Fractured (26 page)

“There, there,”
Abyzou comforted. She patted his hair.
“You did the right thing, Eric Martin. The next time you lay with your wife, she will be with child.”

She held him, and Bash wondered at first what was happening. Then she realized her father was sobbing into the demon’s shoulder. Despite the horrible thing she had seen, she felt a wave of sympathy for her father.

“You did the right thing,
” Abyzou repeated. She whipped her head across the stream to somehow see Bash across time and space. Her face was a mask of fury as those all-black eyes turned on her and she screeched, reaching out towards Bash. Abyzou flew towards Bash, shrieking with rage.

“I WILL DESTROY YOU, BITCH!”

Bash cried out in terror and fell backwards as the image of the demon flew at her.

She woke up in Seth’s arms.

“Bash!” he yelled, shaking her awake. “Bash, are you okay?”

She blinked the tears away from her eyes. Miraculously, she could still see. She just wished she could get the image of her father having sex with that beast out of her head.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

She groaned as she sat up in her fiancé’s arms, running her fingers through her hair. “How long was I out?” she asked. It felt like she had been trapped in the past for hours.

“A few seconds,” Seth answered. “I thought...I thought...”

Bash saw the ghost of her father meekly standing a few yards away.

“How could you, Dad?” she spat out. Seth, unsure of what was happening, held her tight without interrupting.

“Bash,” Eric said resignedly, “seeing your mother in so much pain, I was willing to do anything to give her a child. Including making a deal with the devil.”

“But...giving up one of your children? And having sex with her to do that!”

“I had thought…” he said, his voice tired and full of regret. “Well, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I had thought we were only going to have one child. Cheryl had had so much trouble, I didn’t think there would be any way she’d be able to have a second one. We’d have the one baby and that would be it.”

“That was it?” Bash asked, angry. “You’d have the one baby and Abyzou would let you off?”

“After it happened,” Eric said, “the whole thing felt like a dream. I went back to the hotel, properly drunk, and your mother had such a great massage. You and your sister were conceived up in that room there.” He pointed behind them, and Bash turned to look up at a window on the fourth floor. “My greatest gift and my greatest curse.”

“That’s what you were trying to tell Mom that day you died,” Bash said. “You were trying to explain to her why Lily was so different than me. You were trying to tell her that you had made a deal with a demon so she could be a mother.”

Eric nodded. “Of course, Cheryl didn’t believe me. I didn’t even believe myself—the whole thing felt like a dream. You know how strange stuff always happened around Lily. Right after I brought up the possibility of it being real, your mother had a stroke and I died. Coincidence? It’s hard to believe in coincidences now.”

Seth’s grip around her shoulders tightened, bringing her back to the reality of their situation.

“What happens now?” Bash asked, her voice trembling.

“Now,” Eric said sadly, “you can right all the wrongs I created. You won’t be able to leave this nightmare until you do. I love you Bathsheba. And Lily too. Though I never could look at her or treat her the same way because I knew, deep down, whose child she really was. I wasn’t strong enough to look past the demon. And I’m so sorry.”

He disappeared in a flurry of red snowflakes.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cheryl lay on her small bed at the rest home, curled up in a little ball. After seventy-two hours, no one had been able to tell her where her daughter was. All she could think about was her daughter being gone from this world. Cheryl hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.

The thing that was supposed to be her second daughter had her lovely baby in its grasp. Bathsheba was beyond her help now. She gritted her teeth, her fingernails drawing blood on her upper arms because she was gripping them so tightly. She was powerless to do anything to help her poor baby.

She remembered something that she had tried to clear from her memory. The thought had only surfaced as she lay there worrying about Bathsheba; the day Eric had tried telling her what had happened. How after six miscarriages, she was able to give birth to two very different, but beautiful daughters.

He had made a deal with a demon he said, and the demon had wanted one of their children in return.

She hadn’t believed him at first. How could she, when it sounded absolutely ridiculous? Even as she asked about it, Eric seemed to not believe that he was answering questions about it. There was a reason, he said, why Lily was so dark and reticent.

She was possessed by a demon.

Cheryl had laughed and thought that he was off his rocker. Then she had seen a horrible face in the back seat of the car, the face of an old woman with completely black eyes behind a lacy veil, who had her mouth open in a silent scream. The scary thing was, it looked like how she imagined Lily would when she was seventy years old.

Cheryl remembered the numbness inside her skull and Eric yelling at her to drive. She remembered watching the car swerve, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she was screaming at her body to move. She couldn’t turn the steering wheel no matter how much she tried.

Later, she woke up in the hospital, feeling like she was missing a chunk of her brain.

Oh, how she wanted Eric and Bathsheba at her side. She never looked at the thing that was her other daughter the same way again. It was hard—as a mother, she couldn’t help but love Lily. She couldn’t allow herself to fall for the demon’s tricks again, but her maternal instincts kicked him and she had loved her second daughter as much as she could.

“Bathsheba,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

Out of the darkness, a hand reached out and grasped her. She turned onto her back and saw the face of her husband smiling sadly down at her. He looked just like he did the day he died. Strangely though, he had a shard of glass sticking out of his right eye.

“Eric,” she asked, frowning confusedly. “Eric what are you doing here?”

He lay down next to her, spooning her back. “I wanted to apologize,” he whispered.

Apologies were worthless. There was only one thing she cared about at that moment. “Is Bash going to be all right?” she asked.

“I hope so,” he whispered. “I hope so.”

*****

Bash sat on the steps of the hotel, not wanting to return, but also realizing that she couldn’t leave without resolving what lay inside. The snow continued to fall. The world around them was a sea of red, the night dark as ever. She would have given anything to see sunlight.

She felt hollow, a shell of a real human being.

Seth sat next to her, his head buried in his hands. “Scott’s dead,” he said slowly. He rubbed his head as if weighing how he should talk about it. “I tried saving him, but I couldn’t. He...turned and I had to take care of him.”

Bash chewed on the inside of her cheek, her heart going out to her fiancé. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“He was my responsibility,” he said sadly. “And I let him down.”

“You didn’t let him down,” Bash said. “It wasn’t your fault. At all.”

“I keep thinking about what I could have done better. If I had taken better care of him when he broke his arm, if I hadn’t let him ski, if I had been with him, if I had been able to find his stupid meds...”

“If you hadn’t waited with me for the guide,” Bash wryly added, remembering Rodney, who was still somewhere in the hellhole at their backs.

Seth looked exasperated. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s not our fault,” Bash said. “None of it is our fault.” She sighed and leaned back. “Maria’s dead too. They all are. The people we left behind in the break room. Jeb opened the door and let them burn. Maria...” She let out a breath. “Maria found me, and I had to stop her.”

He looked shocked for a moment and then shook himself. “I can’t believe this isn’t affecting me more than it is,” he whispered. “Maria was a friend. Scott was...”

“I think you and I are both at our full capacities of fear,” Bash said truthfully. She reached over and squeezed his hand. “We don’t have room to process everything we’ve witnessed.”

“What do you think happened with the rest of our group? The ones that went into the ventilation system?”

Bash couldn’t answer that. She didn’t want to face that reality. Instead, she mulled over something else. “Abyzou,” she said slowly, unsure if she wanted to hear what Seth had to say about it. “Abyzou said that you had murdered some children?” Her voice squeaked.

Seth wasn’t looking at her. He was staring forward, a faraway look in his eyes.

“Seth?” she pressed.

“I’m a soldier, Bash,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’ve killed a lot of people in my life. Some of them were young.” He paused, scoffed at himself and sat back. “Fuck, that’s not even true. And you deserve to know the truth.” He spat as if the words he was about to say were filthy. “Darius and I had been driving, doing a patrol. Four kids—I have no idea what they were doing out there at that time of night. They ran out in the middle of the road…I swerved, but it was too late. We...left them there, afraid that we were going to start the third World War. It’s stupid, but you worry about things like that when you’re in the field.” He chewed on his bottom lip. “They never made the news. I tried finding their bodies later, but they were gone.” He paused, considering what he was going to say next.

“They…” His voice broke. “They haunt me. Their faces. I…”

“Is this why you don’t like kids?” Bash interrupted, remembering how squeamish he always seemed around kids. Ever since she had known him, he had ignored them and was reluctant to get too close to them. Now she knew why. The feeling in her belly deepened with dread.

He gave her a pained look. “I don’t…
not
like kids, Bash,” he said. “It’s just…I
see
those four faces every time I close my eyes.” He rubbed his face. “I’m a monster.”

Was he? Bash wondered that. It wasn’t like he had killed them in cold blood. At the same time she wasn’t sure if she could overlook what had happened. She wondered what their future looked like from this point. If there even was a future.

“You’re not a murderer,” she said softly. “Hit and run—it’s not murder.”

Seth hung his head.

“It’s not right either.” She swallowed self-consciously. “Thanks for telling me,” she added. It felt like the appropriate thing to say.

He still refused to meet her eyes.

She now could guess why Abyzou had wanted him since they met. If what Naomi had said was correct, Abyzou caused stillbirths and miscarriages. If Seth had been tainted by the death of four children, the two of them had connected on some level that Bash could barely comprehend. As the demon would see it, Seth was on her side. Just like she was a killer of children and babies, so was Seth.

It had been a mistake, though, regardless of how horrible it had been. An accident.

“My period’s late,” she added softly. She guessed there was no time like the present to talk to him about it. After all, they were revealing much about themselves.

A shocked beat passed and the color drained from his face as understanding dawned on him. “How late?” he asked, his voice choked.

“About four weeks.” She sighed and combed her fingers through her dirty hair.

“Is it—are you...” He couldn’t even get the words out.

She smiled sadly, hopeless tears sliding down her face. “I haven’t been able to go to the doctor. I didn’t want to freak you out or add any stress. I was going to wait.” She put her hands on her face. She didn’t want him to see her like this.

Wordlessly, he wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest. They stayed like that for a few moments, two people who were watching their world crumbling around them. At that moment, the birds could have come back, and she wouldn’t have cared. She just wanted to stay in this protective bubble for as long as possible.

Lily still needed to be saved. She closed her eyes. What now? What were they supposed to do now? Somewhere in that hotel, her sister was hidden, trapped and possessed by a demon she had no control over. Lily was probably the biggest victim of them all. She had never known what a normal life was. From the moment she was born, she was claimed as some old woman’s property.

Her jaw dropped and her stomach clenched with the realization.

“I know why I was blinded,” she whispered.

“What?” he asked.

“Why I was blinded. I can’t believe it took me so long to realize it.” She remembered back to when she was three. She could suddenly see herself on the playground the day of her seizure, only it wasn’t a seizure.

She remembered seeing Lily standing there, the familiar presence of an old woman standing by her. Always standing by. Bash could see an old woman that no one else could. She had tried telling her parents, who laughed it off as her imaginary friend. She had tried telling Lily, but the old woman had always been there, watching her with those depthless eyes. Frankly, the old woman frightened her, which was why Bash hadn’t wanted to play with Lily on the playground that day.