Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1) (32 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The instant that Tony broke the circle, I knew we were hosed.

Spiessbach’s pack of dead orderlies and nurses surged toward us, their arms outstretched like a horde of Romero zombies.

“Run for it!” yelled Brandon, his words muffled by the tee-shirt that was pulled up over his nose and mouth.

I still got the point though, and I didn’t need to be told twice.

We scattered, going our separate ways into the thick black smoke. I could feel the floor getting warm under my feet now, which had to be a bad sign. The fire must have reached the sixth floor already, or else be pretty freaking close.

I could hear Spiessbach’s heavily-accented voice bellowing gleefully into the fog.

“Flee all you like, children! Run as far and as fast as you can! For we both know that there is no way off this roof for you, hmmm?”

“Go to hell!” a male voice screamed in reply. I wondered for a second if it was Brandon, but got my answer when I heard the blast of a shotgun and saw an orange flash light up the smoke off to my right.

“All in good time, my boy,” Spiessbach chuckled. “You may rest assured that when I
do
finally get there, I shall not lack for company, hmmm?”

Damn, but he was starting to get on my nerves.

Okay…think, Danny.
Think.

I couldn’t go to the right, over by the kids’ swing set. That was where Tony and Spiessbach were, two characters I most definitely did
not
want to tangle with right now. The main staircase was a no-no; black smoke was pouring out of the doorway, and the staircase itself would probably be as hot as a chimney by now.

Part of me was tempted to just
jump
, hit the ground and end it all, quick and clean, but I never took the idea seriously. This was
not
a place I wanted to start my spirit existence in.

It had to be to the left, then. I couldn’t see anything over that way but smoke; then again, there was smoke
everywhere.
I took a few tentative steps in that direction, pulling my tee-shirt collar up and over my nose and breathing in the sweaty air that came from underneath. Tears were streaming from my eyes — tears of irritation, rather than emotion. Honest.

And then I saw it; a golden-yellow glow at about the height of my head, faint at first but growing steadily brighter as I closed in on the source. I stopped still for a second and realized that whatever it was, it kept getting larger and larger. I suddenly realized that I’d seen something like this before, up here on this very same roof.

It was a spirit portal.

A figure emerged from inside it, and was suddenly running towards me. I recognized it long before she was close enough for me to see her face.

“Lamiyah!”

I locked her in a massive bear hug, and now the tears running down my face were not just down to the smoke, they were also tears of pure joy.

“It is so good to see you too, Daniel.” Her slender brown arms returned the hug fiercely. “Forgive me for having taken so long.”

“What are you talking about? I only called for you a few minutes ago.”

“I mean that I have been absent throughout most of your evening, ever since the energies here forced me to leave,” she clarified in that so-very-knowledgeable, cultured manner of hers.

Damn,
but I had missed that voice.

“That’s okay. I figured you would come back to help us as soon as you could.”

Lamiyah nodded vigorously. “You ‘figured’ correctly, Daniel. I was worried that you might have believed that I had abandoned you.”

“Nuh-uh. Not for a second.”

“That is good, because as your sworn spirit guide, you must know that I would never forsake you.” She looked around with wide eyes, as if seeing the rooftop for the very first time. “And it appears that I have arrived not a moment too soon.”

“Be careful,” I warned her. “There are some pretty nasty spirits up here with us.”

“Yes,” she agreed gravely. “I have been watching. I am now fully acquainted with the despicable Doctor Spiessbach and his…
friends.
I agree with your assessment of the situation, Daniel, but you should also know this…I have brought with me some most excellent reinforcements.”

“Reinforce…reinforcements?” I broke into a fit of coughing, feeling the harsh smoke irritating the back of my throat.

“Yes indeed. My apologies, but enlisting their help was one of the reasons why I was forced to stay away for so many of your hours.”

The air was getting to be so thick now, I could barely see for five feet in front of my face.

A figure suddenly loomed up out of the smoke directly in front of me, and my heart skipped a beat with the shock of it.

“Why, hello, young man,” Spiessbach leered wolfishly. “Fancy meeting you here, of all people, hmmm?”

Before I could react, I felt the touch of a cold blade at my throat.

“I really would not move, if I were you. This scalpel has been sharpened to the standards required by surgical precision, and is more than capable of slicing open your carotid artery if you so much as
flinch.
”

I froze, not moving a muscle.
Please don’t let me cough now, or it’s game over,
was all I could think.

“Doctor Marko von Spiessbach, I presume. My name is Lamiyah, and I wish that I could say that it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance — but given the seriousness of our present situation, it seems best to dispense with the pleasantries, does it not?”

Spiessbach’s hand didn’t move even a fraction, but his eyes flicked sideways in his head to regard the Indian girl clad in her colorful sari.

“I suppose that would depend on your definition of
serious,
” he responded thoughtfully. “This situation is nothing short of a delight. As the Americans like to say, it is a ‘win-win situation’ for me.”

“How so?” Lamiyah sounded politely curious, but she had that look on her face, the one I saw only rarely; when I
did
see it, I knew that she was up to something devious.

“This building is about to be consumed by fire,” he explained. “Unfortunate, but it can do no harm to either myself or my associates.”

“Or your patients,” Lamiyah added helpfully.

“Just so. These children, who have caused me so much trouble of late, will die in the conflagration, hmmm? They may asphyxiate; they may burn; they may even choose to act preemptively and jump to their deaths. It is of no significance in the grand scheme of things, because no matter which method they choose, they shall be dead within moments, along with their methamphetamine-making companion.

“And once they have died, like everybody else who has died here at Long Brook, they shall be
mine
to do with as I please.” Spiessbach’s eyes flicked back to meet mine again. “Would you like me to do you a kindness, boy, and end it all for you now, right here with a flick of my knife? I could empty out your lifeblood in the space of a few heartbeats. You would feel very little pain. You might even
thank
me afterward, hmmm?”

Before I could tell him to go to hell, Lamiyah butted in with her own answer.

“You’re forgetting just one thing, Doctor Spiessbach.”

“
Von
Spiessbach,” he corrected her, irritably. “And what, pray tell, is that?”

“Me.”

The body-slam came out of nowhere, smashing into the surgeon’s left side with the speed of a truck. His scalpel went flying end-over-end into the air, lost in the smoke. I didn’t hear it clatter onto the rooftop, so it may have gone over the side of the building.

Frankly, I didn’t give a damn so long as it stayed well away from my throat.

Fists rained down on Spiessbach’s face in a flurry of blows that made me wince to look at it. For a moment I thought that Mister Long Brook might have come back with Polly in tow, but this level of ferocity was beyond even that guy’s fearsome rage.

One very steamed-up Jennifer was straddling his chest and just pounding on him, releasing the pent-up rage of decades and decades of mistreatment through the medium of her clenched fists.

Punch after punch pummeled Spiessbach’s head and neck, breaking the nose and splitting the lip, and still she would not stop.

Spiessbach gasped, raising bony arms defensively in a pathetic attempt to ward off the blows, but the enraged nurse simply pounded her way through them and kept on punching.

“You murdered me!” Smack. “You murdered them!” Smack. “
All
of them.” Smack-smack. “You vile” smack “pathetic” smack “loathsome” smack “miserable excuse for a human being.” Smack. “
You killed our child!
” Smack. Smack. Smack.

Lamiyah laid a tender hand on her shoulder. Jennifer’s head flew up, wild-eyed and crazy-looking. She cocked a fist back as if to strike the little Indian girl, who simply stared placidly back at her.

Finally, sense returned to the nurse’s black-within-black eyes…except, I saw, that they
weren’t
any more.

I shuffled over towards them both, wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me; sure enough, Jennifer’s eyes were now a light blue against a bed of white, no longer filled with the sinister darkness of a spirit that had chosen the evil path.

Holy crap. I guess this was what redemption looked like.

Spiessbach wasn’t moving. He just lay there limply, every muscle flaccid. His eyes were closed, although based on the speed with which they were swelling shut, I doubted that he could have seen anything through them even if he were still conscious.

I thought at first that Jennifer’s attack had put him out like a light, but after a few seconds his eyelids began to flutter.

We were surrounded on all sides by smoke. I couldn’t see much of anything for a few seconds, but then everything around me was suddenly bathed in a golden light. It grew out of a pinpoint in mid-air, but rapidly grew to the size of a basketball.

Slowly, in the manner of somebody who was either utterly exhausted or absolutely wasted, Jennifer got to her feet and staggered away from him.

Spiessbach’s body turned a bright yellowish color as the light turned its full attention towards him. His eyes widened in horror as realization dawned.

“No! Nein!
Nein!”

The doctor held up weak hands in a desperate effort to ward off the inevitable.

It was pointless.

I could feel that it was his time. The spirit portal had come for them both. A flood of warmth that was nothing to do with the inferno poured out of the light, and I could feel such a sense of raw, unbridled compassion flooding out of it that it brought fresh tears to my eyes.

Despite all that he had done, all of the pain and suffering and misery that Spiessbach had caused, the light wasn’t judging him. It wasn’t here for vengeance or retribution, or for any other equally shallow emotion.

No, it wasn’t about that at all.

This was all about offering him help, an opportunity to accept responsibility for all that he had done, and possibly to begin making amends.

“Nein! Please!” the doctor screamed. The light simply pulsed, and then a voice began to speak from somewhere inside it. I couldn’t make out any words, but just the sound of that voice — it was so perfect, so
loving;
I had never experienced anything more beautiful in my whole life.

Jennifer reached out to it, a look of blissful acceptance on her face. I was so sure that she was going to go forwards into the portal’s accepting embrace, but then I was swallowed up in a tunnel of black smoke.

The floor felt sticky beneath my feet. I realized that should have been impossible — stone and concrete don’t melt — so I looked down, and saw that the sole of my shoe was beginning to stick to the ground, which had gotten hot enough to fry an egg on.

Lamiyah was suddenly beside me, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Lamiyah, Becky and Brandon are still out there — a bunch of Spiessbach’s thugs are running around after them. Oh, not to mention the shotgun-carrying meth-head. If you brought reinforcements, we sure could use them in a hurry!”

“They should not be long in arriving, Daniel; please bear with me. Now, come with me. Let us gather up your friends and devise a way of getting you all to safety.”

She took my hand in her own, which was cold but strangely comforting at the same time. Swirling geometric patterns had been either inked or tattooed across her fingers. It’s funny the little details you notice in times of stress sometimes.

A shotgun boomed again from somewhere off to our right, followed by the sharper
crack-crack
of a pistol firing a double-tap. Lamiyah headed that way, stepping around the play equipment (even though she could have walked straight through it if she had chosen to, I certainly couldn’t) and angling towards the edge of the roof.