Mecca ducked back into the office. Jenny kneeled beside Oliver, looking panicked and trying to get him to wake up.
“Never mind,” Mecca said. The desperation in her own voice scared her as much as it scared Jenny, judging from the expression on her face. “Get up. We have to go. Will, we’re coming. Be ready. We’re coming and fast.”
“I’m at the door,” he said. She was grateful that he didn’t ask her what was happening.
Mecca went to grab one of Oliver’s arms, but Jenny picked him up like a little kid and half-slung him over her shoulder. They couldn’t worry about his injuries yet. They needed to get to safety first.
“The backpack,” Jenny said, nodding at it.
Oliver had been wearing it earlier, and now it lay where he’d fallen. Mecca scooped it up and followed Jenny, who’d already made it out the door.
Jenny didn’t even look back but made a beeline around the corner, heading for the door they’d entered.
“What’s going on?” Sara said on the line.
“Later,” Will snapped.
Mecca made the mistake of glancing along the hall before following Jenny.
Three giant men, dark suits stuffed with thick chests and huge arms, barreled down the long hall toward them.
“Go! Go!” she yelled, running full tilt behind her best friend, whose speed was leaving her behind. “Shit shit shit.”
Jenny pushed into the employee door, and they were outside, cold air slamming them both in the face.
Will stood beside the car, three doors open—the two in front and one back seat. “Come on! Get in!” He rushed to help Jenny.
“Just get ready to drive. I’ve got him.” And a second later, she’d hurled Oliver’s unconscious form into the back seat and climbed in after.
Mecca hadn’t even gotten to the car when the building door crashed open.
She put on a burst of speed—thank God for track—and catapulted into the passenger side. “Go!” She jerked her door shut as gunfire erupted around them. Everyone in the car ducked.
Will slammed the car into Drive and smashed the gas pedal, sending them leaping forward.
Mecca raised her head enough to peek out the side window as they careened toward the exit driveway. Three of the guys in dark suits lined the raised walk at the employee door, guns held in front of them. Salas stood in the doorway, watching.
The gunfire stopped as the car reached the parking lot exit, but Will didn’t slow, taking the turn so fast Mecca jarred her shoulder on the window.
He didn’t ease off the gas pedal until he got to the main road and had to meld with the late-night traffic around Emory.
“Everyone okay?” He peered at her.
She nodded. The energy rush from killing Blume still sang through her. Between that and the adrenaline, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have a coronary right here.
“I am,” Jenny said from the back. “But Oliver won’t wake up.”
Mecca looked back. His face had gone ashen, and his body lay limp against Jenny. Her best friend looked like a small child: scared and wanting someone to fix it.
“Does he have a pulse?” Will asked, his voice steady and calm.
Jenny pressed two fingers against his neck. It took a moment of moving around, but she said, “Yes. It’s faint.”
“What happened to him?”
“A man held him by the neck, choking him, and punched him in the stomach. A lot.”
“It was Salas,” Mecca whispered to Will.
He cut his eyes at her, and she knew he understood what she meant.
Although now Mecca knew that Salas wasn’t Visci, they both understood that he wasn’t “merely” human, either. His punches hit much harder than a normal human’s.
Just as Will’s would.
Mecca supposed it was a benefit of the Visci blood.
“He can’t die,” Jenny said, her voice forlorn, as she cradled Oliver’s head in her lap. “I promised I’d keep him safe.” When she met Mecca’s eyes, desperation lived there.
Leaning the seat all the way back, Mecca said, “Let me try something.” She scooted up as far as possible, so she could reach Oliver.
“What are you going to do?” Jenny asked.
I don’t really know, Mecca thought. She’d seen her dad try to save Jenny’s father, when his life was leaking out over his office floor. It had been bloody and awful. Her dad hadn’t known she was in the doorway or that she’s shifted her vision to see the Cavern.
Both Caverns.
Jim Barron’s and her dad’s.
The memory assaulted her, but she let it come. She needed to see, to recreate what her dad had tried to do.
She couldn’t save Jenny’s dad, but maybe she could save Oliver.
Oliver’s face was swollen. Bruises started to form on his cheek and just over his right eye. Had Salas punched him before they’d gotten into the room? He must have.
She didn’t know if there was more damage to his head or to his gut, but she was able to reach his belly more easily.
“Mecca?”
She’d forgotten Jenny had asked her a question.
“I’m going to try to help him. I don’t know if it will work, because I don’t exactly know how to do it. But I think it can be done.”
I hope it can be done.
From the corner of her eye, she caught Will dividing his attention between the road and her. She ignored him. If he wrecked the car… Well, they’d deal with that if it happened.
She took a breath and tried to relax. The adrenaline still pumped through her and she had that jittery sensation she always got when the chemical dumped into her bloodstream.
She shifted her vision.
Oliver’s Cavern superimposed itself over his broken form. As before, it held the warm golden light of a human’s soul. And the grey-ish-green tendrils that snaked their way through the light were there too. But the difference from when she viewed his Cavern in Jenny’s basement and her view now was radical.
Where before, the light seemed almost like a golden cloud with its radiance suffusing the entire space, now the light—muted—covered the ground in a fog. The top half of the Cavern had dimmed and looked murky.
The tendrils still wove through everything, but now they pulsed and moved, as if looking for more of the light to feed from. It reminded her of the trash compactor scene in Star Wars.
It also reminded her of Jim Barron’s death. His Cavern had looked much the same, but without the grey parts that Mecca now associated with Visci hold.
How could she fix this?
“Lift his shirt.”
Jenny obeyed without hesitation.
Oliver’s torso was colored pinkish, with splotches of dark red. A deep purple layered beneath the red.
She set her hand gently on his skin. Warmth heated her palm.
Taking another breath, she focused solely on the Cavern. If she could use her soul to take a stolen human soul from a Visci—killing him—then it made some kind of sense that she should be able to push her soul into Oliver’s to…keep his from draining away?
She didn’t know, but she had to try. Jenny wouldn’t forgive herself if Oliver died. Mecca couldn’t let that happen.
The gold color of the human soul was universal, but many people had tinges of other colors around the edges. Mecca didn’t know if the colors meant anything. Her own edging was a bright blue, as was her dad’s, her Uncle Ken’s and her Gramps’s.
Oliver’s was only golden. Had it been edged in a color earlier? She didn’t remember.
She tried to concentrate only on what she was doing right now.
Trying not to let her fear and panic color her mind, Mecca concentrated on gathering up a column of her own soul.
Letting her eyes drift closed for a moment, she thought of her own soul, about molding a piece of her soul into a hand, an arm. Something that could extend away from her and toward Oliver. The low thrumming beat that had been in her veins ever since Blume’s death began to echo outward.
/> When she opened her eyes again, a long column of gold wove itself into Oliver’s Cavern. It slid into the fog of Oliver’s soul and wound circles around the ebbing light. The difference in the vibrancy of the colors was stark. Her own bright; his dim, dull.
She wasn’t directing it exactly. She’d pushed a bit of her soul into his, but once the light of her essence was there, it seemed to work on its own. Mecca had become a spectator.
Within a few moments, the distinct edges of her soul were no longer visible. The blue had melded into the rest and taken on the same golden hue. It entwined and become one with Oliver’s. The fog-like parts became denser, brighter.
“I think it’s working,” Jenny whispered.
Mecca focused back on the real world. The red patches on his face had melted away. They didn’t even look pink. On his torso, the purple marks were still visible, but they were red now and fading too.
Mecca’s thoughts had halted altogether. She couldn’t even fathom quite what was happening. She shifted again to the Cavern.
Oliver’s soul—the piece of hers seemed to have melded with his now—had risen from the floor to almost fill the entire space. It was very near to looking normal now. Its color had leveled out and become more uniform.
How could this have possibly worked?
For the first time in her life, she regretted not letting her father teach her more about her Gift.
“Jenny?” Oliver’s voice broke through her thoughts, and she snapped her vision to the here and now, letting the Cavern scene close altogether.
“I’m here!” Jenny said, her voice filled with relief and awe. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Mecca let out a breath and slumped down in the seat.
Now that the crisis had passed—it worked!—weariness invaded her bones. She closed her eyes. Muscles that had been tense and tight felt sore, as if she’d run all-out crazy to place in a track meet. The adrenaline, the rush from Blume’s death, all that was gone, leaving her with a bone-numbing exhaustion.
All she wanted to do was sleep for a week.
“Guys.” Sara’s voice came across as quiet, subdued. And that wasn’t like Sara.
It brought Mecca’s awareness back, and she opened her eyes. That feeling, like dread, that creeps up and makes it seem as if the floor will drop out from under you at any moment crept over her.
“What’s wrong?” Will asked.
“Jorge. He’s…”
Will took the next corner at a snail’s pace. “He’s what?”
Even in the gloom, Mecca saw Jenny’s pained expression. It was as if they both knew what Sara was about to say—the only thing she would say in that tone. And neither of them wanted to hear it.
“He’s gone,” Sara said, hushed.
“What?” Jenny’s voice, high-pitched and on the verge of frantic, matched the look on her face.
Mecca laid a hand on her best friend’s wrist.
“He just…” Sara’s voice cracked. “He’s gone.”
Chapter Thirty-Four: Jenny
“Hey,” Sara said quietly, as she let them into the apartment.
The happiness and elation Jenny had felt after Mecca had healed Oliver was long gone. Her own mood matched Sara’s somberness.
And then she saw Jorge. Or rather, the blanket on the sofa bed that covered him. Tears pricked at her eyes.
They’d let him down. He’d needed them to be there, to get the thing done, and they’d failed.
“Here,” Mecca said to Sara. “We managed to get his laptop out. It fell on the floor once or twice, but hopefully it’s not damaged. Maybe you can get something off it about the poison.”
“What’s the point?” Jenny said, not turning to look at them. “He’s dead.”
Mecca’s hand rested on the back of her shoulder. “I’m sorry.” They stood in silence for a moment before she continued. “But there is at least one infected human out there. Maybe more. We can’t be sure.”
The irony of Mecca’s words wasn’t lost on Jenny. Mecca, who’d vowed to kill every last Visci, was now wanting Sara to find something they could use to figure out a cure for a poison that would kill any Hybrid—more than half the Visci.
I guess mass execution doesn’t have the right flavor.
Guilt stabbed at her. She didn’t want to think of Mecca that way.
“Where’s Zoey?” she asked.
“She’s in that room. Her room, I guess,” Sara said as she set the laptop on the kitchen island beside her own. “She’s been there ever since…”
Jenny turned around to face Mecca. “I’ll talk to her. It’s probably better if you stayed in here.”
Mecca nodded.
Jenny moved to the other door—the one that was not the bathroom or a bedroom, but instead was inexplicably a lab. She knocked.
There was no answer.
“Zoey?”
Still nothing.
She felt someone behind her.
Oliver.
“I have something,” he said.
“What?”
“I want to show Zoey.”
She searched his face, but he seemed sincere. She turned back to the door. “Zoey, I’m coming in.”
She turned the handle, half expecting it to be locked. It moved smoothly.
She opened the door onto Zoey’s little lab. It looked very much like Blume’s, only much smaller and not as…expensive-looking. Instead of shiny metal tables, Zoey’s equipment was organized on white plastic pop-up tables, the centers reinforced with wooden saw horses. DIY lab, apparently.
Zoey was hunched over a microscope, a laptop open on the table beside her. “What?” she asked, without looking up.
Jenny stepped into the room, leaving the door open for Oliver to follow. “I wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“Busy.”
“I see that.” Clearly, Zoey was one of those who threw themselves into anything to distract them from their feelings. Jenny could relate. “You’re looking at the antidote?”
“That didn’t work? Yeah. And after, I’ll tackle the other one that didn’t work.”
As Oliver stepped forward, he met Jenny’s gaze, looking for support. It wasn’t surprising that Zoey intimidated him. After all, she’d almost killed him.
“I have something that might help,” he said, his voice soft.
Zoey swung her head around and glared at him. “Help? Like these helped?” She waved a hand at her microscope.
“I said that I didn’t know whether they’d—”
“And they didn’t. Help.” She turned back to her work.
“This might.” He took a few tentative steps and stretched a hand forward, as if he didn’t want to get any closer than he had to. He laid three vials on the table beside her and then backtracked to Jenny’s side.
He was definitely brave, Oliver.
Scowling, Zoey glanced at the vials, but she straightened up and turned around to see them both properly. “What are these?”
“The most recent batch of the poison that was in the main lab,” he said. “It’s possible that’s what was put into the guards.”
She lifted a vial between her fingers and stared at it, turning it back and forth. “If this is tainted, I’ll know.”
“I only want to help,” he said. He looked at Jenny again, and she gave him a nod. She hadn’t known he’d pocketed the vials. He hadn’t said a word. Oliver took her nod as an excuse to leave, backing out of the room quickly, but without turning his back on them.
“So no headway?” Jenny asked.
Zoey’s attention moved from the vials to her. “Does it look like I’ve made headway?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure I’d recognize what that would look like.”
Zoey snorted. “No, I haven’t.”
“I hope those help. There’s also Blume’s laptop. Sara is working her magic on it right now.”
Putting her back to Jenny, Zoey grabbed a couple latex gloves and pulled them on, before setting about c
reating new, smaller vials from the first one Oliver had left. “Tell her to give me a heads-up when she gets into it.”
“Are you okay? About Jorge, I mean.”
“That’s a stupid question.”
Jenny had expected Zoey to rant and rail. So her quiet, nonchalant response was a surprise. “I guess it is.”
“After she breaks into the laptop, get Sara on trying to find Helen.”
Helen.
In the evening’s chaos and the wake of Jorge’s death, Jenny had forgotten about Helen. She kept doing that.
“I will,” she said. “I’m not sure what she can do, though.”
“She’s magic with computers. I’m sure she can do something.”
Jenny nodded, thinking Zoey was probably right, though surprised she’d compliment anyone. After a moment, Jenny asked, “Why do you have this? I mean, who turns their bedroom into a lab?”
“Obviously, I do.”
“Yes. But why?” It seemed weirdly convenient that Zoey happened to have a full lab in her apartment.
“It’s not your business, is it?”
And Jenny supposed it wasn’t. As she turned to leave, though, Zoey spoke again.
“I’m a grad student in bio-chem.”
Jenny paused and half-turned. “Do all bio-chem grad students build their own labs?”
Zoey shrugged. “No idea. Now let me work.”
Jenny did as she was asked and went back into the apartment proper. Sara sat hunched over at the kitchen island with both her laptop and Blume’s in front of her. A small black box with wires running to both machines, like an umbilical cord.
Mecca stood next to Sara, observing, with Will beside her. Oliver sat in the recliner in the corner of the living room.
Avoiding going anywhere near the sofa bed, Jenny headed to the kitchen. “Mec, can I talk to you for a second?”
“Sure.”
Leading her into the bathroom, Jenny took a deep breath and put her thoughts together. After closing the door, she said, “I wanted to thank you for saving Oliver. I’m sure he would have died if you hadn’t helped him.”
Mecca shifted from foot to foot, distinctly uncomfortable. “No problem.”
“How did you do it?” This is what Jenny had been wanting to know since it happened. How had she done it? Why hadn’t she tried to do it with Jorge? Was it because he was Visci?
Visci (Soul Cavern Series Book 2) Page 22
