Raw Power: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Demon-Hearted Book 1) (5 page)

Rising to his feet, the doctor walked around to the other side of the bed, took up the slack chain that trailed from my right arm, and then hastily tied it around the bottom wheel of my bed. He was some time in composing himself, but when he finally replied, his calm tone had mostly returned. “As I said, those shackles are on for a reason, Lucian. Until we know for certain the transplant has succeeded, we need to keep... everyone in this building safe. You'll stabilize soon enough.” He patted at his cheek, a palm's worth of blood dribbling down onto his scrubs. He grimaced. “I need to take care of this.” The doctor gave Amundsen a look before ambling unsteadily into the hallway.

Amundsen stood up and felt his way back to the chair, his eyes fixed on me like I might reach out and kill him.

My heart had calmed down, at least. It'd fallen into what I felt was a natural rhythm.

But what had happened there, and why couldn't I remember it?

Was I right in thinking that my brief period of unconsciousness and the resultant outburst had been caused by the demon?

 
A demon? Jesus Christ... this has to be a joke. Demons don't exist, man. This can't be right.

Of course, up until recently, witches hadn't really existed, either.

“Why did you do this to me?” I asked Amundsen after a time.

He looked at me sorrowfully, kneading at his greying temples. His large eyes didn't stay on me long; they drooped to the floor in shame. “You said you wanted to live, Lucian, and I wanted to give you that choice. This was the only way to make it happen. The only way.” He looked up gravely, his brow dotted in sweat. “If you've changed your mind, I can ask the doctor to remove the heart, I suppose...”

What a gracious offer that was. If I didn't want to house the heart of a violent demon I could just ask ol' Dr. Sargasso to come on in and scoop it back out. I could go back to being dead. That sounded like a real treat.

 
Not.

“That isn't much of an option,” I replied. “Deal with it or just die? Thanks a lot.”

Looking a little offended, Amundsen stood up and shook his head. “Now, you may not see it yet, but this is a gift, Lucian. It's a gift that no other living man possesses. In time, you will come to understand it as such. The Veiled Order has great plans for you, Lucian. You'll grow so powerful, do such good in the world for our organization. Those criminals who did this to you in the first place will cower in your shadow very soon now.”

I frowned. “Well, it was nice of you to let me know that this little operation of yours had strings attached. Considerate. I always wanted to sign up to... do whatever it is you're talking about.” He'd mentioned an organization; what, was I going to join the Super Friends? I wasn't sure exactly what he meant by any of this and didn't have much time to dwell on it because the thumping in my chest resumed with a vengeance. I groaned, feeling like my heart might explode, and clutched at my breast.

Amundsen noticed and walked over to the door. “He needs sedated,” he shouted.

Not a moment later and that same young nurse who'd wheeled in the nightmarish mirror was rushing in with a syringe. She flicked the cap off of the needlepoint and gave the thing a few quick taps while testing the flow. She didn't ask any questions or even tell me it was going to hurt. She squatted down beside my bed, pulled down the edge of my gown and began sizing up my deltoid.

“Hey now, hold up a second--”

She stuck me in the shoulder, hard.

 
“Damn it!” I thrashed a little, my heart flopping and squirming like a dying fish. “This isn't necessary, you know. What about patient satisfaction? Don't you people have those little surveys for people to fill out after they get discharged, for government reimbursement? I'm going to give all of you fucking
zeroes
for this!”

The nurse stood up after pushing the whole of the syringe's contents into me. It burned a little, made my shoulder feel numb and tingly. Then, dropping the used-up syringe into a red container on the wall, she walked out without a word.

“By morning,” said Amundsen, “you'll be able to wander freely. No restraints, no sedatives... but, until then... you must rest. We'll be having someone watch you, too. An orderly will be posted in your room at all times, should you need to use the bathroom or anything of the sort.” He patted me on the foot as I felt a wave of numbness wash over me. That shit, whatever it was, worked fast. “I'll see you in the morning, Lucian. Take care.”

I was going to tell him to go fuck himself for using me as his occult plaything when, suddenly, it was lights out. The sedative hit me like a load of bricks and I sailed into unconsciousness with nary a struggle.

SEVEN

I woke up again, at some point, and felt immediately that something wasn't right. Don't ask me what. I couldn't have told you even if I'd had a hundred years to answer. I felt groggy, weighed down. That was likely the sedative, or whatever else they'd been feeding me over the course of my stay. But that wasn't all.

That wasn't the worst of it.

Most drugs that I know of don't incite feelings of terror or panic. Some might, maybe, but the fright coursing through me seemed to stem from another source. I could feel it in my veins. And I don't mean that metaphorically.

The demon heart, I figured, was at the root cause of this feeling.

I couldn't feel the rest of my body, but could sense my heart galloping along. My vision was blurry, my thoughts were fuzzy. It was like being held underwater. Everything was dampened, unfamiliar, delayed. I tried to move my hands, my feet, just to ensure they were still attached to me, but couldn't raise them an inch.

 
When I resigned myself to just laying back in bed and calming down, however, I noticed myself sitting up. My legs and arms worked in tandem, and I sat up in bed with ease. The trouble, though, is that
I
wasn't doing it.

That's right. My body was moving of its own accord, or under some agency other than my own.

 
This development brought about a lot of confusion in me. The terror faded away, and I just dwelt deep in my headspace, baffled.
How is this happening?
I thought.
I didn't try to sit up, and yet, I did.

Next, I guess I started to speak. Er, rather, words started coming out of my mouth, but I wasn't the one coming up with them.

Someone was sharing my vocal chords, my lips; someone was co-opting my body and speaking through it as though it were a puppet.

 
“Excuse me,” said the entity speaking through me. I could hear the words dully. They echoed in a strange way. Was I schizophrenic now, or had the demon in me completely taken over my body? And, if that was the case, was I
supposed
to be aware of its control over me? I was still in there, somewhere, it was just that my consciousness and its sway over my physical form was severely diminished. My mind had been tucked away neatly into some dark corner to make room for this new
something
that now spoke and sat up using my bones and muscles.

It was the most uncomfortable thing I'd ever felt. Imagine walking into your house and finding the entire thing ransacked. Your clothes are strewn all over the floor, the kitchen's a fucking mess, your dog's been shot and there's piss all over the toilet seat.

Now imagine that same sense of having been violated. Except we're not talking about your home-- no, in my case, this awful feeling was issuing from inside of me. My insides, my mind, had been rearranged without my permission, and were presently being used in a way I hadn't consented to.

“Excuse me,” repeated the thing speaking through me. “I'm so thirsty. Please, may I have some water?”

 
I focused hard. As best I could tell, through my tenuous link with my physical body, I
wasn't
thirsty. I didn't need any water, and still couldn't tell who the intruder was speaking to.
But I'm not thirsty. Why ask for water?
I thought.

From my periphery came a young man dressed in teal scrubs. He was tall, with curly black hair, and stooped down at my bedside with a plastic water jug in hand. I presumed this was the orderly they'd posted in my room to keep watch. He held out the jug and shifted the straw towards me so that I could take a sip.

“The air here gets dry,” he said, smiling. “Makes me mighty thirsty, too.” He was friendly, trying to make chit-chat with me. He was probably a swell guy, possibly going to nursing school or something similar. I'd never seen him before, and had no reason to bear him a grudge.

That was why it was so surprising when I jerked towards him and spit in his face.

 
Well, it wasn't actually
me
doing it, remember. I'm not that big a jackass. I don't spit in people's faces. Something else was responsible for this, something using my body. I was hopeless to stop it.

The orderly fell back onto the floor and began to wail. He clawed at his face, thrashing from side to side like he'd just been seriously injured. I watched on from deep within my head, baffled at this behavior. I mean, getting spit on sucks, but he was overreacting a little, wasn't he?

And then I noticed.

His skin was being eaten away.

 
Rapidly.

Smoke rose from his face as the skin was burnt. Blood began to ooze from gaping holes in the flesh, and as he clutched at it, yet deeper parts of his anatomy became visible. We're talking muscle here. Bits of bone. His lips were destroyed, giving him the look of some rejected Batman villain, and his eyes were degenerating into something like runny egg whites.

 
My spit had done
that
to him?

The next thing I witnessed was a swift motion of both my arms. Somehow, I managed to pull off not one, but both manacles. They dropped to the floor, clattering distantly. The imposter then stood up, using my legs, and turned in the direction of the window.

I was being trotted around the room and couldn't even tell you how.

After a brief pause, I punched out the window, showering the floor in glass. Just beyond the edge of the busted pane was a set of thick iron bars, like those you might see in a generic jail cell.

What kind of hospital used iron bars on the windows? I was beginning to think that this wasn't a typical hospital at all.

 
Though, maybe that should have occurred to me sooner. They did weird shit here, like implanting
demon
hearts into their patients. The bars on the windows were not exactly the first red flag.

With a grunt, I managed to pull the bars in opposite directions. They gave like they were made of rubber, and the resulting space looked just large enough for me to wriggle through.

And that's exactly what I did.

We were a few stories up, but I guess I didn't think much of plunging out of a second or third story window down into the grass below.

It was a quiet, dim night. A new moon, if my perusal of the sky was to be believed. We were out in the middle of nowhere, too, judging by the lack of buildings in the area and the abundance of visible stars.

 
I heard a soft voice as I stood there. It wasn't coming from outside, but from within me. It was like I was standing within my body with someone else, and we were having a quiet conversation. If my consciousness had been able to reach out just then, it might've bumped elbows with this other thing that now spoke to me. The voice said, “
Say, you look tired. Why don't you relax while I take this thing for a proper spin?
”

By “thing”, I figured he was talking about my body.

Despite all I'd just seen, I couldn't muster up a single reason to refuse. “Sounds good,” I thought.

And then, my thoughts faded into darkness for a good, long while. My mind was blotted out. If my senses had been dampened and my connection with my body weakened previously, then the effect had been multiplied a thousand-fold now.

I'd sunk to the bottom of a deep, dark lake with no idea as to when I might resurface, while something else took a turn captaining my body.

EIGHT

It was morning when I woke up.

 
That is, when I
really
woke up, feeling like myself again.

My body was wicked sore and the surface I was laying on was rough. I kind of missed the hospital mattress.

 
Oh, shit
, I remembered.
You left the hospital, didn't you?

 
Well, that wasn't quite right. My
body
had left the hospital, it was true, but someone else had been at the helm. Or, rather,
something
else. A
demon
.

I had a look around, finding my surroundings mostly dark and shadow-swollen. There was some light coming from above, though. It was the sky, mostly dim but with traces of a rising sun bleeding through.

By the looks of it, I'd spent the night out and about. A cool breeze washed over me, sending me into shivers. The hospital gown was still draped over me, but underneath I was wearing a pair of basketball shorts that I didn't recognize.

Come to think of it, I didn't own a single pair of such shorts.

This was getting weird.

I stood up, massaging the back of my head where a dull ache was forming, and took stock of my surroundings in earnest. It took me a while to recognize them, though. It was a building, partially destroyed. The room I was in now was a real sorry mess, and the roof in this spot was gone, giving me a perfect view of the sky. A bit further on, a wall was missing, mostly crumbled or burnt away, and beyond I could see a lawn of decent size, thoroughly overgrown.

I remembered this place.

 
The house...

This was the shithole Amundsen had sent me to, the place those witches had conducted their sabbath.

The place I'd died.

I paced around dazedly for a short while, looking around and expecting a gaggle of hags to jump me at any moment. None came, though. The place was quiet, unbelievably so. Not even the breeze made any noise as it ambled in. I looked down at my body in the dim morning light and marveled at the bruises marring my limbs. I knew the witches had beat the crap out of me, but they looked a lot worse than I remembered. And then there were the wounds on the knuckles of both my hands. I sure didn't remember getting those. Had I injured myself in the night?