Hell Is Coming (The Watcher's Series Book 1) (17 page)

The demon rushed past me and attacked Frank with the knife as I fell back onto the mattress. Frank blocked the knife swing from the demon and plunged his own knife up under the demon’s chin, burying it to the hilt. Dark orange light burst from the wound as the demon seemed to convulse for a few seconds like it had been electrocuted, then it took its final breath and dropped to the floor with a heavy thud.

From the mattress all I could see was Kasey’s dead body on the floor, her eyes open and looking in my direction. “Kasey…”

I felt ice cold suddenly, like all the heat had gone from my body.

Then everything went black.

Chapter 12

“Where am I?”

My voice sounded strange, like it belonged to someone else.  I opened my eyes fully and tried to make out where I was. A room of some sort, brightly lit, green walls, some sort of machine to the right of me. Nothing seemed familiar. An acrid smell assailed also my nostrils.

Antiseptic?

Nothing felt right.

I tried to sit up but a combination of debilitating pain in my stomach and a weight on my chest prevented me from getting any further. Then I heard a voice right beside me.

“Relax, Leia,” the voice said—a woman’s voice, soothing.  “Don’t try to move, you’ve been hurt, you need to lie still.”

I managed to turn my head to the side so I could make out the figure standing beside me. It was a woman with dark hair and large eyes. I felt her hand on my chest, gently pushing me down. “Where am I?” I mumbled.

“You’re safe. We had to perform surgery. You’re fine now, you just need to rest.”

I had cotton mouth. I kept smacking my lips. “Water…”

“Hold on.”

A moment later I felt a cold glass on my lips and a hand at the back of my head, lifting it up slightly so I could sip the water. I choked on the first sip and the coughing created more pain in my belly.

“Easy, easy…” said the woman. “There we go.” My head was rested back on the pillow.

“Where’s…Frank?” I asked.

“I’m here.” Frank’s voice came from within the room. A second later I saw him standing beside the woman in the white coat.

“Frank?” I held out my hand and felt his strong grip.

“You’re safe, Eva will take care of you. She saved your life.” He paused. “You almost died.”

“Died?” Then it hit me all at once, the memory of Kasey and her black eyes, the demon inside of her stabbing me with the knife. The images in my head were vivid and it felt like I was being stabbed all over again. I groaned and arched my back off the bed.

“Easy, easy…” Eva said, her hands on me, holding me down.

“Kasey…”

“Kasey?” Eva asked.

“Her friend,” Frank said. “The demon possessed her. She’s dead.”

It was more than I could take, hearing those words come out of Frank’s mouth. A huge swell of anger and resentment welled up in me and I clawed at frank as I tried to get to him from the bed. “You fucking killed her!” I screamed “You killed her! You killed Kasey! You didn’t have to kill her…”

Eva was doing her best to get me to lie back down, but I was full of rage; I just wanted to get at Frank so I could rip his eyes out for killing my only friend in the world. I screamed and thrashed until I felt a sharp prick in my leg. Eva had injected me with something. I didn’t care. I continued to scream, not even at Frank anymore, just screaming because I didn’t know what else to do. I spewed rage and sorrow into the room until eventually I had no choice but to slump back into the bed. Whatever Eva had injected me with forced me back into oblivion. “You killed her…” were the last words I remember saying before blacking out.

The next time I awoke I was more lucid. I opened my eyes to find Frank’s lady friend doing something to the IV drip at the side of my bed. She was strikingly good looking, with large smoky eyes that were a sapphire blue and dark brown hair that fell just past her shoulders. She wasn’t tall, about my height, and her body was slender, which she moved with great composure. A warm smile spread across her face when she noticed I was awake. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

How was I feeling?

Apart from being numb, which no doubt had to do with whatever medication they had given me, I felt groggy and weighted down by an overwhelming sense of sadness. I remembered screaming at Frank because I blamed him for killing Kasey. Whatever anger I felt towards him had now gone, and in its wake a tsunami of grief, overtaking and smothering everything else that I might have felt. The last time I had felt such pain was when my parents were killed, but I was just a kid then. The hurt went deeper this time, maybe because it was mixed up with everything else I felt about Josh, my mom, and the whole demons and Watcher thing. I hung from a cliff by a thread, a black abyss beneath me that if I fell into I would never escape. I’d be gone forever.

I said nothing to Eva, who smiled her pleasant smile and shone a small light into my eyes. She seemed satisfied and put the little flashlight back in her coat pocket. “I’m glad to see you are pulling through,” she said. “You had a lucky escape. You almost bled to death by the time Frank got you here. You’re healing power is the only thing that kept you alive until I could repair the damage.”

“What damage?”

“The knife you were stabbed with hit an artery in your abdomen. I had to operate and tie it off to stop the bleeding.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Eva,” she said. “I’m a friend of your Uncle’s. I was also a friend of your mother’s.”

“Seems like everyone knew my mother except me.” Eva didn’t know what to say to that so she just smiled tightly. “Where’s Frank?” I asked. “And when can I get out of here? Where the hell am I anyway?” I tried to lift myself up again but Eva rushed forward and held me back down.

“You’re not strong enough to be moving around just yet. You need to stay still and rest or you’ll rip your internal stitches and that would just be a messy business. We also have to replace the blood you lost. It was a lot.”

“Where’s Frank?”

“He just popped out. He’ll be back.”

Eva went back to checking my IV drip and glanced briefly at the EKG machine I was hooked up to. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Wait,” I said. For some reason I didn’t like the idea of being left alone.

Eva placed a hand on mine. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back.” She smiled at me, her large almond-shaped eyes caring and detached at the same time. I nodded and she left the room.

Looking around, I had no idea where I was. It was a large room from what I could make out from my position. There seemed to be some sort of laboratory over to the left and all the walls where filled with shelves lined with small glass bottles and jars, each of them containing some liquid or powder of some sort. To the other side was a wall filled with books, similar to the books Frank had back at the cabin and the ones I found in my mom’s lockup.

Was this Eva woman a Watcher too?

Most likely, I decided. Given Frank’s commitment to the cause, I doubted he associated with anyone who wasn’t involved in some way. And she had said she knew my mother. I would have to press her further on that.

Looking down, I could see under the sheets that covered me that I was wearing a surgical gown. I peeled back the sheets and pulled up the gown so I could assess the damage. Apart from the dried blood and iodine, all I saw was a large bandage that covered the wound.

“Ah-ah,” Eva said when she came back into the room. “Don’t touch.” She put the gown back over me and then the sheets.

“Are you a doctor?” I asked.

“Sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve had medical training, just not in the way most doctors have. As a Watcher, I was trained elsewhere. Our bodies work slightly differently compared to humans.”

Compared to humans. I was still getting used to the fact that I was something other than human.

“How do you mean?”

“Our DNA is completely different,” she said. “We also have a blood type that is unique only to us. Our insides are arranged slightly differently as well. The arteries and major organs are more protected. The demon who stabbed you knew exactly where to put that knife so it would hit an artery.”

“It used my friend to do it. Frank killed her.”

“He killed the demon inside of her. Your friend was dead when the demon jumped her, I’m afraid. Don’t blame Frank for her death.”

“I don’t.”

“Good. Frank cares about you. You should be flattered, he isn’t known for his caring nature.”

I tried to smile, but I was still too weak.

“I’m going to let you rest now,” Eva said. “I’ll give you a sedative to help you sleep. By the time you wake up again you should feel better. Your healing abilities need time to work.”

I was too weak to argue as she took a syringe and stuck it in my thigh. Before the darkness descended again I thought about Kasey. Despite Frank and Eva telling me there was nothing I could have done to save her, the guilt still ate me.

I was glad when I finally closed my eyes so oblivion could claim me once more.

Chapter 13

I sat up in the bed and found I could do so without enduring too much pain. I had no idea how much time had passed since Eva injected me with the sedative. No light came from the small window in my room so I assumed it was night time. I looked down at my stomach and pressed gently with one hand, just to test the pain. My abdomen felt tender, my wound sore to the touch, but it felt like I was healing. I felt the Light Energy concentrated around the wound, producing a slight tingling sensation like millions of tiny robots were stitching me back together again. The blood drip had gone so I assumed I’d had enough to replace what was lost. However, I was still hooked up to the saline drip. I considered the needle in my arm for a moment, then pulled it out, a trickle of blood flowing down my arm.

Slowly, I swung my legs off the bed, the floor cold on my bare feet. I sat for a moment, gathered myself, then stood up. My legs didn’t collapse from under me—which I considered a good thing—and I stood for a minute, giving my body time to adjust. Still in my hospital gown, I walked to the door, one hand pressed gently over my wound.

I walked through the door into a dimly lit hallway. Obviously this was Eva’s house. The smell of vanilla in the hall was a sharp contrast to the antiseptic odor of the room I was just in. I moved down the hallway and heard a low moaning sound coming from one of the rooms to my left. It was the last room at the end of the hall before it led into what looked like a living room. Except for the moaning sounds, the house was quiet and still. It felt like the early hours of the morning—that sense of stillness you only get at three or four a.m. I assumed Eva would be in bed. Frank was obviously still gone, maybe back at the cabin. I was thirsty, so I headed for the kitchen. The moaning at the end of the hall got louder the nearer I got. By the time I was by the door, I worked out that the sounds were coming from  a woman in the throes of sex. It was unmistakable.

It had to be Eva.

But who was she with?

Pausing by the door, I listened intently for a moment, slightly embarrassed by what I heard. It got louder, turning to cries of ecstasy and I cringed when I heard Eva’s voice cry out, “Fuck me, Frank…fuck me…”

I put my hand over my mouth in shock.

Jesus, Frank. You dirty dog!

I shook my head and walked away from the door, completely grossed out.

In the kitchen I fixed myself a glass of water, the loud sounds of sex still hitting my ears from the bedroom around the corner. It really was getting embarrassing so I hurried towards the kitchen door, intending to get back to my room as soon as possible.

As I was about to switch off the light I spotted a book on the kitchen table. When I opened it, I saw it was a photo album. Evidently, Frank and Eva had been reminiscing while I was out of it earlier.

I set my glass on the table and flipped through the album, glancing over the photos. Eva was in a lot of the photographs, which was no surprise. Most of them depicted her when she was younger, in her late teens, early twenties, and early thirties. She was quite beautiful in her day, still was. I could see why Frank was into her. Her eyes where even more striking in the photos. Those large orbs seemed to look right into your soul.

The rest of the people I didn’t recognise, although I came across a few pictures of Frank, one with him and my dad along with Eva. My dad looked young, barely into his twenties. He and Frank looked alike, both handsome and cheerful in the photo. A sad smile crossed my lips and I placed a finger on the photo, gently brushing it across my dad’s  face.

Turning the page, I came across two photos of my mom. In the first one she was with Eva and they were both smiling with their faces pressed together. My mom was beautiful in her own way as well, although she had a hard edge to her, like she had to be strong all the time. In the photo her dark brown hair was long and thick and she had on a tight T-shirt and blue jeans that showed of her curves. Although she was smiling, the smile never quite hit her deep brown eyes. Appearance wise, I saw myself in her, but beyond that I saw no similarity. She possessed a strength I clearly didn’t have or I would have killed that demon before it stabbed me. My Mom would have, of that I had no doubt.

My jaw clenched as I looked at her face. I shook my head and shifted my attention to the other photo of her. This one was just her and Frank. They stood with their arms around each other and my mom was turned to face him while he looked at the camera. I also couldn’t help but notice that my mom was wearing her wedding ring. My jaw tightened further as I took in the look on my mom’s face as she gazed at Frank.

What was that look about?

I didn’t think I had ever seen a look like that on her face before. It was almost soft, loving, a look my mom rarely if ever did for anyone except Josh and me, and even then it was never like the way she did it in the photograph. A deep scowl creased my brow as I stared hard at the picture trying to work out why it was making me tense and angry just looking at it.