Amundsen stood up and felt his way back to the chair, his eyes fixed on me like I might reach out and kill him.
My heart had calmed down, at least. It'd fallen into what I felt was a natural rhythm.
But what had happened there, and why couldn't I remember it?
Was I right in thinking that my brief period of unconsciousness and the resultant outburst had been caused by the demon?
A demon? Jesus Christ... this has to be a joke. Demons don't exist, man. This can't be right.
Of course, up until recently, witches hadn't really existed, either.
“Why did you do this to me?” I asked Amundsen after a time.
He looked at me sorrowfully, kneading at his greying temples. His large eyes didn't stay on me long; they drooped to the floor in shame. “You said you wanted to live, Lucian, and I wanted to give you that choice. This was the only way to make it happen. The only way.” He looked up gravely, his brow dotted in sweat. “If you've changed your mind, I can ask the doctor to remove the heart, I suppose...”
What a gracious offer that was. If I didn't want to house the heart of a violent demon I could just ask ol' Dr. Sargasso to come on in and scoop it back out. I could go back to being dead. That sounded like a real treat.
Not.
“That isn't much of an option,” I replied. “Deal with it or just die? Thanks a lot.”
Looking a little offended, Amundsen stood up and shook his head. “Now, you may not see it yet, but this is a gift, Lucian. It's a gift that no other living man possesses. In time, you will come to understand it as such. The Veiled Order has great plans for you, Lucian. You'll grow so powerful, do such good in the world for our organization. Those criminals who did this to you in the first place will cower in your shadow very soon now.”
I frowned. “Well, it was nice of you to let me know that this little operation of yours had strings attached. Considerate. I always wanted to sign up to... do whatever it is you're talking about.” He'd mentioned an organization; what, was I going to join the Super Friends? I wasn't sure exactly what he meant by any of this and didn't have much time to dwell on it because the thumping in my chest resumed with a vengeance. I groaned, feeling like my heart might explode, and clutched at my breast.
Amundsen noticed and walked over to the door. “He needs sedated,” he shouted.
Not a moment later and that same young nurse who'd wheeled in the nightmarish mirror was rushing in with a syringe. She flicked the cap off of the needlepoint and gave the thing a few quick taps while testing the flow. She didn't ask any questions or even tell me it was going to hurt. She squatted down beside my bed, pulled down the edge of my gown and began sizing up my deltoid.
“Hey now, hold up a second--”
She stuck me in the shoulder, hard.
“Damn it!” I thrashed a little, my heart flopping and squirming like a dying fish. “This isn't necessary, you know. What about patient satisfaction? Don't you people have those little surveys for people to fill out after they get discharged, for government reimbursement? I'm going to give all of you fucking zeroes for this!”
The nurse stood up after pushing the whole of the syringe's contents into me. It burned a little, made my shoulder feel numb and tingly. Then, dropping the used-up syringe into a red container on the wall, she walked out without a word.
“By morning,” said Amundsen, “you'll be able to wander freely. No restraints, no sedatives... but, until then... you must rest. We'll be having someone watch you, too. An orderly will be posted in your room at all times, should you need to use the bathroom or anything of the sort.” He patted me on the foot as I felt a wave of numbness wash over me. That shit, whatever it was, worked fast. “I'll see you in the morning, Lucian. Take care.”
I was going to tell him to go fuck himself for using me as his occult plaything when, suddenly, it was lights out. The sedative hit me like a load of bricks and I sailed into unconsciousness with nary a struggle.
SEVEN
I woke up again, at some point, and felt immediately that something wasn't right. Don't ask me what. I couldn't have told you even if I'd had a hundred years to answer. I felt groggy, weighed down. That was likely the sedative, or whatever else they'd been feeding me over the course of my stay. But that wasn't all.
That wasn't the worst of it.
Most drugs that I know of don't incite feelings of terror or panic. Some might, maybe, but the fright coursing through me seemed to stem from another source. I could feel it in my veins. And I don't mean that metaphorically.
The demon heart, I figured, was at the root cause of this feeling.
I couldn't feel the rest of my body, but could sense my heart galloping along. My vision was blurry, my thoughts were fuzzy. It was like being held underwater. Everything was dampened, unfamiliar, delayed. I tried to move my hands, my feet, just to ensure they were still attached to me, but couldn't raise them an inch.
When I resigned myself to just laying back in bed and calming down, however, I noticed myself sitting up. My legs and arms worked in tandem, and I sat up in bed with ease. The trouble, though, is that I wasn't doing it.
That's right. My body was moving of its own accord, or under some agency other than my own.
This development brought about a lot of confusion in me. The terror faded away, and I just dwelt deep in my headspace, baffled. How is this happening? I thought. I didn't try to sit up, and yet, I did.
Next, I guess I started to speak. Er, rather, words started coming out of my mouth, but I wasn't the one coming up with them.
Someone was sharing my vocal chords, my lips; someone was co-opting my body and speaking through it as though it were a puppet.
“Excuse me,” said the entity speaking through me. I could hear the words dully. They echoed in a strange way. Was I schizophrenic now, or had the demon in me completely taken over my body? And, if that was the case, was I supposed to be aware of its control over me? I was still in there, somewhere, it was just that my consciousness and its sway over my physical form was severely diminished. My mind had been tucked away neatly into some dark corner to make room for this new something that now spoke and sat up using my bones and muscles.
It was the most uncomfortable thing I'd ever felt. Imagine walking into your house and finding the entire thing ransacked. Your clothes are strewn all over the floor, the kitchen's a fucking mess, your dog's been shot and there's piss all over the toilet seat.
Now imagine that same sense of having been violated. Except we're not talking about your home-- no, in my case, this awful feeling was issuing from inside of me. My insides, my mind, had been rearranged without my permission, and were presently being used in a way I hadn't consented to.
“Excuse me,” repeated the thing speaking through me. “I'm so thirsty. Please, may I have some water?”
I focused hard. As best I could tell, through my tenuous link with my physical body, I wasn't thirsty. I didn't need any water, and still couldn't tell who the intruder was speaking to. But I'm not thirsty. Why ask for water? I thought.
From my periphery came a young man dressed in teal scrubs. He was tall, with curly black hair, and stooped down at my bedside with a plastic water jug in hand. I presumed this was the orderly they'd posted in my room to keep watch. He held out the jug and shifted the straw towards me so that I could take a sip.
“The air here gets dry,” he said, smiling. “Makes me mighty thirsty, too.” He was friendly, trying to make chit-chat with me. He was probably a swell guy, possibly going to nursing school or something similar. I'd never seen him before, and had no reason to bear him a grudge.
That was why it was so surprising when I jerked towards him and spit in his face.
Well, it wasn't actually me doing it, remember. I'm not that big a jackass. I don't spit in people's faces. Something else was responsible for this, something using my body. I was hopeless to stop it.
The orderly fell back onto the floor and beg
an to wail. He clawed at his face, thrashing from side to side like he'd just been seriously injured. I watched on from deep within my head, baffled at this behavior. I mean, getting spit on sucks, but he was overreacting a little, wasn't he?
And then I noticed.
His skin was being eaten away.
Rapidly.
Smoke rose from his face as the skin was burnt. Blood began to ooze from gaping holes in the flesh, and as he clutched at it, yet deeper parts of his anatomy became visible. We're talking muscle here. Bits of bone. His lips were destroyed, giving him the look of some rejected Batman villain, and his eyes were degenerating into something like runny egg whites.
My spit had done that to him?
The next thing I witnessed was a swift motion of both my arms. Somehow, I managed to pull off not one, but both manacles. They dropped to the floor, clattering distantly. The imposter then stood up, using my legs, and turned in the direction of the window.
I was being trotted around the room and couldn't even tell you how.
After a brief pause, I punched out the window, showering the floor in glass. Just beyond the edge of the busted pane was a set of thick iron bars, like those you might see in a generic jail cell.
What kind of hospital used iron bars on the windows? I was beginning to think that this wasn't a typical hospital at all.
Though, maybe that should have occurred to me sooner. They did weird shit here, like implanting demon hearts into their patients. The bars on the windows were not exactly the first red flag.
With a grunt, I managed to pull the bars in opposite directions. They gave like they were made of rubber, and the resulting space looked just large enough for me to wriggle through.
And that's exactly what I did.
We were a few stories up, but I guess I didn't think much of plunging out of a second or third story window down into the grass below.
It was a quiet, dim night. A new moon, if my perusal of the sky was to be believed. We were out in the middle of nowhere, too, judging by the lack of buildings in the area and the abundance of visible stars.
I heard a soft voice as I stood there. It wasn't coming from outside, but from within me. It was like I was standing within my body with someone else, and we were having a quiet conversation. If my consciousness had been able to reach out just then, it might've bumped elbows with this other thing that now spoke to me. The voice said, “Say, you look tired. Why don't you relax while I take this thing for a proper spin?”
By “thing”, I figured he was talking about my body.
Despite all I'd just seen, I couldn't muster up a single reason to refuse. “Sounds good,” I thought.
And then, my thoughts faded into darkness for a good, long while. My mind was blotted out. If my senses had been dampened and my connection with my body weakened previously, then the effect had been multiplied a thousand-fold now.
I'd sunk to the bottom of a deep, dark lake with no idea as to when I might resurface, while something else took a turn captaining my body.
EIGHT
It was morning when I woke up.
That is, when I really woke up, feeling like myself again.
My body was wicked sore and the surface I was laying on was rough. I kind of missed the hospital mattress.
Oh, shit, I remembered. You left the hospital, didn't you?
Well, that wasn't quite right. My body had left the hospital, it was true, but someone else had been at the helm. Or, rather, something else. A demon.
I had a look around, finding my surroundings mostly dark and shadow-swollen. There was some light coming from above, though. It was the sky, mostly dim but with traces of a rising sun bleeding through.
By the looks of it, I'd spent the night out and about. A cool breeze washed over me, sending me into shivers. The hospital gown was still draped over me, but underneath I was wearing a pair of basketball shorts that I didn't recognize.
Come to think of it, I didn't own a single pair of such shorts.
This was getting weird.
I stood up, massaging the back of my head where a dull ache was forming, and took stock of my surroundings in earnest. It took me a while to recognize them, though. It was a building, partially destroyed. The room I was in now was a real sorry mess, and the roof in this spot was gone, giving me a perfect view of the sky. A bit further on, a wall was missing, mostly crumbled or burnt away, and beyond I could see a lawn of decent size, thoroughly overgrown.
I remembered this place.
The house...
This was the shithole Amundsen had sent me to, the place those witches had conducted their sabbath.
The place I'd died.
I paced around dazedly for a short while, looking around and expecting a gaggle of hags to jump me at any moment. None came, though. The place was quiet, unbelievably so. Not even the breeze made any noise as it ambled in. I looked down at my body in the dim morning light and marveled at the bruises marring my limbs. I knew the witches had beat the crap out of me, but they looked a lot worse than I remembered. And then there were the wounds on the knuckles of both my hands. I sure didn't remember getting those. Had I injured myself in the night?
What was I doing in this place, and what had I gotten up to all night?
Not knowing was pretty scary, I'll admit.
I'm no stranger to getting blackout drunk, to waking up in unfamiliar places with little recollection as to how I ended up there. This was a little different, though. When you're drunk, you're technically still in control. Lower inhibitions and all that, but you're still there, calling the shots. You can be held accountable for your actions if you hit the bottle too hard, and usually, unless you really fuck yourself up, you can remember what you've done over the course of a wild night. When someone else barges into your head and takes your body for a spin, however, it's another thing completely.
I gulped. This motherfucker inside of me was going to have some explaining to do.
Trouble was, I couldn't sense him. Under the circumstances, my heart was calm, beating normally, and that foggy feeling of being subdued had completely passed. It was like something had taken firm hold of me in one moment and then had suddenly let go in the next. I was free, in control once again, and had no idea what had transpired.
I started pacing through the house's many rooms, all of them strewn with garbage and burnt-out, and ducked through the windows, trying to find some evidence of what I'd done in my strange nocturnal state.
The last thing I expected to find outside the window was a cop car, its lights flashing as it drove up onto the lawn, practically to the front door of the house.
About a half dozen others followed, and cops spilled out of them as they screeched to a stop.
Guns drawn.
My blood turned to ice. “Oh, fuck.”
The cops were here, most of them wearing full tactical gear. Some of those guns were big; they weren't just carrying sidearms. It looked like they'd come to put down a gang of elephants. I chanced to peek out one of the windows again, and nearly caught a smoke grenade in the face.
The place was stormed by police before I knew it. They had me on the ground within seconds, were shouting orders to keep my head down, to keep my hands where they could see them. The barrels of high-powered guns were pressed into my body. More than one boot connected with my ribs; “accidentally,” I'm sure.
“You're under arrest, motherfucker,” uttered one cop, kneeling beside me and handcuffing me as roughly as he possibly could. Literally, he could not have twisted my arms behind my back and squeezed the cuffs on any harder without ripping my arms from their sockets.
I was crying. I'll admit it. Ever wake up in a strange place only to get manhandled by cops? I had no idea what I'd done to deserve this treatment, which made it all the worse. Had I killed someone? Taken a police car for a joyride? Nothing I could have possibly done over the course of a single night seemed worthy of this sort of treatment, but here they w
ere, treating me like a lovechild of Hitler and Bin Laden.
The cold barrel of a rifle met the back of my neck. The metal pressed in hard, hard enough to leave a mark. A shot from this thing would sail straight through my spine and scatter my throat against the floor.
With my hands cuffed behind my back and the strange shorts I was wearing now soaked in my piss, I waited for the bang. This was it. I was about to get executed. Death by cop wasn't how I'd expected to go out of this world, but here I was, on this godforsaken property where I'd been killed once already.
NINE
I was pretty well into my sobbing when a booming voice broke through the commotion. It soared above the rest of the noise, and the cops around me fell into silence as their attention was directed at the newcomer. Big, loud footsteps could be heard across the floor. This guy was walking so hard I could feel it in my bones from across the room. “Hold your fire,” he barked.
“The fuck are you?” asked one of the cops.
I turned, trying to get a look at this guy, but only succeeded in catching a brief glimpse of the impressive-looking badge he held out. He was dressed in all black, but it wasn't tactical gear like the cops wore. A black suit, a black overcoat. Dude was wearing sunglasses, too, unless I was mistaken. The gun against my neck had eased off enough for me to turn my head, but I could only see so much.
“Back it up or I'll have your balls off before you can even say 'ouch',” said the guy in black, pointing to the cop who'd been ready to shoot me just a second ago.
“Who does this cocksucker think he is?” muttered one of the cops from nearby.
“Is he a fed? What the fuck is this?” asked another.
“We're in charge here,” said the thug above me, lowering the tip of the rifle till it touched the small of my back. He really dug it in there, giving it a little twist like he was trying to put out a cigarette.
Raw Power: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Demon-Hearted Book 1) Page 4
