“What darlin’ — you haven’t had enough of my pet snake?” She heard George ask from inside. She waited till she saw the doorknob turn and then kicked hard against the door, slamming it into George as he tried to open it. She heard him cry out in pain. She was through the door, then spun around and closed it behind her.
She was slammed against the door, followed by the weight of George’s body as he rammed her. The impact jarred her, and she felt her nose break. She was sure several ribs were cracked, if not broken as well. Blood poured out of her nose. George leaned against her, smashing her against the door.
“I don’t know who you are missy, but you’re messing with the wrong guy if you think I won’t hurt you just because you’re a girl,” George whispered into her ear. She smelled the alcohol on his breath.
“No, George, I know you. I know you like to hurt girls. It’s the only way you feel like a man,” she told him.
She felt the pressure let up.
“Shae?”
She used the lack of pressure to turn in his grasp, so she was facing him. He stared at her in surprise and eased up even more. She slammed her knee into his groin. He staggered back, leaning forward, grabbing his groin in pain.
She took two steps toward him and kicked him in the face. She got satisfaction from hearing his nose break. She reached up and felt her nose. It had already repaired itself and stopped bleeding. George lay on his back alternating between grabbing his groin and face in pain. She moved to him.
“You disgust me. You sick fuck! How could you do what you did? How could you ruin me? I tried to kill myself because of what you did. And because of that, I was taken by people and held for over a year. Because of what YOU did! You haven’t changed at all. Still drinking, still fucking around, and I bet when Anne gets home, she will have a black eye or a busted lip. You can’t hold your temper and unless you hit her, you don’t feel like a man! People like you shouldn’t exist.”
George tried to scramble away from her, stammering and trying to say he was sorry or some such nonsense. He truly looked frightened. As well he should be. Shae followed closely and as he backed away. She drew her knives from their sheaths. With the look of genuine surprise on his face, she sliced both across his neck. Blood sprayed out and he clutched his neck, desperately trying to stem the flow. Every second as the blood poured from his arteries Shae stared into his eyes.
She watched the grip on his neck grow weaker as more and more blood flowed between his fingers and onto his chest, staining his wife-beater. It wasn’t long before the last bit of life left him. His hand dropped. The blood no longer pumped from his throat but dribbled slowly like a kitchen faucet not shut completely off.
She felt relieved. For too long she had been afraid of men, for they either abandoned her or treated her like shit. Well, she was no longer afraid. She could take care of herself now. She didn't need anyone to help her. Shae moved to the kitchen and proceeded to wash the blood off the knives. While she cleaned them, Shae heard a car door close. She looked out the window and saw Anne, her foster mother walking from her car to the front door.
Anne opened the door and stepped in. The first thing she saw was George with two slices across his neck, and his blood-soaked wife beater. Blood was a dark stain amongst other stains on the carpet, though the blood still looked wet. She dropped her purse and keys on the floor. Her hands went to her mouth and she gasped.
"I did you a favor Anne. He was no good to you," Shae told her from the kitchen.
Anne quickly turned and saw a young woman with faded red hair and pale skin standing there with two long, wicked looking oriental knives still glistening from being washed. Recognition dawned slowly on Anne's face.
"Shae?" Anne asked her with a puzzled look.
"Yes, Anne, it's your foster daughter, here in the flesh." Shae crossed the room and approached Anne. "I bet you never thought to see me again, eh? Not after you sold me to those doctors."
"No, Shae, it wasn't like that. They said they could help you. I knew you would be better off without being near George." Anne finished with a sob as she glanced back at the body of George. Tears came down her face.
"Well here's an idea, mom, why didn't you kick George out? He beat you, and me. He cheated on you and spent your money. Plus, he raped me which made me try to kill myself. Don't you think that instead of sending me away... the innocent one, you should have sent HIM away?" she yelled and saw Anne was truly scared. Her eyes kept flicking towards the two knives in Shae's hands.
"It's just, you don't understand. I love him."
Shae lost it. She growled a yell of frustration and anger then thrust one of the knives deep within Anne's abdomen. She felt it nick a vertebra as it exited out the back. Anne collapsed to the floor, sliding off the knife. Anne, still alive, was trying to say something. Shae knelt close to her.
"Do you know what they did to me in that hospital you thought would help me?"
Anne didn't respond.
"They ran experiments on me almost every day. They cut me, burned me, and hurt me in ways you cannot even imagine. There are even things they did I don't even remember what they were they were so horrible. It's like the memory is there, but I just can't get a hold of it. I'm not even sure I want to remember." She moved so her face was just inches from Anne's, who sobbed quietly, looking at her with pleading eyes as she bled out slowly.
"So, don't tell me you did it to help me, or for any reason other than you just wanted your life to be easier. I complicated things for you. For you and for George. You probably hoped he would beat you less if I wasn’t around, right? I’m guessing you were wrong on that account. I loved you, as a mother, until you let him rape me. Then I hated you. Now I can live without that hate since both of you will be burning in hell for what you did!"
Shae realized she was shaking Anne, but her body had gone limp. She was dead. Shae let go and stood. She took one last look around the room and left. She pulled the door shut and when she turned around, she saw someone she wasn't expecting to ever see again.
"Daniel?"
The last thing Daniel remembered before he woke up in the hospital bed was the look in patient 12's eyes. That look of resolve. He knew right then and there she was going to kill him. He felt searing pain along his neck and then weightlessness. When he hit the ground, he was already unconscious.
Luckily, he was told later, there was a doctor there who did everything he could to stop the bleeding. In addition, Daniel happened to be at a governmental hospital housing some of the most state-of-the-art equipment and world-class doctors.
The surgery to repair his carotid and jugular arteries took five hours, since they also had repair his esophagus and windpipe. Apparently, when they accomplished all they could do, all that was left was to pump him full of blood and hope for the best.
He still hadn't regained consciousness when he flat lined. They were able to revive him after several attempts to defib. After that, his recovery was nothing short of miraculous. They predicted he wouldn't be able to speak for months, and even then, he might have to go to a speech therapist to recover some of his vocals.
They planned on having him hooked to a feeding tube for quite some time because of the damage to the esophagus. Instead, he was up and about in a week. It was as if nothing had happened to him. The doctors did not know what to make of it. Daniel did. He realized the only way he could have recovered so quickly was because he had somehow picked up the ability from patient 12. It was obvious it was transferred when she used her claws to cut him.
The contagion entered his bloodstream through the cut. He reacted the way the other test subjects did. He had flat lined, but this time, they were able to revive the subject. So, the transfer was iffy at best, unreliable and could cause death, but was still possible.
He had no idea what had happened to patient 12. Why she had changed into that creature, whatever it was. The only thing he knew was he needed to find her as soon as possible. The agency sent out people to locate her, but
she wasn’t to be found.
The police discovered a family killed and robbed within a few miles of the hospital. The agency believed there was a connection. They traced the use of the family's credit cards, but the trail went cold in the southern part of New York State.
Her trail disappeared, but Daniel knew where she was headed. He knew, because he was the one who convinced patient 12's foster mother to give her over to his care. He knew she was going back to her foster mother's house. He also knew it wouldn't end well when she got there. The hours of video they had of patient 12 showed an incredible amount of hate and resentment towards her foster mother and her mother’s boyfriend. Since he had seen her ability to kill without remorse firsthand, he was sure she was going to kill them.
Yet, he didn't tell the agency any of this. He wasn't sure why. He also had more than just knowledge leading him in the direction of her foster home. Somehow, some way, he seemed to have a sense of patient 12 in his head. Like he could close his eyes and point to her.
He should have told the agency all he knew, yet he felt this need to keep that information to himself. Instead, he told the agency he needed some time off. What happened had shaken him up a bit and he needed some time to come to grips with the fact he had almost died.
The agency was suspicious given the fact he had somehow recovered from being almost dead in a matter of a week, but they could see no obvious reasons not to let him have the time off he requested. He had never been sick before, or even called off. He hadn't taken a vacation in years. He was the model employee. Always there, always on time, and always willing to do whatever was necessary, even if it was unethical. In the end, they agreed, and Daniel left the next day to locate patient 12.
He didn't know how far away she was, but as he got closer to where her trail had gone cold his sense of where she was sharpened. There were other things that changed for him in those days. His senses were sharper; his sense of self was enhanced. Several times he cut himself to see how quickly he healed.
He remembered how quickly patient 12 always healed. He was slower than her, but not by much. He was curious if he would change into the creature she had. He had to assume she was no longer in that form, because the credit card transactions were made in public places. He was sure no one would serve the monster he witnessed, nor were there anymore unexplained deaths. The hunt for patient 12 had pretty much been called off.
Everyone who witnessed what she became either was paid off or threatened to never mention what happened. As far as the agency was concerned, what happened had nothing to do with them, but they would be there to clean it up if it happened again. Someone would call someone, and they would quickly and quietly take care of it.
There were too many questions, and Daniel had no answers. This was like nothing he had ever witnessed, or even heard of for that matter. Never in a million years did he fathom what he had been experimenting on was not some girl, but some creature that looked like a girl. Maybe she was an alien? He hadn't considered that. It just seemed she was so human. Human emotions, human wants and desires. It was too hard for him to think of patient 12 as anything but human. Listen to him... anything but human. Yet, he never treated her as one. She was a patient with a number — that was it.
Something else changed in him as well. He could see in the dark, not well, but a hell of a lot better than he had ever been able to. It was like living in a world of grays. Nothing was the color it should be, only different shades of gray. It was easy for him to navigate in the dark. Anything formed of lights, like streetlights and such, still came through in color, like those black and white photos where there is one rose that is red. He liked these changes and wondered why he hadn't noticed patient 12 had them. He assumed she must, otherwise he would not have contracted them from her. Too many questions.
He finally arrived at the town where his senses told him patient 12 was located. His sense of her location was so acute it was like a constant presence in his head. As his car pulled into the trailer park, he could feel her need. He drove along the road when suddenly he felt her presence. He jerked the wheel to the left and pulled into a driveway beside another car. He cautiously approached the trailer and heard someone shouting inside. He couldn't make out the voice, but his senses told him it was patient 12. He stopped short when the yelling stopped. A moment later, patient 12 exited the trailer. Imagine her surprise to see him standing there.
"Daniel," was all Shae could say at that moment. She felt something weird. She had felt it while in the trailer but was so caught up with what was going on, she didn't have time to analyze it. She could not only see Daniel standing there, but she could sense him as well. She didn't understand it. She knew he would be standing there, but never truly realized it. It was impossible for him to be alive after what she did to him. He should be dead. That was something she was going to rectify right now.
Daniel watched patient 12's reaction and after a moment of shock, that look of determination came to her face. Daniel knew she was going to try to kill him again.
"Wait. Don't kill me. I'm not here to take you back." This was new. Daniel didn't know when he decided that but decided it he had.
Shae paused her forward motion towards Daniel.
"Why on Earth would I believe anything you say? You have done nothing but lie to me, and torture me for over a year."
"Yes. That is true. But when you cut me, you did something to me. You gave me what you have. I heal quickly and have heightened senses. I can sense you now," Daniel told her quickly, hoping he could convince her before she decided to hurt him.
She raised an eyebrow.
"Really? So, what I'm about to do will only hurt? Not kill you?"
Daniel realized it was a rhetorical question. She made her way over to him and slammed one of the knives she was holding into his chest, slicing his heart in half. Blood poured into his body and then followed the blade as she slowly drew it out from him. Daniel's knees buckled and he fell to the ground in front of her. He saw her looking around, obviously making sure no one witnessed. She bent down in front of him and quirked a smile. The light was growing dim and he passed out with her looking at him.
He awoke. By the placement of the sun he realized not much time had passed. Not even an hour. He was lying in the gravel driveway of a trailer. Standing and brushing himself off, he took stock of his situation. He wasn't hurt, his fingers probed the cut in his shirt. There wasn't even a scar underneath.
Shae was gone, but not far. He could sense her. For the first time, he wondered if she could sense him. It had been one thing for him to find her here, where he would know to look. Now she was running. If he could find her again, that would prove whatever she did to him, it created some sort of bond. He got into his car and drove, leaving the trailer park.
He saw a police car speeding in his direction, the lights flashing and siren wailing. It passed him at breakneck speed and turned into the trailer park. Someone must have seen his body and decided to call the police. Daniel hit the gas to put some distance between him and the trailer park. He didn't believe the cop car saw him pull out of the trailer park, but it didn't hurt to be safe.
Admittedly, he had ID to get him out of most situations, but the slice in his shirt and being covered in blood would cause a lot of questions. Plus, his supervisors would be called. That is where the real trouble would come. He was supposed to be recovering from a traumatic experience, not traipsing around New York State getting stabbed, and not showing any physical evidence he had been stabbed. No. It was better if he just avoided any trouble.
In town, he pulled behind a restaurant. Quickly, he changed his shirt. The dirtied shirt went into the trash bin and he moved a bag to cover it from anyone just happening to look in. He decided he wasn't in a hurry. Shae would have to stop running, eventually. When she did, he would be there. After tucking in his shirt, he went into the restaurant to get something to eat. It was late, but the sign indicated they were open for a few more hours.
It wasn't long
before he was back on the road. Shae was taking the most direct route south out of town, so it was easy to follow. After a few hours, and it was getting late in the evening, he sensed she was closer. She must have stopped to rest. He continued, even though he was exhausted. Forty minutes later he pulled into a rest stop and saw her. She stood near a car watching him pull in.
He parked the car, leaving the lights on to illuminate her and her stolen car. She held those two knives, her hands pale from holding them tightly. Daniel got out, leaving the door open and between them, not wanting to get stabbed again without having a chance to convince her he meant her no harm. She didn't make any move towards him, so he started towards her.
"Don't come any closer!"
She said it with such force, he froze in place. He couldn't move towards her if he wanted to. It was if some outside force kept him from moving forward. He probed it, not wanting to defy her, but wondered if he could. He strained with the effort but couldn't move an inch towards her.
He looked at her and saw she watched him intently. He saw her mind working, trying to figure out what was happening. He relaxed so as not to give away she somehow had some control over him. Her eyes narrowed and he realized he had just given himself away.
"Come here, “she commanded him.
Daniel moved toward her. She smiled at him. It wasn't a good smile. It frightened him a little bit.
"Okay. Now that we have it settled, I'm in control, we will leave this car here and take yours. I'm tired. So, let's go find a hotel. Oh. And you're paying."
Shae had Daniel drive to the nearest hotel. He kept asking questions, but she would answer none of them, because she didn't know the answers. In the end, she told him to not say another word until she told him. He was forced to keep his questions to himself. They got a room. She told him to rent one room, or there might be questions about who was in the other room. She decided to keep low now that the agency had at least traced her to New York. The hotel was modest, at best, with twin beds and an old TV set.
The Awakening Box Set Page 22