As it was she caught only a glimpse of him before Malleus carried her farther away, stopping on the crumbing steps of the hospital building. Wind swirled and eddied around them, lifting Megan’s hair and snapping the heavy corrugated paper of a torn cement bag to their right. She’d been wrong in thinking the hospital was like a ghost. She was the ghost, intruding on a world that had nothing to do with her, a world she should have left behind ages ago.
Her legs were steady enough beneath her when Malleus set her down just in front of the empty door frames. Once the doors had been etched glass, with TRUBANK MENTAL HEALTH CENTER printed in block script on each panel. Once the atrium had been painted an institutional pale green and filled with modular furniture and plants to take away the ache of that soulless color, and the light had poured in across terrazzo floors.
Now their feet crunched on litter and broken glass as they picked their way through. It smelled in there, like dead things and mold and rotten food, mixed with the fainter, more lingering fragrance of despair. The misery this building had absorbed! The walls still fairly throbbed with it. She could feel them close around her, like dogs sniffing out which hand held the treat.
But there was no hand to choose. She was the treat, and it wasn’t just the building that waited for her to feed it but something inside. Maybe more than one thing. Ktana Leyak could very well be here already. The entire room seemed to sigh when she walked farther into it.
Off to her right were the remains of the reception desk, broken and jagged. It had been bolted down, which was probably the only reason it hadn’t disappeared completely, along with the other furniture. A few disintegrating boxes littered the floor, along with some animal bones and piles of lint and cardboard that could only be rodent nests. That was another smell in the air, one she hadn’t identified until then. Droppings. She sneezed. Just that small movement sent fresh pain shooting down her arm.
A loud sniffle made her turn around. Maleficarum, shaking his head, wiping his eyes.
“Spud,” she said, ashamed of herself for not having asked already. “Is he—”
“He’ll be all right, m’lady,” Maleficarum said. His voice sounded strangled and lost in the empty space around them. “He’s tough, he is. But you—you been shot, and Mr. Dante, and Mr. Showtin…” He covered his face with his beefy right palm, and after a moment of surprise—Spud was usually the emotional one—Megan went to him and took his left hand. Even now they were separated by rank, but the touch meant more to him for that and she knew it
Greyson cleared his throat. “Meg, we need to get that bullet out of your arm.”
To their left rose the wide, sweeping staircase leading to the second floor. Above that were only fire stairs, horrible dark shafts at the corners of the building. But this stairway was for show, this stairway was meant to reassure those leaving family members in the care of medical staff that Trubank was a nice place, a healing place, instead of the bowels of the Accuser.
Greyson slipped her coat off her shoulders and sat down, pulling her carefully to sit on his left thigh with his left arm tight around her waist. His damaged ear wasn’t far from her face; she refused to look at it, focusing instead on his eyes, his lips moving, telling her what she didn’t want to hear, about holding out her arm and it would only hurt for a minute.
Nick squatted in front of Greyson and took her hand. “Squeeze as tight as you want, Megan, you won’t hurt me.”
“Hold on a minute, guys, I don’t think this is really necessary,” she started, but it was too late. Greyson squeezed her so hard she almost couldn’t breathe, and Nick pulled her arm taut while Malleus produced a long silver pair of tweezers from somewhere on his person and plunged them into the wound in her arm.
She didn’t want to scream but screamed anyway. Her fingers ached from squeezing Nick’s hand with her left, Greyson’s with her right, while she buried her face in Greyson’s chest and cried, and begged him to stop. Deep below the pain was shame, the knowledge that she should be braver than this, should be stronger than this, but somehow the fear of what was to come made it all so much worse. It felt like Malleus was trying to remove her actual bone, like somehow the tweezers could grow and bend and tug out her demon heart as well.
As abruptly as the pain had started, it ended. Fresh blood spilled down her forearm to her hand, still held in Nick’s, and covered both of them as though they were being hand-fasted.
Malleus showed her his palm, where three bloodied bits of metal lay among the calluses. No wonder it felt like he was trying to dig out her intestines through her arm. Apparently the bullet had shattered when it hit her bone.
She wanted to laugh. It was the adrenaline, she guessed, buzzing through her body, shooting like champagne straight to her head. Now it was over she felt like she could fly, and while it lasted she wanted to savor it.
Instead she ended up wandering around the ghost town of the lobby while Malleus took care of Greyson and Nick. Both men cursed and gritted their teeth manfully; she felt their eyes on her and tried to pretend she didn’t find it amusing, although she suspected they were hamming it up for her. She’d seen Greyson take much worse pain without being quite so noisy, and she had the distinct feeling that Nick was just as tough if not even tougher. But she appreciated it just the same. For a minute—right around the time Greyson moaned, “By the fiery gates of Hell!”—she was even able to forget where they really were and why, and imagine they were on some sort of crazy Halloween dare.
Too bad the jokes, like the adrenaline rush, couldn’t last. By the time they were finished her hands were shaking and her fear was flooding back. She needed something hidden in this place, and it wasn’t just Ktana Leyak threatening her. It was this building, this place, the memories of the unhappy teenager she’d been, the nightmarish, vague recollections of her time spent here while the Accuser shared her body.
And knowing her father had done that to her. The one man who was supposed to love her more than any other man ever could, who was supposed to teach her how to relate to men and how to expect to be treated by them for the rest of her life, had discarded her without a second thought.
Did that color her relationships? Was she now in love with an emotionally distant demon because her father had never been there for her? It was ridiculous, she knew. It wasn’t as though she was an open book emotionally either, or didn’t keep secrets, and Greyson was nothing like her father.
And yet…he’d gotten where he was today in part by stepping directly on the heads of people who’d helped him. He’d worked his entire life to become Gretneg, and she knew he’d kill to stay there.
Would he discard her, as her father had done, if she became too much of a threat to his position? If dumping her would cement another deal, strengthen an alliance, bring him more power and money?
It wasn’t simply the cold that made her shiver. For a moment she just stood there, feeling more lonely than she ever had in her life.
Then he stood in front of her and heat radiated from his skin, and she didn’t care anymore what was wrong or right. If the last months had taught her anything, it was that no matter how hard you tried to guard against the unexpected, you couldn’t do it. And if her work had taught her anything, it was that feelings and emotions could be coped with but not stopped. She’d deal with whatever fallout happened when it happened. If it happened.
He held her for a minute, then pulled away, stroking her cheek with his fingers. “Ready?”
“My arm still hurts.” It did too. He took her hand, and she felt the smooth rush of his power over her skin. The pain lessened a little.
“I don’t want to use too much energy,” he said. “We’ll probably need all we can get. But that should be better.”
“It is, thanks.” She looked up and caught his eyes with her own.
The others were pretending not to watch them, but Megan knew they were. She cleared her throat and glanced at the floor. “What do we do? I mean, can you feel anything, do you know where it—whatever
we’re looking for—is?”
“No. This whole place feels like demon.”
“Start at the top, work our way down?”
“Probably better the other way around. I’d rather not climb more stairs than I have to.”
She’d almost forgotten about his leg. With a concerned little sound she leaned down, but he touched her shoulder to keep her where she was. “It’s fine. Listen, Meg…”
“What?”
His fingers twined in hers, warm and comforting, while she waited for him to speak. Finally he shook his head. “Never mind. Is this the bottom floor, or what?”
Her heart sank. “There’s a basement.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Fire filled Greyson’s palm as they picked their way down the stairs, throwing shadows on their faces. In its light Greyson looked gaunt, tired; she could only imagine how she must look with her hair frizzing around her head and her eyes wide with fear. Megan didn’t think anyone had been down here since the place closed, but she was wrong. Spiders were here and rats and cockroaches, skittering across the mess of strewn papers and dust and bones on the floor when the light hit them. Her skin crawled at the sight. It was bad enough in the lobby, but here, where no light ever came and no workman had been in to even halfheartedly tidy up, it was chaos, a foul-smelling dump where years’ worth of waste had settled like silt on the ocean floor.
Cobwebs shrouded the damp, slimy walls, so thick and dusty they were more like curtains. In the center of one lurked the largest spider Megan had ever seen, almost as big as the palm of her hand. Its horrible eyes glittered when the light hit them. She gasped, her fingers twitching in Greyson’s. She couldn’t go in there, she just couldn’t. And she shouldn’t have to.
“It’s not in here,” she said, aware for the first time that her demon heart had moved feebly when they were in the lobby, just when they entered. It lay still in her chest again, even though her own heart—her human heart—pounded like a hammer. “It’s not down here, I just…I feel it, I know it isn’t here.”
“Okay.” But he paused, and nodded toward the far wall. “Looks like something’s down here, though.”
“What? I—oh.”
Files. The entire wall was lined with filing cabinets, lurking behind the fog of spiderwebs. One of the drawers hung open; Megan could see the files inside.
“Do you want it?” He moved a little closer, still holding her hand. “You don’t have to, bryaela. You don’t have to see it if you don’t want to. But if you do…it’s there.”
“I don’t.” It came out more strongly than she’d intended, her voice echoing off the walls and sending something rustling away through the mess on the floor.
“Okay,” he said again. “So let’s just head back up the stairs then.”
“Wait.”
He stopped.
“I…I do. I think I do want to see it. Maybe I should see it.”
“Malleus?”
The big guard demon pushed past her carefully and headed for the files, sliding his thick index fingers down the faded labels on the drawers, then opening a few and sifting through them. The folders themselves looked surprisingly clean and dry, but that didn’t make Megan any more comfortable about actually holding it in her hands after Malleus dug it out.
Which he did, after a minute or so of hunting. He started toward her, holding it out in front of him, but she shrank back. Not yet, not here. She didn’t even want to touch it.
But seeing it made something click deep inside her. All these fucking years later, and here she was again in this place. And it was almost Christmas, it was the Friday night before. She was supposed to be home packing right now. Ktana Leyak was ruining the first real Christmas Megan had had in years, and when a wave of rage surged in her chest she realized this was what she’d been missing.
What was wrong with her? It was as though Ktana’s stealing her demons had stolen something more than that too. She’d stolen…she’d stolen Megan’s sense of herself, had picked at it with razor-sharp nails since the first time Megan had seen her. She didn’t think she’d had a more difficult week in her entire life and damn it, it was time for this shit to end. Now.
She straightened up, and held out her hand for the file. “Give it to me.”
Malleus glanced at Greyson, then obeyed.
“Thanks.” She rolled it up—it was surprisingly thick—and stuffed it as best she could into the inner pocket of her coat. She might read it later. She might not. But seeing it, touching it, had reminded her who she was. And who she was would not let some demon bitch steal from her like that.
The triumph of her steely resolve was only faintly lessened when she stumbled and scraped her knee on her way back up the steps. Yes, she was certainly back to her old self.
Another flight of stairs, this one familiar to her. She’d walked up it before, the day she came here—her memory of it was vague and disordered, filtered green—but at that time it had been clean and she’d had an orderly with her. And her parents, faking concern while they checked their watches when they thought no one was looking.
“Each floor has a…had a…rec room, you know, where they did therapy? In the center, with the patients’ rooms around it. Maybe we should check—”
“Which one was your room?”
She stared at him, dumbstruck. “Oh my God, of course. It’s there, isn’t it? Whatever it is?”
Greyson nodded slowly. “It’s a good guess, anyway.”
“I was on, um, the fifth floor, I think. In the corner. I don’t remember the number…”
But it would be in her file, the file in her pocket. She reached in and pulled it out, holding it open in unsteady hands.
“Here.” Nick held it for her, his eyes averted while she flipped through it by the light from Greyson’s hand. Various phrases leaped out at her. “Presented with persecutory delusions…No shoelaces or cutting implements permitted…refuses to eat…fight with another patient…” She didn’t remember any of that.
“I was in 526.”
Greyson thought for a minute. “I still want to at least check the other floors, just in case. But if you can feel it, whatever it is, we’ll do it as quickly as possible.”
“I think I can. I’ll try anyway.”
“I can help,” Nick said. “I might be able to feel it too. My—my father was part psyche demon.”
“Psyche demon?”
“Greyson’s a fire demon, the boys are actually herket demons—their ancestors performed tortures in Hell. They’re physical demons, you know what I mean, with some mental abilities. But psyche demons are like the Yezer, their powers are all mental, with slight physical strengths. I can feel a few things from you without touching you, so it’s possible I’ll be able to feel the demon here if I focus.”
Greyson looked at his friend. Something passed between them, some sort of moment Megan didn’t understand. “Thanks, Nick.”
Nick shrugged. “Let’s go, then. Get this over with.”
They turned and started back up the stairs. Megan’s feet were heavy. She had to force her body to move, to obey her and keep walking toward…whatever was up there.
At the top of the staircase the hallway split, leading to the left and the right. The air up here was a little cleaner, but colder too as the wind blew through the empty windows and doorways. Kids had been in the building, teenagers drinking or getting high or just on a dare, and they’d left their calling cards in spray paint on the walls. CP + DK 4-EVER stretched across the wall in blood red paint, the letters dripping like the title of a Hammer horror flick, next to a passable copy of Motor-head’s Warpig. Another invited readers to suck his cock. At least Megan assumed the anonymous wit had been male. A swastika—no wall of graffiti seemed complete without some asshole adding that one, especially not in a town like Grant Falls.
The sight of it bothered her, brought memories of the town’s hate flooding back even more clearly than they already had been, but she didn’t expect Maleficarum to react t
he way he did. The sound he made could only be called a growl, and he flung his large body at the wall, hammering it with his fists until the plaster gave and nothing was left but a gaping hole. When he turned around his eyes were red, even in the dim light.
There was no time to question it, no time to react, because something moaned at the other end of the hall, something that sent chills rising up Megan’s spine. A zombie…two zombies…the fire flared higher and she saw more, coming around the corner, a small army.
An uneasy moment passed as they stared at each other, demons, human, and zombies facing off in the hallway at the top of the stairs, and then the zombies charged.
She could vaguely remember Greyson telling her that the speed at which zombies moved was related to how strong the zombie maker was. Ktana Leyak must be getting more from the Yezer than Megan ever had.
The hall lit up like a tanning booth as blue-white flames engulfed them, but they kept coming.
“Go! Meg, go!”
Nick was already moving, grabbing her arm, yanking her away from where Greyson stood with his brow furrowed in concentration. Heat roared down the hallway, singeing her eyebrows, and she understood even as Nick and Malleus tugged her around the corner that if she didn’t get away she would burn, they would all burn when the zombies fell on them. The last thing she saw was Greyson standing, his body outlined black against the burning bodies advancing on him, his shoulders set as he waited.
They’d almost reached the end of the hall when explosions ripped the air. Megan’s hair blew forward, lifted from her shoulders by the force of the blast. To her right the blackness of the empty stairwell beckoned; they all ducked into it and started up the stairs, their feet pounding on the cement.
Another explosion rocked the building and tore a scream from Megan’s throat. Blindly she turned, stumbling back down toward the landing. If he was hurt, if he’d died—