Queen of the Dead (19 page)

F
ather Hayes looked alarmed. “Someone will hear her screaming, even down here.”

Good. I took another deep breath and continued at the top of my lungs, even though my voice had already faded into something less of a scream and more of an annoying screech.

Mina seemed flustered, caught between keeping the disruptor aimed at me and moving faster to get the boxes laid out. “Just help me,” she ordered the priest. “Put the boxes on the floor and—”

Behind me, I heard the door open abruptly. Both Mina and the priest jumped. “What the hell are you doing?” a man’s voice demanded.

Yes! I was saved. I tried to crane around to see him but could only catch a glimpse of jeans and the cuff of a faded flannel shirt. “They kidnapped me,” I said, my voice croaking. “Call the police.”

“You’re going to have half the hospital down here, Mina,” he said, clearly irritated.

My heart fell. The man, my potential rescuer, was evidently part of Mina’s crew.

A second later, hands shoved rough fabric smelling heavily of bleach and laundry detergent into my mouth, pulling it tight and tying it off at the back of my head, catching some of my hair painfully in the process. Thematerial sucked all the moisture out of my mouth, and it tasted horrible.

“If you’re going to survive as a full member, your planning skills need improvement,” he said, sounding reproving.

I was only half-listening, focused more on trying to get the gag to loosen. He’d pulled it so tight I couldn’t even bite down on it. Not that I even had a chance in hell of chewing through it in hours, which was way more time than it would take for them to do what they were going to do.

“I would have had it,” she said plaintively. “I just needed a few more seconds.”

He made a sound of disgust, and she flinched a little. That caught my attention. Whoever this guy was, Mina was afraid of him.

“Get on with it,” he said. “Or do you need me to do that, too?”

She shook her head rapidly, her hair flying around her pinched white face.

With Mina’s guidance, the priest finished laying out the boxes and connecting the individual cords to one larger one that lay on the floor near an available wall outlet, and then Mina moved to stand at my side. She brought the disruptor closer, pressing it hard against my shoulder. The wires on the open end dug into my skin through the hospital gown.

I squirmed in my chair, but my lower half was still astonishingly uncooperative. There was no way I would be getting out of here under my own power, even if I could somehow get past the three of them. I screamed against the gag, but the muffled sound that emerged would never travel past the closed door. So…this was it.

My heart was beating a thousand times a minute, shaking me with it. I wondered if it hurt to be boxed, or if I just wouldn’t feel anything more. Tears trickled down my face to be absorbed by the fabric around my mouth.

Will.
I wanted him here so badly. I mean, if this was it, then at least I wouldn’t be alone.

“Ready?” Mina asked.

The priest nodded anxiously, his face covered in a light sheen of sweat.

“It’s your show,” the man behind me said, sounding impatient.

She took a deep breath and pressed buttons on her device.

A faint blue glow emerged, and electricity ran through me, clamping my jaws shut and arching my back. The pain felt like fire over my whole body. Agonized whimpers escaped my mouth despite my best efforts.

Then the strangest sensation suffused me, a separating, one becoming two, like peeling the backing from a sticker or removing that layer of dead sunburned skin. I could feel myself, distinct once more, within Lily.

Mina skimmed her free hand over the surface of my arm. My actual arm, not Lily’s. Staring down at myself, I could see the ghostly—no pun intended—outline of my own body overlaid on Lily’s. I might have cried with relief except I knew this meant I was likely one step closer to those damn boxes on the floor.

I struggled to pull myself free of Lily’s body, but it heldme as securely as a mouse on one of those nasty glue traps my step-Mothra had insisted on using in the garage at their house.

“Get ready, or you’re going to lose it,” the man behind me said, but he made no move to help her. “It’s going to fight you.”

It? Oh, hell no.
And you bet your life I was going to fight.

Mina nodded, but didn’t look up. Her hand hovered above my wrist, just barely making contact, and the next time I lurched upward in an attempt to free myself, her fingers closed around my arm.

I watched in astonishment as she set her feet on the floor, bracing herself, and began to tug at me with one hand—none too gently, I might add—while using the other to keep the end of the disruptor pressed against the shoulder where Lily and I were still joined.

In a few seconds, she’d pulled me out from the waist up. I could see my white shirt with the treadmark again, and my long blond hair brushed against my cheek. I was almost free! It felt strange after so many hours as Lily.

“Look, it was an accident,” I said quickly, twisting my wrist in Mina’s grasp, trying to break free. “I’m out now. I promise I’m not going back in. Trust me.” I was sweaty with panic. I couldn’t run. I was still merged with Lily’s body from the waist down,

“Transition, Mina. Switch over, or you’re going to lose it,” the man ordered.

Behind me, I sensed movement and looked to see Lily slumping against the side of her chair. Oh, God. I flashed back to the memory of Mrs. Turner holding me/Lily against her shoulder. She would be destroyed to see her daughter like this. My heart ached for the girl who would never wake up to see the flowers her father had brought her, the way her mother took care of her, and even her brother returning something to her that he knew she would want.

The priest was staring at Lily and looked sickened. “Is this normal?” he asked. The priest had a point. Lily didn’t look good, and I didn’t think it wasn’t just the absence of vitality and movement. Actually, she seemed worse than before. She was paler, her skin grayer.

The man in the flannel shirt shook his head grimly. I could see more of him now. He had wiry dark hair that looked like it would be curly if he let it grow. His face was hard with deep lines carved in his forehead and on either side of his mouth, like he worked outside or had lots of stress. “They must have bonded. If the entity is embedded long enough, the host becomes dependent on the entity’s energy. And the entity—”

Everyone shifted their gazes to me.

“—becomes dependent on the host, feeding on the electrical energy provided by the body. It’s a cycle.”

I looked down at myself and saw that my arms were disappearing. I gasped. They weren’t flickering, not like all the times before, just slowly vanishing like they’d never been there. And I didn’t feel a thing.

Behind me, Lily began gasping for air, a horrible thick sound. She was dying, I was disappearing, and it was all my fault.

“Hurry up,” he snapped at Mina. “The possession drained it. If it disappears now, it’ll be gone for good. The Order wants a chance to study it first,” the flannel-shirt guy said.

Study me? Why? For how long? Would I be caged up or in pieces? My throat closed with fear. I wanted to struggle, but I had no means for it. I couldn’t even push myself away.

Mina fumbled with the disruptor, moving it up to my neck. “I’m working on it,” she snapped to the guy behind me, who seemed to be a boss of some kind. “Can you just let me do this?”

She bent down and plugged the giant cord into the wall. Instantly, the boxes on the floor began to glow with a sickly yellow light that spilled out of a thin crack along the tops. Then the tops began to retract, and that awful parody of the white light began to seep out toward me, like long creepy fingers reaching.

I screamed, but no one even flinched.

In the midst of this chaos, the door burst open once more. As one, everyone, except Lily, turned to look.

As if my desperation had summoned him like a homing beacon, Will Killian stood in the doorway, out of breath, normally pale cheeks flushed with color.

The guy in flannel smiled. “Will,” he said, sounding pleased. “What are you doing—”

Will ignored him. “Stop,” he shouted at Mina. “Turn it off.” He rushed forward and shoved at her, knocking her hand away from me, sending the disruptor flying across the room toward the priest.

But it was too late. I could feel the light from those boxes pulling me in, each one a slightly different sensation. Some prickly like pins, some hot like the blistering heat rising from fresh asphalt, all painful. It was sectioning me into pieces.

In that second, everything slowed down, becoming very quiet and clear.

I could let the boxes take me in and pull me apart, and the Order would study me, whatever hellish ordeal that might involve.

I could just let myself go. Just be gone. It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Being nothing would be nothing…right?

Or, I could try. Lily’s body would protect me from the boxes. That’s why they’d had to use the disruptor in the first place. But to voluntarily return to her dying body, knowing I’d be stuck? I felt sick at just the idea. That would make me what Will had accused me of being, a body snatcher, and not even of a body I wanted. I couldn’t be Lily Turner.

But if flannel guy was right about Lily and me being dependent on each other, she might survive with my help. She might live because of me. There had to be a reason I’d been sent back from the light, right? Maybe this was it. Maybe we could save each other. And if we lived through this, there might be another chance for us. An opportunity for Lily to keep living and me to be me again, right? But if I didn’t take this chance now, we were both done for. And I couldn’t just let her die, not when I’d caused this to happen and might be able to stop it.…

In my mind, I saw Mrs. Turner’s tear-stained face before me again, the moment she realized her daughter was awake.
I
knew
you would come back. I
knew
there was a reason to keep hoping.

I turned my head and met Will’s gaze. Eyes wide, he shook his head at me as though he could hear what I was thinking.

I’m sorry.
Then I wrenched myself backward toward Lily, praying Mrs. Turner had been right.

“N
o!” I shouted. But Alona was gone.

The boxes remained open and glowing, though, and none of the others in the closet seemed sure where to look. But I knew. I knew Alona. Self-preservation was never very far down on that girl’s list.

I stared down at Lily. She appeared no different, still struggling to breathe and so pale she might as well have been translucent. But I was almost positive that’s where Alona had gone. She’d taken Lily to use for her own purposes again, and this time, it might kill Lily.

Damn it.

But oddly enough, that last look she’d given me had not been one of triumph. Not at all. She’d seemed sad, desperate maybe, and…resigned, if I had to describe it.

“Did it fade out?” Mina asked.

John stepped forward around both of us to unplug the main box cord from the wall. “It’s possible. But there’s only one way to know for sure. We’ll wait.” He nodded at Lily. “The girl is dying anyway.”

I froze. “What?”

“The entity was in place for so long, she won’t survive without it,” he said. “But even if the entity managed to repossess her, it’s severely depleted. Removing it won’t be an issue, especially once the girl dies.”

Thoughts whirled around in my head, making it difficult for me to catch hold of one.

Lily was dying? Had Alona known that? Had she figured out that Lily would not survive without her? That would have explained the expression on her face right before she disappeared.

Had Alona just attempted to save Lily’s life?

The very idea stirred up more thoughts I couldn’t quitepin down.

Granted, trying to save Lily by reclaiming her would have benefits for Alona, too, like not being boxed, but she had to have known that being permanently stuck in Lily was a possibility. And yet she’d tried anyway.

“We should relocate. Someone may have heard the ruckus.” John reached for the handles of Lily’s wheelchair.

I moved to block him. “No.”

He looked at me, startled.

“You say you’re concerned about the living, but the dead were the living once. You don’t get to ignore that just because it’s more convenient for your philosophy and helps you sleep better at night,” I said.

John blanched.

“Yeah, listen to the new recruit,” Mina said softly. “The one you’re all fighting over.”

I ignored her. “If the spirit even survived, if Alona survived,” I deliberately used her name, watching John’s eyebrows shoot skyward, “I’m sure as hell not going to just sit here and watch Lily die so you can get to Alona that much faster.” I reached down and carefully peeled the gag away from her mouth. Lily’s mouth was red and raw on the edges from where Alona had been screaming.

“A Killian rides to the rescue again. All the poor dead people who need your help.” A weary bitterness settled across John’s face. “It’s supposed to be about the greater good, Will. Your father never understood that, either.”

“He did,” I snapped. “His definition of good was just a little broader than yours, I think.”

I grabbed Lily’s wheelchair and started to pull it away, pausing only to open the door behind me.

“She’s possessed,” John spat at me.

“You don’t know that.”

“It’s an abomination,” he continued.

“And you don’t get to decide that.” The light had sent Alona back, and if one held with the belief that the light was representative of some all-knowing, all-powerful force, then the light had been aware of this outcome all along and done nothing to stop it. In fact, by sending her back, it might have very well created the events leading to this moment. I didn’t know, and I couldn’t judge. And I wouldn’t allow John and the Order to judge, either.

“You’ll be calling us, begging for help before you know it,” he said with disgust.

Maybe, but at least I’d know the price for their help next time, and it was far too high.

“Don’t.” Mina stepped forward, her hand closing around my wrist tightly. “If she’s still possessed, I need this, Will.” Her eyes pleaded with me, showing her desperation more plainly than words ever could.

“You are never going to be good enough,” I said to her, andshe flinched. “No one is ever good enough for him because he doesn’t feel good enough himself, always comparing you to other people, just like he compared himself to my dad.”

John made a disgusted noise. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I didn’t, not for sure, but based on what Mina had said and his reaction to my words just now, I felt it was a fairly good guess. “So you have to be who you are, whoever that is,” I said to Mina. “Call Lucy and tell her the truth.”

She jerked back, her gaze skating immediately to her father for his reaction. It wasn’t good. His face reddened, and he glared at her, before turning his attention to me.

“If you’re implying that anything in my division is not running as it should—” he blustered.

“Not your division, your family. And you know it’s not,” I said. “Call Lucy,” I said to Mina again.

This time, she nodded, a tiny motion, almost imperceptible, but still there.

I pulled Lily’s chair out into the hall. To my surprise, the priest followed us. I watched him warily as I turned the chair around and aimed it for the elevators, but he made no attempt to stop me.

“I was trying to save the girl,” he said quietly.

“I know, Father.”
Me, too. Both of them.

“I didn’t know that they would hurt her and—”

The wheelchair jerked in my hands.

I looked down. Lily’s whole body was shaking so hard the chair rattled, and her face had turned an ominous shade of blue.

Fear froze me in place. Whatever Alona had done, it was not enough. Lily was dying, and now she would take Alona with her. I would lose both of them.

“Help, someone! We need help!” The priest took offdown the hall shouting.

I followed, one hand on Lily’s slumped shoulder andthe other on the chair, moving as fast as I dared. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” I just kept repeating the words, praying I wouldn’t hear a final gasp from her. I’d grown used to the idea of life without Lily. But Alona? What would I do without her? No matter how much she drove me crazy sometimes, I needed that—I needed her—in my life.

Several people in scrubs came running toward us. The priest had done his job.

“What happened?”

“What did you see?”

“What is she being treated for?”

They were all calling questions to me in calm but urgent voices that unnerved me. “I just found her this way,” I said in answer to all of them. The truth, but lame. I was pretty sure they didn’t believe me, especially when they saw the gag down around her neck.

They shoved me away from her and lowered her to the floor.

Two of them started CPR, while a third ran for a phone farther down the hall.

In what seemed like seconds, the entire hall was filled with medical personnel, a crash cart…and Mrs. Turner.

She took one look at Lily on the floor and launched herself at me. “What did you do? What did you do to my baby?” Each word came with a punch.

I tried to avoid most of them, but some landed, each one with the fury born of a mother protecting her child.

“You stay away! Stay away from her!” Mrs. Turnershoved at me, and I let her.

They loaded Lily up on a gurney and raced away. Mrs. Turner followed them at a run.

And I…I could do nothing but watch and wait.