The barn door creaked as I opened it and we al stopped to listen for sound and movement. We heard nothing, however, so Bo, Savannah and I filed quickly through the door, Devon staying behind to guard the entrance so that no one could sneak up and trap us inside.
Savannah and I hugged the wal to the left, Bo hugged the wal to the right and we al made our way around toward the center of the barn where Lil y should’ve been playing.
Only she wasn’t.
When Savannah and I moved behind a huge and presumably defunct hay baler and appeared on the other side, I got my first glimpse of Lil y. She was wearing the same clothes I’d seen her in, soiled in exactly the same way, but she wasn’t playing in the floor like I expected. She wasn’t even sitting up. She was lying on her back, perfectly stil .
Her tiny hands were crossed over her motionless chest, her eyes were closed and, as far as I could tel , al signs of life were absent.
I gasped, resisting the urge to go to her. Instead, I looked to Savannah. She was moving her head back and forth in a scanning motion, trying desperately to get a glimpse of anything but her customary blackness. I assumed that her silence meant she saw nothing.
When Bo appeared on the other side of the barn, directly across from where we stood looking at Lil y, he shrugged. I shrugged in return and shook my head. It appeared that the coast was clear.
“Savannah,” I whispered, “nothing?”
“No,” she answered softly.
Immediately I rushed to Lil y’s side. I fel to my knees and raised my hand to her cheek. It was cool and soft. I pressed my fingertips to her throat, praying for a pulse. Much to my dismay, I felt nothing.
“No, no, no,” I breathed as I leaned over and put my ear to her chest. I saw Bo approach and come around to the other side of Lil y’s motionless body.
At first I heard nothing but the heavy silence around me. It rang through the barn like a death knel that couldn’t be heard with the ears, but rather with the heart.
“Omigod, Lil y no!” I cried quietly, icy fingers squeezing my chest in a vise grip as my hands raced over her smal body in search of anything that might signal life.
It was then that I heard the low, sluggish thump of a single heartbeat. Encouraged, I put my ear to her chest again and heard the swish of blood as it poured through her veins in one long pulse.
“She’s alive,” Bo declared. “But just barely. I don’t know what he’s done to her, but at least she’s stil alive.”
“We need to get her to the hospital then.”
“No, they can’t help her. He’s done something to her that only he can undo. I can feel it.”
“Feel what?”
“I don’t know. Her soul maybe. Something. I can feel it hovering around her like it’s separated, but not gone. It’s like something is keeping it from her body.”
In light of al the strange and inexplicable things I’d seen, I didn’t need to ask Bo how he knew this. I just wanted to know if he was certain.
“Are you sure?”
Bo looked up and met my eyes.
“I’m positive,” he replied confidently. “Come on, let’s get her out of here.”
Tenderly, Bo slipped his hands beneath Lil y’s neck and knees and lifted, scooping her off the ground to cradle her in his arms. A pang of regret lanced through me at the sight of them. I knew to the depths of my soul that Bo would have made a wonderful father and I already mourned the fact that I’d never get to see him holding our child in just that way. I’d never see him carrying our sleeping daughter to bed or wrestling and roughhousing with our son. We had no future like that. I had no future at al , but I was hoping that he and Lil y did.
Bo was turning to carry Lil y to the back door when Savannah’s shril scream brought the hair at my nape to attention.
“Ridley!” she screamed, pointing up toward the rafters.
The next several things happened in a flurry of activity that was so quick, so perfectly-orchestrated, we were al caught off guard and stunned into immobility.
The instant Savannah screamed, we al turned to her, curious to what she was referring. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Devon come rushing in the back door. Then al our eyes fol owed Savannah’s finger to where she pointed.
It was Sebastian. He hovered in the air above our heads, like the dark and vengeful fal en angel that he was.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
With one sharp flick of Sebastian’s hand, the back door slammed shut behind Devon. That was immediately fol owed by another scream—also a woman’s scream—that could be heard from outside the barn. It was blood-curdling and quite easily the most frightening sound I’d ever heard.
It grew louder and louder, seeming to come from the sky, and then Annika’s body broke through the dilapidated rafters and fel to the ground, landing with a bone-crunching thud right in front of where we stood.
A shower of wooden splinters rained down on the barn floor, the residue of which covered Annika’s inert body making her look dusty.
Another crash drew our attention upward again, just in time to see Heather burst through the ceiling and land on a huge crossbeam. She crouched there like a flame-haired gargoyle. Her eyes were wide and wild, her mouth partial y open in a toothy, hungry grin. Although she looked similar to the Heather I was familiar with, there was something darker about her. It was as though an inner madness was seeping through her skin and staining it. She was terrifying.
“Subdue them, brother,” Sebastian said, speaking to Heather.
Without hesitation, Heather turned her black, empty gaze to Annika and she raised one bony hand toward her.
Although Annika was plainly unconscious, her body snapped quickly into a standing position as if she were a puppet on strings. She was rigid, from her pointed toes which barely grazed the dirt floor to her tightly-clamped arms. But it was her head that gave her obliviousness away. It lol ed lifelessly atop her neck, dropping back as if she was watching the sky.
In rapid succession, Heather turned her attention to each of us, trapping us al in invisible restraints and moving us into an inescapable semi-circle, at the center of which was Bo.
She turned her malignant attention to him last, ripping Lil y from his arms and bringing her to stand to my left.
Bo squared off against Sebastian as he glided graceful y to the ground, as if floating down on an invisible elevator.
Sebastian didn’t approach him. He simply planted his feet in the dirt several yards away and watched Bo, a smugly wicked smile pul ing at his lips.
As I watched them, a single thought penetrated the panic that I was feeling. Bo had yet to learn al that he needed from the letter. My skin was not yet covered. I felt sure there was very valuable and probably life-saving information that he had yet to learn.