Dark Illusions (Relic Keeper Book 2)

by D. D. Miers

  Now I wasn’t defenseless, and they recognized it, too.

  They ducked as I spun and swirled, and when one man rose to stop me I punched him in the face.

  My cry was worse than his.

  Our blood pooled in polka dots across the floor, their feet sliding and slipping as I ran free. My legs pumped beneath me and my breath turned ragged as I bolted.

  I tore down another corridor. I didn’t find stairs or elevators, nothing to indicate a way out. It was a maze of white and dirty tile floors.

  My head swam, and I felt each beat of my heart as it tried to keep up with my pace.

  My hand twitched in agony. A shard of glass was embedded in it. How did that get there?

  Shouts chased after me, and I panicked. How had I not lost them? Was it the trail of blood I left behind?

  I hit a dead end—a solid white wall, the same as all the others, plopped right in the middle of the hall. Frantically, I combed my bloody hands up and down it, wondering if there was a secret mechanism, or button. Nothing.

  I whipped around with my back against the corner. I’d wield my bloodied hand as a weapon if I had to.

  “Look, we don’t want to hurt you,” one man said, slowing as he reached me. Many others arrived, their hands outstretched passively.

  “Let us take a look at your hand. We can fix it up,” another said, taking a hesitant step toward me, his shiny black shoe squeaking on the tile floor.

  “Get away from me,” I growled as another man stepped forward. He had something in his hand, something like a small gun. He aimed it at me, and I felt the slam of the small dart in my thigh.

  “Lie down, Abigail, before you pass out.”

  I ran toward them on wobbly feet and plummeted face first toward the floor.

  They didn’t even try to catch me.They dragged me away, two each to my legs and arms.

  I was a danger, they said to one another, a danger to myself and to others.

  Colors and lights flashed in my vision, and I forced myself to stay awake.

  I struggled, but the pain in my hand was too great. I couldn’t pull free.

  “She’s struggling more than I thought she would,” said one of the men.

  “She’s got a strong will,” another replied. “Stronger than most we’ve ever seen.”

  Maybe I was all alone in here.

  Maybe I would never get out.

  Maybe . . . it was all in my head. Reagan, Kieron, the Relic. Maybe the truth was, none of it was real.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I didn’t know if it was day or night. There’s no window in my room, and the lights in the hallway never turned off. I couldn’t even control the light in my room. It turned off and I slept, and when it turned on, I woke up.

  There were six lines in the wall I had dug before they found the plastic spoon I had snapped and sharpened to a point. Now they check my tray after every meal.

  I slumped over onto my bed and stared blankly across the room.

  It’s the only thing to do—stare and think. Thinking reminded me of who I am/was. Who I could be if I could get out of here.

  My name was Abigail Davenport and I was the—

  Nothing. I was nothing.

  Dr. Stevens came every day to poke, prod, and ask incessant questions.

  I hated him.

  I swear I knew when he was coming, before he even reached my door.

  “Abigail, how are you feeling today?”

  I clamped my hands over my ears and blocked him out.

  “I need you to talk to me Abigail, or you’ll never get better, you’ll never be able to leave this place.”

  “Like you’d let me anyway,” I growled through gritted teeth. I still refused to look at him.

  Someone jabbed me in the arm with a thick needle and I cried out in pain. Whatever they shoved into my veins burned like wildfire.

  “Stop!” My pleading fell on deaf ears. Whoever controlled the needle jammed it in even harder. I lost feeling in my arm.

  “What did you do to me?”

  “Admit it. Admit it now,” said Dr. Stevens.

  “What, that you’re insane?”

  Steven shook his head in disappointment.

  My own scream surprised me as he pressed his thumb against my arm, against where they’d driven some poisonous liquid into my body.

  “Say it, Abigail.”

  I bit my tongue so hard I tasted iron.

  “Say. It.” He was getting angrier with me, and I saw the orderly step up.

  “No! No!” I’ screamed and thrashed like a caged animal.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself, Abigail, and we can’t have that.”

  His voice sounded like venom. I wondered how hard I would need to pull to dislocate some bones for an escape. It would hurt, but if I could get away . . .

  “Fuck you,” I growled, pathetically.

  “I’m not leaving here until you say it.”

  Dr. Stevens snatched another needle from the orderly’s tray. He stuck it into my vein as the first dose kicked in. My eyes felt heavy and the world tilted on its axis. I dropped my head into my arms hoping to stop the stomach-churning nausea.

  “Do you want to live, Abigail?”

  I peeked at Dr. Stevens through the curl of my arms. Amusement played on the curl of his lips.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered, uncertain of everything now. Would I be better off dead?

  Laughter spilled from his lips and made me wince.

  “You should want to live, Abigail. Do you want to make your father sad?”

  Yes. No. No—but I can’t. He’s dead . . . I think. I shook my head in confusion.

  “I need you to admit that it never happened. That none of these things you imagined were real.”

  A guttural growl escaped my throat. It was instinctual to defy his wishes.

  “If that’s how you wish to play your game . . .”

  He stabbed me with a needle, and though I saw his arm jab down only once, if felt like a thousand times. I screamed but no sound came out.

  I saw his face again, heard his voice, but no matter how quickly I ran—I couldn’t reach him.

  Kieron.

  My hands shook. I was weak and unsteady from the meds flowing through my bloodstream. The tile floor was so cold, my feet were numb.

  My brain was mush, a mixture of the meds and the magic. Were his eyes gray or green? It’s so hard to remember. With each night that passed, everything became less clear. I saw him in my dreams.

  He called to me in words I can’t understand. He’s hidden in a sea of darkness.

  I crouched down onto the floor behind my bed in the corner farthest against the wall that shielded me from the door.

  I replayed the memories in my head, hands tightly pressed over my ears as I rocked back and forth trying to gain some form of control. It happened. It was real. No matter what they said.

  I closed my eyes and drowned in the recesses of my mind. I saw myself like a star flickering in the sky, slowly burning out. The darkness was too strong, its pull unyielding. My light dimmed slowly, shade by shade, becoming less visible until finally the flicker was gone and so was I.

  The darkness swallowed me up again, eating me whole.

  Something smelled strange, though, something different . . . something not sterile. Trees, maybe? Woods?

  The thin mattress beneath me felt itchy, like dirt. The air felt thick, like dense fog, and a shiver ran up my spine from the forcing cold. I opened my eyes to a black dust storm.

  “Ms. Davenport.”

  The voice was far off, and the harder I listened, the more my head hurt. It pounded with an incessant force.

  “Ms. Davenport. Focus.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes—you can.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “Abby.”

  The way he called my name evoked a million sensations within me. I saw him but he couldn’t reach me. Something soared from his hands into me. Pain blossom
ed against my arm, and I tried to lock myself away from it. I imagined myself as a butterfly, fluttering away, except the pain of whatever Kieron had done doesn’t subside. No, it grew. It roared alive, wild and unrestrained.

  Something within me clicked and restored the fight within me. My mind cleared like cobwebs lifted from a dusty attic.

  I knew who I was—and I knew what I needed to do.

  I knew he’d never release me. I’d die here in this hellhole and Yasinda would laugh when my body grew cold on the slab.

  But I waited for my opportunity to escape.

  They didn’t know the haze had lifted and I did everything in my power to convince them I was still too far gone. I moved and spoke slowly, acting as if I wasn’t a threat. My door was always open, but the doors that led to the outside were locked. I needed a keycard to open them. I moved freely within the cage, but with my head down and a shuffling gait.

  But I remained watchful. Under cover of my disguise as a drugged-out mental patient, I wandered the long maze of hallways painted with an ice green meant to promote calm. I tested doors, making a mental note of what led to where and marked staff movements and routines pegging them to times shown on clocks that hung in every hallway. In my head, I made maps of who was where when. I learned names. Today, ahead of me, Raoul, the maintenance man, mopped the shiny linoleum floors, spreading the scent of lemon as he worked, and I mumbled, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” he returned without interest, as his beefy arms pushed the heavy mop across the floor.

  With each step, I chased the reflection of the fluorescent lights overhead while I contemplated my situation. This hospital was strange. For its size, there were few patients. Occasionally I glimpsed people in beds, drugged as I was. Beneath the deceptive calm of this “house of healing” crept a menace that seeped up the dull green walls. Either the menacing atmosphere or the drugs continued to my mood, molding my face to exhibit no emotion. My hands shook from the noxious drugs, so I clenched my hands into balls at my side as I slid one foot in front of the other.

  Nothing to see here, people. Just another mentally-ill person aimlessly wandering the halls.

  Today I made it farther than I usually did. There was a wood door here not like the others. A glazed pane of glass sat in the center with the word “Library” painted across the center in black paint. Slowly I tested the handle and it turned. I didn’t know if I stood at the doorway of heaven or hell, but maybe the room held a way out of here.

  I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one watched me. With the way clear, I pushed the door open and soundlessly slipped inside.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dusty light filtered from the dirty windows set above the wood shelves that covered the four walls. To the left was another door set with an unmarked glazed window. The room smelled musty with too many old dried books that had been left unattended and a ray of sunshine accented the layers of dust floating through the air.

  A wooden desk sat in the far corner in total disarray. I rifled through the scattered papers and drawers hoping to find a weapon or a key. With the right intentions, just about anything could be made into a weapon.

  I pulled on the brass handle of the bottom drawer, but it appeared stuck. I slid my hand in through the open crack to pry it free, hoping that this drawer would be the one with an answer to my problem. My fingertips grazed the edges of something smooth with pages between. Another book was caught between the drawer and the desk frame.

  Embossed on the cover was gold illegible lettering with a cut-out in the cover filled with cracked, dust-crusted glass. I opened the book to find in the blocked-off space the name Henry Gordon, PsyD. I flipped through the pages. At a point three quarters through, he talked about bringing on a young intern, Dr. Stevens. He initially seemed pleased, but after a few pages, he complained his patients were fearful of Dr. Stevens, telling Gordon they saw monsters when he was around. Soon after, Gordon reported spotting monsters himself, and he questioned his sanity.

  The entries stopped.

  Forty years ago, Dr. Stevens started working here. But Dr. Stevens didn’t look like a sixty-plus-year-old man. He looked as if he just barely broke forty. In the decade I’d known him, his appearance hadn’t changed at all. My teenage self wouldn’t have noticed, but my adult self knew there was something more to Dr. Stevens than him eating his Wheaties.

  Footsteps sounded on the linoleum outside, and I quickly shut the book and put it on the chair next to me.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” said a woman’s voice from the door.

  I almost toppled over. Yasinda, the Black Walker, stood across from me, dressed in scrubs. The name ”Yasmin” was typed onto her ID badge. Holy shit. What do I do? Should I fight her? Could I?

  Keep it together, Abby.

  I hung my head, trying to hide my shocked expression. “I got lost,” I mumbled in a pathetic voice.

  “Come along.”

  “Where?”

  “Where I say,” she snapped. “This has gone on long enough.”

  I hoped she hadn’t seen through me enough to notice the clusterfuck of shock that was my mind at present. She led me into a small rectangular room with only a table and a single chair. It reminded me of those interrogation rooms you saw in police shows.

  “Here.” Yasinda pushed me into the chair and tossed paper and crayons onto the table. “Draw,” she said when I just stared at the objects.

  “Draw what?”

  “Draw!”

  It was more than an angry command, the suggestion too strong to resist. I took the purple crayon and started drawing. I made a stick figure house with a dock and a happy-faced sun. I didn’t know what the fuck she actually wanted from me. I handed her the page, and she ripped it and threw it to the floor, “Another.”

  I did the same, this time drawing a forest. She tore it and slid another blank page before me. “Another.”

  “I don’t understand what you want.”

  She shoved my head forward. “Close your eyes and draw. You will do so until I tell you to stop.”

  Page after page, I handed her and page after page, she frowned and threw them to the floor in crumbled-up balls. My eyes drooped as fatigue hit me and my hand and wrist ached as minutes turned to hours.

  “Again.”

  If you told me what you wanted, I could just draw it.”

  “Again.” She lifted another crayon and placed it my palm.

  When I didn’t move, she backhanded me. The smack of her closed hand caused everything to move into slow motion. My lip was cut and my cheekbone ached, but my hands suddenly moved. At some point I’d picked up the crayon and started drawing. I glanced at the sheet to see an oval forming under my hand.

  “Keep going,” Yasinda said. “Put in the details.”

  My body shook with the effort to resist her spell-casted command.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she rasped in my ear. “Stop shaking.”

  I grimaced. “Can’t. Side effect of my medicine.”

  “Draw,” Yasinda snapped.

  In the training Reagan gave me, she often told me that frustrating your opponent gives you an advantage. If you can get them to make an impulsive move, you can use it to make your own.

  I surreptitiously eyed the keycard hanging from a clip off the pocket of her nurse’s scrubs. One quick yank, sprint from this room, and I could be out of here. It didn’t matter that I had no plan past that. Escape was job one. But first I had to satisfy the supernatural earworm that commanded my hands, so I stopped resisting.

  As my hand moved, color, light, and shadow formed into an amulet with dual stones in the shape of an “infinity” symbol. I colored in the oval a light blue and added highlights in white. It looked very much like a moonstone. In fact, it seemed familiar. Where did I see this? I drew a delicate filigree around its edges and a silver-braided chain.

  Both Yasinda and I stared at it. I tilted my head to the side as recognition dawned on me.

  The Relic
—the vector of immense magic. The thing it was my destiny to wield to destroy Yasinda.

  But this wasn’t any picture. No. Beneath my hand, the Relic pulsed with power and it called me to grasp it, to take it unto me, and use it. It wanted me. It wanted its mistress.

  “Go ahead,” she urged. “Put in the background.”

  I bit my lip. Despite all of Yasinda’s magical power, she did not perceive the thing lay “just beyond,” that I could snatch it and blast her to kingdom come. I put my index finger on the picture, and it sunk to past my fingernail into somewhere else. But despite my efforts, I could not push past to the place where the Relic hid. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead as heat gathered around me and alarm shot through me. I tried too hard and my demeanor changed from passive to active resistance. If Yasinda noticed, I was dead meat.

  To hide my efforts, I picked a green crayon. My hand paused over the picture. There was no way I would give her visual information where the Relic was hidden.

  “Go ahead,” she said in a more insistent voice. “Draw!”

  My hand hovered over the moonstone, and it whispered to me.

  Keeper, take me. Use me. There is evil to destroy.

  The power of it connected with my soul and filled me. It was the nexus of the power of the entire universe. Every atom and molecule that existed connect to this thing. I dug deeper to reach where it was. A tremor ripped through me.

  A light glowed under my hand, and the table rattled as the Relic strained to reach me by ripping the barrier between the respective worlds in which we existed. Yasinda hissed and our eyes met. She sprang toward me and tried to snatch the paper from my hand. She yanked, I pulled, and the paper stretched as if it were an elastic band.

  “Give it to me!” she howled with an inhuman, hollow utterance.

  Yasinda gripped the drawing-turned-rubber-band and threw me forward to fall against her. She grabbed my shirt and pulled me to her gorgeous face, twisted into ugly by hate and desire.

  “Give it to me,” she spat. One hand clutched her end of the picture with a deathly grip and the drawing vibrated between us. I would not give it up. I couldn’t be sure if this paper was a map or the real deal, but either way, I had to protect it. Yasinda would be unstoppable if she gained the immense power. She threw me against the wall in her anger and hissed when she realized her mistake. The picture snapped out of her hand, and I clutched it to my chest. Apparently, the picture had protective powers because instead of pain coursing through my spine, I merely slid to the floor stunned. I sat as I regained control of my limbs.