Lightning flashed above them and a horrible cracking sound split the air before thunder boomed, reverberating like a gong.
What was that crack?
He spotted a shadow dropping along the door, highlighted by the tall floodlights that had suddenly come on above them. Something was falling.
The crack. Something had broken off the cathedral.
He spun, raising his eyes, spotting the tumbling piece of stone, and fear lashed through him. “Look out!” he screamed at Alyx and threw himself at her.
Everything went into slow motion. He could see his own face reflected in her eyes, wide with fear. He seemed to be launching towards her as if through a sticky glue.
He wasn’t fast enough. The tumbling piece of stone, no larger than his head, clipped against her skull and her eyes rolled back into her head.
Israel grabbed her as she fell. His knees jarred on the flat stone but he didn’t care; he barely registered the pain. He was too focused on her. He lowered her head onto the ground. Her hair was matted and sticky with her own blood, and her eyes were shut. Dear God, please don’t let her be dead.
He pressed his fingers into her neck and was relieved to find a pulse—a weak pulse, but it was there. He called to her to wake up as he wrapped his arms around her limp body, pulling her into his lap. It was no use. She was out cold.
He slid out his phone from his pocket and dialed.
A sharp female voice coupled with static called into his ear. “Emergency, how can we help.”
“This is officer Israel Kader. Badge number 362922.” He stuttered as he spoke his badge number. He shouldn’t even be using it, seeing as his badge was currently sitting in one of the drawers in his captain’s desk along with his CZ 75 piece, or perhaps the captain had given up on his ever returning? He just knew that emergency would respond faster if there was an officer calling it in. He was desperate to do anything, anything, to keep Alyx from dying. Even if it meant he might get in trouble. “There’s been a woman knocked unconscious. She was hit by a falling…” he eyed the villainous stone, “gargoyle from one of the buildings. She’s losing a lot of blood. Saint Paul’s Cathedral. The front entrance. Please hurry.”
Israel slid his phone back in his pocket and repositioned himself on the ground, cradling her head in his lap so he could hold his jacket to her open wound. He bit his lip. Blood was pouring out of her.
“Don’t die,” he commanded her. “Don’t you dare die on me.”
He brushed the ebony strands of hair from her cheek; he couldn’t help himself. She didn’t move. “Hang on, Alyx,” he said to her. Her name felt so familiar on his tongue. “Help is on the way.”
Darkness filtered into Alyx’s eyes and every crease of her skin. She slipped further back towards the edge of the precipice. She was so tired of trying to hang on. She could just let go. She could just…let go.
“Don’t die,” a deep familiar voice crashed into her consciousness. Deep and comforting. “Don’t you dare die on me.”
I won’t, I promise. Just don’t leave me.
“Hang on, Alyx,” the voice vibrated into her.
I’m trying.
Everything solid crumbled from underneath her. Her arms windmilled backwards, desperate to grasp at something but finding only air. She was swallowed up by the darkness; the only thing she could hear was his voice. “Help is on the way, Alyx. Hang on…”
And she fell,
and she fell,
and
she
fell.
She landed on her front on something hard. She let out a groan and let herself lie on the ground, too winded to move just yet.
She mentally catalogued the parts of her body, moving them slowly, testing them. Nothing seemed to be broken. Her fingers scratched some kind of material. She was lying on a carpet. No, it must be a rug because she could feel the rough fringed edge of it cutting along under her thighs and the coldness of stone seeping up through her knees.
She tested her eyes, squinting before she opened them fully. Wherever she was, it was a room cast in flickering firelight and shadows. How long could she lie here before someone made her get up?
How did she even get here? Her mind was fuzzy. And her head throbbed like a heartbeat. She remembered going to meet someone…at the cathedral…then…
Nothing.
How could there be nothing?
She had to get up and figure out where she was. She pushed herself gingerly to sitting. Her muscles were stiff as if she hadn’t used them for days.
She was in a large room with soaring vaulted ceiling that had stars carved into it, several pillars holding up the structure. Directly above her was a large piece of carved stone that dripped down from the ceiling with a diamond-shaped end. The keystone. But the keystone of what?
How did she get here?
And where was here?
She pushed herself up to her feet. She touched the back of her head, the source of the fading pain, and was relieved to see there was no blood on her fingers when she pulled them away. Her black pants and jacket were scuffed but otherwise she seemed fine.
She gazed around the walls, which undulated from the stone carvings set in every inch of them, and frowned. There was something odd about this room. Something…missing.
There were no windows here. None at all. She spun, scanning the walls, peering into the shadows that fell about the room from the flames set in ornate iron torches bolted into the pillars, the only source of light. There were no doors.
Her heart began to pound just a little faster. She walked around the perimeter, trying to find a door, a way out, her bootsteps echoing in the space.
She traced her fingers across the relief carvings on the walls. There was a huge tree with gnarled roots and fruit on the ends of its branches like large eggs. There were three men facing each other, flowing cloaks about their shoulders and all wearing a matching amulet at the end of a chain around their necks.
There was a horrible scene where limp bodies hung upside down from trees, the ends of their hair soaking in the pool of blood that trickled down from their fingers. Alyx shuddered, pulled her hand from it and kept moving.
She stopped before a battle scene in a desert valley between figures seemingly clashing in mid-air, mountains and a huge mosque in the background. It flowed into a scene of a couple within the remains of the mosque. Alyx leaned in closer and frowned. He was lying on the ground, his head in her lap, the broken bones of the structure littering the sand, stars seeming to hang in the air around them.
It ended here.
What ended here? Where did that thought even come from?
She traced the boy’s face etched in stone, and her heart squeezed in her chest. Something about this scene…something about this boy. He was familiar. And the girl… Or perhaps she was projecting herself onto these walls.
A darkness blurred in the corner of her eye.
She spun around, the only sounds the twist of her heel on the stone and her heart beating in her throat.
“Hello?” Her voice echoed off the cavern walls, her eyes trying to pierce into the shadows the pillars made. She wasn’t sure she was alone in here anymore.
Chapter Three
“Sir, you can’t go in there with her.”
A large burly male nurse stepped in front of Israel, preventing him from following Alyx’s gurney into the operating room at the Mother of Mercy Hospital. Over the man’s shoulder, Israel lost sight of her behind the swinging doors and panic clutched at his heart with cold fingers. In his mind’s eye he saw another set of doors closing on another body. Adere. The memory of another cursed night flashed into his mind, causing him to flinch.
…her open eyes dull and lifeless…
He shook this image from his mind. This was post-traumatic stress. He was reacting like this because of what happened… He was sure that’s what his government-issued therapist would say. If he ever went back to her.
PTSD or not, he was going to make sure Alyx wa
s okay. He was…responsible for her.
Israel grabbed the male nurse by the arm before he moved away. “Please, is she going to be okay?”
Despite his size, the nurse had a kind round face with soft cheeks. “You’ll have to wait ’til she’s been assessed.”
“Then I can see her?”
The nurse eyed him. “Are you family?”
He considered lying for a second and saying that he was her brother, but no one would believe it. He was dark and tanned as opposed to her porcelain skin, and he had dark, deep-set eyes as opposed to her open round emerald ones. “No.”
“Then I’m afraid we can’t let you in.”
“You don’t understand… I’m going to marry her,” he blurted out.
“You’re her fiancé?”
The lie was out there. He might as well run with it. It wasn’t like there was anyone here to refute his claim. He inhaled deeply and lifted his chin with confidence. “Yes.”
“Wait here and someone’ll get you when she’s ready to have visitors.”
After the ambulance had arrived at Saint Paul’s Cathedral and picked Alyx up, that should have been the end of it for Israel. He should have considered his civic duty done and gone to find the closest bar. No one would have expected anything more from him; he barely knew her. But he found he just couldn’t walk away without knowing she was okay. He just couldn’t.
He had flagged down a taxi in the rain by running out in front of it. He leaped into the passenger seat and ordered the cabbie to drive. They’d followed the ambulance through the labyrinth of skinny Saint Joseph streets to this hospital where he was now, sitting in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs in a waiting room on the second level, listening to the clack of footsteps along the laminated flooring, the distant beeping of machines and the occasional adrenaline-fueled chaos of doctors and nurses around a gurney barreling its way through the hallway.
Finally the same burly male nurse came out. “Israel? You can come and see her now.” He led Israel into a small white room smelling of antiseptic, stepping aside to let him through. There in the center of the tiny white room was Alyx, lying like a ghost, almost disappearing into the sheets of the hospital bed, her hair pooling around her looking like the blackest of spilled inks. As he got closer he could see the tube coming out from her arm and into an IV drip. A machine on the far side of her was beeping, a thin green line showing that her heart was still beating, the only sign that she was alive. Israel’s gut clenched fiercely. He barely knew this woman, but something in him felt tied to that beeping line.
“Is she okay?” he asked the nurse.
“Maybe I should let the doctor talk to you. I’ll go get her.”
The doctor? Israel’s gut churned. That didn’t sound good. He gazed over Alyx’s prone body. Her closed eyelashes were so long they almost brushed her cheeks. Her cheeks had gone pale, not flushed pink like they were when they stood facing each other outside the cathedral. He brushed the fragile skin of her forehead with his fingers. She was so soft. “Alyx, if you can hear me…” What would he say to her? He didn’t know her. She didn’t know him.
Someone cleared her throat behind him. He spun. A woman in a white coat stood there, he guessed in her mid-fifties, gray shooting through her dark blonde hair tied back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, a weary look pulling down the jowls of her chin and her eyes a flat dull blue. “Israel, is it?” Her voice was crisp and efficient. “I’m Dr. Novak. You’re her fiancé, are you?”
“Yes.”
The doctor glanced past him to Alyx. Following her gaze he realized the doctor was staring at her left hand. Her ringless left hand.
“It was too big,” Israel said. “The ring I got her. We’re having it resized… Will she be okay?”
Dr. Novak walked to the end of Alyx’s bed, where she picked up a clipboard. “She came in with a contusion, a major concussion. Her vitals are sound, but…”
“But…what?”
The doctor pursed her lips. “I don’t know why she sank into a coma. A deep coma. She’s not responding to anything. Her pupils aren’t dilating, she’s not responding to verbal cues. No motor responses either. We’ve hooked her up to an IV drip to keep her fluids up and we’re monitoring her heart rate. That’s all we can do for her now.”
“When will she wake up?”
“Israel,” she said slowly. “There’s no medical reason for her to even be in a coma.”
Israel blinked once, twice at the doctor, trying to decipher the meaning behind her words. He didn’t find any answers there. He glanced down at Alyx and his heart fluttered at the sight of her so frail and helpless. It looked so wrong. “What does that mean? Why won’t she wake up?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” The doctor replaced the clipboard at the end of Alyx’s bed and turned to leave. At the door she paused and shot one last meaningful look at Israel. “Are you a spiritual man?”
“No.” He had stopped believing in any of that rubbish a long time ago. Being a cop, seeing the things he had, did that to a man. “Why?”
“Sometime medical science doesn’t have the answers. Sometimes the answers are found somewhere else.”
“Like where?” He was starting to get frustrated because he just couldn’t understand whatever this doctor was implying. “What answers?”
“Maybe there’s a reason she doesn’t want to wake up.”
Maybe there’s a reason she doesn’t want to wake up.
Israel jammed the key to his apartment, the doctor’s voice still ringing in his head. After the doctor had left, he remained at Alyx’s bedside. He couldn’t bring himself to leave. He just sat there for hours in a chair by her bed, whispering to her to please wake up and reminding her of all the reasons why this world was a good place to be in: “chocolate ice cream and puppies and the first snow of winter and the way the autumn turns the leaves green and gold.” Just like your beautiful eyes. Open those eyes, Alyx. Let me see them. Until one of the nurses kicked him out, letting him know that visiting hours were over.
Israel let himself into his dark apartment and an old Chinese proverb rang in his head. If you save a life, you’re responsible for it. Maybe this responsibility was why he seemed so tied to Alyx, a woman he didn’t even know.
Maybe she’s your penance.
He shut the door behind him, turned on the light and froze. There were two men he’d never seen before in his living room. One looked like a gypsy, with golden skin and dirty blonde hair that grew over his collar. The other was chocolate-skinned with raven hair.
“Don’t freak out,” the darker one said. “We’re not here to hurt you.”
Israel was so stunned that for a second he didn’t react. “Who the hell are you?”
“We’re…old friends of Alyx’s.”
Israel’s body prickled, tensing. Friends of Alyx’s? Why were they here? Had they followed him from the hospital?
“I’m Jordan,” the gypsy-looking one said, “and this is Balthazar.”
“Or you can call me B,” the dark-haired man said with a grin.
How the hell had they gotten in? The door had been locked. He hadn’t noticed any tool marks around the lock.
A cool breeze floated in from somewhere. His bedroom window had been opened, the curtains floating out like ghosts. They must have scaled up all four stories. His skin prickled. They must want something very badly to risk scaling up this high.
“What do you want?” he said, his gaze darting over the intruders, assessing them. The one named Jordan was taller and broader, but Balthazar looked faster and leaner. Israel wouldn’t win against the two of them in an unarmed fight. Neither of them had guns in their hands nor could he see any bulges of weapons on their person. Not visible ones anyway.
“We just want to talk,” said Jordan.
“Well, Jordan, come on,” Balthazar said. “We don’t just want to talk, do we?”
“What?”
“We’re going to ask him to do something for us
?”
“Are you serious? It was just a figure of speech.”
“I just don’t want to misrepresent us.”
Israel eyed the two men as they bickered between themselves. They were distracted enough. This would be his best chance.
He slammed back up against the door, his hands going for the pistol at his hip. Usually it would be his service weapon, a CZ 75, but seeing as that was taken off him when he quit, he now kept an unregistered Glock 17 that he’d paid for in cash.
“Hands up, both of you,” he yelled, pointing the gun between them.
The two stopped talking and turned to face him.
“Is he pointing a gun at us?” said Balthazar, sounding more curious than scared.
Jordan snorted. “Well, that won’t work.”
Why weren’t these guys scared?
“Get your hands up now.” Israel clicked back the hammer. “I’ll shoot.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Jordan, as if Israel was being a nuisance.
“Maybe you should give him something to calm him down,” Balthazar said.
“Already on it.” Before Israel could move, Jordan flicked his palm at him. A warm wave of sleepiness smashed into him and almost knocked him off his feet. It drowned him, crashing down over him like half an ocean. He dropped to his knees, swaying. The gun slid out of his fingers and clattered to the floor. The world fluttered in and out of sight as his eyelids refused to stay open. What the hell was happening to him?
He was about to fall the rest of the way when he felt hands on him, preventing him from hitting the threadbare carpet. His head flopped to one side, too heavy to hold up.
“Dammit, Jordan,” he heard from close by. “I said ‘calm him down’ not ‘knock him out’.”
“Relax, B. I didn’t knock him out. Look, he’s awake. Sort of.”
There was a sigh. “We can’t exactly talk to him while he’s like this, can we?”
“Why not? I always liked him more when he was asleep.”
“Still holding a grudge for getting the girl, are we?”
There was an indignant snort. “Of course not.”
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 256