Soulstice (16 page)

Reggie raced into the Cutter’s Wedge Emergency Room lobby. The place smelled like an infected wound soaked in bleach. When
Aaron had called her and told her about Eben, all of her anger had turned to worry for the man she had once loved like a second
father.

Reggie pressed her palms against the cool marble counter. The clerk on the opposite side had thin wisps of yellowish gray
hair and thick glasses that made his brown eyes look cartoonish.

“Can I help you?”

“Where is Eben Bloch? An ambulance brought him in—”

Aaron’s long fingers clutched her arm. “Come on, he’s on the third floor.”

They moved quickly to an open elevator and dashed inside as the doors closed. Fluorescent bulbs lit the small space, and canned
music played from the speakers. Shivers erupted over Reggie’s skin as the tune summoned up the hospital images from her brother’s
fearscape in her head: the demon infants, the cancerous ghosts of dead children, the monstrous surgeon—all of the visceral
horrors from her memories pressed down upon her. She felt the acidic burn of the surgeon’s needle in her neck, the bites of
the fanged baby zombies in her calves and thighs…

“Reggie? You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I just don’t like hospitals.”

Aaron took her hand and held it until they stopped on the third floor and the doors dinged opened again.

They approached the nurse’s station, where a young woman sat and scribbled onto one of many medical charts stacked beside
her.

“Hi,” Aaron said nervously. “We’re here to see Eben Bloch?”

The nurse shook her head and stood up.

“Dr. Kwan wants him to rest. No visitors for the evening. Perhaps first thing in the morning? I’m sorry.”

“But I’m his daughter,” Reggie lied. Aaron said nothing.

The nurse shuffled through her charts and examined one closely.

“This says Mr. Bloch has no immediate family.”

“We’ve been—estranged,” Reggie stammered. “Please. I’m all he’s got.”

The nurse looked around furtively, put down her clipboard and then stepped out from behind the station. She looked to Aaron.

“You will need to stay here.”

Aaron nodded respectfully.

“Thank you,” Reggie squeezed Aaron’s hand.

“Take your time. I’ll be here.”

Reggie drew a deep breath and followed the nurse down the hall and around a corner to the farthest room in the unit. Outside
the door the nursed stopped and turned.

“Put these on.” She handed Reggie a mask and a pair of latex gloves. “Do not take them off for any reason. Dr. Kwan may decide
to quarantine your father if the tests come back and cause concern. We haven’t…” The nurse struggled. “I’ve never seen these
symptoms in a patient before. I don’t mean to frighten you by saying that, it’s just—”

“I understand.” Reggie tied the mask behind her head and pulled the gloves on her hands. “I’m not afraid.”

The nurse nodded and left Reggie at the door. She stepped into the room, which seemed more like a cell than a hospital suite.
The throb of beeping machines and labored breaths filled the air. From behind an olive green curtain a choked voice called
out, “Aaron?”

“No, it’s Reggie.” Her speech sounded thin in the sterilized room, and she realized she was terrified to face Eben here, alone.
She heard his ragged breaths and winced behind her mask.

“Ah, Regina. You see the lengths I have to go to get you to visit me.”

“Aaron called me. He told me you were… sick.” The machines hissed and whirred. Reggie stood before the curtain and looked
down at the chipped linoleum tiles. “What’s happening to you, Eben? The nurse said—”

Hollow coughs interrupted her.

“Oh, I doubt the nurse, or the doctor, or a team of scientists could diagnose this,” Eben rasped. “There are things I need
to tell you, Regina. Pull back the curtain. Go ahead. It’s okay.”

Reggie fingered the sickly green drapery, then pulled it aside, scraping the rings along their metal rod. Behind it, a ruined
Eben Bloch stared up from the hospital bed. Reggie, who had never seen him in short sleeves before, saw that the man’s thin
arms were not only ropy with muscle, but also pitted and crisscrossed with scars. He looked like the living dead.

Any anger toward him left in her evaporated at the sight of his pallid form. Various tubes and wires ran from his arms and
chest, and his wrist was wrapped in a thick cast. Medical equipment stood over his bed. He’d hidden what he’d known about
the Vours from her, even after they’d taken over Henry, but for a time he’d been so dear to her—and in the end he’d saved
her life. And Henry’s. A desperate sadness rose up in place of her bitterness.

“Please don’t die,” she pleaded.

“That may not be up to me,” Eben said. “And you need to know the truth, before it’s too late.”

He motioned her closer. Reggie rolled the doctor’s stool over to him and sat down.

“It happened to me, too,” he said. “They took my own sister away, like they did to Henry. But I never got her back.”

Reggie put her hand on his shoulder.

“You don’t need to do this now. Not when you’re sick.”

“Yes, I do.” He coughed. “We believed in Sorry Night where I grew up, too. Only our village called it Kracun. In stories,
it was supposed to be the day evil spirits returned to the earth.”

Reggie wondered if he was delirious from illness. Eben caught her expression. His gaze cleared and his breathing became steadier.

“When I was a boy, on the night of the winter solstice, we’d light fires in the crossroads and graveyards on the edge of town.
Legend said that it warmed the ghosts, but—”

“It drew the Vours away from people,” Reggie said quietly. “They’d follow the heat and light.”

Eben grunted his affirmation. “We’d snuff the lamps and hide in the darkness and cold, huddled together and praying for morning.
For years, it passed as just another local tradition to me, a superstition. Then it all changed.”

Eben looked past Reggie, as if trying to remember.

“One year, my older sister Alanna went hunting on the solstice. It had been a harsh winter, and we were starving. Alanna was
a crack shot, better than most of the men. She left at dawn, but by noon, a blizzard had rolled in, and at sunset, she still
hadn’t returned.” Eben took a ragged breath. “People were too frightened of the ghosts to search for her. My father told me
that Alanna would see the lights of the bonfires outside of town, and they would lead her home. So I prayed all night for
my sister’s return. She never came back.”

“But something that looked like her did?”

Eben’s head nodded ever so slightly.

“Alanna rode back to us the next morning, but she had changed. She was no longer good-hearted and brave, joyful and funny.
She had turned cruel. Gluttonous. She was wise in a terrible way, a witch who knew what everyone feared. I lived in her shadow
for years—I endured terrors and visions. So, when I was the same age you are now, I…” Eben’s voice was unnervingly calm now.
“I freed her. She took me to the forest to chop wood to keep the fire going, and I carried the axe. And in that forest I freed
Alanna from the Vour. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Everyone knew what I had done, and they brought me before the village council. I was sure I would be hanged. Instead, they
put me on a carriage and sent me away. Then I was put on a train, then a boat. It seemed they were going to send me to the
end of the Earth. But once there, I was taught to be a Tracer.”

“A what? Tracer?”

“For centuries Tracers have tracked the Vours, freeing their victims the only way we know how. We have never questioned what
must be done… until now.”

Reggie was stunned. “Do the Tracers still exist?”

“Yes.” Eben shrugged. “But how many? Where? This is not for me to know. I’m just a soldier.”

A nurse peeked in the window. Eben waved her away.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Reggie asked.

“Aaron said something to me today. It made me angry, but he was right. You’ve chosen to fight, just as I had chosen so many
years ago. But your power is something this world has never seen. You are a new breed of soldier, Regina. And I fear your
fight will cost you dearly before it is done.”

Reggie gripped the bed rail as Eben continued.

“When an infected human dies, the Vour essence seeps out before disappearing. Whether it’s destroyed or gone back to its own
world, we don’t know, but that substance, what we see as smoke, is an evil cancer of unknown origin. I’ve killed hundreds
of Vours in my time, and who knows how much poison I’ve absorbed. It has taken my lungs, surged through my veins, charred
my bones—” He took a handkerchief from the bedside table and coughed into it, then held it up for Reggie to see. Black spittle
spotted the whiteness. “This is who I’ve become.”

Eben folded the handkerchief neatly in squares and placed it back on the table. Reggie thought of the smoke that had come
from Detective Gale’s body, and she hoped the mask she wore hid the horror she felt.

“I didn’t know,” she said.

“I didn’t want you to,” Eben replied. “This is the curse of the Tracer, at least those who live long enough. A black virus
that slowly eats away our insides is the punishment for the life we lead, for the sins we commit on behalf of a greater good.”

“But I don’t need to fight them the way you have,” Reggie insisted. “There’s another way now.”

“Yes, and I imagine your method is all the more dangerous. If a Vour essence can do this to me in this world, what must be
happening to you when you trespass into theirs?” He pointed to his scars. “I fear your future will be much worse.”

Reggie tried to swallow the lump forming in her throat. The nurse came in again, and this time Eben could not wave her away.

“I’m sorry dear, but it’s time for your father to sleep. You can come back tomorrow.”

Reggie put her hand on Eben’s.

“I will. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

The nurse had injected something into Eben’s IV bag, and already his eyelids were drooping. Reggie stayed until she felt his
hand go limp, and his breathing slowed. She went back into the hall and the nurse followed, clicking off the lights and shutting
the door behind them.

Aaron was just flipping his phone closed as Reggie got back to the waiting area.

“Perfect timing. That was Mitch. We’re on.”

  
14
  

Aaron and Reggie dropped their bikes behind the football field bleachers and walked the two hundred yards to the school. The
sun had gone down, and mosquitoes swarmed them in search of moist skin and fresh blood. Both walked wide circles around the
pale pools of light cast by the humming floodlights that illuminated pockets of brick along the building. The school looked
like a prison in the night, harsh and secretive.

Aaron spotted the broken window first.

“There. Principal’s office. Figures.”

He scuttled across the sprinkler-soaked grass in an awkward crouch. Reggie followed.

“No alarms?”

“No. But after tonight?” Aaron pulled two sets of latex gloves from his backpack and handed a pair to Reggie. Then he took
a flashlight out and used it to brush away the glass teeth that protruded from the side and bottom edges of the pane. “This
will be the Kassners’ last break-in, I think. Don’t cut yourself, Reg.”

Aaron slipped in through the window, stepped onto the air-conditioning unit that lined the back wall of the room, and hopped
to the floor. He offered up a hand to guide Reggie down into the office. Even in the relative dark, she sensed the carnage
first. She could smell it.

Formaldehyde.

She snatched the flashlight from Aaron and scanned the room with the ghostly beam of light. Lab animals had been strewn across
the floor, some of them torn into pulpy pieces. Two headless rat bodies littered Principal Padian’s oak desk, and blood had
been smeared across the family pictures that adorned each corner. In the pen cup, the decapitated heads of the rodents were
punctured atop the tips of fine custom pens. A dissected frog was pierced into the back of the leather chair with yellow and
blue pushpins. There was nothing ritualistic or sacrificial about any of the butchery, nothing to suggest that the bloody
mess had any purpose. It was simple and brutal cruelty.