Death at First Sight (Spero Heights Book 2) (12 page)

Chapter Twenty

If this was death, Dr. Delph preferred the pain of living. It felt like someone had tried to punch a hole through the center of his back—and nearly succeeded. He wheezed in an unsteady breath, struggling not to pass out a second time.

It was at that moment the Fates decided to return his neutered gift, as if refraining until he’d proved himself worthy by surviving… or maybe simply because they were the cruel sort of divine beings who enjoyed kicking an oracle while he was down.

So much blood.
The vision was a familiar one that had haunted him for months, up until he’d been cut off the previous week.
Get on with it,
he thought, straining to see beyond the grisly replay. Then he saw Lia.

There was still blood in the image, but it was of the life-giving variety. In more ways than one. She had a future waiting for her in Spero Heights, and so did he. If he knew how to claim it.

The vision was the most rewarding one the Fates had ever granted him, and it forced him to forgive all their past transgressions. He returned to the present with tears clouding his eyes.

The pain shooting through his torso was more bearable, and he muscled past it as he rolled onto his side and used the leg of his desk to pull into a sitting position. He waited for his breath to steady before delicately stripping out of his ruined suit jacket and vest.

Selena’s paranoia had finally come to his aid. The Kevlar vest had kept him alive, even if he did feel like someone had taken a hammer to his spine. He could already tell that the swelling was going to be murder—though not the literal kind that Saunders had intended for him to suffer.

Dr. Delph grabbed the edge of his desk and grunted as he stood, hissing when his shoulders protested. He needed to check on Lia and let her know that he’d thwarted her vision. That everything was okay now. That Saunders would be apprehended soon enough and far away from Spero Heights.

He hobbled for the bookcase entrance, and then froze. The doorway was cracked open, his empty bed visible beyond the shadowed volumes.

“Lia? Lia!” He pushed the door open further and reached for the bed, running his hands over the sheets as if she might somehow be lost in them.

“Poor doctor,” Daisy cooed. She appeared on the other side of the room, and then momentarily disappeared as she passed through the spilling moonlight of the window on her way to the bed. “The harlot has fled with her former lover. Shall I disrobe to comfort you?”

“What?” He grasped his head with both hands. “How could you let this happen?” he shrieked at her.

“Me?” Daisy pressed a hand to her chest. Her dark eyes blinked at him innocently, but then they filled with a toxic mixture of guilt and rage. “Your pain is her doing. Not mine. I would never bring such agony upon you.”

“You could have stopped him! Scared him off. Convinced Lia to stay hidden. What’s wrong with you?” he shouted, not caring that he’d completely abandoned his cautionary rules for handling the spirit.

The floor rumbled and the walls began to creak as Daisy’s temper escalated. “I am not beholden to do your bidding,” she whispered, her voice echoing off the walls until it multiplied into a wail that ached in Dr. Delph’s ears.

He reached for the drawer of his nightstand where he kept his banishing crystals, but it ripped free of its own volition before he could touch the handle. It crashed against the opposite wall, scattering its contents as it splintered into pieces. He turned back to scowl at Daisy, but she was already gone.

The phone on the nightstand was unharmed, so he grabbed it and speed-dialed Selena’s number. She answered on the first ring.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice ragged but alert. Crickets sang in the background, and he could picture her standing out on her back deck, longing for another run under the last night of the full moon. She’d resigned herself to one night a month for the twins’ benefit.

“Lia’s been taken.” The words rushed from him in a panicked blubber.

“The new girl?” Selena sighed. “You said she wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“The bastard who took her shot me.”

“Fuck.” Selena growled into the phone. “Did you call the witch in to patch you up?”

“I’m fine,” he shouted, struggling to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “I was wearing your riot vest—”

“I told you that would come in handy.” Selena sounded smug, but that quickly changed when her common sense caught up. “You
knew
this was going to happen. Didn’t you? You lying rat bastard!”

Dr. Delph ignored the accusation. “I’m going after her—”

“The hell you are!”

He dragged his free hand down the side of his face and clenched his teeth. “I love her.”

“Fuuuck,” Selena groaned. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll have to drop the twins off at Ben’s.”

“There’s no time.” Dr. Delph glanced at the clock on his wall, trying to determine how much he’d already wasted. “If they reach the interstate, I’ll never find her.”

He hung up before Selena could protest further and picked his car keys out of the demolished remains of his nightstand drawer before heading out the side exit of the clinic and into the rain. The moon peeked out from behind a storm cloud, illuminating the sidewalk.

He ran toward the back parking lot where he kept the yellow Datsun. He hoped the little beater car would survive the trip down through the mountains. Not that he had any idea what he would do if he actually did catch up to Saunders. Would a trained cop notice if he followed him across the state?

One problem at a time.
He unlocked the Datsun and crawled in, turning the keys in the ignition and slamming the shifter into reverse before his door had even closed.

The little yellow car’s tires squealed as he tore out of the parking lot. He sped up Monroe Street and almost rolled the car as he turned off onto Fanfare Road. His headlights flickered across the interstate sign.

Seven miles.
He hoped he wasn’t too late.

Chapter Twenty-one

Lia could barely breathe around the lump in her throat. The musty smoke from Saunders’ cigarette only made it worse. He flicked his ashes through the gap above his rain-streaked window and grinned at the rearview mirror. No one was following them.

While Saunders hummed along with the radio as it blared out an Elvis tune, Lia peered through the dark woods pressing in on both sides of the road. Low branches stretched overhead, their thick leaves only giving an occasional glimpse of the full moon. The car’s headlights curled around a bend in the road, and the trees tapered off momentarily, exposing a steep ravine that spilled into more dark woods below. They were past it before the idea struck Lia.

Her eyes watered as she watched the road more intently after that, waiting for another break in the trees to present itself. If she timed it right, she could grab the steering wheel and jerk it from Saunders’ grasp, just long enough to send the car hurling down the side of the mountain.

There would be no coming back from a fall that severe. Lia was almost certain, but she knew that even if Saunders survived, he wouldn’t be able to explain her body in his vehicle, or the coincidence of Dr. Delph’s death, just a few miles away, involving a bullet from his gun.

Saunders’ humming stopped suddenly, and a gut-wrenching cough rattled up from his chest, spilling blood and mucus from his lips. Sweat dripped from his brow as he puffed to catch his breath, and he removed his bandaged hand from the wheel long enough to stretch his fingers, clenching and unclenching them a few times.

“She bit you,” Lia whispered, taking in Saunders’ symptoms with an alarmed expression. He turned his hard features on her. The brown of his eyes looked more yellow in the dark, and Lia prayed that she was just seeing things.

“Guess fumigation don’t exterminate everything.” Saunders wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, letting the bandage soak up his sweat. “I find a bullet works just fine though. No more mutts stinking up the apartment next door to yours. I can promise you that.”

Lia’s eyes darted back to the road in time to spy another curve coming up ahead. The trees broke apart and moonlight scatter across their path. Her pulse quickened and she felt sweat prickle along the back of her neck as she took a deep breath, preparing to make her move.

Saunders glanced down at the dash and reached for the temperature controls, cranking up the air conditioning to full blast. Just as his focus returned to the road, a pale figure stepped out of the moonlight, blocking their path.

“Sonofabitch!” He wrenched the wheel to the left and stomped on the brake pedal.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the car slid sideways, rising up on two wheels. Lia’s face smooshed against the window glass from the momentum, and as they passed the person standing in the road, she could have sworn she saw Daisy glaring down at her.

The image fled from her mind as the front end of the car smashed against the base of a tree and the airbags deployed, knocking the breath right out of her.

* * * * *

Lia groaned and pressed her fingers under her nose. They came away sticky with blood. Her shoulder ached where the seatbelt cut across her chest, and bits of glass scraped along her thighs as she squirmed in her seat. The smell of gasoline filled the car. It burned her throat as she struggled to free herself.

Saunders moaned beside her. She heard his door click open, but it didn’t move far. The front end of the sedan was caved in on his side, mangling the door hinges.

Adrenaline stabbed at Lia’s heart, and a survival instinct she was sure had died with Dr. Delph spurred her into action. She unlatched her seatbelt and threw her door open, feeling Saunders’ fingers graze her arm as she toppled out onto the blacktop road.

“You little bitch!” he screamed after her. She heard the snap of his gun holster come undone and quickly rolled onto her back, using her bare feet to slam the door shut.

A shot pierced through the door, leaving an indentation on the outside. The second bullet went all the way through, narrowly missing Lia as it pitted the road beside her head. She rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled toward the shoulder, veering away from the beam of the passenger side headlight. It had survived the collision, but only just. The car was totaled.

Gravel bit into Lia’s palms and knees as she found the edge of the road. The tree line was only a few feet away. She waited until she reached it before standing on shaky legs and disappearing into the shadow of the woods. Rain dripped from the leaves overhead, dotting her face and shoulders.

She heard the car door open, and Saunders swore as he climbed out of the passenger side. His gun went off again as he fired it into the darkness. Lia flinched, but she didn’t stop moving. The underbrush whipped against her exposed calves, and low-hanging branches snagged her hair and scratched her arms and face. She tripped over an exposed tangle of roots and her shoulder cracked against a tree trunk, burning as the bark scored her skin. She kept going, fumbling around more frantically as the darkness thickened, suffocating her in the humid foliage.

A twig snapped behind her, and Saunders’ voice echoed through the trees, his usual faux charm tinged with desperation. “Come on out now, girly. That was just a warning shot. If I really wanted you dead, you would be.”

Lia stood perfectly still and tried to calm her panicky breath before she hyperventilated.

“I swear to god,” Saunders shouted. “If you make me chase you down, I’ll take you straight back to Aldini’s, let them light up your brain with electricity until you’re vegetable. Is that what you want?”

Lia knew he’d kill her before turning her loose to anyone, even the depraved doctors at Aldini’s. But it didn’t stop her mind from spiraling into despair as she remembered her escape from the asylum. The woods pressing in around her were too familiar, like a time machine she couldn’t find her way out of.

On that night ten years ago, Lia had awakened to Dr. Godwin leaning over her bed, his wrinkled hand caressing her face.
Welcome back,
he’d said.
We almost lost you.
The strap across her forehead had prevented her from turning away, but the electric hum of her body made her limbs convulse violently. They’d been experimenting on her with various shock techniques, until her nerves were raw and twitchy.

The muscles in her arms had flexed of their own accord, expanding and shrinking with every pulse of her heart. And then suddenly, a seam along the strap restraining her right arm had popped, the leather stretching and tearing as she strained against it. Her hand had shot out and grabbed the nearest thing it could find—a fancy, metal ink pen attached to Dr. Godwin’s lab jacket. She jabbed it into his stomach, forcing it up under his ribs.

He’d been so shocked, he couldn’t even scream for help. By the time a nurse came to check on him, Lia had unbuckled the rest of her restraints and was waiting behind the door, a metal instrument tray held at the ready.

She’d knocked the nurse unconscious and ran through the darkened halls until she found an exit. A long trek through the surrounding woods finally deposited her out on a busy highway as the sun was rising. She was mid-vision when Saunders had arrived and stuffed her in the backseat of his patrol car.

She’d tried to barter with him, to exchange her visions for freedom. But somehow, the negotiations had not turned out the way she’d expected. The rest was history. Her pathetic, miserable history.

Lia gasped as light flickered through the trees, and she looked back toward the road in time to see Saunders’ silhouette against the glow coming from his wrecked car. He pointed a flashlight in her direction and then descended into the woods.

Lia turned and ran. She tromped through the trees with reckless hysteria, ignoring the sting of sharp rocks slicing up the pads of her feet and the itching burn of her skin as sweat and tears ran into her fresh cuts. A steep drop-off sent her tumbling down the side of a rocky bluff and into a shallow creek. Her hip bounced off a boulder, and she slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out loud.

The moonlight spilled through an opening in the canopy, sparkling over the bubbling water before it disappeared under the shadow of a downed tree wedged in the canyon at an odd angle. Daisy appeared suddenly, sitting precariously on the trunk. She dangled her feet over the water and watched Lia with vulturine eyes.

“The man with the gun is ill,” she said matter-of-factly. “But he’s still better suited for the night than you are.” She gave Lia a disgusted look that suggested she wasn’t happy about the situation. Then she levitated off the tree and floated closer. “Dr. Delph will be most distraught if you should die.”

Lia sniffled and the cold creek water sent a chill through her. “Dr. Delph is dead,” she whispered, straining to hear Saunders’ approach.

Daisy folded her arms. “If he was dead, I would have no reason to help you, now would I?”

Lia shook her head. The ghost girl just hadn’t seen him yet. She didn’t know what she was talking about. “You’re just a ghost. You can’t help me.”

“I will try my best,” she snapped. “It’s the only way back into the doctor’s good graces.”

“You’re just a ghost,” Lia repeated, her voice dropping to a hush for fear Saunders was looming nearby.

Daisy’s glow intensified and the black of her eyes deepened, spilling out into the veins that ran beneath her transparent flesh. “I am much more than some hollow apparition,” she whispered. “And I am your only chance of surviving this night.”