Authors: Angella Graff
Greg shrugged and set the paper back down in the tray. “Since Charles was brought in here, his brain has been, for lack of a better word, trying to regain consciousness. At least seven or eight times a day we’d see a spike in his activity. Much like the other patients that went missing, Charles showed signs of impossible healing as well as a sudden drop in brain activity, instead of an increase which one might expect if the patient was just going to suddenly recover and walk out.”
“So you have the other patient’s information?” Ben asked suspiciously.
“I’m afraid that two of them were my patients,” Greg said soberly.
“You realize this isn’t looking good for you, don’t you?” Ben said, leveling a finger at the doctor.
“I do,” the doctor said with a smile. “Unfortunately I was chosen, just as you are, for a reason, though my reason is more clear than yours. I wish I could let you walk away from this case and add it to a pile of unsolved homicides, but I can’t do that. You’re going to see very soon why I’m involved in these cases, and you’re not going to like it.”
“You keep implying that you’re a good guy, doctor, but I’m not so sure.”
“It’s Greg, please,” the doctor stressed, “and I’m not asking you to trust me. That would be foolish. Trust will come in time, when I can prove I’m on your side.”
Ben let out a tired sigh. “Is this all you wanted to show me?”
“No, but it’s all we need to be in the room for,” Greg said and led the way back to the office. Once securely inside, the doctor cracked open the blinds, just a little, and gestured for Ben to sit on the chair. “I’m going to ask you not to interfere with what’s about to happen, Ben. Do I have your word?”
“No,” Ben said with a disbelieving laugh. “Of course you don’t have my word. I’m a cop, Greg, and if something is going wrong, I’m not about to stand aside.”
Greg looked troubled, crossing his arms, his face pleading with Ben. “You’re special, Ben. You have something in you, something in your genes that was passed down to you, that makes you vulnerable, except you’ve beat it. Your absolute refusal to believe in any of this keeps you shielded from them.”
“Them,” Ben repeated.
“Yes, them. The old ones, the old gods, the beings trying desperately to reach into human consciousness, to have us all remember them again. They can’t even sense you because you’ve blocked out any possibility that they can even exist. The only reason you’re here is they can’t touch you.”
“I see,” Ben replied, his voice heavy.
“No one is going to get hurt,” Greg pressed. He took a step toward Ben, but the warning look the detective shot him made him stay where he was. “All that’s going to happen is that the nurse is going to get called away from her station. The lights are going to go out, though there will be a few on generators in the hall. You’ll see Charles open the door and walk out of the hospital. That’s all that’s going to happen. I beg you not to stop him.”
“And if he goes, he dies?” Ben asked.
Greg gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. Some of them know better. Some of them know when to leave, and some don’t. I can’t promise whether he’ll live or die.”
“Letting him walk out knowing he might die is accessory to murder,” Ben said.
“I can’t argue with you, I can only ask that you trust me, and understand that this man is going to die anyway. Whether it’s in this bed, or on the street. He was chosen for a reason,” Greg begged.
Ben acquiesced to the doctor’s request, but could not bring himself to promise that he wouldn’t step in if he actually saw this man get up from his bed and walk out. This was no joke, as far as he could tell. Greg Asclepius was an actual doctor, with an actual degree. The medical records were in the database; Ben had used it before when researching evidence on a warrant. The man in the bed was clearly comatose, and there was no way the man had been out of his bed anytime in the recent past.
He couldn’t really believe, however, that everything the doctor said was actually going to happen. The idea that the nurse was going to leave, and the lights would go out, and then this Charles person would just stand up and stroll out was absolutely insane.
However, even as Ben sat there in disbelief, the nurse answered a call, and suddenly got up from her post and ran down the hall. Ben heard Greg take a deep breath and whisper, “Here we go.”
Ben opened his mouth to reply, but the lights went out, just as Greg promised. Ben was instantly on his feet, his gun drawn, his face pressed against the blinds. As the doctor had described, a few floor lights remained, attached to the building’s generator, but Ben could see in the corners of the hall, the security cameras were all out.
“They didn’t think to put those cameras on effing generators, too?” Ben whispered.
“They are on generators,” Greg whispered back. “Those were taken out separately. Please, just watch.”
The heavy flow of adrenaline was causing Ben’s hands to tremble, but his finger near the trigger of his gun was trained and still. He watched as the door across the room slowly opened, and a man appeared in the door.
There was no mistaking him for the emaciated Charles Wighbon, though Ben’s brain desperately tried to come up with some other explanation. The man stumbled, his muscles clearly unused and weak. He was wearing the hospital gown, the back flowing openly, as the man shuffled across the carpet.
“I’m sorry,” Ben said and he shoved Greg aside, throwing the door open and holding the gun at point-blank range. “Stop right there, Mr. Wighbon.”
Charles stopped, but so did Ben. It was the oddest thing Ben had ever experienced aside from what happened to him in the church. His feet, suddenly, felt glued to the floor, and though he held the gun, he couldn’t move to pull the trigger.
Charles, for all his emaciated glory, looked at Ben with sunken eyes, and grinned. The eyes flashed, just for the barest second, as though someone had shone a light through them from the inside of Charles’ head, much like the video’s Ben had seen earlier. The man cocked his head to the side, as if studying Ben, and then, ever so slowly, picking up speed as he went, shuffled down the hall and disappeared through the emergency exit door.
It was when the door slammed shut that Ben could move again, but before he could go after the man, Greg hauled him into the office and slammed the door. “Don’t, you fool! He’s already seen you!”
“So what?” Ben said, pushing Greg off his arm. “Look at him, look at the state of him! He’s practically a corpse.”
“With the soul of an ageless god inside of him,” Greg said. “Tell me you didn’t feel that power.”
“Are you saying he could kill me? That I couldn’t overpower him, or effing shoot him if I needed to?” Ben demanded.
“No,” Greg said with a shrug. “If it came down to it, you probably could kill him. Not the god, mind you, but the man. You could kill the man and the god would no longer have a vessel and he’d be forced to prep another one. The power he used on you was likely the most he’s got, and it probably wouldn’t have lasted long. However, there’s always strength in numbers, and don’t for a second think he’s alone. There are many of them in this world, Ben, and together they could do some damage if they chose to.”
“This is a bunch of bullshit,” Ben snarled, but something in him was shaken. He knew he should have pushed Greg away and gone after the man, but for some reason he couldn’t. It took Ben a minute to realize that he was scared.
Ben was startled, suddenly, by a buzzing in his pocket, and he pulled out his phone to reveal a text from Mark. It was asking him to come with the doctor back to San Diego the next day. There was no question about that, of course, and he replied with two words,
Expect me
.
Ben turned to look at the doctor, who was watching him apprehensively, and he let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He holstered his gun again, securing it back against his side, and then said, “We should probably get a few hours of sleep before we head back to your office.”
Chapter
Twenty-Three
With the dawn, Mark woke to the sound of the shower running. He rolled over and saw Abby’s bed vacant and the discarded washcloth on the floor. He sat up, stretching slightly, his back a little tense from the stiff motel bed, and he rose.
The clock on the nightstand read four-fifteen, so he assumed it was off and went to his phone. It was blinking with a message, and when he opened it, it read simply,
Expect me
. It was from Ben, and Mark had a feeling the good detective was in a rage. It wasn’t anything he could help, however, and he could only hope that whatever Ben had discussed with the doctor the night before had helped him to understand the gravity of what was going on.
Mark went to the car to grab his bag, and when he returned, Abby was sitting on the edge of the bed, using the stiff-bristled, motel-issued brush on her hair. She was wrapped in a towel, her clothes piled on the floor next to her.
“We might need to go shopping if I’m going to be cavorting around with you for a while,” she said with a small smile. “Sorry about the towel, they seem fresh out of hotel robes.”
“It’s fine,” Mark replied with a shrug and a half-smile. “We have some time before your brother and the doctor arrive, we can pick up whatever necessities you may need for this trip.”
“Any idea how long we’re going to be away?” Abby asked. “I mean, I should call the school and give them some sort of time frame.”
“I believe they know already,” Mark said, “or if they don’t, they will shortly. The break-in at the hospital won’t go unreported, and it’s likely those two detectives will be on the case. They’ll be searching for us, so wherever we go, we have to lay low. Our best hope is that whoever took Yehuda took him out of the city.”
Abby sighed and bowed her head. “I’m going to get arrested, aren’t I?”
“Should we ever be captured by law enforcement, I’m going to claim you are my hostage, and not a thing will be done to you. Believe me, Abigail, nothing bad will happen to your personal life.”
“I don’t want to see you in trouble, either,” Abby fretted.
Mark gave a little chuckle. “Believe me, nothing will happen to me that I can’t handle. Now, go ahead and get dressed, and we’ll find a quiet place to eat and then get you the things you need.”
Abby stared at Mark for a long time before finally grabbing her clothes and going back into the bathroom to change. She was still limping a little when she came out, but she was able to put more pressure on the foot, which meant that it wasn’t broken.
As terrible as it was, if the foot had been broken, Mark would have had to leave her behind. He couldn’t have afforded to drag along an injured person, nor could he afford being seen at a hospital where authorities could be alerted.
The pair got into the car and Mark found a little café for breakfast on the still, quiet streets of La Jolla. The café was nice, older styled, and the patrons there were all aging locals. They took a booth in the very back and ordered from the tall, lanky waitress who looked like she’d been working in the café for far too long.
Mark ordered coffee and took down the entire cup before the waitress had even walked away. He accepted the refill with an apologetic grin, and for the second cup added a couple of sugars. “I need all the energy I can get, today,” he said to Abby, who was watching him with a wry grin.
“I see that. Is today going to be a lot like last night?”
Mark shrugged. “I don’t know. I can only assume we’ll be on the run, and definitely should not be in
this
city long.”
“Why are we here, exactly? I mean, are we going to try and break back into that doctor’s office and see what’s in that room?”