by K. R. Willis
She must have figured all this out recently or she would have gone after Sally a lot sooner, back when they worked at the hospital together. Once her father discovered he could create a weapon with my blood, she killed Tom. Brian was a loose end she couldn’t allow to live.
Damn, everything that had happened could be attributed to one woman’s jealousy and obsession.
“Why didn’t you just take the cure and move on?” I asked. “None of this had to happen.” Fire flashed in Lilith’s eyes as she snapped her head around and looked at me.
“Why…why?” she croaked. She dropped her hand from where it petted Brutus’ arm and stomped toward me. “Because I loved him…I wanted to be with him enough to become a filthy, howling beast with him, and it still wasn’t enough. He chose her over me,” she screeched.
Her eyes bled to amber sometime during her rant. She breathed hard, almost to the point of panting. Any moment, she would sprout fur and devour me on the spot. I held my tongue and waited, hoping she would decide that eating her daddy’s new golden goose would be a bad idea.
Surprisingly, Brutus came to my rescue.
“Lily,” he said softly. He placed one of his meaty hands on her arm in a gentle caress. The amber bled from her eyes almost instantly and she stepped backward into his arms. A slow, cruel smile spread across her face.
“Bet you’re wondering why I’m telling you this, huh?” The happy way she said it made alarm bells go off in my head. “I just wanted you to know where you stand in the scheme of things,” she said. “Your blood provides us with the means to create our new play toy. My daddy’s gonna milk you dry.”
She laughed hysterically as she slipped out the door. Brutus gave me a toothy grin, then pulled the door shut behind him. The massive steel shut with a decisive thud. Bolts clicked back into place, once again sealing me in my prison. Their footsteps receded down the hallway until I no longer heard them. The lights went out, plunging me into darkness.
I screamed at the top of my lungs. Banged and beat on the door until my knuckles bled. Fear and anger warred within me. She couldn’t be allowed to get away with everything she’d done. Too many people had died because of her jealousy. I had to put a stop to it. I just needed to figure out how.
My fingers trailed along the wall, feeling each bump and groove. There had to be a way out. I refused to allow myself to be slowly bled to death, or die in a concrete prison. Ugh! If only I could walk through walls. My fists once again hit the concrete wall as I raged against its hard, unyielding surface. I panted, out of breath, my knuckles hurt and my eyes burned with unshed tears. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t die like this.
Then suddenly, realization hit me like a bolt of lightning and I froze.
CHAPTER 30
I started pacing back and forth, thinking. The last time I shadowed, I passed right through my apartment door. If I could figure out how to do that again, perhaps it would allow me to pass through the concrete walls of my prison. Then again, the last time I shadowed, I barely made it out of the Evil One’s lair in one piece, and the only reason that happened was because Rya pulled me out. She wasn’t with me this time, and I didn’t know if I could pull on her connection to me without her being physically close.
Dammit! If I just sat here Dr. Johnson would continue to bleed me and make his weapon. I had to do something, even if it meant facing the Evil One again. Fear surged to the surface, making my heart race and my throat tighten. Facing the Evil One was the last thing I wanted to do, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get out of this mess. I took a deep breath and blew it out. My mind was made up; I just had to figure out how to make the shadow thing work again.
I needed to retrace my steps.
After gaining the power from Sabin, Rya and I headed home, not stopping anywhere except for fast food. Once at my apartment building, I went upstairs and walked toward my door, then Scrappy snuck up behind me and barked…Scrappy. That had to be it. After he scared me I became invisible and fell through my door into the Evil One’s lair.
I needed the element of surprise. There had to be another way to make it work, but I hadn’t had the time or the want to figure it out. Now I had no choice.
My eyes had adjusted to the dim light while I paced back and forth. I looked around the room. Four walls, a cot bolted to the floor, and a toilet were the only things my cell provided. How the hell would I surprise myself with any of those things?
Think, Keira, think. I slapped my hands on the concrete wall once again, and then rested my head on its cold stone. I blew out a frustrated breath and thumped my head on the concrete. The jolt of pain that shot through my forehead made me wince. A thought slowly formed.
If I knew that I was about to crash into the wall, would it be enough to scare me into shadowing, similar to the way Scrappy surprising me had? I had no idea, but I was willing to give it a shot.
My fingers traced the arch of the cot’s metal footboard as I felt my way to the opposite wall. The Lorum tingled when I pushed my back against the wall. I propped my foot up, readying to push off. My heart pounded out a painful rhythm and my throat went dry. I took several deep, cleansing breaths. If this was going to work, I had to make sure I couldn’t see the wall and risk slowing down. I closed my eyes and prayed it worked, or I was in for a whole hell of a lot of pain.
Here goes.
I pushed off with as much force as I could muster and hurled myself in the direction of the opposite wall. Fear gripped me with both hands and ripped a scream from my throat. What the hell had I been thinking?
***
The face smashing, bone-crunching wall that should have greeted me never came. As the seconds passed and I still hadn’t met my very painful demise, the realization that it must have worked settled over me. Then the air and the smell of the room changed, from stagnant nothing, to something cold and rotten, and I knew where I was.
The momentum I’d managed to build up as I ran at the wall had me sliding across the rough sand floor. It scraped like sandpaper across my skin, peeling and tearing the top layer off in spots like horrible rug burn. I opened my eyes in time to see the wall that stopped my skidding trek. My shoulder took the jarring brunt of the hit, saving me from a cracked skull.
The Evil One must have heard the commotion because he said, “So glad you returned. I have prepared a surprise to welcome you back.” Cloth ruffled somewhere across the room. My head still spun from my collision with the wall, but I knew that whatever he had in store for me wasn’t something I wanted any part of.
Rya, can you hear me? I waited for a response, but nothing came. I’d been able to communicate with her before when she wasn’t my tattoo, but only at a close distance. With my heart in my throat, I reached for that tendril of connection I’d pulled on at my apartment when Rya brought me back. As I feared, I couldn’t feel her. Without Rya being close to me physically, I had no metaphysical tie to her. My hope for an easy way out vanished. With no way out for now, I pushed to my feet, determined to face my enemy standing up and ready to fight.
The Evil One stood across the room with his back turned toward me. The same robe he’d been wearing before covered his features. He did something, but his robe obscured whatever it was, keeping me from getting a good look. I glanced around, wondering if he was distracted enough I could find a way out before he noticed. No such luck.
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “What are you looking for…a way out?” he taunted. “There is no way out for you this time.” He laughed, a deep rumbling sound that reverberated through my bones and sent shivers down my spine. Then he stepped away from what he’d been doing and turned to face me, the smile on his face one of pure, utter delight. I glanced past him and screamed…
Sam hung from two hooks that came out of the ceiling and looped around the chains that bound his hands over his head. His bloodied left eye had swollen shut, his lip was busted in three different places, and blood covered his bare chest in patches large enough to obscure the definiti
on of his abs. Battered and broken, he looked so unSam-like I couldn’t breathe. The sight of him hanging there like that made my knees tremble and the air seize in my lungs, but the thing that finally made my legs give out adorned his shoulders.
Draped over his right shoulder and down his back like someone’s sick idea of a prized fur coat was Rya’s pelt. Her beautiful green eyes stared blankly out at me as if she stared straight into my soul.
“What have you done?” I croaked, barely above a whisper. My brain struggled to make sense of it. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be. I would have felt their deaths. Especially Rya’s—our bond went too deep for me not to. A horrid thought popped into my head. What if that was the reason I couldn’t pull on our bond and escape? Maybe it no longer existed.
No. I shook my head, unwilling to believe it.
“What have I done?” the Evil One scoffed. “They did not come looking for me. You were the one who left them defenseless when you took off on this quest alone. You were the one who refused to join me when I asked you to the last time you were here.” He walked over to where Sam hung and slapped him across the cheek. Sam groaned with the impact.
He was still alive.
I jumped to my feet. “Don’t touch him!” I started toward him, ready to defend Sam at all cost, when something stopped me. I tried to push past it, whatever it was, but couldn’t.
The Evil One laughed. “Did you think I would let you ruin all my fun?”
He reached up and stroked the fur on Rya’s head. Sam groaned and tugged on the chains, almost as if he tried to resist the Evil One or stop him from touching Rya’s still form. The Evil One responded with a backhanded slap across his cheek so hard another cut opened up from his jawline to the corner of his nose. Blood welled up in the cut, quickly joining all the other bloody lesions that covered his body.
“Stop.” My voice wavered as tears filled my eyes. Sam had always been so strong, so solid. My rock. Seeing him now with his body torn and broken, the fight almost completely gone from him, nearly tore my heart from my chest. And seeing Rya’s beautiful pelt draped lifelessly over his shoulders was more than I could bear.
The Evil One pulled a red-handled athame from somewhere under his robes. The blade of the knife gleamed in the candlelight, and the red handle appeared almost see-through. The light hit the handle and threw red-tinted shadows across the walls, making it look as though blood had been sprayed all across the room.
I froze. Fear crawled up my spine and weighed me down. Was that the same knife he skinned Rya with? As soon as I thought it I wished I hadn’t. I doubled over and vomited until my throat hurt and there was nothing left in my stomach. The Evil One burst out laughing and began carving symbols into Sam’s chest.
He screamed, the sound of it marking me in a way I would never be able to forget.
My screams joined Sam’s until my voice was hoarse. The Evil One just laughed and continued carving into Sam. This was my fault. If I hadn’t sent Rya away at Lily’s house, she’d be with me right now. And if Rya hadn’t gone and found Sam and brought him to Lily’s house, he wouldn’t have become involved. If I had just told Sally no, she couldn’t go with me, she’d still be alive. If I hadn’t been born, my mother and Raging Buffalo would both still be alive. All of them would still be alive, and Sam wouldn’t be hanging there tortured and half dead.
The weight of everything came crashing down on me. I crumpled to the floor, unable to stand any longer. The Evil One would come for me as soon as he finished with Sam, which, judging by how quiet the room had become, wouldn’t be long now. I no longer cared. Without Sam, Sally, and Rya, nothing else mattered. The thought of my father popped into my head momentarily, but skittered away when I decided he’d be better off without me. I’d just get him killed, too.
Pressure started building in my head, pounding like a jackhammer had been unleashed. My temple pulsed and my right eye twitched as the pressure became almost unbearable. I wondered briefly where it came from, then looked up at Sam and Rya. My shoulders slumped and my heart shattered. The Evil One roared, but I didn’t care about that either. My eyes were all for Sam.
“Keira.” Sam’s haggard voice broke through the pain of my throbbing headache. He stared at me with his one good eye. The pain in my head receded to a dull ache as I rolled up to a sitting position.
“Sam!” My voice was raw from screaming. “Sam, I’m sorry…for everything.” I placed my hands against the barrier and leaned against it. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“No,” he said without hesitation. His cold, steely voice didn’t sound at all like my Sam. Something didn’t seem quite right, but I was too miserable and heartbroken to figure out what it was.
Tears welled up in my eyes. “Sam?”
He shook his bloodied head at me. “This is your fault. Sally’s death, Rya’s. And soon I will join them. You’re the reason we’re all dead, just like your mother.” He turned away from me.
“No!” I shouted. My fists pummeled the invisible wall as all the rage and heartache boiled to the surface. It didn’t take much for my knuckles to bleed again, and my lungs burned from screaming. How could he say that to me? He knew I already blamed myself for my mother’s death. Hearing him speak those words destroyed me more than anything else.
The Evil One laughed, triumphant, and pushed his way into my mind. That’s what he’d wanted all along, I realized. The headache had been him trying to force his way in. He filled me with his evil essence, coating my thoughts and memories with a thick, black, slimy substance that reeked of malice. His horrible laughter echoed through my mind, filling me with such hatred I shuddered and shirked away from it. But there was nowhere to run. He was like a schoolyard bully I couldn’t defeat.
At that thought, something happened…I remembered something.
I was twelve years old on the playground and Bobby Bearclaw, the school bully, pulled my hair and taunted me. His daddy owned the local smoke shop, so his family was very well off, and he thought that entitled him to do or say whatever he wanted.
Well, I’d had enough; I punched him in the nose, bloodied it, and ruined his white T-shirt. He retaliated by pushing me to the ground and pinning my arms over my head. He threw every insult he could think of at me, including accusing me of killing my own mother the day I was born. I screamed in frustration as I tried to buck him off, but he was a big kid and he wouldn’t budge from my chest.
Suddenly, Bobby went flying through the air and landed several feet away. I looked up to see Sam standing there, heaving from the effort it had taken for him to pull Bobby off me. He reached out his hand and pulled me to my feet.
“Don’t ever let anyone accuse you of killing your mother again. She loved you more than anything else. It was not your fault.”
Those words echoed through my head, louder than the Evil One’s taunts. Sam, my Sam, would never say those words. My guilt and self-loathing had led me astray from what I knew to be the truth.
This was not my Sam.
I drew on the strength that knowledge gave me and slowly pushed to my feet, wiping tears from my eyes with the back of my shaking hand as I stood.
“No,” I said.
Drawing in a deep breath, I forced as much strength into my words as I could.
“No. You’re not real.”
Sam and Rya’s forms wavered.
“You’re not real!” The air popped and swirled around me and a second later they vanished.
Nothing remained of Sam or Rya, or anything that said they had ever really been there. It had all been an illusion, the Evil One’s attempt at breaking me down so he could take control over me. What better way to control your enemy than to possess them?
The Evil One threw back his head and roared; the deafening sound echoed through my mind. I concentrated with all my might as another, sharper pain, took root in my temple. Angry, he tried to keep his hold on my mind, but I chanted over and over again, “Get out!” and mentally shoved at his essence with everything I had.
The Evil One’s essence left my body and ripped another scream from my throat as he raked my subconscious with his claws the way Rya had clawed Sabin.
Perspiration dripped down my cheeks as I panted from exhaustion. I hoped I never felt anything like that again. Even though he’d only been in my head, my whole body felt dirty, tainted, and I wanted a shower like never before. Exhausted, both mentally and physically, I faced him and prepared to fight as he sneered at me from several feet away.
“Do you think this is over?” he thundered. “Not even close.” He rushed me.
My back crashed into the opposite wall a second later as he picked me up and threw me like a sack of potatoes. The air whooshed from my lungs and my vision blurred. I sucked in a deep breath and cried out when agonizing pain shot through my whole body. I crumpled to the floor, and couldn’t move for several precious seconds. Tears welled up in my eyes, causing the room to blur.
The Evil One appeared in front of me, grabbed me around the throat and picked me up several feet off the floor. I screamed as more gut-wrenching pain set my body on fire as gravity pulled me downward back toward the floor. I kicked my feet in the air, trying to find a foothold.
“If I cannot possess you, you have no use to me,” he snarled. Something passed through his eyes, the purest glimpse of evil I’d ever seen, making me shudder. “It has been a long time since I had a woman in my midst.” He ran his other hand down my chest and caressed my breast. I wanted to throw up, but couldn’t breathe enough to do so. “Perhaps I will make use of you before I kill you.” He started laughing again; the sound cut my ears like jagged glass.
I closed my eyes and prayed to the Great Spirit. Please, help me. What do I do? How can I beat him? The Evil One must have thought I ignored him because he squeezed my breast so hard I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming again.