Possession (11 page)

Another shot of pain pierced my chest, this time
even more intense. I opened my mouth and a scream ripped from my throat. The
beating grew louder.

The figure stopped its whispering. The quivering object
was brought down. The shadow turned, and I could make out a male face in the
moonlight—a human face, not a monster. Another pulse of pain shot through
me. He brought the thing in his hands to his face and his mouth opened. I
watched as he took one bite, and then another. Red liquid slid across his mouth
and chin, dripping down, forming a pool on the ground below.

* * *

When I woke up, I was lying on my back with drool
running down the sides of my mouth. I struggled to sit up without the use of my
bound arms. I was still in the padded room, still in the straitjacket.
They drugged me.
I wondered how long I’d
been unconscious.

The terrible nightmare still echoed in my mind, sending
flashes of adrenaline into my muscles. I’d watched—no,
felt
, like a memory—someone die,
and the violence and horror of it still lingered. I twitched against my
restraints, full of the urge to run and fight. But I wasn’t going anywhere. Not
until they came and untied me.

I had never thought I was claustrophobic, but I’d
never been imprisoned liked this before. My arms were starting to cramp. What
if they never let me out of this thing? Panic filled me
. I want out, I want to be free.
I strained harder against the
jacket, but my arms didn’t budge an inch. The unyielding material held them
tight against my chest. I could feel anger race through my blood. I didn’t do
anything to Dean! Rage filled my body and my mind.

“Let me out!” I screamed at the top of my lungs,
twisting my body back and forth. My heart pounded in my chest, and I could hear
it roaring in my ears. I got to my feet and rushed to the door. My shoulder
slammed hard against it.

“LET ME OUT!” I yelled again, consumed with
violent rage, throwing my whole body against the door. I screamed and thrashed
and threw myself like a mad woman against the door again. One more time and then
my body slid to the floor. The rage started to fade. It’s no use. Who knows how
long I’ll be stuck in this room. Some patients live in solitary confinement for
years.

I screamed again, this time rolling over and
looking up at the ceiling. I was sane, but if I stayed in this jacket and this
room, how long would it take to lose my mind? How long before I would go truly
mad?

* * *

Time passed—I have no idea how much—before the
door opened. An orderly I didn’t recognize and Caroline, the young nurse who
had been forced to follow me around, entered the room.
They’re probably here to shove more pills down my throat.
I didn’t
bother to sit up. I just watched them from my spot in the middle of the room, lying
on the ground on my side.

Caroline bent down and started to undo the straps
on the back of the jacket. “Dean is awake and talking. He told us you didn’t
try to hurt him.” Her voice was soft and reassuring. “He said it was an
accident. He fell into the bath and hit his head. He told us that you found him
and saved him.”

Dean was awake and telling them it was an
accident. But how could what he said be true? Was he in control of his body
when it happened? How could a comatose boy wheel himself into an abandoned part
of the hospital? How could someone who didn’t seem aware of anything around him
and wasn’t capable of any physical activity wheel himself through the doors and
across the room with enough momentum to crash and fall into the tub? Or had
Luke suddenly taken control? If Luke had somehow struggled to the surface, but
unable to keep control, maybe during the struggle somehow things had gone wrong
and Dean had ended up in the water. Had it all been a terrible accident?

If it wasn’t an accident, did someone try to kill
him?

Over the last year, someone in the asylum
supposedly
committed suicide or had a
fatal accident once every a month, but I didn’t believe it. When Mildred first
told me what she suspected—that a serial killer was operating in the asylum—I
thought she was having one of her delusional moments. But, then again, I’d
heard spirits crying out for help. I’d seen tormented souls looking for
justice. Mildred wasn’t imaging it. Someone in this place
was
murdering people.

Caroline helped me to my room. I walked the halls
on unstable legs. When she finally tucked me into bed and I was alone, I lay in
my bed, unable to function or speak as I finally realized the enormity of what
had happened
. Luke…
Luke was gone,
forced back into the ether sea. The grief I felt was so deep I thought I might
forget how to breathe. I could try to bring him back into another body, but if
I did he would probably no longer be himself. That’s what Walter had said. He
would be different, warped. The lure of the other side would draw him into the
darkness, or the light, and what remained would not remember what it was like
to be alive. Once had been a miracle—twice was beyond the reach of hope.

Crying, sobbing, lying on my bed—that’s how
Mildred found me when she came looking for me in the middle of the night.

She opened the door and stepped into the room, her
eyebrows perking up comically as she took in my appearance. “Aren’t you
coming?”

I was lying on the bed, my face streaked with
tears. I didn’t bother to answer. I just looked at her, not trying to hide the
sadness, the deep pain I felt.

When I didn’t answer, she moved closer and
whispered. “Don’t you want to see him?”

“Who?”

“Why, lover boy, of course.”

I forced myself to sit up and wiped the tears from
my face. “Someone tried to kill Dean, Mildred. They pushed him in the tub. I
found him and gave him CPR, and I don’t know how, but Dean is back and Luke…” My
words ended in a sob. I took a deep breath and tried again. “When he finished
coughing up all of the water, it was obviously
Dean
inside the body. He spoke to me. He’s back.”

Mildred looked shocked. “The one that never
speaks? He’s back? Are you sure you weren’t just hearing spirits? I hear people
talking all the time, when really, no one is there. Maybe you just
thought
it was him.” She cocked her head
and looked around, as if she were listening to unseen voices right now.

For a moment I thought maybe Mildred could hear
the spirits, too, but then I remembered that this was a woman who often heard
music playing in silent rooms and liked to quote nursery rhymes. I had seen the
slightest glint of insanity in her eyes more than a few times. I didn’t think
Mildred was completely unhinged, but she was more than a bit off. “It was him.
And Luke—”

She interrupted me. “Is waiting for you.”

I gave her a hard look. “What do you mean?”

“I just left his room. He’s asking for you.”

“Luke—he’s still—he’s not gone?” I
wanted to believe her, I genuinely did, but I knew Mildred’s mind was not always
rooted squarely in reality.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you.
That boy of yours was practicing walking around his room when I saw him last.
He’s determined to get his strength back.”

I didn’t wait for her to finish. I bolted from the
bed and rushed out the door.

“Wait for me!” Mildred called out after me.

I had to stop when I came to the first locked
door. I stood there impatiently, watching her take too much time lifting the
keys and slowly putting one in the lock. After a beat too long, I couldn’t take
it anymore—I grabbed the key from her hands and turned it in the lock
myself. The second the door was open, I was through it and down the hall.

I opened each door and ran through, desperate to
see if Mildred was telling the truth, to see if Luke was still here. One part
of me knew I was being rash.
Hector or
Larry could be on patrol. I need to be careful.
They tortured me the last
time they’d caught me. I didn’t know what they might do to me if they found me
wandering the halls again.

But I didn’t care.

When I got to Luke’s—Dean’s—door, I
stopped, unexpectedly scared to open it. My hand went to my chest. What would I
find on the other side?

Mildred came up behind me, breathing hard. “My, my,
child, you are anxious to see him tonight. The way you were racing through
those halls, I didn’t think I’d ever catch you.” She looked at me. “What’s
wrong?”

I raised a trembling hand to my head. “I can’t do
it.”

“Can’t do what?”

“I can’t go in.”

“‘Course you can.” She put her hand on the door
and turned the knob. It swung open.

Dean was standing on the other side of the room,
balancing himself against the wall.

I took a hesitant step forward. As Dean began to
turn, I held my breath and said a prayer.
Please,
Goddess, let it be him…let him still be with me…

Those dark eyes looked at me, first questioning
and then full of concern. “Colina, are you all right?”

“Luke?” I whispered his name, so overcome with
emotion at hearing his voice that I couldn’t move.

He made his way to my side and lifted his hand to
my cheek. I looked away, trying to hide the rush of tumbling emotion that
almost paralyzed me.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I thought you were gone!”

“Why would I be gone?”

“Dean woke up. He spoke to me.”

It was Luke’s turn to look shocked. “Are you
sure?”

“I never met him, I don’t know what he sounds like…but
when I asked his name, he answered Dean.”

“But…how is that possible?”

I told him about the orderlies—how they
caught me and tortured me with the ice bath. I explained how I lost the
medallion and went back to find it.

Anger blazed across Luke’s face and his hands
clenched into fists. “I swear I’ll kill them both with my bare hands for
touching you.”

I reached out and grabbed his arm. “They didn’t
really hurt me,” I lied. I didn’t want him to worry. “They only scared me.”

“And you lost the medallion?”

“Yes, and then when I went to look for it later, I
found Dean. His body was in the tub, underwater. The medallion was there with
him. I pulled him out and gave him CPR and…he came back.”

“He was dead?”

Mildred spoke up. “They don’t heat that part of
the building. If the water was still cold…a body can be under cold water for a
long time and still be revived. Not dead, but on the brink. I’ve seen it happen—when
I was a small girl, my cousin fell through the ice. He was in there for ten
minutes before they pulled him out, but they brought him back.”

Luke started pacing back and forth. “Dean was on
the brink of death. Maybe, somehow, the magic in the medallion did something
that brought him back? If it did, it means he was never truly gone. He was
still in there—in here, this body—somewhere, but his guild, his
family…they couldn’t find him.”

“They thought he was lost,” I whispered. Dean’s
family had given up all hope and admitted him to this place.

Luke stopped and looked over at me. “He hid
somewhere deep inside himself. So deep, their magic couldn’t locate him.”

I walked over and put my hand on his arm. “But if
he’s back, how are you still here?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. But,
Colina—last night I was awake and up walking around
before
the witching hour. Tonight, too.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You were in
possession of his body before midnight?”

“Yes, about two hours before.” He pointed toward
the open window. I could hear the chimes from the tower clock on this side of
the building.”

“And when three o’clock comes around?”

His expression looked grim. “When the witching
hour was over last night, I went away, like before.”

I saw Dean, I talked to him. He told the orderlies
I didn’t try to hurt him.
So, somehow Luke
can now possess Dean’s body
before
the witching hour, but Dean is in possession during the day?
“There’s
something else. Dean…said my name. It was as if he knew me.”

“How is that possible?” Luke demanded.

“Tell me: when you’re not in control of Dean’s
body, you aren’t aware of what’s going on? You can’t hear or sense anything?”

Luke shook his head. “When I’m gone…there’s
nothing. I’m here and then I’m not.”

“Then how could Dean be aware of anything? None of
this makes sense. Have you ever heard of something like this happening before?”
I asked.

“Never. But we already know that when it comes to
the magic you can do, it’s different. It’s magic that’s never been seen
before.” He gave me a smile. “I’ve never known anyone who can force spirits
against their will to cross to the other side. The things you can do—”

I interrupted him. “You think
I
did this?”

“I think somehow it was a combination—the
medallion, Dean dying, and you…somehow it all came together. If he wasn’t truly
dead, maybe he was just drifting near the veil, waiting to be revived.”

“What does this mean?” I whispered.

Luke frowned. “I have no idea. We are officially
in uncharted territory.”

None of this made any sense. I raised a hand to my
head. Just trying to figure out this puzzle was giving me a headache. “Do you
think Dean couldn’t come back into his body completely because you were in him?
Because you possessed a piece of him?”

“Maybe…and if that’s true, then now there are two
of us sharing his body. But how long can that last? If he gets stronger, things
may change. He’s a death dealer, too, Colina. Granted, he never finished the
trials or trained, but he comes from a family of death dealers. There’s magic
in his blood. He may be strong enough to kick me out soon.”