Blood Entwines (4 page)

He had to be quick. Find the files, find the room number
.

Put an end to this blip in the plan to free himself, so he could get on with the real work
.

His vision blurred and for a moment he thought he might pass out, his hand reaching forward, searching for the solidness of the wall. He could feel the fluidity of his muscles, the movement of sinew and tendon, bone and skin. It shouldn't feel like this. If only they hadn't stolen from him he would have regenerated perfectly. Now it was going to take more time. And time was something that he couldn't afford
.

He balled his hand tight, feeling the press of nails into the palm. Anger coiled in his belly
.

It was time
.

Day Thirty-four:

Anger.

Kara felt it course through her. She imagined herself as a tall glass of coke and the anger a mint, dropped in. It fizzed around her, robbing her of sense, of rationale, of any kind of pause mechanism. Her entire body hummed with it. Anger pressed itself into her, wrapping itself around her, causing her heart to speed up and her muscles to twitch.

She was so mad she wanted to punch the nurse in the face.

‘Now I know you say you're not hungry, but you really should eat.' The nurse indicated the tray of food in her hand. ‘The ward sister asked me to pay special attention to you this morning,' she said, grinning. ‘Your chart shows that you've lost quite a lot of weight and with the surgery and your leg healing. I really don't know how you cope with it all . . .' The student nurse placed the tray on Kara's table, prattling on. Her chatter like a cheese grater against Kara's nerves. Her hands arranged and rearranged the cutlery.

‘I'm. Not. Hungry!' Kara said each word slowly, her mouth tight as the syllables made their way up her throat, across her tongue and out through her lips.

‘Of course you are. Everybody is hungry in the morning. Take myself for instance; some mornings I have two breakfasts. After a night shift I make toast and then have an extra bowl of cereal. Oh not every morning, you know, I have to watch my figure.' She smoothed her uniform over her plump waist. ‘So the kitchen sent down porridge this morning. I know it's your favourite and you must be hungry so . . .'

Was the nurse deaf?

What the hell was wrong with these people?

When Kara was hungry she would eat. When she was tired she would sleep and when she was angry she would . . . What? Assault someone? There was a desperate urge inside her to rip at something, to tear, to strike, to pummel . . . the frustration and unfairness of her situation stung the back of her throat. She remembered after her father and the police report, she'd been so mad. She never meant to set the chemistry lab on fire, it had been an accident. But her anger had made her do stupid things.

‘. . . if I were you I would eat several times a day for strength. Those cells in your body . . .'

Something inside Kara flipped.

‘You stupid, deaf moron! I told you a hundred times, I'm not fucking hungry!' Kara lifted the tray and, with all her might, hurled it across the room. The bowl of porridge crashed into the wall, smearing a trail of gloop down the plaster. The tray clattered to the floor and Kara closed her eyes, savouring the release.

But it only lasted a moment.

When Kara opened her eyes, the student nurse was staring. Her eyes, big and round flicked from the puddle of breakfast on the floor to her patient in the hospital bed. Her lip began to quiver, her hands folded at her waist. She started to cry before turning and speed walking from the room.

‘Crap.'

Kara pushed up out of bed and hobbled to the wall, bending to retrieve fragments of breakfast bowl from the quagmire of porridge. Rosemary never cried when Kara gave into fits of rage. Rosemary just stood there and let the heat of Kara's anger wash over her. Kara felt a momentary stab of remorse.

They would send Nurse
Trunchenbowl
to her room. She heard the matron before she saw her.

‘Miss Bailey.' Kara turned slowly, the cracked pieces of bowl in her hand. ‘Is there a problem this morning?'

Kara snorted but chose not to answer. She moved toward the small waste paper basket located next to her bed.

The matron, stocky and bull like, glared at her charge. Kara was referred to on the ward as a difficult patient. The weeks in hospital for observation and tests were wearing at her.

‘No matron. Everything is just peachy.' Kara sat slowly into the reading chair next to the window, wiping her sticky hands down her pajamas. She stared out of the window, ignoring the matron, ignoring the hospital room.

There was a hole in her heart, a deep sense of loss. It showed itself to Kara only when the anger dissipated.

After her father died, there was so much anger. She was lucky that she only had to attend counselling as punishment for what she did. It could have been a lot worse. The solicitor for the school had suggested six months in juvenile detention. Kara suspected that this was just to scare her.

The counselling had been a condition of not prosecuting her. With no other options open, she'd agreed to go. It was all she could cope with at the time. Anything more and she might not have made it, drowning, disappearing under the waves of anger, caught in the rip-tide of grief.

The accident had reopened old wounds, left her too much time to think, to reflect.

She looked out of the window into the distance, trying to remember something, anything concrete that she could focus on. It all seemed such a blur now, session after session of words and talking, of labelling emotions, of trying to understand, of listening to someone else interpret what she was meant to be feeling. When you took all of that away, there wasn't much left except two base feelings.

She wasn't sure which one scared her most, the never-ending well of anger or the pit of loss.

***

Strangulation. That was probably the easiest way to do it. The easiest and the cleanest.

Once the person was dead, he knew the blood would die too.

Then there would be no risk.

No chance of further contamination.

***

Day Forty-six:

‘Get the hell away from me. What are you trying to do, kill me? Finish the job?' Kara paused to catch her breath, black dots swimming in front of her vision. The evening's physio session was not going well. ‘I bet you're sorry that car didn't roll over me a few more times. Then you'd be rid of me for good.'

She was shouting with such force that the vocal cords at the back of her throat quivered under the strain. Hot tears of frustration streamed down her cheeks.

Rosemary stood a few paces away at the end of the recuperation walkway, looking pale and strained. She'd aged ten years in the last few weeks and Kara felt a momentary twinge of guilt, but it was buried in an instant under the force of her anger.

‘Kara, of course I don't . . .'

‘Shut up! This is hard enough without you talking.' She tried to take another step; her hands squeezed tight around the practice bars. Every time she put her weight on her right leg a searing pain shot up through her body, lodging in the base of her skull.

‘If I could help you with the pain, you know I would.' Rosemary folded her arms across her chest, her lips pressed in a tight line.

‘Like you helped when Dad died? Like you helped then?' Kara had no idea where the words were coming from. It seemed never-ending, the hurt and the loss and the anger. She thought that this was buried deep within. She thought she'd dealt with it. The counsellor said she was better. They'd talked about it, over and over again, until she capitulated. Agreed with what they had written in the police report. She'd conceded, believed what the coroner, the senior detective and the judge had declared.

When she said the words,
I believe
, it felt like a release. She didn't have to fight any more. Her truth had been replaced by their truth, a different, more painful one.

But now, with the hours alone in the hospital, her mind free to think as her body regenerated, she realised that she had been lying to herself all along. She didn't believe. Not for one second. The pressure on her chest increased.

‘Your father . . .' began Rosemary.

‘What?' Kara snapped, her knuckles white where her hands wrapped around the bars. ‘My father what?'

‘The report.' Rosemary took a step towards her.

‘I know what's in the report,' she shouted, her knees weakening. ‘But it's a lie. It's always been a lie, only I got distracted.' Her right leg gave way underneath her, her hands loosening from the metal bars. Kara crumpled to the floor, hot tears blurring her vision.

‘I got distracted,' she whispered.

All those sessions, all those hours with the counsellor, papering over the cracks.

No!
She wanted to scream. No matter what they said, no matter how much they tried to convince her, she knew, she knew deep inside that it was a lie.

‘Kara, please.' Rosemary was at her side, trying to help her up.

‘Get away from me,' she shouted. ‘Get away!' Spittle flew from her mouth, her body shaking.

‘I hate you,' she said quietly, the adrenalin draining from her body, leaving her empty.

If she was being truthful, it was herself she hated, for taking the easy way out, for believing the lies. It made her father's life seem less important.

The truth. She had to focus on the truth, no matter what.

***

Focus! He was running out of time
.

***

Day Forty-seven:

She woke with a start. The hospital was eerily quiet, her room dark, the curtain pulled around her bed, shielding her from the neon light of the corridor.

She felt a cold shiver travel up her spine.

Something wasn't right.

***

A cold shiver travelled up his spine. She was there behind the curtain. All he had to do was cross the room, put a pillow over her face and press down. It was the only way. How else could he be sure? If
the monster
took over his body again, there was no telling what he would do
.

I wasn't in control. He just had to keep telling himself that
.

But he was in control now. And he had to make sure the blood was destroyed
.

It's not like he could ask for it back
.

He balanced on the balls of his feet. Fear spiked in his system
.

She would have to die. There was no choice. No room for weakness
.

He would kill her
.

***

Kara slid her hand under the pillow, her fingers fumbling for the call button. Fear slid over her like a silk shroud. She didn't know why but she could feel it settling on her. She pushed the red circle with her thumb, the sound of the alarm ringing down the hallway at the nurse's station.

Kara searched frantically, pushing the branches of the trees out of the way. The ground underfoot was uneven making her progress slow. She was breathing fast, her body trembling. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the sea, the roar of it beating against the cliffs.

Pushing the last of the branches out of the way as they snagged in her clothing and hair, she emerged from the tangled forest. The cliff edge in front of her was steep, a jagged fall of rocks down to a sandy beach. How was she going to climb down? How was she going to scale the rocks? There had to be a way. She began to run, fast, her feet pounding off the springy cliff-side sod. She had to get away.

Whatever was chasing her was close.

The beep of the alarm clock invaded her dream and she woke with a start, her body hot. She hit the red snooze button.

‘Ugh.' Kara buried her head back into the pillow, the echo of the dream trickling away. She kept her eyes closed, waiting for her heart to slow down, waiting for her breathing to return to normal. She had been having the same dream now for almost a month. Someone was searching for her. What did it mean?

She stretched long in the bed.

‘Kara get up. School!' Rosemary called from downstairs.

Rolling her eyes, Kara pushed back the covers. She had been dreading this day for weeks. She'd even been reduced to begging but Rosemary was adamant.

‘No way, Kara. You've been moping around the house for ages. Your injuries have healed. The doctor is happy with your progress.'

‘But, Rosemary,' Kara began.

‘No. Enough. You cannot wallow in self-pity any longer. You are going back to school for the January term.'

Their exchanges of late had been curt and to the point,
pass the butter
,
turn off the television
,
lock the front door
, those sorts of conversations. They were both skirting around the topic of her personality readjustment. That's what the doctor called it. Something to do with major trauma, shock to the body and all that. People experience a type of personality glitch for a while. For Kara it was more like a complete personality overhaul. All the pent up frustration, guilt, anger and grief seemed to come in one cataclysmic eruption.

Just give it time
.

Always the same advice from the doctors.

Sighing, she lifted herself easily off the bed and went to the wardrobe.

She fingered a pale pink polka-dot dress that hung at the front. Ashleigh had convinced her to buy it the week of the summer holidays. Her friend assured her she looked good in it. Hanging in her wardrobe, Kara realised that even Rosemary wouldn't have worn the rag. What had she been thinking?

Her new school uniform hung in the corner of her wardrobe. She looked at the stiff material of the school blazer. Her return was not going to be glorious by any stretch of the imagination.