The Awakening

by Kelley Armstrong

Page 11

 

  Unless it was rabid.

  The bat finally launched itself again. It fluttered away, weaving and bobbing like it was still dazed. It headed for the ceiling, then turned and came straight at me.

  As I stumbled back my foot slipped, and I fell with a bone-jarring crack that set my injured arm on fire. I tried to leap up, but whatever I’d stepped on was stuck to my sneaker, sending me skidding again.

  The thing on my sneaker was slick and cold. I pulled it off and raised it into the moonlight. Pinched between my fingers was a rotting wing. The bat I’d seen still had both of its wings, so there must be another one in here, dead.

  I threw the wing across the room and frantically wiped my hand on my jeans. The bat swooped again. I ducked, but my foot slid out and I fell. As I hit the floor, a horrible smell enveloped me, so strong I coughed. Then I saw the bat, less than a foot away, teeth bared, long fangs white against the dark.

  The cloud cover shifted, the light streaming into the room, and I realized I wasn’t looking at fangs but at white patches of skull. The bat was decomposing, one eye shriveled, the other a black pit. Most of the flesh was gone; only hanging bits remaining. The bat had no ears, no nose, just a bony snout. The snout opened. Rows of tiny jagged teeth flashed, and it started to shriek, a horrible garbled squeaking.

  My shrieks joined it as I scrambled back. The thing pulled itself along on one crumpled wing. It was definitely a bat—and I’d raised it from the dead.

  With my gaze fixed on the bat creeping toward me, I forgot about the other one until it flew at my face. I saw it coming—then saw its sunken eyes, bloody stumps of ears, and bone showing through patchy fur. Another zombie bat.

  I slammed back into the crates. My hands sailed up to ward the bat off, but too late. It hit my face. I screamed then, really screamed as the rotted wings drummed me. The cold body hit my cheek. Tiny claws caught in my hair.

  I tried to smack it away. It dropped. As I clapped my hands to my mouth, I felt something tugging at my shirt. I looked down to see the bat clinging to it.

  Its fur wasn’t patchy at all. What I’d mistaken for spots of bone were wriggling maggots.

  I pressed one hand to my mouth, stifling my screams. With my free hand, I swatted at it, but it clung there, rows of teeth opening and closing, head bobbing like it was trying to see me.

  “Chloe? Chloe!” Liz raced through the outside wall. She stopped short, eyes going huge. “Oh my God. Oh my God!”

  “G-get it off. P-please. ”

  I whirled, still swatting at the bat. Then I heard a sickening crunch as I stepped on the other one. When I wheeled, the one clinging to me fell off. As it hit the floor, Liz shoved the top crate off a stack and it fell on the fallen bat, the thud drowning out that horrible bone-crunching noise.

  “I—I—I—”

  “It’s okay,” she said, walking toward me. “It’s dead. ”

  “N-n-no. It’s…”

  Liz stopped. She looked down at the bat I’d stepped on. It lifted one wing feebly, then let it fall. The wing twitched, claw scratching the concrete.

  Liz hurried to a crate. “I’ll put it out of its misery. ”

  “No. ” I held out my hand. “That won’t work. It’s already dead. ”

  “No, it’s not. It’s—” She bent for a closer look, finally seeing the decomposing body. She stumbled back. “Oh. Oh, it’s—It’s—”

  “Dead. I raised it from the dead. ”

  She looked at me. And her expression…She tried to hide it, but I’ll never forget that look—the shock, the horror, the disgust.

  “You…,” she began. “You can…?”

  “It was an accident. There was a ghost pestering me. I—I was summoning him and I must have a-accidentally raised them. ”

  The bat’s wing fluttered again. I dropped beside it. I tried not to look, but of course I couldn’t help seeing the tiny body crushed on the concrete, bones sticking out. And still it moved, struggling to get up, claws scraping the concrete, smashed head rising—

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on freeing its spirit. After a few minutes, the scratching stopped. I opened my eyes. The bat lay still.

  “So what was it? A zombie?” Liz tried to sound calm, but her voice cracked.

  “Something like that. ”

  “You…You can resurrect the dead?”

  I stared at the crushed bat. “I wouldn’t call it resurrection. ”

  “What about people? Can you…?” She swallowed. “Do that?”

  I nodded.

  “So that’s what Tori’s mom meant. You raised zombies at Lyle House. ”

  “Accidentally. ”

  Uncontrollable powers…

  Liz continued. “So it’s…like in the movies? They’re just empty, re-re—What’s the word?”

  “Reanimated. ” I wasn’t about to tell her the truth, that necromancers didn’t reanimate a soulless body. We took a ghost like Liz and shoved her back into her rotting corpse.

  I remembered what the demi-demon said, about me nearly returning the souls of a thousand dead to their buried shells. I hadn’t believed her. Now…

  Bile filled my mouth. I turned away, gagging and spitting it out.

  “It’s okay,” Liz said, coming up beside me. “It’s not your fault. ”

  I looked at the box she’d shoved onto the other bat, took a deep breath, and walked to it. When I reached to move it, she said, “It’s dead. It must be—” She stopped and said in a small, shaky voice. “Isn’t it?”

  “I need to be sure. ”

  I lifted the box.

  Sixteen

  THE BAT WASN’T DEAD. It was—I don’t want to remember it. By that point, I’d been so stressed out that I couldn’t concentrate, and freeing the bat’s spirit had taken…a while. But I did it. And I was glad I’d checked. Now I could relax…or so I thought.

  “You should sleep,” Liz said after I’d lain there with my eyes open for almost an hour.

  I glanced at Tori, but she was still snoring—hadn’t even stirred since I’d come back.

  “I’m not tired,” I said.

  “You need to rest. I can help. I always helped my nana sleep when she couldn’t. ”

  Liz never talked about her parents, only her grandmother, and I realized how little I knew about her.

  “You lived with your nana?”

  She nodded. “My mom’s mom. I didn’t know my dad. Nana said he didn’t stick around. ”

  Considering he’d been a demon, I supposed that was how it worked.

  Liz was silent a moment, then said quietly, “I think she was raped. ”

  “Your mom?”

  “I heard stuff. Stuff I wasn’t supposed to hear, Nana talking to her sisters, her friends, and later to social workers. She said Mom was wild when she was young. Not really wild, just smoking and drinking beer and skipping classes. Then she got pregnant, and that made her different. She got older. Pissed off. Things I heard—I think she was raped. ”

  “That’s awful. ”

  She pulled her knees up and hugged them. “I never told anyone that. It’s not the kind of thing you share. Kids might look at you funny, you know?”

  “I’d never—”

  “I know. That’s why I told you. Anyway, for a few years, everything was okay. We lived with Nana, and she looked after me while Mom worked. But then Mom had this accident. ”

  My gut chilled as I thought of my own mother, killed in a hit-and-run. “What kind of accident?”

  “The cops said she was at this party, got drunk, and fell down the stairs. She hit her head really hard and when she got out of the hospital, it was like she was a whole different person. She couldn’t work, so Nana did and Mom stayed home with me, but sometimes she’d forget to feed me lunch or she’d get really mad and hit me and say it was all my fault. Blaming me because she wasn’t happy, I guess. ”

  �
�I’m sure she didn’t—”

  “Mean it. I know. Afterward she’d cry and tell me she was sorry and buy me candy. Then she had my little brother, and she started getting into drugs and getting arrested for stealing stuff. Only she never went to jail. The court always sent her to a mental hospital. That’s why, at Lyle House, I was so scared—”

  “Of being sent to one. I should have helped. I—”

  “You tried. It wouldn’t have mattered. They’d already made up their minds. ” She went quiet for a moment. “Mom tried to warn me. Sometimes she’d show up at my school, high on dope, going on about experiments and magic powers, and saying I had to hide before they found me. ” Another pause. “I guess she wasn’t so crazy after all, huh?”

  “No, she wasn’t. She was trying to protect you. ”

  She nodded. “Okay, enough of that. You need to rest up so you can find the guys. Nana always said I was good at helping people fall asleep. Better than any pills. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  She grinned. “’Cause I can talk your ear off. Now, let’s see, what can I talk about that’ll bore you to sleep? Oh, I know. Guys. Hot guys. I have this list, see? The ten hottest guys ever. Actually, it’s two lists, ten each, ’cause I needed one for real guys—guys I actually know—and one make-believe list, for guys in movies and bands. Not that they aren’t real guys, because of course they’re real…”

  I finally drifted off and didn’t wake until the roar of a truck sent me jerking up, limbs flailing.

  Light streamed through the windows. I checked my watch. Eight thirty. No sign of Liz. Was she on patrol? Or had she left already?

  Tori was still sound asleep, snoring softly.

  I shook her shoulder. “It’s morning. We need to search for the note. ”

  Tori opened her eyes, muttered that there probably wasn’t any note, the guys were long gone, and we were screwed. A ray of sunshine, our Victoria.

  But after moaning about not having lifted breath mints or a hairbrush or breakfast she did rise and help me.

  We’d been searching for about a half hour when Tori said, loud enough to be heard by anyone walking past the windows, “The taggers in this town really have too much time on their hands. ”

  I hurried over to shush her. “Taggers?”

  She waved at the surrounding stacks of crates and I saw what she meant. A crate in every stack had been tagged with graffiti. “My dad’s store gets hit every month, but he never had one this fancy. ”

  She pointed to one almost hidden in shadow. Where the others were typical tags—nicknames and symbols—this was a sketch in black marker of a teenage guy with a paw print tattoo on his cheek, brandishing Wolverine-like claws.

  I grinned. “Simon. ” When Tori gave me a huh? look, I said, “It’s Simon. ”

  “Uh, no. It’s a guy with a paw on his face. ”

  “It’s Simon’s work. This is one of his comic-book characters. ”

  “I knew that. ”

  “Help me lift the crate. ”

  She didn’t move. “Why?”

  “Because the note”—I heaved the top crate off by myself—“will be under it. ”

  “Why would he put—?”

  Sure enough, under the crate was a folded piece of paper. We both grabbed for it. I won.

  Simon had drawn three pictures. In the top left corner, like a salutation, was a ghost. The middle had a big sketch of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator. The third in place of a signature, was a lightning bolt surrounded by fog. Beside the drawing, someone had scrawled in inch-high letters 10 A. M.

  Tori snatched it from me and turned it over. “So where’s the message?”

  “Right there. ” I pointed from picture to picture. “It says: Chloe, I’ll be back, Simon. ”

  “Okay, that’s just weird. And what’s that mean?” She pointed to the time.

  “That would be Derek, making sure I know when they’ll be back. ”

  “Only once a day?”

  “Every time they sneak in here, it’s a big risk. Anyway, the time isn’t really important. If I pick up the message, Derek will smell me. He can follow my trail. ”

  Her nose wrinkled. “Like a dog?”

  “Cool, huh?”

  “Uh, no. ” She made a face. “So they weren’t kidding about him being a werewolf. Explains a lot, don’t you think?”

  I shrugged and checked my watch. “We’ve got just over an hour to wait, so—” I swore under my breath, making Tori arch her brows in mock-surprise.

  “We can’t let the guys come back,” I said, “not with that Edison Group guard patrolling. ”

  There wasn’t an Edison Group guard patrolling. There were two. I sent Liz to check all possible entry points. She returned, naming four: the main gate, the front delivery gate, the back delivery gate, and the entire surrounding fence.

  I doubted Derek would climb the fence again. He’d be exposed up there where anyone could see him. If I were him, I’d pick the same entry point as the Edison Group had yesterday—that rear gate.

  But I also knew Derek well enough to admit that I didn’t know him well enough to guess his strategy with any real confidence. So we had to split up and cover all three entrances. I needed to stay close to Liz, so she could communicate with me. That meant Tori got the back. I could only pray she’d actually remember to watch.

  By nine thirty we were in position. The factory yard was at the edge of a residential area—a neighborhood of older homes including, a block away, Lyle House. Derek and I had come this way Saturday night when we escaped and I still remembered the general layout. The roads ran north-south, with the factory yard down at the southern end.