Shattered (33 page)

“He’s dead,” Chris had to
inform me. I snapped out of my rage and dropped his bloody head. I wanted to
come across more people like him. I needed to. I was suddenly sad that I
couldn’t run home after this and tell the people from my dreams.

“When we open the door, seven
guards will be there,” she said. “All human. Followers by choice. They’re more
talented than the others.”

“Let’s do it.”

The door flew open without
her touching it. We marched through it, ready for the next challenge. We’d made
it to the prison cells. It smelled like pee and death. The walls were coated in
colorful grime that had to be a combination of bodily fluids and colonies of fungi.
The air singed my nose, thick with bacteria that no one should ever breathe. We
could leave these hunters here and they would die from the air alone
eventually.

They weren’t expecting visitors,
but they grinned at the chance for a fight. Christine wasn’t in the mood for
one. We didn’t have time for one. The watch was still ticking.

 
She flailed her arms in one sharp
movement and slammed each of the guards into the wall at once. Their heads
bounced on the concrete as her force pinned them in place. In slow motion, they
would look like victims in the front seat of a car during a head on collision.
There was no shattering glass, but their bodies caved like a truck had plowed
into them.

They weren’t dead, so I raced
through the hall–stopping at each crash–and finished them, saving
her seven more deaths.
That
would be
seven less people she would ever have to think about again
.
I knew they wouldn’t cross my mind. Things like this, for some reason, didn’t
register as stress in my head.

Christine turned towards the
cells and gasped. They were empty, chains dangling from the walls and attached
to no one. We ran down the long and twisting halls. All of them were empty.
There were no prisoners to save.

“The kids,” she said. “We’re
too late. They’ve already been moved. We need to get to the chapel.”

“That’s not a good idea,” I
said. “Not right now. No one knows we’re here. It’s better this way. If we show
up in that chapel, that’s the end. Let’s keep looking. We may not get everyone
out, Chris, but we’ll get more people doing what we’re doing now.”

Anger and sadness fumed from
her skin. She paced in front of a cell, teeth gritted and fists clenched. She
looked like she wanted to punch someone or something very hard.

“Think about the people who
won’t be offered,” I said. “The people who will never see this place when it’s
gone.”

She squatted low to the
ground and covered her face, breathing deeply. I had a brief moment of panic.
Her angry and passionate side could get the best of her. This time, the
consequences would be severe.

She shuddered and lifted her
face slowly, tears on the brims of her eyes. “Then why were they here?” she
asked.

“Who?”

“The guards. There are no
prisoners. Why were they here if there is nothing to guard?”

She gasped, answering her own
question and flattened down to all fours. She pressed her ear against the
floor, and the tears that were just threatening before spilled down her face.

“It’s them,” she whispered.
“The kids. Thirty-eight. No.” Her breath hitched in her throat. “Thirty-four.
We lost four since I learned about them.”

I got down to listen too.
What I heard, no one would ever want to hear. Crying, moaning, stomachs
growling, children dying. I punched the floor, trying to get to them, and Chris
said, “No. I feel like there are stairs. Secret stairs.” She paused to catch
her breath and wipe her eyes. “Look for a crack. Over there.”

She pointed to a wall at the
end of the hallway. From here, it just looked like a wall. I helped her up, and
we ran to it. She panicked as she pressed against the bricks and nothing moved.

I followed every line, every
groove, looking for a crack, until something finally caught my eye. One line was
too straight to be natural but not too thin for my eyes.

I traced the line around the
wall. It formed a door. At the bottom of it, the wall didn’t quite meet the
floor. There was an opening just wide enough for my fingers. I pulled and
pulled until the false wall lifted and opened to a stairwell.

“There’s a woman at the
bottom,” Chris said. “They call her Mistress.”

She wrapped her arms tight
around her stomach and shivered. She kept looking over her shoulders and all
around us, maybe seeing things I couldn’t see.

It was darker than a homeless
night in the forest. My eyes weren’t much help, even with my stronger senses.

I tapped her hand that I knew
fire could spring from. “A little help here,” I said.

“Sure.” A second later, she turned
on a flashlight. I choked back a laugh. Nothing was funny right now, but I
wasn’t expecting her to create a simpler and more effective solution than a
ball of fire.

With our path lit, we raced
down the steep staircase, following the moaning and the smell of rot. As we
pressed closer, Christine gagged. A second later, she gagged again and pressed
her hand over her mouth. I didn’t think it was because of the smell. Her eyes
were distant like she was seeing something entirely different and more terrible
than the stone stairwell.

“A button,” she whispered.
“She has some kind of button. Like a panic button. Kill her quickly.”

“Where’s the button?”

“Bones. Next to bones.”

God. Where were we? What kind
of place had panic buttons near bones?

A calm heartbeat banged in my
ear, over my own, over Christine’s, over the crying.

Mistress. She smelled like
something flies would live on, something dead with no hope of living again. I
was going to enjoy this one way too much.

“My shift isn’t over,” she
said, as the light hit her face.

“Yes, it is,” I said, then
lunged for her neck.

This place held so many
spirits captive. They were everywhere. Walking the halls, sitting in cells like
they were still prisoners, descending the stairs with Nate and me, trying to
show me the way.

And they kept getting
younger. And I couldn’t breathe.

Nate had done most of the
work. I sort of felt like I was failing him, but I knew this was what he needed
to do. I knew this was why he was here in the first place. To kill people so I
didn’t have to.

I sensed there used to be
fifty-three children where we were headed. Fifty-three. They were pronounced
dead during the attacks and taken here. I was starting to see my mother’s
original point, why she wouldn’t have cared to save anyone. Even if they had a
good reason, anyone who knew about these children, anyone who came and went
from this place and still did nothing, had blood on their hands, had little
souls on their hands. The four kids who’d died while I knew about them weighed
on my heart.

For whatever reason, my
mother had given me the power to sense death. Feeling my boyfriend kill hunter
after hunter was no comparison to what their deaths felt like. They were hungry
and scared and tired and dirty. They’d lived in hell before their tiny souls
slipped away.

I’d felt what a heart attack
felt like at St. Catalina, I’d felt what beheading felt like in CC’s studio,
and my neck had snapped several times today, but this was much worse. Much
darker, slower, hopeless. And all for what?

I sensed that Kamon had taken
them for experiments. I wanted to scream. They were in here because he wanted
to test evil theories. He thought of them as things, disposable things. Lab
rats.

I hoped to dance over his charred
body tonight.

A spirit of a little boy
stayed close to my side. He couldn’t speak, or either I couldn’t hear him. He
flailed his misty hands, frantically pointing at the bottom of the stairs. We
didn’t need his warning about Mistress. Nathan was ready. I was ready.

Before opening the door to
the underground cell, I’d learned everything I needed to know about the sick
woman who loved guarding these children. Fiona Duff, known around here as
“Mistress.”

Disgusting.

She was thirty-two years old,
human, and had worked for Kamon for years. I stayed out of her mind. It was
chaotic and unbalanced. She had more than one mental voice, way more. The
logical side of me pegged her as mentally ill, but the spiritual side of me,
the girl who still believed things the nuns said, thought she might be
possessed. Since we didn’t have any holy water, we would not be attempting to
save her tonight.

Nate’s muscles tensed. He
looked like he tasted her blood already.

“My shift isn’t over,” she
said. Nate dropped the flashlight, and I caught it before it hit the ground. As
he soared through the air, aiming for her neck, the world seemed to slow. I saw
her life–this dark, hollow thing–flash before my eyes.

Monsters
are
made by
monsters. For a quick moment, I wanted to save her, move her
neck out of Nathan’s grip. She didn’t have a fair shot at life. The world had
always been a hostile place for her. Her name, Mistress, was borrowed. She
lived at a boarding school where the Head Mistress had abused her and most of
the children there.

However, the misty blue
spirits surrounding the commotion Nate had caused changed my mind about saving
her. As he tackled her to the ground, arms slashing at her so fast they
blurred, the spirits rejoiced. These children, once alive and tortured in this
room, reveled at the sight of her death.

Her rough life wasn’t an
excuse. I could be
torturing orphans
right now,
blaming years of bullying as the culprit. But that would be
my
fault. If the past could be presented
as an alibi to thwart punishment, there would be no criminals. Everyone had a
past. She’d decided to let hers ruin her life, and she’d decided to ruin the
lives of others. So as the pain of her cracking bones surged through me, Nate
growling like a bloodhound on the hunt, I turned away from the gore and let it
happen.

I was glad I did. As I
turned, I saw the rest of the room. The cellar was full of rows and rows of
tiny beds. Under them were frightened children and more ghosts hiding among the
living. I didn’t want to cry. Everyone counting on me needed me to be strong.
But they were so small and so afraid and that evil woman kept bones around to
frighten them. Remnants of arms, legs, and fingers were everywhere. Fixed to
the walls, thrown in corners, displayed on bedposts.

This was hell. The actual
place. No one would ever convince me otherwise.

“I’m going to get you out of
here,” I managed to say through my tears. I ran to the beds, and they scurried
out of my reach. One little boy was too afraid to move, Miguel. I touched his
shoulder and sent him to the warehouse. The other children gasped.

“He’s going home,” I said. They
stared at me like I was crazy. Then I remembered they were from Kamon and
Devin’s attack on a city in Mexico. “Home. Um …
su
casa. Madre, padre.”

“Madre?” a little girl asked.
“
Mi
madre
?”

“Si,” I said. “Su
madre
. Pamela.” She nodded, ecstatic that I knew her
mother’s name. “You will see a man first and others. Gregory. He is nice. He
will give you food.” I feasted on air so she’d know what I meant. Hesitantly,
she crawled to me. I touched her shoulder and ended the nightmare for her.

The others were still afraid.
I caught a few of their feet as they scurried away and sent them against their
wills to Pop.

“Let me help,” Nate said. I
looked up and jumped. A bloody vampire was standing over me.

“Okay,” I said, catching my
breath.

“My name is Nathan,” he said.
“I know I look kind of scary right now, but I’m a shifter. I turn into a dog.
Maybe later, I can show you, but I need you to stop hiding. Okay? Who in here
knows Mistress? Raise your hands?”

Like his English was better
or something, the children raised their hands, peeking from under their beds.

“What the hell?” I said.

“They’re afraid of hunters,
and you’re chasing them, Chris.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Mistress is dead,” Nate said
to them. “
Muerto
.” They started whispering their
disbelief, a few pointing to the bloody mess at the stairs when they saw it.
“My girlfriend is very nice, and she wants to bring you home. Okay? But she has
to touch you. She’ll just tap your shoulder and you will be out of here.”

Nate kneeled and opened his
arms. The magical children would rather run to a blood-soaked vampire than a
hunter. Wow.

They circled Nate, and I
tapped them as fast as I could and cleared out the room. The dead little boy
who’d met me on the stairs pointed at himself, like:
what about me?
I didn’t know what to tell him or the other spirits
in the room.

The little boy pointed to a wall
and ran to me, then back to the wall. He wanted me to follow him.

I walked a few steps then
became sure that he was showing me to a body.
                         
Multiple
bodies. He wanted to leave. He wanted his body out of here. I closed my eyes as
I approached the wall, thinking of white sheets. A bundle of them appeared in
my arms.

I felt Nate move to my side
and didn’t open my eyes as the door creaked open. “Oh, God,” he said. I choked
on the odor, my eyes squeezed tight. I knew I would never stop seeing whatever
was behind that door, so I didn’t open them. Nate took the sheets, and a minute
later, he wrapped his arms around me.

“Get them out of here,” he
whispered, his voice heavy like he was about to burst.

I finally opened my eyes.
There were several lumps under the sheets. I touched them quickly, chills wrecking
my body, and sent them to Pop who would hopefully lay them to rest.

I took Nate’s hand and
brought us back to the false door. He closed it with one hand and dried his
face with the other. There was a huge part of me that wanted to leave now. I’d
gotten the children out. I was finding it hard to have compassion for anyone
else.

It took looking at the empty
cells to soften my heart again. Many of these hunters were once in those cells,
and I’d made a promise to do my best. I wasn’t even tired yet.

“According to the map I saw,
there’s a hospital wing,” Nate said. “That way.” I followed him through the
twisting hallway. His feet sped just as I glanced down at the watch, in sync
with me in every way. We’d spent a lot of time with the children.

Detonation was in thirty-five
minutes.

“To your right,” I said, as I
sensed a hunter.

“I’m all over it, baby.” He
didn’t slow a bit. We were running now, bounding through the hall towards a
very loud mind. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “All I can smell is …
prison.”

“He’s foul,” I said. “Very
foul.”

The distant clatter of a
radio joined the hunter’s thoughts. Then his footsteps banged against the
concrete as he rushed towards us. “I think we have guests!” he screamed.

He turned the corner and ran
right into Nate’s arms. Those were his last words.

“Corridor One,” the person on
the radio said. “Come in.”

Nate grabbed the radio and
pressed the button on the side. “All clear,” he said. “False alarm.”

He tucked the radio into the
pocket of his suit jacket, and I spotted a card with a magnetic strip dangling
from the hunter’s pants. I unhooked it from his belt loop and gave it to Nate.
I felt like it would come in handy.

The filth of the prison
receded as we ran through Corridor One. The hospital wing we were headed
towards must’ve been important. This hall had the most guards yet. But out of
fifteen, I was able to send twelve to Pop. It was twelve less people who had to
die because of Kamon. Twelve more captives that would make it back to their
families soon.

They were all under twenty and
struggling to master psychic powers. It was an unfair match up, but I knew the
hunters would get better and stronger as we moved deeper into this place.

Nate swiped the card through
a sensor next to a door. It beeped, and a green light flashed just as the door
opened.

It was like walking into a
different world. The door opened into a normal, run-of-the-mill hospital. I
would swear I’d just parked my car and walked into any average U. S. clinic for
a routine check up. The walls were a nonthreatening mauve color. I looked down
at the green linoleum floor. Nate and I were tracking brown grime, the only
sign of the disgusting prison behind us.

Above us was the only
indication that something wasn’t quite right with this place. There were
strange signs mixed among mundane ones noting the different wings of the
hospital–Pharmacy, Morgue, Research, Purging, Harvesting, Triage.

Nate took a sharp turn under
the Research sign. A low growl gurgled in his throat. He threw his arm in front
of me, stopping us in the middle of an empty hallway. The overhead lights
flickered and buzzed. A weak light bulb, I thought. Nate seemed to sense
something more dangerous.

As we stood there, waiting
and waiting, all I could feel was time ticking away. A second leaving us was
more people we wouldn’t get to. More seconds flew by, and he finally pointed
into the room to our left. He sniffed and made a confused face. He needed my
help. Kamon’s entire headquarters so far was a terribly noisy place. Sounds of
the dead and the living rang in my ears. Immediate dangerous were louder, but
nothing on this floor had risen above the noise.

“I don’t really sense
anything,” I said.

“Something’s wrong here,” he
said. “Try again, please.”

When I focused on the room, I
saw blue-green water surrounding me like I was submerged in it. “Water,” I
whispered. “I just see water.”

We inched towards the room,
cautious since our senses hadn’t helped us much. He growled again. It seemed
involuntary, almost like he hadn’t heard himself do it.

He opened the door and wavy
shadows greeted us. Light shining on water. We stepped inside and my breath
snagged. There were person-sized glass tubes, filled with greenish water, with
figures floating inside. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t drag my eyes
away. It was too terrible not to stare at.

Thirteen tubes. Thirteen
magical beings that couldn’t be saved. Nate ran through the room, looking for
ways to unhook them. But I knew it was too late.

As he ran, his shoulders
trembled like he was about to shift. I caught up to him and rubbed his back,
trying to make him focus. But he wouldn’t stop sniffing under tables, opening
huge cabinets, and wasting more time.

“There’s something else
here,” he said.

“But we need to hurry.” As I
lifted the watch to show him our remaining minutes, I heard a strange sound. It
was the sound of metal against metal. Rattling. Handcuffs, I sensed. Small
handcuffs.