She pushed open the door that shouldn’t exist and saw a child huddled in the corner. A young girl wearing a purple nightgown. She squinted wondering if the girl was real, or another vision.
“She’s coming,” the girl sobbed, but as Kaylyn rushed toward her, she disappeared. A rush of air swirled around Kaylyn spinning her toward the door. The woman from her dreams, her visions.
“My child,” the woman smiled reaching out a hand.
Kaylyn backed away, remembering the last time the entity had gotten a hold of her. She turned, planning to squeeze between the bare joists in the wall, only to remember they were now solid.
“No.” she pounded against the wall. “This can’t be happening, none of this is real.”
“It’s as real as I make it.” The entity approached backing Kaylyn into the corner of the room. Kaylyn reached for the pendant, hoping to feel the comforting coolness of the metal, a reminder that the spirit couldn’t harm her. Her hand grasped at her neck, feeling nothing there. Her eyes widened as the entity’s hand stretched closer to her.
Jonah
Besides being hooked up to a dozen machines, there wasn’t much to indicate that Emerson had just had a heart attack. He put down the TV remote and watched Jonah and Cole approach the bed. Cole hung back, her arms pulled around herself.
Even Jonah’s nerves seemed like a bundle of raw energy, but there didn’t seem to be another way to get the answers before anything else happened. “Not to be blunt, sir. But if you know what’s after Kaylyn, you need to help us stop it.”
“You shouldn’t have let her in the hotel. There’s nothing that can be done, now. It’s like a damn bloodhound. Now that it has her scent again, it won’t stop.”
“What is it, and how did you stop it last time?”
“We didn’t, her mother did. She stopped it with her own blood. We never figured out if it was intentional or not, and we haven’t seen enough cases to compare.”
Cole stepped forward. “There has to be a way,” she said with a shaky voice.
“Fancy dying for your sister?”
“If I have to.”
Jonah shook his head, squeezing the bed railing to divert his tension. “No one else is dying. Just tell us what the hell it is, and why it’s fixated on Kaylyn.”
“What, I have no idea,” Emerson coughed, “but it’s after her because she belongs to it. She’s the only target we’ve found who survived. After it took her mother, we thought she was no longer in danger.”
Emerson coughed again, attracting the attention of the nurses. Two nurses entered. One waited by the door, while the other checked Emerson’s stats.
“You’ll have to leave,” she said.
Jonah kept his sights on Emerson, restraining the anger that urged him to fight. This wasn’t the place for it. He rubbed his hand through his hair and down the back of his neck.
“Sir,” the nurse reminded him, “you need to leave.”
Jonah nodded and stalked out of the room. Except for a few nurses, the hallway was empty. He cussed, looking up and down the corridor for Kaylyn. A blonde nurse pushing a cart stopped a few doors down.
“If you’re looking for the brunette girl who was sitting in the hallway, she left in a hurry.”
A glimmer on the floor caught his eye as he nodded a “thank you” to the nurse. His necklace.
“Where would she have gone?” Cole’s mouth fell open, “Oh, no, no, no. The hotel. You don’t think.” They both ran toward the elevator, where a crowd of people stood, waiting impatiently. No time for that, so Jonah pulled Cole to the stairwell.
“Why the hell would she go to the hotel alone?” Cole yelled as they sprinted toward their cars.
“I doubt she had a choice.”
Cole peeled off first, leading the way to downtown Chatham.
Jonah pulled on the padlocked door and jiggled the latch, but the door wasn’t going to budge.
“Can’t you just do the manly-man thing and break it down?”
“Because my bones are made of steel, right?” Hearing a scream from the second floor, they both looked up.
“Well, we better do something.”
“You two certainly are sisters,” Jonah murmured, jogging back to his trunk to get a crowbar. He handed a flashlight to Cole and set to work on the latch. The latch popped off the door just as something thudded and scratched on the floor above.
Jonah ran in first, heading straight for the main stairway, with Cole at his heels. She switched on the flashlight, shining the light up the stairs in front of them. They paused on the landing and, through the joists, they could see Kaylyn huddled in the corner of a room, as if something had trapped her there. They ran down the hallway toward her, but as soon as they reached the doorway, Kaylyn ran out, plowing into Jonah’s chest. He lost his breath for a minute, but looked up to see a figure coming at them. He tried to pull Kaylyn to the side, but she wouldn’t move. He shoved her backward until she stumbled and fell, with Jonah landing on top of her.
“You can’t fool me, and I won’t give you what you want.” She screamed swinging a board at his face. Jonah caught her wrist and shoved her back down. The board thudded against the floor.
“Kaylyn. Take back the necklace.” He couldn’t release her long enough to shove it into her hand. She stared him down, refusing to divert her gaze. He pulled her arm up in front of her face. The pendant dangled from his hand, which clasped her arm just below her wrist.
A crash arose from behind Jonah.
“If you two don’t mind getting off the floor, I think we should get out of here.” Cole screamed, dodging another blast of energy.
Kaylyn relaxed at Cole’s voice, so Jonah released his grasp.
“Your mom,” Kaylyn whispered.
Somehow, those words managed to coil Jonah’s muscles even tighter.
“She said you’d come after me.”
“We don’t have time, Kaylyn.”
“It’s not gibberish is it? Ni neart go cur le cheile.”
His mother’s favorite proverb—there is no strength without unity. He crouched over Kaylyn for a second and then pulled her to her feet. “It’s not gibberish,” he whispered to her. “The entity is too strong—if we leave, it’ll just follow us.”
“Then, what are we supposed to do to stop it?” Kaylyn asked.
“It came for you, but now it wants more—” Jonah was cut off when the entity materialized in front of them.
The building shook and moaned with the menacing power building within the hollow structure. They jumped at the sound of an explosion—like an overloaded transformer—in the next room. Then all sound seemed to vanish, replaced by the rising sound of laughter in the next room. Jonah squinted through the beams as his vision blurred. When he blinked, walls materialized around them.
He caught Kaylyn’s wobbling body against his side.
“Now what?” Kaylyn said, her voice barely audible.
The door in front of them was closed and Jonah moved toward it, pulling an unwilling Kaylyn along by his side. “We have to send it back.”
“We don’t know what it is.” Kaylyn fought back, even though she was too weak to break Jonah’s grasp. “Your mom said it’s my legacy.”
“Not anymore. We have to break the link, and since that room is the center of its power. That’s where we need to be.”
“And then what?” Cole stepped between them and the door. “That’s what I want to know! Emerson said—”
The door flew open, silencing all of their arguments. Power whipped out from the room, gathering around them. It prickled at Jonah’s skin as if a swarm of bees had engulfed them.
The apparition materialized again, the same brunette woman, with lips curled into a twisted kind of smile. “I’ll take them, too. Especially her, it’s a pity she escaped me last time, but I made do with what I found.”
Cole grimaced and looked to the other two for some kind of answer. Jonah put his hand on her shoulder and pulled her back. “We need you, Col
e.”
Kaylyn stepped forward. “Why haven’t you taken me already?”
“You’re the last. Your mother offered herself. I didn’t think it’d be so fulfilling to take something so freely offered, but we struck a deal. You still belong to me, but she convinced me to offer you a chance. Lucky for me, that chance left me linked to this world; your mother didn’t count on that. Then, your interfering employer got involved. Shut down the hotel, and cut off my energy supply.”
The room shook again as something crashed on the floor above. Then, the entity dissolved, materializing again between the group and the door. “I managed to make the jump a few times, but I was still connected to you. So, it wasn’t as fun as I had expected.”
“If you kill us,” Kaylyn said, “Then, you lose your link for good.”
The apparition reached toward Kaylyn, as it had in the house days earlier, but Kaylyn didn’t attempt to break away. The woman’s fingers passed through Kaylyn’s arm.
Infuriated, the entity stepped back, her facade of skin melting away into a pillar of fire. A moan sent vibrations through the floor.
“You think you’re smart,” the entity’s voice—now rumbling and inhuman—rattled the room with the force of an earthquake, “but if you’re immune to my touch, I have other methods.”
The walls disappeared again, returning them to the dark and decrepit hotel. The only source of light came from the circle illuminated around Kaylyn’s feet. Similar enough to the one she’d photographed, but there was something different about it. Jonah didn’t have time to decipher the differences as the room coursed with a new energy. The bricks, boards, and other debris around them rose a few feet off the floor and began to swirl around them.
Jonah grabbed Cole and pulled her into the circle with Kaylyn.
Kaylyn started down at the circle, then began to chant. “Hear these words, hear my cries, spirit from the other side…”
“Kaylyn,” Jonah shook her shoulders, “I don’t think channeling another entity is a good idea right now.”
She blinked, her eyes were glassed over and vacant as she began the chant again. Jonah took her hand, feeling the pendant squeezed between their palms. The debris swirled faster around them, crossing into the circle, a shard of glass caught Jonah’s calf. He winced, but took Cole’s hand and nodded for her to complete the circle.
“Hear these words,” Kaylyn repeated as the other two joined in.
“Hear my cries, spirit from the other side….”
Cole lost her balance, jerking on Jonah’s arm, but he kept his eyes on Kaylyn. She stared straight ahead, unaffected by the chaos, as her chant continued. Jonah lurched forward as a two-by-four connected with his lower back. Kaylyn’s concentration was broken as she glanced over at him. He squeezed her hand, returning to his position with a wince.
The same laughter began again, near the doorway. Kaylyn closed her eyes her chin lowering to meet her chest. Jonah noticed a building heat in the palm of his hand where the pendant remained tucked tightly between his palm and Kaylyn’s.
“Kay?” Cole asked, attempting to break away from Jonah and move toward her sister. Jonah held her firmly, a jerk of his wrist commanding her to remain in her position. He winced again as the heat from the pendant began to sear his skin.
Kaylyn’s body jerked, her chest constricted against her own lungs and she hunched forward. Jonah broke the circle attempting to catch her as she fell. “Kaylyn?” He brushed her hair away from her face. The wind picked up around them again.
“What’s… how…?” Kaylyn groaned. She braced herself with Jonah’s arm and took a step away from the glowing circle in the floor.
Jonah heard a whisper in his ear, and jerked around toward the source, but no one was there. He shifted and reached for his pocket, Kaylyn moaned at the movement but was too weak to raise much more of an argument. Jonah pried out the blade of his Swiss Army knife, just as Kaylyn opened her eyes again.
“Whoa, boss, I thought we agreed to not kill me.”
“We have to break the bond,” he explained. “The bond is your bloodline.”
Kaylyn squinted up at him, but acquiesced, letting him take her left hand. Another block of wood hurdled at Jonah’s face as he prepared to make the cut, but he hunched over Kaylyn, hearing it whiz by his ear. They heard glass shatter in the hall.
Cole huddled closer. “That doesn’t sound good. There aren’t even any windows in this place.”
Jonah dragged the blade against Kaylyn’s palm, she cried out, hiding her face against his shoulder. “Let the blood flow into the center of the circle.” He looked up at Cole. “Now, I need you.”
The entity roared as beams of wood snapped around them. Cole held out her hand, biting her lip against the pain as Jonah made the cut. He positioned her hand over Kaylyn’s so the blood mixed before it reached the circle.
Shards of debris flew in from the hallway. The three collapsed together near the circle, feeling the on-slot of tiny pricks and scratches from the debris.
The room erupted in breaking wood, and shattering concrete. Fearing the room, and quite possible the building, would collapse, Jonah tried to get to his feet. His back clenched, knocking into his injured ribs and forcing the air out of his lungs in a painful protest. He struggled to catch his breath, feeling Kaylyn and Cole pulling at his sore body.
As soon as they cleared the circle, the puddle of blood ignited and the figure of a woman engulfed in flames rose from the center.
“I will have you,” it yelled.
“Not tonight,” Kaylyn whispered.
The figure screamed and was torn out of sight, replaced by the brown-haired woman. “I knew you could do it,” she said. “It wouldn’t work for me, because you share my blood. I only managed to put on enough restraints to keep it away from you. And even that wasn’t entirely successful.”
“Mom?” Kaylyn asked, she took a step forward, but Cole pulled her back.
“You were to be the last victim. It waited hundreds of years, and even though you’ve sealed it away, it won’t rest until it completes its oath.”
Jonah’s rib ground against itself with every breath, but after all of that, he wanted answers. “What oath?”
“I’m not entirely certain, but the curse ran in my husband’s family, claiming the first-born of every son in the tenth generation.” Her form flickered and dimmed. “No one ever really believed it, but I knew it was coming. I tried to help, Kaylyn…”
Kaylyn nodded, but stumbled backward, taking Cole’s hand.
As the flames burned down, the rimmed the circle died down, the apparition disappeared and the building settled, leaving the three in complete darkness.
Kaylyn
For a moment, Kaylyn felt like she was back in that slightly out of sync mode she’d experienced in the hospital, until the blaring of police sirens filled the room. “Think we’re busted, boss.”
“Good, at least it saves me the trouble of getting you two out of here. I’m not sure I can walk.”
Kaylyn squinted at him, trying to remember everything that had happened. It came back in bursts, with missing segments, and edges that didn’t line up properly. Beams of light emerged from the stairwell indicating the police surveying the premises. Kaylyn shielded her eyes from the bright light, now aimed at her face as two officers approached the room.
“I hope you three have a good reason for being in here,” one officer said.
“Well,” Jonah clutched his side as he tried to explain, “as a matter of fact, we do, but I doubt—”
“Did you find the little buggers?” said a familiar voice from the stairwell.
An officer shined his light toward the other end of the hotel. “Mr. Roarch, we told you to wait outside.”
“Mr. Roarch?” Jonah perked up, catching the owner’s attention.
“Jonah Troyer?” Roarch scratched his eyebrow while he scanned the room, “And your investigators… I wasn’t aware that you would be in here tonight or…” He turned to the o
fficers with a twitchy smile. “I’m sorry, but I know Mr. Troyer, and I can take care of this on my own. I won’t be pressing charges.”
The officers looked around once more, then one shrugged and patted the other on the shoulder, directing him back toward the stairs.
“Sorry, Mr. Roarch,” Jonah tried to stand, but he grunted with every move. Kaylyn stood and Jonah offered his less injured arm so she could help him to his feet.
“Are you okay?” He whispered before stepping away.
She nodded, “I’m more worried about you at the moment.”
“I can manage, thanks.” He motioned toward Cole.
The room dimmed for a moment as Jonah’s shadow blocked out most of the light from Mr. Roarch’s flashlight.
“Cole?” Kaylyn whispered, kneeling down next to her sister. Cole was still sitting on the floor, staring down at her clenched hand.
“It killed Dan’s brother in my house.” Cole kept her voice low enough that Mr. Roarch wouldn’t be able to hear, but her anger was evident in every hiss that slipped through her teeth. “Where is the body, Kay? What the hell am I supposed to tell Dan and his family?”
Kaylyn shook her head. She was too busy screaming at her mouth to work, urging it to say something. “You should call Daniel.”
“And say what?” Cole shook her head, and rubbed her uninjured hand against her face.
“I love you?”
“Way to go, Kay. That’s almost romantic.” Cole patted her pockets, checking her coat and pants twice. “My cell is gone.”
Kaylyn stood, wincing as a sore muscle in her side spasmed. “I’ll be back.”
Jonah and Mr. Roarch both stopped talking as soon as she approached.
“I need to borrow your phone.”
Jonah handed it to her without question, and then offered his flashlight, so Kaylyn shoved the phone in her pocket to take the flashlight with her good hand.
She turned on the flashlight, sat it up in the center of the room, and handed Cole the cell. “Here, call away.”
Fractured Legacy (Darkness Bound / Frqactured Legacy #1) Page 15
