“So this is how you do it?” DS Anderson asked.
Aza tried not to display her surprise at such a coherent question. Luckily, she found herself distracted by the hospital room next to which DS Anderson was sitting. She’d noticed the door right away when she’d rounded the corner, but it hadn’t had a window built into it as it did now.
“Why are you out here and not in there?” Aza asked as she pressed her face to the security glass, propped up on her tiptoes.
DS Anderson said nothing, but Aza heard the quickening of his breath and the rattle of his shackles.
“Scared?” Aza asked. “Peter’s not going to die.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?!” DS Anderson shouted. Aza felt a spray of saliva on her neck, but still she didn’t turn. “You did that to him!”
Aza watched the practically mummified form of Peter through the glass. The rest of his hospital room didn’t exist; he just floated in the middle of nothingness. Obviously, DS Anderson had never entered the room at all, and his mind didn’t even want to guess at its contents.
Aza wrinkled her nose and filled it. With Jell-O. Because why the fuck not?
Aza laughed and spun away from the door. A normal person would suffocate in such a predicament, but that version of Peter was no more real than the version of DS Anderson or herself. It was all in good fun.
“What do you want?” DS Anderson asked.
Aza sat cross-legged on the floor, directly in front of DS Anderson, but just out of reach. “Everything. Don’t you?”
“No,” DS Anderson said.
“It really is quite marvelous,” Aza said.
“You’re killing people.”
Aza opened her mouth, then shut it. She thought for a moment and said, “Some, I suppose. Like Dr. Green, but he deserved it. You know that.”
“And Daphne Miller? Her babysitter?” DS Anderson was drooling. His eyes were bleeding from the corners, but he stared right at her.
“You don’t even remember her name,” Aza said. “It was Anita Mae Wallace. Why does no one remember her name? I suppose because she wasn’t a pretty little girl. Anyway, they were for practice. Well, I guess Daphne dying was personal. She was a bully. You’d understand that if you had ever been on that end of the stick. Don’t bother arguing, this is your mind, after all. You were just like her.”
“You don’t know me,” DS Anderson said.
“Are you not even listening? Dani hates you, by the way—”
DS Anderson thrashed and foamed at the mouth, saying nothing coherent, but making quite the racket. Aza would need to hurry in her torture. He wouldn’t last much longer.
Aza wrapped his mouth in duct tape without even batting an eye and continued. “Like really hates you. Like almost my level of hate. It’s a little… Actually, we’re a lot alike, me and her.”
DS Anderson didn’t need his mouth to communicate. Aza was literally standing on, in, and throughout his mind. She heard him oppose the statement as clearly as if he had told her out loud.
“Maybe you don’t see it because you’re an absentee father. Just like mine was. Mentally, not physically, but you get my point. Of course you do; you’ve read my therapy journal like what…a hundred times?” Aza listened to the breeze that had inexorably risen up in the hallway. “Really? That’s far more than I would have even guessed. Well, you may have memorized the downfall of my family, but there is much, much, much, much more you don’t know about Mommy and Daddy. Just know that they got what they deserved. Just. Like. You.”
Aza knelt in front of DS Anderson and produced the cutest little switchblade. DS Anderson’s eyes went to it and he stopped struggling. It was so much easier to see him when he wasn’t resisting. It was no small feat to travel into another’s mind. If she were being honest—which she hated to be—she still had no idea how she was able to do it. Sheer willpower was the only explanation that she’d come up with, even after all her experimenting on the loony bin’s finest nurses. Aza laughed.
“Oh shit,” Aza said, remembering that she was in the middle of something. “Listen, DS Anderson. I have to go now. Well, not go go. But I thought I’d…poke around a bit.” Aza looked longingly down the hallway as dozens of doors appeared, each calling to her in their own, unspoken way.
She turned back to DS Anderson and dismissed his shirt with a wave of her hand. His eyes widened, but not in terror, as Aza was used to seeing, but rage. Aza moved the knife toward his chest and grinned. There were few things she loved more than—
“What the fuck?!” Aza shouted, jumping to her feet. Her knife was gone. She eyed DS Anderson as she conjured another one. She kept her eyes on him as she leaned forward, determined to leave him with something to remember her by. It was only good hospitality.
Before she got the knife to DS Anderson’s flesh, however, it stopped. Frozen in midair. Aza threw her full weight against it. She pulled back on it. She cursed and slapped at the handle. And still it hung in place, no more movable than a mountain.
Despite the wrap of duct tape, Aza could see DS Anderson smiling. He arched an eyebrow. The wind said, It’s my mind after all, right, Aza?
Aza closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Somewhere in that brief respite, she reconnected to her dark gifts. Sometimes when she dreamed, it was not other’s minds that she wandered, but a darker, more…sinister…place. She’d have called it Hell if she believed in such a thing. But should Hell exist, it wouldn’t be able to hold a candle to the place that Aza often visited. The darkness spoke to her in those times, not in words, but intuited understanding. She was spared from the torment and given the gift to inflict as much as she wished.
In just closing her eyes and letting her mind drift away from DS Anderson’s, Aza felt a renewed focus. And power.
She opened her eyes and rested both hands on DS Anderson’s wrists. The knife was gone altogether now, but it was nothing but a prop anyway. Aza was the true weapon.
“We’ve done this before, you and I. Time is different here. I’m different here.”
DS Anderson growled against his gag. He thrashed and broke off the restraints, freeing a hand. He grabbed for her, but his hand passed through Aza’s face. DS Anderson stopped fighting after that.
“You’re a foolish man, DS Anderson. I am the ever-present pit in your stomach. The shiver that races up your spine that tells you that you’re not alone. I am more powerful than life and more everlasting than death. Some people are just broken from the beginning. And some people…well, they aren’t people at all.”
Aza looked DS Anderson in the eyes as she tore into his flesh with nothing but her intention. There would be no escape of death for him, only deep, searing, agony.
Dreams are funny that way.
Chapter Sixteen
Sunday 3:15 a.m.
Jake jolted awake and nearly fell out of his chair. He caught his breath and leaned forward on his elbows, trying to make sense of the nightmare he’d just had. But no sooner had he woke, than had it faded away. His stomach was tied in a knot still, betraying the sense of dread it had conjured, but he could no more remember it than the lessons given in grade school.
The lights in the waiting room were dimmed, now only slightly brain searing. Jaina was curled up on a small couch, arm under her head, breathing softly. Jake stood up, stretched his wooden limbs, and quickly bent double. Pain lit up his chest and coursed down to his toes. Gingerly, Jake touched his chest as he fought to stand upright. His shirt was damp with fresh blood along the shallow cuts he had almost forgotten about. He must have stretched too far and opened the wounds up. Jake snagged a tissue from a table in the corner and blotted at his chest. Christ, it felt like he’d been cut again, and he still had no idea how it’d happened the first time. Jake tossed the bloody tissue out and moved to Jaina’s side.
“At least one of us is getting some rest,” Jake whispered as he draped his jacket over her upper body.
He watched her a moment longer, then left the waiting room and walked up to th
e information desk. The main lights were completely off in the hallway, leaving only small emergency lights in the upper corners of the walls to reveal Jake’s path. The central desk was lit up from the light of a dozen computer screens, illuminating the sole attendee: a portly man, roughly Jake’s age.
“Hi, uh, any updates on my son, Peter Anderson?” Jake asked before he even reached the desk. He clutched at his chest, fighting against the pain, and hoping too much blood hadn’t seeped through.
The man looked up. “Oh, Mr. Anderson. It is my understanding that your son is in between surgeries at the moment. Stable, but unable to receive any visitors. I’m sorry.”
The lights flickered. It lasted only a moment, but it left Jake dizzy.
“Mr. Anderson?” the man asked.
Jake rubbed at his temples and nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I’ll…I’ll just be back in the waiting room. Let me know if anything changes.”
“You got it, sir.”
Jake walked back toward the waiting room, but stopped and leaned against the hallway wall when the lights flickered again. Jake squeezed his eyes shut and let the wall keep him from falling. It had been a few days since he had slept or eaten properly. Something had to give.
Summoning whatever strength he had left, Jake walked back to the central desk of the burn ward. “Is there, like, a cafeteria that serves at this time? I could really use something to eat.”
The attendee surveyed Jake with a concerned frown. “Oh, well, not normally, but I can call down and let them know to have something prepared for you. There’s always someone in the kitchens.”
“Yeah? Great. Which way?” Jake asked. He didn’t think he’d get back to sleep, so he figured he might as well eat. Sandwiches held no nightmares.
“Main level. End of the hall, take the elevator to the lobby, and it’ll be straight ahead. There are signs pointing the way.”
Jake thanked the man and walked down the hallway along the given route, leaving Jaina, the burn ward, and Peter behind. He found the elevator and punched the button. It lit up and he could hear the elevator moving. He stretched out his limbs and tried to shake some more life into his body and mind. He needed to be at the top of his game for whatever lay ahead.
The elevator doors slid apart, but Jake couldn’t get his feet to move. “No,” was all he could say as he read the words written in large, block letters on the elevator wall.
Hell turned me away, so I took the darkness as my own.
The elevator doors shut, and no matter how much Jake pounded on the button, they would not open again. He tried to wedge his fingers in the crack and pull the doors open, but he couldn’t get a good grip. She’s here. Aza is here.
“Fuck!” he shouted, banging on the doors for good measure. Still they refused to part.
Adrenaline pumped through his veins now, bringing clarity and sick desperation. Dani was safe, but there were still two people in the hospital that Jake cared for. Peter was secluded and under armed guard. Jake couldn’t for a second think that was enough to truly protect him, but it would be enough to dissuade Aza from attempting anything further against him. That only left Jaina. Predators always targeted the weakest and easiest to catch.
Jake took off running back the way he’d come.
Jake slammed into the waiting room door and nearly fell inward, just catching himself on the back of a chair. The lights flickered, but it was plain to see. Jaina was gone.
“Jaina?” Jake asked the empty room.
The shadows and flickering light gave no answer. Jake’s gut stirred, but his muscles tensed. Only then did he realize how much Jaina actually meant to him.
Jake moved back into the hallway and called for her. Her name echoed but ignored his plea otherwise.
“Sir, are you all right?” a passing nurse asked.
Jake forced the woman against the wall. “Did you see a woman leave this room in the last few minutes?”
The nurse nodded, clutching a stack of sheets tightly to her chest. Her eyes threatened tears.
“Which way?” Jake asked.
The nurse pointed away from the burn ward. She tried to extricate herself and continue on her way, but Jake slapped his hand against the wall, barring her passage.
“Sir?” she asked.
“Was there a child with her? A girl. Twelve, but small for her age. Black hair. Impossibly blue eyes.”
The nurse shook her head. “Alone,” she said.
Jake breathed a sigh of relief and stepped back. The woman just about sprinted away from him, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder as she went.
“She is such a pretty liar,” a tiny voice said from somewhere nearby.
Jake jumped and whirled around. “Who’s there?”
Distant laughter echoed along the corridor, washing over Jake and setting a fire in his chest.
“Jaina?” Jake asked as he began to walk.
The voice returned, but Jake couldn’t make out the words. It was brief and airy. He patted the small of his back, wishing he was carrying his pistol. His mind told him he was sleep-deprived and stressed. His gut told him to keep his head on a swivel.
Jake turned the corner and pushed through a set of heavy doors marking the transitions between wards. The lights were brighter, though not at full strength, and the air smelled like disinfectant, bodily odors, and something familiar that he couldn’t quite place.
“Jaina?” he called out.
A curl-topped head leaned out over a desk. “Sir, can I help you?”
“Middle-aged woman, about this tall, braided red hair, slender.”
“Oh, yeah. She just passed through, looking for a coffee machine. Down the hallway a bit.”
The lights were turned on to their full brightness, forcing Jake to squint. He hadn’t noticed when they’d changed. Jake jogged off in the direction the man had indicated, scanning every room he passed. Patients occupied the beds of most of the rooms, and a few nurses and orderlies paced the hallway.
He reached the end of the hallway and was about to round the corner, driven by the new scent of burned coffee, when he saw in the last room a small figure that brought him to a standstill.
It was Aza. Sitting up on a hospital bed, a stack of papers on her lap.
Jake only froze for a second. Then he moved at a ferocious pace. He shouldered open the door and stood in the doorway.
Aza looked up from her reading. “Well, good morning, DS Anderson,” she said.
Jake took a quick account of the room. Small, plain, one window, one door, no one else present. He stepped in and kicked the door shut behind him. His entire body quivered and twitched. If he’d brought his gun, he might have already used it. Being unarmed forced him to restrain himself. If only just.
“Do you believe this shit?” Aza asked, holding up a loose piece of paper.
Seeing Aza and hearing her speak so casually to him arrested Jake’s first impulse to throttle her. It delayed him enough to see what she had on her lap and what she was waving at him. It looked to be the entirety of Aza’s original journal entries and the torn sheets from the Miller girl’s diary. Jaina had had them last. In Jake’s car.
“Holy shit, DS Anderson, frown much?” Aza asked. She punctuated it with a shrill laugh.
“I’m retired,” Jake said. Was there anything less vital to say in the moment? Jake cursed himself. He wouldn’t be intimidated by her.
Aza shrugged and returned to flipping through the journal entries, mumbling to herself.
Jake eased open the door and took a quick look out into the hallway. Everything was calm and quiet. He shut the door again.
“It’s just you and me,” Jake said, taking a bold step toward the bed.
“That’d be a more appropriate threat coming from me,” Aza said without looking up.
Whatever she was—child or demon—Jake had stood in plenty of rooms with plenty of violent bastards over the years. This wasn’t any different. He calmly sat on the only chair in the room. He leaned back and
folded his hands in his lap and sighed.
Aza looked over at him.
Jake stared back.
“Waiting for me to fill the silence?” Aza asked. “I’m not sure that would be wise on your part. Though, from the way you strolled in here, I’d guess wisdom isn’t one of your stronger attributes. And they say it comes with age. Go figure.”
Jake forced a thin smile and said nothing. All monsters were the same, once you got down to it. Most just wanted to be heard. Most just wanted to be noticed.
“You’ve watched me since my parents burned,” Aza continued. “Do you know why?”
Jake remained as still as possible, maintaining eye contact.
Aza smiled. “This is a dangerous game you are playing,” she said, keeping her eyes locked on his. Christ, they were so blue. “Hasn’t your girlfriend told you about me?”
Jake’s heart picked up a notch, startling him. His finger twitched, but he fought every impulse in his body that wanted to react with violence.
“Oh, is she keeping secrets from you?” Aza asked, sticking out her bottom lip. “She always was such a bitch, so I don’t suppose it’s surprising. Maybe it’s all you deserve, DS Anderson.”
Jake’s heart pounded and he couldn’t stop a sweat from breaking out along his brow. He had her where he wanted her. He would let her say her piece and then calmly drag her back to SCPC. It wasn’t what he wanted to do, but putting her back in a cage would have to do. One of his legs started bouncing. He couldn’t explain it.
“What are you doing?” he asked, finally breaking his short silence.
Dear Tragedy: A Dark Supernatural Thriller (House of Sand Book 2) Page 12