Stakes and Stones

by Bilinda Sheehan

  “What, then?”

  Emotion played across his face. He was definitely torn over something, I just didn’t know what it was.

  “This isn’t the place, guys,” Alex said. “Visiting hours will be over soon and if you want to get in and see Simon, Jenna, then you’ll need to do it sooner rather than later.”

  The openness of Grey’s face disappeared as soon as the words left Alex’s lips, and he shut me out. His face was an impassive mask, giving nothing away.

  “He’s right,” Grey said “The family isn’t exactly welcoming of Division 6’s involvement, and while they haven’t yet tried to stop us, they have stipulated all our visits happen when they’re there to bear witness.”

  “They think you’ll snatch him from them, turn him into something to justify your interference.” My voice was flat and void of emotion. I’d seen it often enough when I’d worked with Division 6 in the past. The public wanted us, needed us even, except when it came to their own. There was always an element of not in my backyard happening and I couldn’t really blame them. Nobody wanted the monsters to come a calling at their door. The problem was, the monsters fed on that fear, used it to their advantage, ultimately making it harder for the good guys to get anything done.

  Grey nodded silently, his lips had thinned to little more than two lines in his face.

  “Do you need to bring anything with you,” Alex said, making me jump. I’d been lost in my thoughts.

  “What?”

  “Any of the files, you want to bring them with you?”

  “No, I’m good. Seen enough of them,” I said, “for now at least. I just want to see Simon.” Alex’s response was to lock the SUV.

  “Better get going, then,” he said. “Daylight’s wasting and the day is far from over.”

  I gave him a sharp look and he grinned at me. “You didn’t think we had only one case, did you?”

  “I thought it might take all your resources…”

  Grey shook his head, a dark chuckle escaping him. “We’re undermanned here, Jenna, and the preternaturals have gotten restless. Where do you think the saying, no rest for the wicked came from?”

  “That’s actually a funny story,” Alex chipped in.

  “No one wants one of your anecdotes, Alex.” Grey sounded worn, as though he’d heard it all before from him, and perhaps he had. “He announces himself as an immortal and suddenly there’s no shutting him up. He has a story for every occasion, and they’re never as funny as he claims,” Grey said, rolling his eyes.

  “It’s not my fault if I’m more experienced than you,” Alex said haughtily.

  Under Grey’s dark look, I stifled my laughter, practically cramming my fist into my mouth to keep the sound from slipping out unbidden. They were bickering like an old married couple.

  Grey opened his mouth to continue the argument and I stepped between them.

  “Gentlemen, please, you said it yourself, daylight’s wasting and we need to get a move on.”

  They both stiffened, but it was Grey who broke first. “Fine.” Without another word, he turned on his heel and started off up the path toward the hospital. His stride was so long, it made the pace he chose impossibly swift. If I wanted to keep up with him, I would have to run, and I’d done all the running after Grey Cooper I was ever going to do many years ago.

  Grey kept up the unrelenting pace and I finally caught him as he stood at the main doors to the hospital. He held the door, his gaze locked on mine, but whatever thoughts lay behind his, dark eyes were kept hidden from me.

  I contemplated making a smart ass response to him as he held the door for me but crushed it down inside instead. Letting a man hold a door for me wasn’t worth starting an argument over and, anyway, Grey had lived through the time when holding a door for a woman was considered courteous. There were others like him who took that long held belief to new and stifling levels, believing that women were the weaker sex, prone to hysterics, and that we were incapable of many of the things we did without a second thought.

  The smell of disinfectant and sickness instantly washed over me and it was all I could do not to turn on the squeaky clean white floor and march back out the door I’d just come through. Not that it would do me any good. Once you had that smell in your nose, it didn’t just go away. It lingered, sinking into your hair, your skin, clothes. And even after a thorough scrub in the shower, the smell remained in the sensitive membranes of your nose, just waiting to well up once more, bringing with it the memories of those trapped here, fighting for their lives.

  In its own way, a hospital was the frontline, the patient’s bodies a battlefield upon which the war being waged, that of two opposing forces. Life and death. And the only true weapon that counted was the living’s primal instinct to survive. It wasn’t a conscious act on their behalf, instead, it was coded deep in the DNA of every creature on earth.

  “You okay?” Grey’s question brought me back from my thoughts and I realised I’d followed him into the elevators and we were moving upwards. In the metal shiny surface, I could see a distorted version of myself thrown back at me, my face drawn and pale beneath the natural colour of my skin, large dark eyes, even blacker than usual.

  “Fine,” I said, “just hate hospitals.”

  “The smell?” He wrinkled his nose, emphasising his question.

  “Yeah. Knowing so many lose their final battles here…” I trailed off, sucking in a deep breath, “it’s a sobering thought is all.” I noted Alex’s absence and darted a look at Grey.

  His eyes were closed, and as the elevator juddered to a halt, I watched as his usual colour drained from his face, giving him an ashen complexion. It seemed unkind to ask him if he was all right. A man like Grey wouldn’t like to know that I’d seen his vulnerability, and he was already guarded enough around me. Perhaps even more than he’d been before we’d worked together on the Pied Piper case.

  Even though he’d said he wasn’t afraid of me, I wasn’t convinced.

  Without appearing to hurry, he stepped out of the elevator and we were both met by a grim, sweaty faced Alex.

  “Couldn’t keep the elevator for me?”

  Grey shrugged. “I didn’t know how long you’d be.”

  Alex let out a loud and altogether rude snort. In the harsh fluorescent light, his eyes were hazel, and judging by the way they sparked with gold flecks, he was pissed as hell.

  “It’s the ward on the right,” Grey said, “last room at the end of the corridor. They want to keep him in isolation.”

  I didn’t wait to see if the two men were following me. Instead, I left them to their petty squabbles and I took off on my own. The sound of their raised voices travelled easily, drawing the attention of more than one harried nurse.

  Following the corridor, I found Simon’s room easily. His chart sat in the small basket outside his door and I cast a furtive glance up and down the corridor before I snatched it down and scanned the pages inside.

  I couldn’t make head nor tail of most of it. There were pages of blood tests, ECGs, CT-scans, x-rays, and basically anything else the hospital could think to run on the teenager. From my skimming of the notes, it seemed the doctors had no real clue what was keeping him unconscious. There was minimal brain activity, the kind usually seen in those in a deep sleep, but it never changed, which was more than a little concerning. The brain normally cycled at night, passing through the different stages of sleep, but according to Simon’s notes, he remained in a constant state of stasis. And other than supplying him with a litre of oxygen to keep his saturation levels above a particular number, he didn’t require any other kind of outside intervention in order to keep his body ticking over.

  Slipping the file back into the plastic basket set on the wall, I knocked gently on the door. Only the end of the bed was visible from where I stood outside in the hall, the geometric patterned pale blue curtains had been drawn, blocking those inside the room from prying eyes.

  I pushed open the door and stepped inside. The
steady hiss of oxygen was the first thing I noticed. Closing my eyes, I caught the faint stirrings of Simon’s heartbeat. Drawing in a deep breath I caught the faint wisps of a cloying scent. It was oddly familiar but I couldn’t quite pinpoint just where I knew the smell from. It was overlaid with the heavier scent of magic, and it clawed its way up my nose and down my throat like some sort of rabid creature hell bent on destruction.

  I sneezed, the sound strangely loud in the small room.

  Clearing the edge of the curtain, I stared at the teenager in the bed. He looked nothing like the smiling, strong young man I’d seen in the picture from the file Alex had given me.

  There was a grey ashy undertone to Simon’s black skin. His thin emaciated arms lay on top of the covers, a cannula sat in the back of his right hand, the line connected to a bag of what I assumed was saline. Despite being half drowned when they’d found him, he was also severely dehydrated and from the notes in the file, I knew they were struggling to keep him hydrated, as though something was preventing him from absorbing the electrolytes.

  Moving over to the side of the bed, I sat in the chair next to him.

  “Hi, Simon,” I whispered, but my voice still sounded far too loud for the tiny room, “my name is, Jenna…” I hesitated before I continued, struggling to find something meaningful to say. “I don’t know if you can hear me but if you can, I want you to know you’re safe.”

  It was a stupid thing to say. He’d been the victim of a violent crime, the details of which were still hazy, and here I was stupidly promising him he was safe. Before he’d been kidnapped, he’d thought he was safe then, too…

  “I’m sorry, that sounds stupid,” I sighed, closing my eyes. I was bad at this. “Your family really want you to wake up, they want you back…”

  Pausing, I opened my eyes and stared down at the unmoving young man in the bed. It wasn’t right, no one should have to suffer like this because of another’s sick whims.

  Leaning in toward the bed, I let my voice drop lower still. “Simon, if you can hear me, I want you to know I’m going to use my magic now. You don’t have to be afraid, I promise I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to help.”

  It wasn’t as though I expected him to stir in the bed and yet I paused after I spoke, holding my breath as I studied him carefully.

  Nothing happened.

  Closing my eyes once more, I reached out and took his hand gently, carefully interlacing my fingers with his. It felt terribly intimate and for a split second I had a pang of regret. Perhaps I should have told him I was going to touch him, a kind of warning.

  Panic slammed into me before I could even summon my magic. Simon’s hand spasmed around mine and my eyes sprang open. He lay as he had before, unmoved apart from the gentle rise and fall of his chest beneath the bedsheets.

  Was I imagining things now? There wasn’t any reason for me to imagine him moving, and there definitely wasn’t any reason for me to imagine the panic he felt.

  I let my eyes drift shut again, but this time nothing happened. There was no panic to swamp me and his hand lay still in mine. Drawing on my magic, I let it fill my body, my skin was merely the barrier between it and the rest of the world, and when I released it, I felt it flood out, filling the room quickly and quietly. I focused on the feel of Simon’s hand in mine, pushing my power toward him, searching for something, anything that could give us a clue about what we faced.

  My power slid off him as though he wasn’t even there in the bed. Everything felt as it always had, there was no difference in the questing nature of my power. In my mind, I could see the room, every inch of it mapped out before me, but when I tried to focus on the young man in the bed, there was nothing but a void…

  That wasn’t the right way to describe it, though. There was something in the bed but I couldn’t get a read on it, my power point blank refused to breach whatever was keeping him trapped.

  I pressed harder, using my magic to search for a crack, a way in. On the periphery of my power, something nagged at me before I could reach it. The panic I had felt before washed over me once more. I was putting so much effort in searching for some way in, the moment the darkness yielded to my magic, I fell into it headfirst and it sucked me under.

  Chapter 4

  Panic choked me, it bubbled in my throat, spilling up and into my mouth like salt water. There was so much of it, I could feel myself drowning in it. Darkness beckoned and I fought against its pull, pushing back with every ounce of strength.

  “Help me!” said a voice in the dark, young, male, and terrified. “Please, God, someone, please, don’t let them find me again!”

  Something grabbed my arm, nails dug into flesh and I flinched, suddenly finding myself face to face with Simon. His brown eyes were wild, terror pulsed from him in waves that left the taste of ashes on my tongue.

  “Please, help me!” he sobbed, his fear almost infectious, and I had to fight against it to prevent it from robbing me of thought.

  “I can help,” I said. Despite feeling the panic that felt like salty water in my mouth and throat, I spoke easily.

  “They’ll find me, we have to get out of here,” he said, his eyes franticly darting from side to side as he searched for monsters only he could see. “They’re coming, I know they’re coming. They said they wouldn’t let me go and…” His words trailed off into a terrified hiss of sound as he ran out of breath.

  “Breathe, Simon, please,” I said, taking his shoulders gently and giving him a quick shake as I attempted to pull his attention back to me.

  “You’re one of them,” he moaned, his knees buckling beneath his body, driving us both toward a floor I couldn’t distinguish from the opaque shadows that surrounded us.

  Dizziness rocked me as I tried to concentrate on our surroundings. But everywhere I looked there was darkness, cold, hard, and empty. Perhaps I had been right to describe it as a void.

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’m here to help, Simon, but you have to let me help.”

  He shook his head, running his hands over his short hair, back and forth, back and forth, an almost hypnotic movement. “There’s no helping me,” he said. “I thought I could escape her, I thought throwing myself in the water meant I would die quickly, but she kept me alive.”

  “Who is she?” I asked, peering into his face, searching for answers. If he could tell me who we were hunting, even what we were hunting, then I would stand a chance of saving him. As it was, I couldn’t see a way out of the impenetrable darkness that surrounded us.

  He shook his head again, a high-pitched inhuman keening noise tore the air as he rocked back and forth. It took me a second to realise the noise was coming from him.

  “Simon, answer me, who is she?”

  He ignored me, curling his arms around his knees as he continued to rock back and forth. I touched his shoulder and he let out a low terrified sob. Jerking away he attempted to crab walk backwards into the darkness.

  “Help me help you,” I pleaded. Something brushed against my leg making me jump. When I glanced down at the ground, there was nothing to see, but I had the sudden feeling that we weren’t alone in the dark. Dread curled in the pit of my stomach as Simon’s mumbled pleas grew in intensity.

  “No, no, no, no, no, not again. Please God, no, not again.”

  I went after him, reaching out with my hand. “Simon, I’m here. You’re not alone now.” He opened his eyes, wide staring eyes gazed at my hand. He opened his mouth but his words were swallowed as he was violently snatched into the darkness.

  Lunging forward, my fingers closed over nothing but darkness. “No!” I screamed the word into the void but it was flung back in my face. Something stirred, the gloom roiling and boiling as though something living was unfurling inside it.

  What are you? I felt the question inside my own head like the fingers of some great evil had reached in and planted it there.

  The darkness closed in around me and when I raised my hand to my face, I could no longer see it. Something
solid slithered against my leg and I tamped down the urge to scream. Whatever was in the darkness with me, it was alive and I could feel the evil of its essence pressing against my skin. Everywhere it touched left me feeling unclean, its moist, too warm breath creating condensation that trickled down my neck, sliding beneath the collar of my jacket.

  But I wasn’t a child. I’d felt magic like this before, the kind that screwed with your head, turning you into a helpless blubbering mess.

  You’re in control, Jenna, your mind is your own, don’t let this prick in.

  Reaching down to my belt, I imagined my whip, the feel of its familiar cool scales pressed beneath my fingers. I conjured the image in my head and it was suddenly there, its solid form, sliding through my fingers as I caressed it. The pulse of its magic urging me to release it upon whatever evil we faced, working as one as we had always done.

  Releasing the whip, it whispered to the floor, curling and writhing intricate patterns as it awaited my command.

  “Send Simon back,” I said, giving whatever lay in the darkness fair warning. Not that it deserved it. I’d seen the terror in Simon’s eyes and I wanted nothing more than to carve up the monster that had put that expression in his gaze. If he survived, he would learn to hide it, to live with it, but the fear, the terror… That would never go away. It would leave him breathless and sweaty, tangled in his bedsheets in the middle of the night when he awoke from a nightmare. And even then, with the light chasing back the shadows of his dreams, he still wouldn’t feel safe. Not really.

  I’d learned that lesson myself. Once that was taken from you, the naivety that convinced you the bad things wouldn’t happen to you was destroyed, there was no getting it back…

  I cut my thoughts off sharply. Laughter ricocheting around me, echoing in the darkness, amplified and magnified over and over.

  Shit, was it already in my head? It was the only explanation that fit. I’d learned not to dwell on the past and yet here I was, supposed to be helping Simon and all I could focus on were my own demons. My fingers twitched and I started to raise my hands toward my face. I caught myself before I covered my ears. It wouldn’t block the sound out anyway. It would just let whatever was holding us here know that it was getting to me, that it had successfully wormed its way under my skin.