Elysium Dreams

by Hadena James

around my throat.

  “Time to sleep,” he whispered. There was something familiar in his voice.

  “Fuck you,” I whispered back and brought my knee up into his spine. It caught his tailbone. He yelped and moved, I drove the knee further up, putting it between his legs and pressed up with all my strength. He screamed, primal and terror-filled.

  Sirens in the distance. He got off of me. I had no fight left to follow him. I struggled to stand up and found my legs wouldn’t work. I watched as he got to the fence, pushed aside a board and slipped through. Blood drops left a trail.

  “Help me,” I whispered.

  “Oh god,” Sheriff Rybolt was there suddenly.

  “He got away,” I whispered again.

  “Marshal, we have an ambulance on the way,” Sheriff Rybolt yanked off his gloves and took hold of my hand. He rolled me onto my side.

  “Hands?” I asked.

  “What?” He asked.

  “Your hands? What happened?” I had to stay awake. If I didn’t, I would die. My body was screaming this at me. Whatever was in my blood stream mixed with blood loss would kill me.

  “A dog,” he answered.

  “A dog did that?” I felt my eyes want to close.

  “Stay with me. Keep talking, Aislinn.”

  “A dog did that?” I repeated.

  “We busted a dog fighting ring and they let one of the dogs loose. It attacked. I have scars all over.”

  “One day, soon, we’ll compare scars,” I said, rolling my eyes up to him. “Where’s Xavier?”

  “On his way. I was headed to the crime scene when I heard your call. I was only a few minutes away.”

  “I have a metal allergy. There is a needle tip in my arm. Possibly another in my neck. I need to get them out.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “I have a knife in my back. I need that out too.”

  “We’ll let the paramedics handle that.”

  “I don’t know if we can. Do you have an EpiPen?”

  “Yes, in my first aid bag.”

  “Get it, I need the adrenaline.”

  “It will...”

  “Get it!” I said as forcefully as I could manage. The darkness was still there, I was swimming in it. There was no fear, no pain, nothing except the will to survive. I needed the adrenaline to stay awake. It was going to make me bleed faster.

  The sheriff returned. He held the pen like it was a snake.

  “Jab me in the leg,” I told him.

  “You’ll bleed more,” he told me.

  “I know. Once you jab me, start applying pressure to my neck wound. I don’t know how bad it is. As long as the knife doesn’t move, the wound should suck closed around it.”

  My eyes fluttered and rolled into the top of my head as the adrenaline hit my blood stream. The fog lifted completely. My heartbeat increased. I felt the blood begin to flow heavier at my neck and back. Sheriff Rybolt immediately put his gloves over the wound, his bare hands forcing the material to suck against the hole and slow the bleeding.

  “Don’t let me pass out,” I told him. “If you think I’m about to pass out, hit me or something.”

  “Talk about something then,” he told me and began shouting.

  “My brother is a mass murderer. He opened fire with a sniper rifle into a yard full of convicted felons. Took out sixty-three of them before they found his hiding spot. He was a hell of a shot, managed to not hit a single bystander or non-convict. I still don’t know how he did it. My family is cursed with violence. I’ve survived a handful of serial killers and now, I’m going to have even more scars. I killed my first serial killer when I was eight years old. I killed him with a plastic spoon to the eye or from beating his head on the floor of the room he kept me in. I’m not sure which. At the time, my only thought was that I had to kill him, I had to kill him so he couldn’t torture another little girl. I was the only one strong enough. That was my thought. I wanted to kill him. I’ve never told anyone that.”

  “They’re coming, Aislinn, just hang on and keep talking to me,” Sheriff Rybolt said.

  “I’m not good at talking about myself. If I wasn’t working with the Marshals, I would probably be with my brother,” I paused, remembering the conversation with Nyleena. She was not going to take my death very well. Neither would my mother. I wasn’t sure how it would affect Malachi, he might be indifferent or it might be the stressor that sent him over the edge. The adrenaline was wearing off. The effects of blood loss sinking in, my brain was feeling slow. My body was feeling heavy. I was going to die in the fucking Alaskan snow.

  Another surge ran through me.

  “What the fuck?” Sheriff Rybolt said and pressed harder on my neck.

  “My own survival instincts,” I told him. “I’m a sociopath with a strong desire to live. My body will fight for survival until it exhausts itself. How long have we been waiting?”

  “Three minutes,” Sheriff Rybolt answered.

  “I fought for maybe six minutes. I have another five or so before my body gives out depending on how fast I’m bleeding.”

  “Your back has stopped. Your arm isn’t bad. Your neck wound though,” Sheriff Rybolt looked at my face.

  “I tore the vein when I jerked from him. Probably the jugular. Under normal conditions, I’d already be dead, but I’m a fast clotter and the hole isn’t that big. If I’m lucky, I will clot the hole closed, that means I can’t have any more adrenaline spikes though.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve come very close to death,” I thought for a moment. “First time I’ve ever had my veins opened though. Guess there’s a first time for everything.”

  “Aislinn are you going into shock?”

  “Unlikely, I won’t go into shock when I die,” I told him. The calm that kept me alive, kept me rational and thinking, even as I bled to death. “There was something about the voice that I recognized. It was familiar. Since I don’t know but a handful of people in Alaska that narrows the suspect pool. How the hell did he get the drop on Lucas?”

  “I don’t know, he isn’t awake yet.”

  “If I die here, yell at Xavier,” I told him.

  “You aren’t going to die,” Xavier’s voice came to me.

  “And you can prove this?” I asked him.

  “Well, your back is bad, but it will heal,” Xavier said as the sheriff moved his hands.

  “The neck is worse, but not life threatening,” Xavier began doing something to it. It was hot as hell. “It is going to leave a nasty scar.”

  “How’d you beat the ambulance?” I asked.

  “My favorite sociopath and best friend are both in need of help, I made Gabriel drive like the devil was chasing him,” Xavier answered. “That will stop the bleeding temporarily.”

  “Great, can I move?”

  “Absolutely not,” Sheriff Rybolt answered.

  “Fine,” I lay on the ground. “Can I sleep?”

  “No, we don’t know what was in the syringe,” Xavier answered. He flashed a light in my eyes. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. By the looks of this yard, you aren’t the only one.”

  “Good, maybe you’ll find him dead in the next yard over.”

  “No, they are checking now. He left a blood trail that disappears at a side street. We are guessing he got in a car.”

  “I’m bleeding to death and you’re chasing serial killers?” I asked.

  “We all have priorities,” Xavier shrugged.

  “I’m going to be stuck in the hospital, aren’t I?”

  “For a day or two. You may need surgery. And we’ll have to watch you for a severe allergic reaction,” Xavier answered. “You have a needle in your neck. I’m leaving it in for now and burning the area closed. If I pull it out here, you’ll start bleeding and there will be nothing I can do about it. You may need to have the vein stitched along with the
skin.”

  “I have one in my arm as well. He was prepared. He had multiple syringes.”

  “He injected Lucas with something as well,” Xavier answered.

  “I hate hospitals.”

  “And they hate you,” Xavier smiled as a paramedic came into view.

  Nineteen

  I have never been a fan of hospitals. My current situation was doing nothing to improve my opinion of them. Since they didn’t know what I had been injected with a doctor had given me a local and was now removing the blade from my back.

  The local wasn’t doing much. The skin was numb, but the muscles and nerves under it were not. It hurt like hell.

  The blade hadn’t damaged anything. It had hit a rib and lodged on it. I was going to have a scar on the bone, but that was it. It hadn’t even been plunged in with enough force to break the rib.

  “Just a little more,” the doctor informed me. A string of responses came to mind, but I bit my lip as Xavier squeezed my hand.

  Suddenly, the knife gave and slipped out. I felt every movement of it. If I were a weaker person, I probably would have been sick. Since things like that didn’t bother my stomach, I consoled myself by swearing at the doctor in my head.

  I felt the pressure as he stitched me up. When he finished, he moved to my arm. I put my face into the pillow as he stuck the needle into me to numb my arm. We still had two more to go. It seemed like it had been hours since he had started.

  The medication went to work and there was no pain as he sliced into my arm and removed the needle remnants from the muscle. More pressure as I was stitched closed. Three more scars, two were going to be nasty looking. One was going to be noticeable.

  “Ok, we’re going to need you to lay on your side to do your neck.