Demonic Dreams

by Hadena James

“Are you guys okay?” Xavier asked.

  “I need help with Raphael,” I told him. “He has several stab wounds in his abdomen and a scalp wound from a bullet grazing the top of his head.

  “Your hand,” Gabriel added, joining me beside his brother.

  “I would love a pair of handcuffs and leg shackles if anyone has any of those available,” I told anyone standing within ear shot.

  “Coming,” Caleb sounded slightly further away but he was suddenly at my side and handcuffing Raphael’s legs at the ankles. The cuffs would be a little tight, but they would also prohibit him from getting up and running away or trying to kill me and Gabriel again.

  “We were able to follow the sound of the gunshots,” Lucas answered a question I hadn’t yet asked.

  “We were a lot closer together than we thought,” Malachi came up on me. He looked down on me, literally, towering over me as I knelt on the ground next to Raphael trying to apply pressure to all his wounds, so he wouldn’t bleed to death in a forest in Maine.

  “Once we got into the forest little ways, there were no traps set.” Malachi told me.

  “Great,” I answered, pretty sure I didn’t care a lick about whether there were traps in the forest or not.

  “Vlad managed to hack into the bunker and disable everything,” Lucas added. “That probably helped significantly.” I still didn’t care. It had been easy going for us up to this point, too. It seemed like the biggest threat was probably the psychopaths that used the place.

  “I really wish I had an x-ray here,” Xavier said. I tried not to snip at him. There was no x-ray, and somehow, we were going to have to lug the giant out of the woods, that was going to slow us down considerably, regardless of whether the defense systems were active or not.

  Malachi was on his phone. I didn’t ask who he was talking to and I didn’t listen to his side of the conversation. I was looking at Gabriel. He had nearly killed his own brother to protect me from him. Loyalty like that was rare. I wanted to hug him, an urge I almost never had since I wasn’t much of a toucher when it came to people.

  “What?” Gabriel asked.

  “May I hug you?” I answered.

  “Why?” Gabriel countered.

  “Because you put my safety over your own mental well-being,” I told him. “And because you are alive, and I was pretty sure you were not after the first day you were missing.”

  Instead of me hugging Gabriel, Gabriel reached over and hugged me. I folded my arms around him, hugging him back and felt his weight against me. To some degree, I found his hug comforting as opposed to my normal feelings of uncomfortableness and awkwardness when people touched me, even with my permission.

  “When he threw you, I was sure you were going to be killed,” Gabriel whispered to me. “He threw you at a tree, I think he intended for you to slam into it. I have never been so scared of anyone in my life than I was at that moment, just knowing that my brother could manhandle you to death was terrifying. I have never seen anyone be able to do that to you.”

  “I told you he would probably win that fight,” I whispered back and let go of Gabriel. Everyone was busy doing something and no one was talking. Normally I didn’t mind silence, but at this moment, I felt like I needed reassurances that everyone was real and that all this wasn’t in my head because I had hit a tree and been knocked out. I needed to know that Raphael hadn’t killed Gabriel and wasn’t about to kill me while I lay unconscious, because that was the way I had expected this to go.

  A light appeared aways away from us. It illuminated the trees from the sky and moved slowly back and forth. I pointed at it and tried not get up and jump for joy. It might have been less than twenty-four hours since I had been in that shack, but it had been a very long twenty-four hours and my body had been convinced it was going to die for most of it. That panic was still there to some degree.

  “Aliens?” I asked Gabriel pointing at the light.

  “Might as well be,” Gabriel smiled at me and Xavier, who was kneeling close enough to hear me, gave a small chuckle.

  “Your neck is bleeding,” Gabriel told me.

  “I know,” I answered. “I think one of your shots grazed it.”

  “Thank God for Raphael finding you,” Xavier said.

  “Why?” I frowned at him wondering if he had lost his mind.

  “We were only about four football fields away and probably would have walked right past you in this forest, because even without the leaves on the trees, we couldn’t hear you and we couldn’t see your camp fire.”

  When the light was over the top of us, it became obvious that it was connected to a helicopter. A basket was dropped, but it got hung up in the tree branches above us. Malachi was barking orders at Caleb, and soon I saw Caleb scurry up a tree. He grabbed hold of the basket and shook it loose from the branches and then held onto it as it was gently lowered to the ground.

  I had to admit this was not an ideal place for a rescue mission. My body felt tired suddenly. It wasn’t the pain medications or the pain I was feeling that made me tired, it was the sudden lack of adrenaline. The surge had run its course now that I was back with lots of people I trusted with my life, and I had a new and deeper respect and trust of Gabriel.

  I was still dreading walking out of the woods regardless of whether we did it tonight or tomorrow. Mostly because I was weary from the day and the medications and the pain and dealing with Gabriel’s twin. It might have only been a handful of days, but if I didn’t see Raphael again anytime soon, I was fine with that.

  Xavier, Caleb, and Malachi put Raphael in the basket, and to my surprise, Xavier rode up the basket with him. I knew those things had weight limits, but I didn’t know what that limit was, and I was shocked Xavier was riding up with Gabriel’s psychopathic twin. They both reached the helicopter above us and someone dropped out what appeared to be a harness. Gabriel grabbed it and put it on me.

  “What about you?” I asked my boss.

  “There’s a second rescue unit coming,” Malachi told me. “This helicopter can hold four plus the basket and you have been injured so you get to be among the four.”

  “Gabriel has had it almost as tough as I have,” I told Malachi.

  “And the sooner you get off the ground, the sooner Gabriel follows you into the helicopter. He needs to be checked for dehydration and malnutrition.” Malachi told me.

  “Okie dokie,” I said letting the harness and cable pull me up into the helicopter. I had a mild fear of heights and it took some effort not to scream or kick on the way up. Once inside, my fear didn’t abate. Helicopters just didn’t seem as safe as airplanes and I didn’t know why. They pulled Gabriel up and shut the doors and we moved away from the trees and forest. I didn’t know where we were headed, and I wasn’t entirely sure I cared. I was away from the bears and lynxes and the trees. This experience had only reaffirmed my thoughts that forests were not safe places for me.

  Raphael woke up kicking, literally, his feet were kicking struggling against the cuffs that Caleb had put around his ankles. I heard them click as they tightened a little more. Gabriel was trying to calm his brother down over the noise of the rotor and blades slicing through the air outside. I couldn’t hear him, his words gobbled up by the other noises. A police officer that had been in the helicopter when I got in it was also trying to get Raphael to settle down and not struggle. The basket was now dancing on the floor of the helicopter. Caleb had cuffed Raphael’s arms to it and it moved with his wrists like a dysfunctional marionette.

  The police officer reached over Raphael and in an instant all hell broke loose. Raphael managed to get the cop’s gun and began firing. However, being handcuffed to the basket meant he didn’t have a lot of mobility and the shots went straight up. The officer’s body jerked as the gun began to click. Raphael had emptied the clip, Xavier and Gabriel were in motion trying to subdue Raphael by climbing over him now that the gun was empty.

  Alarms started going off inside the helicopter, I knew alarms were a bad thing
and I looked up at the roof. I could feel air circulating in the cabin of the helicopter and the noise had gotten louder. Not all the bullets had entered the body of the police officer and liquid was starting to drip from a few holes. Gabriel pushed the dead body off his brother and onto the floor next to him. The police officer had multiple gun shots to the chest and lower torso. His eyes were open, his mouth was slack, and his eyes had this empty look to them that I associated with death. I didn’t check his pulse, instead I reached down with my Taser, that I had found in Gabriel’s backpack, ejected the clip, and put the bare prongs against Raphael’s scalp. It would be pure torture on a regular person to send that much electricity straight into their head, but for a psychopath, not so much, and it was the only good place I could reach. It might fry him, but it was a risk I was going to have to take. I hit the button and felt the Taser jump in my hand. Raphael made no noise, which was creepier than if he had been screaming bloody murder. His eyelids fluttered close and his breathing regulated.

  “Hold on!” Gabriel was screaming about an inch from my face. I didn’t know what I was supposed to hold on to as there wasn’t much in this area of the helicopter. I tucked my hands between my knees and realized the helicopter wasn’t pointing out anymore, it was pointing down. I didn’t know the statistics for surviving a helicopter crash, but I was sure they probably weren’t all that great, and I prepared for this long day to get significantly worse.

  The paramedic that was across from Xavier was holding onto a handle that was on the side of the helicopter. I didn’t have one of those, but the seat across from me did. I didn’t move into it, I didn’t figure moving around a crashing helicopter was a good idea.

  We landed very hard instead of crashing. We were at an angle. I had heard something that sounded suspiciously like a blade tearing off moments before we stopped moving and ended up semi-sideways against the ground.

  For a second I thought I’d gone deaf as all noise ceased. Then the pilot started moving and I could hear him, meaning the sudden lack of noise was due to him turning off the helicopter. I didn’t know if you were supposed to congratulate a pilot that kept you from crashing or not, so I said nothing. The paramedic unfastened his seat belt and opened the door on his side. The ground was only a few feet from the door along with what looked like one of the helicopters runners. I didn’t know what else to call the thing on the bottom of a helicopter, feet didn’t seem right in my head.

  “Ace hit the release on the latch on the basket,” Xavier told me. It took a heartbeat or two to find it, but once I did, I hit it and watched with some joy as the basket slid uncontrollably out of the helicopter bay and onto the ground. It hit awkwardly and flipped over, forcing Raphael’s face into the ground with the basket behind him. His feet were still cuffed together, and his arms were still cuffed to the basket and he rocked it back and forth but couldn’t get it to flip over.

  “I’ll go first,” Xavier told the paramedic as he hopped out onto the ground, gun drawn. I could see other feet move closer to the helicopter door. They stopped next to Xavier and one set had to belong to Malachi because the boots were massive, and Malachi had the biggest feet I had ever seen. They were so long he had to custom order all his shoes.

  “You okay?” Gabriel asked.

  “I am so totally done with helicopters,” I answered.

  “I can understand that.” Gabriel nodded.

  “Oh, and your bother.”

  “Agreed.” Gabriel said as he helped me with my seat belt. My hand didn’t hurt, but it should have. The fingers were all pointed in strange and different directions. I didn’t know if they were broken or dislocated. I had learned a valuable lesson from it though, I had tucked my hands to keep them from flailing about when the helicopter crashed and instead I had damaged one of them with my knee. If there was ever a next time, I’d just let them flail. I had a feeling it was like falling, if you were falling, you weren’t supposed to try to catch yourself, a rule I had already broken once today and been stabbed for forgetting.

  “If it makes you feel any better, it was hard not to chuckle when Raphael and his basket fell out of the helicopter through the open door.”

  “It does, but mostly because I had the same reaction and had to stifle it,” I told Gabriel.

  “Safe to say if he survives this, I won’t be visiting him in the near future.” Gabriel gave me a weary smile that I felt as much as saw. My adrenaline was back up and I was no longer tired, but I was still exhausted.

  Once my seat belt was off, Gabriel and I climbed out of the helicopter together. Caleb reached in and helped me with the final step which was actually more of a jump. Xavier looked at my hand and touched my fingertips.

  “I’ll need an X-Ray to be sure they aren’t broken, but I think they are just dislocated.” He said.

  “Awesome.” I answered and leaned against Caleb. Every inch of my body was screaming at me that it needed a bed. After a moment, the pilot told us to get away from the helicopter and there was a lot of wind as the other helicopter took off.

  “We have cars and ambulances coming for us,” Malachi told us. “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure,” I told him. Xavier began explaining the sequence of events that had landed us on the ground, which was fine because I wasn’t entirely sure I had seen everything. I stood there and let Caleb hold me mostly upright. He didn’t have an arm around me, which helped, he was just standing still so I could lean against him. Which was good because my legs didn’t feel very strong. I had this thought and then realized I might be entering the psychopathic equivalent of shock. Not from pain but because we had all just survived a helicopter crash and Xavier wasn’t bleeding from anywhere, but his nose and the helicopter hadn’t exploded on impact or caught fire or killed anyone as it landed very roughly.

  It felt like we stood near the ruined helicopter for hours, but it was probably no more than ten minutes, before vehicles with lights and sirens began to arrive. There were three fire trucks, a dozen police cars, and two ambulances.

  Chapter Seventeen

  MALACHI HELPED CALEB put me on a gurney and strap me down. Then the two of them plus Lucas began hoisting Raphael up. They left him handcuffed to the basket and put the basket and Raphael on a different gurney. Then they used the straps to secure the basket to the gurney. Lucas and Malachi walked over to one of the two ambulances and got in.

  I lost sight of them as they loaded me into an ambulance. Xavier and Gabriel climbed in with me. The paramedic protested but lost the argument when Xavier pulled out the “I’m a medical doctor” card.

  “Wouldn’t you prefer to ride with your brother?” I asked Gabriel as the ambulance started moving.

  “If I have to look at my brother for the entire ride to the hospital, I will kill him.” Gabriel told me.

  “Me too,” I told him. “Between Fiona and the helicopter and him treating me like a rag doll, he isn’t real high on my favorite person’s list.”

  “Mine either,” Xavier said.

  “Shouldn’t you have ridden with the one that was more gravely injured, so you could administer medical support.” I looked pointedly at Xavier.

  “Yes, but I figured Lucas and Malachi were better guards than me,” Xavier answered. Xavier had a condition that made him bleed heavily if his skin was pricked. It didn’t seem to be a medical condition like hemophilia, but he didn’t take daily medications, so I wasn’t sure it was a blood thinner. It was a newer condition, the result of something they did after Xavier was shot in the head, he was living proof that people survived bullets in the skull and brain all the time.

  Xavier had even survived a rifle shot to the head, which was less survivable than a bullet from a handgun. We hadn’t delved into the matter very deeply. I had read the police report about the incident, but other than that Xavier didn’t talk about it much. I was sure this was because he didn’t remember much about it. In my opinion, the lack of memory would be a blessing. No one needed a detailed memory of being shot in the h
ead. I had detailed memories of gunshots I had survived, and they were bad enough. Getting shot in the head was cause for PTSS, even if you didn’t remember it, as far as I was concerned.

  Xavier was surprisingly quiet for most of the ride to the hospital. He checked my fingers a few times to make sure blood was still flowing into them, but otherwise, he didn’t talk much or do much. His nose was still bleeding, and I had surmised it was the result of flailing arms during the landing.

  I was taken in and rushed to X-Ray. Malachi and Caleb were in the hall as they wheeled me to the room with the machine. As I went by, I heard Caleb talking about Raphael being in one of the rooms and him not being comfortable outside the room no matter what they had put on him to restrain him before sending him in.

  “Marshal Cain is there a chance you could be pregnant,” an x-ray tech asked me as she tried to help me up onto the bed of the machine. I was getting a full body x-ray series done to make sure I didn’t have a bunch of fractures in my legs and things.

  “No,” I answered.

  “It says you aren’t on birth control,” she responded.

  “I’m asexual and therefore celibate,” I told her. “Birth control is unnecessary to control pregnancy if you don’t take part in the act that creates babies and I was going to be less than happy if immaculate conception or parthenogenesis had taken place in my body during the last couple of months.

  “Alright then, so no chance.”

  “None,” I told her.

  “Then we’ll go ahead and start. We’ll start with the lying down x-rays and move the standing x-rays since I believe they said you had been in a helicopter crash.”

  “Correct,” I told her.

  “Deep breath and hold,” I did as she said and let her take all the x-rays she wanted. My leg was throbbing a little bit where the skin had been removed and I had forgotten to tell the doctor about it during the five seconds I had seen him when I first arrived.

  My fingers were dislocated, and the nurse had nearly fainted when I remembered to pull up my pant leg and show them the wound on my calf. I was pretty sure this had less to do with the wound and more to do with the fact that she thought it was the result of Raphael trying to eat my leg while it was still attached to me.