The next morning, my mother found Inang where she had collapsed in the hallway.
She never came out of the coma—she died within a week.
No other children contracted the disease.
Until now.
# # #
As I paused in my telling, Will interjected, “So what do you think this disease actually is?”
“I think it’s exactly what it looks like,” I said. “A parasite that acts in concert with a virus. But it’s one that has specific host requirements.”
Susan had come in partway through the story, and now stood with her hand pressed against her faceplate, as if she could cover her mouth with her fingers.
“Requirements? Such as?” Iverson asked.
“A certain genetic makeup?” I said. “Maybe a particular gene marker? I think that’s why Inang said our family was cursed—if the requirements are rare, but genetic, a tendency to make a good host could run in families.”
Families, the voices echoed, and I shivered.
“I think they use us to reproduce.” Swallowing down the nausea again, I glanced at the children. “I think my grandmother caused the last outbreak. And I think I caused this one.”
“How does all this connect to the portal?” Will asked.
“That’s where they come from,” Iverson said abruptly. “Like the vampires—or whatever causes vampires.”
I nodded mutely.
Scott spoke for the first time, keeping his voice gentle. “Tell us what you know about the portals.”
“I don’t really know anything.” A sob hiccoughed through me, and I fought to keep tears at bay. Even if I had been willing at that moment to show weakness to anyone here other than Scott, a hazmat suit is not a good place to get a runny nose. I clenched my teeth, sniffed, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, they were dry. “All I have are guesses.”
“Then tell us what you think you’ve guessed.” Even through the suit, I could feel the gentle pressure of Scott’s hand on my knee.
“Whoever is doing the killing is using me…or the things inside me…the aswang, I guess, to infect the children so they can open a portal.” I shook my head, still not certain of what I was saying.
But at least the voices inside my head had stopped fighting me quite so hard. For the first time since this nightmare had started, I was able to speak about these things.
I glanced at Scott. Not all of it had been a nightmare.
“Back up a step,” Iverson knelt in front of me. “Why do the killers carve up their victims?”
“It’s blood magic.” I shivered. “The symbols on the victims call to the aswang in me.”
“And they match the symbols on the children’s windowsills,” Scott interjected.
“Wait a minute.” Will stepped closer and bent down to stare in my eyes. “You say the aswang are inside you? Then what is the creature that Agent Chandler saw outside the kids’ windows?”
I hadn’t considered the physical implications of my confession. “I guess….” I paused and then tried again. “I think maybe it’s the physical manifestation of the aswang? What they look like when they’re outside of me?”
That didn’t feel quite right, but I didn’t have any better answer to offer. I felt my shoulders hunch in misery.
“We can figure that out later,” Iverson said.
“Yeah, when we kill the monster with fire.” The microphone in his suit picked up Will’s muttered comment clearly and broadcast it to all of us.
Iverson chose to ignore Will. “Why do the aswang want to open the portals, Lili? Why do they want to cross over?”
“I’m not entirely certain, but I don’t think the aswang are opening the portals for themselves. Not to go back over there, anyway.” My stomach clenched, but I forced the next words out, anyway.
“I’m pretty sure they’re opening the portals to let something else come through.”
# # #
Everyone spoke at the same time for several moments, the babble overwhelming the microphones’ ability to sort out individual sentences.
Finally, though, Iverson called for quiet, cutting through everyone else’s comments.
“If the aswang are trying to bring something over, then we definitely need to see what’s on the other side of the portal,” the detective said, once no one else was speaking.
“What’s on the other side?” Will waved one hand in front of him. “Are you insane? If all this conjecture is right—and I’m not saying it is—but if there are viruses that can turn human beings into vampires, and can infect otherwise perfectly sane doctors and cause them to hear creepy voices and develop psychic bonds with monsters? Then us crossing over into their homeland? That’s crazy talk.”
Iverson managed to sound remarkably calm. “We don’t have any evidence that what turns people into vampires is a virus—or even that all these portals go to the same places.”
“Anyway,” I said. “Will, you’re a pediatrician who specializes in virology. I’m an epidemiologist. I know damn well that you’ve been to Africa to work with Ebola patients. We are already geared up. If we take precautions, we’ll be fine.”
Covering his eyes for a moment, Will said, “Seriously? You’re really think you’re going to cross over into some alternate dimension? How do you know the aswang, or whatever they are, aren’t causing you to say that?”
“I guess I don’t—not in any empirical way. But I am absolutely certain that this is my idea, not theirs.”
He opened and closed his mouth several times, as if casting about for something to say, then finally came up with, “You don’t even know if we can breathe over there.”
With that, I deflated.
He was right. We were clearly crazy.
Not crazy, the voices whispered. Come to us.
Crap. Maybe the aswang did want me to cross through the portal, to carry them back to their homeland, as Will called it. “And even if I’m right, there’s no telling what will happen when I get over there,” I whispered.
What if I cracked open, like Kenny, and the voices inside my head came spilling out?
What if I couldn’t get back?
“Come with me,” Iverson said, grabbing my hand and pulling me out of the room and down the hall, Scott moving quickly to catch up and walk beside me. Will and Susan trailed behind us as the detective tugged me into Felicity’s room.
“Are you willing to risk it to save these children?” Iverson asked, waving at his niece.
I stared at Felicity, who was watching her uncle with wide-set, blue eyes that looked exactly like his.
“Yes,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “I am.”
“Good,” Iverson said, and began opening and closing the drawers and cabinets along the back wall.
“What the hell are you doing?” Will finally asked.
“Looking for additional weapons.” The detective rummaged through the sterile, packaged items at the bottom of the drawer he had pulled open. “I have ten rounds.” He gestured at his holstered gun. “Scott, what do you have?”
“Two magazines, fifteen rounds each, plus a bullet in the chamber. If there really are vampire things on the other side of this door, we might need more than that.”
“You won’t find anything there,” Will said. He didn’t say anything more, but I could tell he had given up on trying to convince us not to cross through the portal.
If it even really was a portal.
I knew it was nuts to even consider it, but Iverson was so sure I was right.
And honestly, so was I.
At least about it being a portal. I didn’t know if I was right about what the aswang wanted.
Home, home, home.
Then again, maybe I did know, and simply didn’t want to admit it.
Iverson stood straight, turning a suture-removal kit around in his gloved hands. “No, not much to work with here in the way of weapons,” he said, staring down at the tiny scissors and tweezers. “I don’t think I could do any real d
amage with this.”
“We’re not even sure there’s anything dangerous over there,” Will said, switching to his most reasonable voice.
I had always hated that tone, even when we lived together.
Especially when we lived together.
I much preferred Scott’s quiet assurances, his silent support.
His belief in me, despite everything that was happening.
Oh, hell. I was falling for with my one-night-stand FBI agent. Despite knowing I was connected to the monsters, despite wanting nothing from him but comfort and the kind of physicality that let me forget myself. Despite knowing that we had no future together.
Well, now was certainly not the time to mention my inopportune revelation.
Maybe there would be time later.
“Here,” Susan said, diving into a different drawer and handing one scalpel to Will, and then another to me. “It’s not much, but it won’t hurt to have it, just in case.”
In my head, the voices snickered and mocked.
Just in case, just in case, just in case.
# # #
It took the four of us—me, Will, the detective, and Scott—almost twenty minutes to double-check our protective suits, switching from HEPA air filters to full air tanks, in case we couldn’t breathe on the other side of the portal. After we all trooped back to Kenny’s room and explained our plan, Susan actually climbed onto the bed behind the boy, pulling him back and holding him against her chest as he whimpered. She leaned down so that her face was next to his. It looked odd to see her, still masked, talking to the child and rocking him. He curled his legs up under his torso and rested his face against her chest.
“You ready?” she asked him.
He nodded, but his small form stiffened.
The nurse reached up and untied the strings of his gown, then gently began to peel it away from his torso. She paused for a moment when it stuck to the skin, then grimaced and pulled it away.
The light from his forearm had faded. I saw Susan wince before she began wrapping a white bandage around the open wound, closing it in an attempt to force the light out through some other venue.
Do no harm.
Yeah, right.
With a hoarse scream, Kenny arched his back. The skin along his spine split, as if it were being unzipped, and bright blue light spilled out of it.
The voices in my head cackled as the light hit the wall and grew, wavering as Kenny’s body heaved with sobs.
A crack in the world.
I didn’t know if the thought belonged to me or to the aswang.
“Are you ready?” Scott asked me.
I nodded, unwilling to speak.
I didn’t want to risk letting any of them know that part of me was eager.
Or maybe it wasn’t me at all.
Will made eye contact first with me, then with Scott and Iverson, and nodded. “Let’s go,” he said. He stepped up to the wall and pressed his thickly gloved hand against it—and then through it. From beside him, it looked as if he had put his fist through the wall. He pulled his arm back and shivered. “It’s cold on the way through,” he said. “But wherever my hand came out, it’s warm.”
Apparently, having decided to go through with the plan, Will was fully on board.
“Let me go first,” Iverson said. Despite our arguments against it, Iverson and Scott had both cycled through to the scrub-in room and removed their hazmat suits long enough to retrieve their guns. Iverson hefted his firearm. He pulled out the magazine and checked it, pushed it back into the gun, and flicked a small switch on the side—the safety, I assumed. Scott performed some similar check and nodded at the police officer.
Iverson inhaled deeply and closed his eyes for a brief moment, as if sending up a prayer. The sound echoed through the microphone and speakers in the suits.
I wanted to follow his example, but the excited chittering inside my mind was too loud. I couldn’t think.
Lifting his chin and gesturing for us to follow, Iverson stepped, very deliberately, through the portal.
Without stopping to think, I followed into the nothingness of passage, trusting Scott to follow behind me.
For that instant, I couldn’t see or hear or breathe.
Will had been right—the passage was freezing, the kind of cold I would expect from outer space, chilling me down to my soul.
If you have a soul, the voices chorused.
And then I was stumbling out into a sere brown landscape of cracked earth and burning sun. Gasping, I fell to the ground before me.
Falling out of the portal only a few steps away, Scott pulled himself to his feet, clumsy in the bright orange hazmat gear.
“You okay?” he asked, holding his hand out to help me up.
Iverson watched our interaction with his narrowed cop eyes.
Will tumbled out of the portal behind us, his breath wheezing through the speakers.
Iverson dropped my hand and surveyed the land around us, taking a moment to check behind the portal. “Looks like Mars,” he said. “Where the hell are we?”
“Nowhere good,” Scott said, pointing at the horizon.
Over a slight rise in the landscape, behind the heat rising from the sand in waves, I saw movement—and then they came up into view, marching toward us like an army bent on destruction, the sound of their passage like thunder rolling in the distance.
Thousands of creatures, coming ever closer. I couldn’t accurately judge the distance in this alien landscape, but they were definitely headed in our direction—indistinct, but definitely inhuman, forms that made my head swim with simultaneous recognition and revulsion.
Overhead, the screech of a flying thing echoed as it passed high above the horde.
Monsters.
We had opened a portal into some other world, and there was an army of monsters marching toward us.
Inside my head, the voices sighed, a sound of contentment.
Home.
In the next moment, I fell to the ground again, clawing at the hood and mask over my head as pain exploded in black starbursts behind my eyes.
“Lili? Are you okay?” Scott’s shout alerted our companions.
Will dropped to his knees beside me, sliding into doctor mode with practiced ease. “Can you hear me? Okay, can you speak? Look at me, Lili. Don’t try to take the hood off. You need it.”
But Lili was fading, and we were stretching into her skin.
Finally.
It had been so long.
The grandmother, the Inang, had pushed us away, held us back.
Kept us from being what we knew we needed to be.
But we had survived, hidden in the small spaces, the dark internal places.
She could suppress us, but she could not exorcise us.
We were bound by blood, to one another and to Lili.
And now we were home.
We took a deep breath.
Dirt dust sun sky heat home.
Home.
We were exactly where we needed to be.
And we knew our job.
It was time to show the others what we had found.
“Fine.” Our voice came out as Lili’s. “Okay now. I’m okay.”
One voice one mind alone alone alone.
Not alone.
We raced through her veins, into her fingertips and through her heart.
The doctor—Will, Lili’s voice echoed in our mind—helped us stand, and he, too, stared into the distance.
“What the fuck are those things?” he asked.
Home love blood devour joy.
“Whatever they are, I think we should try to avoid them,” the detective—Iverson wisped through our mind—said. “I think we should turn around.”
“Agreed,” Scott said. “Lili?”
Not Lili.
Aswang.
“Agreed,” we sang out.
We were leading our people to a new home.
Our world now.
Ours.
But another, disc
ordant voice broke into our delight.
No.
This is my mind, not yours.
We sent sharp barbs into the thoughts of the other, images of talons gripping and teeth sinking in, strong jaws clamped tight.
Ours. Ours ours ours.
I pushed the voices down, shoving them out of the way, as if I were clawing my way back up to the forefront of my own mind, kicking at them until they lost their grip and slithered back into the deep hole my grandmother had created to hold them. “Thank you, Inang,” I whispered.
Bending over, I took deep breaths. Saliva filled my mouth and I swallowed convulsively, working not to vomit from the aftereffects of fighting off the monsters in my own mind.
Vomiting inside the hazmat suit never worked out well—it was much worse than a runny nose.
Iverson glanced at me, his brow furrowed. “You okay?” he asked.
I shook my head as I reached out toward Scott, desperately needing the comfort of his—or any human’s—touch. “No,” I said, gasping. “There’s something terribly wrong with me.”
“Let’s talk about it back in the hospital,” Scott said, squeezing my fingers in his and staring over my head at the oncoming horde. “We need to figure out how to close that portal.”
“I think I know how.” My voice sounded harsh to my own ears.
Iverson gave me a long, level look. “Blood magic,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Blood?” Will asked, glancing between my face and the detective’s.
“My blood, I think.”
Scott nodded his agreement with my assessment.
“Why yours?” Iverson asked.
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” Will demanded. “How did you get from we’re in another world to blood magic?”
“Because I think…” I paused and swallowed again, forcing the words to come out. “I think I’m one of them.” I gestured toward the monsters in the distance, moving inexorably closer. “And because I think the contagion is bloodborne. All of this, Will, it’s about blood in one way or another.”
With a strangled sound of negation, Will pulled me toward the portal shining above the cracked earth. “Come on,” he said. “We can figure this out somewhere else.”
“He’s right,” Iverson said. “Even if you are the source of the contagion, we’re better off talking about it on our own turf.” He paused and narrowed his eyes as he looked at me. “And if the idea about the blood magic pans out, we’ll need to deal with that on our own side. I don’t want to get stuck over here.”
Bloodborne (Night Shift Book 2) Page 13
