Things That Go Bump At Night

by C. A. Saari

  “How do you decide who the enemy is?” I whispered; though I knew what his answer would be.

  “Well, the enemy of the highest bidder of course.” He laughed. Yeah, this was so funny.

  “How will my gift control them?”

  Parker stopped laughing now, he even frowned slightly.

  “See, that’s been the rub for many years. We have not been able to find a way to control them, we’ve tried altering your protections, even coming up with some of our own ideas and potions, but nothing works. The protections have aided us in capturing demons, but not controlling them.”

  “You’ve captured demons?” I asked appalled. Not because I thought it unfair they cage the things, but because they were here, right now, too close.

  “Of course.” He answered as if I were silly for asking. “How do you think we’ve tested our own protections? Nothing has worked though; but I believe your gift is the key. Not only because they hunger for it, they would do anything to have it, but because they know it also means certain death if it’s used against them.”

  I soaked that up. What did it mean for me?

  “You are here for a purely scientific reason.” Parker answered, as if he’d read my mind. “I need to find a way to extract this gift from you, so that my handlers can use it, as a weapon, if you will, after it’s been altered to suit our purposes of course.”

  Now he sat back and smiled at me, as if he’d explained everything just right. The man was nuts. Certifiably so.

  I said nothing. I couldn’t. What was I supposed to say? This was all too much, and I couldn’t get my thoughts in order, I couldn’t even think of a way out while sitting in this room tied to a desk. I felt a lump form in my throat. Parker stood and smiled at me.

  “I’m having a room prepared for you. Sit tight and someone will come for you soon.” He stared at me a minute longer, then left me.

  I pulled at my restraints for a time, but they didn’t budge and I was only hurting myself. My mind drifted to Jake and I wondered what they were doing to him? I hoped they’d simply thrown him in a cell and left him. I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine them hurting him, and in a cell, he could escape. He could come for me; I knew he would. I don’t know how long I’d sat there, but eventually I dozed off, dreaming of Jake. I was roughly woken later, but since my room had no windows, no clock or anything else that could tell me the time, I had no idea how long I’d been asleep. One suit cut my tie –though they just replaced it with a new one- while the other waited by the door. Then they flanked me and led me down another long winding corridor and through several sets of doorways before finally ushering –well, rudely pushing- me into yet another room.

  But this one scared the hell out of me at first glance.

  It was another white room with gray floors, but instead of a table and chairs bolted the floor there was a surgical chair. Complete with wrist and ankle restraints.

  Oh shit. Oh mother effing shit.

  My fear graduated to terror.

  Parker strolled in after us, all smiles. He motioned for one of the men to cut my ties. I rubbed my wrists. Funny, people actually do do that after being tied up.

  “Please undress.” He asked kindly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I looked around the room, not only was he still here, but so were the two suits who’d escorted me in.

  “I assure you, they won’t watch.” Parker smiled at me, I in turn simply stared at him. Was he planning on watching? Apparently so, because he motioned for me to continue. It would be a cold day in hell before I undressed in front of this man. I stood by defiantly. Parker sighed and pulled his cell phone from an inner pocket of his suit coat.

  “One call, Miss. Dexter, and your boyfriend loses a limb.”

  Bastard. I thought vehemently. Well, the devil was apparently enjoying a good snowball fight right now. Not only was Parker a first class douche bag, an evil mastermind and certifiably insane, but now we could add pedophile to that list. With shaky hands I reached for the hem of my shirt. By the time I’d finished, my entire being was wracked with the shakes. I stared at the floor in front of me as Parker took his time looking his fill. Finally he held a paper gown out to me. I hastily pulled it over my head.

  “Thank you Miss Dexter.” Parker said softly, as if I’d just done him a favor. I still didn’t look at him, and being covered again did nothing to settle my shaking. The two suits lifted me into the chair and strapped my ankles and wrists. Tears filled my eyes. Parker reached out to smooth my hair back, but I recoiled from the touch and he smiled softly.

  “We’ll start out simply, Miss Dexter. No reason to ruin a pretty thing. Just some blood, and tissue samples. That should be enough for now to start our research.” As he said that, two men in surgical gowns rolled in equipment and while one set up an IV stand the other wrapped a rubber hose around my upper arm and pinched a needle into the vein at my elbow. He took several vials of blood as Parker watched on, like a concerned father…well, that description was a little sick, seeing as how he’d just seen me naked. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be able to reach that scalpel and jam it right in his eye. “These men are going to prep you for surgery, I won’t be far away.” He squeezed my hand and turned to leave. Like that was supposed to comfort me? I didn’t care if he was a thousand miles away! And what the hell did he mean surgery? What exactly were they going to be doing?

  “Wait!” I called after him. He turned in the doorway to face me again. Before I could ask my question about what kind of surgery exactly I was about to have a deafening alarm began to blare.

  Jake! I immediately shouted in my head…or maybe I had said it out loud, I couldn’t be sure.

  Parker on the other hand, swore. He shouted for his men to see what was going on, then told the nurses to stay with me and pulled his own gun. He shot me one glare –as if I had betrayed him somehow- before he disappeared out the door as well. The nurses stood by nervously for a time.

  “Please.” I said to them. “Please let me go, I’ll make sure you don’t get hurt.” Because if Jake found them in here with me, there was a good chance they weren’t going to make it out at all. But, much to their detriment, they ignored me.

  “Get her prepped.” One told the other.

  “No!” I cried and worked against my restraints. Of course to no avail. One held my hand still while the other crudely pushed an IV needle into the back of my hand. I cried out, not at the pain, but at my helplessness. As soon as they hooked that hose up to that IV bag I would be out, Jake would have a lot more trouble getting us out of here if he had to carry me. I struggled hard, swore at the orderlies, but my restraints held fast and they paid no attention. Tears stung my eyes.

  Then it happened. Two shots rang out and both orderlies went down. Jake stood behind them.

  “Jake!” I cried, the tears spilled now. He came to me, I saw immediately that he was hurt. One of his eyes looked as if it were trying to swell shut, but he wasn’t letting it. There was a cut on his cheekbone under the other eye, and a cut across the bridge of his nose that was bleeding, it looked as if his nose had bled too; the front of his sweatshirt was covered with it. There were two splits on his bottom lip and the front of his pants over his right thigh was covered in blood, there was a slit in his pants that looked suspiciously like someone a stabbed a knife through it. And as he worked to free my restraints I saw that his wrists were raw and bleeding as well. He had obviously fought while in cuffs or had fought to get out of them.

  But he was still the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen.

  “Hold still.” He said roughly as he yanked the IV from my hand. I winced, and as soon as I was free of the restraints I threw my arms around him. He gathered me to him and held me tight. So tight I could barely breathe, but I didn’t care, I wanted him to hold me even tighter. “Are you alright?” He pushed me back far enough to look at me, then he kissed me. I could taste blood on his lips, but I kissed him back anyway, hard.

  “Are you alright?” I ask
ed when we parted, the corner of his lip kicked up in a smile.

  “You should see the other guys.”

  Guys. My man was hot, he took on guys, plural, for me.

  I cupped his face in my hands, dangerously close to hyperventilating.

  “Let’s go you two. Plenty of time later to paw at each other.” A voice called. I looked past Jake’s shoulder to see Jason looking in on us, a large automatic weapon in his hands. He winked at me. I looked to Jake.

  “Dad couldn’t come himself, they’re watching him too closely. So he sent in the cavalry. Where are your clothes?”

  “I don’t know.” I let Jake lift me off the chair, he pulled his sweatshirt over his head and handed it to me to put on while he reached down and searched the two orderlies for weapons. They both had a gun, both of which he also handed to me, he’d come in with two of his own. Then he led me into the hall, Jason looked at me and smiled.

  “Glad to see we got here in time.”

  “Come on.” Jake led us down the long hall. He stopped us at the end and risked a quick look down either direction of the adjoining halls. “I’m going to scout ahead, stay here. If I’m not back in a couple minutes, find a different way.”

  “Jake!” No way! I was going with him! But Jason grabbed my arm, I would have shot him a glare, but Jake leaned forward to kiss me before he moved off quickly. I stared after him.

  “Watch our backs, Remi.” Jason ordered, pulling me out of my stun. I shot him a glance before turning my attention to the hall behind us.

  So it had been Jason that had come to our rescue. Somehow, I was saddened by that thought. Maybe selfishly I had wanted Jake to come riding in on his white stallion, I couldn’t see him as the type to be rescued.

  “Thank you.” I said weakly. “For getting to him.” I wasn’t going to say for rescuing him; that just didn’t seem right.

  Jason studied me for a time, then smiled.

  “As much as I would love for you to be grateful to me, I can’t take credit. Jake was already out and coming for you when we got here.”

  I turned away from him and pretended to watch the rear hall to hide my smile. Of course he had been, why had I even doubted it?

  Had he said we? Who was we? I turned back to ask and caught him looking at my legs. The paper gown and sweatshirt did their best to hide what they could, but they still only just grazed the top of my thighs.

  “Hey!” I barked. “Eyes up top.”

  Jason chuckled and looked back down his end of the hall.

  “You seriously can’t blame me.”

  I glared at the back of his head.

  “Who is we?” I asked.

  “We?” He frowned and turned to look at me again, I saw the moment he grasped my question. “Oh, Sarah, Wally and Shane are with me. They’re out there creating a distraction while we get you out.”

  As if on cue there was what I could only assume an explosion outside, but from here it was a dull sound and the building above us shook slightly.

  Jake whistled at us from the end of the hall, my heart soared.

  “All clear, for now at least, so let’s hurry.” He waved us down. We ran. Ran through corridor after corridor, and finally we reached the elevator that had taken me down, but we didn’t take it back up, and I didn’t have to be told why. As soon as those doors opened on the upper level, we’d be sitting ducks for any suit in the lobby. Instead we took the stairs up, I was annoyingly aware that Jason was behind me as Jake kept a firm grip on my wrist in front of me. I knew Jason was probably getting a good show back there, but I wasn’t going to embarrass myself by addressing it any further than holding my limited clothing as closely to me as I could. Jake pushed the door open slightly and peered out into the lobby. He gently let the door close and turned to us.

  “Three in the lobby.” He said in a low voice. I glanced down and made sure the safeties were off on my guns, I hadn’t even thought to do that in the hallway, how embarrassing would that have been had Jason and I been shot by suits coming at us from the back simply because I forgot one of the first rules of shooting. Safety off to fire. Duh. They were off.

  We stepped into the lobby firing and made quick work of the three suits. We made for the front door, Jason watched high as Jake kept an eye on the doors in front of us, so I watched our sides. There was another explosion outside.

  “Hang on.” Jason said and jogged over to the elevator. I watched as he put something inside and sent it down, then jogged back to us with a smile. “We should go now, we’ve only got a few minutes.”

  A bomb. Lovely.

  Jake took my hand and we stepped outside. An SUV –probably the same one I’d rode here in- was parked out front, we made for it.

  “Locked.” Jake said. “You’ve got tools on you?” He asked Jason. Jason nodded and dug a small black case out of one of his pockets and handed it to Jake, then went back to scanning the area around us. There was gunfire and smaller explosions behind the house. I couldn’t see, but I was guessing there were grenades being tossed out, whether they were ours or not I had no clue, but either way the distraction was working. There seemed to be no suits out front as we crouched next to the SUV while Jake worked to pick the door lock.

  “I’ve found her!” someone yelled. “She’s out front!”

  Then I heard Parker’s voice.

  “Don’t let her leave!” His voice came from above, I looked up to see him looking down at us from a balcony. Jason and I fired off a couple rounds, forcing Parker back, but several other suits were now coming from around the house.

  “Time to go Jake.” Jason said casually, though the whole situation was anything but casual. He fired at the suits coming from the left, I fired right.

  “Got it!” Jake called and swung the passenger door open to hit the lock button for the rest of the doors.

  Jason reached up and opened the back passenger door and motioned me to climb in. I heard Parker scream at us again –for the life of me I couldn’t remember what he said- just before the shot –Parker’s shot?- hit me in the side. I cried out and pitched forward.

  “Remi!” Jake shouted, he’d been about to climb into the front of the truck, but he came back for me just as Jason caught me before I hit the dirt. “Drive!” Jake barked at Jason and took his place. Jason launched himself through the door without argument and went to work hotwiring the vehicle while Jake lifted me into the back seat, shooting as we went. He closed the door behind us and laid me on the seat, he knelt on the floorboards next to me.

  “Oh God.” I grunted, bile rose in my throat. This pain was almost worse than being stabbed in the back.

  “Come on Jason, get us going!” Jake barked.

  “Almost got it.” Jason replied, his voice was finally strained. “It’s a little hard to hotwire newer cars these days.”

  “Remi, look at me.” I turned my eyes to Jake’s. “Stay with me, Okay?”

  I nodded and swallowed hard, I was beginning to feel dizzy and every single one of my nerve endings was jumping in pain, even my feet seemed to hurt. I felt the truck rumble to life under me. Jake gently pulled his sweatshirt up to examine my wound, he rolled me slightly and I heard him sigh –was that relief? Jason must have heard it to, because as he drove –fast- he asked; “She alright?”

  “Went through.” Jake said roughly. I knew that to mean the bullet hadn’t bounced around inside me for a while before deciding to settle…so yeah, that was good. Jake pulled his t-shirt off, he stuffed half of it under the wound beneath me and the other half over the top of my wound, then whispered strained apologies as he pressed hard, putting pressure on to stop the bleeding, he kissed my face and apologized again. I groaned and black spots danced in my vision.

  “The others?” I croaked.

  “We’ve got a jeep downhill. They’ll be fine. Jake, do we need a hospital?”

  “Get her to Maria.” Jake answered not taking his eyes from me. He held my hand with one of his while keeping pressure on me with the other. “Remi, stay w
ith me, baby. Please stay with me.”

  I went numb. Everywhere. And felt a wave of panic, what did that mean? To go numb? That couldn’t be good, right?

  “Jake.” I couldn’t seem to get my voice above a whisper, and it was getting alarmingly hard to breath. “Jake…I can’t feel…” I paused to gasp for breath.

  Then everything went black.

  15

  I pulled myself up from sleep, fluttered my eyes open. I was in bed. Sun was steaming through the windows. I reached out for Jake, but he wasn’t there. I stretched, but my motions were slow, hindered, as if I were trying to move through water.

  Oh yeah, I’d been shot. I focused my attention on my side, but felt nothing. So I sat up and swung my feet over the side of the bed. Still, no pain. I lifted the t-shirt someone had dressed me in and saw a large white bandage just over the area of my bottom rib. I replaced the shirt and stood, I had to put a hand to the bed for a minute until I gained my balance and when I did, I finally felt a tiny twinge in my side, I could walk –I had to favor my left side, so it looked like I had a limp, but still, I could walk; so I did. I went in search of Jake. I knew he wouldn’t be far, not with me laid up and all, but I didn’t find him anywhere in the house. No one was in the house actually.

  He wouldn’t have left, would have he? I went to the front of the house and looked out the window next to the front door. No, his truck was still in the driveway. A movement to my right caught my attention, I saw him then. Sitting on the wicker love seat just outside the front door, the very same place he’d sat me that very first day he’d brought me here. He was hunched forward, he elbows rested on his knees and his head hung over them. I opened the front door and stepped out; it was cold.

  “Jake?” I could see my breath.

  Jake came to attention quickly, he jumped from his seat.

  “Remi, you shouldn’t be up. What are you doing out here?” He reached for me, I let him take my arms, but didn’t let him steer me back into the house.

  “No. Can we sit out here for a minute? The fresh air is nice.”