Authors: Ginger Voight
He yowled in pain as he backed away, stumbling backward onto the ground.
“Don’t worry,” she told him as she hovered over him. “You should know you’ll die happy.”
With that she opened her mouth wide and dove into his neck, tearing
easily away at the tender pink flesh. Blood filled her mouth, thick and salty. Her whole body came alive as she drank his life away, laughing as blood poured down her chin.
With a start
Adele’s eyes popped open to find herself in a hospital room. An IV was attached to her arm and she was receiving a blood transfusion. Seeing the dark red blood in the bag made her recall the thick taste of it oozing down her throat, which immediately made her gag. She grabbed the tubes and snatched them out of her skin, toppling with a thundering crash onto the floor. She was hysterical, yanking cords and tubes out of her way to stand.
Michael woke from his sleeping position jammed in a chair in th
e corner. He rushed to her side. “Addie, you can’t go anywhere,” he urged, trying to hold her in his arms. It frightened him to feel how weak she was, she felt so fragile.
“
I can’t stay here, Michael.”
“
Leaving won’t make it go away,” he reasoned. “It won’t help.”
“
Nothing will help!” she exploded. “This was it. The last goddamn piece of the puzzle.”
“Adele…”
“This is why mom won’t talk about the rape. This is the reason I have heard voices and experienced hallucinations. And the dreams.” He gave her a helpless glance. “I saw all of them,” she whispered, confessing her greatest sin at last. “In my dreams. I saw them die. Because I killed them all, Michael.”
He
couldn’t believe that about her. He refused. “Addie, you’re hysterical.”
She shook her head.
“For the first time ever I am thinking clearly. It all makes sense. The voices I hear. The things I see. Ever since this whole mess began. Now I know what they all mean.”
“
Addie,” he tried again.
“
Don’t,” she interrupted. “Don’t you dare tell me not to believe. Not after all the years you’ve tried to tell me that life is bigger than what I thought.”
He forced her to look him in the eye.
“I’m not telling you not to believe.” How could he? Not now. She stared at him for a long moment. His voice lowered and his eyes brimmed with tears. “It’s just like the fifth grade. Lean on me.”
S
he’d have fought him but truth was she was had no choice but to lean on her friend's strength. Her rush of emotions had drained her when she had already been physically compromised. It was much easier to allow him to lift her back into bed. For the first time in her life, she had to depend on someone else to fight her battle. “You have to go to him,” she whispered after he tucked her under the covers. Michael just nodded. He kissed her on her forehead before exiting.
A nurse was quick to enter, to administer the IV and the blood transfusion again.
After her vivid dream this process, which she had undergone before in her life, just traumatized her further. Taking someone else’s blood into her body just to sustain itself kept Vincent’s words bouncing around in her head until her skin crawled. She cursed Michael for sending the nurse back into the room. To punish him, Adele told her to take the crucifix from the wall. It was a useless piece of metal at that point anyway. Learning one was the offspring of evil made one skeptical of the power of a piece of tin. After all, her mother’s many statues had done nothing to keep her safe.
The nurse seemed reluctant to do as she asked
, but she understood that with Adele’s history it was best to humor her.
As she finished up, Roman knocked at the door
. He pushed it open without waiting for her reply. The nurse didn’t like the intrusion. “Miss Lumas is not up for visitors,” she told him tersely.
“
It’s okay,” Adele insisted and motioned for Roman to sit. The nurse left them alone after the briefest of hesitations.
“
What can I do for you, Roman?” Adele asked after she’d gone.
“
You can tell me everything you know.”
She just smirked.
“No, I can’t. We tried that before, remember?”
“
He’s gone,” Roman interrupted. “Vincent escaped when they took him to the ER for his arm.”
The memory of what happened to her brother filled her instantly with rage. The kinship and bond she had with Vincent should have taken a lifetime to build, but it turned out nine months in a shared womb was enough.
“Well, they wouldn’t have had to do that if they hadn’t broken his arm in the first place.” He didn’t respond. “So what makes you think I know anything? Why aren’t you out questioning Dense Carter? Vincent was her informant.”
“
I would,” Roman stated flatly. “If I could get in touch with her.”
The news
didn’t sit well with Adele. Roman tossed the bag with the bloody handkerchief on the bed. “So anything you tell me could really help me make sure nothing happens to her. Considering you were the last one to see her, and this seems to be a running pattern.”
A knock interrupted their conversation. It was the nurse, and Nicholas stood behind her.
“I told him no more visitors, but he was insistent.”
As usual, just seeing Nicholas did a lot to improve her mood. She smiled and nodded her approval. The nurse scowled as Nicholas brushed passed her and rushed to
Adele’s side. “I came as soon as I heard,” he said, taking her injured hand in his. He glanced across the bed to where Roman sat.
Adele made the appropriate introductions. Both men sized each other up, and Nicholas noticed the handkerchief on the bed. He said nothing.
“Roman was just leaving,” Adele said, shooting a pointed glance at Roman.
Roman nodded, grabbed the bag and stood.
“You know where to find me if you need me.”
Nicholas was on the bed holding her before Roman could make it out the door.
“My poor baby,” he crooned in her ear. “Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head.
“What happened?
She shrugged.
“I went to see – I went to see the suspect of the child murders.”
Nicholas looked shocked by the very idea.
“Why would you do that, Adele?”
Her sad eyes met his.
“How could I not?”
He just sighed as he lifted her hands into his own. They just seemed to fit together, as though made for each other. Adele was overwhelmed by that. He turned her palms upward to examine the injury.
“I should have insisted you get this looked at,” he muttered. “Forgive me for being selfish.” His eyes met hers. “Thinking I could save you. I should know better than that by now.”
Tears ran down her face as she reached up for him.
“Don’t blame yourself, Nicholas. I love you for trying,” she whispered, her face buried in his sweet smelling skin.
He crushed her to him, overcome by emotion.
“Promise me something,” he whispered.
She was ready to say, “Anything,” but a softly spoken command rendered her silent.
“Never see that man again.”
Her heart stopped. No matter how much she wanted to, she
couldn’t promise that to Nicholas. Instead she just clutched him tighter and prayed he would understand.
Michael went immediately to Vincent’s bookstore. Cops were already there, swarming the place. He could tell from the bits and pieces of their various conversations that Vincent had escaped. They were scouring the joint for any clues they could find to point them in the direction in which he was hiding.
Michael made himself as inconspicuous as possible. Wearing mostly black that was easy to do. He rounded the building to the alleyway. The boys in blue were all over the building top to bottom, front to back, so Michael instead bounded up the fi
re escape of a nearby building.
He made it to the roof and hunched down to watch the activity. Police carried out boxes of stuff, books,
papers and personal belongings.
Just then a hand snaked around his neck and clamped across his mouth. Michael fought but the man holding him was much too strong. He turned Michael to face him, and Michael immediately stopped fighting. It was Vincent.
“If you love Adele, you won’t scream,” he whispered.
Michael just nodded.
Vincent withdrew a package from his coat. “When the time is right, she will need this,” Vincent said, handing it to Michael.
“
She’ll want to get it from you,” Michael insisted.
Vincent nodded.
“I wanted to give it to her. But things have changed now. And I may not get that opportunity.”
“
If you’re innocent…”
Vincent just shook his head.
“No one will want to believe the truth, Father. They will want to hang a killer of flesh and blood.”
Michael
couldn’t argue. “She needs you,” was all he could say.
“
No, she needs you,” Vincent corrected. “He knows who she is now. He will stop at nothing to get to her.”
“
But who is he?”
“
Hey! Up there on the roof!”
Both men hunched down as the police on the ground caught sight of them.
“Protect her,” Vincent told Michael as turned to leave. “And protect that little girl.”
With that he ran across the roof and sailed over the side.
Michael tucked the package under his coat and made a hasty departure down the fire escape.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Dani nudged open the hospital door with her wheelchair. Adele
was so frightfully pale she nearly disappeared against the white hospital bedding. Dani had never seen her so wane. She wheeled herself over to Adele’s side and just watched her sleep.
To Dani, Adele was a hero. She had saved her from her
biological mother and given her love where there was abuse.
Dani remembered all too well what it felt like, living with someone she could never predict to be the same person from one minute to the next. Sometimes her mother would cook hot cereal, read her bedtime stories and tuck her into bed. But other times, most times, her mother was loud and cruel.
She’d scowl at Dani that it was all her fault they were living hand to mouth. She’d mumble about how she could have run far away if she didn’t have a brat to feed, then she’d drink herself into unconsciousness on the cheap whiskey that cost more than any food she’d ever bought Dani.
Dani
remembered all too well seeing her mother face down on the linoleum floor, a band strapped around her arm, her own skin so gray that Dani was certain that she’d died.
And, God help her, it wa
s what she secretly hoped for, especially after her mother began to dress her up and parade her around those scary old men who would give her mother handfuls of cash just to have her sit on their laps.
Dani barely even spared her mother a second thought these days
. It wasn’t worth the pain and the anger that always rose up in her throat, nearly strangling her with its intensity.
Instead she
chose to think about Adele, Michael and Adam. They were her real family.
They were the ones who never said a cross word to her, even though she did not make it easy on them in the beginning. She had trusted no one. The only person she could love was baby Adam, who was sti
ll so sick being born to a drug-addicted mother. He needed her. Everyone else, she concluded, was just out to use her.
But Adele and Michael
didn’t give up. They visited her even when she wouldn’t spare them a word. They took her places kids should go, ice cream parlors and the park and the movies, even when she refused to show them how happy it made her to go all the places all the other kids from school would brag about going, and places she’d never before gone.
They were the ones who told her that she
wasn’t a mistake, that she wasn’t a problem or brat or imposition. Instead they tried to show her that she was wanted and loved. They would hug her when she would stand stiff as a board in their embrace. Adele was the one who took her to each and every therapy session, and never ask her once how they went. For months Adele and Michael would be there if she ever wanted to talk, which she never did. But somehow it was a comfort just to know that she could if she chose to. She just made sure she never let on.
Michael and Adele were the ones who stayed in that courtroom when she had to testify all the horrible things her own mother had done. Dani remembered the tears that ran down
Adele’s face as she listened to the horrifying young life Dani had to endure. When it was over Adele hugged Dani so tightly Dani could barely breathe. “I am so proud of you,” she whispered and Dani finally let the last walls down. She threw her arms around Adele and finally let the anguish of her brief six years free. They stood there for what seemed like forever, but Michael and Adele wouldn’t move or even allow anyone else to interrupt the important moment.