Electric (3 page)

I stood beside Trevor inside the deepest and darkest shadow in the room. The moment I stepped into it, my body responded. I could already feel it slipping down into the floor. I imagined it was like what a snake felt shedding its skin.  I was sloughing off my Salem Vale skin.

Trevor grabbed my hand and squeezed it reassuringly.  He knew I hated traveling the shadow-ways. It wasn’t necessarily the way it felt to be drawn through the darkness like being sucked through a straw feet first, but what was waiting for me in the black passages of nowhere. Dreams of Merlin plagued me at night, but his image, his presences haunted me during the day as well.

I closed my eyes and thought about the morgue, pictured the room we had been in during our field trip.  I let my shoulders relax and unlocked my knees. The pulling sensation started at my feet and I allowed it to take over. Within minutes I sunk into the shadow. Every molecule in my body melted into the black. I knew if I opened my eyes I would see half my body submerged into the floor. That was why I kept them closed.  I’d seen it once and didn’t want to witness it again.  Chloe’s intake of breath of what was happening was enough of a reminder.

Once I’d fully disintegrated into the nothingness, I couldn’t feel Trevor anymore. The physical sensation of his hand in mine vanished. In its place was the feeling of being pulled, tugged at, and lured into the darkness.  I squeezed my eyes shut tighter although technically I didn’t have any eyes.  But the notion of it allowed me to pass through the shadow-way without the temptation to wander through them overtaking me.

When I did finally open my eyes I was standing in an empty joyless room with Trevor beside me.

“Is this it?” he asked.

I looked around and nodded. “Yeah, this is the intake room.” I swung around and pointed to the big glass window, that showcased another room, bigger and even more joyless. “That’s where the bodies are.”

Trevor moved to look through the window. I joined him.  I shivered surveying the three stainless steel tables with drain gutters all around them.  Beyond the tables was a wall with twelve square steel doors stacked 4x3.  The dead girl was in one of those drawers. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure I could go through with it.

Trevor must’ve noticed because he grabbed my hand.  “Are you okay?”

I nodded, afraid I would betray myself if I spoke.

“I can do this on my own. You got us here. You don’t have to look at the body.”

“No, I have to.”

“Okay.” He squeezed my hand once more, then walked to the swinging doors between rooms.  “Let’s get it over with.”

We entered the room as silently as we could. Although everyone in the room was dead, it didn’t seem right to make a bunch of pointless noise. Respect, man.

“Which drawer do you think she’s in?” I asked.

Trevor grabbed the handle of the closest one, on the bottom.  “Well her death was recent, so I’m going to assume the autopsy was just completed.”

He opened the door. The smell hit me instantly. I wasn’t expecting it and I stumbled backwards, colliding into one of the steel tables. 
Hip meet sharp edge
.

“Ow! God damn it!”

“Do you want to be louder? I don’t think they heard you outside.”

“Sorry. It’s just the smell.”

“What did you expect? Roses?”

“Maybe.”  I joined him back at the drawer.  “Is it her?” I gestured to the toe tag on a small and feminine foot. The police hadn’t released a name, but I sensed I would know it when I heard it spoken out loud.

Trevor grabbed the toe tag and turned it so he could read the name on it.  “Deanna Moser.”

He looked at me expectantly. I shrugged. I didn’t know if it was her or not.  I was just guessing with the name thing. Although it did seem familiar to me.

“Step back,” he said, as he took hold of the sliding tray and pulled it out until we were looking down at a covered body of a dead girl.

“How do we tell?”

“She’ll be sunk in. Remember how Josh looked after you nearly sucked him dry?”

I smacked Trevor’s arm. “Yes, thanks for reminding me.”

“Sorry, but at least we know what a cambion death will look like.” He gripped the white sheet in his fingers.

I could see the horror in his eyes. He didn’t want to do this either. He was just as freaked out as I was. But he would go through with it, because that was the kind of guy he was. He did things that were hard so others didn’t have to suffer.  Although he would never admit it or want to hear it, Trevor was a standup guy. He was a hero.

“You don’t have to look, Sale.”

“I know, but I will.”  I swallowed down the bile rising in my throat and forced myself to continue to look down.  I nodded to him.

He raised the sheet, just uncovering her face. That was all we needed to see to know that Deanna Moser died from a cambion attack.

I put a hand up to my mouth and turned away. I couldn’t look at her sunken shriveled face any longer. She looked like a thousand year old corpse and not a vibrant young teenage girl.

Trevor lowered the sheet, and then pushed the tray back into the drawer. He shut the door and leaned on it for a moment.  “Damn it.”

“I can’t believe it.”  I backed up and leaned against the table I’d run into earlier.  “Do you think this is a warning to us? Did they do this to get back at us?”

The thought that this girl died to get back at Trevor and I made my gut roil. I didn’t know how I could live with myself knowing that.  Squeezing my eyes shut to stem the angry tears that threatened to fall; I swung away from the body drawers and stormed out of the autopsy room.

Once out of the room, I bent over and took in some deep breaths. I felt sick. My head was spinning and I just wanted to curl up into a little Salem ball and cry my eyes out.

Trevor’s hand was on my back when I straightened. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What are we going to do?”  I turned into him. He opened his arms and snuggled me in close. I could feel his heart beating against my own chest.

“We need to find out who we are dealing with and stop them.”

The tears came then, I couldn’t stop them any longer. I closed my eyes and breathed Trevor in. His smell always calmed me down.  “I don’t want to fight anymore. I thought we were done with that.  I just want to live.  I just want to be a teenage girl again with barely passing grades, a shitty afterschool job and some hope for a decent future.”

“I know, baby.” He smoothed a hand over my head. “But if we don’t stop them, who will?”

Chloe was on me the second we materialized back in her bedroom.

“Did you see the body? Are they back? Are we in danger?”

“Yes, yes and yes.”

She paled. I guess she didn’t like my answers. I just didn’t want to lie to her and tell her everything was all right. Because it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

I gripped her by her upper arms. “We aren’t going to do anything. Trevor and I will handle it.”

“I want to help.”

“I know you do, Chloe. But I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She looked crestfallen but also a little bit relieved.  “What are you guys going to do then?”

“Check into this Deanna Moser’s background. Find out where she was before they took her,” Trevor said.

Chloe’s eyes popped.  “Deanna Moser?”

“Yeah,” I said, “That was the name on the toe tag. Why?”

“She went to our school.”

“What?”

Chloe crouched near her bed and pulled out a stack of yearbooks. She grabbed last years and sat down with it on the bed.  She flipped through it, then stopped.  She turned it toward me, and pointed to a picture.

“Is that the dead girl?”

Trevor and I both looked at the yearbook picture. I glanced at him to confirm my suspicions. He nodded, then moved away to look out the window.

“Yeah, that’s her.”

Then right before I shut the book, my gaze landed on another photo. One of those candid ones of students in the hallway, doing what they do. In this image, Deanna leaned against a bank of lockers talking to a boy. It looked harmless, innocuous. An image like any image in high school. Except the boy in the photo was my brother Kyle.

––––––––

A
fter leaving Chloe in a state of two parts shock, one part frenzied, Trevor drove me home.  We didn’t talk much. Likely we were both thinking about what was ahead of us and what we needed to do fix it.  I know I was wishing I still had the sword so I could drive it through the gut of whoever had killed that girl. The list of suspects included the remaining members of Malice, Seth and Quinn, or Merlin himself, their granddaddy of sorts.

He was ours in a way too.

But believe me I had no problem gutting him like a pig. There would be no family sentimentality with this girl.

Trevor parked in front of my house but didn’t shut off the car. I took that as a sign that he wasn’t coming in with me. Instead he reached across the seat and stroked my hair with his fingers.

“Are you going to be cool?”

“I guess.  No point in freaking out about it.” Of course what I was referring to was the fact that Kyle had known the deceased girl.  I wasn’t one to believe in coincidences. In my world, everything happened for a reason.

“Just keep it together. Okay? They want us to be afraid and do something stupid.”

“Well, it’s working,” I said then gave a little humorless laugh. “Do you think I should tell Kyle?”

“I don’t know, are you ready to come out as a cambion to your family?”

“No.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “Then I guess you shouldn’t tell Kyle anything. We’ll just keep an eye on him.”

I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his. The kiss was hesitant at first, as I wasn’t sure how Trevor was feeling, but then he buried a hand in my hair and deepened it.  I dug my fingers into his arms and held on as he kissed me hard. By the time we parted, I was completely breathless.

“Good night sugar.”

“It will be now with that on my lips and you in my mind.”

He chuckled as I opened the car door and slid out. I stood on the sidewalk and watched him drive away, then I turned and booked it up to the front door. I went into the house, kicking off my shoes, and found my mom in the living room with my brother watching
The Walking Dead
, their favorite show on DVD.

My mom paused it on a particularly gory part and said, “Hey baby doll. How was work?” She glanced at the clock on the wall.  “Aren’t you home a little early?”

“I wasn’t feeling all that hot, so I left early.” I slumped into the comfy easy chair. “How was your day?”

“Good. Uneventful.”

I looked at Kyle who was busy shoving more popcorn into his mouth. “How about you Kyle? Anything exciting happening?”

His eyes narrowed. “No. Why?”

“No reason. Just asking.”  I got to my feet.

“What’s up Sale? You never ask me about my day.”

“Nothing.” I didn’t turn toward him.  If he saw my face, he’d know I was lying. He could always tell when I was lying. I was never any good at it. “I’m going to bed. Can you keep your zombie murder down to a dull roar please?”

I escaped to my room and shut the door. After dumping my bag on the floor, I stripped off my work clothes and put on my comfiest—boxer shorts and an old ratty tank top.  I had homework to do but was in no frame of mind to complete it. Not if I didn’t want to hand in random lines of gobblygook for my English paper.

I climbed into my bed, grabbed the stuffed Pikichu Trevor had bought me weeks ago, and tried to empty my mind of the horrible images and thoughts that had gathered there in the past hour.  I wanted to erase the picture of that poor girl from my brain. But it was impossible. It was etched like someone had actually carved it directly into my gray matter. For as long as I lived, I would probably never be able to forget her dried up corpse.

I knew it wasn’t my fault she’d died, but I still felt responsible. Whoever had killed her did it to get back at me. I should’ve killed Seth and Quinn when I had the chance. And I should’ve taken Merlin’s sword into the shadow-way and eviscerated the druid himself.

A soft knock came at my door. I turned just as my mom came in.  “Is everything okay?” she sat on the edge of my bed. My mother the super sleuth. She always knew when something was wrong. God, I loved her for that.

“I’m good.”

“Are you sure?” she patted my foot.

“Yeah, Mom. Don’t worry.”

“You know I do, Salem. Please don’t put me through that again.”

I butt-shuffled forward on the bed and wrapped my arms around her.  She squeezed me back.

“I won’t. I promise.”

She pulled back, and kissed my forehead.  “Okay. Have a good sleep.” She stood and left my room, shutting the door behind her.

Sighing I leaned back against the mound of pillows on my bed.  I was an evil liar monster. And I was probably going to go to hell for putting my mom through even more shit than I already had.

I pulled the blanket over me and settled down in my bed.  Yawning, I closed my eyes and tried to let sleep take me quickly.  I was hoping things would seem better in the morning. Although I knew without fail they would be worse.

I dreamt that night.  Not about Merlin this time, but about the other him.

Thane.

He was the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, Malice. He was tall, with beautiful hair and a beautiful face, and a voice that sent me into a euphoric fog. He was also the one that had seduced me one night after a gig, taken me to a hotel room and sucked out my soul.

Well, he didn’t do a very good job of it, because obviously I was still here. Alive and well.  But I’d been turned into a cambion, a half succubus, half human creature of darkness.

I dreamt of his often and it was the usual scenario. The night I met him. The night I became a cambion.

Thane was singing to me as he always did in my nightmares.

I swayed to every note, to every dip and crest in cadence of his sweet sensual voice.  He’d entranced me.  I was caught in his spell.  I was trapped but I liked it there.  It made me feel wanted, craved and sexy.  Like I could conquer the world with just a kiss of my lips.