Fractured (22 page)

The banging, which seemed so loud to her, came to a stop right in the middle of the ceiling.

She swallowed. It
did
know she was there.

She quickly took stock of her situation. Her wounded arm still felt like it was limp weight. Obviously she wasn’t going to be able to use it to defend herself. Her other arm was fine, she just needed a weapon. Seth had been able to dispatch the thing that was once Naomi, Bash just had to have a lucky shot and incapacitate it somehow.

Not an easy thing, considering she was blind, injured, hungry, and suffering from blood loss.

She wound her good arm behind her, searching for something to defend herself with. She guessed she only had moments before the thing overhead joined her in the room.

A loud, keening noise issued from the ceiling. The scraping started again, this time digging into the vent. Her hand found a handle. She gripped it and pulled it free, just as the thing crashed into the room with an inhuman screech.

She screamed as she whacked the thing with her makeshift weapon. The weapon—a mop or a broom she realized—connected with the thing, though unfortunately, she hadn’t hit it hard enough. The creature keened again, splintering the handle of the stick. Something hit Bash in the pelvic area, making her reel backwards into a shelf. Toilet paper rolls, cleaning supplies, and more fell on top of her.

“You little bitch!”

A supernatural version of Maria’s voice filled the little room. Bash froze, not believing her ears.
Maria?
Why was Maria here? And where was the rest of the group that was in the break room?

“Maria?” she whispered.

Maria’s voice belted out high-pitched laughter that made Bash wince.

“Oh Bathsheba,”
Maria chided.
“Poor, pathetic, Bathsheba. Always so innocent.”

Bash held her half stick out in front of her, wielding it like a baton. She couldn’t tell where Maria’s voice came from. Here in the closet, it seemed to come from everywhere. She shuffled forward, striking about, hitting only hit air.

If she couldn’t find it, maybe she could talk to it and pinpoint it based on its voice. If she didn’t lose her nerve first.

“What do you mean?” Bash asked. Her voice was trembling and she hoped that Maria couldn’t hear it.

“You left us in that room, you bitch,”
Maria’s voice spat in the darkness, two o’clock of where Bash was standing. She flailed, trying to hit the source of the voice.
“You left us to burn alive.”

Bash’s temper flared up. “You
wanted
to stay, Maria,” she reasoned. “You wanted to be left behind.”

“I was grieving for Rick. I was in pain. And you left us. We’re all dead now, because of you.”

Bash was speechless for a few moments. She knew that she was basically arguing with a zombie that was controlled by the demon, but she couldn’t stop the tears that sprang to her eyes, nor could she fight the lump that formed in her throat. She
did
feel guilty, and she couldn’t help feeling that way. Especially when the puppet talking to her now had been killed after being left behind.

“You wanted to stay behind,” Bash insisted. Her voice wavered. “You wanted to stay in case Rick came back.”

Silence answered back. Bash could only hear the labored beating of her own heart, probably pumping out more and more blood from the gash in her arm. She tried listening for breathing. Or feet scuffling.
Something
to tell her where her assailant was.

“Boo.
”

The thing had said it right next to her. Bash shrieked and jammed the broken end of the broom into the thing, reminiscent of Buffy slaying a vampire with a stake. The corpse collapsed to its knees, sucking in a deep breath.

“Bash!”

No longer was Maria’s voice laced with Abyzou’s power. Now it was just her normal, frightened voice. That depleted any of Bash’s anger towards the creature.

She heard it crumple to the floor, and before she could stop herself, she knelt next to the body. Now that she could feel what Maria had become, she could feel the charred flakes of skin and the oozing blood and pus and smell the cindered flesh. Maria had been telling the truth when she had said they’d been burned alive. How? That little haven had been safe. How had they been burned?

“Jeb...” Maria choked, answering Bash’s unspoken question. “Jeb...came back to life...and he opened the door. Left...it wide open...” She coughed. Bash tried to comfort her, touching her cheeks, the skin and tissue sloughing off. “We all...died...”

“Shhhh...” Bash said through her tears. “Shhhh...”

“I blamed...you...” Maria mumbled, her voice sounding fainter now. “I blamed you for all of this...”

“Hush,” Bash pleaded. She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want this dead woman blaming her for all of their deaths.

Maria’s body seized and then started shaking, like she had gone into a seizure. She started screaming loudly, reverberating off the walls. Bash held her, trying to calm her down, but nothing would help.

“You’re going to...die...real soon,
” The words were barely a whisper, yet they still sounded mocking. Maria’s last breath escaped her and she stilled.

Bash sat back, put her hands around her knees, and stifled her own cries of anguish.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

S
he hovered somewhere between pain and ecstasy, a mishmash of different sensations. She alternated between relishing it and screaming.

It left her both shattered and revitalized, a completely unnatural sensation that sent her mind reeling in million different directions.

There was one thought that grounded her, giving her a reason to fight back, however small. The last and only person who cared about her.

Bash
.

The fog lifted. The thought of her sister forced Lily’s eyes to open to reveal a dark, dank hotel room. Eyes watched her from all ends, like silent, guarding hawks. As if they were expecting her to do something. Command them.

She shivered, and at that moment, she realized that she couldn’t move. Something was keeping her rooted to the spot, an unyielding embrace that wouldn’t let her go.

She tried to turn her head to see what it was, but a wave of agony submerged her, causing her to scream once again. She spluttered, her senses exploding into what felt like a firework display along her skin.

Wherever she was, it was terrible.

Hot breath tickled against her left ear as sensation came back to her arms. Someone was holding her hand.
Why
was someone holding her hand?

“
Liiii-illlly...”

It was the voice in her head, the one that always talked to her and told her things when she was distressed, except this time it was outside her head.

Lily opened her mouth to speak, only it felt like there were cotton balls in her mouth. Her tongue lolled about uselessly. She could moan and make noises, yet she couldn’t form the question that was on her lips.

The presence on her left seemed to notice she was having trouble. “
Shhhhh...
” the voice said. “
It will all be over soon.
”

Soon?
Lily’s mind reeled, trying to figure out what it could be and what was supposed to be over soon. She tried forming words again, but it was a futile effort.

A cold, clammy finger pressed to her lips, shushing her again.

“
Patience my pet
,” the raspy voice whispered. “
Patience. Aren’t you happy how things turned out
?”

Happy
? Lily wanted to ask. She had no idea what was happening. The last thing she remembered was the kitchen exploding. Her memory was black after that, only bits and pieces came back to her, horrific images, never anything substantial. Something terrible had happened. How could she be happy about that?

“
Rick
,” the voice beckoned. “
Come
.”

A pair of eyes in the darkness blinked and started moving erratically toward them, growing in size. Though they were bloodshot, Lily thought they somehow looked familiar. Then her mind connected the name Rick to the charred thing before her and she screamed. A hand clamped down over her mouth, muffling her screams.

“
None of that, none of that
,” the voice chided. “
After all, you’ve marked him as your own.
”

How
...
what?

The voice laughed. “
By coupling with him.
” Lily recoiled as the memory struck her. “
Too bad you couldn’t do that with Seth before that bitch ensnared him.”

That bitch?
Lily thought. She meant Bash...

Lily could turn her head just enough to see an old woman peering at her. They made eye contact, Lily’s green eyes against all-black ones. The old woman smiled, although it appeared that she was baring her teeth at Lily.

“Your sister,”
the old woman sneered,
“has been a bit of a troublemaker. It seems that she picked up a few slivers of my power while you two shared the same womb.”

Lily blinked, her world turning into a watery mess. Bash...where was she? What was she doing now? Was she safe?

“She saw me, you know,”
the old woman said. She shifted in her seat.
“Back when she
could
see. We took care of it, didn’t we? Surely you remember that day.”

The old woman’s hand on hers squeezed and suddenly Lily saw that day in vivid detail, like she had never forgotten it. She felt the absolute hatred for her sister once again. She felt the pounding in her head, her sister collapsing on the other side of the playground. She remembered her nosebleed. All the nosebleeds throughout her life—they always happened when something strange or weird happened.

She knew the truth now, even though she realized she had instinctively known it all her life.

She herself had caused those incidents.
She
had caused her sister to go blind.
She
had caused Bash to break her arm.
She
was responsible for her parents getting into the wreck. Scott breaking his arm, Rick getting his own bloody nose, the kitchen and restaurant exploding—those had all happened when Lily had felt extreme duress. Now she knew that
she
was the one who had unwittingly caused it.

She was responsible for everything. Whether or not it was because of the old woman’s influence, she had, on some level, wanted those things to happen.

“It’s almost over. They’re in my world now,”
the old woman said, her smile frozen in place.
“Once we get rid of Bathsheba, we’ll focus on you. You’ll give me a child, won’t you, my baby?”

Lily was trapped.

I’m so sorry, Bash.

A single tear slid down her cheek. It was her last shred of defiance.

*****

Scott was getting worse. Seth was doing everything in his power to try and help his little brother recover, but it seemed like he just kept slipping further and further away.

“Shit,” Seth muttered, pulling his hand away from Scott’s forehead. His fever kept rising.

After getting separated from the group, Seth had dragged Scott through the maze of ducts. Poking and prodding through what felt like a loud, metal coffin wasn’t what Seth thought of as fun, and try as he might, he just couldn’t find the way out of the lodge, which made no sense. With all of his Army training, Seth should have been able to get out of there easily enough. He had learned a long time ago how to orient himself and how to get to safety in any situation. It seemed like no matter how far he traveled in one direction, there was always more ventilation to crawl through. He tried different directions. He even tried going to the fourth floor back to their rooms. If they were going to be stuck here, he was at least going to retrieve Scott’s medicine.

He tried everything he could think of to get out. There were a few points when he could have sworn he had passed by the same spot twice. When they moved up or down a level, he found himself going in a circle.

Scott kept passing in and out of consciousness and hallucinating about children in the ventilation system with them, which frightened Seth even more.

Despite desperately trying to get out of the Grand Trails Lodge, Seth had to make the difficult decision to stop in a safe area, which happened to be a men’s public bathroom. It wasn’t the first place Seth would have chosen, but he had been hauling Scott along for so long and it seemed safe enough.

They were going to stay there while Scott had time to recuperate, though it seemed like he wasn’t going to.

Seth didn’t know what he’d do if his baby brother died. Scott was his responsibility. He had promised their father that he’d look after Scott. And then this happened.