Ghost Heart (The PSS Chronicles #3)

by Ripley Patton

  “Walk fifty miles? How long will that take?”

  “That depends on how fast we walk,” Jason said, handing me a pair of men’s long johns and one of the camo jackets.

  We each went to our own corner of the cabin and turned our backs on one another to change into the dry clothes. I hesitated for a moment, feeling the twinge of fear that always came when I knew my arms and scars would be exposed. But it was only a moment. I yanked my damp shirt off over my head, leaving my bra on, which had mostly dried from the heat of my body. In the dim light of the cabin, my arms looked even paler than usual. I always covered them, always hid the evidence away, not just from other people, but also from myself. Olivia had asked me why I cut. So had her mother. I’d given them each a different answer. I had as many answers as I had scars, and as many questions. Was I really done cutting, now that I’d solved the mystery of my weird PSS blood? Had Olivia truly cured me by taking away the blades, or was this just another long reprieve like I’d experienced in the past? Looking at the marks on my arms both shamed and warmed me. But it didn’t warm me enough to stop the goose bumps from breaking out all over my skin from the cold cabin air.

  I shrugged the oversized camo jacket on and buttoned it up. It hung down to my knees nicely so I wasn’t exposed when I took off my pants, which ended up being a lot harder than I’d anticipated. Removing wet jeans requires a level of escapism I’m not sure Houdini could manage. Putting them back on over a pair of dry, oversized long johns is a level up from that. I had to hop and pull and yank with all my might. Even then, everything bunched in all the wrong places, making me feel like a cross between Kim Kardashian and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Still, it was a relief to get the cold jeans off my skin. When I was finally all zipped up and had managed to wrestle the button into the button hole, I turned to find Jason watching me, fully dressed, the .22 slung over his shoulder and the ax tucked into his knife belt.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nice pants dance,” he said, handing me one of the empty water bottles. “We’ll head to the river first to fill these. We can put the water tablets in them, and they should be good to drink in twenty minutes. Put this in your jacket,” he instructed, handing me some of the food, the fishing kit, half the water tabs, and some of the matches. “You’ll need it if we get separated.”

  Separated? That one word terrified me. What would I do out here alone? Probably die, and what I could fit in my pockets wasn’t going to make a difference, but I tucked the stuff away anyway, humoring him.

  Then Jason handed me the fillet knife wrapped in a small piece of cloth he’d cut from the mattress. “And keep this handy, just in case.”

  “Just in case what? I’m attacked by a fish?”

  “In case you need to gut something,” he said grimly, turning toward the door. “I’ll scout ahead. Always stay at least ten feet behind, but keep me in your line of sight. Don’t move until I wave you forward. And if we see anyone, do not engage. Stay hidden and let me handle it.”

  “Okay.” I slipped the knife in my most accessible pocket as he opened the door.

  3

  PASSION

  An hour later, the cabin was nothing but a distant memory in the forest behind us, and I found myself crouched in the mud behind a bush, waiting for Jason to call me forward another ten feet. In front of me, I could hear the river rushing and roaring, so much louder than it had been last night. We were almost there, but I felt like I might die of thirst before we reached it. The sound of the water was maddening, and it taunted me with a freshness I could practically taste in the air. If we were going to make it back to Indy alive, we needed water.

  Still, I was torn. Jason had already warned me we’d be exposed and visible on the banks and the flood levels would be dangerous after the storm. “And there might be bodies,” he’d added. “Everything got pushed downriver last night.” I didn’t want to see those bodies again. For some people, water was a soothing thing, but in my life it had always carried death. A river had killed my sister, Purity. And now this one had taken my friends. I really didn’t want to go back to the river, unless I was going back to save Olivia and Marcus.

  Jason had made his case. It was unwise, and stupid, and it might get us caught. My head knew he was right, but my gut said otherwise. We hadn’t seen any sign of CAMFers since we’d left the cabin. No helicopters. No voices or sounds of pursuit echoing down the valley. I could still feel Olivia’s presence, vague and tenuous. I couldn’t tell if she was near or far, just that she was alive. But even if the CAMFers had taken her, Marcus was still back there in the pool. Olivia would never give him up, which meant Jason and I were the only ones left who knew where he was. I knew the exact spot. I’d watched him sink away from us as Olivia had struggled against me.

  But he wasn’t dead. That was the part of Jason’s argument I knew was wrong. I’d seen Marcus come back from the dead with my own eyes. It had been like a miracle out of the Bible, except better. Not that I thought Marcus was a prophet or Messiah or anything. He was way too flawed and paranoid. But I did believe he was a sign. A sign that had led me to Samantha, and The Hold, and the new truth I’d only just begun to understand. Marcus was crucial to the cause. Samantha had explained that much to me. Each one of us with PSS was important, but Marcus was essential. And time was ticking away. I could feel it. Even a miracle like Marcus’s couldn’t override the forces of nature forever. Jesus had risen after three days, before decay had set in, but he’d been prepped and wrapped and sealed in a tomb. Underwater, Marcus probably had considerably less time than that.

  I looked away from Jason, back the way we’d come, an urgency pulling at me. Something was wrong.

  Suddenly, Olivia’s presence crashed over me stronger than I’d ever felt it before. She was alive and conscious. She was terrified and pissed off. I got a flash of the inside of a car and men—men she loathed with every fiber of her being. The connection had never been this sharp before, this clear. Not even when she’d been in the same room with me. It wasn’t strong because she was close. In fact, I could feel her moving swiftly away from me, somewhere off to the west. No, it wasn’t her proximity I was feeling. It was her terror.

  Oh God, don’t let them kill her.

  I turned around, pulling myself away from Olivia and back toward Jason. I can’t help her. I can feel her, but I can’t help her.

  Jason was waving me forward, and based on his scowling face and the impatient vigor of his gestures, he’d been doing it for a while.

  I stood up, moving toward him, one careful step, and then another.

  I was halfway to him when pain slammed into my ribs, knocking me to the ground. I writhed in the mud, feeling it squish into my hair and onto my face, soaking cloyingly into my clothes. Am I hit? I didn’t even hear a gunshot.

  “What happened? Did you twist your ankle?” Jason was bent over me, his hand running over my lower legs, feeling for swelling or breaks.

  The pain was fading.

  Olivia’s pain, not mine.

  I looked up into Jason’s confused face. “No—I—I just tripped.” I’m not sure why I lied. Probably just out of habit. I was used to hiding my pain from the world, my craziness, as I’d heard my parents refer to it in hushed whispers when they’d thought I was out of earshot. It seemed even crazier to be feeling someone else’s pain. But at least there was pain. That meant Olivia wasn’t dead. I could still feel her, could still feel the dull ache in my side. “Help me up,” I said to Jason.

  He held out a hand, pulling me to my feet, and I walked alongside him to where he’d been crouched before. I could finally see the river in front of us, foaming right up against the pale boulders that had once been high on its banks. Downriver was a wall of thick, tangled, thorny brush, virtually impenetrable, beyond which the river curved sharply to left. That was the way we were headed, but it didn’t even look passable.

  “We’re going to have to break cover,” Jason said, talking loudly so I could hear him over the roar of th
e water. “I’ll go first, this side of those boulders and then around the bend. As soon as I scout out a clear path and a safe place to get water, I’ll come back for you. But you won’t be able to see me, and it may take some time. Just be patient and stay hidden.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Once we’re past this, we should be able to move faster,” he said, crawled away from me and scrambling through the brush out onto the open rocks. Then, he stood and moved cautiously around the bend, his gun in hand, never giving me a backward glance.

  It took a moment for it to sink in; I was utterly alone in the wilderness. And now there was nothing to distract me from the vastness of it except Olivia’s panic rising in me like a feral animal determined to scratch its way out. It’s okay. I’m here. You’re not alone. I’m not sure if I was telling her or myself.

  They’re taking me away. Too far away. That was her. In my head, almost as clear as if she were sitting next to me. She was terrified. An image flashed through my mind—her hurling herself out of a moving car.

  “No,” I cried. Could she hear me the way I’d just heard her?

  Something stung me in the arm, hard, straight through the camo jacket and my shirt, but when I looked down there was nothing there.

  And then Olivia faded away to nothingness. I couldn’t feel her anymore. At all.

  “No, no, no,” I moaned. What had just happened? She hadn’t jumped out of the car. I definitely would have felt that. Maybe they’d taken the tags off of her. That had to be it. They’d drugged her and taken them off. She’s alive. She has to be alive. But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

  I glanced around, the stillness of the wilderness expanding away from me in all directions. What if Jason didn’t come back? What if he’d left me here for the CAMFers to find so I wouldn’t slow him down?

  Dr. Black had once said something about me having abandonment issues. “Your sister abandoned you when she died. Your parents abandoned you emotionally out of grief. You even abandon yourself when you cut. No one in your life has been there for you the way they should have been.”

  “That’s life,” I’d shrugged it off. “You can’t control other people.”

  “No, you can’t,” she’d replied. “But you can be there for yourself. And you can seek out more reliable relationships. They do exist, you know.”

  And that’s exactly what I’d been trying to do, until the CAMFers had shot it all to hell.

  Jason would come back. He had to. He was all I had left. I just needed to focus and stop freaking out.

  I waited, ten or fifteen minutes maybe, my thirst growing. Not even the faint smell of rotting fish on the breeze coming from the river deterred it. I would drink fishy water. I would drink any water. Jason would be back any minute. God, please let him come back.

  Something rustled in the brush above my head. It was a red-winged black bird perched on a branch, peering down at me with beady eyes as if to say, “What are you doing here, human? This is not your place.”

  A gunshot pierced the air, and I jumped up, my hand feeling for the fillet knife, the black bird fluttering into the sky.

  The sound reverberated, echoing up and down the river canyon. I couldn’t even tell which way it had come from. Had it been Jason’s .22 or a CAMFer’s gun?

  I waited, my body braced for more shots, but none came. What did that mean? Could the CAMFers take Jason down with one shot? Surely he’d have gotten one off too? What if they’d shot him? What if I was truly on my own now? I took a deep breath, ready to call out for him. Screw the CAMFers. Screw everyone. Anything would be better than dying in the woods alone.

  And then I heard voices, male voices, coming closer, and I ducked down into my little brush hole just before a troop of armed men came around the bend from the direction Jason had gone. There were eight of them, four clumped close together in the middle. When they got to the boulders, they spread out a little, and I could see what they were guarding so carefully.

  It was Jason.

  The group stopped, and one of them shoved him face-first against a large, flat rock while another handcuffed his wrists behind him. I didn’t see Jason’s gun, but obviously, he didn’t have it anymore. They made him stand and searched him, taking away everything we’d found at the cabin except the clothes on his back. When they were frisking his pant legs, there was a discussion between the two who had bound him and another one, maybe the leader, but I couldn’t hear it because the wind had shifted toward the river.

  One of the men crouched down in front of Jason and grabbed the bottom of his right pant leg.

  Jason kicked, clipping the crouching man in the chin with his boot, sending him sprawling backward onto the rocks.

  Immediately, four of them were on Jason, pinning him down spread-eagle, yelling at him with their black guns drawn.

  I clutched the fillet knife, the handle digging painfully into my palm. What was he thinking? They were going to kill him for sure now.

  The guy who was down staggered to his feet, shaking his head and clutching his jaw. The leader put a hand on his shoulder, asking him something, and when he nodded, they both moved toward Jason, blocking my view of him altogether.

  What were they doing? I had to stop them. If I gave myself up, if I stepped out of the woods, it might defuse the situation.

  I stood up and took a tentative step forward.

  From that angle, I could see Jason’s face, his eyes instantly connecting with mine. He was the only one facing me. All the men were focused on him.

  “No,” he shouted, as the leader grabbed at his ankle and yanked up the cuff of his pants, revealing the glowing blue pulse of his PSS leg. I’d never seen it before, even in all the weeks we’d camped together on the way to Indy. Jason hid his leg the way I hid my scars, and for much the same reason.

  His eye bored into mine over the shoulder of the men holding him. His “no” hadn’t been for them. It had been for me. I nodded at him and stepped back into hiding, my body sinking soundlessly down the same way my heart was sinking in my chest.

  What would they do now? Kill him or extract him? And what could I do but watch? If I gave myself up, they’d simply do the same to me.

  Jason struggled and bucked against the men who held him. The leader began to question him, some of it drifting to me on the wind. Who are you? What are you doing here? Have you seen anyone else? But Jason wasn’t answering. Eventually he stopped struggling, but his lips remained a firm, closed line, his eyes defiant and filled with determined malice.

  They finally gave up the interrogation and the leader gestured to his men, indicating they should bring Jason along.

  Two of them grabbed Jason by the arms and dragged him off the rock. Then all of them proceeded to head upriver back toward the pool, disappearing into the woods almost before I realized what was happening.

  When their voices had faded, I crawled out of my hiding place and followed them. They left a fairly clear trail, a swathe of broken brush and their boot prints heavy in the soft mud. They didn’t have to travel slowly and stealthily the way Jason and I had been forced to. They had nothing to fear. No reason to hide.

  After about fifteen minutes, they curved back toward the river and I was so thankful. I needed to drink. Badly. When the woods opened up to a small riverside clearing and a flooded sandbar, I could barely wait for them to move on before I rushed to the banks. In the water ten feet from where I filled my bottle was a black robe, soaked and caught upon a large rock. I turned away from it and plopped the purification tab into my soon-to-be drink. Jason had said to wait twenty minutes, so I would. But I was pretty sure it would be the longest twenty minutes I’d ever lived. At least I had the tracking to occupy my mind.

  The CAMFers were staying close to the banks now, taking advantage of the easier terrain, which meant I had to be extra careful to keep cover between me and them. They were moving quickly and I was struggling to keep up.

  It seemed encouraging, though, that Jason was
still alive, especially after he’d struggled and flipped out about his leg. Considering everyone they’d killed last night, I had no idea why he was still alive. But I was thankful. My guess was they were taking him back to the cliffs, back to the scene of the Eidolon, and I had no idea what they’d do to him when they got there. Not anything good. I knew that much.

  They were leading me close to the river, the bank a rocky shelf growing narrower and narrower. The proximity of the raging water was terrifying and I was running out of places to hide. My shoes splashed in a puddle, water caught in the indent of the shelf, and my toes collided with something hard, sending it skidding across the rock.

  I ducked down, afraid the noise might have drawn attention, but when I looked up Jason and his captors were nowhere in sight. Ahead, the rocky shelf ended in a sudden drop-off. They must have cut off into the woods. Either that or they’d heard me stumble and were waiting to ambush me.

  I stood, cautiously, and crept forward, crouching next to the thing I’d kicked. It was nestled in a rounded indentation of the stone shelf, like an egg in a puddled nest. But it wasn’t an egg.

  It was a ball.

  A black gleaming magic eight ball, to be exact.

  I reached out and picked it up, turning it in my hands. It felt unusually warm, but maybe it had been sitting in the sun before I’d sent it flying. What in the world was a magic eight ball doing out here in the middle of nowhere? Had it been in someone’s pocket last night? Had some poor, scared kid brought it to the Eidolon like a lucky rabbit’s foot? Not so lucky then.

  I put it back down in its rocky nest.

  I’d owned a magic eight ball when I was eleven. Well, technically it had been Purity’s, but we’d played with it a lot together, asking it questions about all the boys she had crushes on, all the girls who were mean to us. It had been our little secret, because my parents were adamantly against anything with “the appearance of evil” and a ball of divination definitely fit that category. Never mind that it was a dumb toy two girls had giggled and bonded over. At least until my father had found it under her pillow and taken it away.