Jake landed against the wall and fought to get up again. DS Grimly sidestepped and jabbed her weapon toward him. “I said, get up, nothing more, nothing less.”
“Tell me she hasn’t gotten to you, too,” Jake said.
“Turn around,” DS Grimly said.
“Okay, okay,” Jake said, spinning around and offering up his wrists. “But we have to go back to room thirteen. Dani’s there. I don’t know what Jaina is going to do to her. She already shot her once.”
“Jaina?” DS Grimly asked as she slid zip-tie handcuffs on Jake’s wrists and pulled them tight.
“Yeah,” Jake said, turning back around to face her. DS Grimly could do whatever she wanted to him, as long as his family made it out in one piece. “Aza got to her. I should have seen it earlier, but Jaina’s not herself. She shot Dani in the foot and is going after Peter. He’s still in the burn ward. Oh, and thank you, for what it’s worth.”
“You really have completely lost it, haven’t you?” DS Grimly asked. “Jaina’s dead, you whack job.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Time Unknown
Jake felt like he’d stepped on a live electrical wire. He shook his head emphatically. “Jaina’s not dead. Possessed, maybe, but not dead.”
“Yes, Jake, she is,” DS Grimly said. “And I’d bet my badge it was you that shot her. The rent-a-cop and nurse, too. You’ve left a literal blood trail behind you, but it’s over.”
Something echoed in the distance like thunder but not. Something flashed like lightning, but it wasn’t. “He had a gun,” Jake said. “It was an accident.”
“Who? The guard? He was unarmed,” DS Grimly said. “Those amateurs aren’t cleared to carry firearms. You know that.”
Jake stared at the floor where the light at the end of DS Grimly’s shotgun lit up. One solitary patch of light in a darkness so deep, Jake knew he’d never surface. He knew the details of the House of Sand killings inside and out. He’d read Aza’s account of it a hundred times. He knew it so well that he couldn’t ignore the stark similarities between what had befallen Aza’s father and himself. Fuck, he thought. She’s in my head more than I thought.
“I’m not myself,” Jake said, still staring at the spot of bright light. Causing the rest of his world to dim. “I’m not crazy, not really, but I get why’d you’d think that and I won’t argue. Maybe I shot Jaina and that guard, I can’t be sure. But if what you’re saying is true, then we need to get back to room thirteen.” He still trusted the fact that Dani and Aza were there. He had to. Peter would have to come later.
“You’re not calling the shots,” DS Grimly said, grabbing him and forcing him to stumble in the direction Jaina had been taking him. Away from Dani.
Jake walked a couple of steps, then violently turned away and started running back the other way. “Shoot me if you have to!” He had to know.
Jake could hear DS Grimly chase after him, but she didn’t fire. He hadn’t actually expected to make it more than a few steps before catching a tight grouping of buckshot in his back. He sprinted as best as he could, trying to get his eyes to see the passing door tags. The first that registered told Jake he’d ended up much further away than he’d previously thought. He skittered around another corner and blew past an elevator that told him he was on the sixteenth floor. It didn’t matter how he’d gotten there.
Trying to ignore the maddening realization that he’d lost a considerable amount of time with Jaina, he awkwardly flung open the door to the stairwell with cuffed hands, spun back around, and practically fell down the first flight.
DS Grimly crashed through the door above him. “Jake!” she shouted.
Jake didn’t even look or slow. What good would it do? If she wanted to shoot him, it’d have the same effect whether he was looking or not.
On the landing of the thirteenth floor, DS Grimly caught up to him and slammed him into the wall. His face bounced off the cinder block. At least three teeth dropped out of his mouth behind a trail of blood. More drops for the ocean that was his slowly crumbling vitality. He hadn’t known Jaina was dead. Would Jake know if he was?
“You are really exercising my patience tonight, Jake,” DS Grimly said.
She pressed her shotgun, lengthwise, against Jake’s neck, keeping him pinned.
“If you weren’t such a stickler for protocol, I suppose you could just shoot me,” Jake said after he’d caught his breath.
“Don’t tempt me.”
Jake tried to shrug. “The shame of it would be that nothing would change. For either of us.”
“All right, enough talk, time to take your lumps.” DS Grimly let Jake go, but quickly pinned him in place with the point of her shotgun wedged against his chest. She fished out a cell phone from her pocket.
“Hey, didn’t I take that…?” Jake asked, feeling dizzy again.
“This is DS Grimly. I have the suspect in custody and am bringing him out… DS Grimly. Of the Seaside City Police Department… I don’t care who— No, just one: Jake Anderson… It doesn’t matter how I… Fine, I— That won’t be necessary. I have the suspect— No, you listen to me… Hello?” DS Grimly slammed her phone on the floor and leaned into her shotgun enough to stop Jake’s breathing.
“Trouble with authority?” Jake asked.
DS Grimly scowled at him and pulled her gun back. “Federation Response Teams are inbound. Guess they got tired of waiting for your demands. But I won’t be having them steal my arrest, so let’s go. And put some hustle in it.”
DS Grimly motioned Jake toward the stairs. He slid along the wall until his hands touched the push bar of the door to the thirteenth floor. It burned his fingers, but he kept them in place, embracing the pain. “I have to…” Jake said.
“Jake…” DS Grimly said, raising her shotgun.
Before Jake could decide if DS Grimly was capable of cold-blooded murder, the lights clicked on, dazing Jake. He’d grown accustomed to the dark, and the sudden change made him nauseous.
“What the…” DS Grimly said.
Jake forced his eyes open, not having realized he’d pinched them shut. Occupying the downward stairwell was an unending void. A darkness too black to be called black.
DS Grimly took a step toward it, leading with her shotgun. The flashlight at the barrel did nothing to illuminate the darkness. It did nothing to dissuade its presence. Even before, when Jake had seen it, it was difficult to see or understand, but now… It was still utterly featureless, but it was certainly…larger.
“Don’t touch it!” Jake shouted.
DS Grimly stepped forward again, close enough to jab her shotgun at the thing if she wanted to. “What is…?”
“Don’t touch it,” Jake repeated.
DS Grimly turned back to look at Jake. “Jake, what—”
A screech from unseen speakers pierced the stairwell. It was followed by the monotonous tone of an automated voice system. “DS Anderson, please report to room thirteen. DS Anderson, please report to room thirteen.” There was another blaring screech, then a new voice asked, “Daddy?”
Then a burst of static and silence.
Jake pushed against the door and stepped back into the thirteenth-floor hallway. “Bekah, I’m not crazy. I just want to save my daughter.”
DS Grimly looked back at the stairwell and then at Jake. Her brow furrowed. Jake imagined it’d be a lot for any person to try to absorb in a single moment. “All right, we’ll check out room thirteen, but I’m not uncuffing you.”
“Whatever makes you feel safe,” Jake said.
He turned and looked for something to tell him what direction room 13 was in.
What he saw was a man running toward him, devoid of clothing, covered in nothing but a sheen of blood from head to toe. He slipped on every other step, smearing blood and bouncing from wall to wall.
“Stop! Seaside City PD!” DS Grimly shouted, pushing Jake out of the way and leveling her shotgun at the approaching man. “Stop!”
The bloody man looked up, tri
ed to turn directions, and hit the floor hard. The smack of the man’s head echoed.
Jake followed DS Grimly as she approached the man. “Don’t move,” she said.
“I…uh, I think he’s dead,” Jake said, moving around to better view the man’s face.
DS Grimly knelt and checked the man’s pulse. After a moment, she pulled back and pointed her gun at Jake. He didn’t even bat an eye. It was like a handshake from her at this point.
“What is this, Jake? This man… the…what was that in the alley? And in the stairs…?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. But it has something to do with Aza. She can make people…different. The…dark thing must be some…extension of her. Whatever it is, it’s not good.”
DS Grimly looked past Jake and nodded. “And that?”
Jake turned to see a new set of burning footprints that snaked down the hallway and disappeared around the corner. “You can see that?” Jake asked.
“I… Yeah, I see it.”
Jake almost cried. Maybe he wasn’t as crazy as he’d previously thought. He started following the prints, wary of touching them.
DS Grimly stopped him with a nudge. “I know I’m going to regret this,” she said.
The plastic cuffs around Jake’s wrists fell off. He looked at her and gave a half-smile. DS Grimly snapped her knife shut and tucked it into her pocket. “All right, let’s go,” she said.
Together, they followed the burning footprints, Jake in the lead, DS Grimly close on his heels, occasionally touching his hip with the end of her shotgun. He figured it was her way of letting him know she was still in charge, still willing to shoot if need be. As if Jake gave a shit.
“Holy—”
Jake stopped suddenly on turning into a new hallway. DS Grimly slammed into the back of him, but bit off whatever she started to say.
The overhead lights were flickering erratically, but even so, Jake could pick out at least four different bodies splayed out on the tile floor, bloody and still. Even more pieces of bodies filled the rest of the space, save for a singular path down the center. The path the flaming footprints took.
“What have you stepped in?” DS Grimly asked.
Jake set his jaw and continued. He didn’t need to check the numbers of rooms he passed to know he was getting closer. He tried not to acknowledge the death and destruction along the path. If he survived, he’d mourn for them later.
“There,” Jake said when the footprints had run their course and terminated against the base of the door to room 13. The footprints extinguished in small puffs of smoke.
DS Grimly sidestepped to the small window built into the wall next to the door. The blinds were drawn. She wouldn’t see anything, Jake knew. Jake took a breath and stepped up to the door. He turned to look at DS Grimly.
“Give me a gun,” he said.
DS Grimly shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not arming you.”
“Then you need to be prepared. I’ll get Dani out of here. You need to end this.”
“Meaning what?”
Jake ground his teeth and tried to dismiss the distant echo of dripping blood. “You need to kill Aza.”
DS Grimly said nothing, so after another breath, Jake opened the door and stepped into room 13.
It was dark in the room. The only illumination came from the flickering lights in the hallway and the open blinds on the opposite side letting in pulses of red and blue. The air was stale and musty, like Jake was the first person to open the door in the last decade. It wasn’t like he’d remembered it. He had been there before. Right?
His eyes adjusted at the same time as they passed over the lone hospital bed. On it was a small shape. A child with hair darker than night.
“DS Anderson, my hero!” a voice shouted.
Jake recoiled and grabbed at his temples. He hadn’t seen Aza move, but it was her voice that nearly ruptured his eardrums. He shook it off and stalked toward the bed. DS Grimly grabbed his arm and wrenched him around.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Jake pointed a finger at Aza. “We need to kill her before she wakes up.”
“What about Dani?” she asked. “And Peter?”
Before Jake could answer, Aza bolted upright and screamed. It was an ear-splitting wail. In the dimness, her eyes glowed, making everything else around her look washed out.
She continued to shriek.
“Now, Bekah!” Jake shouted.
She shook her head. “I’m not shooting a child. You said Dani was the priority.”
Abruptly, Aza stopped screaming and yelled, “Daddy!”
That was it. The edge Jake needed. In a flash, he snatched DS Grimly’s shotgun from her and spun, lashing out with a pointed elbow. He caught her in the nose and sent her falling backward. At best, she’d be dazed. He’d only have a moment. He turned back and aimed the shotgun at Aza. Not at her chest, the easy target, but at her impossibly blue eyes. He needed to be sure. He wanted her to see it coming.
Aza scrambled away from Jake and fell off the far side of the bed. He leapt atop the bed and maintained his target.
“I will only ask this once,” Jake said. “Where’s Dani? What did you do to Peter?”
Aza rolled and pressed herself into the corner. Beneath a wash of tears she yelled, “Mommy! Daddy!”
Jake stepped off the bed and moved close enough to press the shotgun barrel against her forehead.
“Where’s my mommy?” Aza asked. “Where’s my daddy? Where am I?”
“Twisted bitch,” Jake said. He tightened his finger around the trigger, teasing it.
“Please, mister, please,” Aza said. She tried to retreat further into the corner, but there was nowhere to go.
Jake gritted his teeth. He would paint the room with her blood. Fuck everything else. She needed to die.
Just as he pulled the trigger, something hit him hard in the side, throwing him off balance. The shotgun blast blew out a fist-sized section of the wall. The echo of the shot seemed endless as Jake fought off DS Grimly as she grappled for the gun.
“Jake!” DS Grimly bellowed, clawing and pulling.
“Help!” Aza screamed.
Jake cursed and struggled to keep the weapon.
And above it all, Jake heard the drip, drip, drip of blood. Of fetid water. Of anything and everything. His sanity falling one drop at a time. Nothing was limitless. But neither did anything end.
DS Grimly got both hands around the gun and pulled hard, yanking it free from one of Jake’s hands. She almost got it from him completely, but he surged forward and head-butted her in the face. If her nose hadn’t broken before, it did then, making an audible snap as Jake sent her tumbling away from him and onto the bed.
Jake recovered and got the shotgun back under control. He aimed it at DS Grimly just as she found her own balance. “I don’t want to hurt you, Bekah,” Jake said. “But Aza has to die. It’s the only way. For what she did to Dani, to Peter, to…me.”
“You’re mad,” DS Grimly said. “She’s just a scared kid.” She pointed at Aza, cowering in the corner, blubbering a stream of nonsense.
“You saw what she can do!” Jake shouted. “She killed your men. You saw it.”
“Yes, I saw it,” DS Grimly said, holding up both hands as if it would placate Jake. He was beyond such futile gestures. “Whatever it was…or is…it’s not Aza. Jake, you’re obsessed.”
In the distance, an explosion sounded and the floor shook ever so slightly.
“That’s the response team, Jake,” DS Grimly said. “It’s over. Whatever this is. It’s over.”
“No,” Jake said, keeping the gun on DS Grimly. He knew she would have to die before he could finish Aza. A necessary sacrifice. Kill DS Grimly. Kill Aza. Find Dani. Everything has its order.
Drip, drip, drip.
Jake steadied the shotgun with one hand and scratched at his ear with the other.
Aza whimpered incessantly, alternating between loud sobs and g
ut-wrenching calls for rescue.
“Jake,” DS Grimly said. “Please.”
Drip, drip, drip.
Jake dug at his ear, searching for the noise that wouldn’t leave him. He tore at his ear. His fingers became wet with blood. He could feel it running down his neck. Eventually it would find a point and fall to the floor to join the rest. No one could bleed forever.
“Shut up!” Jake shouted.
Inexplicably, everything quieted. In doing so, the room stopped spinning and Jake could see far clearer. “Good,” he said. “Please, Bekah, move to the far side of the room and sit on your hands.”
“Jake…”
“Now!” Jake shouted. Blood and saliva sprayed from his mouth in a pink mist.
Slowly, DS Grimly shuffled off the far side of the bed and sat against the wall.
Jake nodded and swung back to face Aza. As he did, a door clicked open behind him and the room fell deathly cold. Everything stopped in that moment, allowing a solitary voice to float through the frigid air.
“Silly man,” Dani’s voice said. “It’s not about her.”
Jake turned, unwilling to believe what he’d so clearly heard. Unwilling to give credence to the sick knot of realization in his gut. Instincts could be wrong, couldn’t they?
“Dani…” he said.
Dani stepped out from the doorway set in the corner of the room. Behind her showed a small bathroom. The pulsating lights from outside made the sheen of blood on the bathroom floor seemed to shift and dance. Blood stained Dani’s arms, up to the elbows, and became a haunting mask on her face, covering the girl Jake once knew. The same reveal Aza gave her parents, in room 13 of the Regency Motel. In that moment, Jake doubted his own identity.
“It’s not about her either,” Dani said, not moving any closer.
Jake studied her eyes and saw nothing of his daughter.
“Aza?” he asked.
Dani stomped a foot and balled her fists as she shouted, “It’s not about her!”
Jake readjusted his tact once more. There was power in names. “Tragedy,” he said as firmly as he could. “That’s your name. What you are. You’re Tragedy.”
Dear Tragedy: A Dark Supernatural Thriller (House of Sand Book 2) Page 24