The Mortal Sleep (Hollow Folk Book 4)

by Gregory Ashe

  “He’s got a gun,” Timmy Stepp’s brother called.

  Someone down the hall screamed.

  Jesus. Just Jesus Christ with these guys.

  I whipped out my hands. Both guys flinched.

  That’s when I spun the gurney out from the wall and into the hall. I charged, pushing the gurney lengthwise across the hall, gathering as much speed as I could. I only had to go about ten yards, and Timmy Stepp’s brother and the other guard were still recovering from those big, yellow flinches. I rammed into them at something close to fifteen miles an hour. Timmy Stepp’s brother went down, and the gurney bucked over him. The other one took the brunt of the impact, and he flew. He hit the wall, grabbed at a chrome wall plate, and then drizzled down to the floor.

  I shoved the gurney aside. Snatching one of the walkies, I bolted down the stairs. Aches and twinges from my fight the day before with Krystal clamored for my attention, but a cocktail of fear and adrenaline made it easy to ignore them. Urho and the Lady were coming. Or they were sending their guys. And I knew what they were looking for: they were looking for Tyler and Hannah.

  I took the steps three at a time, risking a twisted ankle or worse and not caring. I caromed off the landing and kept going. My thoughts raced out ahead of me. Cribbs had been hiding them. That thought was clearest, bold and black-lettered. Cribbs had taken his children. He had let the Lady wake them from the mortal sleep. And then he had—what? Changed his mind? Realized he had made a mistake?

  I hit the ground floor, and the shock zinged up through my ankles. I sprinted toward the ER. Cribbs had been a good dad; Shay had told me that several times. He’d been a shit husband. He’d done some bad stuff working for Lawayne. But he’d been a good dad. How had it gone down? Had Lawayne lied and told Cribbs that they just needed the kids as bait? Had he not even told him that much? At what point had Cribbs realized that something had gone wrong?

  My sneakers squeaked as I slid into a turn at the next corner, and a realization rumbled through me, hitting hardest in my knees, vibrations that made me slip and catch myself on the wall. At the Kane Motor Court. After the Lady had come. After the children had been woken. That’s when Cribbs had realized he had made a mistake, and then, at the first opportunity, he had run. The ripped screen on the bathroom window. The shouts. The fighting.

  That vibration hit me again, shaking me so hard that I crashed into a kidney disease poster and ripped it clean from the wall. I spun, kept my footing, and ran. But those big shakes weren’t coming from realizations. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, and I tasted blood. Those tremors running through me, those weren’t because I was some kind of genius. Those were a real, genuine, goddamn earthquake. Kyle Stark-Taylor was here, and he was going to bring down the whole hospital on my head.

  At the next intersection, I skidded to a halt. Which way? Were the kids even in the ER still, or had they been transferred somewhere else? Another tremor shook the building; one of the drop-ceiling tiles shook loose and fluttered down, spilling foam chips on the floor. Christ, if I took too much time, it might not matter. All they had to do was get the kids; as soon as the kids were clear of the hospital, Stark-Taylor could bring down the building and kill anybody left inside. All they had to do was get the kids out the front door.

  Betting on institutional bureaucracy, I charged toward the ER. The decision saved my life. Something whipped through the air behind me, something I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. And then it exploded. A globe of fire filled the intersection where I had stood a moment before. The blast clapped against my ears; the force of it lifted me onto my toes, and I jinked right, hard, to keep from falling. I hit the wall and slid along it, keeping my footing out of sheer luck.

  When I threw a glance behind me, the intersection looked like a firestorm had spun through it: soot blackened the paint and stained the chrome wall guard, and flames danced along the padded cushion of a wheelchair—which, thank God, wasn’t currently in use. The smell of melting rubber chased after me.

  “Vie,” a familiar voice called. I recognized it from the hallways at school and, more recently, from the parking lot outside Garry’s Greasy Spoon. I kept running and threw another glance back. Leo came around the corner, moving over the blistered vinyl without seeming to notice it. He was tossing a balloon between his hands; liquid sloshed inside the plastic, and I was willing to guess Leo hadn’t filled the balloon with water. “Hey,” he said, flipping the balloon into the air and palming it with another slosh. “Catch.”

  I put on speed. I just had to make it around the next corner. Twenty feet. Maybe thirty. I could do it. I shot looks back at Leo. He had a grin under that ugly red hair. He was laughing, watching, letting me try to get away. The hallway ahead was clear. Footsteps were moving along it—first responders, maybe, coming to check on the explosion. “Stay back,” I shouted. “Just stay the fuck back.”

  Twenty feet now. It couldn’t be more than twenty. Behind me, Leo’s ugly red-headed grin got bigger. He pulled back his arm, drew up his leg, a whole show like he was pitching in the Major Leagues, and then his body uncoiled and that balloon shot toward me. He was shit at throwing, I realized as I watched the balloon wobble. Then the balloon vaporized into flame, still spinning toward me with that hitching, awkward lurch like Leo hadn’t ever played a decent game of catch. And the flames grew, a cloud of fire rushing to swallow me. Twenty feet to the intersection, but the fire was going to get me before I made it another yard.

  I drew in a breath of superheated air, and honest to God, I felt my lungs crackle, felt the dizziness of a breath with all the oxygen burned out of it, and I ducked my head and kept running because I wasn’t going to let a fucking ginger roast me standing still. The flames licked my back. Along my neck, there was a hot, stinging flash like a sunburn, and then nothing.

  I hit someone. I was running full speed with my head down, and I hit hard, and I went down. We went down, both of us, tangled arms and legs, my head bouncing once on the linoleum that seemed softer than it should have been. Maybe that was just my head. Maybe you can only hit your head so many times before it starts going soft.

  I needed to get up, but I was still thinking about my head, wondering if it had a big bruised spot like an apple, and I was breathing in these huge, wonderful breaths of air, and I was tasting campfire smoke, the kind of fire you roast hot dogs and toast marshmallows and huddle up against with a mug of hot chocolate. Nothing like that burnt rubber smell that had been following me. Then I blinked, and Jim Spencer’s face drifted into view above me. His hair was copper and gold and a deep red like the heart of a volcano, and heat poured off him.

  “Stay down,” he said.

  That sounded pretty stupid, so as he moved away, I rolled onto my side. Then I stopped. And I stared.

  The flames that had licked the back of my neck hung in the air. They weren’t frozen; they still snapped and licked and curled, and the foam ceiling tiles smoldered and gave off acrid smoke. But the flames had stopped. I could see where they had stopped, a perfect line drawn in bubbling vinyl and blackened ceiling tile. Jim Spencer had stopped them.

  Jim wore what he always wore: a button-down and slacks that made him look like runway material instead of a high school teacher. He stood between me and the curtain of fire. Embers spun and whirled around him, and for a moment, I thought they’d fallen from the tiles overhead, but then I realized Jim was standing too far away. And then the only explanation that made sense—even if it didn’t make any sense at all—was that the embers were coming from him. Huge, fat cinders spun in the air around him. Black patches worked their way along his shirt, and when he raised his arms, the cloth flaked away to expose lean, pale muscle. With my inner eye open, I could see him as he was, golden fire haloing his mortal body. He was fucking beautiful.

  Then he pushed, and the fire raced toward Leo. Leo yelped. And then Leo screamed. I got to my feet and grabbed Jim’s shoulder—his bare shoulder, his well-muscled, very nice, very
rippling shoulder—and then I yowled and yanked my hand back.

  “I told you to stay down,” Jim said. The fire rolled down the hallway like a river, and the cinders drifted like snowfall around him. His face was pale and drawn and dry like a fever was burning inside him.

  My inner eye was still open, and when power spiked in the direction Leo had gone, I felt it.

  “We’ve got to go,” I said. “He might not be able to control fire, but he can make things explode, and he just—”

  The explosion threw me onto my ass, and it threw Jim down next to me. Ahead of us, the hallway collapsed. The walls folded inward. The ceiling bowed. Metal shrieked and sheared away, and then everything came down. Dust and ash swirled out, peppering my face, lining my tongue with the taste of styrofoam.

  Another tremor shook the hospital. On the wall, an emergency defibrillator case rattled itself open, and the padded case flopped out onto the floor. A gurney with an unconscious woman shivered in time with the hospital, its rails chiming musically as it inched along the floor. Overhead, a fluorescent tube worked its way free. It fell, battering open the plastic screen and shattering when it struck the ground.

  “Where are they?” I said as I scrambled to my feet.

  Jim was just as fast; more of his charred shirt flaked away, and the heat pouring off him seemed even more intense. Embers whirled at the back of his eyes. “Who?”

  “The kids. The ones I brought in.”

  He shook his head.

  “Fuck. I’ve got to find them. I need you to—”

  Before I could finish, Jim elbowed past me. Even through my coat and sweater, his touch was like a hot iron on bare skin. Fire lanced from his extended hand, blistering the paint down the next hallway. Then, just as suddenly, the fire cut off.

  I stared at him. “What was that?”

  In answer, the overhead sprinklers spun to life, a deluge that soaked my coat and sweater. The woman on the gurney moaned and thrashed, but her eyes didn’t open.

  “He’s down there,” Jim said, staring past me, his arm extended like he meant to shoot another blast of fire. The heavy spray of the sprinklers washed away the ashy remains of his shirt, leaving a lot for me to look at. And I was looking, even though I knew there were more important things to focus on. But the guy had an eight pack. And he was—he was dry. The water steamed off him. And his fucking pants were about to burn away, and then—

  Business, I told myself.

  “The one that was coming after you,” Jim said, jerking his head in the direction he had shot the blast of fire. “He’s skulking down there. He just poked his head around.”

  “I’ve got to find Tyler and Hannah.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll take care of him.”

  I nodded; it was as close to a thank you as I could get right then. But when I turned to go, I saw the woman in the gurney. Her eyes were open. They were wide, uncomprehending, a milky blue that made her look older than she really was—maybe thirty, forty at the outside, but those eyes belonged to someone much older. She moaned again. Water slicked her hair and filled her gaping mouth.

  “Where’s the staff?”

  Jim shook off my question and launched another barrage of fire down the hall. Something detonated, and a chunk of metal the size of my fist spun past me. With a grunt, Jim gave a quarter-spin and clapped his hand over his stomach. Blood boiled off him in greasy black smoke.

  “Come on,” I said, “you can’t stay here.”

  “I said I’d take care of him. Go get those kids.”

  “Where’s the staff? This lady, she can’t just stay here. There’s got to be—”

  “Just go,” Jim shouted, and then a column of fire as big as the Impala roared down the hallway. It lasted maybe twenty seconds, and then Jim sagged. Water ran down him in silvery lines. Blood slicked his fingers.

  It wasn’t boiling off.

  That was a red alert. I kicked his ankle and, when he shot me a look, jerked my head in the opposite direction. Then I grabbed the gurney and started pushing. The woman thrashed once, and her bare foot rang out against the gurney’s frame, and she shook her head as more water plastered the hospital johnny to her wasted frame.

  The floor was slick, and the gurney moved easily. Too easily. I knew I was going too fast, but we were running out of time. The smell of smoke, that pleasant campfire smell, was gone. I smelled blood, though. Jim’s blood. And I tasted my own sweat and the oils in my hair as water ran into my mouth. The hypertextured reality of the other side overlay my vision: grief and pain etched into this place like acid stains, with the occasional touchstone glimmer of joy. A new baby—the memory caromed off me, a vision that opened and shut in an instant of a mother and child. In my mind, I pictured Hannah’s tiny, weary face.

  Hannah, I called.

  The rush of static filled the distance between us again.

  River, I tried.

  More of the white hiss.

  I swore, and at the next corner, I slid into a turn, forcing the gurney against its own momentum. The static—that was Urho’s doing. His abilities had to do with the other side. I had learned that before. He was the reason the dead hadn’t been able to tell me what was going on. He could control them to an extent—or bind them. Something. The way he had used River to deliver that message, for example. And now he was getting in my way again.

  Hannah!

  But still nothing except a fuzzed noise that made me want to scratch the inside of my ears.

  “Vie.” Jim was panting. His hair had returned to strawberry blond. The embers at the back of his eyes had settled. With one hand, he hid the wound low in his gut, but gore stained his trousers, and pink runnels of blood slid along bare skin. “I can’t.”

  “Just a little farther.”

  Shaking his head, he set himself against the wall. Then he pointed. “Go.”

  “You can make it. You can. Just a little farther, Jim.”

  He gave me an exhausted smile. “Mr. Spencer.”

  “Fuck that, Jim. I’ll call you that when we’re in school. Right now, you have to keep moving.”

  Power spiked again behind us. Closer now. Much closer. Leo was closing in. Then another tremor shook the hospital. The floor bucked hard enough that I actually went into the air. The gurney too—it came down hard, and the woman in it screamed, and metal rattled with the force of the landing. A fissure ran up the closest wall, and plaster spilled out. The spray from the sprinklers muddied the dust and spun it into the growing current. When I was done with all of this, I wasn’t going to shower for a week. I spat out more water. A month. A fucking month.

  “You need to go, Vie. I’ll keep him from following. I can do that much.”

  “But—”

  “These kids, they’re important?”

  “Fuck that. That’s not what we’re talking about.”

  “They’re important. So go make sure they’re ok.”

  “Fuck you.”

  That same exhausted smile. And then embers glowed at the back of his eyes, and his hair brightened to copper and sunlight and the sizzle of an old heating element.

  “Go,” he said, pushing me. The skin on my chest puckered and stung, and I knew I’d have a red patch of sunburn in the shape of his hand.

  I stumbled, catching myself on the gurney, and then I froze. Down the hall, coming toward us, was the kid, the Indian boy, the one we called the Crow boy. His twin braids hissed along his back, sweeping back and forth with every step. His dark eyes were locked on mine. Sno Balls. That was all I could think about. Those nasty prepackaged snack cakes with coconut. This kid loved Sno Balls. He loved them so much he’d shot a C-Store clerk in the head and walked out with an armful of them.

  Behind me, fire roared, swallowing oxygen and drawing air along the hall. The breeze pricked my cheeks like nettles. It rubbed my raw lips. It pulled at the wet strands plastered to my face, and I could smell something new, something that the wind drew off the Crow boy.
Weed. I took in the kid again, the way his braids rasped across his shoulder blades, the way his eyes never left mine. Glassy eyes. Red eyes. And then I let out a laugh. This middle-schooler was coming to a fight stoned.

  He’d probably be best friends with Kaden.

  The rush of fire died abruptly. “Why are you still here?” Jim shouted. “I can’t keep both of them off you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said, turning to look back at Jim. “Not with the Crow boy—”

  But the words crumbled in my mouth. Jim looked like shit, even worse than he had moments before, but that wasn’t what stopped me. At the far end of the hall, Leo bounced a basketball. Where he’d gotten it, I had no idea, but with my inner eye open, I could feel the power building in him. In a moment, he’d loose that power, and then he’d throw the basketball, and then it would explode and take off my head. But it wasn’t Leo that stopped me either.

  It was the Crow boy. He walked past Leo with the same slow stride that I’d just seen a moment before, at the other end of the hall. His dark braids rasped against his shoulder blades. He flicked open a knife and held it low and casual.

  “That’s impossible. He was just—”

  And there he was. At the other end of the hallway, coming toward me, where I’d seen him.

  “There are two of him,” I said.

  “That’s impossible,” Jim said. He raised one hand, launching a gout of fire. The flames passed through the Crow boy with no effect. It was like he wasn’t even there. “That’s impossible,” Jim said again, his voice lower, and he looked down the hall and shot fire at the second Crow boy. Same thing: the fire went straight through him, and he just kept coming.

  “They’re not real,” Jim said.

  “He’s got a knife. They’ve both got knives.”

  “They’re not real!”

  But what I couldn’t explain, not in the heat of the moment, was that I had my inner sight open. And I could see the Crow boy. I could really see him. And he was there when I looked at him, really there, his spirit and soul and essence mapped out across his physical body. Jim’s fire went right through him, and that didn’t make sense, but he was really there. In both places. At the same time.