Katie had managed to keep on her feet and circling around until she was near the electric gun and She was near the far wall of lockers. “What do I have to do with all this? I tried to save them, anyone would, but I didn’t choose it. I owed it to them.”
Yes. We brought you into this and we are sorry. But we thank you too.
“But I’m in this now and I’m in it till it’s over.”
“I’m done with this dance. You want lost souls, I want them, it’s gonna be a thing.” Without warning, She rushed at Katie. A wall of black mist sprang up around her. Arms of protection. Katie watched her old friend hit the wall and saw the impact like a hit on a forcefield – lilac and sky blue ripples. “You’re gonna play like that, huh?”
You have wronged many people. We have waited for our turns to take the fall into the Other Place, where-ever that shall be. The girl has no place with us.
“What girl? Me girl?”
You have woken a fury more powerful than you can imagine. You think you are strong but you have committed crimes fit for nothing but nightmares.
Katie took advantage of these few seconds of distraction, keeping half an ear on it, and snaked an arm out of the dark ring, grabbed the Tazer. Part of her didn’t want to use it because… well, it was still Jaye. Her body would still fry under the shocks. And she was tiny. It might even kill her. But she stamped the voice into a whisper and shot two prongs into her, wincing a bit as thousands of volts travelled through thin wires. But She stayed on her feet, even though She staggered back a few steps. A hand shape misted out of the black, slid across the wires and touched her on the shoulder. It seemed gentle. Mist could have no real weight behind it. It had enough of it though to force the girl down to the ground. Katie hadn’t let go of the Tazer – an insane amount of power was still going into her former friend and She was desperately trying to disguise the pain. It wasn’t working. There was a growing red patch spreading across Jaye’s front. It was blazing and roaring. There was a fire inside her. And it was as bright as Katie believed her face was. Her head was telling her that this prolonged attack was more than justified, and her heart was telling her that she was electrocuting her best friend.
Don’t think like that. This is the only way.
But Katie took her finger off and dropped the stun gun to the ground, unable to keep this up.
“Giving up so soon?”
The wall of Shades closed around Katie once more, then faded straight through her, returning to their ranks. Not that their presence wasn’t welcome but Katie needed to stand alone for a minute. “I don’t give up.”
“Oh, but you’re so good at it. This year… what have you really done but give up and run away?”
A flash of anger blinded Katie to rational thought and she ran the few steps to her opponent and kicked her in the face. Her booted toes caught the other girl just below the chin and her head rocked back. There was a little bit of blood and Katie was sure that she had busted some toes. It felt like kicking a rock more than breaking a jaw. But She screamed and fell back like any human – just as breakable. And then She looked up at her, cross-legged and childlike, and smiled. With smears of blood on her teeth, the teenager sitting on the floor was unmistakably a demon, not Jaye.
“How far will you go, babe? Kill me and I’ll take her with me.”
Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Katie stood over the girl and dropped to her knees, one knee on her chest and the other on the floor. Using her own weight to still the wriggling form beneath, she glanced behind her. Get into her head. Cover her in darkness and pull her out.
To touch her… to own her… She will know how it feels to be controlled by sin.
She already is. She just isn’t sorry yet.
As one, a thousand dark shapes joined forces and formed a black shell over the two girls, slowly caving in and sinking into She. Katie sat back on her haunches and held the girls’ arms pinned above her head and placed a chair over her legs so She couldn’t thrash around and hurt herself. And thrash She did. Eyes tightly closed, she convulsed and kicked and made noises that spoke of a struggle for a human body.
Katie felt like crying again. Maybe she was losing her friend. Maybe she was losing everything. This week… this week, she had fought to keep her normal life of study and sport and Shimma. And what good was any of that if she ha no friends left to share it with? “Stop.” She couldn’t watch her friend in any more pain. The minute she uttered the word and the air in the room shifted – they were actually listening to her – She wrestled back control and eyes as hard as blue marble and bloodshot snapped open and bored into Katie. The dump truck was reversing and Katie was trying to stop it by staring at it.
You have no idea what you’re doing, those eyes said. There was hate in them, will and fury that She was being denied, but there was fear in them. A lot of fear. What that intense dread was about was anyone’s guess. What the Shades would do to her? Losing ownership of Jaye? That Katie had beaten her?
I’m saving us all.
Don’t do this Katie. You said yourself, you’re not a killer.
No, I‘m not. But this isn’t killing. It’s justice. And it should have worried her that she believed that. Killing the sheriff just last week; she told herself it was self defence – it was kill or be killed, so he deserved it. But killing someone, even if they were evil, it was still murder. Whichever way you cut it, murder was never justifiable.
Please, babe, it hurts so much. Katie softened her hold. Was that Jaye speaking? The eyes were still scared and confused. That should have given it away –
And it did.
Jaye was sure of herself and confident in every step she took. She had never looked uncertain in her life. Well, the last three weeks of it anyhow.
There’s my girl. For trying to kill me, my friends, making them believe you were her, you will pay. Every spirit you sent over the edge before they were ready – they’re here. Every single one of them is asking me – begging me – to get revenge and kick your unholy arse back to hell. But I won’t do that. I have better plans for you. Babe.
Katie vaguely saw a flicker of doubt on Jaye’s heart shaped face. And then it was too late. She stripped off her jacket, flexed one aching hand – please, God, do the same for my back – and slammed it flat over those eyes, knowing she was launching herself into whatever torture was happening to her psyche. Beneath her hands, one of Jaye’s shot down and wrapped around her wrist, nails carving deep crescents into the soft flesh and drawing thin moons of blood. Katie yelled out in pain but She kept pressing, squeezing. Her wrist felt weird when she managed to pull away and try to shake it back to life. No question it was broken. It was floppy and every movement felt like splinters of bone were fighting to pierce her skin. She sat back on her backside for a second, using her knees once more to keep Jaye from hurting herself. When she got her breath back, Katie leant forward and got back into her hand-over-eyes position. Whatever had been happening inside Jaye’s head was over now. Whatever fight Katie had stupidly been about to wade into, it was finished. But it was too late. Katie was already falling through the too-calm first layer of consciousness. She reached out, trailing imaginary fingers over the furry darkness, watching as she left ripples in her wake. It was so dark and quiet here. So much so that she could hear a heartbeat. Anything – anyone – could jump out at her and, in the confines of a skull, there was no room to defend herself. Not that she would stand a chance.
And then that concern was made redundant.
OUT!
A herd of black shapes rushed past her and Katie found herself swept along with the flow.
MOVE IT! YOU TOO! One of them grabbed her wrist, the broken one. She felt a scream bubbling up but swallowed it down, thinking that noise wasn’t the best idea right now, and settled for the tears of agony streaming down her face instead. A heat was creeping into her bones, making her feel lethargic. She began to slow. Don’t stop. Never stop. And hen it slapped her. Not just the sensation of light fingers pa
ssing through her cheek – a hard, open-handed, stinging smack. A warning Katie wasn’t likely to ignore. She picked herself up and tried desperately to keep pace with the Shades. She might be faster than many humans but she still had to run on legs; couldn’t even hope to keep up with the supernatural speed the Shades could use to just float forward. And she did well until she came to the calm edges. The hand holding her fell away. Almost everyone had made the jump back into the real world. Katie twisted and pressed her back to the wall – it was too creepy to think of it as a piece of skull. A ball of flame was burning through the space towards, blasting a sizzling heat into the air. Too hot. Her blood was bubbling underneath the surface and Katie knew it was over. This was She – angry and blind and death. She closed her eyes tight, reached out for the darkness that must be all around her if it was inside. She caught onto the trailing tendrils of one of the final Shades to leave, gleefully waved goodbye to the raging fire and then she was out.
Pausing for breath when she dropped back into her body was luxury Katie doubted she could afford though. She had to get as far away from Jaye as she could, not knowing what would happen next but suspecting it wouldn’t be good. Logic told her to open the door and get outside where there was space. And people. No-one would dare attack in broad daylight and in public. Thinking this as she went, Katie scrambled over to the far wall and cowered between a table and a vending machine. She’d barely enough time to blink or even glance over at Jaye – for it was her now, just Jaye, tiny and vulnerable and oh so fragile – when there was a familiar heat arming along her arms and blowing her hair this way and that. Katie looked up and saw black shapes lining every wall. Why weren’t they helping her? Why were they just standing there when I could use a hand. Seriously, I can’t be everywhere – I’m not Wonder Woman. She was just a kid who didn’t want to be here anymore. As though they had read her thoughts, a dozen or more Shades moved forward and linked their misty arms, forming a protective circle around Jaye. Good. That was one less thing she had to worry about. Now it was just the one drifting towards her, looking threatening. The thing that had blasted its’ way out of Jaye wasn’t a jungle of dark threads and purple-black glints, wasn’t… wasn’t anything really. Just a loosely humanoid shape, a displacement of the suddenly thick air.
And it was terrifying.
It reached across the table, looking down at it and then realising it – no, She, might look sexless but it was still She – could now go right through it. She was inches from touching Katie, who was having a very badly timed memory of killing the Sheriff. I can’t feel a life draining away because of something I did. Can’t have blood – not even evil blood – on my hands again. Can’t watch people think ‘m an innocent when I know I’m a murderer. I just can’t. I won’t. And then She was touching her, some-one was screaming, there was an incredible heat and a fire alarm ringing, and it was over.
The world was black, silent, far away. Katie was almost relieved to find that her mind and body had given up. She sank into a bottomless unconsciousness in the common room.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t where she woke up.
It was daylight bright under her eyelids. The first thing Katie could think of was finding out who had just been slapping her. Mind still in the ‘identify and eliminate immediate threat’ phase. Only… taking action on that thought didn’t seem that important after all.
“Hey. Bitch, wake up. Don’t make me have to hit you again.”
Katie dragged her eyes open – they felt like they had lead weights attached to them – and found herself staring up into bright autumn sun. She shivered under the jacket somebody had draped over her and shot her hand up to shield her eyes. Her wrist exploded in so much pain that stars started dancing in her vision and she couldn’t do anything to stop the agonised scream that erupted. That brought things back. She didn’t want to know some of those things but you couldn’t pick and choose your memories. “Jaye.”
“Do I look like Jaye?”
Katie sat up and put her arm through the jacket – the one she was not cradling to her chest like a china babydoll.
“I had to phone home. They’ll be here soon.”
But she wasn’t listening to Leo anymore. Katie was staring up at the first floor common room with every single one of it’s’ windows blown out and sticking up in jagged triangles of shattered glass. He followed her gaze. “When I never saw you at the fire assembly point, I figured you’d found some trouble to get yourself into. Jaye screamed, did that, haven’t seen her since.”
Katie flung her good hand out to the wall of the building, clawed her way up and headed for the door. “Call it a bad feeling.” He hadn’t even asked a question yet.
In the common room, within the exploded windows were banks of lockers toppled sideways into one another like dominoes, dented where Katie had been thrown into them – the memory brought fresh waves of pain – and furniture, papers, discarded coats and bags littered the floor. Nothing was how it should be. The lockers should be smooth and upright. The windows shouldn’t have glass inside and out. The other mess in the room… yes, that was pretty much the same as always. She was surveying the damage, wondering how exactly she was still on her feet if she had caused even a fraction of it when Katie felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. It stared ringing a second later. It was somehow still functional and fully intact; they had definitely built that one to last. There were no numbers programmed into the phone yet and she hadn’t exactly had time to sync her SIM with the handset yet. “Hello?”
“You need to get down here now.”
“Jaye?”
“Yeah. And I’m serious. Like, deadly serious. This thing isn’t over yet. I thought it was, I thought I finished it when those things went away but it just got worse.”
“Worse? How can it get any worse than it just was? Are you okay? And tell me where you are. I’ll come find you, Jaye. You shouldn’t be out on your own.”
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end, as though Jaye had just witnessed something particularly horrible. “I’m at Shimma. I followed her here and, Katie, She’s got Jack.” The line went dead.
A sinister dread turned the air frigid around Katie. Struck with a flash of inspiration, or maybe fright, she used her good arm to flip every chair, every table, ransack every bag, every coat, not giving a toss about privacy. Nothing but cigarettes and books. There was a nauseous moment as she realised her friend had taken it. “It’s gone.”
“What is?” Leo asked from his position at one of the window shaped holes. He was waving at somebody below.
“I had a Tazer. She took it.”
“Okay, first, that phone was on loudspeaker, I heard every word. Second, you ain’t going nowhere without me – not this time – and third, she’s got a weapon to defend herself with. I call that a plus.”
“Problem the first, my dear brainiac-“ but she didn’t get much further than that because Adam and Lainy came dashing in at that very moment. “I’m fine. We’re all fine.”
“Sweetie, what happened?” Lainy reached out to touch her but Katie flinched away, fearing that she was going to set yet more lightning bolts of white hot pain shooting through her arm. If Katie kept it very still, there was just a muddy brown roar in her wrist.
“Fire drill, stampede for the door, hand in door, busted wrist.” She slid her eyes to Leo for a confirming nod. The fire alarm and the stampede, at least, were the truth, and they nicely explained most of the chaos inside the room. Students weren’t exactly known for being tidy or patient creatures.
Lainy held her hands up to show that she wasn’t going to touch, then elbowed Adam forward. He inched forward, picking over the junk on the floor, and put one arm around Katie in an awkward half hug, trying to avoid touching her injured wrist. Katie turned her face into his chest, glad he was there for support because she thought she might have fallen down otherwise. While she wasn’t looking, Lainy took the broken wrist in one hand and used the fingers of her other hand to feel around
. Even though quiet tears were streaming down her face and Katie was biting her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, she didn’t try to pull away. God, she was so much gentler than the doctors who had seen her before. It still hurt and the lightest brush of fingers on flesh was about an inch beyond painful.
I’m so sorry I have to do this. Why do I have to be the one who causes the pain? I hope I’m not being too rough.
Katie tried a smile. It wasn’t a convincing one. But she knew that Lainy meant well and telling her that tender hands alone weren’t going to make her arm any better just sounded ungrateful. “It’s probably not as bad as it looks, right?” Things often looked worse when they hurt. Or when there was blood. Surprisingly, there was none of that around.
“Honey, I think it’s broken. We need to get you to the med centre and plaster that.”
Oh… fun.
It only took a few minutes to get to the medical centre, despite her (admittedly weak) protests that she would get fixed up later. Leo had insisted on coming with them to the door, for some reason, and then had taken off back to Levenson Academy proper. Anyone would think that a boy seeing his injured friend to the hospital would at least want to see it through. But no. That would be far too logical. Lainy blew right through reception, found an empty row of seats just outside the waiting area and the trio sat down. There were the same out of date magazines on the low table, the same frayed fabric on some of the chairs – the OUT OF ORDER sign on the hot drinks machine was new. Also a blessing to anyone who had ever drunk from it. All business, Lainy walked straight back out and calling for Dr de Rossa, throwing over her shoulder, “Adam, feed the girl. We don’t want her passing out as well.”
Katie supposed she was hungry. She watched Adam vanish out of the door and around the corner into the kitchen where the staff and visitors of long-term patients could make themselves a bite to eat. He was still ensconced in his sandwich construction when Dr de Rossa came and felt her wrist. He came to the same broken conclusion as Lainy, his shadow for the day apparently, but “I’d like to do some X-rays just to be sure where the break is.”
Circle of Arms (The Shades of Northwood 2) Page 20
