Awaken (Divine Hunter Series) (13 page)

“It’s okay. I’ve got you,” Michael said, his voice was gentle, soothing, and as she bent forward and leant her hands on her knees, she felt him gently stroking her back. “Just try to relax. Deep, slow breaths.” She copied his rhythm as he continued to breathe with her.

The feeling of dread that consumed her whole body from head to toe began to slowly subside, washing away from her like a retreating tide. Her heart rate was returning to normal and the dizziness was fading. Breathing in through her
nose and out through her mouth slowly, she began to feel herself again. She continued the pattern for a minute longer as the trembling subsided.

“Better now?” Michael asked while he continued to stroke her back.

She managed to nod her head. She felt relieved, ashamed, and scared that it might not be just a one off−that the panic attacks she’d spent years getting under control had just returned in an instant.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to say before she walked back inside the house.

Michael followed her. “You don’t have to be.” He closed the doors. “Here, sit down and relax, okay?”

* * *

L
acy was still clearly shaken from what Michael assumed was some sort of anxiety attack. Talking about her past was understandably difficult and to think that she’d suffered all of this time. . . It must have weighed her down. He didn’t know why he should feel so angry towards her mother but he did. He wanted to somehow take Lacy’s anguish away, to talk to her, tell her everything was going to be okay. It worried him that the thought of someone hurting her plagued him so deeply. But for whatever reason, it did.

“I’m feeling better now. Thanks,” she said to him as he sat down across the table from her, allowing her some space to pull herself together.

“Does that happen often?”

“It used to, at least once a day until I finally got a grip on it. Well, I thought I had until now. I haven’t had one for nearly three years. My therapist taught me to control my breathing and not let them consume me and it was hard at
first, but I persevered and finally learned to control them. Eventually they went away completely. I don’t know what happened.”

“Well, you’ve had a lot to deal with over the past few days. It’s probably all just become too much for you.” He noticed her hands were still a little shaky. “Are you sure you’re
okay?”

“Yes
, honestly. I’m fine. This thing with Nina, It’s just brought some bad memories to the surface.”

The kitchen door opened and Evo strolled in looking pretty grim. “No. Before you say it, I’m not going back outside. I’ve gone through nearly half a pack of smokes since I’ve been out there leaving you two to talk. I don’t think you’re very good for my health.” He joined them at the table. “Now, who the hell do I have to screw to get a cup of coffee in here?”

Michael rolled his eyes. Leave it to Evo and his inappropriate behavior to kick a fragile moment right in the ass. As Evo sat down next to Lacy, Michael was pleased to see her mouth quirk at the corner as she looked back at him. Evo gave him a friendly wink while she wasn’t looking.

Smart bastard.

“Hey, I’m going to make some more breakfast.” Evo was on fire with his manners this morning, jumping up and going straight to the refrigerator and grabbing some eggs, more bacon and what looked like cheese in a can.

“God help us.” Michael said.

“Not much
he
could do to stop me filling my stomach right now.” Evo threw some bacon in the pan, then cracked two eggs in there as well and began to fry it all up together.

“I’m sure he could teach you some
manners, though.” Michael looked at Lacy and mouthed, “Sorry.” She gave him a half smile but looked like her mind was somewhere else. “Penny for them. . . ” he said, using the phrase she’d used on him the other day.

“I wish he was real. . . then maybe he could help her,” she said as she stared down at the table, ignoring all the clatter coming from Evo.

“You don’t believe in God, Lacy?” Michael hadn’t been that convinced himself at one point, but given his current situation, and what he’d seen over the short time he’d been dead, he couldn’t be more convinced about God’s existence. It was hard to ignore when you’d been plunged into a world where fighting demons and vengeful spirits had become a regular part of your day to day routine. He had to be real. Although, where he was and why he’d let this happen to him he had no idea.

“How could I? After what happened to my sister? My mother never really spoke about
God, so what little I knew of him I’d learned in school. It was enough to make me believe he was real. But after”−she hesitated−“the accident all my beliefs were gone.”

Michael noticed Evo had gone quiet and looked up to find him watching them from across the room. Evo raised an eyebrow at him, he too had seen the things that Michael had; fought with them in the same
way, but right now he looked to have the same understanding as Michael did for Lacy feeling the way that she did.

“I don’t know why these things happen. I can’t give you the answer to that. But I know God exists even though I can’t explain to you how. Not right now anyway−”

“It wouldn’t matter what you said,” Lacy interrupted, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to believe that.”

Michael inhaled a deep breath. He truly understood her
reasons, but he tried a different approach anyway.

“Have you never had anything happen to you, I mean, any time in your life which has made you think that, just maybe, someone was looking out for you? Could’ve been something as simple as seeing something that’s made you cross the street right before that cab drove straight through a puddle that would have drenched you otherwise?

“Or, for example, I remember an employee of mine many years ago−Joseph I think his name was−had left his house one morning to come to work as he always did, and had headed to the subway station to get the seven forty-five train into the city, the same one he always travelled on. This particular day, he was late getting in the office, when I asked why, he explained to me that he’d left an important file at home and had to go back to get it. He missed his train and had to get another one which took him on a different route. Later that morning, reports came in that a train heading from Granville into the city had de-railed, causing the front carriage to burst into flames.”

Lacy sat upright, “I remember that. It was all over the news. Forty-eight people died and a load more badly injured. It was tragic.”

“Yeah. Didn’t they put a memorial plaque outside the station to remember the dead?” Evo mumbled; mouth half full.

“Yes, that’s right.” Lacy replied.

Michael just nodded. “It was the train Joseph would have been on had he not left his file at home.”

Lacy gasped and held her hand to her mouth.

“Someone was looking out for him. Call it fate, divine intervention. . . whatever. But he wasn’t meant to die that day. Needless to say, after the news, I gave him the rest of the day off.”

Lacy looked stunned for a moment and sat quietly as if she didn’t know what to say.

“I’ll make some fresh coffee.” Michael said as he picked up her used mug from the table in front of her.

“
Okay,” she whispered.

He walked over to the kitchen and gave Evo a look of disbelief as he watched him place his dishes in the sink and begin to wash them. “You feeling
okay, buddy?” Michael asked, placing his hand on his shoulder. It wasn’t every day he got to witness his friend being all domesticated.

Evo shrugged. “Just doing my bit.”

“Hey. Actually, there may be something.” Lacy said, swinging herself around on her chair to face them as Michael filled the coffee machine with fresh ground beans from the jar on the counter.

“Go on,” he urged.

“There was this group of girls who I’d had a bit of trouble with in high school, you know the type: perfect hair, designer clothes. The popular girls who treated everyone else like crap? Anyway, it was mostly jarring words and occasionally one of them would shoulder bump me as they walked passed me in the hall, making sure I dropped my books. Anyway, I remember this one time they followed me home taunting me. When they caught up with me down a small alleyway that I always had to walk through to get to my street, one of them dragged me back by my arm.”

Michael listened as he shoved Evo so he could get to the sink to rinse their cups. “Only cowards behave that way.” he told her.

Evo shoved him back. “I would have punched the bitch.”

“Well, it was because I tried to do that very thing
—and missed—that I ended up on the floor with two of them kicking hell out of me.”

“Damn.” Evo said.

“Yeah. I was lucky when a boy from school, a senior, came down the alley and thankfully intervened. He managed to stop them and threatened to call the police. Needless to say, the girls said some choice words, but then left pretty quickly. It was something that the boy said to me that I’ve just remembered. He said that the only reason he was passing that way was because he’d left a term paper in class, and going back to get it had made him late for work so he’d taken a shortcut.”

Michael stopped pouring the coffee for a minute, struck by a familiar memory.
It can’t be. . . No. No, there’s no way.
He shrugged the strange feeling away and filled up the two other mugs as Lacy went on.

“If it hadn’t been for him, who knows how badly I could have been hurt. My only regret was that one of the girl’s older brothers beat him up after school one night. I felt terrible because I knew it was because of what he’d done for me.”

“Shit. Remind me never to get involved in a bitch fight,” Evo said as he dried his hands on a towel hanging from the cupboard door.

Michael continued to ignore the tight feeling that had now grown more intense in the pit of his stomach as he sugared the coffees.

“The worst part about it was that the boy ended up in hospital, all because he stopped
me
from ending up there, or worse. I wish I could remember his name?”

Michael placed both his hands on the counter and tried to clear his head for a second. She couldn’t have been talking about the same day. It had to be a coincidence, a very
large
coincidence. He picked up two of the mugs to take over to the table and as he walked away from the kitchen counter, the next words that Lacy spoke almost floored him.

“Jack! That was his name. Jack Pearson”

The coffee mugs that hit the floor smashed into pieces.

“S
hit, my man. Watch what you’re doing next time.”

Evo
began to wipe spilled coffee from the bottom of his trousers with the dish towel.

Michael bent down to pick up the broken pieces. “Sorry, buddy.” He was still feeling a bit numb after hearing Lacy say his name−his real name−from when he was still human. The name he hadn’t heard for over a year since he’d died. Or, whatever the hell he was.
Fucking hell!
He couldn’t believe that she was the girl he’d been beaten up over in his last year of high school.

“What high school did you say you went to?” He sounded apathetic even though he was barely able to speak as he tried to comprehend what he’d just heard.

“Clearview High. Lawrence Co. Do you want some help with that?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ve got it. You never mentioned you lived in Ohio.”

“Well, I was only there for a few years and then I got accepted into UMD so I came to Maryland to study.” Lacy began to squeeze her hands together on her lap looking quite sullen all of a sudden. “I desperately wanted to say sorry to him, but when I went to visit him his parents were there and wouldn’t let me see him. They told me it was my fault and to never try and contact him again. I never saw him after that. I wonder what happened to him.”

Michael placed the broken pieces of coffee cup in the bin.
She’d come to the hospital?
“I never knew,” he whispered.

“Sorry. What was that?” Lacy asked as Michael
realized he’d said that out loud.

“Uh. . .
They
”−he cleared his throat−“never knew. His parents I mean. If they’d known what had happened, they probably wouldn’t have blamed you.” Though, he wasn’t entirely sure about that.

“Maybe,” she replied. “It upset me for a long time not being able to see
him; even if it was just to say how sorry I was.”

Michael finished dusting up the last of the mess he’d made on the kitchen floor and swept it into the bin. “I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have expected an apology from you.” That was the truth. He never did blame her for what happened.

Soon after, Michael’s parents had moved them out of the area; said they didn’t want him getting into any more trouble, as if what had happened was his entire fault or something. After the Johnson’s fostered him from the Heritage Boarding Academy when he was seven years old, they were never really very fond of him. He knew from an early age that they’d never liked him, but he’d accepted it, staying out of their way as much as he could by working as soon as he was old enough to. That way, he would get home from school just in time to change for work, eat, and then he’d go straight back out again until late. It was what it was. And it beat living at the children’s home that he’d spent most of his miserable childhood in.

He never got to finish high school either. After leaving Clearview High, there was no point enrolling into a new school where he lived as there was only four months left of the term.

It never stopped him though. If anything, his relationship with The Johnsons had made him more determined to achieve something much higher than their expectations of him. He saved what money he earned, put himself through college, graduated and got himself a good job as soon as he’d left, working as a programmer for a software development company. After working as part of a development team for nearly a year, Michael himself went on to develop a web portal designed for investment companies to access global market data, and went on to have huge global success with many large corporations buying his software. After which he built up his own software development company and was a multi-millionaire by the time he was twenty-six.

It was a very different life from the one he’d led for the past ten months. He’d had no shortage of friends, colleagues who admired him and a busy social life. Being CEO of a large company was a big deal. He was very well respected, rich, he could have anything he wanted, any woman he wanted−and he did−but the money, the status, it never changed him. He made sure he gave back too. He cared about people, was always passionate about helping as many as he could, a “true philanthropist” they’d called him.

Why he was now dead, he had no idea.

“Michael?” Lacy’s voice hauled him away from his memories, pulling him back to the present, back to the kitchen with her and Evo, and he noticed they were both looking at him. “Is everything okay?”

“I’m going for a walk.”

* * *

T
he SUV pulled into the hospital parking lot.

It’d been a long day of waiting around and Michael had hardly seen Lacy after what had happened this morning. He’d avoided her as best he could. Not knowing how to handle the fact that she wasn’t a complete stranger to him anymore.

She’d certainly surprised the shit out of him when she’d said his real name and he didn’t know how to handle it. It wasn’t as if he could tell her. To take his mind off things he’d headed over to the college in the hope that, if he’d found the demon that was possessing Jake, he could have taken some of his frustration out on its ass. No such luck. Jake had disappeared since going after Lacy.

Michael had left Evo alone with her for half the day. She hadn’t been happy about
it, but in fairness−in between catching some sleep on the sofa−his friend had behaved, keeping his eye on her for the right reasons and even making sure she’d eaten. Michael hadn’t mentioned the panic attack to him, but he’d made sure Evo understood that she was still shaken from what had happened with Jake and had told him to go easy on her. His egotistical buddy may be a shit sometimes, but he knew when things were serious.

They pulled into a free space by the main entrance of the
building. Michael was sitting up front with Evo, with Lacy in the back. She hadn’t said a word the whole time, which was fine. Michael wasn’t in the mood for talking either.

“You go ahead, I’ll hang here.” Evo said as he killed the engine. “No point in us all going in.”

Michael flicked his seat belt. “Thanks, man.”

He saw Lacy hesitate. “Actually, Michael, I was wondering if I could go in alone for a while. Just until I know how she is.” He understood. And as much as he didn’t want her
to be on her own at all, he had to give her this.

He glanced at Evo who shrugged his shoulder like he could care less.

“Fine, but if you see Jake, you get straight out of there, okay?” Lacy nodded to him. “Just take as long as you need. We’ll be right here.”

“Thanks,” she said as she left the vehicle.

Michael watched quietly as she walked away towards the slow rotating doors at the hospital’s main entrance. He knew she was in serious danger and it was unsettling him. It wasn’t fair to her that she knew nothing of the danger she was in, and not being able to tell her was eating at him in a big way. So much so, that it surprised him how much he did care. Deep down, he knew he was getting too emotionally involved in this particular case and it wasn’t because of Nina, the girl lying in the hospital bed.

To his chagrin, Lacy had been on his mind all day.
It wasn’t so much about how amusing he found her when she was drunk, or that he’d enjoyed spending time in her company−again−but about how he’d felt when she’d kissed him.
damn!
He couldn’t believe he’d actually contemplated kissing her back. Of course, not only would it have been a selfish thing to do on his part given the state she’d been in, but it would have also seriously complicated things. The last thing he needed was to get involved with someone while in his current. . .
state
. He’d forced himself to push her away last night, but for some reason, he was having real trouble pushing her from his mind.

This is a big problem.

“So, what’s the deal with the chick?” Evo asked, his eagle-eyed friend never one to miss a trick.

Michael shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, I’ve seen the way you look at her. You’re into her aren’t you? Don’t blame you though; she’s a nice piece of ass.” It was all Michael could do to stop himself wiping the smirk of Evo’s face. He sooo wasn’t in the mood for his buddy’s clever quips right now.

“Forget it Evo, we’re not going there
, okay? She’s a work colleague who’s, regrettably, already too deep into this shit that’s going on.” He tried to sound convincing but knew his friend wasn’t stupid. Thankfully, and to Michael’s surprise, Evo didn’t press. Good, they had more important things to deal with at this present moment in time. Like what the hell had decided to use Jake as a suit and why?

“I think there needs to be someone watching the hospital at all times. Jake’s bound to show up again at some point. That demon’s gonna try and finish the job and I want to make sure one of us is here when he does.”

Evo nodded his head. “Agreed. I rang the college earlier and managed to speak to Jake’s roommate. He hadn’t seen him since early last night. I’m not surprised he’s gone AWOL though. It’s a little hard to act like a model student when you’re full of
demon
.” He exhaled.

“I know. I went over there this afternoon. No sign of the son of a bitch. It’s like he’s just vanished. So what do we do now?”

Evo picked up his Lucky strike cigarettes from the dash, shook one out and stuck it between his lips before lighting it. He inhaled deeply, then blew the smoke towards his open window. “We wait. Sooner or later the bastards going to show and we’ll be here when he does.”

Michael felt anxious as he thought about how Lacy could have ended up like Nina, wired up to machines in a hospital room, or even worse. That bastard could’ve killed her. How he felt when he thought about someone hurting her bothered him. It felt foreign to him. Those kinds of feelings hadn’t existed in him before, even when he’d still been alive, and it was seriously unsettling. And now, whether he liked it or not, she was his responsibility.

Sure, they’d spent a little time together over the short time they’d known each other, but how had she gotten so under his skin? It made no sense. He’d had plenty of opportunities to be with women since he’d been in his new body. He knew that some of the women he’d helped had been attracted to him but he hadn’t been interested. Not even in anything casual, with any of them. So what was so special about Lacy?

After an hour or so Michael couldn
’t stand sitting in the SUV any longer. His anxiety had only gotten worse, so he needed to get out.

“
I’m going to check out the grounds. I need some fresh air,” he said to Evo who was sitting as still as a statue looking straight ahead out of the windscreen. With Evo’s work, this whole stakeout thing would be something he was well used to but Michael couldn’t stand it. Not tonight anyway. Sitting around doing nothing was driving him insane.

“
Okay, man, no worries.”

“Call me if anything changes
.” He got out of the SUV and inhaled the crisp fall air deep into his lungs as though he’d been trapped in a confined space for a decade and had just managed to break free.

He walked through the parking lot, straight past the main entrance of the hospital, through a small crowd of smokers and towards the edge of the
building. Eyes scanned the area while one hand was in his woolen trench wrapped around the Glock that was strapped to his chest. Still no sign of Jake. He walked past the old, original brownstone building that was hidden away behind the new modern build which now took pride of place at the front of the grounds. He continued on past the ambulance service yard, which was situated at the back of the building, and carried on walking until he’d come full circle, ending up right in front of the revolving doors which led to the main reception entrance.

Unsurprisingly
, he found the urge to go inside and check on Lacy too strong to fight. Before he knew it, he was in the elevator travelling up to the third floor where ICU was. The walk down the corridor was a long one. The trauma ward was alive with the many nurses and doctoring staff that were on duty, rushing in and out of rooms that spread all the way down to a set of double doors at the end of the cream hallway. Some were open and as Michael walked past, he glanced in and saw families sitting by their loved ones’ beds. Some were laughing and joking; some sat quietly, their anguish clear on their faces. A female voice came over the Tannoy system requesting the presence of a
Doctor Henley
to treatment room 4.10.

Visiting was until
nine p.m, and would soon be over. With no sign of Jake yet, hopefully Michael could get Lacy home quickly and safely while Evo watched over the hospital for the second night running.

He pushed through the double doors and into a smaller co
rridor which was much quieter. The decor looked the same, but the strip lights overhead seemed a little dimmer. The information sign on the wall in front of him had an arrow pointing left for the nurses’ station. He headed straight there where a nurse with brown, shoulder length hair was just coming out of a small room behind the desk with a file in her hand. She was laughing and spoke to someone over her shoulder before smiling at him. “How can I help?” she asked in a soft voice.