The detective looked back at me, taking in my claws, the brown scales across my torso, the shreds of clothing and protective hospital gear still attached to my new form. “We have to,” he said, one hand settling on the girl’s back for a moment as he brushed a kiss across the top of her head. Sobbing, she grabbed his other wrist.
“It’ll kill him,” she said.
“No, it won’t.” Iverson stared at me over the children’s huddled forms. “I won’t let it.”
“Scott.” I could feel the tremor in my voice, but I didn’t know if it came through—my hearing was different, along with my voice, my face, my hands. Everything. “I don’t know if I can keep them under control.”
“Them?” Scott asked.
“The aswang parasites. I can feel them inside me, pushing to take control.” Scott’s eyes grew huge and round as I spoke. “We’ll need blood to close the portal. My blood. But they won’t want you to take it.”
With a sharp nod, Will moved to the instrument tray and took a second scalpel. “I’ll do it.”
“You first,” I said to Iverson. “Change the image on Kenny’s arm. Scott, you hold me back. When the portal opens fully, Will, you take my blood. Smear it across the opening.”
“What will happen to you?” Will asked.
“If I’m lucky, I’ll turn back into myself.” I wanted to offer a smile, but I suspected that this face could do little more than snarl.
Already yourself, I heard in my mind.
I didn’t know if it was the voices this time, or merely my own fears.
Scott settled in beside me, prepared to hold me back.
“Ready?” Iverson asked, scalpel poised over Kenny’s arm. Felicity sat close by, one arm wrapped around Kenny’s shoulder. The fingers of her other hand interlaced with Kenny’s. When Iverson sliced down with several quick strokes, the boy screamed, and Felicity cried out with him.
Light flared from Kenny’s arm, and a hot wind blew out from the portal.
Voices echoed out to me, calling me…us…me to join them, and I fought against their pull.
Sharp pain sparked across my own arm, and I glanced up from my internal struggle to see Will wiping his fingers across the door. Forcing myself to hold still, I watched him swipe his fingers through the blood on my arm, then across the top of the portal. With every touch, the light dimmed incrementally.
“It’s not enough,” Will said, grabbing my arm and making another cut through the leathery, brown skin.
The aswang inside me struggled, slipping more and more out of my control.
“Hurry,” I whispered, fighting to keep the voices down.
From the other side of the portal, the wind carried the thunderous sound of thousands of footsteps across the dry dust.
“What is that?” Felicity asked in a terrified whisper, wrapping her hand more tightly around Kenny’s.
“Monsters,” the boy replied, his voice thin and weak. “Monsters.”
Monsters, my internal aswang echoed joyously.
“Help Will,” I said to Iverson, teeth gritted so hard that my fangs sliced into my lower lip. “Hurry.”
Iverson nodded, hurrying to join the doctor in his repetitive motions: slice, swipe, smear. Scott wrapped his arms around my waist, and his touch was an anchor to the self I wanted to be.
Nonetheless, I was fading. I could feel it. Any minute the aswang would erupt from me. I didn’t know if I could beat them back again.
Scott, Will, and Iverson were determined to save me.
I was equally determined to save the children.
Looking up, I made eye contact with Felicity. Deliberately, slowly, I nodded toward the ax, where it had slipped out of Susan’s hand and now lay half submerged in the sticky pool of blood on the floor.
When I glanced back up at Felicity, she shook her head wildly, her blonde curls flying around her face.
You have to do this. Do it, Felicity. Please. I couldn’t say the words out loud, but I held her gaze steadily, pleading with my eyes, and she glanced away, shamefaced.
After a long, silent moment, she finally looked at me again and nodded. Giving Kenny one last squeeze, she slipped off the bed, her slippered feet making no noise.
She still wore the nightgown her uncle had carried her to the hospital in, some part of my brain noted, sweet white lace edging the cap sleeves and the piping around her tiny, not-yet-developed bust.
Far too young to have to do this.
The grim set of her mouth reassured me.
But she’s the only one who will.
Her eyes traveled across my body assessingly. Gently, I drew one claw across my neck, leaning my head back and baring my throat to her.
The thump of feet grew louder across the void within the portal, and more dust flew into the room, choking Will.
I nodded at Felicity.
She pulled the ax high overhead, rearing back and aiming.
As she swung down, Scott—alerted, maybe, by some motion glimpsed from the corner of his eye—reached out to stop her, throwing her aim off enough to send the ax deep into my belly.
My scream echoed throughout the mostly empty ward as Felicity wrenched the ax from my stomach. Blood flecks flew from the blade, splattering across the portal—and everywhere they touched, the portal faded, the light turning patchy.
I had barely enough time to rasp out, “Use it,” before I felt them surging up to take over. Then the screams of hundreds, maybe thousands, of voices tearing out of single throat echoed around the room, and the instant of distraction allowed me to overcome the aswang’s control of my mutated body.
Pain seared through my stomach, and I fought my own desire to huddle around the wound and protect it. “No. Wait,” I gasped. “I think I need to be on the other side of the portal when you close it.”
“No,” Scott said. “Absolutely not.”
Will paused in his frantic attempts to paint the door closed with my blood, whipping his head around to peer at me closely. “Lili?”
Iverson didn’t bother to ascertain my identity—either because he was already certain, or because he didn’t care where he got his information. “Why? And more importantly, how?”
I was glad to see that Felicity hung back, still clutching the ax, watching me carefully. I hoped that if the aswang took over again, she wouldn’t hesitate to take them down.
Reaching out to clutch Iverson’s sleeve, I pulled him down closer to me. The white paper gown crumpled in my fist, leaving reddish-brown smears of blood where it slipped through my clawed fingers. I didn’t bother to answer Will’s question. “Because I’m the one who infected the children,” I said. “I’m the only disease vector. Think of me as patient zero—but if I leave this realm, then all the other aswang parasites go inert.”
“Like worker ants,” Kenny said from his position on the bed. “In some species, if they don’t have a queen, the colony won’t survive.” Iverson shot him a look, and he shrugged. “I learned about it on TV.”
“More or less,” I agreed. “You need to get me through the portal while I’m still alive, but the aswang are going to fight it. Be ready to hit me again,” I said to Felicity. She nodded.
“Any other advice?” Iverson asked, peeling my claws off of him.
No, the voices screamed, and I felt a shudder rip through me. The blue light of the portal flared, the air around me shimmering with power. My vision blurred, and when my eyes cleared again, Iverson no longer held claws, but fingers.
The thud of the ax hitting the floor as it slipped from Felicity’s fingers broke the sudden, strained silence.
Will dropped to his knees beside Iverson to push my hands away from my stomach, examining the wound that only moments ago he had used to gather blood.
“This is bad, Lili,” he said.
“I can’t hit her if she looks like that,” Felicity said, taking a step backward, stopping only when her heel backed up against Susan’s body—and then she burst into tears.
“It’s the asw
ang,” I whispered. “They’re trying to stop us from doing this. The fact that I changed back means I’m right, Felicity.”
“It’s okay,” Scott said, picking up the ax, even as all the color drained from his face. “I can do it, if I have to.”
Wrapping my forearm around my stomach, I motioned for Iverson to help me sit up against the wall. The mild exertion winded me, and as I caught my breath, I examined the children, thinking of my Inang’s stories, the way she had given herself to protect me, the all-consuming love that must have prompted that sacrifice.
“Listen,” I rasped. “Kenny, Felicity. I need you to understand. This is okay—and it is not your fault. The creatures inside me—they’re parasites, and they want to take me over. And they want to take you over. They used me to get to you. If they could, they would use you to get to the rest of the world. And they would bring an army of monsters across that portal to take over everything we are.” Felicity crept a little closer to her uncle, allowing him to take her hand in his as he stood up from where he had crouched beside me. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders protectively then held out his other hand for Kenny. The boy scrambled across to the foot of the bed and threw his arms around the detective’s waist.
“But we’re smarter than they are. We are going to shut down this doorway. And Detective Iverson—”
“Henry,” Iverson interrupted me.
“Henry,” I corrected, smiling. “Henry knows some other people who are already on the other side, working to keep us safe.”
Felicity had gone almost as pale as Scott, but she nodded. Slowly, Kenny did, too.
Darkness swam across my vision, and I swayed, forcing myself to stay awake.
Stay alert. Keep the aswang from shifting me again.
Still kneeling, Scott supported me, one hand resting against my back. Will joined him on the other side of me.
Through the portal, dust swirled in on hot, dry air, and the thundering sound of the monstrous army echoed into the tiny hospital room.
“Are you sure about this, Lili?” Will asked. “We could find a cure…” His voice trailed off.
“I’m sure, Will. I know I’m right.” The breath I drew in burned like fire in my lungs. “You know how bad this wound is, Will. It will take hours for me to die. I need you all to send me through the portal still alive—but don’t leave me there alone. Not like this. Not without a way out.” Tears pricked the back of my eyes and my voice wavered.
Scott’s jaw clenched, but he responded. “Tell us what you want.”
Will and Iverson both nodded, seriously. Felicity and Kenny stared at me, wide-eyed.
I swiped the back of my hand across my eyes. “Get another scalpel, Will. Let’s shut this down for good—we’ll close it up as much as we can from this side. Then you give me that scalpel and send me through to finish the job.”
# # #
I had hoped the new cuts would distract me from the misery of the stomach wound, but they hadn’t. Instead, the hot lines of pain across the tops of my shoulders had simply accentuated the agony of the pain in my belly.
If I hadn’t planned to die in the next hour, I would have been worried about the way I kept losing feeling in my legs and feet.
As it was, I simply leaned my head back against the wall of Scott’s chest where he supported me, and concentrated on keeping the voices in my head from swarming across the barrier I had constructed in my mind.
It was easier now, for some reason; though I could feel their growing desperation, something about focusing on the pain in this body kept me rooted in it.
It’s my true form.
Somehow, I knew that was the key. They could change me, but in the end, this was the shape my body preferred. My human shape. The aswang were an infection, and they had to use their own power to overcome my immune system.
It took more energy to keep me in the aswang form than this body of mine had left in it.
Even their screams had diminished over the last quarter-hour.
We are all dying.
I glanced toward the hall, where Iverson had moved Susan’s body.
Her death, my death, even the deaths of the parasites trying to take me over, ultimately had to mean something.
Scott held me against his chest, his legs stretched out beside me. I leaned my head back against him, breathing shallowly. As Will and Iverson worked at smearing my blood methodically around the edges of the portal, the blue light diminished. Kenny watched the men, but Felicity had taken up a kind of guard stance near me, holding the haft of the ax in her hand and resting its head lightly against the tiled floor. I had nodded at her when she first moved into position, and she had nodded back, seriously.
It was still more than any twelve-year-old should have to do.
But there wasn’t anyone else around who could take over for her—not if Scott insisted on holding me like a lover rather than holding me off like the threat we all knew I really was.
But the plan wouldn’t take long to execute, and Felicity’s determination would see her through.
When the portal was about a quarter of its original size, Will and Iverson squatted down next to me.
“Are you sure?” Will asked again.
“It’s the only chance we have,” I said, gasping to get the words out.
Iverson nodded. “Okay. You ready?”
I blinked. Scott smoothed my hair back from my forehead, his touch comforting even now.
This wasn’t really happening.
Then Will leaned down, brushing his mask against my lips in a pantomime of a kiss. “I was glad you came home,” he whispered to me.
I laughed, a harsh sound in the quiet ward. “Are you still glad?”
He nodded, tears in his eyes.
Scott held my shoulders and moved out from behind me, kneeling in front of me and supporting me when I couldn’t even sit up. He blinked back his own tears. “I’m glad I knew you, Dr. Lili Banta.”
“You sure about that?” My voice rasped.
His kiss was real—his lips soft against mine. When he finally pulled away, he smiled gently. “I only wish we’d had some oatmeal together.”
This time, my laugh was genuine, even though it ended in a cough.
I could taste blood. Scott wiped it away with a tissue Will produced from somewhere by the bed.
Iverson reached out and helped me up to my knees. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head through his mask. “Thank you,” he said.
Placing an arm around my waist, Scott helped me stagger to my feet, and then brushed one hand down my cheek. “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met, Lili.”
Finally too exhausted to laugh, I smiled. “You should have met my Inang.”
“I wish I could have.” His arm squeezed me gently, and I worked hard not to wince at the pain that shot through me. I knew he meant well.
We all did.
Susan’s body seemed to mock me, and I worked to avoid looking at it. At her.
Instead, I stared into Scott’s eyes.
I was out of time for everything. Pain. Love. Regret.
I glanced back at the children. “I want to do this,” I said, willing them to believe me.
The aswang screeched so loudly that my vision blurred and I couldn’t hear if either child answered me.
It didn’t matter.
It’s time.
I nodded to the men.
As ever, Scott held me up, kept me from collapsing as Will slashed the scalpel down the inside of my arm, opening up a vein from elbow and wrist, while Iverson caught the blood pumping out in a pink plastic bedpan. I watched the pan fill as the acrid taste of adrenaline flooded my mouth—my body’s final attempt to save itself from the horrors of the last twenty-four hours.
My body had betrayed me, allowing itself to be invaded.
It would pay.
“Now,” I hissed.
Will and Iverson each grabbed an elbow, Will’s gloves slipping in the blood.
“Wait!” Felicity
stepped forward and pressed the ax handle into the hand of my undamaged arm. “You take this,” she said. “And if you can, you kill some of them.”
“I will.” I forced a smile, but it felt more like a grimace.
The two men glanced at one another over my head, and then on some silent signal, they slung me through the portal. At the last moment, I remembered to grasp the ax tightly.
Chapter 34
Scott
I watched as Iverson and Manning sent Lili flying through the portal and tried to believe that it was for the best.
I knew that Lili believed it. That she really thought it was the only way to save us from that horrific horde advancing on the portal. On our world.
If I follow her, the FBI will never reinstate me.
The thought nearly made me laugh aloud.
If I even survived—if I ever made it back—I would probably be lucky if I didn’t get arrested for interfering in an investigation, posing as a federal agent, or whatever they could trump up.
So where does that leave me?
The FBI be damned. Iverson and I had solved this case—or come as close to it as possible, anyway, with the information we had—and for once, I didn’t care whether or not I got my job back.
The woman I loved might be a monster, and she was almost certainly about to die, but she was headed into the most dangerous territory I had ever seen.
I could not let her face that alone.
The thought of her facing those monsters—armed only with an ax, alone, injured, dying—twisted my stomach into knots, even as part of me acknowledged that on some level she, too, was one of the monsters.
We all stared at the glowing blue portal for a long moment, and I half hoped it would stay open, that Lili would come back through it.
Instead, it began to close.
I couldn’t do it. I could not leave her to face those creatures—including the ones inside her—all by herself.
I took a step forward.
Iverson placed a hand on my arm. “You look for Cami Davis while you’re over there.”
I nodded. “I will, man.”
“And save Lili, if you can,” Will added.
Bloodborne (Night Shift Book 2) Page 16