The Devil's Dreamcatcher by Donna Hosie

Author:Donna Hosie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2015-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

16. Circles of Hell

I run through the surf toward the beach. The sand gives way beneath my sneakers. I can’t locate Elinor or Jeanne in the green glow cast by the Pacific, but I do see Angela and Johnny pass me on their way out to the water. They splash out to where Alfarin and Owen are standing, and together, they each grab a limb and haul a disoriented Mitchell from the cold water.

“Melissa, are you okay?” calls Owen.

“My name is Medusa.”

“What?”

“Don’t call me Melissa anymore, Owen.” I turn to look at the dripping-wet soldier. “The Unspeakable knows me as Melissa, but he doesn’t know me. The me I am now. He thinks he’s baiting the sixteen-year-old girl he tormented forty years ago. He said I have something he wants. He said he’d give up the Dreamcatcher when he gets his life back. I don’t know how those things are connected yet, but I do know we have an advantage in that he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.”

Owen is watching me carefully, and I feel an intensity building in my chest. The powerful feeling that came over me moments ago in the water is coming into sharp focus, and with it comes a strange sensation of relief. It’s time to finally shed myself of Melissa, once and for all. Melissa was scared and unprotected. She was friendless and untrusting. When she died, the Grim Reapers at the HalfWay House inadvertently gave her a clean slate with a new name. Since then I’ve learned to think on my feet, and to stand up for myself against hurtful people, like misogynistic bosses and mean girls with a pack mentality. It hasn’t been easy, and it hasn’t been fun. I carried Melissa with me the whole way, and all the self-doubt that came with her. But I did learn how to keep people from taking advantage of me. I learned to control my emotions. And finally, after going it alone for so long, I have friends, real friends, in Mitchell, Alfarin and Elinor.

It’s time to let Melissa go. And I need to let something else go, too. From now on, I won’t think of my stepfather as anything other than an Unspeakable. Rory Hunter, the man who lived, the monster who destroyed my life and has haunted my nightmares in death, will not be allowed to ruin my new existence as well.

I return Owen’s gaze and give him a small, reassuring smile.

“I’m Medusa now, Owen. The girl who fell from the bridge forty years ago is gone. She’s dead. The Unspeakable doesn’t understand that yet, but he’s about to. We’re going to learn how to immolate. And then we will rescue that child. When we do, the Skin-Walkers can take the Unspeakable back to Hell, where he will rot.”

I try to retain my confidence as Cupidore sidles up next to me. “Septimus knew what he was doing, trusting in you,” he sneers. “Yet I smell duplicity in your future. You are not what you seem, child.

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