American Quest (39 page)

She tiptoed into the bathroom, groping her way through the darkness, and switched on the light. First hot water and then cold. She combed her hair, thinking it a fruitless effort because it was liable to get good and wild if she slept on it. Hey, maybe it would scare away the evil spirits.

She left the light on in the bathroom and pulled the door to allow for a sliver of illumination because the hotel room was now pitch black. Was it really nighttime already? It seemed like it shouldn’t be that late.

She went back to the bed and stopped just shy of it.

“Eek! It’s smelly over here! Good God, Charlie, what have you been eating!”

“Hmm?”

He lifted his head, hair standing on end, and cocked an eye at her. She fluttered her fingers in front of her nose.

He laughed. “I didn’t do anything. Here, smell.” He waved a hand over his backside and then reached for her.

She squealed and evaded him. “I’m not getting in there with you. You’re toxic.”

Charles chuckled. “Honest, it wasn’t me! It must’ve been you.” Shannon harrumphed.

Charles wrinkled his brow. “That is pretty strong, whatever it is.”

“I’ll open a window.”

She went to the curtain and peeled it back, using the heavy fabric to shield her nude body. But when she lifted the curtain, there was nothing on the other side but solid wall. No window.

“That’s strange. Look.” She drew the curtain all the way open for Charles to see.

The smell grew stronger. And Shannon noticed a faint sort of hissing sound, as if air were moving rapidly. Like gas from a pipe.

Charles sat up with a start. “Where’s the door?”

“What?”

Shannon looked along the length of the wall, confused. She thought the door had been right there, right next to the window—or the curtained wall that was supposed to be a window—but the outer wall spread solid from corner to corner. Then she noticed Charles’s guitar resting up against it.

“Wasn’t your guitar sitting right next to the door?”

Charles got to his feet and switched on the light. “Yeah. The door was right there.”

The odor increased and Shannon’s lungs began to burn. “Charlie?”

She looked from left to right, scanning for a door even along the interior walls. Perhaps she’d just gotten confused? But the only door in the entire hotel room was the one that led to the bathroom.

“Hey!” Charles slapped his palms against the barren stretch of Sheetrock. “Hey! Anyone out there? Hey!”

Shannon pounded on the interior wall, the one adjacent to the next room. “Hey! Help!”

She grabbed the phone. She’d call the desk or, better yet, call Bruce or Jamie. But the phone was dead.

That horrible hissing! That horrible smell! It smelled . . . malignant. Shannon’s fists bounced harmlessly off the wall and she started to feel light-headed.

“Hey!” She picked up one of Charles’s shoes and banged on the wall. “Hey! Help!”

Her breathing grew very labored and her lungs burned. She knew she should try to remain calm, but that was going to be a very serious challenge.

“Hey!” One more bang.

“Shannie!”

She had somehow slumped to her knees without noticing. And then she was on her butt on the carpet. Charles was beside her and the room was starting to spin.

He wrapped his arms around her waist. “Shannie! Baby, hang on,” he said, putting a T-shirt over her face. “Breathe slowly, baby.”

But she could see that his eyes were starting to lose focus, too. She looked back at the place where the door should have been, where the guitar stood. Only the guitar was gone.

“Look!” She pointed to the place where the guitar had been. Charles’s “axe” had been replaced by a real axe.

Charles leaned her against the bed and lunged for the axe.

Shannon struggled to keep her eyes on him, though her vision zigged away and then zagged askew. He swung the axe and embedded its blade in the wall, heaved to release it, and swung again. Shannon smiled, a distant observer, thinking he looked like a lumberjack in a porno film. Still naked, that axe wasn’t the only thing swinging. And he seemed very far off. Disappearing at the end of a dark tunnel, her little pornojack. Her head lolled backward. She fought to lift it up.

A patch of daylight burst into the room, tiny but true. Enough to pry her eyes open. Charles kept after it. Shannon felt her head swing toward the mattress. She shifted, changing her position in a way that forced her posture to keep her head aloft and her eyes open. But they failed her. She heard a sound like a giant filbert breaking open under the crush of some massive nutcracker.

“Shannie!”

His arms were around her again. Shannon felt herself being lifted, and felt searing light that shone red beyond her eyelids.

And then a fresh cool breeze.

“Breathe, baby!” Charles’s voice was labored under gasping breaths.

Shannon did. Had been doing that, hadn’t she? It wasn’t like she’d stopped breathing or anything. Her lids swam open. She was head-tohead with Charles, both of them gasping like guppies at the dinner plate-sized opening in the wall. Her lids, arms, and legs grew lighter, and the fog in her head dissipated, leaving behind a crackling headache.

“I . . . I can breathe.” she said, nodding. “I’m much better.”

Charles squeezed the back of her neck. “Okay, baby. Take a deep breath and then hold, and stand back.”

She did and he went to work again on the wall. She held that juicy oxygen in her lungs as long as she could, and when her lungs began to contract, she let it out slowly.

When she filled her lungs again, the air was tainted, but not so much as it had been earlier. Even standing away from the door, she could feel a luscious breeze that filtered through the hotel room.

Charles alternated hacking with the sharp end of the axe and picking with the hooked end until he’d carved a sizeable hole in the Sheetrock and studs.

“Come on, Shannie!”

He dropped the axe on the bed and took her hand, guiding her to the gap. She slid sideways through the opening and glorious afternoon sunlight blistered her vision to near-blindness. Better yet, pine-scented fresh air filled her lungs. Charles stepped through behind her and joined her on the concrete breezeway.

There was no one about. That was good, as they now seemed safe enough—and were standing there naked as ballpark franks.

Charles’s hands rested at her elbows.

“Look,” he said, tugging at her arm.

She looked back over her shoulder at the hotel room. There was no hole in the wall. Looking through the window that wasn’t there a minute ago, she saw there was no axe on the bed. Instead, Charles’s guitar now lay diagonally across the rumpled bedspread. The hotel room door creaked innocently where the hole had been.

Charles caught it just before it swung shut and locked them out.

HE HELD HER IN HIS ARMS, smelled her hair, felt the lithe fluidity of her movements. Gloria was his. He could tell that she had already changed in her heart.

Enervata danced with Gloria in the glittering lounge. Onlookers watched them, trancelike, unaware of what they were witnessing on a conscious level, though he knew they were instinctively mesmerized within their primal selves. Enervata was accustomed to these reactions from mortals. The staff, the patrons, the spies, everyone. They were alert to the sheer power, not only of Enervata himself, but of what he represented in dancing with Gloria.

Her hand was in his hand. Her arm draped over his shoulder. She had willingness in her eyes; hunger even.

He was surprised to find that he wanted to draw this out longer. He chose to maintain this slow, sustained pace. A sure pace. He wanted to savor these moments that brought all of humanity to their collective knees before him.

“Aaron,” she said.

“Yes, my dear.”

“I wonder if you know what’s happened to Sileny. I used to see her all the time. But now, it’s been a while.”

He frowned. He wanted her attention, all of it. Sileny had been useful in getting Gloria accustomed to her new life, but he was loath to
allow the two to spend too much time together. He wanted to keep Gloria yearning for his company.

“I believe Sileny has been otherwise occupied.”

“It’s a shame. It was nice to have another woman around.”

He watched her face, unsure what to make of it. Then Gloria’s gaze lifted to meet his. And in that moment, he saw that she did have motives. She seemed beautifully corrupt. Perhaps she had become spoiled by the luxury of her surroundings, the beautiful clothes she wore. Being waited on by a handmaid.

Her eyes drew him in to her, like the heated chimney of an open hearth might beckon a banshee on a clear cold night. He relished the thought of turning that hearth to ice. Already, the crystals had begun to form.

He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her. Long, sumptuous. She did not resist him.

Forte and Shannon looked like hell. When they’d come pounding on the door in the Arkansas hotel room with stories about deadly gas and Forte’s guitar-cum-axe, Bruce had wanted all six of the questers to pile into one room to keep an eye out for one another. Things were just getting too dangerous. But Forte and Shannon refused, deciding instead to sleep in the van. They were too spooked to be able to relax inside a hotel room, though Bruce couldn’t imagine that things were actually safe anywhere. And the van’s seats couldn’t have been a hospitable substitute for a bed; they didn’t exactly emerge all bright-eyed and bushytailed.

Meanwhile, he, Jamie, Bea, and Em did all pile into one room with two king-sized beds. Bruce was not about to take any more chances and he didn’t want the group to split up. As it was, he barely slept; he kept checking outside to make sure Forte and Shannon were okay.

Now as the road arced between the mountains of West Virginia, he felt as though his eyes had turned to sand.

“Keep going on this road until we get to Charleston,” Emily was saying from the backseat. “And then we turn onto I-77 going north.”

Her chatter was a welcome diversion and he wondered if she was making a deliberate effort to keep him company and keep him awake. Everyone else was asleep. Jamie’d passed out in the front seat next to him, and in the back next to Emily, Bea was also out of it, her cardigan wadded up and tucked between her neck and shoulder in a makeshift pillow. In the very back, Forte was sawing logs with Shannon’s head draped over his shoulder.

Bruce cut his eyes to the rearview mirror, where he could see Emily sitting bent over the road atlas. She leaned forward as far as the seat belt would allow and spread it out for Bruce.

“And then I-77 brings us to guess where—right back to Ohio.”

“Does it look like there’s a town or a rest stop anywhere soon?” Bruce had to pee so bad he was beginning to sweat.

“Yup. There’s an exit coming up close and it looks like it goes to a town.”

Bruce glanced down at the atlas. In the top right-hand corner, he saw a black thing that looked like a dragon squatting in the blue stretch of New York Harbor. It looked suspiciously like a creation of Emily’s felt-tip markers.

“What’s that?” he asked her.

“Treasure maps gots to have sea monsters, ain’t they?” she said brightly. “I make treasure maps for the little kids in the park sometimes. I always put sea monsters in ’em.”

Bruce chuckled. “There’s treasure in your park?”

“Well yeah, but I gotta get the treasure and bury it myself. There’s a lost and found there, and if nobody claims the stuff they just throw it out. Usually there’s, like, matchbox cars and balls and stuff. I bury ’em in the sand by the jungle gym and put an X on the map where the treasure’s buried. The little kids like to hunt it out. I have to do separate treasures for girls and boys. I once saved up some mismatched earrings and beads and all and put ’em all in a box. That was the best buried treasure ever!”

“You never keep the stuff yourself?”

“More fun to send the kids on a hunt. But I keep the books sometimes. Then when I’m done I take ’em to the library next to the park.
You ever read
The Boxcar Children
? It’s my favorite. I read it when I was little-little. I saw it again in the library once when I brought in some park books to donate, but I couldn’t take it with me because I don’t have a library card. I’m too old now, anyways. Actually, you wanna know the truth? It’s an absolutely-resolutely dorky book, but I don’t care—I totally love it!”

Bruce laughed aloud. “I never read it. Did you ever read
Ender’s Game
? That was great. And there was this book called
The Cay
. And you wanna talk about sea monsters, I read
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
I don’t know how many times. You read that one?”

Emily cried out and began flapping the map.