Deceptions (Cainsville 3)

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

As I struggled to my feet, I felt a familiar weight in my pocket. I reached in and touched my gun and switchblade. I patted my other pockets. Cell phone and tusk, right where I'd left them.

"Liv!" It was Ricky, shouting, his voice distant. "Olivia!"

At first, I thought I was in the grave, that I really had fallen in. But when I reached out, I touched only air. I pulled out my switchblade and flicked on the light.

I was inside the hospital. In a room I didn't recognize, one without windows.

"Liv!"

"I'm here!" I shouted. "In here!"

He kept calling my name, obviously unable to hear me. I took out my phone, speed-dialed his number, and got a "customer unavailable" message. I hung up. Tried again. Same thing.

I looked around. The sequence of events that had brought me from the graveyard to there should have been of some concern, but really, all that worried me was the possibility that I was still trapped in a vision, and only because that would mean it was futile to keep shouting and phoning. Yes, that's what my world was reduced to: zap from location A to location B, only wondering, Is it live or is it memory?

The fact that I was dressed as I had been, with my phone, suggested this was live.

I set about finding my way back to Ricky. I could hear him, and the building wasn't that big.

I walked into the next room, the one with creepy human-sized cribs for patients. Ricky and I had found Macy locked in one. I could even see our old footprints in the dust.

As I turned to the door, something scraped behind me. I glanced back. Fingers poked out from the crib slats. I froze. Swallowed. Stared at those fingers.

"Is someone there?"

A muffled response, as if from behind a gag. I walked over carefully, gun in hand. More fingers appeared between the slats. Then more. I stopped short and looked at the third hand. There w

asn't enough room in that crib for two people, not unless they were crushed together--

More fingers appeared, and more, and more, reaching through the slats, beckoning me, that muffled cry turning to grunts and squeaks and snarls, the fingers clawing, one hand slashing at another, catching it in the wrist, blood spurting--

I raced out of the room and leaned against the corridor wall, panting and rubbing my eyes, the cold gun stock knocking against my cheek. Then I peeked in again. No fingers. No blood. Just our old footprints.

"Liv!" Ricky's voice.

I shouted back, as loud as I could, but he just kept calling. I pulled up the map from memory and walked. Turn here and then here and I should be in the--

I was back in the room with the cribs. And one was rocking, back and forth, on its stand. Then a baby started to wail, and I could see it inside the crib, waving pale arms in the darkness.

I walked over, my feet moving as if of their own volition, and pulled the cover off the crib. It came away easily. Inside was a little girl, blond-haired and green-eyed, maybe almost a year, ready to crawl and walk, but lying on her back, waving her fists in the air, her cries howls now, enraged and frustrated howls, her face beet-red. There was a brace on her back.

"Shhh," whispered a voice somewhere beside me. "Daddy's here. Come on, sweetheart. Let's take you out of there."

I knew the voice. Todd.

"She gets so angry," he said.

"Do you blame her?" Pamela's voice. I turned, but they weren't there, only their voices.

"No." His voice broke on the word. "I keep hoping the brace will help--"

"It's not helping."

"God, why doesn't something work? All that medicine, and they can't fix her?"

"What if we could fix her?"