Possession (13 page)

“Unless you have a better idea. I’m not leaving
here without you.” He suddenly sounded so earnest, and I didn’t know how to
respond. Here was a death dealer that wanted to
protect
me when the rest of his kind wanted me dead. The fact that
he cared what happened to me was…surprising. I felt my heart flutter a bit when
his eyes met mine. “Luke is still with me. Until I force him out or he leaves,
I’m stuck with your boyfriend. My mom is mage-born, but her power isn’t
particularly strong. She can’t sense Luke’s presence inside me. But if I go
back home to the rest of the family and the guild, they’ll know I’m possessed.”

I remembered asking Luke once,
“How can you tell if you meet someone who’s
possessed, someone who has a spirit commanding them?”

The shape of
his jaw and his blond hair were outlined in the glow from the fireplace inside
his cousin’s renovated barn. “You can tell sometimes, but not always. You can
feel the wrongness inside them. You feel it in your gut.”

If Dean’s guild felt the “wrongness” inside him,
they would do their best to get rid of Luke.

“And if they sense Luke…” I stopped, unable to
actually say the words out loud.

“They would force him out. They would banish him
to the in between.” He reached out and touched my arm. “I don’t want us to be
enemies. I know you care about this guy. I mean, look at the lengths you’ve gone
to bring him back. I’ve heard the two of you talking. I know if you try to
bring him back in another body that you risk losing him. He may come back wrong—come
back different. I was thinking…maybe there’s another solution.”

I looked down at his hands, which were now wrapped
around my arm. They were warm against my skin. I couldn’t help it—my body
began to respond. I felt my skin begin to tingle. I felt a feeling of desire
spread over me. For weeks, I’d been with Luke in this body. I’d been held in
these arms. I’d been kissed by these lips. Embarrassed at the way I was feeling,
I took a deep breath and forced my thoughts back to what Dean was saying. “What
other solution?”

“Find some kind of spell that could transfer Luke
from me to someone else. Some spell that would allow him to move effortlessly
from me to another, without first banishing him into the ether sea. I know it’s
a long shot, but this can’t be the first time someone’s tried it.”

Was it possible? Was there a spell out there that would
keep Luke safe as he jumped bodies? “And you’re willing to escape with me and
help me try to find such a spell?”

“I’m not saying that I’m going to let Luke stay
inside me forever. But I’m willing, for a short time, to let him be. I’m
willing to give you some time to try and find a solution before he has to go.”

He was offering to let Luke stay, at least for a while.
I thought I’d have to butter him up to the idea or con him into it. But here he
was, offering it up to me on his own. Dean was a decent guy.

He seemed to take my silence for an affirmative.
“So it’s a plan. I let my mom think my recovery is happening slowly. You do as
much research as you can with those books in Dr. Barton’s office. I’ll build up
my strength as best I can. In a few days, a week tops, we make a run for it. If
you can’t find what you’re looking for in the doctor’s library, I know other
places on the outside we can look.” He suddenly seemed to realize his hand was
still on my arm and quickly pulled it away. “What do you have to lose? I help
you escape and you get to spend more time with your boyfriend.”

What he was saying made sense, but there was something
about his body language—the way his eyes kept shifting away from mine. I
suddenly didn’t trust him. I couldn’t help but wonder if he had an ulterior
motive.

But a small voice in my mind whispered,
Does it really matter
?

He was granting me my wish. Luke would still be
with me, and we would get out of this hellhole.

* * *

I did my best to avoid Dean for the rest of the day. I
wanted to stay out of Rachel’s way. I watched from across the room as she spent
time fussing over him. A group of doctors showed up, clipboards in hand, and
stood around Dean, staring down at him. Eventually, after much
handwaving
and group discussion, a nurse whisked him off.
Rachel and the doctors followed close behind. I wondered if he would be able to
keep up the charade. Could he convince them that he needed to stay?

I spent my time playing a few games of checkers
with Andrew. Today he was even more tightly strung than usual. He was shuffling
two black checker pieces back and forth across the table, stopping every few
moments to look around him, his eyes wide with fear, as if he were expecting someone
to pop out and attack.

“Are you all right?” I finally asked.

He looked over his shoulder for the third or
fourth time since he sat down. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. It’s just…”

I sat there, waiting for him to continue. The
silence stretched on and he started nervously tapping his foot against the
floor.

He leaned in and whispered across the table. “It’s
just that I’ve been having…well…visions.”

“Don’t you usually have visions?” He was, after
all, a reader—I imagined visions were part of his repertoire.

His hand reached up and touched the pouch hanging
around his neck. “Not often, not often at all. This pouch helps keep out a lot
of random thoughts that float by. It mutes my powers considerably. It takes
extremely strong emotions to break through the barrier.” His whole body went
still for a moment. “These visions have been unusually disturbing.”

“What have you seen?”

“A ceremony and strange symbols painted with blood
on the floors and walls.”

Now he had my full attention. He was describing
the dream I’d had while I was confined to the straitjacket. “Did you see anyone
in the vision?”

“That’s the part I find so…” He paused and cleared
his throat. “There was a boy being hurt.” He stared off for a few moments
before continuing. “I could hear the sound of hearts beating and terrible, horrific
screams filled the air.”

“Who was hurting the boy? Did you see them?”

“A strange figure in a white cloak. It was a man.
He spoke words I didn’t understand and held up a skull with feathers at the
top.”

The skull with feathers. The same one I had seen
in my dream…or was it a vision? Either way, I’d witnessed a murder from the
victim’s perspective, though it felt like the scene happened to me. Parts of
the vision made no sense. I’d seen the killer with a heart in his hands. Was it
the victim’s heart—
my
heart—in his hands? I knew she’d been alive, whoever she was. Had some
magic been performed on her? The fact that thoughts had still been running through
her head even while her heart lay beating in the killer’s hands… The whole
thing made no sense.

And now Andrew said he saw a boy being hurt?

Andrew picked up the checker pieces and tossed
them onto the board. “I’ve had many visions before, when I was first learning
my powers and then when I came into them fully. I can sometimes see things that
have happened in the past, or things that are going to happen in the future.
Things from the past have a certain feel to them. It’s like an echo that you’re
hearing. I don’t know—it’s hard to explain. I just got the impression
that what I was seeing was something that happened a long time ago.”

“Something that maybe happened a few months ago?
Did you recognize the boy as someone you knew from in here?” I couldn’t keep
the excitement out of my voice. Maybe we can finally unmask the maniac! As long
as we were in here, Luke and I were still potential targets.

Andrew violently shook his head back and forth.
“No. No, I’d never seen the boy before. And I had the impression that it was
years…a lot of years ago that this happened.”

From all that Mildred and I had uncovered about
the killings in this place, they’d started up about a year ago. Is it possible
that whoever’s behind this has killed before? I’d seen stories on TV about
serial killers who killed for a short time, then suddenly stopped only to start
back up again later.
Are the killings
some kind of pattern repeating itself?

“You saw his full face? You had a proper look at
it?”

Andrew nodded his head. “I did. He was a man in
his thirties. Dark hair, brown eyes.” His finger reached up and glided across
his chin. “He had a long scar across his chin. And a tattoo.” This time his
finger slid down to his neck. “It was of a dragon eating its own tail, and it came
down around his neck—like a necklace. I think it was some sort of ancient
religious symbol.”

It would be easy to spot the killer with a tattoo
like that—unless he went around dressed in turtlenecks. “You didn’t
recognize the man? Maybe he’s a doctor, a nurse, or an orderly.”

“No. It’s not someone from in here. I’m sure it’s
not a face I’ve seen before.”

We had a lead, but it didn’t seem to get us any closer
to finding the killer. “Have you ever thought about taking off the pouch and
trying to use your abilities again?”

Andrew shook his head violently and scooted his
chair back from the table. “I couldn’t do that. You don’t understand how bad it
is. How the voices come from all directions, flinging themselves at me like
arrows. The pain is quite intense.”

“You can’t keep them out? You can’t put up some
kind of mental wall to keep them at bay?” Using his power without the pouch…maybe
it would take only one try for Andrew to conjure up the killer’s name.

“I’ve tried so many times. They’re too loud. There
are too many!” He stood up and waved his hands wildly in the air. “No matter
how strong a barrier I put up, they find a way to bring it crashing down.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t.” He forced himself to calm down.
“It’s the vision. It’s the second time I’ve had it. I find the whole thing very
unsettling.”

“I can imagine,” I said in a soothing voice. I
gestured toward the board. “Do you want to play another game?”

His hand went to his forehead. “I think I’ll go
back to my room and lie down until lunch. It was nice seeing you. I enjoy our
games.”

I gave him a smile. “So do I.” And the strange
thing was, I wasn’t lying. There weren’t a lot of activities or distractions to
help pass the time in here, so I actually looked forward to playing checkers
every afternoon with Andrew. I watched him walk away. He was having visions of
murders that happened in the past. I was having dreams about weird things. The
more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that his visions and my
dreams were all tied together somehow. The ritual, the room with blood, the
beating hearts, the screams…

It all had to be connected—I just had to
figure out how.

I was standing in line in the cafeteria, tray in hand, when
Dean joined me.

It looked like macaroni and cheese again for lunch.
The ladies were lifting plates with small bricks of the cheese-and-noodle
concoction onto passing trays.

He looked over at the women dishing out the food.
“Does it taste as bad as it looks?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Most of the time.”

He grimaced. “Terrific.”

“How did the doctor visit go?” I asked as we
shuffled along in line.

“They asked me a ton of questions and poked at me
for a while.”

“And their final verdict?”

“I’m alive and kicking. They say it’s a miracle I
came out of the mental zombie state I was in. They’re hoping for a full
recovery. My mom is over the moon.”

It was finally our turn for food. I dutifully
raised my tray, and a woman with a hairnet put a plate on it piled high with
macaroni and cheese. “It must be good to see her again.”

Dean followed suit and raised his tray. “It is.”

We moved slowly down the food train, loading our
trays with the unsightly and questionable food. I motioned to the nearest table
and we both moved toward it. “The rest of your family—will they be coming
to see you?”

Dean shook his head. “Not for a while. My father
is traveling out of the country on business. My brother is away at college. My
home is quite a few hours from here. It’s surprising my mom came up to see me
as much as she did.”

“She must really care about you.” I sat down at
the table.

Dean sat next to me. “She does. She’s happy to
have me back. I’m happy to be back.” He lifted a piece of slightly wilted
lettuce from the salad. “Though I’m not so happy about eating this food.”

“Dinner is usually not nearly this bad.”

“Somehow that’s not so encouraging. How did you
spend your afternoon?”

“Playing checkers with Andrew—a reader I met
a few days ago. He was telling me he’s been having visions.”

“And by the look on your face, that’s a bad
thing.”

I didn’t realize that my feelings were so
transparent. “It’s just that he had a vision that was very much like a dream I
had the other night.” The images of my dream flashed before my eyes, and I quickly
lost my appetite.

“A dream or a vision?” Dean asked, watching me as
I pushed my food around my plate.

“I thought it was a dream, but now I’m not so
sure.”

He raised an eyebrow and took a bite of food.

I felt a chill run down my back and a breeze glide
across my arm. I waited for a voice to speak out. Nothing. No pleas, no images,
just the sounds of the living people around me eating their lunch and talking.
I looked over at Dean. “You’ve been through the first ritual, so you must feel
the spirits in this place.”

He looked uncomfortable. “The vibe in here isn’t
exactly relaxed.”

“There are spirits here full of unrest. They’re
pleading for help.”

“And they’ve come to you?”

The breeze was back—this time across my
cheek. “They have,” I admitted, waiting for another form of contact. But still,
none came. I pointed to the salt package. “Make sure to take that with you.”

“Why?”

“You have to sprinkle the salt across your doorway
and your windowsill.”

He looked amused. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was. Choking ghosts will come into your
room at night.
I crossed one over, but I know there's
more than one in here.
”

“This place just gets better and better.” He took
another bite of food and swallowed it. “Edible, but just.”

“You get used to it.” Despite my lost appetite, I
forced myself to eat. It was a long time until dinner, and I didn’t have
anything to trade for some contraband snacks.

He poked at the stale roll. “Hopefully I won’t be
here long enough to get used to it. Tell me more about these visions and the
spirits.”

I described in detail the dream I’d had and what
Andrew had seen.

“Do you think this madman is killing to power a
spell?” he asked when I was finished.

I shook my head. “There’s no dagger and no Latin.
Whoever he is, he’s not one of us.”

Dean looked thoughtful. “A mage with a different
kind of magic. We have no idea why he’s killing people, but from what you said
he’s definitely using the victim’s blood to create those symbols for some kind
of ceremony.”

I dropped my fork at the mention of the blood. “I
think he is. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“And the beating hearts? How do they fit in?”

“I’m not sure. In my dream, I was inside of someone…seeing
things that happened through her eyes, feeling what she felt. I was a girl the
killer abducted. And then he did a spell and there was so much pain.” I
squeezed my eyes shut at the memory of that crushing weight on my chest. “At
some point I saw the killer holding a heart in his hand.
My
heart…” I swallowed hard, trying to clear my thoughts. “No—not
my heart, really. It was the victim’s heart. Yes, I’m sure it was her heart, but
I saw no knife, felt no thrust of a blade. I…could still see through her eyes even
though the killer held her heart.”

It had to be magic
.
The blood from
the heart had been running down the killer’s hands and wrists, but there had
also been smears of blood on his forehead and cheeks. My mind clicked something
into place, and I suddenly knew where I had seen an image like that before.

I’d
watched a documentary once about hunting. It had talked about the
“blooding”
rite—when hunters would smear the blood of the animal they killed onto
their face in some kind of tribute. Did this maniac think of himself as a
hunter?

There was another detail to consider, too. The
psycho wasn’t just using the blood
to smear on himself—he was also using it to create symbols. Both Andrew
and I had seen a room covered in symbols. Signs painted in blood that I assumed
were part of some magic ritual.

I
thought back to what I knew about the patients that had died. There had been no
talk of their hearts being removed. Each death had looked like an accident or a
suicide. If someone had removed their still-beating hearts, surely that would
be a clear sign of murder.

“It has to be some kind of spell he’s doing,” I
blurted out. “A spell that takes the heart from the chest without cutting into it.
Is that even possible?” My right hand went to my chest. “There was pain. Overwhelming
pain.” It was weird sitting here, talking to him. Looking into those eyes that
were now blue. The face was so familiar, yet the expression it wore was
different than I was used to. If Luke had been sitting close to me like this,
staring into my eyes, he would have reached over and brushed his hand through
my hair.
Luke.
I kept expecting Luke
to pop up and chime in at any minute. I looked out the window. The sun was
still shining. It was only one o’clock, which meant another eleven hours before
Luke and I could be together again. Or maybe even less. Luke
had
said he’d been waking up before the
witching hour.

Dean pushed his tray away. He’d only eaten half his
food. “The ones that have died so far—they each died a different way?”

“One was an overdose, though I have no idea how
the girl got so many pills. And then there was the boy who had an epileptic
seizure, but his family swore he’d never had one before.” I took a sip of milk
and tried to remember everything I had heard from the staff and patients about
each death. “One died of heart failure. There was a woman who slit her wrists.
And last month Sabrina, a teenage girl just down the hall from me, hanged
herself. Those are just the ones I’ve been able to get details on. There have
been more.”

A dark expression crossed his face. “You’re
convinced they were all murdered?”

I shrugged. “I don’t have proof, but it seems odd
that every month there’s a death. What’re the odds? I knew Sabrina and there’s no
way she would have hanged herself. She was a devout Catholic. She was also extremely
slight and weak. I can’t imagine that she’d have the strength to hoist her bed
up against the wall. And where did she get the rope? It’s not like there’s rope
just laying about in the hallway or supply cupboards.”

Dean started drumming his fingers on the tabletop.
“From what I can see, they don’t let visitors out of the common areas, which
means the lunatic killing patients must also be in here.”

I looked around. “He has to be a patient or one of
the staff. But Andrew swears he’s never seen the man in his vision before.”

“And you don’t have any suspects on your list?”

“I don’t. Mildred’s convinced it’s one of the
orderlies.”

He took a slow look around the room. His eyes came
to rest on a big man wearing a white uniform standing by the door. “The
orderlies are some truly mean and twisted individuals. Payback and nightly
torture seem to be the norm around here.”

“Seem to be.”

He suddenly had an odd look on his face.

“What?” I asked.

His expression was troubled. “I’m just surprised
my mom would put me in a place like this. You’d think she would‘ve spent more
time checking it out.”

I poked at my salad—the only edible things were
the pieces of carrot and tomato. “They
don’t
go around advertising how nuts it is in here. And honestly,
who’d
believe all the things that go on?
Especially since it’s the crazies complaining.”

He looked at the group of people sitting at the
next table. “The whole place has an eerie vibe to it.”

“I’ve felt it, too. It’s not just the staff. It’s
the place itself. It feels evil at times.”

He gave me a wide grin. “Crappy food, sadistic
staff, evil place… So glad I woke up.”

I smiled. “Yeah, look at all the fun you were
missing.” An image flashed in my mind of those lips kissing me, of those hands
running down my body.
No
, I told
myself,
Luke was in control when those
things happened, not Dean
. The whole situation we were in made me feel
extremely awkward. I looked away and cleared my throat. “We need to get out of
this place as soon as we can. Especially now, since you seem to be on the
killer’s hit list.”

“It won’t be so easy for him if he tries it again.
I’m no longer an easy victim. If he comes after me, I can stop him.”

“A lot of the deaths have happened in the middle
of the night. If someone had full-access keys like Mildred, they’d have the run
of the place.”

“Not a comforting thought. Maybe I’ll sleep with
one eye open.” He then seemed to realize what he was saying. “I mean…Luke will
have to sleep with one eye open. You normally go to Luke at night, to his room—I
mean, my room?”

I nodded. “Mildred and I go every night.”

“Maybe Luke should start coming to your room. If
Luke is aware at night, it might be best if he keeps watch over you.”

Dean’s eyes were full of worry…worry for
me
. I couldn’t help but find it touching
that he actually felt concerned with my well-being. Every time I turned around,
he was offering to help me.

“Everyone in this place is a potential target. How
many days left until another murder if the killer keeps on schedule?”

“Three days until the end of the month,” I
answered. I knew we had no choice but to try an escape, but I was worried about
our chances. “Do you think you’re strong enough to try and escape tomorrow
night?”

He moved his legs from under the table and hit the
right one with his fist. “I was in that wheelchair a long time. They gave me
some physical therapy a couple times a week, which kept my muscles from
atrophy, but I’m still weak. I can walk on my own, but I don’t think I can run dead
out yet. And there’s the fence.”

I looked out the window into the yard. The frosted
metal gleamed in the sunlight. “It’s at least twenty feet high and charged full
of electricity.” I still hadn’t worked out how to get the electric fence down.

“If we try to leave before I’m ready, we could get
caught. You know, you could escape out of here on your own tonight and then I
could join you later. My mom will get me out, and we could meet up on the
outside.”

I shook my head. “I’m not leaving here without
Luke.”

“So that stubborn expression now plastered on your
face means end of discussion? There’s no room for argument?”

I gave him a cold stare.

He didn’t bother arguing with me, but instead
looked resigned. “We keep watch, try not to get killed, and then get out of
here the first chance we get.”

Every month, someone died. There were three days
left until the end of the current month. For those next three days, the serial
killer would be hunting the halls, and anyone who crossed his path could be his
next victim. But what other option did we have than to watch and wait?

Dean picked up the packet of salt off his tray and
slid it into his pocket. “And we must not forget to protect ourselves from the
choking ghosts.”

An unsettling thought crossed my mind. “When I
finished the first trial, Luke said I was wide open. He said the ritual made it
easy for a spirit to possess me.”

He nodded his head. “It’s happened to me
twice
now. First during the second
ritual and then with your boyfriend.”

“But is it possible for a spirit that’s strong
enough…” I took a deep breath. “Do you think another spirit could try and
possess you and force Luke out?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s possible. I’ve never
heard of such a thing happening.” He reached over and put his hand on mine.
“You said Luke is strong. I certainly haven’t been able to shove him out yet.”
He smiled. “Not that I’m trying. I think Luke could hold his own if another
ghost tried to move in.”