“Wait.” I pulled down the black mask, adorned with three matching pink gemstones at the temples, over the upper half of my face. “What do you think now?”
“Cute, but I prefer seeing your face.” Daniel tied his own black mask over his eyes. Luckily, his was free of any sparkles. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
I nodded. “What about you? How’s your shoulder?”
The way he’d been carrying himself all day, I’d almost forgotten about the bullet wound. I realized that it might not be the best idea for us to head into battle with one of us injured.
Daniel rolled his shoulders. “It stings like crazy, but I’ll be okay. I think it’s even started to heal a bit.”
“That’s good.”
“Let’s go.” He reached for the door handle.
I put my hand on his arm. “Thank you.”
His dark eyes blinked behind the mask. “What for?”
“For not suggesting that I stay in the car while you go in and take care of things for me.”
“We’re partners in this.”
“Good,” I said.
We got out of the car. The lost boys, wearing various Halloween masks, fell in behind us and we made our way toward the farmhouse through the crowd of teens who were clamoring to get past the bouncers. Some of the partygoers were dressed in costumes, others just in assortments of black, camo, lace, and leather. I wondered if they were eager to get inside the trance party because they knew what was going on in there—or because they didn’t have a clue. Part of me wanted to shout at them to run away.
“Just act like you belong here, and no one will stop us,” Daniel said, bypassing all the wannabes standing in line. I called on my superpowered balance in order not to wobble in the high-heeled black boots that went with my ensemble as we strode right up to the large bouncers. Daniel gave one of them a slight nod. He let us pass.
Daniel pushed open the door, and techno music burst into my eardrums. Inside reminded me of the Depot, with strobe lights, dancers, and plenty of foggy smoke wafting in the air. The biggest difference here was the decrepit farmhouse furniture interspersed with garish haunted-house decor, looking all the more frightening in the flashing lights and smoke.
“Fan out,” Daniel said to the boys. “I want you to act as lookouts only. No engaging with any of the Shadow Kings.”
I knew he hadn’t wanted them coming along into a potential fight—didn’t want to feel responsible for them if anything went wrong. But I’d convinced him that they should be here. They were his pack after all.
“This place reeks,” I said, gagging on the mixture of smells in the air: alcohol, perfume, cigarettes, decaying wood from the house itself, the must from yellowed drapes that hung from the blacked-out windows, and an underlying scent probably only someone like Daniel or me could pick out—like garbage that’s been baking out in the sun. The stench of sour milk and rotting meat.
“Akhs and Gelals.” I covered my nose. “This place is crawling with them.”
“Feeding grounds,” Daniel said. He looked at me. “You okay? I know this isn’t your scene.”
The first time I’d been to a party like this, at Daniel’s apartment last year, I’d run away scared. The second time was when April and I went to the Depot looking for Jude, and we’d had to be rescued and dragged out of there by Talbot. The third time, I’d had to leave before I lost control and hurt someone.
But this time, I wasn’t leaving the party until I’d kicked some major butt.
“Yeah,” I said, and led him toward a crowd of dancing teens in the family room of the house. “There he is,” I whispered, and nodded my head toward Pete Bradshaw. He lurked in the shadows behind a group of girls dressed in matching red-devil costumes. The girls danced in a circle, close to each other in a fashion that would have been provocative if their arms and legs weren’t moving in a such a weird, jerking sort of way. Almost like someone else was directing their motions. Like puppets on strings.
“Why are they moving like that?” I scanned the room, noticing more people dancing and moving in that odd way. A girl standing on a tabletop, dressed as a fairy, looked particularly horrible the way her arms moved—like she was trying desperately to get them to stop but couldn’t.
“They’re in trances,” Daniel said. “If an Akh stares into your eyes long enough, it can keep you in a hypnotic state for quite some time, even without the continued eye-to-eye connection. These people are being controlled by someone else.”
“And they do this on purpose?”
“It’s quite the high,” he said in a way that made me wonder if he’d tried it before in his former life. “They feel stoned. But their brains are starting to fight it. Hence the jerking movements.”
I tore my sight off the gruesome dancers and looked back at Pete. He’d narrowed his sights on a girl in a curly blonde wig, dressed as a sexy vampire. Velvet cape and all. Her back was to me, and I couldn’t see her face, but I watched as she tapped the shoulder of one of the dancing devil girls. “Kristy, I want to go,” I heard her say. The other girl didn’t respond. “Kristy, please? Answer me.” Something about her voice made me cringe. It was laced with so much fear. Her friends had probably dragged her here, and she hadn’t known what she was getting herself into.
Pete must have heard the fear also. He licked his lips as he stared at her. I knew what he was thinking: easy prey. And I doubted it was just her psychic energy he wanted to feed off of.
I leaned in close to Daniel and pecked a kiss against his throat, making it look like we were merely on the dance floor to make out. “Pete’s on the prowl,” I whispered into Daniel’s ear.
“Then he’ll be easily baited.” Daniel kissed me. “What do you think?”
Our plan had been to find away to lure Pete to a secluded area of the haunted house—in order to kill him without attracting any attention.
Daniel caressed his finger along my face. He pecked a few kisses behind my ear and then whispered, “There,” turning my head slightly toward an arched doorway, guarded by two more freaky scarecrows. A sign, painted in garish letters the color of blood, read, library of horrors: enter at your own risk. A yellow X of caution tape blocked it off from the rest of the party.