The girl pulled back her lips, revealing a mishmash of adult and kid teeth, along with a couple gaps where her baby teeth were missing. She made that sound again, that bone-chilling, whiny snarl.
A shiver crawled up my spine.
And then she lunged at me.
I was so shocked by how quickly she could move that my deflection of her attack was slower than it should’ve been. But she was a sick little girl and she couldn’t possibly be this strong and how could I bring myself to hurt—
Her jagged fingernails caught on my cheek, gouging the side of my face in stops and starts. She grabbed a chunk of my hair in her impossibly strong grip and yanked my head to the side, exposing my neck. For the kill.
Even a Nejeret will die from a ripped-out throat. And there was no way I was about to let some kid kill me.
I wedged my boot between us, pressing the sole into her belly, and rolled onto my back at the same time as I kicked out. She might’ve had the adrenaline-fueled strength of a pro boxer, but she was still as light as a young child, and I launched her far. All forty-five pounds of her flew even farther than I’d intended, and her frail body slammed against the corrugated metal wall. The boom of her impact echoed throughout the room, a gong of pain and death.
She sat limp for a moment, but impossibly, she lifted her head and managed to gather her feet under herself. She was preparing to spring at me again.
“Stay down,” I said through gritted teeth as I stalked toward her, hoping some part of her brain was still lucid. “Please, just stay down.”
She placed her hands in front of her on the floor and leaned forward.
“Damn it,” I howled, reaching over my shoulder to draw my sword. It was easy enough to stop her once Mercy had joined the fight. As the At blade slid through her little body, it was one of the few times Mercy proved the rightness of her name. The girl had already been at death’s door. She been fated to die the second she contracted that fucking disease. At least, now, her suffering was at an end.
The footsteps behind me stopped, and I pulled Mercy’s blade free as I turned my head to glance over my shoulder. “The sedative isn’t working,” I said to Dorman. “When they get close to the final phase, end it.”
He nodded, his throat working but no sound coming out.
I wiped my sword’s blade on my jeans until the At was invisible once more, then stood and re-sheathed it. I stared down at the little girl lying on the floor. Somehow her face was absent of bloodstains, though the rest of her seemed bathed in the stuff. She almost looked like she was asleep.
“What was her name?” I asked softly.
“Ab—” Dorman cleared his throat. “Abigail. Her name was Abigail.”
“Any family?”
“A mother, but she’s sick, too.”
I raised my eyes to the ceiling so high above and blinked several times, then took a deep breath. “That’s a blessing, then.”
“Yes,” Dorman said. “It is.”
Chapter Eighteen
Before I left the Tent District, seven kids had to be euthanized. Neffe sent word to me through Dom about her theory that the spike of epinephrine that floods the infected person’s system as they enter the final, rabid stage of the disease must be so intense that, in some cases, it’s able to override any sedatives. She said that increasing the already tripled dosage further might help keep them down—might—but such a high dosage was also just as likely to kill them.
Apparently she and Aset and a team of other brilliant, scientifically minded Nejerets had been tirelessly working in their lab on Bainbridge since they first received the blood samples from Nik. They had some idea of how the disease worked—some sort of an attack on both the body and the soul—but not enough to slow it down, let alone stop it. It was unlike anything they’d ever seen, and considering they had millennia of experience in the field, that fact scared the shit out of me.
Dom had known Neffe for centuries, and he’d worked closely with her for almost as long. He knew how to read her, and according to him, she wasn’t just flummoxed by this disease; she was afraid. Such a thing almost never happened, and that scared the shit out of me even more.
It also motivated the shit out of me. I still had Abigail’s blood all over me. Four raw, pink lines still streaked down the side of my face from where she’d gouged me with her fingernails. I was just lucky she’d missed my eye; an injury there would’ve taken a full regeneration cycle or two to heal, and I was already functioning on fumes. Thanks to the chemical burns I’d healed from earlier today, whenever the time came that I could afford to crash, I would crash hard. No doubt about it.
Ten kids had died from the disease so far, but they’d managed to take another dozen or so people to the grave with them and infect over a hundred more during the final throes of the disease. A disease that Ouroboros had manufactured. That the Senate and Initiative Industries had to have known about.
It didn’t slip past me that the rabid stage had probably been a purposeful construct of the infection. That they wanted the victims to lash out during their final few hours. And the only reason I could come up with for why anyone would include such programming in such an infectious, apparently incurable disease was for one single reason: to increase the infection rate. They wanted to spread this thing to as many people as possible.
I would find a way to stop it. To stop Ouroboros. I would find a fucking way, damn it.
“You’re certain of this?” Dom asked for the umpteenth time. “You trust him?”
I rolled my eyes, knowing full well he couldn’t see it. “It’s happening, Dom. I’m going to work with Nik, and it’s going to be awesome. So please just accept it.” I was in Dorman’s office, finishing up the final few details on a drawing of my bedroom, getting the wrinkles in the bunched-up comforter just right and adding a pile of clothes in the corner. A pile I hadn’t left there, but that showed up in the drawing anyway. Were the clothes Nik’s? Had he moved from the couch to my bedroom in my absence? My eyes narrowed, even as I added shadows to the discarded clothing. I was creating the gateway on the wall beside the still-active one to Garth’s condo, though this one was taking much longer, considering the lower hum of otherworldly energy flowing through my sheut. I was running on fumes in more ways than one.
I was adding texture to a wadded-up pair of jeans when, unexpectedly, I felt a surge of power rush through me, entering me from some other plane, passing through my sheut, and flowing into the drawing. The imagery crackled, electrified by the energy, then flooded with color. With immaculate detail. The drawing became real. It became a gateway.
I recapped the Sharpie and stuffed it into my back pocket with several others, all in various states of running out of ink. I was finding that sometimes the partially dried-out markers were the best for shading and texture. I should know, I’d been drawing on walls with them a lot lately.
I yanked open the door to Dorman’s office and poked my head out. The space beyond had been converted into a reception and waiting area, with the half-dozen rooms scattered around the perimeter functioning as offices for Dorman and the other Tent District “officials.” The district was a big place, housing thousands of people, however unconventionally, and this repurposed air control tower operated as the central nervous system. And, so far as I could tell, it operated pretty damn well.
“Hey, Caleb,” I said, calling out the reception guy’s name.
A baby-faced young man sitting at a desk just a few yards from the door to Dorman’s office spun his chair around to look at me, eyebrows raised. He was human, for now, but his dad was Nejeret and his mother was a known Nejeret carrier. His older sister had already manifested Nejeret traits, and only time would tell whether the same would happen for Caleb.
“Let your boss know I’m leaving, will you?” As an afterthought, I added, “And don’t let anyone but him come in here, alright?” I was worried about others finding the pair of gateways.
Caleb nodded twice.
“Awesome. Than
ks.” I pulled the door shut once more, then grabbed my things. Less than a minute later, I was passing through the gateway to my apartment.
I entered my bedroom as though I was walking through the doorway, except a quick glance over my shoulder showed me that the door was still closed. When I left the bedroom, I was relieved to find that the blinds were all drawn and that the apartment was dark, only the glow from streetlights, storefronts, and cars passing by on Broadway leaking into the apartment in strips of light.
Washing up was a main priority, but I didn’t want to strip off my clothes and hop into the shower until Nik knew I was here. The thought of him finding me in there, well . . . that wasn’t an option. So, I decided to settle in at the kitchen table with a bottle of bourbon and my trusty deck of tarot cards. Luckily, there was a full bottle of Widow Jane—ten-year—in the cupboard. I didn’t even bother pouring the booze into a glass; I just drank it straight out of the bottle.
I started shuffling the deck, but I made it through only two rounds before the cards slipped free from my hands, spraying across the edge of the table. I’d washed my hands back in the Tent District, but blood still smudged the backs of my hands in a few places, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the faint stains for long enough to focus on what my fingers were supposed to be doing with the cards.
Hands shaking, I scooted the chair backward with the screech of wood on wood and stood, rushing to the kitchen sink. I must’ve scrubbed my hands in nearly scalding water for minutes, because my skin was raw and stung with minor burns by the time I finally turned the faucet off.
I gripped the edge of the counter and bowed my head over the sink. I’d tied my hair back with a rubber band back in the Tent District, when we’d been taking care of the rest of the critical cases. I’d been so busy helping Dorman then, so focused on creating the gateway that would bring me here, that my mind had been occupied.
It wasn’t anymore. I was just standing there, waiting. And thinking. And remembering.
She’d been so light. Just a wisp of a girl. And her perfect little pixie face had gone from vicious to peaceful in the blink of an eye. In the time it took her to breathe her last breath. For her heart to give up wrapped around Mercy’s blade. For a flash of lucidity to appear in her blue eyes just before the light faded completely. I’d done that. I’d snuffed out that light.
But so had Ouroboros . . .
The thought was logical, and I knew it made sense, but it didn’t stop the shaking. It didn’t stop my stomach muscles from convulsing or the bourbon from rising up my throat and splattering into the sink. It didn’t stop me from melting to the floor, a puddle of misery.
“Little sister—”
I gripped the mirror pendant and yanked, hard. The chain snapped, and I threw it. Somewhere. Away. I wasn’t in the mood to be comforted. I deserved the pain.
On unsteady hands and knees, I crawled back to the table and reached up to grab the bottle of bourbon. I curled up against the end of the cabinets with that bottle and waited for Nik to come home.
I waited. And thought. And remembered.
Chapter Nineteen
The bourbon was gone by the time I heard a key turning in one of the locks on the apartment door. The bottle now lay on its side a few feet from me; I’d knocked it over with my boot, and it had rolled until it hit the table leg. My head lolled to the side when the door opened, and I watched Nik enter the apartment.
He shut the door, twisted the locks, and froze with his hand still on the bottom deadbolt. Likely because he picked up on my heartbeat or the lazy whoosh of air in and out of my lungs. Or maybe it was the scent of bourbon and blood that tipped him off. Regardless, his eyes locked with mine, black pools of darkness in the dim apartment.
“You shouldn’t be h—” His words cut off when he flipped on the light switch beside the door, and he froze once more. His pupils constricted at the influx of light, revealing his hauntingly pale blue irises. “Shit, Kat. Are you alright?”
I rolled my head to the side, turning my face away from him, and stared at the lone tarot card that had fallen from the table. Death. The image on the card came in and out of focus, Abigail riding on a pale horse, face gaunt and eyes the sightless color of moonstones. On the card, I knelt before her in supplication, or possibly begging for forgiveness. She stared down at me, holding her horse’s reins in one hand, a banner displaying that damn tail-eating snake in the other.
Traditionally, the Death card represents endings, but also the transformation and change that comes after an ending. When one door closes, blah blah blah. I had no doubt that it was significant that of all seventy-eight cards in the deck, this was the one that fell off the table. It was significant. It mattered. Only my alcohol-sodden brain couldn’t figure out why. All I could do was look at Abigail’s face. See the accusation in her stare. Hate myself.
Nik’s footsteps were quiet as he crossed the living room. I heard him toss his leather coat onto the table when he reached it. He didn’t seem to spot the bottle until he was almost on top of me. He stopped, standing over me, and nudged the empty bottle with his toe. “How long have you been here?”
I tried to lift my head from the side of the cupboard, but my neck didn’t seem capable of supporting it, so I let it bang back against the hollow wood. “Hour . . . dunno . . .” The words were slurred, my vision skittish. Even with my body’s ability to process alcohol quicker than a human ever could, I’d consumed a dangerous amount. A full bottle of liquor in that short amount of time might just be enough to kill me. “Wanted to forget,” I mumbled.
Nik inhaled and exhaled heavily, then crouched down beside me. He had a hand-shaped bruise on his neck and scratches that looked like they’d come from fingernails on his forearm. “Alright, Kitty Kat . . .” His arms slipped under my knees and around my back. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” He lifted me like I weighed nothing—like I was as light as Abigail had been—and carried me into the bathroom, where he set me down in the bathtub.
Time skipped around in stops and starts. Getting black-out drunk will do that.
One minute, I was fully clothed; the next, I was naked from the waist up, and my jeans were covered in soured bourbon. My body’s natural defense against poison had kicked in.
Another skip forward, and I was naked, warm water spraying down on me. From outside the tub, Nik was holding me up in a sitting position, his hand jammed into my mouth, his fingers making me gag.
Another skip, and I was lying on my side in the tub, my abdominal muscles aching and my throat burning. The water raining down from the showerhead was cool, and I was shivering.
One more skip forward, and I came to curled up on my side on the couch, covered by a faded fleece blanket matted from being washed so many times. My pulse jackhammered inside my skull, and my whole body ached.
A glass of water appeared in front of my face.
I licked my lips, insanely thirsty. “Thanks,” I whispered, accepting the glass as I gingerly pushed myself up onto my elbows.
Nik helped me sit up the rest of the way with a hand on my upper arm.
The blanket slipped down, and I realized I was wearing an old, ratty T-shirt, one of the few I’d left behind when I’d temporarily relocated back to my room in the house on Bainbridge. A quick glance under the blanket revealed plain black underwear, nothing else.
“All you have here are jeans,” Nik offered up in explanation. He was standing a few feet away. He’d changed into a pair of black sweats and a gray T-shirt, and his feet were bare.
I lifted the glass of water to my lips and tilted it back, shrugging as I chugged. My sluggish mind caught up a moment later, and flickers from the past hour or two flashed through my mind. Nik had dressed me. He’d had to dress me because he’d stripped off my bloodstained clothes. And he’d cleaned me up in the bathtub. And helped me purge the rest of the bourbon. Team vomiting—we could start a whole new Olympic sport.
I choked on the water. The blood drained from my face, leaving my cheeks icy
.
“Shit . . . are you going to throw up again?”
I shook my head, mortified by the memories. Without looking at him, I downed the rest of the water and handed the glass back to him. “Can I have another?” I asked, my voice raspy.
As I watched him walk away, my nose picked up on the scent of toasting bread. And was that eggs?
“There’s milk and OJ, too,” Nik said from the kitchen. “And there’s coffee, but I still have to brew it.”
Now that he’d brought up the possibility of drinking something other than water, I was dying for a Cherry Coke. But after what I’d just put my stomach through, I thought it best to give it a break from the usual crap I forced into it for a little while longer. “Milk, please.” A moment later, I added, “And maybe coffee in a bit?”
“Sure.” Nik came back into the living room and handed me a glass of milk, then returned to the kitchen. “Hungry?”
I nodded and pulled my legs up onto the couch, tucking my icy feet into the crooks of my knees as I gulped down half the glass of milk. I’d never really been a fan of drinking the stuff straight up, but it sounded good. Refreshing. Tasted it, too.
“Nik,” I said softly, resting the half-empty glass on my knee. “I—”
He was standing at the stove, just out of view, but poked his head around the wall to look at me. His hair was askew, the longer strands swept mostly to one side, and his stare was open and intent.
“It was a little girl.” I stared at the glass of milk but watched Nik out of the corner of my eye. “Couldn’t have been more than seven years old.”
Nik didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched me right back. “One of the kids infected by the Ouroboros disease?” He reached out to do something on the stove, then came around the corner and into the living room. He sat on the coffee table in front of me, his legs splayed wide and his elbows on his knees. I could feel his eyes on me, I but still couldn’t bring myself to look at him. To see him. I wasn’t used to him being so attentive or serious. I didn’t really know how to interact with this Nik.
The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Page 31