Queen of the Dead

Behind me, I heard the door open abruptly. Both Mina and the priest jumped. “What the hell are you doing?” a man’s voice demanded.

Yes! I was saved. I tried to crane around to see him but could only catch a glimpse of jeans and the cuff of a faded flannel shirt. “They kidnapped me,” I said, my voice croaking. “Call the police.”

“You’re going to have half the hospital down here, Mina,” he said, clearly irritated.

My heart fell. The man, my potential rescuer, was evidently part of Mina’s crew.

A second later, hands shoved rough fabric smelling heavily of bleach and laundry detergent into my mouth, pulling it tight and tying it off at the back of my head, catching some of my hair painfully in the process. Thematerial sucked all the moisture out of my mouth, and it tasted horrible.

“If you’re going to survive as a full member, your planning skills need improvement,” he said, sounding reproving.

I was only half-listening, focused more on trying to get the gag to loosen. He’d pulled it so tight I couldn’t even bite down on it. Not that I even had a chance in hell of chewing through it in hours, which was way more time than it would take for them to do what they were going to do.

“I would have had it,” she said plaintively. “I just needed a few more seconds.”

He made a sound of disgust, and she flinched a little. That caught my attention. Whoever this guy was, Mina was afraid of him.

“Get on with it,” he said. “Or do you need me to do that, too?”

She shook her head rapidly, her hair flying around her pinched white face.

With Mina’s guidance, the priest finished laying out the boxes and connecting the individual cords to one larger one that lay on the floor near an available wall outlet, and then Mina moved to stand at my side. She brought the disruptor closer, pressing it hard against my shoulder. The wires on the open end dug into my skin through the hospital gown.

I squirmed in my chair, but my lower half was still astonishingly uncooperative. There was no way I would be getting out of here under my own power, even if I could somehow get past the three of them. I screamed against the gag, but the muffled sound that emerged would never travel past the closed door. So…this was it.

My heart was beating a thousand times a minute, shaking me with it. I wondered if it hurt to be boxed, or if I just wouldn’t feel anything more. Tears trickled down my face to be absorbed by the fabric around my mouth.

Will. I wanted him here so badly. I mean, if this was it, then at least I wouldn’t be alone.

“Ready?” Mina asked.

The priest nodded anxiously, his face covered in a light sheen of sweat.

“It’s your show,” the man behind me said, sounding impatient.

She took a deep breath and pressed buttons on her device.

A faint blue glow emerged, and electricity ran through me, clamping my jaws shut and arching my back. The pain felt like fire over my whole body. Agonized whimpers escaped my mouth despite my best efforts.

Then the strangest sensation suffused me, a separating, one becoming two, like peeling the backing from a sticker or removing that layer of dead sunburned skin. I could feel myself, distinct once more, within Lily.

Mina skimmed her free hand over the surface of my arm. My actual arm, not Lily’s. Staring down at myself, I could see the ghostly — no pun intended — outline of my own body overlaid on Lily’s. I might have cried with relief except I knew this meant I was likely one step closer to those damn boxes on the floor.

I struggled to pull myself free of Lily’s body, but it heldme as securely as a mouse on one of those nasty glue traps my step-Mothra had insisted on using in the garage at their house.

“Get ready, or you’re going to lose it,” the man behind me said, but he made no move to help her. “It’s going to fight you.”

It? Oh, hell no. And you bet your life I was going to fight.

Mina nodded, but didn’t look up. Her hand hovered above my wrist, just barely making contact, and the next time I lurched upward in an attempt to free myself, her fingers closed around my arm.

I watched in astonishment as she set her feet on the floor, bracing herself, and began to tug at me with one hand — none too gently, I might add — while using the other to keep the end of the disruptor pressed against the shoulder where Lily and I were still joined.

In a few seconds, she’d pulled me out from the waist up. I could see my white shirt with the treadmark again, and my long blond hair brushed against my cheek. I was almost free! It felt strange after so many hours as Lily.

“Look, it was an accident,” I said quickly, twisting my wrist in Mina’s grasp, trying to break free. “I’m out now. I promise I’m not going back in. Trust me.” I was sweaty with panic. I couldn’t run. I was still merged with Lily’s body from the waist down,

“Transition, Mina. Switch over, or you’re going to lose it,” the man ordered.

Behind me, I sensed movement and looked to see Lily slumping against the side of her chair. Oh, God. I flashed back to the memory of Mrs. Turner holding me/Lily against her shoulder. She would be destroyed to see her daughter like this. My heart ached for the girl who would never wake up to see the flowers her father had brought her, the way her mother took care of her, and even her brother returning something to her that he knew she would want.

The priest was staring at Lily and looked sickened. “Is this normal?” he asked. The priest had a point. Lily didn’t look good, and I didn’t think it wasn’t just the absence of vitality and movement. Actually, she seemed worse than before. She was paler, her skin grayer.

The man in the flannel shirt shook his head grimly. I could see more of him now. He had wiry dark hair that looked like it would be curly if he let it grow. His face was hard with deep lines carved in his forehead and on either side of his mouth, like he worked outside or had lots of stress. “They must have bonded. If the entity is embedded long enough, the host becomes dependent on the entity’s energy. And the entity—”

Everyone shifted their gazes to me.

“—becomes dependent on the host, feeding on the electrical energy provided by the body. It’s a cycle.”

I looked down at myself and saw that my arms were disappearing. I gasped. They weren’t flickering, not like all the times before, just slowly vanishing like they’d never been there. And I didn’t feel a thing.

Behind me, Lily began gasping for air, a horrible thick sound. She was dying, I was disappearing, and it was all my fault.

“Hurry up,” he snapped at Mina. “The possession drained it. If it disappears now, it’ll be gone for good. The Order wants a chance to study it first,” the flannel-shirt guy said.

Study me? Why? For how long? Would I be caged up or in pieces? My throat closed with fear. I wanted to struggle, but I had no means for it. I couldn’t even push myself away.

Mina fumbled with the disruptor, moving it up to my neck. “I’m working on it,” she snapped to the guy behind me, who seemed to be a boss of some kind. “Can you just let me do this?”

She bent down and plugged the giant cord into the wall. Instantly, the boxes on the floor began to glow with a sickly yellow light that spilled out of a thin crack along the tops. Then the tops began to retract, and that awful parody of the white light began to seep out toward me, like long creepy fingers reaching.

I screamed, but no one even flinched.

In the midst of this chaos, the door burst open once more. As one, everyone, except Lily, turned to look.

As if my desperation had summoned him like a homing beacon, Will Killian stood in the doorway, out of breath, normally pale cheeks flushed with color.

The guy in flannel smiled. “Will,” he said, sounding pleased. “What are you doing—”

Will ignored him. “Stop,” he shouted at Mina. “Turn it off.” He rushed forward and shoved at her, knocking her hand away from me, sending the disruptor flying across the room toward the priest.

But it was too late. I could feel the light from those boxes pulling me in, each one a slightly different sensation. Some prickly like pins, some hot like the blistering heat rising from fresh asphalt, all painful. It was sectioning me into pieces.

In that second, everything slowed down, becoming very quiet and clear.

I could let the boxes take me in and pull me apart, and the Order would study me, whatever hellish ordeal that might involve.

I could just let myself go. Just be gone. It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Being nothing would be nothing…