The Sacrifice of Sunshine Girl

CHAPTER 2

The Attack of the Serpent-Demons

The attack has begun.

The serpent-demon has a long, thick body with no arms or legs. Its green scales glow grotesquely in the wan light. Horns thrust out and curl backward from its head. Hissing and grinning, it proceeds to wrap itself around Victoria's slim, fragile body. She flails at it, but it is too swift and strong. Plus, she can't see it because she's an ex-luiseach and doesn't have luiseach powers anymore.

Lucio rushes forward like a football player on steroids.

"No!" Aidan commands him.

Lucio stops in his tracks. He can't see the creature either, even though he is a full-on, card-carrying luiseach. Not sure why. "But Aidan! Something's happening to Victoria! We've got to—"

Victoria screams again. The serpent-demon has coiled itself completely around her and is squeezing, squeezing. Its face is a breath away from her face.

"Victoria, close your mouth!" Aidan orders her. She stares at him wildly but obeys, whimpering in terror; he was her mentor when she was a luiseach, so she listens to him.

The creature laughs and flicks its tongue at the thin, hard line of Victoria's lips, its yellow eyes gleaming. Victoria tries to pull away, but it keeps flicking, flicking… and soon her mouth begins to open slowly, excruciatingly as though by force.

Oh no. That's how it will kill her. Not by squeezing her to death but by slipping into her mouth and down her throat. Once inside it will possess her and wipe out her soul. Stop the beating of her heart. After it is finished with her, the memory of her will fade in our minds, like she was never here.

And then it will turn on the rest of us.

I tip my face to the sky. Anna, where are you? Your mom needs you! But I can't feel her spirit anywhere.

Helena, who is no longer chanting, inspects her perfectly manicured nails. She has very small, dainty hands—for a murderer, that is. Or is it murderess?

"What's the plan, Aidan dearest?" she trills. Her tone is sarcastic but with a subtle undercurrent of anxiety. Has she never dealt with a demon onslaught before? Still, part of her probably wants to see Victoria suffer—after all, Victoria was a double agent for Aidan.

"Continue with the incantation, Helena!" Aidan instructs her.

"Why should I? Victoria did betray me, after all."

"We can discuss that later. We need to stop this now, not just for Victoria's sake but for all our sakes. You know what will happen if…"

Aidan doesn't finish his sentence. He loosens his gunmetal gray tie and strides toward Victoria and the serpent-demon. Very James Bond of him. Sighing, Helena resumes chanting. So do I, although in Aidan's absence I automatically move away from her. Lucio, ever protective, places himself between Helena and me. It must be taking every ounce of self-control for him not to go after Helena right here and now. But he wouldn't disobey Aidan, and he knows what's at stake.

Aidan circles the creature, which is too busy demon–French-kissing Victoria to notice him. As I chant, I do a quick visual sweep of the perimeter. The chasms are closing, but not fast enough. I spot two more serpent-demons crawling out: one black, one red. There may be others. There will be others. Demons… dark spirits… an army of pure evil…

The serpent-demon on Victoria finally detects Aidan's presence. It whips its head around 180 degrees and bares its lethal fangs with a low, gurgling hiss.

Aidan grabs its neck with lightning speed. Startled, it loosens its grip on Victoria just long enough for her to wriggle away and hurl herself to the ground.

The creature and Aidan wrestle. Out of the corner of my eye I see that the red serpent-demon and the black serpent-demon have cleared the chasm. The red one speed-slithers toward Helena and Lucio and me. The black one speed-slithers off in the direction of the street.

Nolan and Mom and Ashley!

Panic grips my chest. They're human—they can't defend themselves. I have to do something, anything, now.

My luiseach knife. I reach into the back pocket of my jeans, but of course, it's not there. Ack!

"Sunshine! By the fountain!" I hear Nolan shout from the street, pointing me to the knife.

Nolan to the rescue again. I send him a mental "thank you" surrounded by hearts and X's and O's. I notice that Ashley is trying to open the driver's side of her little blue hybrid car but keeps dropping the keys. Clumsiness is my thing, but terror can have the same effect, I guess. Nolan is attempting to steer Mom around to the passenger side, but to no avail; she keeps pointing to me and arguing with him. Listen to Nolan, Mom!

Aidan is still wrestling with the serpent-demon. Lucio is lifting Victoria to her feet. I check out the other two serpent-demons… if I run fast enough, I might be able to get to the knife just before the closest one, the red one, reaches striking distance.

I break into a sprint.

"Sunshine, what are you doing?" Lucio yells.

The red serpent-demon pivots and speed-slithers in my direction. I combat-roll onto the ground and reach for the handle of the knife.

My fingers close around it just as the creature catches up to me and prepares to strike. I can feel its hot, rancid breath on my face as it flicks its tongue at me.

I jump to my feet and step back. The knife burns and twitches in my grip. Its blade bears the faint echoes of its past incarnations: a torch, a storm, the epic instrument that split the earth open…

Now!

I fling the knife—or rather, the knife flings itself—toward the charged gray sky. It swoops and arcs like a bird and nose-dives down, down, down.

The blade hits the earth and pierces it. It creates a swirling cloud of dirt and smoke and pine.

The cloud funnels up, up, up and explodes… and a gigantic eagle rises up from the chaos. It flaps its massive wings—they must span at least twelve feet—with a sound as deafening as helicopter blades.

Helena abruptly stops chanting. She glances at the monster eagle and then at me, her brown eyes wide with shock.

Yup, that's right, I did that, I want to say to her smugly. But this is not the time for teen-daughter attitude. Not that I'm her daughter in any way that matters.

The eagle fixes its laser gaze on the red serpent-demon at my side and swoops in for the kill. The creature screams and screams as the eagle sinks its razor talons into its throat. Ochre-colored blood sprays everywhere. Gross. The creature flops to the ground and sizzles, dissolves into nothingness.

Then the eagle directs its attention to the serpent-demon that is—was—wrestling with Aidan. The creature is now trying to speed-slither into the nearest chasm. But the chasm is almost closed up—all the chasms are almost closed up—and the eagle seizes the creature by its neck and proceeds to shake it to death. Old school but effective.

The eagle dispenses with the third serpent-demon in the same way. I feel a huge whoosh of relief. Nolan and Mom and Ashley are safe. We are all safe.

At least for now.

Victoria is shivering and crying. Lucio has stripped down to his cargo shorts and is using his T-shirt to wipe blood and dirt and tears from her face. The earth tremors shudder to a complete stop. The chasms have all disappeared, and things are back to normal again.

Well, maybe "normal" isn't the right word. Nothing has been normal since I turned sixteen and came into my luiseach powers and the invisible world became visible to me. Stuff no one should ever have to see or experience.

Aidan appears at my side. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, D—… Aidan. Ai-dan."

His milky green cat eyes, identical to my own, flash with surprise. Did I seriously almost call him "Dad"? Maybe I did suffer a head injury, after all.

Aidan starts to say something but then turns to Helena. "Do you finally—finally—understand why we have to keep her alive?" he says gruffly.

"Sentimental nonsense," Helena mutters. She busies herself with a loose strand of hair and shoves it back into her bun. She and I have the same curly brown hair, except that hers is perfect and mine is a perpetual, freaky frizzball (and thanks to a little encounter I had with a fire demon recently, it's now a short, fried frizzball).

"No, it's not that. Her powers… we were wrong about… Helena, you need to speak to the other luiseach and convince them!"

At Aidan's mention of the "other luiseach" Lucio visibly tenses. I reach over and squeeze his hand. I notice Nolan noticing my hand from across the lawn, and I remove it hastily. Not that he has any reason to be jealous of me comforting a cute half-naked guy—Lucio and I are just friends, 99.9 percent just friends.

Plus, Nolan doesn't know everything I've learned recently, including what Helena did to Lucio's mom and dad.

Helena gazes at Aidan and then at me. She seems to be considering something. To kill me or not to kill me? What method to use, maybe? Earlier today she tried to choke me. When I was a baby she tried to suffocate me while pretending to nurse me. I'm pretty sure a therapist would have a field day with our relationship.

Helena slants her cold, eagle gaze back at Aidan. "I need to take this up with my luiseach council," she says finally.

Aidan arches an eyebrow. "Your luiseach council? What on earth is that?"

"A lot has changed since we went our separate ways, dearest."

CHAPTER 3

Blood and More Blood

White walls, beeping machines, the smells of iodine and disinfectant. I wanted to go straight home after the demon smack-down at Victoria's, but Mom wouldn't hear of it. So now I'm stuck at Ridgemont Hospital, where she works as the head of the neonatal nursing unit, and I'm getting poked and prodded for no good reason.

Leads and wires cover my body. A nurse I don't recognize—her nametag says "Beverly"—hovers over me with a clipboard. She jots down notes as she glances over her shoulder at the blinking numbers on a monitor.

A second nurse walks into the room, pulling on a pair of latex gloves with a brisk snap, snap. She is carrying a basket full of empty collection tubes.

"Afternoon, ladies," she calls out in a friendly voice.

Beverly gives her a chin nod. "Our patient's all ready for you, Latoya."

"Great. The lab needs these samples ASAP. Kat's down there now to make certain they put a rush on everything," says Latoya.

"If anyone can light a fire under their butts, it's our Kat," Beverly says, chuckling.

"May I please go home now?" I ask, shifting carefully so I don't unplug myself. "I'm fine. Really."

Beverly pats my shoulder. "I'm sure you are, hon. Your mom just wants to be a hundred percent that everything's A-okay. We're just gonna run a couple of tests and have Dr. Kothari give the results a look-see."

"Are you right or left-handed, sweetheart?" Latoya asks me.

"Right."

"Allrighty, then." Latoya takes a piece of rubber tubing out and ties it securely around my left bicep. "Make a fist for me?"

I obey, trying to ignore the pinchy pressure of the rubber tubing. If I know anything from living with Mom for sixteen years, it's that nurses don't take no for an answer. Latoya presses several points on my forearm, finds a bumpy blue vein, and swabs it with iodine. "Sharp sting, okay?"

"Um, okay."

I wince as she pierces my skin with the long, thin hypodermic needle. The collection tube attached to the needle quickly begins to fill with dark red blood. When the tube is full, Latoya switches it out for another.

The sight of my own blood has always made me feel queasy, so I look away and try to think happy thoughts.

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts. Vanilla ice cream from Scoops 'N Smiles. Taking pictures with my Nikon F5, my sweet-sixteen present from Mom, on a slightly cloudy, perfect-light day. My dog Oscar wearing a sequiny, powder-blue tutu. (Second-grade me used to like dressing him up.) Pizza and movie nights with Mom. The day we brought my cat, Lex Luthor, home from the SPCA. Sleepovers with Ashley back when Mom and I used to live in Austin. Antique stores and flea markets. Anything Jane Austen.

And Nolan. Always Nolan. The way his hair falls across his forehead. His goofy, crooked smile. His amazing mind. His warm lips…

Where is he, anyway? When we got to the hospital Mom insisted he get examined too—and also Victoria, although she had to sign in under an alias, as she did technically die here in the ICU on New Year's. (No one knows how she managed to resuscitate herself—is it because she had just enough leftover luiseach in her to undo that demon's mortal attack?)

I'm not sure where Aidan and Lucio went off to. I think Ashley is downstairs at the hospital gift shop buying me trashy magazines and jelly beans and other get-well presents.

As for Helena, I hope she went back to where she came from, wherever that is. I have a better chance of staying alive that way. The thing is, she didn't always have homicidal feelings toward me. When she was pregnant with me, she was your typical joyful, expectant mom. But on the other hand she was extremely not typical—ditto Aidan—because they were too busy conducting scientific experiments on the unborn me to try to create some kind of mutant super-luiseach. Then, at the exact moment of my birth, at the Llevar la Luz luiseach training compound in Mexico, a massive shockwave of energy apparently blasted out into the universe. Several pregnant luiseach women at the compound spontaneously miscarried, as did other pregnant luiseach women around the world. Some of them even died.

And so Helena came to believe—and still believes—that the luiseach race is doomed as long as I am alive.

"Hello, hello!" Mom—my real mom, my only mom—sweeps into the room wearing ladybug and sunflower scrubs. "Sunshine, how are you feeling? Beverly, how are her vitals? Latoya, the lab is standing by for those samples," she says all in one breath.

"Aye, aye, captain," Latoya says with a mock salute. She gathers the neatly labeled dark red tubes, winks at me, and takes off.

Beverly hands her clipboard to Mom. "Her vitals are all within range, Kat… except that her temp is running a bit high."

"That's okay. She's, uh, getting over a bad cold."

Mom knows by now that as a luiseach, my base body temperature runs high. But she can't let anyone know my true, nonhuman identity.

She takes the clipboard from Beverly and scans the information. She nods to herself and regards me with anxious eyes.

"No dizziness?" she asks me.

"Nope."

"How about nausea?"

"No nausea. Mom, can't we just—"

Mom's pager beeps. She pulls it out of her pocket and reads the message on the screen. "Oh! My goodness. Beverly, did you know about the situation in the ER?"

"You mean the arson incident in the shopping mall? The ER's backed up six ways to Sunday."

I sit up slightly. "Wait. What arson incident at the mall?"

"They've just admitted one of the victims. She's thirty-two weeks, and she went into premature labor. They're prepping her for a C-section now. Come with me," Mom says to Beverly.

"Seriously, Mom. What's happening?" I demand.

"Nothing for you to worry about, sweetie. Just stay put. Dr. Kothari will be by soon to check on you. You remember him, right? He's the funny one with the tattoo of a…" Mom's words drift away as she sweeps out of the room, Beverly at her heels.

Arson incident at the mall?

Ridgemont isn't exactly a sleepy little town, but it's not a violent-crime kind of place either. The worst crime I know of was when Anna's dad murdered her while he was possessed, and that was over a year ago, before Mom and I moved here from Texas.

My gaze lands on the small TV screen hanging from the ceiling. I wonder if this mall situation has made the news yet? I find the remote control and click on.

A blond newscaster named Traci is saying something about a tragedy. I crank up the volume.

"—again, one person is dead and a dozen people were hospitalized as a result of the arson at the Ridgemont Mall. Police have a suspect in custody at this time. Her name is Mabel Ostricher…"

A photo of Mabel Ostricher pops up on the screen. White hair, blue eyes, rosy cheeks… holy crackers, I know