Pandora's Key (10 page)

A wave of dizziness washed over him and he rested his head against the cool wall until it passed. Pandora’s Box was a talisman said in Greek mythology to have been created by Zeus to punish Mankind for accepting fire from Mount Olympus. It was filled with “Furies.” The box had been given to Pandora to deliver it to Mankind. But they’d refused to accept the gift. Curious Pandora had opened the box and released the Furies. And the rest was history.

“Or was it?” Malledy asked the empty room with a sly smile. His research on behalf of his client, drawn from long forgotten texts and ancient scrolls, had led him to a different conclusion. And now that truth was going to set Malledy free.

Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, Pandora’s Box not only existed, but it wasn’t empty. It contained a fifth Fury that the cunning Pandora had managed to trap inside the box: Annihilation. And once Malledy acquired the box and the artifact that was required to open it, he believed that fifth Fury could be manipulated to obliterate his disease.

Malledy picked up the TV remote control and turned on CNN: “A seven-year-old girl in Detroit was found in a dumpster behind her apartment building, beaten, raped—” Malledy changed the channel to Fox: “Hamas has claimed responsibility for a bombing in a popular restaurant in Israel that has killed twenty and left fifteen more men, women and children critically wounded.” Malledy turned to NBC: “Iran claims to be well on their way to developing a nuclear weapon.”

Disgusted with the brutality and stupidity of mankind, Malledy threw the remote at the TV so hard that it cracked the plasma screen. “If you have absolutely no morals and can’t handle freedom,” he grumbled at the broken television, “you shouldn’t be allowed to govern yourselves!”

Turning to the window, Malledy gripped the wooden sill wishing he could just tilt the world, shake it, and Pandora’s Box would slide from its hiding place into his hands. “Patience,” he reminded himself. Juliette could lead Malledy to Pandora’s Box. And if possessing the box and wielding its power didn’t heal him, then he would force the girl to save his life.

Malledy went to his desk and opened his laptop. His screen came to life showing the Google Earth photo of the pale-yellow house. Two figures had been caught in the satellite shot. Their faces were blurred, but both had blonde hair and one was quite tall.

Evangeline sank lower in the bath until her hair fanned out in the water and bubbles scented like freesias brushed her chin. The heat felt delicious. She began to sing one of her favorite Italian arias. She was a soprano and her voice was pitch-perfect. The song filled the large bathroom, swelled, dropped, and caressed the white marble.
Italian? I don’t even speak Italian.
Evangeline sat up in the bath and looked down at her perfect, size C-cup breasts.
Those aren’t mine
! She sank back beneath the water in embarrassment.

“Kiri?” Evangeline’s English was inflected with an Italian accent. “The water is cooling. Bring me a towel. Kiri?”
Why do I have a maid if she’s never around?
“
Merda
. Stupid girl. I will have Dimitri fire you!”
But then, where would the poor thing go? A towel isn’t so important.

There was a towel beside a radio set on a wide shelf a few feet above the tub. Soft music was coming from the silver box. She reached up to tug the towel free…and the radio came with it, tumbling toward the sudsy water.
Get out!
Evangeline wanted to scream. But the woman just watched the radio spin through the air, holding her breath as the silver box, still playing music, splashed into the water.

Nothing happened. And then a jolt of electricity ran through the woman’s feet and arced like lightening, bending her voluptuous, naked body forward, then back, screaming through her legs, pelvis, torso, neck, brain. The woman exhaled one word: “Penelope.” She was dead before her body sank beneath the water’s surface. And Evangeline couldn’t breathe…

• • •

Evangeline awoke abruptly because her hands were clutching at her own neck. She greedily gulped air.
What the hell is going on?

“What’s going on,” Evangeline asked aloud, but she was alone in her dark bedroom, the comforter twisted tightly around her body. Sitting up, she felt a rivulet of cold water run down her back. Evangeline touched her hair—it was soaking wet.

How?
Maybe she was still caught in the tangled web of her nightmare. But she knew she wasn’t. Samantha was asleep in her mom’s bed. Tomorrow she’d promised they’d go to the hospital… Her mother was in the hospital.

This isn’t fair. This shouldn’t be happening.
Her clock read 1:23. Evangeline thought about waking Samantha, but decided against it. She’d just say to wait until morning. But Evangeline needed to go to the hospital right now. She had to tell her mom that some really freaking crazy stuff was happening.
She can’t die—she can’t. She needs to fight her cancer and be there for me. We’re a family! One person can’t decide to bail because there’re only two of us.

By the glowing light from her clock, Evangeline dressed swiftly and quietly in some jeans and a gray hoodie from the pile of clothes on her floor. On hands and knees, she located one sneaker and searched for the other, feeling along the floor and beneath her bed. Her fingers touched a rectangular box—smooth paper, a stiff ribbon.

Evangeline pulled out the box and held it close to the light of her clock. “For my gorgeous girl. Happy 16
th
!” was written on the paper in her mother’s loose script. Evangeline unwrapped the box, careful not to tear her mom’s message. Inside was an iPad. She stared at it for a moment but she felt nothing. She’d wanted the iPad so much only a day ago and now the stupid thing didn’t even rate.

Evangeline tossed the gift on the bed, found her other sneaker, eased out her bedroom and snuck down the stairs. Good Samaritan Hospital was about five miles from her house. Grabbing a down sweater, Evangeline slid into the night and started to run.

The streets were soaked. Evangeline didn’t feel the rain or the chill in the air. Her mind was racing. Samantha seemed to think her mom shouldn’t try to fight or have chemotherapy. But she was wrong. Modern medicine found cures to different diseases all the time. What if they found one for her mom, but they’d all given up too soon?
I want her to fight, even if she loses her hair and barfs her guts out.
In the back of Evangeline’s mind she heard a tiny voice saying, ‘You’re a terrible daughter,’ but she ignored it and ran on.

When Evangeline reached the hospital’s automatic doors she paused to catch her breath and wipe the rain and sweat from her face. Catching her reflection in the glass, she knew there was nothing she could do about her hair; her curls had grown even wilder from the rain, forming a halo around her face and cascading in a tangle down her back. Taking a deep breath, she stepped through the doors into a brightly lit reception area with modern, leather furniture.

No one will stop me if I look like I know where I’m going.
Evangeline made it past the white-haired woman at the admissions desk without a hitch—she’d fallen asleep, head back, snoring. When she pressed the button for the elevator, the door opened instantly. Evangeline stepped inside and pressed six repeatedly until the doors closed. Moments later, she walked out on the oncology floor. The tiles gleamed and the air smelled like bleach, wax and sickness.

Evangeline spied a nurses’ station with two women staring at computer screens, their backs to her. She walked down the empty hallway, wincing as her wet sneakers squeaked with each step. No one called out for her to stop. She started to relax a little as she rounded the corner—and ran right into the chest of a doctor in a white lab coat.

“Sorry,” Evangeline said, head down, trying to keep walking. The doctor grabbed her arm.

“What’re you doing here?”

Evangeline looked up. It was Dr. Sullivan. “Um, I came to see my mom.”

“Visiting hours begin at eight in the morning,” he said, leading her back the way she’d come.

“Sorry—yeah, okay.” Evangeline pretended to follow him for a moment, then pulled free and ran down the hall to her mom’s room. She yanked open the door.

At first Evangeline couldn’t make sense out of what she was seeing. Ten figures in long, white hooded robes, their faced obscured, were standing in a circle around the bed. They were holding candles and chanting in a language Evangeline had never heard before. One of the figures standing next to her mom’s head was holding a pillow over her mom’s face! The heart-rate monitor on the wall registered a flat green line and a dull monotone sound was piercing the air.
No!

“What the hell is going on?!” Dr. Sullivan yelled from behind Evangeline. “Get away from her this instant!”

The figure holding the pillow looked up sharply, her hood slipping back to reveal pale skin, dark brown hair, and emerald-colored eyes.
Samantha?!

“I did this for Olivia—for your mother,” Samantha said. “The Gods are cruel—she deserved better.”

And then a sudden freezing wind tore through the room. The candles were extinguished and hell broke loose. There was pushing and shouting and a rush of bodies in the darkness and then a horrible stillness punctuated only by Evangeline’s terrified scream and the unremitting sound of her mother’s heart monitor emitting that single, flat tone.

Someone turned on the lights. The white-robed people in the room had disappeared. Dr. Sullivan yanked the pillow off Evangeline’s mother’s face and pushed the emergency button above her bed. Moments later, a team of doctors and nurses pushing a crash cart ran into the room. For eleven minutes the doctors and nurses worked to resuscitate their patient using shock paddles, a huge syringe of adrenalin plunged into her chest, and CPR.

Breathing heavily and wiping tears from her face, Evangeline watched it all from her perch on the windowsill, forgotten by everyone, left to be a spectator to her mother’s death. But her mother didn’t die. The heart rate monitor’s green line began to peak sporadically and finally it settled into a rhythm.

“She’s okay now,” Evangeline said. “She’s okay.”

Dr. Sullivan turned to her but didn’t speak for what felt like forever but was probably only a few seconds. “Your mom is in a coma, Evangeline. The machine you see connected to the tube we put down her throat is a ventilator. It’s breathing for her because the part of her brain that controlled involuntary actions, like breathing, was damaged when she was—when she was suffocated by that—that monster.”

Evangeline felt her panic rise. “But eventually she’ll breathe on her own and wake up? Right?”

Pushing his glasses onto his forehead, Dr. Sullivan pinched the bridge of his nose. “We can’t know if there was brain damage, or if the damage was permanent, unless your mother wakes up.”

“She
has
to wake up. I need to tell her about Sam.”

“Who’s Sam?”

The one you just called a monster.
“She’s my…my godmother—you talked to her on the phone.” The doctor looked confused. “Samantha Harris—she’s my mom’s agent, my godmother. Sam.”
Is she a monster?

“Security can’t find those intruders. I’m going to call the police.” Dr. Sullivan strode toward the door. “And then I’ll phone your godmother to take you home.”

Evangeline’s hands were balled into tight fists as she struggled to make sense of what she’d seen and to explain it to her mom’s doctor.
There’s no explanation that makes any sense!

Wait!” Evangeline called. The doctor turned, looking harried.
Tell him—you can’t afford to hide from this.

“Sam—Samantha—was the woman who—who was holding a pillow over my mom’s face!”

“What the hell?!” Dr. Sullivan hollered.

Everything after that was a blur. An athletic-looking, bald detective named Greg Morrison came in asking a million questions. He wanted to know if Olivia was in a cult and if Evangeline was a member, too. When Dr. Sullivan explained that everyone, including Samantha, was wearing hooded robes, Morrison ran a hand over his cleanly shaven face and then continued taking notes. The room was silent except for the scratching of the detective’s pencil. When he was done, he read his notes aloud. “So a group of robed individuals, possibly as many at ten, came into this hospital without being seen. One of them—Samantha Harris—attempted to suffocate a terminal patient. When Dr. Sullivan and Evangeline Theopolis—the patient’s daughter—entered the room, the lights went out and the entire cult literally disappeared.” Detective Morrison looked up. “Do I have the details right?”