Crushed (City of Eldrich Book 2) (24 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

P
atrice helped Jamie
get his shoes on, kneeling to tie them the way she did with the kids.

Natalie seemed to snap out of her stupor, at least enough to wrestle on the mismatched T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers John had found for her.

Patrice pulled a tub of baby wipes out of the console and rubbed some of the grime off Jamie, carefully avoiding the bright red sigils. If they caused him any pain, Jamie gave no sign of it. Patrice’s reappearance and casual forgiveness seemed to steady him. Despite the blood and dirt, and the huge circles under his still overly dilated eyes, Jamie looked calmer and more like himself than he had in a long time.

While Patrice was cleaning up Jamie, John used a couple of baby wipes to gently dab the crusted blood off Meaghan’s nose, lips, and chin.

“I was afraid you’d be mad at me,” Meaghan said.

“Oh, I was. Very angry.” John smiled. “Then she opens the door and Russ and I are too busy to be angry anymore. There. All clean and beautiful.”

With her fingers, Meaghan carefully felt her cut lip and swollen nose. “Liar. I bet I look awful.”

“No worse than last time,” John said. “For either of us. You were all scraped up and had a big bandage on your arm and your head full of Jhoro’s special drink. And I was a wingless Fahrayan. How about when this is done, we have a wash, you put on a dress, I put on a clean shirt, and I take you somewhere for a nice meal?”

Despite everything she’d been through, despite her pain and fear, Meaghan laughed out loud. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

John looked puzzled.

“Courting ritual,” Jamie called over. He buzzed a Fahrayan word at John.

John, nodded, now understanding. “Yes, I am asking you out for the date.”

Patrice giggled. “About damn time.”

Jamie glared at her.

She smiled back and handed him a faded blue polo shirt. “Oh, don’t be Mr. Grumpy-pants. This is a good thing.”

“It’s my father, going out with my boss. Tell me how that’s a good thing.”

Natalie punched him lightly in the arm. The simple task of getting dressed seemed to have calmed her quite a bit. “Don’t be a whiney puke. Old people get to have romance, too.”

“
Old people
?” Meaghan shook her head. She looked at John. “Did you hear that?”

“Yes,” he said, grinning. “So, you say yes? To the date?”

“Yeah,” Meaghan said, smiling back. “Absolutely. If the world doesn’t end and we aren’t dead, it’s a date.”

John beamed.

“But, I thought you going on a date meant the world
was
ending.”

Meaghan whirled around. Russ was standing in the shattered doorway. He waved his fingers at her. “Hey, sis.” He stepped closer. “You look like shit.”

She grinned at him. “You should see the other guy.”

“Shot or squished?”

“Shot. Nice work getting Brian up on the roof top.”

Russ looked puzzled. “Brian’s in Williamsport.” He looked around at everyone. “Isn’t he?”

“So, you aren’t responsible for the sniper?”

Russ shook his head. “Not us. We were trying to figure out who did it.” He looked around again. “Where’s Annie?”

Meaghan shook her head, her good mood abruptly gone. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her or Sid since the mob grabbed us.”

“She got away?” Russ chewed on his lip, looking worried. “You think she’s okay?”

Meaghan nodded. She had no idea what happened to Annie, but if it made Russ feel better, she was happy to lie. “And Brian came back from Williamsport. Emily didn’t tell you?”

“We didn’t really have time to talk,” Russ said. “The door opened, Patrice . . .”—Russ waggled his fingers—“did something to the handcuffs. She told us Emily was on our side now and that John was riding in the Hummer and Emily and I were following in the food truck. We picked up Nate on the way.”

“Nate?” Meaghan asked.

“Yo!” Nate sauntered in and waved. “Hey, Patrice. I hear you turned into Wonder Woman. I like the pink Hummer. Is that like your Batmobile?”

Patrice merely smiled.

Nate looked at Meaghan. “So, what’s the plan?”

Meaghan stared at him. “Why are you asking me? Go ask Wonder Woman.”

Patrice laughed. “I’m not the leader.” She turned to Natalie. “Would you grab the cooler bag out of truck?” She turned back to the crowd. “Juice boxes, water, and snacks. Everybody make sure to grab something. I’m sure you’re all hungry and dehydrated.” Now she looked at Meaghan. “You’re the leader. I’m the secret weapon.”

“And the mommy,” Jamie said, grinning. “Black magic can’t withstand the power of a chilled juice box and a bag of Chex-Mix. You got trophies in there, too? Participation certificates?” He put his arms around her and gave her a quick kiss. “I love you so much. Those shithead wizards don’t stand a chance against you. How did I ever forget that?” Then he doubled over, his hand on his chest, groaning. “Oh, shit, that’s how.”

Patrice supported him so he wouldn’t fall. Her face grim, she said, “That’s it. I want these things off you. I’m done with this.” She looked upward. “We need to get upstairs. Send these things back to whatever hell they’re trying to break out of.”

After some arguing, Russ relented and took Nate back out to the truck where Emily waited. Their job was to round up the witches and make sure no other wizards could get into the building. Or out. They were also sorting out the possessed kids in gray robes from the surviving wizards.

The mob had melted away once it was no longer controlled by the Power. Whether the Power was gone or merely lurking, looking for a new vessel, no one knew. Meaghan’s bet was on the latter. Hopefully, without the raging emotional energy of the mob fueling it, the Power would again be limited to one person at a time. If not . . . Meaghan shook her head. She wasn’t going to think about that right now. She had to keep moving.

Meaghan led them up the stairs to the second floor. The plan was to do a sweep, looking for wizards before climbing to the third floor. They found several wizards in Emily’s office. The biggest one tried to hex them.

Patrice dropped him with a look.

“Um, honey,” Jamie said gently. “You’re kind of . . . glowing. And you’re hair, your ponytail, is all . . . floaty. Is that normal?”

Patrice’s dark hair floated outward like it was charged with static electricity, perhaps from the pulsing golden aura now visibly surrounding her. “I have no idea what’s normal right now. Not a clue.” She looked at the two smaller wizards, who huddled together. She smiled. “You boys can go. Take off the robes before you go outside, okay? So you don’t get blasted on your way out the door.”

“We’re . . . we . . .” The taller one swallowed, his face turning red. “We’re naked underneath.”

Patrice nodded. “Hang on a sec. Let me fix it. Hold still.”

Shaking, he obeyed.

With a glowing finger, Patrice traced the shoulders and collar of his robe. The sleeves and hood fell away, leaving the boy standing in a gray sleeveless shift. She then waved her finger and the letters “OK” appeared on the fabric over his chest, as if scorched into the cloth. She did the same thing to the other boy.

The boys stared at her, wide-eyed.

“There,” she said, standing back to admire her handiwork with a smile. “Off you go. There’s a cooler on the hood of the big pink truck parked in the lobby. Make sure to grab a juice box and something to eat before you leave. You’re both too skinny.”

They nodded and ran.

“Don’t forget,” Patrice called after them. “I’ll know if you don’t take anything.”

“Baby, you’re kind of scary right now,” Jamie said. “Sweet, but scary. Like some kind of vengeful mommy goddess.”

“Yes,” Patrice said, “but I’ve always been like that, only without the superpowers.” She looked at everyone else. “Okay, let’s do one more quick sweep to make sure nobody sneaked down the stairs and then we’ll head upstairs.”

Meaghan looked at John. She didn’t need to be psychic to know he was thinking the same thing she was. Patrice was more than “kind of scary” at the moment.

Natalie was thinking the same thing. She grabbed Meaghan’s arm, holding her back a moment as Patrice led Jamie and John out into the hallway. Before Natalie could say anything, Meaghan whispered, “What is she? Have you seen anything like this before?”

Eyes wide, Natalie shook her head. “Never.”

“Is it witchcraft? Magic?”

“No freaking idea.”

“Has she ever given any signs of abilities, magical or psychic, before this?”

“Not that I’ve seen and Jamie’s never said anything. I spend an awful lot of time with them. Patrice has never . . . nothing. We used to joke about how she was the normal one.”

“Does she know anything about her family?”

Patrice poked her head in the door. “No, not a thing.” She sighed. “I can hear you. In here.” She tapped her forehead. “I know you’re scared. I can feel it radiating off everybody, even Jamie. But I’m still me. I think I’m more me than I’ve ever been. I can’t explain it any better than that. Whoever . . .
whatever
I am, I’m supposed to be here doing this. Stopping this. And so are you.” She smiled. “C’mon. We have to get upstairs. They’re almost here.”

“Who’s almost here?” Meaghan asked.

“
Them
.” Patrice’s brow furrowed. “I’ll explain later. If there is a later. C’mon.” She turned and walked out of Emily’s office.

Meaghan grabbed Natalie’s hand and dragged her forward. “You heard the scary mommy lady. Let’s go save the world.”

“And then we can have a juice box,” Natalie said. “At least this day can’t get any weirder. Can it?”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

“
A
nd you didn’t
think it could any weirder,” Meaghan whispered to Natalie as they trudged up the stairs to the third floor.

Patrice had already dispatched several more scared boys—wardrobe change and juice boxes—and a few wizards, which involved significantly more screaming and no snacks.

The climb seemed much longer than it should have. It was like the space had been stretched and the air thickened. Every step took more effort than the last one.

As they climbed, Patrice glowed even brighter. Her hair, now escaped from its ponytail, floated in a mahogany nimbus around her head. The light emanating from her was so bright it hurt to focus on her for too long.

With every step, Jamie grew visibly weaker, his face slick with sweat and contorted with pain. The sigils glowed red, so hot that they’d burned holes in his shirt. He finally tore it over his head, gasping for breath. “Hurts. It hurts.”

John threw Jamie’s arm over his shoulder to support him. He tried to pick up Jamie and carry him, but Jamie resisted.

“No, you’ll . . . they’ll burn you.” Gingerly, he rested his forehead on his father’s shoulder. “Stop, give me a minute.”

John gently squeezed the back of Jamie’s neck, careful not to brush against the sigils. “I’ve got you.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know.”

“Don’t go away again.”

“Never.”

At which point, Meaghan’s eyes filled with tears. “Goddammit,” she muttered. “Damn crybaby.”

Natalie handed her a roll of toilet paper.

“Where you’d get this?” Meaghan tore off some tissue and handed the roll back to Natalie.

“Second floor men’s room. Figured you’d need to blow your snotty nose at some point.”

“Bitch,” Meaghan sniffled.

Natalie gave her a grin. “I know you are, but what am I?” She gripped Meaghan’s arm. “Fucking scared. That’s what I am. We’re not going to get through this, are we?”

Meaghan tossed the soggy wad of paper aside and squeezed Natalie’s hand. “Yeah, we are. It felt hopeless in Fahraya, too.”

“And then you saved the day.”

“Yeah, something like that.” Meaghan sniffled again, feeling the tears still close by. “But not by myself. I had help. Like I have this time.” She pulled Natalie into a quick hug. “We have something they don’t have. Family. Each other. All they have is fear and hate.”

It sounded good, Meaghan thought, reaching for the roll of toilet paper to blow her nose again. Bullshit often did.

But it seemed to help Natalie rally. She smiled. “Okay.” She glanced up the stairs. “Jamie’s not gonna make it without help.” She dragged herself up a couple of steps until she stood next to John and Jamie. “Let me try something.”

Natalie closed her eyes, concentrated, and then moved her hand to Jamie’s chest. She held her palm about two inches above the glowing sigil. Teeth gritted, she held her hand there for a few seconds, then pulled it away. She shook it violently for a moment as if trying to flick off something nasty.

Jamie looked up. “What did you do?”

“I pulled off some of the heat. Is it better?” Natalie asked.

“Yeah. Can you do the other ones?”

Natalie did the same thing to the other three sigils. By the time she was done, Meaghan noticed, there were tears in her eyes.

“Let me see your hand,” Meaghan said.

Natalie gave her a warning look and a microscopic tilt of her head towards Jamie. “It’s fine. Let’s keep moving.”

When Jamie, with John’s help, began climbing again, Meaghan grabbed Natalie’s hand. The palm was red and blistered.

“Not a word,” Natalie hissed. “He doesn’t need to know. I’ll be fine.”

Patrice had gotten about ten steps above them. She turned and stared at Jamie, concern in her eyes. “You can do it, baby. Not much further now.” She looked at John. “I can’t help you with him. There’s too much power in me right now. I’ll burn him up.”

“Go,” John said. “I have him. You go and finish this.”

She nodded. “Natalie, get up here. I need you by my side.”

“What about Meaghan?” Natalie asked.

Patrice’s eyes narrowed. “She needs to stay in back. She can’t help with this. Not yet.”

Natalie looked at Meaghan for a long moment. She took a tentative step up.

“Wait,” Meaghan said. “The toilet paper.” She held up her hands. “For my snotty nose.”

Natalie grinned, tossed the roll, and climbed the stairs to where Patrice waited.

Patrice grabbed Natalie’s burnt hand to help pull her up the stairs, and Natalie cried out. Patrice frowned. “Let me see that.” She examined Natalie’s blistered palm, then blew on it gently. “There. All better.”

Natalie stared in wonder at her now unburnt hand. “Shit, yeah.” She smiled at Patrice. “Let’s go kick some monster ass.”

Patrice smiled back. “Everybody try to get upstairs as fast as you can.” She looked down at Meaghan. “You have a role to play, I feel it. But not yet. Hold back and wait. You’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

Unless,
I don’t
. Meaghan forced herself to smile and wave.

They continued climbing. Meaghan slipped her arm around Jamie’s other side and, together, she and John pulled him up the stairs. Natalie’s intervention soon wore off and the sigils burned red again. Jamie’s eyes had rolled back in his head and he whimpered like a wounded animal with every step.

John tried to carry him, and Jamie shook him off. “No. I have to do this. I have to be the one.”

“Why?” Meaghan asked. “Let us help you.”

“You are helping,” Jamie rasped. “But you can’t do it for me. Don’t ask why. You can’t. It has to be me.”

Patrice and Natalie reached the landing. With a final backward glance and a wave, they stepped out of view, leaving only a golden glow behind them.

Meaghan and John dragged Jamie up the final half dozen stairs. By the time they got there, Patrice and her glow were gone and the landing was enveloped in murky darkness.

The high windows that normally flooded the stairwell with light showed only blackness. Meaghan hadn’t noticed the absence of daylight before because of the glow emanating from Patrice. It was not the darkness of nighttime, but the flat blackness of the void. Meaghan had seen it before, in the moments before Fahraya had been destroyed.

A faint brightness came from the shattered remains of the solicitor’s office. “This way,” Meaghan said, pointing with her free hand. “Almost there.” She smiled, trying to hide her fear. “I almost never get to work this early. And during Labor Day weekend, no less.”

Jamie merely grunted.

The oak door and its surrounding frame were charred and shattered. Meaghan couldn’t see much in the dim light, but the squelching under her feet told her the fire sprinklers had gone off at some point.

“Hang on a sec,” Meaghan said. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket. The screen was cracked but the flashlight app still worked. She shone it around until she found what she was looking for—the small fire extinguisher sitting under what remained of Kady’s desk.

John looked puzzled.

Meaghan shrugged. “In case the wizards are still fire happy. And it’s a metal doohickey we can hit somebody with.”

“Made of steel?” John asked. “Like the saucepan?”

Meaghan grimaced. “No idea. Let’s hope we don’t need to find out.” She peered into the murk. The flashlight app was a pinprick in the darkness and as good as useless. She put the phone back in her pocket. “This way.”

Yesterday the hallway had been only about twelve feet long, with Meaghan’s office door near the middle. But the hallway they entered stretched far into the gloom. All the usual landmarks were gone. In the distance, they saw a pulsating ball of light.

“I don’t think we’re in city hall anymore,” Meaghan said.

“Did we go through a gateway?” John asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “The Fahrayan gateway was like stepping through a doorway. No tunnels, no light shows.”

John nodded. “Troon is like that too.”

Jamie roused a bit from his stupor. “That way.” He gestured weakly at the light. “Patrice is down there. They’re down there.”

Meaghan grinned at him. “So first you trash the office, then these jerks turn it into some kind of mystical portal to hell?”

“I guess,” Jamie said, smiling for a moment before crying out in pain and doubling over. He would have crumpled to the ground if John hadn’t caught him.

“Enough, boy. I carry you now.” He cradled Jamie like a baby and lifted him from the ground. Jamie was a big guy, yet John held him like he would a sleeping child.

They trudged down the hallway toward the pulsing light.

Go toward the light
, Meaghan thought.
Isn’t that what they say happens in a near-death experience?
“Are you sure we should we be doing this?”

John grunted and shifted Jamie’s weight. “No. But Patrice says we must. And I think I am more scared of her than them.”

“Put me down,” Jamie grumbled. “I’m not a kid anymore. I can walk.”

John sighed, but acquiesced.

Jamie groaned and buckled again.

John caught his arm and tried to lift him, but before he could, Jamie said, “I can do this. If you help me.”

Meaghan and John pulled him to his feet and pulled his arms over their shoulders. Jamie swayed a bit, but stayed on his feet. “Lions and tigers and bears,” he rasped. “Oh, my.”

“What?” Meaghan tucked the fire extinguisher tightly under her armpit and tried to get a better grip on him.

“The Wizard of Oz. When they’re going down that big hallway to meet the wizard. Or maybe in the woods before they met the lion—I can’t remember.”

“Who is this wizard?” John asked. “Is he with the Order?”

Jamie chuckled. “Dad, you need to get out more.”

“It’s from an old movie,” Meaghan said. “They show it on TV all the time.”

“I don’t have a TV,” John said.

“Of course you don’t,” Jamie said. “You guys promise me something.”

Like it had on the stairs, the air felt thicker. Every step was a struggle.

“Anything,” John said.

“What are we promising?” Meaghan asked.

Jamie chuckled. He was still on his feet, but John and Meaghan were doing most of the work. “You’re such a lawyer. He says yes, you say not so fast. Promise me you’ll look after Patrice when I’m gone.”

Meaghan snorted. “You aren’t going anywhere. At least not without the rest of us.”

He laughed, almost giddy now. “You know that’s not true. Even if the wizards or the mystery bad guys don’t kill me, my heart’s about to explode from all the drugs. I’m not getting out of this one alive. We all know it.”

“No,” John growled. “We do not know it. Patrice, she does not know it.”

“You guys need to make sure she’s okay. Make sure she gets on with her life. Gets married again.” Jamie gave John a hard look. “No years of drinking and grieving and being all alone. Promise me.”

John stopped, his head bowed. His shoulders shook and Meaghan realized he was weeping. “I promise.”

Jamie nodded. “Good.” He turned to Meaghan. “I’d ask you again, but I know how stubborn you are.”

“Good call.” She squeezed his hand. “Wherever we end up, we’re all going together. You’re not ditching me that easy, kid.”

“I’m still not gonna call you Mom.”

“Fine,” Meaghan grunted. “Whatever. Let’s get our asses down the hall and get this shit over with. Everybody’s waiting for us.”