Part 25 (1/2)

The face of a dead woman who looked like- No! That's impossible. I'm not dead. Just dreaming. My eyes were open. I saw...

John.

Had she seen him? Was he still next to her? She pushed at the darkness, trying to force it back. Trying to sense the outside world.

Sounds.

Beeping. Voices.

I'm here! she screamed, but the voice was only in her head. Was she awake or still dreaming? Or in a coma? Did people in comas imagine they were conscious?

Maybe I'm blind. Sudden fear motivated her. She concentrated on her eyes. Feeling them. Moving them.

Opening them.

Straining like she was lifting a heavy weight, she forced her eyelids to rise. Nothing happened at first, and then a pale strip of gray appeared. The strip turned into a small window, and then a larger one. The gray evolved into something brighter, almost white. Shapes appeared. At the same time, the voices and beeps grew clearer.

”-hear me? Leah? Can you hear me?”

”John?” Attempting to speak was an automatic reaction to hearing him. The word came out as more of a whispered croak.

”Hold on,” a second voice said. A woman. A hand appeared with a Styrofoam cup. A straw poked out of a plastic lid. It drew closer and Leah eagerly moved to meet it.

Cool liquid touched her tongue and throat, a magic elixir that washed away the dry, scaly feeling from her mouth, moistened the arid tunnel that was her throat, and poured energy into her body with each sip.

The cup pulled away, leaving Leah feeling unsatisfied but a thousand times better.

”That's enough for now. You can have more in a few minutes.” The woman stepped away and began fiddling with a machine next to the bed.

Woman. Machine. Bed. She's a nurse. I'm in the hospital.

”John?” She turned to the side, afraid she'd hallucinated seeing him before. Memories-real or imagined, she couldn't be sure-jostled each other in her head. John on the floor, dying. John turning away from her when she needed him.

John cowering on the ground?

”I'm here.” His hand patted hers, and she clutched at it. Real. Solid. Warm. ”How are you feeling?”

Leah thought for a moment before answering. How was she feeling? Weak, but her strength was returning. Confused. Tired, the kind of tired that comes from mental exhaustion rather than physical exertion or lack of sleep. But, otherwise, she felt...okay.

”All right, I guess. I... How did I get here? What happened? I remember...I saw you...they...”

”Shot me. But you cured me. Again. I think I'm losing count of how many times that is now.” He gave her a ghost of his usual sunny smile that triggered a twinge of guilt in her chest. He had to be as exhausted as she was.

Whatever had happened, he'd undoubtedly been right there with her, just like he'd been there for her all along. He was the one who'd been shot, poisoned and who knew what else. And yet she was the one in the hospital bed, while he watched over her.

”It's me who owes you. I was the one who got you in all this mess, and you're the one who pulled me out of it. Or tried to. I guess I should have listened more.”

Continuing as if he hadn't heard her, John asked, ”So seeing me get shot. That's the last thing you remember?”

Leah bit her lip as she tried to make sense of the image and memory snippets that were flas.h.i.+ng in random fas.h.i.+on through her thoughts. ”Del...he ordered them to do it. We watched on the computer... I begged him to let me help you-”

”We?” John interrupted. ”We who?”

”The other men,” she said, as the scene cleared up in her head. ”The ones who came to see what I could do. To buy me. Six of them.”

”Dressed real nice, but tough looking? Some of them were foreigners?”

Leah nodded. From the way he'd said it, she had the feeling he'd seen them. But when?

”Yes. And then Del had his men lead everyone down to the room where you were. And...” She stopped as a new memory popped to the surface.

A mummy lying across her, a dead thing that somehow looked familiar...

”Leah?”

”There was an explosion. In the hall. Someone was pointing a gun at me... Tal Nova! That's who it was. But he didn't shoot me. He...I...I think I did something to him.”

She looked at John and saw something in his eyes, something she'd never seen there before. Not fear. Not sympathy, either. Something she couldn't identify, but she knew it wasn't good.

”John. You know something. Tell me.”

He stared at her for a minute, his lack of expression betraying the fact that he had bad news for her. Then he sighed, and she recognized the emotion filling his brown eyes.

Pity.

With another sigh, he started speaking.

Leah waited until she was positive John wasn't returning before letting her tears spill out. She wasn't sure what had her crying worse-losing John, knowing she was the cause of his leaving or finding out she was a monster, something no longer human.

She lay on her side, clutching one of the thin, almost-useless hospital pillows to her chest. It was almost too much to comprehend. She wanted to just close her eyes and sink into dark oblivion. Return to her coma-like state and never wake up. Except now she knew even that would offer no respite from the h.e.l.l her life had become. John's words-awful enough on their own-had acted like magnets on her broken memories, rounding them up and piecing them together until the whole picture became clear inside her head.

Drawing the death out of John and replacing it with her own life force.

Sucking Tal Nova's essence from him until only a husk remained.

Becoming something other than herself, the opposite of herself, a thing that delivered death instead of life.

Killing the men who'd held her hostage, who'd attacked her.

And worst of all, enjoying it.

Most of the previous day was still fuzzy, but parts she remembered were more than enough to let her know she'd turned into a freak. A monster. She'd sensed John hadn't told her everything, either. He'd been vague about describing what she looked like when he encountered her in the hall. But she'd seen how his face turned pale, how his hands trembled in his lap.

Whatever he'd seen-whatever she'd been-it hadn't just frightened him.

It had terrified him.