Archangel Chronicles 7 - Shot In the Dark

by LaBarthe L. J.

  “We are not fucking dying today,” Declan said. “Not on my watch.”

  “We’re going to live long and happy lives, and get old, fat, and be happy,” Liam said.

  “Amen, bro. Now let’s move.”

  THE MEDICAL wing was eerie, not just because of the silence, but because of its near-pristine cleanliness. Unlike the floor above, there was no dirt or dust and no pieces of plaster from the ceiling on the ground. It was empty, devoid of furniture, although plastic curtains remained, hanging from steel rods like sad, forgotten souls. The sound of the wolves’ toenails upon the linoleum floor seemed very loud as they made their slow and careful way along the dark corridor, the lights from the flashlights the only illumination, cutting through the darkness like scythes.

  “How long has this place been like this?” Declan wondered.

  Liam shook his head. “No idea. Longer than we thought, I guess.”

  “No kidding.” Declan shone his flashlight into a room that had once held four beds, only the boards on the walls indicating as much. “And where did all the furniture and stuff go?”

  “Over here,” Angelique said. “It says Records Room on the door and it’s locked.”

  Liam and Declan went to join her, both of them trying the handle, then shoving the door. She rolled her eyes and snorted, a soft huff of air.

  “Dicks. Did you think I didn’t try that?”

  “How’s a wolf going to turn a door handle?” Declan demanded.

  “Just because I’m a wolf doesn’t mean that I can’t figure that shit out. It’s locked, like I told you.”

  “Hush,” Lily said. She was looking down the corridor. “I can smell something.”

  Liam looked at Declan. “Open it,” he said. “You, Angelique, Lily, and Riley take a look at what’s inside, Danny can stand guard, and Bax and I can go check it out.”

  “Who made you alpha?” Angelique asked, but there was no malice in her mental voice, only a slight amusement.

  Liam shrugged. “I’m still not totally used to working with a pack like this.”

  She licked his hand. “I’m just teasing you, soldier. Let’s get the door open and then you and Sugar-puff can go check out the smell.”

  He nodded, noting that Declan was already picking the lock. There was a click and then the door opened, and Declan looked through, casting his flashlight on the walls to see if there was a light switch. There was, and as Liam watched, Declan flicked it. He didn’t expect it to work, but much to his surprise, there was the sputtering noise of fluorescent tubes long unused coming to life, and then the little room lit up like midday.

  “How about that!” Declan said, surprised.

  “Let’s do this,” Danny said.

  Declan nodded, and he, Angelique, Lily, and Riley went into the room. Liam heard Angelique tell the others they’d make more headway going through the room’s contents if they were in their human shapes, and he assumed they were going to change out of their wolf shapes as he and Baxter started down the corridor.

  Baxter gave his hip a gentle nudge with his nose and Liam looked down at him and smiled. “What a job, huh?”

  “It’s definitely one of the weirder ones, yeah. You okay, babe?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Confused for sure, a bit worried, definitely, but fine.”

  “What’s got you worried? Apart from the fact we’re trapped inside a horror movie set with nightmares chasing after us and no one knows what’s going on?”

  Liam chuckled softly. “All of that.”

  “You know, I saw some fucked-up crap during the war. I know Raph blocked some of my memories and I’m good with that. I figure I wouldn’t have the block if I didn’t need and want it up, so I’m not going to pick at it like it’s a scab. But even still, nothing that I remember seeing in the war is as weird or as scary or as downright wrong as this place is.”

  “You know, that’s exactly the word. Everything in this place is wrong. The town we came up from looks like a lovely place for a vacation, especially if you like fishing or hunting. It’s remote, sure, but it’s beautiful and peaceful. And then… this place.”

  “One of these things is not like the other.”

  “Exactly. Whoa. What—” Liam broke off and stared, lowering his flashlight a little. “Hey there,” he said, gentling his voice. Finally, he’d seen a ghost.

  It was a girl, perhaps twelve years old, wearing a plain hospital gown and holding a battered teddy bear. Her hair was long and in braids, and her skin was dark and smooth. Her feet were bare, and around one wrist she wore a plastic hospital bracelet. She stared at him with large brown eyes, her expression one of astonishment, as if not sure Liam was real.

  “Hi there,” Liam began again. “I’m Liam Jones. This is Baxter.

  Right now, he’s a wolf, but most of the time, he’s a man.” He’d always found that introductions put the dead a little at ease, as if they were being treated as equals and not as anomalies of existence—or nonexistence.

  “What’s your name?”

  She canted her head to one side. She really was a beautiful child, and it broke Liam’s heart to think she was dead. “Liam, you said?” she asked.

  Her voice was soft and had a thick southern accent, putting Liam in mind of Georgia or Tennessee.

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “Hello.” She bit her lower lip. “I’m Jessica-Mae.”

  “It’s lovely to meet you, Jessica-Mae.”

  “How did you get into the clinic?”

  “Is that what this place is? We came in through the stairwell. We were being chased by… something.”

  “A mechanical monster type of something,” Baxter said.

  “You can see her?” Liam asked, surprised. The dead refused to show themselves to anyone else most of the time, so when one did manifest to others, it was always unusual.

  “And hear her. Where’s your mom, Jessica-Mae?”

  She looked at the floor, her lower lip wobbling. “She’s gone.”

  “Oh, honey,” Liam said. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  “Listen, I’m here with my brother and a few others like Baxter here.

  Would you come with us and tell us what happened?” Liam was banking rather heavily on the hope that Jessica-Mae would know what they needed to survive this facility.

  She nodded. “Okay. Can you fix this place?”

  “Fix it?”

  “Yeah. Get rid of it.”

  Liam took a slow, deep breath. “We’ll certainly do our best.”

  That got a smile out of her.

  “We’re like superheroes,” Baxter told her. “Some of us turn into wolves. One of us turns into a teeny tiny little doggy, but he gets cranky about that, so we don’t mock him. Much.”

  The little girl giggled. “I like him.”

  Liam smiled. “I rather do too.” He held out his hand to her. He knew that he wouldn’t feel it if she did take it in her own, but it was a gesture he thought she’d appreciate. He was right, for she dashed to him and he felt the faint echo of cold and mist against his fingers as her little hand slipped into his.

  “You’re both nice,” she said. “I haven’t seen anyone nice in ages.”

  They walked back to the records room, Liam holding her hand and Baxter on her other side. Jessica-Mae seemed much happier now, and as Danny caught sight of them, his eyes widened and his ears pricked up.

  “Hello,” he said.

  She smiled shyly at him. “Hello, Mister Wolf.”

  Danny’s tongue lolled out of his mouth in the wolfy version of a laugh. “Just Danny is fine, miss. What’s your name?”

  “Jessica-Mae.”

  “Well, then, Miss Jessica-Mae, why don’t you come inside and meet the rest of the pack? We’re all in this records room.”

  “That’s probably the safest spot here,” she said.

  Liam and Baxter exchanged an unhappy look at that, even as Danny nudged the door open with his nose and al
erted the others to what was going on.

  The room was cramped, and several wooden boxes had been turned upside-down to use as steps or chairs. Liam sat down on the nearest one, noting that Angelique, Lily, and Riley were all naked. Part of shifting midjob, he supposed. It would be difficult to carry around a change of clothes for the off-chance you needed to shift back to human while working as a wolf.

  “This is Jessica-Mae,” Liam began. “We came across her while we were checking out the corridors.”

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Declan said, dropping to a crouch. He smiled at her and she smiled shyly back. “Are you all right?”

  Jessica-Mae nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Aw, no, not ‘sir.’ Sir was our dad. I’m Declan. This is Angelique, Lily, and Riley.”

  She smiled another shy smile at them.

  “Riley, why don’t you close the door, just in case?” Angelique said.

  Riley nodded and did so, and everyone else sat down, either on the floor or on the crates. Liam got comfortable on the crate and stretched out his legs as he leaned against the wall. He saw that Declan had gathered up a small stack of files and wondered what they’d found while he and Baxter had been in the corridor.

  “What happened here, can you tell us?” Declan was asking the ghost. Jessica-Mae’s expression grew sad. “It was bad,” she said.

  “Why did your mum bring you here?” Lily asked her gently.

  “I was sick,” Jessica-Mae said. “I had something with a really long name. It made my heart hurt a lot and my skin was really itchy.”

  Riley frowned thoughtfully. “Was it hypereosinophilic syndrome?”

  Jessica-Mae nodded. “That sounds like it. Anyway, Mom brought me here because the doctors said they could fix me up.”

  “And they didn’t?” Angelique guessed.

  Jessica-Mae shook her head. “They made me sicker. I don’t remember much about how I died. I remember that they put all these tubes and needles into me and that some of them made me feel like I was burning from the inside out and others made me feel really cold. One made my heart pound so hard that I thought it was gonna break my ribs.”

  Riley leaned forward, his expression compassionate. “Do you happen to remember what any of the treatments they used were?”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “I was, once,” Riley said. “In the Army.”

  Jessica-Mae’s eyes went round as saucers. “In the war?”

  “We all fought in the war,” Riley said gently. “But yes, I was on the front lines, treating the wounded.”

  “Wow.” Jessica-Mae stared at him. “You’re a hero.” She hugged Riley then, and Liam saw Riley’s astonishment, even as he hugged her back. Riley didn’t seem bothered by the fact that he couldn’t actually touch a ghost, and he kept his hands resting on what would have been Jessica-Mae’s back, were she still alive.

  “I’m no hero,” Riley said, eventually pulling out of the hug. “I was just doing my job. Like we all did.”

  Jessica-Mae looked around the tiny room. “You’re all so much better than the people here. I can see that. In the light that’s around you.”

  “Light?” Danny echoed.

  “Aura,” Liam supplied.

  “Oh. Right.”

  Jessica-Mae looked at Riley again. “You’re nice,” she said. “I can see that you really care and you really want to help.”

  “I do care, and I do want to help,” he said.

  “I don’t know how much help I’ll be, though,” she said.

  “I bet you’ll be lots of help,” Riley said with a warm smile.

  “I’ll tell you everything I know,” Jessica-Mae said, nodding her head in emphasis.

  “All right.”

  “Mom said the doctors had a new medicine that would make me better. She didn’t know what it was, and she wasn’t sure they’d take me as a patient. She’d only heard about this place when we’d been at the hospital—I’m from Alabama. She got a leaflet off the table in the waiting room, she said, so she and Daddy sold everything and brought me here.

  Daddy went back to Alabama for work. So Mom stayed with me.

  “The doctors here took me on as soon as they examined me. They were really excited. I didn’t know why, I don’t think being sick is exciting.

  It’s horrible, most of the time, although you get a lot of presents. So they tried this medicine on me and it just made me throw up. One time, I vomited right on the doctor! He was real mad about that.” She giggled.

  “I bet he was,” Riley said. “But I bet he deserved it too.”

  “He did. He was mean.” Jessica-Mae’s lips compressed into a moue of sadness. “They did all these tests and then one night, when they thought I was asleep, I decided to have a look around. Mom was asleep in a chair by the bed, so I got up and went to explore. I didn’t think I’d get far—I never had before, not in the hospital back in Alabama. There were lots of old people and a few teenagers, and I saw one boy smoking a joint in the janitor’s room.” She grinned. “He told me that it was the best thing about the place, hiding out with dope or cookies. He gave me a cookie, it was nice.”

  “What sort of a cookie?” Angelique asked.

  “Oatmeal. It didn’t have dope in it, he made sure. He said I was too young for dope.”

  “That’s something, I guess,” Angelique muttered.

  “What happened next?” Riley asked. Liam was impressed—he had exactly the tone and manner to communicate best with a frightened, sick child, whether that child was alive or a spirit. He kept his voice low and gentle, maintained eye contact at their level by leaning forward on the crate he sat on, and smiled warmly. Riley radiated kindness and compassion, and even though he was stark naked, he gave off the impression that he would never hurt you—that he would hurt anyone who tried. It was exactly the way to talk to Jessica-Mae, and Liam was suddenly so proud to be a part of this group of extraordinary people that he thought he’d burst.

  “I ate the cookie, then went on exploring. Most of the people here were old, like I said, and they were mostly asleep. So I went downstairs and wandered around there. I found a room that was for surgery. It was all metal and the door was open, so I went in to have a look. I was in a sort of observation room, I think it’s called? And I could see into the metal room.

  There were doctors and nurses and two metal tables. One table had a demon on it. They were taking out his insides and putting them into jars and dishes. The other had a human being on it. Some of the insides of the demon they put into the human being, and then they sewed him up and woke him up. It was awful—he started screaming and clutching at his body and trying to tear off his own skin with his fingers. I heard one of the doctors say, ‘This subject wasn’t compatible,’ and then they knocked the guy out. I ran out of the room, because it was so horrible, but I got lost and couldn’t find my way back to my own bed and my mom.”

  “This doesn’t bode well,” Declan muttered to Liam.

  “I got lost,” Jessica-Mae continued. “I ran into one of the interns, he always scared me. He wanted to know what I was doing, and then he picked me up and carried me into another room, like the metal one with the demon and the human being. There was no one in this room, but I started screaming and screaming, and a doctor I didn’t know came in. He and the intern spoke together, and then the doctor injected me with something. I felt really tired suddenly, and before I passed out, I heard him say to the intern, “Get her out of the kennels, she’s not one of these test subjects.”

  “When I woke up, Mom was really upset and the doctors were trying a new medication. This is the one that really hurt. I felt like my blood was on fire and like my heart had frozen. I couldn’t breathe, it was like a giant rock was crushing me. I tried to say something, but Mom was crying and the doctors were shaking their heads, and then I think I died. All I knew was that it was later and I wasn’t solid anymore. I was like this, a ghost.”

  They were silent for a long moment when Jessica-Mae finished her stor
y. Finally, Lily sighed and looked over at Liam. “Do you know a way to give her soul some peace?”

  Liam spread his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “I know a few, but I’m not sure they’d work that well. Only an Archangel could do it properly. Samael, especially.”

  “And I think we need to call an Archangel now,” Angelique said.

  “We should have done that first thing, as soon as we saw those metal people things upstairs.”

  “You mean the Mecha Nurses?” Jessica-Mae asked.

  “Is that what they’re called?” Angelique asked.

  Jessica-Mae nodded. “They put you to sleep, then take you down to the kennels or the pens.”

  “I know I’m going to regret this, but… what happens in the kennels and the pens?” Danny asked. He’d resumed his human shape and Liam hadn’t even noticed. So had Baxter, he now saw.

  “The kennels are where they keep demons and different kinds of animals. Don’t go in there, it’s really, really bad. They did really bad things down there, really bad.” Jessica-Mae looked frightened. “The pens, that’s where they put people who didn’t do well in the tests or experiments or whatever they were. They’re still alive, but they’re not… not people anymore.”

  “God,” Baxter muttered. “What a place this is.”

  Liam nodded. He had a feeling of dread, and Jessica-Mae’s simple explanation had made him feel slightly sick. His imagination happily provided him with all manner of horrible possibilities, each one worse than the last. He swallowed hard several times, then dug into his carryall and pulled out a water bottle, opened it, and took a long drink.

  Angelique had grabbed Declan’s cell phone and was punching in a number. She lifted it to her ear and waited, and a few moments later, a strange expression crossed her face. “Weird.” She lowered the phone, looking at the display. “Dec, does this happen often?” She held the phone out to him.

  Declan took it and frowned. “What the hell does ‘Forbidden Access’ mean?”