Second Verse (27 page)

Mom pouts. “I’ve been waiting sixteen years, holding down the fort without killing
anyone
. Sorry if I got a little excited.”

“Suffering, my dear. Haven’t you learned? Isn’t the suffering worth so much more than the kill?”

The kill
.

My stomach rolls, bile burning the back of my throat.

She huffs. “You do it your way, I’ll do it mine.”

He gives her a sideways glance, eyes dancing. “I can’t stop wondering if you’ve gotten soft in this life.”

With a growl, she leans forward to slash the air with her knife, cutting through my leg, just above the ankle. When I cry out in pain, she lunges for me, all the while watching for his approval. Blood quickly soaks through my pants.

He stops her with a hand on her arm. “Tsk. Patience.”

And then I’m dry heaving, bent sideways at the waist and trying to will myself to keep it together.

It’s just blood. It’s just blood
. I repeat the mantra, but it doesn’t help. Each place I’m cut—my arms, wrist, palm, head, neck and leg, pulse with the blood oozing out. I squeeze my eyes shut.

It’s just blood
.

If I pass out, I know this will be it. They won’t let me wake again. And who knows what will happen to my soul.

“Stay calm,” he tells her. “Let’s get this set up. And then, we can rouse the boy and get started.”

This time it’s not dry heaves but real vomit that comes, passing over my trembling lips while I try and drag myself as far away from them as possible. But sheer terror has me rooted in place. Everything in the cellar looks soft, as if the edges of things have faded away.

Mom’s eyes never leave mine, though even she comes in and out of focus.

Stay awake, Lange
.

Everything wavers, but I know this may be my only chance. With the tiny bit of energy I have left, I throw my shoulder against Vaughn, then roll away from him. It’s the only signal I can manage.

He takes it.

He springs into action with a roll that brings him to his knees, then to standing. His hands are tied, but he’s managed to loosen them enough to maneuver his arms.

He’s a shadow to me, my vision so dulled I can’t make out his features. He’s barely got limbs now, moving like a blob in my weakened sight. It reminds me of one of our past-life blurs in Sharon’s photos.

Summoning one last burst of movement, I roll, grabbing the framed picture of Ginny and Hank and smashing it against the wall.

Mom and Dad move toward us in the split second I manage to grab the largest piece of glass. It slips in my blood-coated fingers. Since Mom still grips the knife, I go for her first.

Behind her, Dad and Vaughn tumble in a mess of grunts and flailing limbs. I slice at the air around her. I see two of her—no three. Frantically, I push forward, stumbling over nothing, into the wall. And then I strike something. It’s soft and warm, with little resistance. Mom hisses near my ear before falling back on her heels.

I fall to the floor, my skull bouncing again with a loud crack against the cellar wall. A dark cloud descends over me, and through it I watch Dad push Vaughn against the wall.

“You ready to watch her die? Last time you only saw the aftermath. This time, I’ll let you live until the last drop of life has drained from her.” His hand presses Vaughn’s neck to the wall, the serpent tattoo opening its mouth against Vaughn’s Adam’s apple.

Vaughn’s eyes dart between Dad and Mom and me. My head throbs from where it hit the wall a second time, even more blood gushing down the back of my neck. Panic rises in me, buoyed on the reality of the circumstance. We are going to die. And that’s not the worst part. They are going to force our souls somewhere horrible.

Mom’s on her knees, blood soaking her shirt. Her hands clutch the knife by my feet. She crawls toward me, the knife in her outstretched hand so out of proportion to my addled brain it looks like a sword.

“Do it, Cheryl!” Dad’s scream fills the root cellar.

She looks between us, biting her lower lip.

“Now!”

She moves forward, the knife trembling. Something sharp digs into my knee. A quick glance down reveals the gilded, antique bird’s wing. With my left hand, I scoop up Ginny’s comb.
With the glass still clutched in my right, I attack the air with both hands as the room goes dark, the panic and blood loss finally just too much. Grunts and the sound of pounding flesh fill the space, and the smell of blood is everywhere. Something clangs against the glass, the force vibrating up my arm. I’m shoved right, then left, nearly falling backward. A burning pain cuts at my shoulder as the knife slices through my flesh. I push back with everything I’ve got, digging as deep as I can.

A blunt, heavy object hits my temple. Pain shrouds me like a white-hot wave.

W
HEN
I
OPEN
my eyes, I see something I don’t expect.

Stace.

And Ben.

They sit at the foot of my bed. Overhead there’s the sound of an intercom, behind me the beep of machines.

Hospital noises.

Rhythmic pounding fills my head. My body burns and aches, my mouth so dry even the idea of speaking seems impossible.

“Hey,” I manage.

“Don’t move!” Ben’s immediately at my side, fingers with his neatly trimmed nails lined up against the metal rail. “I’ll get the nurse.”

Once he’s in the hall, Stace stands, leaning against the doorframe. Her black eyeliner is heavy under her eyes, smudged, and her hair is in some kind of fancy bun. “You’re going to be okay,” she says, looking down at her feet. “Kelly will be, too. Apparently, Vaughn saved her.”

A nurse pushes a cart into the room. She shoos Stace from the room and leans over me. She has a blood pressure cuff on my arm and motions for me to open my mouth. She places a thermometer under my tongue.

“Well, how are you feeling, darlin’?”

“Hmmm.”

“It’s okay. No need to talk. You had an ordeal. There’s some officers here to talk to you. You up for it?”

Officers?

Oh.

Flashes start to come back. The Hunt. Kelly. Home. Mom’s pictures. The letter.

The root cellar.

Vaughn.

My father. My mother. Except they weren’t.

The knives.

Vaughn.

I choke on the thermometer, spitting it against the blanket.

He was fighting my dad. I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine him as he usually is, lazy smile and tender eyes. I ignore the memory of the tattooed serpent around his throat. The knives glistening in the dim light.

“Vaughn?” I ask in a sandpaper voice. Behind me, one of the monitors beeps like crazy. The nurse places her hand on mine but I can’t feel her. I look down and see how many bandages are on my arms. I look like a mummy girl.

“Just relax now. You don’t have to talk to them if you don’t want to. It’s only been a few hours. I’ll tell them to come back tomorrow.”

A few hours? That explains Stace’s eyeliner and hair. The Hunt was only last night, just a few hours ago? What time is it? The clock across from my bed tells me it’s four. Four o’clock in the morning?

“When did I get here? Where is Vaughn?”

The nurse continues to bustle by the foot of the bed. “Shhh. It’s been a long night. Everything will be okay. I’ll tell the officers to come back. You just rest and feel better, honey.”

It’s like she’s purposely ignoring my question about Vaughn. My throat is too tight with fear to ask anything else. She wheels a tray next to me, placing a pitcher with ice water and a cup on its
surface. I wrack my brain, trying to remember what happened last night.

“Breakfast is in a few hours,” the nurse says in a soothing voice. “Any requests?”

I shake my head. “I don’t want food.” What I want is Vaughn.

She looks at me with a sad expression and smoothes my hair back. She turns the bedside fluorescent light off and tucks the blanket around my legs. I close my eyes and let the exhaustion drag me back into sleep.

I
WAKE TO
the sound of crinkling plastic. With my eyes still closed, I imagine plastic grocery bags, crumpling in the wind. The beeping still goes on.

I’m still alive.

I open my eyes, just slits at first, trying out the real world to see what it has to offer.

I see his bruised face and blink.

Don’t let this be a dream
.

But when I open my eyes again, wider this time, he’s closer. Beside me, he smells like sweat and the root cellar dirt still caked on him, his hand like pure heat on my shoulder. My face stings when hot tears slide down the scratches on my cheeks and into the corners of my mouth.

“Hey you,” he says close to my ear. Gently, so gently, he lets his lips stray from my lobe to my temple. I turn my face to his. Even with the bandages, the sheets aggravate the cuts on my body and head, but I can’t stop moving toward him. He stops me by leaning closer, with his lips hovering against mine.

“You saved us,” he says.

T
HE NURSES LET
him use the shower in my room. His mother brings him clothes. No one asks him to leave. They know he won’t.

But what really matters is that I know it. He sits in the chair by my bed and I fall asleep with my bandaged hand nestled comfortably in his. The nurses keep the blinds closed tight so even when the sun rises, it feels almost like night.

For hours, nightmares wake me. But each time my eyes open, I see our clasped hands. Sometimes he’s awake, ready to calm me with the brush of his lips or the pure, simple look in his eyes. Sometimes he’s slumped over in his chair, snoring. But his hand never leaves mine.

After a particularly violent dream I wake with a start. When the cold air sneaks beneath the gauze to chill my fingers, I realize he’s gone. I half sit, the pain ricocheting in my bones. It skates across every exposed surface of me. But worse than the pain, is the fear of losing him again.

“Shhh,” Vaughn says from behind me. His arm curls around my stomach. He’s crawled into my bed.

It hurts so bad to turn toward him, but I do. I wrap my leg around his and his arms circle me like all the stars in the universe.

He mumbles sleepy words against my lips. I mumble some too. And then the hospital bed is filled with half-asleep kisses and the taste of him is the best medicine I could ask for.

B
Y LUNCHTIME
I’
M
up and showered and I nibble on my grilled cheese and stare at the TV, which plays some soap opera on mute. Vaughn watches too, feasting on a Twinkie and a cup of coffee.

“Okay,” I say. “Just tell me everything. The cops are coming back soon and I don’t even have a clue what happened.”

“What
do
you remember?”

“I don’t know. My mom.” I swallow. “I can’t even call her that, can I? This is so weird. What happened to her down there?”

Vaughn spins his coffee cup in his hands. His eyes don’t meet mine.

“She’s gone, Lange.”

“Gone?” My voice lilts in question. But I already know the answer. “I did it, didn’t I?”

He nods. “But you had to. And it saved us.”

The pit in my stomach lurches, threatens to come up. I push my lunch tray away. “How?” I whisper.

“You had that glass in your hand, and that comb thing,” he says quietly. “You attacked her, somehow. She fell, she was gone, I think … soon … after that. And you were lying nearby. You were passed out but I didn’t know. Didn’t know if you were okay. It took Gerard’s attention for a second, when she slumped down that way. It was all I needed. My hands were tied, but I put them, somehow, around his neck. He struggled, but eventually I
broke my hands out of the rope. We were too evenly matched at that point. He grabbed his suitcase and took off.”

“Did they catch him?”

Vaughn’s silence is answer enough.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “What else?”

“Your parents. The police are looking for your real parents. After I called them from your house, we were brought here but I wasn’t really hurt, so they questioned me for a while. I told them everything I remembered hearing down in that cellar, well everything that wasn’t Obitus or rebirth related. They know you were kidnapped as a kid. They’ll find your real parents … ”

My real parents.

“How is this possible? I found the letter and went looking for that cellar. I found Ginny’s stuff, our stuff. But then, when I saw them …
him
. And then after that … you, knocked out like that. God, it’s all a blur, really. How … ”

“It was weird,” he says. “At the community center, I saw this creepy guy. He had this white blond hair, but like punk dyed. And he looked older, yet familiar. He was dressed young, like he didn’t want to stand out. After my argument with you—”

“Oh my God, I am so sorry about all that. How could I—”

He waves my worries away. “After our argument,” he says again, “I was up on the stage and I saw the guy again sort of in the backstage area, near the power lines and setup. He looked so familiar and then I remembered those pictures on your dresser. It was him, but different. And it was freaky because—”

“He was supposed to be dead.”

“Exactly. So I watched him closely, not believing what I was seeing.”

I lean forward, rapt with Vaughn’s story.

“The lights went out and I didn’t think it at the time, but when I went over it with the cops, I’m sure it was him. He somehow tripped the power and then took off across the room.
I wasn’t far behind him but he moved quickly. I knew where you were and I knew, right then, that he knew it too. I reached out and spun him around. There was too much confusion for many people to notice, I guess. It was so dark. But Kelly was there, like right there somehow, by the door, I think. It’s kind of a blur, but she said my name, and I knew her voice. The next thing I knew, she was on the floor and I was being dragged outside. There was a scream. But everything was still so dark in there. I knew the scream wasn’t you, and that is the only thing that kept me going when he dragged me away from that place. I felt like I knew you, at least, were safe in that moment. Even if nothing else made sense.”