ON EDGE (Decorah Security)

by York, Rebecca

  And how had he figured that?

  He couldn’t exactly say, but he’d known to the marrow of his bones that it was true.

  He’d tried to fight her off, and she’d sent him sprawling on the floor. As she’d swooped in for the kill, another woman had rushed into the room and rescued him. She’d told him her name was Ariel. And the bad girl was Lilith.

  That was about it, except for a very hot kiss and a bunch of weird details he could hardly believe. Ariel had told him he shouldn’t be there. She’d ordered him to forget what had happened, and he was pretty sure she was confident that the command would wipe out his memory of the events. But they were engraved on his mind as though someone had taken a wood-burning iron and gouged the scene into the tissue of his brain.

  He winced, hating the metaphor, yet unable to shake the image.

  He pushed himself up as he’d done the night before and swung his leg over the side of the bed. Only now he didn’t have to hurry.

  Instead he reached for his crutches and hobbled into the bathroom where he used the toilet, then turned the water in the shower to hot.

  He could lean his shoulders against the tile wall and stand up to wash without the crutches. After his shower he shaved, staring at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes looked sunken, and the creases between his nose and lips seemed deeper. He was thirty-five, but he probably looked older. Then he went back to the bedroom for the prosthetic leg. Donning it was part of his morning routine. Since his stump tended to perspire in the sheath that held on the artificial limb, he sprinkled on an absorbent powder, then pulled the special sock over the stump of his leg, before fitting the prosthesis over it. When he was finished, he stood up to make sure it was comfortable and not going to chafe.

  That was a big problem when you had an artificial extension on the end of a limb. Get it irritated, and you were in big trouble.

  Dressed in sweatpants and a tee shirt, he stepped into the hall. He’d been here last night. Well, not here exactly. Another plane of existence, Ariel had said. Where the light was eerie. Now it was normal morning light. He ran his hand along the institutional green surface of the wall. It felt cold and solid. If it was reality, what had last night been?

  When he saw one of the day staff nurses watching him, he pulled his hand away and headed for the mess hall where the men and women in the program who were mobile ate.

  Pausing in the doorway, he looked at the fifteen troops who were already there, not just Navy but from other branches of the service too. Most were sitting at the square Formica tables set far enough apart for easy access. Several orderlies were on duty, ready to assist anyone who needed help.

  Gordon, who had lost both legs, was still in a wheelchair, which was pulled up at the table in the corner. He stared at Frank for a long moment, then back down at his plate on the table in front of him.

  Frank stopped for a mug of coffee from the urn and carried it to the table.

  “Join you?”

  “Sure,” Gordon answered without a lot of enthusiasm.

  “Be right back.” Frank got in the cafeteria-style line, picked up a tray and a plate, and served himself scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, butter and jam, which he carefully carried back to the table where he’d set his mug. Walking was one thing. Walking and balancing a tray of food was another, and he knew the orderlies were keeping track of him as he returned to the table.

  He set down the food and pulled out his chair.

  “So how are you doing?” he asked Gordon.

  “Okay,” the man answered without mentioning anything about the night before.

  Unsure how to proceed, Frank forked up some scrambled eggs and ate them.

  “I woke up last night and thought I heard you,” he finally said.

  Gordon’s head snapped up. “Heard me do what?”

  “Did you call out for help?”

  “No.” The flat denial left no room for argument.

  He waited a beat before asking, “Did you feel like you might . . . give up?”

  Gordon kept his gaze level. “What kind of question is that?”

  Frank lifted one shoulder. “There were times when I felt like I couldn’t go on. You ever feel that way?”

  Gordon pushed his fork around the plate. “I think we all do at one time or another.”

  “Yeah. But don’t stop believing that you can make it. We’re all going to get through this.”

  “And when we finish the program, then what?” Gordon asked.

  “I don’t know. Whatever you want.”

  “Oh, sure.” He gave Frank a fierce look. “I worked in a warehouse before I joined the Navy. I’m not going to be operating a forklift.”

  “There are other things you can do.”

  “I don’t need a bunch of bullshit about the wonderful kingdom of Oz from you this morning.”

  “Sorry. I guess I was just feeling vulnerable.”

  “Why? You’ve still got one good leg, and you’re up and walking.”

  Frank nodded. “But I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life, either.” He hadn’t planned to discuss his own fears, and maybe giving Gordon a pep talk wasn’t the way to go. But what was? Stay awake at night and listen for sounds of trouble?

  He looked around the room. More of the men and women in the rehab program had come in, and there were now twenty-four of them eating or getting food. Were any of them at risk from that mind vampire thing? What if you were a woman who had lost a leg—or two? Was that worse than a man having his body image screwed up? Would she think that no one would love her with important parts missing? The way he felt when he wasn’t guarding his emotions.

  He shuddered.

  “What?” Gordon asked.

  “Nothing.’ He wasn’t going to say he was imagining himself in bed with a woman, making love. One particular woman, actually. Only how the hell did you do it with one leg? He flicked a quick glance at Gordon. Or none?

  He finished breakfast quickly, then stood up too fast, almost losing his balance and making a grab for the table. Everybody turned to stare at him, and he ducked his head to keep from making eye contact.

  He felt their eyes on him. Were they feeling a wince of self- awareness as they watched him almost fall over? And which of them was susceptible to the thing that had tried to suck the life out of Gordon? It had looked like a beautiful woman. If you were female, did the vampire take the shape of a handsome man?

  Would it do them any good if he knew?

  He wished he’d never had that weird encounter last night. No, that was a lie. He really wished he’d had more control over it. And he wished he’d had more time with Ariel.

  After breakfast, he reported to the PT room where they checked him out on his prosthesis, then had him work at upper body strength—which was important when a lower limb was missing.

  By noon he was glad to take another shower before lunch, which he ate with Thompson and Wardell, two guys who were both married and going home to their wives and families when they got out of here. Would the wives stick with them? He wasn’t going to ask. But he was glad his own marriage had ended three years ago, and he wasn’t going to have to find out.

  But how did you start dating again at thirty-five, with one leg. With his trousers on, maybe you couldn’t tell. But it wasn’t the kind of thing you waited to tell a woman when you were already at the stage of taking off your pants.

  With free time in the afternoon, he went down to the computer room to do some research on what he knew about last night’s encounter.

  He liked the new way of doing research, liked the easy access to information he would have needed a library for a few years ago.

  He started with Ariel because he was more interested in her. On a personal level. It turned out that Ariel was the name of an angel who was known as the Lion of God. An angel of protection—which fit what she’d been doing last night.

  Was she really an angel? Or had someone given her that name?

  He clenched his ha
nds into fists. He didn’t want her to be an angel. He wanted her to be a woman. Why? Because he was thinking about having a relationship with her? A woman he’d met on another plane of existence? But a woman who had responded when he’d kissed her.

  With a snort he went back to the computer and looked up Lilith. That was the name of Adam’s first wife in Hebrew folklore. But the name was known as far back as Babylonian times. She was also an ancient demon of the night who supposedly kidnapped or strangled male children.

  Had she switched from children to disable men?

  He didn’t find anything in the mythology that helped him settle the question. But he kept poking through Web sites until dinner. Then he returned to his room, knowing he was waiting for the hours after midnight, because what had happened last night had seemed more real than reality.

  Did he want it to be more real—because he longed to escape a life where his future had been taken out of his control?

  Maybe, but he knew something else was out of his control as well. He had never been to that other plane of existence before last night, and he had no idea how to get back there. Maybe getting there had been a fluke. Maybe he couldn’t even do it again. That thought made his throat tighten painfully. He had met Ariel there. He wanted to meet her again. Well, it was more like an aching need. A void inside himself that only she could fill.

  He made a rough sound. Only she could fill? And she probably wasn’t even real.

  Chapter Three

  Frank wanted to leave his prosthesis on when he went to bed. He wanted to meet Ariel standing on two feet, but he knew that was a bad idea. Because he had to rest the stump, he sat on the edge of the bed and reluctantly reversed the process of donning the leg.

  He set it on the chair, then grabbed his crutches to get ready for bed. Last time he’d tried to hit the mind vampire with one of his crutches, which had left him dangerously off balance. This time he retrieved his Bowie knife.

  Of course it was against regulations for patients to have a weapon at the Naval Medical center, but since his injury, he hadn’t felt comfortable totally unarmed. He’d paid one of the orderlies to bring him the knife, which he kept in back of a loose piece of molding at the bottom of his closet. He got down on hands and knee, retrieved the weapon and brought it to the bed, where he covered it with the top sheet.

  As he lay beside it, he wondered what to do next. Gordon’s cry had awakened him from sleep. Should he try to sleep now? Or stay awake and figure out some other way to get into the other place?

  If he focused on Ariel, would she come to him, or could he go to her?

  He lay in bed remembering how she looked, focusing on individual features like her thick dark hair or her large violet eyes, then taking in the whole picture again and remembering what her lips had felt like against his—what her body had felt like in his arms. Why was he obsessed with her? Because she was a fantasy and easier to deal with than a real woman?

  He fell asleep contemplating that question. And he awakened to the sound of the meds cart at seven in the morning.

  “Damn,” he muttered as he pushed himself up in bed. He’d slept through the night.

  Deep disappointment threatened to keep him in bed. Then he remembered that he had an appointment with Dr. Leonard, the shrink who’d been seeing him since he arrived at the Naval Medical Center. Since he didn’t want to report that he was too depressed to talk to the guy, he heaved himself up and got ready for the day.

  He made it through breakfast, PT, lunch. And then he was on his way down to the psychiatric unit wondering what he was going to say. If he stuck with reality, he’d have to tell the doc that he’d had a psychotic experience. But he didn’t think that was true. He thought his interactions with Ariel and Lilith were real, but he couldn’t explain them in rational terms. Of course, that was the definition of being crazy, wasn’t it? You thought you were perfectly fine.

  He snorted. He wasn’t going to argue that point with a mental health professional.

  Leonard put down the folder he was looking through as Frank came into the room. “So how are you doing?”

  “Pretty well,” he answered, trying to keep his voice casual.

  “No problems?”

  “Just the usual. Physical stuff.”

  “What about the argument you had with Gordon in the cafeteria yesterday morning?”

  His eyes narrowed. “What? Did somebody report us for talking too loudly?”

  Leonard shrugged.

  “I don’t like being watched all the time.”

  “You’re in a hospital. It’s bound to happen.”

  Frank shifted in his seat. “I was asking him about the night before. I heard him scream around two in the morning, and I got up to see what was wrong.”

  “Yeah, a nurse saw you in his room.”

  Frank felt his pulse rate go up. If Gordon had ended up dead the next morning, would someone have accused Frank Decorah of smothering him in his bed?

  Not a comforting thought. He kept his gaze fixed on Leonard. “So how many of the guys who’ve come through this department had committed suicide in the past few months?”

  The doctor reared back. “Why would you ask that question?”

  “I’m trying to figure my survival chances.”

  “Your chances depend on you—not a bunch of statistics.”

  Frank looked down at his hands. Getting into a fight with the unit’s shrink wasn’t going to do him any good. And he was picturing how Leonard was going to write up this session.

  “Is something specific worrying you?” Leonard asked.

  “No,” he denied, hoping the lie didn’t show on his face.

  “You don’t have to wait for your regular sessions. If you need to talk to me, you can always do it.”

  “I appreciate that,” he lied again.

  “Have you talked to your brother lately?” Leonard asked.

  “No. Like I told you before, he always looked up to me, and he’s having trouble coping with my injury.”

  “You may have to accept that your relationship won’t be the same.”

  “I have,” he snapped.

  Cooper was something else to worry about. Or to put it another way, something else he didn’t want to have to deal with. His brother had come to see him—once, before Frank had gotten the prosthesis. When he’d stared at the place where Frank’s leg ended in disaster, his face had gone white. And the meeting hadn’t gone any better from there.

  At least Cooper had showed up. Sherry, his former wife hadn’t bothered, but Frank hadn’t been surprised. The marriage had been over long before he’d gone on his last assignment. She hadn’t been able to cope with a husband who was away for long periods—on dangerous assignments. And he’d understood, even when he hadn’t liked it.

  Frank saw the psychiatrist look at his watch. “Our time is up.”

  Thank God.

  He had never thought the sessions with Leonard did him much good, but this one was worse than usual.

  “Do you want to schedule an extra appointment?”

  “No.” He pushed himself to his feet and left the office, hating that he’d gotten himself into a stupid confrontation. Had it come from within himself? Or was some outside force pushing him?

  An outside force? Did he think some paranormal being could manipulate his mind while he was awake? He hoped to hell not. And he hoped to hell the paranoid thought wasn’t a sign that he really was cracking up.

  He snorted. Maybe he should make himself a tinfoil hat to keep out the bad vibrations.

  But seriously, were his thought rational? Was he actually paranoid, or did he have something real to fear? He’d put money on Lilith being dangerous—and tricky. He didn’t know what to think about Ariel, but he found himself hoping she was a woman—and not someone unreachable.

  He needed to find out, and he was determined that he wasn’t going to simply sleep through another night. But was there any way to force himself into the other plane? There damn well better be. />
  In a corner of the lounge, he pretended to watch the evening news. But he was really thinking about himself—about Frank Decorah, about his future and his past. Why had he stepped into a place the other night that wasn’t this earth? At least if he believed Ariel’s explanation for where they’d been. And why did he think he could get back there?

  Was he different from the other men and women here? Had his injury triggered something inside himself that he hadn’t known he possessed?

  Or had something come back to him that he’d had a long time ago and lost?

  His mind ranged back to his early childhood—to when his memories came only in snatches. He’d lived with Mom and Dad on a farm in Iowa. Before Cooper was old enough to be his playmate, he’d spent long hours on his own. Big Bird and Oscar had been his friends. And Mister Rogers had given him a neighborhood, but he hadn’t been happy to sit in front of the television set all day. He’d spent as much time outside in the orchard behind the house playing pioneer or soldiers. And sometimes out there, weird things had happened. He remembered flickers of movement at the edges of his vision, like something . . . unexpected was just at the edge of the world he knew. He’d turn his head quickly, and nothing would be there; but he’d be sure that something had leaped away before he could see it clearly.

  Had he seen glimpses of creatures from the other plane of existence? They’d never turned real and solid for him, and he’d been glad of that—because he sensed that they were dangerous.

  Now that he was pulling up long-forgotten memories, he remembered something else that sent a shiver up his spine. He’d gone over to where he’d seen the creatures. The things themselves had vanished. But he saw tracks in the dirt, tracks of animals that even a little boy knew should not have been roaming around an Iowa farm. Maybe some of them were big cats. And maybe others were huge lizards. He couldn’t be exactly sure.

  He clenched his teeth. At any rate, he’d outgrown the flickering images at the edge of his vision. They’d been replaced by the prints of Cooper’s little shoes when his brother had toddled outside to join him playing boys’ games.