After Moonrise: Possessed\Haunted (9 page)

“You went here?” Lauren asked as they climbed the stairs.

“For almost three years this is where I matriculated.”

“Which means you didn’t graduate,” she said.

“Not even close,” he agreed. “College and I didn’t agree.”

“Makes sense to me. OU and I had a fundamental disagreement, as
well.”

“Which was?” he asked, realizing he was actually interested in
her answer.

“Well, they thought their students needed to attend class. Even
if said students could
not
attend class and just
show up for tests and still make decent grades.” Lauren shrugged. “OU and I
agreed to disagree.”

“You agreed to leave and they agreed to let you?”

Her smile was sly. “No, I agreed to let Mother endow a chair in
the botany department, and OU agreed to give me a BS.” Her smile turned into a
giggle. “A BS! It still makes me laugh. That’s exactly what it
was—bullshit.”

“What about Aubrey?” He couldn’t seem to stop himself from
asking.

Her gaze met his. He tried to read her eyes and found all he
could decipher was weariness and a healthy dose of cynicism.

“Aub graduated with honors—
without
Mother bribing anyone. She has always been the smart one.”

“And which one are you?”

“I’m the pragmatic one. Which one are you?” she fired back at
him.

“I don’t have a twin.”

“Let’s pretend like you do.”

“All right. I’d be the grumpy one,” he said.

As he grabbed the metal handle of the door to the third-floor
hallway, she said, “Really? My guess is you’d be the lonely one.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The smell hit him right away. It had been bad enough on
the ground floor. Up here in the dimmer, cooler third-floor hallway it was
downright disgusting.

Lauren wrinkled her nose. “Eesh, what is that?”

He glanced at her. “You were a botany major but you didn’t take
any labs?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I told you—I
took
a bunch of classes. I just didn’t
attend
many of them. So, what’s the smell?”

“Death,” he said. “Formaldehyde only preserves bodies for so
long. It never completely covers the scent of decay.”

Lauren looked horrified. “There are dead bodies up here?”

“Yep. Humans, animals and probably a bunch of bugs, too.”

She shuddered. “No wonder I never went to class.”

“Stay close,” he said.

“Don’t worry about that. I’m not going anywhere.” She wrapped
her arm through his.

Raef moved forward with Lauren practically stuck to his side,
trying not to think about how good she felt and how badly he wanted to keep her
safe.

The classrooms were clearly labeled and in numerical order,
with odd numbers to the left and even on their right. Room 303 was only a few
yards from the stairwell exit.

“Ready?” he asked her.

She unwrapped her arm from around his and lifted her chin.
“Ready.”

Speaking quietly, he said, “This isn’t going to take long.
Remember, let him see you, but then I’ll move between the two of you. Stay
behind me.”

“And close to the door,” she whispered back. “I remember. Let’s
just get this over with.”

He nodded tightly, and pulled the door open by the cold,
metallic handle. Only half of the fluorescent bulbs in the classroom were on and
very little light managed its way through the high, rectangular windows. Black
lab tables were clustered in pods. The smell was bad, but the tables and the
aluminum lab chairs—which looked ironically like bar stools—were spotless. The
wall closest to them was decorated with large feline physiology posters that
were almost as gruesome as the stuff that was floating in huge jars on the
shelves that lined two of the other walls. The place was so dim and creepy that
at first Raef didn’t think anyone was in the room. Then, from the head of the
classroom, a man cleared his throat and said, “May I be of some assistance to
you?”

“Dr. Braggs?” Raef asked in his best nice-guy voice.

The professor pulled off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of
his nose with the back of his hand, which was covered in a latex glove.

“Yes, I am Dr. Braggs. How may I help you?”

“Well, if ya have a sec I’d like to ask you ’bout a tree,” Raef
said, adding a healthy dose of Okie and country-ing up his words.

Braggs blew out a little sigh. “I’m a bit busy setting up
tomorrow’s lab. But I can talk while I work.”

“Hey, great! That’d be great,” Raef said, and started moving
toward the front of the room, staying ahead of Lauren.

“All right, then. Ask away.” Braggs put his glasses back on and
bent over the large metal tray that was mounded with something Raef couldn’t
quite make out. He studied Braggs as he approached him.

Had Raef not been so accustomed to the many faces of evil, he
would have automatically discounted Braggs. The guy was absolutely average. His
height was average—his balding was average—even the slight paunch he was working
on was completely average. He appeared as harmless as Raef’s dorky tenth-grade
math teacher.

But Raef had spent ten years with the OSI in the air force, and
he’d been involved in the apprehension of men who looked like Mr. Rogers, even
after they’d strapped explosives to women and babies and intimidated them into
going into restaurants to blow themselves up, along with innocent civilians,
just to make a pseudo-religious point. It’d been tough to learn to separate the
seen from the unseen, but he’d damn well figured it out—lives had depended on
him. He’d been good at his OSI job then, and that military experience had helped
him become one of the best psychic murder investigators in the U.S. of A.

So, Raef looked past what his eyes could see, reached out and
tested the invisible energy around him. Nothing. He felt nothing. Not even the
slight hum of irritation Braggs should have been feeling at being
interrupted.

“I’m Buddy Chapman,” Raef began when they were within
handshaking distance of Braggs, “and this is my wife—”

But Raef didn’t get a chance to finish his introduction.
Lauren, who had been following just a little behind him, had stopped like she’d
run into a glass wall. Her eyes were wide, staring at the tray Braggs was
working on, and her voice was unusually loud. “You’re cutting up a cat!”

Braggs looked up, pulled off his glasses again, his average
brown eyes blinking like he was having trouble focusing on Lauren. “Young woman,
I am dissecting the internal organs of a feline specimen for tomorrow’s nursing
students to identify in their anatomy and physiology midterm,” he said
patronizingly. “I realize this might appear unsavory to an outsider, but I hope
you will try to realize that this creature died for the greater good of
science.” He hesitated and blinked again. Then, as if his vision had finally
cleared, his eyes widened. He smiled at Lauren. “You look familiar. Are you a
graduate of TU?”

It was when Braggs smiled that the bedlam of emotions hit Raef.
Braggs’s expression never changed—never wavered from the benign dismissiveness
and slight curiosity he was showing Lauren—but inside the
real
Braggs was a seething cesspool of hatred and rage, lust and
fear, all mixed with the most disturbing wash of greed and violence Raef had
ever felt.

“Graduate of TU? My wife?” Even though Raef was being battered
by emotions, Raef forced himself to keep his tone normal, his voice jovial and
as mildly patronizing as Braggs’s charade. “No, sir. My little woman here
married me right outta high school. She went straight to the college of havin’
babies, if you know what I mean.” As Raef spoke he kept his eyes on Braggs,
moving one more step forward, and positioning himself directly in front of the
professor, who was on the opposite side of the dissection table, and between him
and Lauren. “Hey, I gotta apologize. We shouldn’t have barged in here on ya. I
just got a question about the big elm in my front yard. It’s lookin’ sickly and
I hear you’re a damn good tree doctor.”

“Well, thank you,” Braggs said, sounding calm and cordial, even
though Raef could feel that he roiled with hatred and a deep, desperate need for
violence. “I truly do not mind that you and your lovely wife have sought me
out.”

“Yeah, but you got your work to do, and the wife, she’s a
little squeamish.” Raef tried to chuckle, but only managed to clear his throat.
“How ’bout you give me your card and I call and set up an appointment
proper?”

“Whatever you wish, Mr. Chapman. I have cards here in my desk,
and I do see that your wife is looking rather faint.”

Braggs opened the top drawer of the dissection table, and Raef
took the opportunity to glance back at Lauren saying, “Honey, you go on back to
the car and the kids. I’ll get Dr. Braggs’s info and meet you—”

“Raef! Watch out!” Lauren screamed, eyes wide and
terrified.

Raef lunged to the side, reaching for the concealed Glock he
kept in his side holster, but Braggs was already over the table and on him,
striking with superhuman speed at his arm with a dissection blade that was so
sharp it slit through Raef’s sweater and sliced a long, deep path down his arm
from bicep to wrist, causing him to drop the gun. It skittered across the slick
floor as if it had been paved with ice.

“Lauren, go! Now!” Raef couldn’t even look at her. All of his
attention was focused on Braggs, who had suddenly morphed from average Joe Blow
to a slashing, cutting machine.

Raef grunted with effort as he dodged the guy’s blows. His body
was taking too damn long to respond.
No, it’s not me. It’s
Braggs. He’s abnormally fast—abnormally strong.
Braggs struck again.
Raef couldn’t be quick enough. This time the blade sliced a red line across his
chest, but Raef’s adrenaline was pumping so hard he only felt the warm wetness
of his blood. The pain would come later—if he lived until later.
Gotta buy Lauren time to get out of here—to get
help.

Braggs slashed again, ripping a line of blooming scarlet down
the inside of Raef’s thigh. As Raef staggered, Braggs rushed around him.

“No!” Raef snarled, reaching out and catching the edge of his
lab coat and pulling him back. “You’re not getting her unless you go through
me.”

Braggs laughed. Raef thought it was the most terrible sound
he’d ever heard. “She’s as dead as you are.” His words were filled with venom.
His face was twisted with anger. “I won’t go after her until you bleed out. She
can run as far as she wants. I’ll find her. I’ll kill her. I’ll drain her. Just
like I did her sister.”

Raef didn’t see her coming. Neither did Braggs. But suddenly
Lauren was there, behind the professor. She swung the long metal pipe she was
holding in both hands like a baseball bat, connecting with the back of Braggs’s
head as she yelled, “Like hell you will!”

Braggs dropped to the floor where he lay utterly
motionless.

Lauren was actually descending on him, pipe raised, to hit him
again when Raef caught her in his arms. “Stop—he’s unconscious. We got him. We
got him.”

Lauren hugged him hard and then abruptly pushed away from him,
her trembling hands hovering over his bleeding knife wounds. “He cut you. Oh,
God, Raef. You’re bleeding so much.”

“I’m gonna be okay.” He wanted to touch her face—to hold and
reassure her—but she was right. He was bleeding. A lot. “Lauren, I’m going to
cuff Braggs. You call 9-1-1.” Stifling a painful groan, Raef crouched over
Braggs and took out his handcuffs.

“I can’t. I tried, but there’s no reception up here. At all.”
Lauren’s breath caught on a sob. “Raef, God, the blood!”

“I’m okay,” Raef repeated, trying to sound calm even though he
could already feel that he was getting light-headed. He managed to roll Braggs
over and cuff him. “Here’s what you need to do. Go outside. Call 9-1-1. Get
help.” He staggered over to where his Glock had slid to a stop against the
classroom wall. When he bent to retrieve it his legs gave way so he sat beside
the gun, and started to unbuckle the belt to his jeans.

“I’m not going without you.” Lauren rushed to his side and was
trying to take his hand, obviously thinking she could tug him to his feet.

“Lauren,” he said, speaking as quickly and clearly as possible
as he cinched the belt around his thigh. “I’m six foot four. I weigh two hundred
and thirty-five pounds. You can’t even drag me out of here. I’ve got a
tourniquet on this leg wound. The rest will wait.
If
you get your very shapely little butt outside and call 9-1-1.
Understand?”

“Yes. Sorry.” She wiped tears from her face, leaving bloody
smears across her cheeks. “I’m going right now.” She hesitated only long enough
to lean down and kiss his forehead. “Don’t you dare die on me.”

“Not planning on it,” he muttered as she turned and started to
hurry away.

It was then that Braggs sat up.

His entire face had changed. His eyes were larger, darker and
sunken into his head. Blood flowed freely from the cut in the back of his
scalp—it ran down his neck and seemed to cloak him in crimson. Raef had no idea
how it could be, but the professor looked as if he’d lost half his body weight
in a matter of minutes. He’d become almost skeletal and looked more reptilian
than human.

“You have both been very inconvenient. I will take particular
pleasure in draining you.” Braggs drew a deep breath, and with that inhalation
Raef could feel the surge of siphoned violence and hatred that filled him, and
as it did Lauren dropped to her knees with a terrible moan of agony.

“Lauren!” Raef shouted.

Lauren’s gaze met Raef’s. “He’s draining Aubrey now!” she
gasped.

“I’ve never had twins before,” Braggs said. “It’s like a
two-for-one special.” He lifted his arms and snapped the handcuffs as if they
were a child’s plastic toy, spread his arms and embraced the flood of terror and
pain that cascaded into him.

The raw sound of agony that escaped from Lauren sliced through
Raef. “He’s killing us,” she sobbed.

“No, he fucking is not.” Raef lifted his Glock and, in one
smooth, quick movement, shot Braggs between his eyes, blowing away the entire
top of his head.

Even though the world was going oddly gray around the edges,
Raef could hear Lauren whimpering not far away from him. “Hey, it’s okay. The
bastard’s dead. It’s over. Just don’t look at him—it’s not a pretty sight.”

When Lauren didn’t respond, Raef dragged himself over to her,
thinking she must be in shock. “Lauren, honey, you gotta pull it together and
get me some help. I know I look indestructible, but—” His words cut off as he
reached her. She was in a fetal position, her arms wrapped around herself. Her
face was absolutely colorless, her eyes blank, open and staring. “Lauren!” With
a trembling hand he felt for a pulse. It was weak, but there. “Lauren, damn it!
Don’t do this! He’s dead. He can’t hurt you or Aubrey anymore.”

The air above Lauren shimmered as Aubrey tried to materialize.
Raef could only catch fleeting glimpses of her silhouette.

“Aubrey, what’s happening? I got the guy—I killed him!”

Like her spirit, her voice was a weak, whispering shadow of
itself, and all Raef heard before Aubrey faded away was,
“You killed his body. It’s his soul that’s draining us. Save us,
Kent....”