Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) (21 page)

“Safer? You
drugged me, Dina, and left me out there – lying dead in a ditch for
all you knew. How is that safe?”

“You weren’t
dead though. We live, we suffer, we die, we come back, we watch the
same things happen to everyone we know. And that’s forever.”

“And you want
to speed that process up?”

“No. Stop it in
it’s tracks is what I want. Stop it dead. Ha!” She wriggled under
the sheet, trying to find a cool and dry spot. There was none.
“They’re all dead. Ghosts, every last one of them.”

And then the
blanket of warm, deep sleep crept over Dina and Katie sat in the
chair watching the even rise and fall of her chest. There was a
small toiletry bag in the locker which Jaye must have fetched
earlier. She unzipped it and rooted around for a mirror. The light
in the room wasn’t fabulous but she could see just well enough to
push her hair back and see the tiny slice above her left eye. It
was just a nick, right on the brow line, where no-one would notice.
Worrying at it, a single drop of blood squeezed out of the wound
and dropped onto the crisp white sheet below.
There’s always
blood.
The thought popped into her mind uninvited. It was true
though.
There shouldn’t be blood. It shouldn’t always be about
blood. It just is.

Death seemed to
haunt her dreams as she fought to grab a few minutes rest before
the others came to takeover and Katie could go home to shower and
change. Her death, Jacks’, Dina’s - and there was red liquid in
each of them. Blood, red wine, crimson ink. Always spilt and always
staining something.

“It’s all okay,
now, Lady Katie. I’m here.”

The green eyed
cowboy stood before her with a hand on Dina’s shoulder. The dream
from earlier, the dream that had been so real it might have been a
memory, came back to her.
Everything will be okay if her green
eyed cowboy is here.
Jack frowned at the tiny cut above her
eye, still with a hand on Dina, still solidifying. Katie watched
this without even questioning it. Caught between nightmares and
reality, everything made perfect sense.
Everything will be okay
because my green-eyed cowboy is here.

And then it was
far from okay.

Okay may as
well have been on another planet.

Dina began to
flatline.

One tense and
tearful phone call later, Jaye came blurring through the medical
centre doors like hell hounds were at her feet. She looked angry
rather than upset; ready for war. Immediately, she stood in the
corridor outside the empty treatment room as if expecting to see
some ghost of Dina still in there. Of course, there was none.
Fearing her reaction, Katie gently turned to Jack and made him lead
her outside. There was no more mileage in hugs or words. The
normally happy and smiling Jaye had stress radiating off her body.
Her best friend had tried to kill herself. that was bound to send
even the most cheerful of people hurtling towards the edge. The
fight with Leo had been out of character too – well, out of
character as far as Katie had seen. She was pretty sure that it had
something to do with what Dina had been speaking about. Not that
Dina had probably been talking much sense just a few minutes ago,
but trying to string together her dreams and what people had been
saying, Katie decided that there was some deep religious thing at
work here making people believe in fate and the afterlife. Maybe.
The explanation was good enough for now.

“You’re
hurt.”

Katie turned
around, lost in her own thoughts, remembering that Jack had come
outside with her. Before she could say anything to him, Jaye walked
out of the doors and stood in the middle of the tiny car park,
rubbing her arms against the chill. She looked a bit like a B movie
zombie, pale and stiff and slack faced. Katie wondered if she
should go over and talk to her. But Jaye was staring at the
ambulance in the car park, her whole body shuddering with the
effort of keeping it all together. It was better to leave her to
herself for a while.

“What
happened?”

Katie stepped
out of his arms, suddenly angry. “What right do you have to ask
that? What right do you have to even be here?”

“I… you needed
me so I came.”

“Oh, hell no,
Jack! I needed you when I got hurt. I needed you when I was in
danger. And you weren’t there. You weren’t anywhere!” It clicked
then. He’d been everywhere with her this week. He had been the
invisible hand that slipped into hers when she was scared, he was
that feeling of being watched when no-one was around. “You weren’t
there when it mattered.”

“I’m here now.
And I can fix this.”

He was here
now? That wasn’t the comforting sentence it was meant to be. Jack
could see that as soon as the words tripped off his tongue. “Great!
Everywhere you go, trouble, pain, blood. It’s never far
behind.”

“I was meant to
keep you safe.”

“Good job.” She
gestured to her entire body. If there was an inch of it that didn’t
have scars, visible or not, then Katie would have loved to hear
about it. Jack began his tale, once more, of how he couldn’t stay
away from her and so on, but Katie just faked a yawn and rolled her
hand in the air. She didn’t need to hear this all over again. “Why
is it that whenever I dream about you – and don’t go getting
excited, you’re just infectious. Like measles. I always end up
getting hurt?”

“I let you see
a little bit of my past. The only part I can’t seem to forget,
matter of fact. By taking you back to my own violent death in a
dream – when we kissed actually – you were taken there in reality
too. It was just a moment but it was enough for him to see you.” He
paused and tried to looked away but Katie’s deep brown eyes – so
very, very sad – drew him back. “And now he knows you, he can find
you every time you close your eyes.” There was so much more to be
said on the subject, so much he needed to warn her about, but
tonight was not the night for it. He was just smart enough to
realise that she needed to rage and yell and scream her heart out
tonight.

“But you were
there and I thought you would save me. For some reason I always
think my green eyed cowboy is going to save me from the
monsters.”

“And he always
will.”

“Don’t make
promises you’ll only break, Jack.” He tried to reach for her again
but Katie backed away once more, pushing his grasping arms away.
Then she reconsidered and grabbed his left wrist. “You should have
scabs, scars, something. I remember you punched the stadium
seats.”

“I… heal
fast.”

“Something else
you can’t tell me,” she spat. Such anger was rare for Katie but a
vicious temper always came to the fore when she was under a lot of
pressure. Being pulled in a million different directions was only
fuelling her fire. “Is that another one of these stupid damn
rules
everyone raves about?”

“Yes.”

“Oh for God’s
sake.
Break
the rules. Just tell me what the hell is going
on?”

“Guys!” Jaye
was suddenly standing between them, looking from one to the other.
“Lovers quarrel – not helpful.”

Katie was
shocked into silence and Jack put his head in his hands. The girl
lying in some hospital bed in that sterile, impersonal looking
building had brought all this anger to the fore and had been soon
forgotten. “I’m so sorry Jaye.”

“I don’t think
I want you here tonight. Either of you.”

“I’m sorry. I
mean it.”

“I know. I just
can’t have this, this fighting around us.”

Jack fixed Jaye
with his sea-green eyes and nodded off to the side. They stood over
by the ambulance, Jack leaning against it, his hat pulled low over
his face but not quite low enough to disguise the shine of guilt
and tears. Jaye stood in front of him, arms folded and waiting for
him to speak. The cold night air carried their voices jus enough
that Katie could hear their words, though little of it made sense.
Everything will be okay now my green eyed cowboy is here.
Every breath she took seemed a little bit harder when he was around
though. Every heartbeat seemed like a countdown to her last. She
ached to believe he could make the world normal again.

“I used Dina to
bring me through. I used Katie before but I got a warnin’. So I
used Dina so I could be near her and I took too much,” he said all
in a rush. Not a single word came from Jaye’s mouth. The silence
filled the night like a roar. “I hope she’s not on my side.”

Before the
questions could even begin to form in Katie’s mind, something
incredible happened. Jack began to disappear. Not the showy
puff-of-smoke crap street magicians would have you believe or the
holographic flickering of sci-fi shows – he was just there one
minute and the next… slightly less there. Jaye stuck her hand
straight out in front of her and a little bit up. She was trying to
grab hold of him. Katie wanted to run forward and pull her away.
Her feet were rooted to the spot. Jack had all but disappeared.
Jaye jolted her body forward, as if she had just hit a brick wall.
Her hand, where she had reached out, had vanished too. She forced
something forward.

“Oh no you
fucking don’t you dead piece of shit!” Her muscles were straining,
had to be, but there was no sign of that happening.

Suddenly Jack
coalesced at the end of her arm, pinned by the throat to the side
of an ambulance. The grip looked tight enough to bruise.

“Are we doin’
this now? I grew up bare fist fightin’.”

“Not right now,
babe. Got better things to do.” She did not let go, step away, even
blink. Something passed between them. Katie felt it like some weak
pulse in her stomach. It was something darker and more dangerous
than she could ever imagine. It was trying to get inside her,
begging, pleading to come in from the cold. Jaye kissed Jack on the
forehead and backed off. “But it will happen.”

It felt more
like a warning than a threat.

When Jaye had
gone and that dark pulse had faded to nothing, Katie watched Jack
fold himself to a crouch and coughed. And then he stood up as if
nothing had happened. “Jack!” Katie ran to him, more out of concern
for a person who might be hurt than out of affection. She crouched
and turned his face this way and that, looking for bruising or red
marks. Was it too soon for bruises to appear? But there was nothing
– not even pinked up skin. It seemed a very long time ago when
seeing something like that would have shocked her. “I’m going
home.” And then she said what was possibly the dumbest thing in the
world but the one thing she was sure would get the right reaction.
More hurt than she wanted choked her voice when she ordered him,
“don’t follow me.”

By the time
Katie had walked a few blocks to cool off and had squeezed through
the locked gates to the athletics ground, Jack was already waiting
for her at the end of the long jump pit. She didn’t bother to ask
how he had got in there. It was time for round 2,

Her phone
vibrated midnight the way it always did if it was still registering
movement. Which made her wonder just why she was still moving at
this time of night. What Katie wouldn’t give to still have that
bedtime Mom and Dad had always drilled into her. A lot of stills.
Even Jack was still. He was looking at nothing in particular but he
seemed to be concentrating hard on something. It wouldn’t be at all
surprising if he had some way of communing with Jaye to keep
updated on Dine. The girl
he’d
sent over the edge. Feeling
terrible was high on the emotional list but feeling bad would not
change anything. It wouldn’t bring Dina back. So, like Katie, he
had to do something to cover that jagged hole inside.

“Do you feel
it?”

“I feel a lot
of things. Human trait,” Katie said, not wanting to get too close
to him but unable to stop herself. That dark pull from the hospital
was working, trying to force them closer. Katie dug her heels into
the grass and resisted the pull. It faded when it realised she had
no intention of letting it control her; not completely but enough
to be only mildly annoying. “Do you even have feelings?”

“That power?
Something dark and a little bit frightening.”

“What if I do?
I might not though.”

“You do. I can
see it in your eyes like you can see it in mine.” He frowned again
at the tiny cut over her eye. It shouldn’t have happened. But he’d
known. “There’s a lot of it in town.”

“My arm? My
eye?” if Katie ever went back to visit her family with
unexplainable scars, she could kiss goodbye to her sporting career.
Bye bye independence. Nice to know you, academy education.

“There’s a
man,” Jack began, taking a deep breath. “He saw you when I took you
into my nightmares and now he knows you, he can get to you every
time you fall asleep.”

So, if this man
could get her wile she slept, the answer was just to never sleep
again. Simple. As an athlete, her body needed sleep to repair
itself after exertion, and she was positive it would start
systematically shutting down if she denied herself for more than 24
hours. Some people survived on power naps and microsleeps – good
for them. Katie wasn’t in that minority. “How long has he been
after me?” It slipped out of her mouth before her brain had caught
up. It sounded like a filling time question and, since Jack was
taking his own sweet time in answering, she set her mind whirring
to find a question that mattered.

“A few days.”
He was hiding something.

“Fine. Who is
he?”

“The man who
killed me,” he whispered, so quietly that Katie was sure she had
misheard. No. That wasn’t exactly right. She knew she had heard him
correctly, she just wanted to hear it wrong. “He killed me and now
he wants you too.”

“I already
regret asking this but why?”