The creature flew straight at me, her ghastly maw stretching as if to swallow me whole. I tripped backward over a piece of lumber and got tangled in some dangling electrical wires. I struggled to free myself, but I was a fly trapped in a spider’s web.
“Get her,” I shouted above her screeching.
The banshee veered away from me toward Aaron and Adrian. One of them howled in fear, and then came the sound of running feet. The banshee gave chase, her angry wails mixing with their screams.
Something grabbed me from behind, and I let out a small scream, whirling to strike out at it. My fist hit flesh, and it staggered back a step.
“Ow! Damn it, it’s me.” Trey rubbed his cheek. “You nearly took my head off. Where did you learn to punch that hard?”
“Sorry.” Apparently, my Fae strength was starting to kick in. I freed myself from the wiring. “Let’s go.”
We ran after Aaron, Adrian, and the banshee. It wasn’t hard to track them with all the noise they were making, and we found the twins cowering in a corner with the banshee shrieking her rage at them.
I tugged on Trey’s sleeve and held up my shackles. He nodded, and we rushed in at the same time. I grabbed onto one of the banshee’s arms, and he went for the other one. The intent was to shackle and hold her long enough for the twins to gag her. Shackles could slow down a banshee, but the only way to subdue one was to silence her. This was why it took multiple people to bring one in.
I almost had the shackle on her wrist when she screamed so loud it was like needles pricking my eardrums. I lost my grip and fell to my hands and knees, and she disappeared into the darkness.
It took a minute for my ears to stop ringing enough to hear Adrian calling his brother’s name. I lifted my head and saw Aaron lying on the floor while Adrian bent over him. A few feet to my right, Trey sat on the floor, shaking his head and looking a little dazed.
I crawled over to Aaron, who had a bloody gash on his forehead. “What happened?” I asked too loudly.
“I think he ran into a two-by-four.” Adrian shook his brother gently. “Come on, bro. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”
I checked Aaron’s pulse and breathing and opened his eyes to look at his pupils. They reacted to the light, which was a good sign. I was debating what to do next when he blinked and let out a low moan. My breath left me in a relieved whoosh, and I sat back on my heels.
A few seconds later, he put a hand up to feel the goose egg on his head. “Did anyone get the license plate of that truck?”
From the far end of the floor, the banshee keened. Aaron sat up and nearly fell over, clutching his head.
“Take it slowly,” Adrian told him.
Aaron looked at his brother with haunted eyes. “Did you see her? It was Emmy but not.”
Adrian nodded sadly. “I saw her.”
I didn’t say anything. Emmy was their sister, who had been two years behind me in school. She’d died from leukemia a year and a half ago.
“Do you guys want to keep going or come back tomorrow?” Trey asked from behind me.
“Keep going,” Aaron, Adrian, and I said together.
Aaron stood, pressed his mouth into a hard line, and tossed away his busted headlamp. “That bitch is going down.”
We headed back toward the other end of the building where we’d heard the banshee the first time. Halfway there, she started up her keening again, and a shudder went through me. I reminded myself it was all in my head, and she couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t let her. A glance at the other three told me they were dealing with their own fears. I didn’t know what Trey had seen, but our visions couldn’t have been anywhere near as bad as seeing a dead sister.
As with before, the banshee went silent when we drew near. This time, though, we were expecting her attack. We stood together with our hands over our ears as she flew screaming at us out of the darkness. She circled us a few times and took off when she saw she wasn’t going to scare us away.
We resumed walking. She kept returning to the same spot, and I suspected it might be where Claire Parker’s apartment had been. If so, that was the best place to corner her. She was drawn to it, and she would make her stand there.
I could hear the howl of the wind the closer we got to our destination, and the sheets of hanging plastic danced like ghostly figures. For a moment, I imagined one of them was the ghost of Claire Parker, and I quickly shook off the thought. The banshee was terrifying enough without me scaring myself more.
Trey touched my arm and pointed at something up ahead. I squinted through the gloom and spotted a figure standing in front of a window, or the place where a window used to be. Her gray cloak and long gray hair fluttered wildly, and she had her head bent forward, her hands clasped as if in prayer.
“Same plan as before?” I asked as we approached her.
Aaron didn’t take his eyes off the banshee. “Yes.”
I swallowed dryly and moved ahead of them. The plan we’d come up with was for me to distract the banshee. While I took the brunt of her anger, the three of them would subdue her. It had sounded like a great plan before I’d experienced her wrath firsthand.
She started a low keening when I was ten feet from her, but she didn’t lift her head to look at me. My heartbeats pounded in my ears as I slowly closed the distance between us. She didn’t move.
I glanced over my shoulder at the others, and Adrian shrugged. They couldn’t sneak up on her if she stayed where she was, but she didn’t seem inclined to leave the spot.
Then it hit me. If this had been Claire’s apartment, the banshee was probably standing exactly where the woman had fallen from. I shivered at the realization.
None of the books I’d read had mentioned what to do when a banshee just stood there like this. Dad had said she would go after whomever got close to her, which was me in this case.
“Hey,” I said to her, feeling stupid talking to a banshee. Could she even understand me? Too bad becoming faerie didn’t give me command of their language. That probably would have come in handy.
She didn’t move, so I spoke again. “Hey?”
Still no response. I took a breath and tried a different tactic. “Claire?”
Her head shot up, and she fixed her dead eyes on me. I backed up as her face twisted in rage, and her keening grew louder. In the blink of an eye, she was so close I could feel the cold emanating from her. She began to circle me, and I moved with her until I was now the one with my back to the windows. Her mouth gaped, and I clapped my hands over my ears before the shriek came.
I couldn’t hear the others moving, but suddenly, the banshee whirled away from me. The twins grabbed her arms, and I caught the glint of metal in Trey’s hands. I didn’t breathe as they wrestled her to the floor.
The banshee exploded from the tangle of bodies with an earsplitting screech. I flinched at the thud of two bodies hitting the wall as she rounded on me. She flew at me so fast there was no time to evade her attack. I pitched backward, but there was nothing to grab onto. Terror slammed into me as I fell through the opening and into the night.
Chapter 3
“Jesse!”
Trey’s frantic shout sounded a long way off as I flailed wildly, reaching for anything to stop my fall to my death. The fingers of my right hand touched the lip of the opening, and I grabbed it, holding on with everything in me. I swung helplessly in the wind as I reached up with my other hand.