Plagued: Book 1 (38 page)

Chapter 21

Dust Devil

Ever since drinking Julian's concoction, the pain in my heart, at least the physical part, had lessened and it was easier to breathe. At his insistence, I went to school the next day.

“Keep to your routine for now,” he'd said as he snuck out the front door. “We don't want them to suspect anything has changed.”

Them,
being the Club. Routine or not, going to school was a pointless exercise in time wasting. I slept all the way there on the bus and couldn't concentrate during classes. Amber Lynne approached me after third period; who knows why? I gave her such a look, she froze in her tracks. Finally, there was no point in even pretending I was paying attention; I cut my last class.

Walking slowly to the train station beneath the buzz of the electric wires from the giant towers lining the route, my body felt untethered, floating like after a fever. Every touch seemed too intense. Even the wind on my face, soft as it was and fragrant with spring, stung like nettles. The train ride was interminable, station after station, through neighborhoods equal parts residential, commercial and even industrial, which seemed how they rolled in this country.

Zoning? We don't need no stupid zoning!

Emerging from the station near my home, I saw the dogwood blossoms lining our street were opening, wide white-and-pink petals unfolding here and there on trees covered with tight buds. A sudden sharp pain in my chest under the mark that wouldn't come off took me by surprise. I gasped, clutching my heart.

Julian appeared out of nowhere at my side. He looked pale. Paler? He was so fair it was difficult to tell.

“
What the hell!
You scared me to death. How did you even know I was here?”

He didn't answer. Pulling a small flask from his coat pocket, he was wearing the same knee length brown coat as yesterday, he said only, “Drink this.”

Unscrewing the top, I sniffed at the contents: the same mysterious smell as last night. I did as he said, the taste of summer flowing over my tongue, pushing the pain far away. I gave a deep sigh of relief. “You should market that recipe Julian, it would make you millions.”

“My family already has millions.” He cleared his throat, looking down at the ground, then back at me. I got the impression he was a little uneasy. “I,
we,
are going to see someone. I was not going to put you through this, but you need to know. You still don't believe, not really.” He paused again to stare down at his boots.

They were made of soft brown leather, I saw. The heels low. Probably good for running.

“I am asking you to place your life in my hands. That takes a great deal of trust. You must understand, Alexandra, no one else can find the three pieces of your soul. Will you come with me?”

Feeling a little uneasy myself, I nodded. What else could I do? There was a mystery here, and it didn't take Sherlock Holmes to show me I was deeply involved in some dangerous paranormal game. We descended into the subway and rode in silence for several stations.

Walking from the depths of the subway into the sunlight, the world seemed so very ordinary at that moment: traffic in the street, motorcycles roaring by. Drab apartments and office buildings jostling for space with convenience stores and drugstores, their goods crowding the already narrow sidewalk. A few trees lined the street, gasping for life in the car exhaust. Young mother's pushed baby carriages and noisy school children in navy blue uniforms and starched white shirts or blouses ran between everyone as though it were an obstacle course. Japanese businessmen and women in somber suits smoked and talked on cell phones, doing the usual everyday things business people do.

Nothing strange in any of that. Except for me. I was walking along the street beside a beautiful, silver-haired boy with eyes like emeralds who had tamed a demon last night in my walk-in closet. The self-same boy who insisted I lost my soul to demon craft and was doomed as a result. '
Surreal
' hardly described my state of mind.

After a time, we stopped outside a gray building all glass and concrete with a wide driveway and a cheerful scattering of bright, flowering planters leading to a set of sliding glass doors. The red cross on the roof marked it unmistakably as a hospital.

Breaking the silence, Julian pointed towards the hospital entrance. “I followed a Kiros here. A kind of death spirit,” he answered before I could ask. “Attracted by certain, enchantment-enhanced deaths. I would say I found it by chance, yet so many things happen by design. Destiny chases us on silent feet, Alexandra. It pays to look over your shoulder.”

He gave me a significant sort of look and I nodded as though I knew what he meant. Julian, I was learning, said a lot of weird things.

“The creature hopes to catch the flicker of energy as the mortality falls from her corporeal body, pitiful as what remains.”

“What body? Where?” I felt thoroughly confused. Oh, wait, no news there!

“The Club has been hunting in Tokyo for some time. There have been and will be others like you. The Kiros spirit led me to one, a girl. Though, of course, it didn't know I followed.” He gestured towards the hospital. “She is in there.”

We walked, not to the large automatic glass doors, but around the side. The building was an older hospital, made of scored stone blocks.

“Hold on to me.”

“What?”

“Put your arms around my neck and just relax your body.”

Doing as he said, I nearly let go when he jumped, springing like a cricket, high onto the side of the building. Fitting hands and feet in the shallow grooves of the blocks he clambered, one, two, three stories above the ground. We must have been thirty feet up before my mind truly had a chance to comprehend what was happening. He slid open a window and shifting me around with a strength I could only barely comprehend, pushed me up to the ledge.

“
In
, climb in.”

I did as he said, trying very hard not to look down. It was a narrow fit. With his help, I squeezed through, falling very ungracefully to the floor with a loud
thump
. Julian followed effortlessly and soundlessly.

Picking myself up I saw we were in one of the hospital rooms, a private one. A bed of white and steel took up one corner. It was framed by a twisted confusion of tubes, wires, oxygen cylinders, and pumps. All of the hardware was attached to a terribly thin young woman barely making a lump beneath the white sheet, her face hidden under an oxygen mask, dark hair spread out on the pillow. A small, fluffy brown bear and a stuffed Hello Kitty in a pink tutu lay next to her on the bed. The room was silent except for an oxygen pump and heart meter providing a jumpy electronic beat I found unnerving. Julian pulled me forward when I would have hung back.

“Hello, Keiko.”

Her eyelids fluttered and the girl breathed more rapidly inside the mask.

Pulling up a chair, Julian sat by the cold, metal-framed bed, taking her hand in his. The skin covering the knuckles and bones of her fingers was practically translucent, the veins clearly visible on her arm. He stroked her forehead, speaking softly.

I had thought Julian hard and frightening behind that handsome face. Strange, mysterious,
cold and unfeeling
.
His gentle manner with the girl was anything but distant. It took me by surprise.

The girl's mouth moved and Julian lifted the clear plastic mask. She rasped out a few words he had to lean closely to hear.

“This is Alexandra. I am going to watch out for her.”

She whispered something again.

Julian nodded and spoke softly into her ear for some time.

I shivered. The room seemed colder than when we entered. Maybe the window was still open?

It was. And something nasty was crawling through.

A shadow rose up in the corner, a dark form taking shape, cloaked and cowled. I flattened myself against the hospital room wall edging behind the IV drips.

“Julian,” I whispered urgently.

“Yes. I see it.”

Carefully replacing the oxygen mask on the girl, he reached into one pocket of his jacket as he stood, pulling forth an object of some kind. A pentagram or maybe a hexagram. Whatever, it had rather a lot of points. He held it ready at his side. “It is the Kiros, the same one I followed before. The creature wishes to take her essence and toy with it before allowing her to die. Stay behind me.”

No urging necessary for that! If I had been any nearer the door, I would have been gone, gone, gone.

Julian held the object in front of him. He whispered a quick rush of words in a strange language. The temperature in the hospital room plunged. Vapor coalesced as Julian spoke, coming in quick, short bursts, though his lips hardly seemed to move. In the corner, the shadow took on a more solid form. Lifting its head every so slightly, I saw the face beneath the cowl and recoiled. This thing, the Kiros, radiated darkness. Childhood nightmares made suddenly manifest. The monster under the bed crawling into reality.

The girl lifted her hand. She looked up at me, her dark, sunken eyes unreadable. With an effort I didn't know I had in me, I swallowed my own terror, stepped away from the wall and took her hand in mine. There was so little flesh, it was like holding bones. I swallowed again.

“Julian will deal with it.” There was only the slightest tremor in my voice. Facing the thing, I placed myself in front of her. '
Please let him deal with it
,' I prayed silently.

Julian spoke. Words and symbols formed in the air between him and the thing: black, silver, gold, and red. Fearsome
things.
I could feel the power radiating from them. The spirit stretched out its hands, long-fingered and gray. A keening sound came from its mouth that sent chills up and down my spine. Patterns appeared, hanging in the air, gray as the spirit's skin. Julian's summons and the Kiros' faced off against one another like soldiers on a battlefield. Writhing and coiling as though they were living things.

Spells. That's what these mysterious words must be.

This was real magic.

Julian was magic.

Even though I had witnessed some of his power between the walls of my walk-in closet, I'd mentally shoved it into the “think about it later” file. Here in the hospital room, there was no later, only now and the
now
was probably going to crawl over and bite me.

Glancing down, I saw the girl's eyes close, her chest barely rising and falling beneath the sheets. It was probably better she didn't see this anyway. I wished I wasn't seeing it.

There was an infinitesimal pause when nothing seemed to move and then, everything moved at once. Julian appeared to throw his whole weight directly at the wall of spells floating in the air. He sent the magic hurtling towards the Kiros. The spirit's symbols counterattacked. Magic against magic, Julian and the Kiros' spells battled. They writhed and fought with casualties on both sides, the shining words falling away in little puffs of dark vapor. Julian looked more like a conductor than a commander, orchestrating the battle with intricate movements of his hands and arms. His stance wide, he pushed forward inch-by-inch, only to be pushed back by the dark spirit. Forward and back, they battled each other – even though they never touched. Julian's breath was coming fast and hard, condensing in the freezing cold emanating from the Kiros. The sound of thunder shook the room. I couldn't understand why no one came.

One of the symbols broke through Julian's battle line slicing him across the cheek. Blood dripped from the long, thin cut. More and more followed until Julian stood surrounded by a maelstrom of dark magic, the spells rending his coat, his shirt, his flesh.

A symbol took form, larger than the rest. Floating a few feet off the ground, it was even blacker than the Kiros and it reached for Julian, engulfing him in an inky embrace. Julian's form disappeared inside the veil of darkness as though he had fallen into a hole. I couldn't breath for the fear. The Kiros looked straight at me, the keening wail rising in volume. It reached out with long fingers. I dropped the girl's hand looking around desperately for some sort of weapon. How could I fight magic?

There was a wrenching motion and an explosion of light and dark. The bed slid several feet forward, knocking me to the floor. The keening wail was silenced. The center of the room suddenly cleared of darkness. Julian stood, breathing heavily. He wiped at the sweat and blood running down his face with one hand. Stopping its advance, the Kiros, backed away. Putting the force of his entire body into the motion, Julian threw a
word
as though it were a lance. A
bright, shining word made of light that manifested into solid form. Flaring, it flew directly at the Kiros. There was a moment of total silence, an absence of motion and movement where the only thing I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears. Then the Kiros shattered like a glass figurine dropped on a concrete floor. Jagged shards skittering across the linoleum tiles. Within seconds, the pieces began to bubble and smoke until there was nothing left of the death spirit.

Julian fell to his knees, gasping for breath.

I couldn't seem to find my feet so I just stayed on the floor.