Her rambling continued, some of it in a musical language Elyssa found very familiar. If only she had a way to record this. The information was too important to forget. But whenever Daelissa recovered her wits, she'd wipe it all from her mind and nobody would have a clue the Divinity was really a deranged lunatic from another plane of existence, not to mention a member of the race who had created the Grotto and its sister sites.

Father would just die if he knew any of this.

The thought of his ignorance almost made her smile. Almost. The hopelessness of the situation murdered the smile before it could reach her lips. She glared at the strap around her right hand and pulled hard as she could, but it didn't budge. The paint near the arm straps on the chair bore numerous scratches, as if people before her had also struggled against these very same bonds and failed.

Frustration built like a rising flood of anxiety, gripping her insides and squeezing. She jerked and strained again, but only succeeded in adding another scratch to the cheap paint. In a flash of inspiration, it occurred to her what she could do. It wasn't much, but maybe, just maybe, she would see it and remember.

The chair's armrests were a little wider than her forearms and extended past the palms of her hands where they ended in a hand-sized circle. Using the fingernail of her right forefinger, she pressed it against the paint and scratched in a final and very short message. With her left hand, she inscribed a tiny bit more. It took only a few seconds, thanks to a combination of hand strength and the crappy paint on the diamond fiber chair. It wasn't much to go on, but it was better than nothing.

Daelissa abruptly ceased her rant as clarity shone through the cloud of dementia in her blue eyes. "I must go, child. But first, the ritual must be completed." She held a hand toward the White Torch and pressed a hand to Elyssa's forehead.

Tears gathered in Elyssa's eyes and trickled down her cheeks.

Justin, I love you. Don't forget Justin. Hold on, girl. Hold on! Stay with me Justin!

The world vanished in a flash of blinding white light.

Chapter 14

I heard Elyssa calling out to me, crying for help. I followed her voice down endless corridors, which morphed into cavernous rooms, each one darker than the last until I couldn't see a thing. The world was dark and the darkness alive. I wandered, hopelessly lost in a morass of twisting, black tendrils, and my night vision refused to flicker on.

Cold hands gripped my wrists, my legs, and pulled from all sides. It was all I could do to hold myself together, to keep the unseen creatures from tearing me to bits. Pain built from a low burn to the sharp stab of agony as muscles failed and flesh tore.

"Help!" I shouted. "Someone help me!"

A brilliant mote of dark light drifted from somewhere above, falling toward me like a snowflake infected by ultraviolet starlight. Screams echoed from every side and the icy grips weakened and vanished, leaving me almost alone. As the speck of light drew level with my eyes, I held out a hand and caught it before it reached the floor. I expected it to be hot or at the very least, warm. Instead, I hardly felt its presence.

"I love you, Justin." Elyssa's voice sounded so muted and tiny, coming from the speck of light as it did. "I will always love you. Help me."

I held the speck to my ear but no other sounds emanated from the bit of stardust.

"Elyssa?" I called. "Elyssa, answer me!"

The brilliant light flickered. Dimmed. Died.

The sound of countless moist bodies wriggling and squirming toward me caught my ears. Closed in from all sides. Icy cold ripped into my flesh. Tore me to bits.

I awoke with a shout. Fumbled for a lamp and found it. When I turned it on, I saw pink walls and frilly purple bed covers. A soft teddy bear regarded me from the nightstand. Lina had given me her room to sleep in, I remembered.

"It was just a dream," I said. "Just a nightmare." But deep down I knew it wasn't a simple nightmare. I'd had dreams like this before, dreams connecting Elyssa and me in ways I didn't understand. The last time it had happened, I'd been dying or mostly dead after Meghan had used my blood to save Stacey from an infected hellhound bite. Elyssa, glowing with an ultraviolet aura, had visited me in the dream and told me she was my light in the dark.

I shuddered at the significance of the dream I'd just had. Did this mean Elyssa had been mind-wiped already? Even worse, had something horrible happened to her? My heart thudded with anxiety and pain. Sweat gathered on my forehead. I pulled out my phone, but there was still no signal. Not like it mattered. I'd asked to use a phone but the tiny town didn't have landline phones and it was nearly forty miles down the road to get a signal on a cell phone—a signal which was incompatible with my phone. Alejandro told me he would take me outside town to a place I could get a signal and use his cell phone. But it wouldn't be until tomorrow. Damn it, I should have insisted he drive me out there after dinner.

My stomach growled even though it was still full from the meal earlier in the evening. My demon blood cried for essence, making me feel hollow. I'd ignored the feeling all evening, unwilling to latch onto any of my hosts, not just because they might detect my efforts to feed off them, but also because it was just plain rude.

The bedroom door creaked and Lina poked her head into the room. "Are you okay? I heard a shout."

I nodded. "Just a nightmare."

She tiptoed into the room and shut the door behind her. "You frightened me. What was it about?"

I couldn't help but notice she wore a pair of tight short-shorts displaying the contours of her smooth brown legs and a purple tank-top adhering to her curves like a second skin. "Oh, nothing much. A bunch of monsters tore me to bits and probably ate me. I wouldn't know. I was dead by then."

She grimaced, her big brown eyes reflecting the lamplight. Then she took a seat on the foot of the bed. "I wanted to ask you something, Justin."

"Fire away." My stomach made a noise like a starving Wookie. I winced with embarrassment.

"Are you hungry?"

"That's what you wanted to ask me?"

She smiled. "No, but your stomach is making funny noises."

I shrugged apologetically. "It's not food I need."

Understanding lit her face. "Oh, demon hunger. I have never seen spawn feed, but heard it is very interesting." Despite her strong Spanish accent, her English seemed mildly improved from earlier and I wondered if she'd been practicing.

A chuckle escaped me. "Yeah, if you're into voyeurism. When I was first learning to control it, I had a few interesting experiences." Interesting was hardly the word to use, considering I'd nearly had sex with a woman in the grocery store and my gym trainer all thanks to my special incubus temptations.

"How does it work?"

"Well, I feed off of a person's essence, mainly through emotions. The more positive the emotion, the better it 'tastes'." I made air quotes.

"And what emotion tastes the best?"

I wondered if I should be discussing this with her at all. It felt kind of strange and embarrassing to tell someone what rocked my socks when it came to leeching. "Happiness is pretty good."

"Is it the best?"

I pursed my lips. "Well, in my experience, the biggest rush comes with love or lust."

"Yes. I imagine sex would be very tasty." Her throaty Spanish accent made it sound all the more sensual. Then again, she could make peeling potatoes sound alluring with that accent.

I licked my lips and cleared my throat as the room suddenly became much hotter. She looked so innocent but sounded oh-so sexy.

She bit her lower lip and smiled. "Why do you look at me so strange?"

I tore my eyes from her full lips and did my best to recover. "Uh, I've just never heard it put that way before." I would have tugged at the collar to my shirt but realized I wasn't wearing one. I almost pulled the sheets over my exposed nipples.

"If you are hungry, would you like to feed?" She held out her arm, wrist up. "From me?"

The demon inside me clapped its hands, jumping up and down with glee while the responsible nerd wagged a finger. I didn't need the nerd to point me in the right direction. "I, um, it wouldn't be right of me." Elyssa would kill me for feeding off someone with such great, err, teeth. Yeah, she has great teeth all right.

She scooted closer to me, her dark eyes giving me a look I'd seen before. Puppy dog eyes. Kiss me eyes. Her shorts barely reached halfway down her flawless copper thighs, and the purple tank top she wore pressed against small breasts and a flat stomach, showing me curves my libido wanted to ride like a sexual roller coaster.

"Lina," I said, placing a hand on her warm shoulder. "I can't."

"But you are so interesting, Justin. I only want to see what it feels like."

"I have a girlfriend."

Her eyes tightened for a moment before relaxing once again. "I am not asking for sex. If the foreseeance is true, Justin, the world needs you, and I want to give you what you need." She scooted even closer and my blood temperature spiked to volcanic temperatures. "Do you not need it?"

Need it? What I really needed was for the tidal wave of testosterone in my bloodstream to calm down before it lobotomized the brain in my head and put the other one in charge. The hunger for essence howled like a mad wind through a hollow space in my belly, clawing at my insides until I felt myself hovering on the edge of sanity. I had to do something or it was likely I’d really lose control. Lina might as well be offering an alcoholic the key to the liquor store. I trembled, a junkie staring at a mountain of cocaine.

Before my raving teenage hormones washed all reason from my mind, I sent out a tendril and latched it onto the halo of golden light around Lina's body. As I did, I sensed curiosity, longing, and no shortage of lustful feminine need. With every ounce of effort I had, I homed in on the curiosity, thinking it might be the safest emotion to equalize with my own. Anything to keep lust from overwhelming her. A slight trickle of warm essence rewarded me and our mutual lust faded into the background.