Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13)

by Robert J. Crane

“How are you d—” Scott started to ask and stopped himself when she writhed again, her legs buckling before she caught herself on the edge of the bed. He was counting the seconds, and was up to fifteen, trying to keep steady in spite of the nearly unseen urge to speed up. It was as though the numbers wanted to slip away from him, come out in a rush. “Sixteenseventeeneighteennineteen—”

  Kat’s legs folded, and this time she hit the bed, landing on Sienna with her elbows but failing to hold herself from collapse. Her hands were still anchored to Sienna’s face, though, even as both women heaved and jerked at the intensity of their exchange.

  “Twentytwentyonetwentytwotwentythree—” He was counting for thirty, unable to stop speeding forward with it at this point, as though caught headlong in a gravity well and flying into it at unsafe speeds. He watched for anything—the flutter of Sienna’s eyes, the widening of them, a shocking gasp of breath, anything to suggest the job was done, that life was restored sufficiently—

  In spite of the muscle movement, she showed no signs of recovery, her power working past death to drag Kat along. But was it doing any good? Was Kat’s power to heal working beneath Sienna’s own power to drain? Or had Sienna’s ability to heal died with her, with the stopping of her heart? If so, the only thing happening now was the death of Kat, who seemed to be holding in a scream, her mouth open wide and head thrown skyward, eyes tightly shut in agony—

  He hit thirty and ran right past it without noticing at first, and was almost to thirtyfivethirtysixthirtyseven- before he reached out and slapped Kat’s hands, breaking the contact because she couldn’t—

  Kat tumbled down and he caught her before she slid off the bed head-first, his arm catching her around her chest and holding her there as her legs drooped uselessly. She was lighter than he remembered.

  “Did I … ?” Kat asked through ragged breaths, her eyes clamped tightly shut. Her head bobbed in whatever direction he moved her as he tried to lower her to the ground. He set her back against the bed, her head rolling against the threadbare comforter, as though she might sleep sitting up. “Did it … did it …” Her voice was low as a whisper. “Scott …”

  He stared down at Sienna. The wounds were still there, he could feel them, those little plugs of blood. The pulse—he could feel it again, the liquid moving steadily, slowly through her veins …

  “I think—”

  Sienna’s eyes broke open like a vase cracked in half with sudden violence. She sat up in bed forcefully, drawing a frighteningly loud breath, a panicked breath, almost a screech. She looked left, then right, wide-eyed, and met his, sagging back, thumping into the headboard.

  “I think she made it okay,” Scott said, leaving Kat to rest against the side of the bed as he stepped up to stand next to Sienna, who was still staring up at him. “Are you—”

  “Is Kat okay?” Sienna asked, breaking away from him and looking around again, her eyes settling on the patch of yellow hair that was caught on the bedspread near her feet.

  Kat threw a hand up limply. “I’m … I’m okay, I think. Lightheaded. Skin kinda burning, like a rash or something … but …” She let out a breathless sigh. “I’m okay.”

  “Good,” Sienna said, slumping back against the headboard like she’d just died again. Scott let out a held breath and found his legs suddenly too weak to bear his weight. He came crashing down on the floor of the motel, his tailbone finding the thin carpeting a poor landing place, but all he muttered was, “Ow,” as the two women in the room with him—the only two he’d ever loved, really—both turned their heads to stare at his sudden and entirely unexpected collapse.

  53.

  Sienna

  “Well, that was a kick in the head,” I said once I’d composed myself a little, enough to hang my legs over the edge of the bed.

  “You think it was bad on your end,” Scott said darkly, arms folded, leaning against the wall next to the bedside table, “try sitting there watching someone who’s damned near invincible die in front of you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him, and he blinked at me, caught somewhere between surprise and amusement. I tried to make my expression convey what I really meant, but I failed, so I just spoke it aloud. “I’m sorry for everything, Scott. Everything I did to you.”

  That caused his eyebrows to go high on his long forehead. “Well … okay, then.”

  “This is really cute,” Kat said, still collapsed against the side of the bed. “But what I want to know is … how did you damned near die in the first place?”

  “Long story,” I said.

  “She took a round in the head,” Scott said.

  “Ouch,” Kat said.

  “Wait, you didn’t know what happened?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “I told her you got hurt,” Scott said. “And she hopped on a plane.”

  That is my Klementina, Gavrikov said. So sweet. So … heartfelt. So …

  I didn’t interrupt him like I normally would have. “Thank you, Kat,” I said, once he was done getting teary over his sister.

  “Just glad I could help,” she said, looking at me wanly. She crinkled her nose. “Ugh. Seriously, though … this place?”

  “It’s the smell, isn’t it?” I asked with a little embarrassment.

  “It’s the décor, right?” Scott asked.

  “It’s the exhaustion, and that the bed is soiled,” Kat said, looking with great unease at where I was sitting. “I cannot sleep in that. And I’m going to need to sleep. So very soon.”

  “Oh, yeah, no, I wouldn’t expect you to,” I said, burning a little in the cheeks. It wasn’t like I’d been in great condition to get up and use the toilet while I was dying. I heaved back up to my feet and made a face. “Yeah … let’s get you a different room, maybe, and, uh … fresh clothes for me?”

  “Yeah, I’ll … get your bag from the car,” Scott said, nodding once. “And another room for Kat.” He nodded a couple times and headed for the door.

  “And, uh, Scott?” I asked, causing him to turn back to me. “If the lobby has a vending machine … ?” I mimed eating something.

  “They do have one,” he said, thinking it over. “Snickers? Chips?”

  “If they have anything healthy,” I said, blushing a little, “start with that. If not … do the best you can?” He nodded and started to leave again. “Thank you,” I called after him, and he hesitated, just a second. “For everything.”

  He nodded again, and turned to leave.

  “Hell of a night, huh?” Kat asked, sounding drained as though I’d opened her veins and let her bleed almost every drop out. She looked like she was about to go to sleep right here.

  “You said it, sister,” I agreed, and she smiled, probably at my most peculiar choice of words, but she did not say anything to dispute them.

  54.

  June

  Sunrise blazed in the windshield and woke them both up from an all-too-fleeting slumber. June didn’t feel like resisting it, like trying to squint it away. She’d stared at the black night for most of it, not even realizing she’d drifted off at some point, probably from exhaustion.

  “What do you want to do?” Ell asked, shifting against her, his ribs a suddenly uncomfortable pillow.

  “Get something to eat, I guess,” June said languidly. There was no joy in her movement now, just a strange resignation to getting back on the road. At the end of it was a beach, but no excitement for it now, just a destination to head toward, a box to check. “Then get on with it.”

  “Okay,” Ell said, and he started the car with a sputtering roar. It sounded labored, like the car didn’t want to get going, either. She sympathized with it. But it didn’t change anything; she felt the call, and it was time to move. Just like the car—start her up, point in the direction, and apply gas until they reached it.

  Ell backed them out of the dirt road carefully, long grass brushing the underside of the car, sounding like the chassis might be batting aside a few sticks in the process. It was like a grin
ding symphony to June, loud and irritating, but she didn’t react.

  She just held tight to Ell’s side, figuring she’d ride right here until they got to Daytona Beach. Then, the next thing would happen, and the next …

  And probably, pretty soon, they’d run out of next things. One way or the other. And that bothered her less than she would have thought.

  55.

  Sienna

  A shower with the quiet hum of the water washing over me, and the surprisingly felicitous chatter of my souls now back in my head allowed me a few minutes to recuperate from the ordeal of getting a big, sloppy tongue kiss from death itself.

  Also, Scott brought me a package of peanut butter and crackers, which I scarfed in about two seconds. Hey, it was better for me than devouring a Snickers bar.

  When I’d finished toweling off and dressing, I walked out to find Scott waiting there, silently, guarding the door, which hung off its hinges. “What happened there?” I asked, wondering if there was a hair dryer available to help me keep from soaking my shirt. Ahh, it didn’t matter, I realized. The water just helped me feel alive again.

  “Kat broke it on the way in,” he said, giving it a quick look. “She barreled right past me to get to you.”

  “Hmm,” I said, tapping my ear to get the water out. That never worked. I did once try boiling it out by turning an entire half of my head into flames, and even that didn’t work. Annoying.

  “You surprised?” Scott asked.

  “That Kat came running? Sorta,” I said. “I’m grateful, though.”

  “You still have friends, Sienna,” he said. “Reed’s coming, too. Sounded like he was the one dying when I told him.”

  I didn’t know quite how to take that. “How’s Kat doing?”

  “Probably sleeping,” he said. “Got her the room next door. You want to check on her?”

  “Might as well,” I said as a car bumped by on the highway outside, its lights drifting past slowly in the fading darkness. Sunrise was visible out there, the sky a fiery orange in preparation for the breaking day. I tossed my used towel on the bed, feeling a little bad for the maid who was going to have to clean this up. I felt surprisingly tired given I’d just woken up, but I hadn’t really been having a restful sleep. I scooped up my bag and carried it with me, figuring I probably shouldn’t leave it in a motel room that couldn’t even be properly closed.

  When we came into Kat’s room, she was pretty out of it, but she looked up as the door clicked shut. “Hey,” she said, and waved her cellphone at me. “I was just about to go looking for you guys. Any minute now. Really.” She shifted a little in bed, but didn’t try to sit up.

  “What’s going on?” Scott asked.

  “Text from Reed,” she said, looking like she might die if she tried to stand. “I told him you’re okay, and he took it predictably in stride. But he warned me, since he knew I was here … I guess Phillips is still trying to get him to intervene in this situation with those kids that shot you.”

  I dropped my bag on the floor behind a table and chairs, not quite sure how to feel about that, either. “Oh?”

  “I guess they assaulted some cops on the road last night,” Kat said, struggling to get up on her elbows. She failed, and didn’t try again. I wondered if Scott had carried her over here. “One patrolman in the ICU, another couple in the hospital with respiratory issues.”

  “But the perps got away?” I asked. That promise I’d made Grandma Randall was nagging at me stupidly, like a hole in my skull or something. Or another one, at least.

  “Yeah, but,” she said, stopping to take a breath. She was winded. “… I guess they’ve got access to these kids’ Google Maps for their cell phone, so they know their destination and Phillips is moving in a special tactical team to take them out.”

  Scott stirred. “He’s done playing, then. He’s issuing a kill order.”

  “Yeah,” Kat said with a heavy breath. “And except for Reed and me … we have no one else who could get into position to help. And Reed’s still over Alabama or Mississippi or something.”

  I looked out the window, messing with the crappy, seventies-era curtains. “When do you think these kids are going to roll into … wherever they’re going?”

  “The destination is Daytona Beach,” Kat said. “I don’t know when. They don’t have a track on them anymore, because I guess they lost it for the night, but Phillips is setting up an ambush for them on the beach. Or near it. I don’t know.” She lay back, completely spent.

  I couldn’t blame her. She was exhausted from more than just the use of her powers; I could feel a shadow inside me, hints of her personality, her liveliness, maybe even a couple memories, though I was avoiding looking at them. Not just because I respected Kat’s privacy, either, but because I knew the kind of old guys she’d slept with before and I really, really wanted to avoid seeing Janus in the altogether through her eyes.

  “That tactical team will bring them down,” Scott said, more sedate than I’d heard him on this entire endeavor. Watching me damned near die seemed to have really taken it out of him.

  It had taken it out of me, too, but that promise was still nagging in my head, along with something else. “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  “No what?” Kat said.

  “I’m not letting them bushwhack those kids,” I said.

  “Because turnabout isn’t fair play?” Scott asked with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “If they get shot through the heads, I think it’s well deserved at this point.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I made a promise I’d try to bring them in.”

  “You tried,” Scott said with grinding intensity, “and look what happened.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not dead,” I said.

  “But clearly you’re hungry for another shot at the prize—I can’t fucking believe this,” and he blew up in a way that very much reminded me of how he’d been in those stolen memories. “We move heaven and earth to try and save your life and now you want to just throw it away by—what? Walking in there and getting your head blown off by June and Elliot again? Or worse, the FBI Tac team? Because let me tell you something, they will not just let their scope pass over Sienna Nealon and think, ‘Gosh, I’m here for these other two, I better let her go.’ You are priority number one for them. They will kill you!” He thudded his fist against the wall, barely slowing it down enough to keep from tearing into it at the last second. “I should have seen it before. You’ve got a death wish.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I might have before, I don’t know. But no, I don’t want to die. I got close enough this time, I don’t need to see it any closer. This isn’t about me wanting to die.”

  “But you realize why it might look like that to those of us casually watching from the outside?” Kat asked, speaking up before Scott got a chance to interject again.

  “I do,” I said. “I’ve been reckless for a while. I … I’ve been arrogant … a lot. Lost track of how I could still be vulnerable. I think I lost my respect for my life. Lost hope, maybe, too … but … that’s not why I want to go after them.”

  “Why, then?” Scott asked, sounding just as exhausted as everyone else in the room. “Why?”

  “Because I know I was dying. I know what that feels like now. And because if someone doesn’t stop these kids … they’re going to feel it, too.”

  “Forgive me for saying, ‘Let them,’” Scott said.

  “I forgive you,” I said quietly, “but … it doesn’t change the promise I made that girl’s grandmother. Maybe she’s too far gone, like … like so many others I’ve met over the years. But I figure … my word is worth one more chance. One more time throwing myself into peril.”

  “Why, Sienna?” Kat asked, channeling the apoplectic look on Scott’s face into a quieter version of his question.

  “Because it’s my job,” I said, my hushed whisper so low I feared it might scrape the floor. “And because no one else is going to do it for them.”

  “You’re right
,” Scott said, not daring to look at me, anger all over his face. “No one else wants to give a chance to these two because … who, honestly, wants to die? They ambushed you. They would have killed you. Giving them another chance seems ill-advised, at best. So why do it?”

  “Because I’m hoping someday maybe I’ll get another chance,” I said in a hushed whisper. “And if I let them just die … shot down in a hail of bullets when I could have stopped it … I’m afraid I won’t really deserve it.”

  “All right,” Scott said after a long few moments of silence. “Let’s go to Daytona Beach.”

  I looked up at him, brushing away the tears in my eyes with my sleeve. “You sure? You’ve done enough already.”

  “I brought you into this,” Scott said, nodding once, like it was settled. “Let’s finish it together.”

  56.

  June

  The sun was up, rising high in the cloudless sky, and they cruised down A1A, just a block from the beach. June could see it out the passenger window. For some reason, Ell was still studying the GPS on his phone, as though he didn’t know where he was going.

  She gently took the phone from him and tossed it lightly into the floorboard. “We don’t need that now,” she said quietly.

  “You have arrived at your destination,” the phone said in a robotic tone, muffled where it pressed against the weathered carpeting in the floorboard.

  Ell pulled off into a parking lot on his right. It was a construction site, a massive condo tower that stretched ten, fifteen stories up, with glass only partially covering its metal and concrete skeleton, the rest still in varying degrees of completion.

  The car came rocking to a gentle stop just outside the construction perimeter fence that divided the parking lot. It was pulled open for cement trucks and work trucks and all manner of other rugged vehicles to pass. The sound of jackhammering reverberated through the car as Ell put it in park.