Haunted

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  “Sean, you won't manipulate me again. I know you too well,” she warned. “We don't need her at all...you do.” Her demeanor changed quickly as she made her power play. “I can, however, manipulate you. If you want me to spare her I will make you a deal. I will heal her for you, but if I do, your obsession ends. You forfeit any claim you have on her, as unfathomable as it may be, and you pursue her no longer. Refuse my terms and she dies. Renege on our agreement and I report you to the Elders. I think you remember how well your insubordination was received last time. They would not suffer it again.”

  His body tensed beneath Scarlet as Sophie backed him into a corner. She trapped him into making a choice that really wasn't one. She knew he wouldn't let me die, and used his feelings for me to ensure he'd never enjoy them. It was well played. Her plan was both as ruthless and desperate as she was.

  I saw his eyes go dark as he stared Sophie down, his rage only furthering Scarlet's blood lust. He leaned down to put his mouth by her ear, his breathing forced but controlled.

  “Ruby,” he whispered. “I'm sorry, but I have to.”

  He laid her head down gingerly on the floor and stepped back, relinquishing his contact.

  “Deal,” he told Sophie with a rage so harnessed it was unnerving. She stepped towards us, taking her clothes off on the way. He grabbed her arm violently as she went to bend down beside us and yanked her body towards him.

  “And you'd better succeed. Your fate is now linked to hers. Fail and it will be the last thing you do to hurt me,” he warned.

  “You wouldn't dare. They'd kill you,” she said, going pale.

  “They would never know,” he said, shooting a glance over to Cooper. “I don't think he'll have a problem backing whatever lie I tell.”

  She, too, shot a glance Cooper's way before losing color altogether. His face was more business-like than ever and it made me wonder if Sean was becoming a bad influence on him, though it didn't seem so bad in that moment.

  Sophie visibly swallowed, and once released from Sean's grasp, continued to undress until wearing only her underwear that was barely underwear at all. I'd seen string cover more skin than it did.

  She knelt beside Scarlet, then closed her eyes, inhaling deeply through her nose in an exaggerated fashion. She slowly extended her arms out towards Scarlet’s mangled body and was met with a low, gurgling growl.

  “Touch me and die, bitch,” Scarlet threatened. I tried to calm her, to talk her down from her rage and see reason. If I die, we both do. Just let her in. She couldn't hear me. I tried forcing those sentiments on her as I had Peyta's name, but again I was unsuccessful. Scarlet's pride would cut our collective nose off to spite our face.

  Sophie looked frightened, hesitating as she looked to Sean for reassurance. She received none.

  Refocusing her attention on the fading lives in front of her, she continued to extend her arms towards Scarlet. I felt her place her hands deep in the abdominal wound before pulling her body closer into it. Neither Scarlet nor I could see her as she was out of our visual field and Scarlet had weakened enough that she could no longer lift her head very far.

  I remembered Cooper saying that he felt like Sophie had been inside him when she healed his wounds from the showdown with Eric a few months earlier. I thought about that as the pressure and burning increased in my gut until there was a flash of pain so blinding that everything around me darkened. No glorious light followed.

  Everything around me stopped.

  There were no voices, no Scarlet, and worst of all, no parents to greet me when I died.

  32

  And then I was back. Sort of.

  Scarlet still had a firm hold of the proverbial wheel, as well as Sophie's throat, and commotion was all around us. Sean yelled, Cooper cheered and Sophie just blankly stared back at Scarlet with disbelieving eyes. She looked ill with shock, and I wondered exactly what had happened while I was out. I felt like I had passed out at the party before the real festivities began.

  What the fuck, Scarlet? What happened?

  “You wouldn't have the stomach for it, Ruby. Probably best that you don't know,” she said aloud, to everyone's confusion.

  Sophie looks like she's seen a ghost...well, you know what I mean.

  “Oh, she's seen something,” she replied with a little chuckle in her voice. “The end of her life as she knows it.”

  Sean grabbed the hand around Sophie's throat and pried it off, throwing Scarlet across the room. I guess he was no longer concerned with our bodily well-being. He checked Sophie over until he was satisfied that she was physically unharmed, then told her to put her clothes on. She was caked in blood and other unmentionables.

  “Are you sure you're fine?” he asked for what must have been the second time. She nodded erratically as she pulled her pants back on. He then turned his attention back on us.

  “She's never looked like this after a healing,” he said accusingly. “What did you do?”

  Scarlet laughed a deep, throaty laugh that echoed off of the walls. “Nothing she didn't deserve, my friend.”

  He charged her, slamming her against the wall with his forearm across her throat. His eyes were nearly black and his heart raced with adrenaline so loudly that I could hear it. Scarlet didn't seem to care.

  “I don't have time for this now, but you will tell me when this is all over. For Ruby's sake, you better not have fucked up,” he threatened. “Cooper, bring me what's left of the ring. Bend it back into shape as best you can. It's time for this bitch to disappear.”

  With that I felt a sharp and jagged ring thrust onto my left pinky finger. My body fell to the ground, and as I took it over again, the pain returned. The healing had clearly worked, but hadn't left me without ailments. I was weak, groggy, and sore in a post-surgical kind of way, which oddly made sense. Trying to stand without aid, I collapsed back to the floor, furthering the pain in my gut as I landed on it.

  Sean went to help me up, only to be reminded of his deal with the devil as she cleared her throat in warning from the other side of the room. Cooper came over and scooped me up delicately in his arms, pulling me close to his body. He kissed me on my forehead before resting his cheek against it.

  “Glad to have you back, Rubes,” he said softly. “For a minute there, I thought you were going to leave without saying goodbye.”

  I snickered lightly before realizing that laughing was not going to be on the menu for a while.

  “Ouch,” I gasped. “You're going to have to stop being you for a while, Coop. Can you go back to being that crazy person I've been living with? He didn't make me laugh.”

  “Anything you want,” he said, lifting his cheek from my face to look at me. “Just don't scare me like that again.”

  “Deal,” I said, putting a small smile on my face. I wiped it off quickly thereafter. “Peyta! We have to find her! Now, or it'll be too late.”

  “You need to put some clothes on first,” Sean told me, looking at the blood-encrusted fabric that covered my body. The gaping hole ventilating my shirt wasn't helping my state of undress. “Cooper, run upstairs and grab something she can put on. Something loose.”

  Cooper put me delicately in my office chair and ran out without a word. He returned quickly with some yoga pants, a t-shirt and some running shoes. He produced a jacket for me after I'd changed and I slipped it on gingerly, trying not to move my arms more than necessary. I was thankful that Sean had thought to mention what kind of clothes to bring; he was always so level-headed in a crisis.

  “Did Gregory say where he was taking her?” Sean asked, getting down to the task at hand.

  “Not exactly. He said she would die in a place she loved. I'm not sure where he was talking about.”

  “Did he say anything else? How he was going to do it, maybe?” Sean pried, desperate for more helpful information.

  “He said he was going to 'sacrifice' her before heading to the 'festivities' downtown.”

  “That doesn't really narrow down the list much,
” said Sean, looking more concerned than I liked. “Think! What has she said to you over the past couple of weeks? She's confided in you, told you things about Gregory and her that she wouldn't have told anyone else. You have to know.”

  So I thought as hard as my weary mind would allow, running through every conversation I could recall over and over again. Nothing stood out that seemed overly helpful. I couldn't help feeling like I was missing something, like it was right there but just beyond my grasp.

  “I don't know,” I said, sounding every bit as hopeless as I felt. “I can't remember anything.”

  “Think!” he yelled, slamming his fist down on the desk beside me.

  “I'm trying!” I whined, doing my best not to burst into tears.

  “Try harder, Ruby. You're her only chance,” he said, before reminding me what was at stake. “We'll never find her in time just driving around the city trying to pick up their trail. She'll be dead by then.” The word “trail” made Scarlet stir.

  Park.

  The single word literally flashed through my mind as she willed it to.

  “What park?” I said aloud, trying to make sense of what was happening. My thoughts were not my own in that moment, making me disoriented and nervous.

  The park...outside of town.

  “Scarlet?” I asked, trying to figure out what was happening. Everyone around me was starting to look concerned as I carried on a conversation with myself with no regard to their presence whatsoever. “How do you know?”

  She told you she was going there with him once, you were too busy worrying about yourself at the time to listen. Don't question me...just go now if you want to find her alive.

  I stood in disbelief, wondering how it was possible; until that moment I'd never heard Scarlet in my head. I knew it had to do with whatever happened between Sophie and Scarlet, but I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. My answers would have to wait; it was hardly the time to solve that mystery.

  “She's in the park just north of town.”

  “Let's go,” Sean said, not doubting me for a second. Maybe the crazier I acted, the more likely people were to listen to me.

  He led the way out to the front of the store and popped open the door to his SUV. Evening was falling outside and I wondered exactly how long it had taken for everything to transpire in that room. How long was Gregory there? How long was it before they found me? How long did Sophie work on us?

  As Cooper loaded me gently into the backseat, I started my search for answers.

  “How did you find me?” I asked him as he buckled me in. “I stared at the ceiling thinking that even if you were upstairs, there was no way for me to reach you.”

  “Your cell phone,” he said, his face serious. “We'd gotten nowhere with our search, so we went to the police department to see how that was going. When they said that no report had been filed and nobody matching your description had been there all day, we got worried. When you didn't answer your phone, we knew something was wrong. We thought it best to come back to the house and start our search for you from there. When we pulled up your car was nowhere to be found and the lights were off in the store and the house. I kept calling you the whole time hoping you'd eventually answer, telling me I was the most annoying person ever.”

  I laughed a second before remembering my new “no laugh” policy, and shot Cooper a look.

  “Sorry, I forgot,” he said softly. “Anyways, I was calling as we went up the stairs to the apartment when I heard a faint ringing coming through the wall. I hung up and tried it again, and the ring started up right on cue. We ran outside, came through the shop and found you bleeding out on the floor. It was the scariest thing I've ever seen.” He looked far away as he spoke about finding me. Cooper had both been through and seen a lot in his time; he was in no way a virgin to violence. For him to look so disturbed about the condition he found me in spoke volumes about just how bad it was.

  “Your eyes were so empty,” he whispered. “Lifeless.”

  “But my eyes were closed, weren't they?” I asked, thinking I closed them before the light came for me.

  “No, Ruby, they were wide open, staring up at nothing,” Cooper replied, pushing a stray piece of hair from my face.

  “I closed your eyes when we found you. Neither of us could bear the sight,” Sean added, weighing in after a small break in the conversation. “The darkness you saw was the fade...it comes just before the light. You imagined closing your eyes.”

  “I can't get that image out of my head,” Cooper said, looking out the window beyond my face. “That and the thought that I almost had to cut your finger off to let Scarlet out of her cage.”

  I looked down at the bandaged digit. I'd forgotten all about it amid the chaos. It hurt, but only slightly. I wiggled it to be sure I still had one and Cooper laughed as he caught me doing my finger check.

  “I didn't have to cut it off, Rubes, but I sliced it to the bone. Sean worked his magic on it to take the edge off. It's still pretty nasty, though. It's gonna hurt for a while yet, I think.”

  “I'll manage,” I said, winking at him.

  * * *

  We arrived at the park, which in truth was better described as a wildlife conservation area. It was heavily wooded with rudimentary trails that, though marked, were overgrown and difficult to trek. It was an excellent place to hide a corpse.

  As soon as Cooper stepped out of the car he growled.

  “I smell her,” he said before taking off down a path.

  Sean scooped me up and started after him. Before Sophie had a second to argue he told her to shut it, unless she wanted to carry me. She conceded, realizing it was a necessary evil. I wished I could have seen the look on her face.

  What was left of the light disappeared underneath the canopy of trees above. I was glad that I wasn't the one running, knowing that I'd have certainly caused a pile up of sorts after tripping on an innocuous root or branch somewhere and taking everyone else down with me.

  It took only minutes at the speed we were going to plunge deep into woods, until we were surrounded by trees and brush on all sides. By the time we were completely enveloped, we'd managed to catch up to Cooper. Sophie had been left behind, not having superhuman speed like the others, but Sean said she could sense Peyta once she got close enough and would find her way. She was probably spitting bullets the entire trip.

  “They're not far,” Cooper called out over his shoulder as he poured on a final sprint. He slammed on the brakes a minute later as he crested a hill, nearly causing Sean to slam into the back of him and drop me in the process. Sean placed me lightly on my feet, being sure that I could bear my own weight before letting go. The three of us looked down upon a scene so unnerving that the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. Down in the valley below stood hundreds of semi-transparent entities, shells of the werewolves Scarlet had killed.

  I'll happily do it again...

  She purred those words in the back of my mind so soothingly that it smoothed those hairs out. I searched the mass of people for Peyta, but had no luck in finding her. Panic struck instantly.

  “I can't see her,” I whispered, grabbing Cooper by the shoulder, turning him around to face me. “Can you smell if she's...if she's...still alive?”

  “I can feel her,” Sophie said quietly, approaching from behind us. “She is still with us.”

  “She won't be for long if we don't come up with a plan,” Sean added soberingly. “And quickly.”

  “So how do you kill someone who's already dead?” I asked, searching the faces of the others in the group. None held a knowing expression.

  Sean sighed then looked me square in the eyes.

  “I haven't a fucking clue, Ruby,” he said. “I'm hoping for some divine inspiration.”

  Lord, so was I.

  33

  I looked over to see Gregory emerge from the mob, finding a raised section of ground to place himself on – his earthen soapbox. He hauled Peyta up with him, still bound with her mo
uth taped shut.

  “Did you see that?” I asked the others.

  “I see him,” Cooper growled.

  “No, not that. Something just happened to the Watchers….”

  I trailed off unsure of how exactly to explain what I thought I'd just seen. For a fleeting moment the group looked more whole, more solid than their previously transparent selves. It flashed so quickly that in the pale light of the emerging moon, I couldn't be sure if it really happened or if my eyes were playing tricks on me. I tried to describe it to the other three, but they just looked at me like I wasn't quite all there.

  “I saw nothing,” Sean announced, sounding all business. “Perhaps your vision is still a little fuzzy from your blood loss.”

  “I guess,” I conceded.

  “We need to do something,” Cooper said anxiously. “She's right there. Can't we just grab her and go? We can deal with him later.”

  “Ummm, about that,” I said nervously, realizing I hadn't really shed any light on Gregory's evil plot. “We have to figure out a way to stop him, too. He plans to publicly unveil the existence of werewolves. He wants to wipe out the whole town at the celebration tonight.”

  They all looked at me with utter disbelief. He was going to do the unthinkable if we didn't stop him.

  Without saying a word Sean bounded down the hill towards them, with Cooper not far behind. For a moment Sophie and I looked at each other, not knowing what to do before we finally followed them down. She didn't offer a helping hand to me, so I sat on my butt and scooted my way down the hill. It wasn't elegant, but it was effective at minimizing any potential further damage I could have caused by falling. I wasn't worried about my pride in that moment.

  The not-so-subtle approach by Sean and Cooper had earned the attention of everyone in the valley. The duo stopped just yards away from the gathering, absorbing the hateful stares of the dead completely unfazed. As Sophie and I came to join them, Gregory addressed us from on high, a position he enjoyed all too much for my liking. I wanted to knock him right off his pedestal. If he'd been surprised to see me alive, he certainly didn’t show it.