The Devil's Elixir

61

I didn’t hear them come in.

It was late. Really late, or really early, depending on which way you look at it. I wasn’t sleeping, but I guess my senses were so numb I couldn’t say I was awake either. I was physically and mentally trashed, and sleep would have been very welcome. I did get some, initially. Maybe a couple of hours. Then somewhere around four thirty in the morning, my eyes flickered awake, and that was it.

Jules and Cal, the new guy, were alternating two-hour shifts on watch, but I’d offered to share the roster with them. My shift, though, wasn’t till six. And yet, here I was, staring at the ceiling. Maybe I couldn’t rest until I’d found a hole, some way of sinking Tess’s theory. Or maybe it was something inside me—acutely sensitive hearing or some kind of ESP, depending on whether we’re going for a strictly scientific explanation or, given where my head was at, a more esoteric one—that shook me awake because of the imminent danger. Either way, I was awake, just barely, lying there in bed with Tess next to me, trapped in that really irritating zone where you’re too tired to think but too wound up to sleep.

I thought I heard a faint creak, like from a plank of flooring or a door frame. Could be Jules getting herself a cup of coffee from the kitchen—or was it Cal’s shift? I wasn’t sure. Jules, I think. The house was silent again for a moment. Then I heard another creak, followed by a metallic snap.

That one slapped me awake, but by then it was too late. I was halfway out of bed and reaching for my gun when the door to our bedroom flew open and two dark silhouettes swarmed in. My fingers never made it to the Browning’s grip. I felt the hard, deep sting in my chest before I realized one of them had targeted me with his gun, but it didn’t sound like a normal gun and what hit me wasn’t a bullet. It came out with a whoosh, like you got from a compressed air cartridge, and what I had in my chest wasn’t a gaping bullet wound. It was a three-inch-long syringe dart with a black tip at its back end.

I kept going for the gun, but one of the intruders was already on me and kicked my arm away from the night table before throwing me against the wall. I glimpsed Tess barely sitting up in the bed before she yelped as she was hit with another dart. I pushed myself off the wall to hit back at the intruder, but in mid-stride, my muscles turned to jelly and I just crumpled down to the floor like a rag doll.

I couldn’t lift a finger.

I could only watch, a prisoner of my own body, as they walked around me like I wasn’t even there. From the corner of my eye, I could see them lifting Tess off the bed and carrying her out of the room, and a rage like I’d never felt flared through me. My thoughts rocketed to Alex, and I hoped they’d used something else to drug him, something that didn’t keep him conscious like I was, something that would spare him the horror of witnessing this. I thought of Jules and Cal, too, hoping they weren’t deemed expendable, hoping they’d been spared. Then a face loomed into my frame of vision, upside down, from behind me. A new face, one I’d never seen before, but I knew it was him.

Right there, inches away from me. And I couldn’t lay a finger on him or rip his damn heart out. Assuming he had one.

I just stared up at him, lost in my silent fury, screaming my lungs out in total silence, and I thought of spiders and lizards and what my tox report would look like when they did my postmortem.