“That seemed to work.” Daphne walked over and looked down at the body of the woman on the ground. No longer showing any sign of being Ridden, with no shadows around her to be seen, she was still faintly breathing, though the flames which limned her burned only faintly. “Still alive, too.”
“Well, maybe,” Izzie said as she came to stand beside her. “The loa chewed up a lot of her mind on the way out.”
“Now what?” Daphne said, looking over in her direction.
“Grab the security guard’s access card,” Izzie said, nodding in the direction of the unconscious man. While Daphne saw to the security guard, Izzie bent down and pulled the lanyard with the keycard from the woman’s neck, noting that it seemed to have been undamaged by the shotgun blast. Pocketing the keycard as she stood up, she glanced around the lobby. “We have to assume that they already know that we’re here by now. If the minds of the Ridden are linked, then taking this one out likely alerted the rest. But I’m not hearing any alarms, so it’s possible that we’re still under their radar.”
“So how do we find out where they’re holding Patrick?” Daphne said, slipping the security guard’s access card into the pocket of her hoodie.
Izzie walked over to the security desk. There was a monitor there which displayed live feeds from different parts of the building, but the coverage seemed limited. All she was seeing was hallways and open-plan cubicle farms as the display cycled through different camera feeds, and aside from a few cleaning staff and a handful of late night workers like the former Ridden laying on the floor beside them, there weren’t many people to be seen.
“We’ll have to search floor by floor,” Izzie answered, turning back toward Daphne.
“But if they do know we’re here,” Daphne said, glancing toward the bank of elevators, “then those might not be the best way up.”
Izzie nodded. “That’s what I was thinking, too. They could trap us between floors just by shutting down the cars from the control room.”
“I was hoping you’d have some genius reason why the elevators would be better than the stairs,” Daphne said, the flames around her winking a mischievous shade of pink. “But okay. Stairs, it is.”
Izzie glanced around, until she located the door to the stairway in the far corner.
“Come on,” she said, hefting the shotgun. “Let’s get climbing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As they ascended the stairs to the second floor, Izzie could feel the effects of the ilbal growing stronger. Her thoughts seemed to move in strange orbits, her mind making unexpected connections, everything seeming to take on a newfound significance. Was this what had sent Nicholas Fuller off the rails, spending too much time in this kind of state?
Glancing back at Daphne a few steps behind, Izzie could see that she was having much the same experience. It took Izzie a moment to realize that she was seeing Daphne have that same experience, interpreting the lights that flared around her.
“Did you feel nauseated by that Ridden?” Daphne asked, as Izzie approached the door that led to the second floor.
Izzie shook her head. It hadn’t occurred to her in the heat of the moment, but she hadn’t, at that.
“Maybe the ilbal is tweaking our perceptions in more ways than one,” Izzie said in a low voice, taking hold of the door handle with her left hand, her right hand tight on the grip of the shotgun. “The weird tastes and smells and the nausea might be our brains trying to process sensory input that is outside our normal range of perception. But with the ilbal, that stuff might be translated into the shadows we’re seeing, instead.”
“Maybe.” Daphne came to stand beside her, the stock of her shotgun at her shoulder. “But that means we won’t have that as an early warning sign, then.”
Izzie hadn’t considered that. They could perceive the Ridden, but they wouldn’t know that any were nearby without looking. Which meant that one could be on the other side of the door, but they wouldn’t know until they went through.
“Ready?” Izzie said, beginning to turn the handle.
“Go,” Daphne answered.
Izzie shouldered the door open as Daphne stepped forward, crouched low and aiming her shotgun through the gap.
A cleaning lady pushing a garbage can on wheels turned toward the sound of the music blaring from the boombox slung across Daphne’s back, and her eyes widened as she saw the barrel of the shotgun pointed at her. The flames around her spiked with panic and fear, but there were no shadows to be seen.
Daphne lunged forward and prodded the stun baton into the woman’s stomach, as gently as she could manage. The cleaning lady collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
“Clear,” Daphne said as Izzie slid past her down the corridor, her own shotgun aimed and ready.
Izzie could hear the sound of a doorknob rattling, and a door swung open a short distance up the hallway.
“Who’s playing that music?” An office worker in a Polo shirt and khakis stepped out through the open doorway, tendrils of shadows rising from his shoulders and head. He was looking around, a confused expression on his face. When his gaze turned to Izzie he paused, squinting, as if he was having trouble seeing her. Then the shadows spiked and throbbed as black blots sprouted all over his face and arms, and his mouth opened wide. “Ke-ke-ke-ke!”
Izzie shot him in the leg with a blast from the shotgun, and the shadows dissipated as the man collapsed onto the floor, eyes rolled up in his head, unconscious but still breathing.
“Clear,” Izzie said, as Daphne continued past her.
They continued down the hallway, until it opened onto a large room filled with cubicles made up of shoulder-height dividers. Judging by the computer terminals, banks of phones, and headsets, this was probably some kind of call center during working hours, though it seemed to be
