Curse (Blur Trilogy Book 3) (33 page)

He and Poehlman leave.

I yank at the cuff again.

Useless.

Dark shapes begin to circle through my vision. At first I’m not sure if it’s the drugs, or shadows, but then I realize what they are.

Bats.

And then the boy from my dream appears right here, by my side—

But no, it’s not him. This boy is a little older, nine or ten, maybe. He’s pale and ghostly and dressed in old-fashioned clothes.

I don’t recognize him. He doesn’t look like I did when I was younger.

“Who are you?” I hear myself ask.

“You need to leave.” His voice is hushed and coarse. “You all need to leave.”

It sounds like both a warning and a threat.

When I reach out to touch him, my hand passes through him.

A blur?

A ghost?

He faces the key and reaches for it.

Just like the boy on the road reached out for my hand as the logging truck roared toward him.

Just like the girls in my earlier blurs reached out to me so I could save them.

So—

My dreams.

My blurs.

My reality.

The girl last autumn in the casket.

The girl in December bursting into flames.

All those blurs merging together.

Bats flapping around me.

Nearby, the general watches me, her breathing becoming more and more ragged.

Follow the bats.

But how? Where?

The boy stretches his arm out longer than it could ever go, all the way to the shelf, all the way to the key.

But I can’t reach it.

I can’t—

Oh.

Unless.

Unless my shoulder was dislocated.

Then I could get those extra few inches.

He says to me, “This is going to hurt. But it’s going to help.”

When I was at the hospital after getting hit by that truck, the doctor warned me that I ran the risk of pulling it out of socket again unless I was careful. Earlier today that almost happened at Little Bear Creek when Tane grabbed my arm.

It’s been just over a week. It’s probably still loose enough.

Propping my leg against the wall, I take a deep breath.

Then push as hard as I can.

Fire splinters across my shoulder.

The drugs make it seem to last forever.

Those flickering shadows open their hungry mouths to devour me.

Like giant bats.

The shoulder rages with pain, but stays in place.

It’s not going to come out if I go slowly like this. I need to create enough force to pop it out of its socket.

I scoot closer to the wall, scrunch up both legs, and then throw myself backward.

The shoulder dislocates and a wash of dizziness spreads over me, through me, overwhelms me.

The boy, the bats, they all slip into the background, fold back into the air.

Stretching out as far as I can, I nudge the small picture aside to get to the key, and the photo tips off the shelf.

I see it falling slower than it should through the air, a mountain vista angled and dropping to the floor. Then its glass shatters, and as it comes to rest I recognize it from Dr. Carrigan’s theater. A print of one of his photos.

The key.

Get the key.

My fingers find it.

I don’t want it to drop to the floor, so I pinch it carefully as I draw it off the shelf.

Everything still seems slow and prolonged as I unlock the cuff and, with my left arm now hanging useless by my side, I start toward the general.

As much as I’d like to get that shoulder back in place, it’s probably too messed up right now. I’m going to need help with it this time.

Everything is bleary, dreamlike.

I make it to her side. “If I help you, can you get to your feet?”

She shakes her head weakly.

“We need to go. He’s gonna burn this place down.”

“I can’t.” She uncurls one of her hands and a USB drive drops to the floor.

“I thought he took that?”

“It was the wrong one.” She smiles faintly. “Everything’s on here. Post it online. Get the truth out.”

I pick it up.

She coughs and a thread of blood dribbles from her mouth.

With my one good arm, I try to lift her, but she cringes and shakes her head so I stop.

“Leave me.”

Smoke begins curling out of the vents along the wall.

This is happening.

It’s happening now.

Go, Daniel. You need to leave.

“Listen,” I tell her urgentl
y,
“the
y
locked m
y
friends in one of the rooms. Do
yo
u know how to get the doors open?”

“The securit
y
center on the first floor.” Her voice is soft now, barel
y
audible. “Open all the doors. These men don’t deserve to die in her
e—b
ut the
y
can’t go free. Get the geo-tracker.”

“What’s that?”

“Looks like a tablet computer. It’ll find the ink in their eyeballs.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about, but then she stares past me, her eyes glaze over, and her body goes limp.

I shake her, call her name.

No response.

It’s too late.

You have to go.

More smoke seeps into the room.

Poehlman said there’d be less than five minutes to get out after the fire started.

Pocketing the thumb drive, I head to the hallway.

The hall seems to waver somewhere between time and space. Taking an unsteady step forward, I lose my balance and lean my right arm against the wall for support, then stumble toward the stairs.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Kyle was cornering a bend when he saw the pair of headlights cut through the storm.

Ma
yb
e the driver had a phone that got reception up here.

He took off the headlamp and waved the light to flag the car down.

It stopped in the middle of the road.

As he hurried toward it, the driver swung the passenger door open and Kyle took it as an invitation to climb in and get out of the rain.

But before he did, he bent and looked inside.

The man spoke first, “What are you doing out here? Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Kyle was still breathing heavily from his run. “I need your help. Can I use your phone?”

“Sure. Yeah, yeah. Get in.”

Kyle got into the car and tugged the door closed. “I’m Kyle.”

“M
y
name is Reginald Carrigan. Now,
yo
u were about to tell me what
yo
u’re doing out here in the middle of this storm.”

It took Henrik a little longer than he anticipated to remotel
y
open all the vents and start each of the conflagration units in the basement.

Now, he was on his wa
y
toward the stairs when a figure emerged from the shadows near the fl
y
room at the end of the hall.

Zacharias.

“So, there
yo
u are.” Henrik drew his gun.

“You won’t shoot me.”

“Oh? And wh
y
not?”

“You’re not a coward. Come here. Come closer.”

Henrik did.

This place is burning down. Just kill him and get out.

No, you’re not a coward. He’s right. You can’t just shoot him. Kill him. But do it with your hands.

Henrik holstered the gun. “Oka
y,
but I’m afraid even then this won’t be a fair fight. You can hardl
y
stand.”

“I’ll hardl
y
need to.”

Ten feet separated them.

As Henrik approached him, Malcolm didn’t step aside, just drew his shirt up over his mouth.

Henrik couldn’t help but scoff. “What are
yo
u doing?”

“It’s so the
y
don’t get in m
y
mouth.”

“What?”

But then it was too late.

A sudden dark realization.

Malcolm threw open the door.

Releasing the ten thousand
Tabanidae
into the hall.

As the flies swarmed forward, Malcolm made his way to the stairs, breathing through the fabric.

He heard a brief shriek, but it was cut short as a wave of flies poured into Henrik Poehlman’s mouth.

Malcolm entered the stairwell and closed the door behind him.

As the smoke creeping through the ventilation units thickened, rose, and gathered along the ceiling.

I find the security center on the first floor.

The console is easy enough to figure out, with numbered switches corresponding to each room.

I flip them all.

Open every door.

The general said to get the geo-tracker.

There’s only one thing in here that looks like what she described, so I grab it. Then I leave to find my friends.

Nicole watched as Tane tried to smash the mirror.

Ever since the smoke had started to invade the room, he’d become more desperate, but the glass didn’t break.

However, all at once, she heard an electric click. The door’s lock.

Curious, she pushed against the door and it opened.

“Hurry!” she cried. “Let’s go!”

Flames were licking up through narrow slits in the floor along the wall. Prisoners from the other rooms were venturing into the hallway. Some seemed disoriented—maybe from their torture and sleep deprivation, maybe from the smoke and the fumes. Some looked suspicious that all this was some type of trap or another one of Dr. Waxford’s twisted treatment strategies.

Tane stood beside her. “We need to get these people out of here!”

One of the prisoners rushes toward me.

In slow motion, I can see him rearing back to take a swing at my face, but I’m able to lean to the side and get out of his path before he can land a punch.

It doesn’t feel like my reaction time is faster than usual. It just seems like everything else is slowed down.

The effects of the drug.

Confused, he staggers past me.

I don’t see the girls, but Tane yells and waves.

The lights flicker like they did earlier and I’m not sure if it’s from the storm or from the fire destroying the wires.

I start toward Tane.

The smoke was in Nicole’s eyes and she wanted to help get people out, but she could barely see.

She moved forward and ran into a wall.

The overhead lights blinked out.

All around her there was smoke and flames and confusion.

“Over here!” Alysha yelled. “Walk toward my voice!”

Nicole hobbled forward and almost ran into her.

“Mia!” Alysha called. “Petra!”

“Where are you?” Mia shouted.

“Here! Hurry!”

A moment later, they were all together.

“I’ll get you out of here,” Alysha said to them.

“How?” Nicole asked.

“I remember how many steps it was. Grab my shoulder. I’ll be your eyes.”

Tane finds me. “Your arm!”

“I’m okay. Where are the girls?”

“They were near the door when the lights went out.”

A burning beam tilts from the ceiling and as it falls, I shove Tane to the side.

With a burst of flame and sparks, it crashes to the floor where he’d been standing only a moment earlier.

Ty joins us and we point prisoners toward the door.

As we pass room 113, the one Waxford threatened to put my friends in, I see that it’s empty.

Outside the hotel, Nicole watched flames shoot out the windows and claw at the night.

The rain only managed to calm down the fire a little, and not fast enough to save the building.

As the prisoners burst out the doors, she silently prayed that everyone would get out alive.

Where’s Daniel? Where are the others?

Please, please, please let them be okay.