Midnight Ruling (30 page)

“Run!” I shouted and turned to follow the others.

As if positioned on a spring, Joel bolted with me.

The further we ran, the more noticeable Phoebe’s limp became. Joel ran as if his legs had been stuffed with lead.

Cody and Robin had managed to get so far ahead of us that they were no longer in sight.

I shouted their names, hoping they’d slow down. We couldn’t separate. This was exactly when Damien would find a way to keep us apart.

Breathing hard, Joel began to slow to a jog. It wasn’t long before he fell against the two-way mirror-wall.

His hand up against the wall to brace himself, he looked back to the strange ghost-like woman following us. Each of her steps was quick, jerky, and calculated. Her eyes glowed behind the tresses of her matted hair.

Water left a trail of steam behind her, fizzling against the black floor.

“Joel, what did you do to this girl?” Phoebe demanded as she slowed down.

Heck, I’d be pissed if Joel got me pregnant. I asked, “Did you rape her?”

Joel gave me a dirty look. “Are you stupid?”

I shrugged, trying to seem indifferent. “You’re a jerk. It’s a legitimate question.”

“No, it isn’t!” he yelled, clearly offended. “She got pregnant. It was a mistake. I didn’t want it, and she did, so I left.”

Looking back, Bess tilted her head to the side at the words, pausing in mid-step. “Left,” she said. Her voice echoed as if over a P.A. system.

Joel clenched his jaw, the muscles twitching.

“You left me,” the girl said again. Sadness touched the icy tone. “And I died.”

“Elspeth!” Phoebe exclaimed.

It took me several seconds to understand what she meant.

“Joel, repeat after me,” Phoebe instructed as the pale Bess approached him, reaching out her hand again.

Shaking, Joel had little choice.

“Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess,” Phoebe began.

“They all went together to seek a bird’s nest.”

Joel repeated obediently when Bess’s hand touched the side of his face. Wheezing sharply, he discolored before our eyes, appeared jaundiced. His entire body went board straight, as if every muscle were seizing.

“They found a bird’s nest with five eggs in it.” Phoebe’s voice wavered.

This time, Joel didn’t move. His lips twitched, but no sounds came out.

Phoebe took a deep breath and half limped, half ran for the girl.

Intending to use her shoulder as a battering ram, Phoebe never collided with her. Instead, she ran straight through and slammed into the wall with a cry of pain that dwarfed the wailing babe.

Trying to think of what I could do, I reached out and grabbed Joel’s shoulder. “Say it, Joel!”

His voice was weak, but I heard him say the line, his mouth barely moving as his lips began to change color before my eyes.

“They all took one,” I coached as Phoebe dragged herself to her feet, “and left four in it.”

Bess’s glowing blue eyes shifted to me. Their haunting gaze rippled outward until I felt cold all over.

She released Joel and turned to me.

Her freezing fingers touched my temples before I could back up.

In an instant, all of my body warmth was snatched away.

My legs, arms, torso, everything contorted. Ice coated my numbing skin and absorbed. Inching in, it infected muscles, turned blood to slush, and scratched bone. That felt the most painful. Every joint was sandpaper, scraping and hard to move.

Don’t move
, I thought.
You’ll break everything in your body
.

“Fuller!” I heard Phoebe but didn’t dare roll my eyes to see her. Even they felt frosted, giving me a dull headache that rapidly froze over.

Joel, who was now free, took two large steps back, and I realized he was running away.

Phoebe hobbled past Bess and me. “Joel!”

Surprisingly, he stopped and jerked his head to look from Bess to me to Phoebe. He was still poised to run. The color began to return to his face—or what color there was left beneath his tan.

“Joel,” Phoebe snapped again. “Say the last line!”

“Why would that work?” he demanded in an angry shout.

I wanted to scream at them to stop arguing, but my voice wouldn’t work. I tried to speak, my lips twitching, which sent piercing quills of pain through frosted nerve endings.

“Do it,” Phoebe commanded with the authority of a drill sergeant. “Do it or the first chance I get, I’m killing you.”

He must have believed her.

“They all took one and left four in it,” Joel said, so quickly the sentence sounded like one long word.

At first, nothing happened.

The baby’s voice died away but didn’t fade completely. Bess still touched me. Both of her hands had raised and cupped my face, though I couldn’t feel them through the numbness. Her inhumanly bright eyes locked onto mine. The shadows that outlined my vision began to collapse into themselves. “Life is death,” she breathed before we fell together.

***

Gurgling bubbles escaped, tickling the sides of my head as they ripped upward. The frozen sensation was gone, but I’d traded that for lack of oxygen.

There was light overhead, and I raised my hands to swim for it when I felt something around my waist, digging into my hipbones.

I was being pulled down, down, down. Away from the light. My hair swished above my head, waving goodbye, as my dress rode up my legs.

Grabbing for the restraining object in my midsection, I felt a rope and a knot. Kicking my feet, I could feel the rope was drawn taut, tied to something below me.

Gripping the rope, I followed it down, inching my way until I felt the cinder block it was wrapped around.

I remembered Dad having a few in the backyard when he was building the deck. I also remembered that they were heavy.

Beneath it, the ground was even and gritty like sandpaper. Like a pool? I wondered.

I fumbled for the rope when I realized that something had brushed up against my wrists.

Snatching it before it could drift away, I felt the fabric again.

The dress. I wore it instead.

Bess!

I felt the shoulders of my dress. They were short, just like Bess’s had been in the room. Snagging the rope around my waist, I fumbled for the knot.

My lungs began to burn their warning, aching and caving in on themselves inside my chest. I’d encountered this once before in the first Challenge. I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to again.

Don’t breathe
, I told myself, though my body didn’t seem to be listening. My chest convulsed, and the panic made me clumsy.

I thought of my mother’s frantic face when I’d showed up late with Cooper and of my dad when he sat on my bed to talk about his sister—my real mother. Why didn’t they tell me?

The answer was obvious, but didn’t I have the right to know that Caitlin and Mona were my cousins, not real sisters?

Would it make a difference? I wondered and immediately knew that it wouldn’t.

Brushing aside the thought, I picked at the knot, hoping for a weak spot.

The warmth swelled in my stomach, rippling up through my chest. I could use it. This demon power. It was my only advantage, and it was in me. If I did, there’d be a punishment.
Or you can die
, a voice hissed.

Aidan, Cooper, Claire, and Read were still lost somewhere in the Challenge. Would a small injury be worth my life? Or would Damien punish me this time?

The last bubbles escaped.

I felt my fingernails pulling back as I dug at the rope, and my heart pounded in my head, which was concentrating on not taking that breath. The impulse was so strong it tried to take over logic.

One breath and it will be over. No more pain.

My lungs were tearing themselves apart.

I can’t die like this.
But Bess had, I reminded myself.
Bess tied that rope to the cinder block, not me. Let her die like this.

Twisting in the blackened waters, I opened my mouth and took a breath.

The excruciating pain and horror as the water flooded my lungs made me want to scream and expel all of it, but I couldn’t. I was choking, suffocating.

It was if liquefied steel had invaded. Hot, seething, remorseless and heavy.

No
air
.

In my weakening struggle, I felt a sharp pain on my ring finger.

I closed my eyes. The warmth in my stomach still hadn’t risen to save me, or maybe Damien stopped it after all.

***

I vomited, raising cumbersome, swollen hands to touch my own face.

Warmth tingled through my body in a brutal wave.

I coughed uncontrollably. My chest still felt as if it were caving in, but each breath inflated it, making it a little fuller. It was slow and hurt, but it was better than no air at all.

My wet eyelashes fluttered open as I stared at the projectile water on the dull black floor.

“Fuller?” Phoebe asked.

My throat felt like sandpaper had been scraped up and down it, and I didn’t answer at first.

Rolling onto my back with Phoebe’s help, I saw her and Joel staring down at me.

When I looked around the room for Bess, Phoebe answered my gaze. “She’s gone. I thought we lost you.”

I raised my eyebrows, trying to gather up my strength. I would have loved to curl up on the filthy mattress we’d found earlier and fall asleep. “What happened?”

“She grabbed you.” Joel paused, and at first I thought he was being sarcastic again, but he continued. “Then you went white and started gurgling water. When the baby sounds finally stopped, she let you go and disappeared.”

I glanced around the room and noticed the large puddle of glistening water I lay in.

“That’s her,” Phoebe confirmed. “She hit the floor and just…splattered.”

Awesome. I’m covered in dead girl.

I lifted an arm, and Phoebe helped me to sit up. The stinging cuts in my back stretched but otherwise didn’t cause any problems.

As my hand touched the water, I felt the sharp pain of a new wound.

A fingernail on my left hand had cracked back so far blood had bandaged it. When I had been struggling with the rope just before I passed out, I vaguely remembered feeling it snag on my ring finger and rip.

Shuddering, I cradled my arm close to me, my finger throbbing with the applied pressure. Too bad there wasn’t any cloth left to wrap it.

It was Joel who helped me stand. He caught the crook of my arm and lifted me to my feet with one hand.

I prepared myself for him to drop me. But he didn’t.

Standing, I tried to pick at my clinging pajamas. The water had soaked me thoroughly.

“Now to get out of here,” Phoebe said. “Do you think you can walk?”

“Do you?” I asked, glancing at her leg then to Joel.

We were quite the trio.

“Should we wait for Robin and Cody?” I asked, my voice harsh and raw.

Joel shrugged. “They ran ahead. For all I know, they could be waiting for us.”

Phoebe nodded in agreement.

Together, we trudged forward, slower than usual. The reflection of light from the mirrored hallway to our left lit the way.

As time dragged on, it seemed as though the hallway would never end. It swept to the right then left, leaving the mirrored hallway behind. Soon we found ourselves in a corridor of black walls, ceilings, and floor. A torch lit the way every thirty feet.

Phoebe tried to call Robin and Cody’s names, but only her echo was kind enough to answer.

Phoebe’s limp became prominent again. After the adrenaline rush, she somehow managed to spread the poison. I wondered how that would work. Would she die again?

Joel wasn’t far behind her. His head was down, his arms limp at his sides. He barely was able to lift his feet or hold his injured arm close to his chest. The shuffling was starting to strum my nerves.

“Something’s wrong,” I said, hoping to distract myself from being irritable. “If we won, where’s our way out?”

Phoebe grimaced in response. “Maybe we didn’t win.”

“If we didn’t, I would be dead,” I pointed out.

Joel’s voice cracked. “Maybe it wasn’t the poem that saved us. Maybe the poem was a warning of who was here.”

Phoebe and I paused. He had a point.

“You mean maybe Robin and Cody found the crying baby. That’s what saved us from Bess?” I asked.

He nodded and shrugged at the same time.

“Dammit, if only they’d waited,” Phoebe said.

I didn’t want to say it, but if they had waited and they were the reason Bess disappeared, I would have been dead.

A rumbling growl overhead quieted the conversation.

Tilting my chin, I saw the black ceiling but with one small difference. A few feet ahead, there was a square hole with a white sheet of wood covered it from above, kind of like our attic at home. The blinding contrast of white on black was hard to miss.

“The tiger?” I asked.

I glanced to my two friends. Neither would be strong enough to lift me. Phoebe’s limp had worsened, and Joel couldn’t even lift his feet. The shuffling had started to make me flinch.

I glanced between the board above and Phoebe before asking, “Do you think if you stepped on my back you’d reach it?”

“Maybe you should stand on my back,” she suggested, frowning.

It was tempting, but I shook my head. “You’re taller.” I didn’t dare say she was weaker; it would prod her to do something stupid.

“Are you sure you want to check it out?” Joel asked, actually sounding concerned. “I’m pretty sure I heard a growl.”

“I bet it’s the tiger,” I said.

We looked up and gauged our options silently.

I sank down to my hands and knees, making a human stool. “Come on,” I urged. “The floor’s cold.”

Making a face, Phoebe placed one sneaker on my shoulder, testing it before stepping up.

Her weight made me wobble, which almost threw her off balance.

I heard her push the white plywood out of the way, or rather, fling it.

I heard it clatter overhead, but it hadn’t fallen through the hole. I didn’t dare look up in case it shifted my weight and threw her.