Page 63 of Kick the Candle (Knight Games 2)
"What's coming?" I asked. "Julie didn't give me any specifics."
He glanced up from his work readying a table of supplies. "Female. Near drowning."
"Drowning?" There wasn't a natural body of water inside Carlton City limits and the indoor pools were sticklers about safety. A drowning this time of year was highly unusual.
"Red Grove Lake."
"Red Grove Lake. My Red Grove? What the heck is anyone doing out there this time of year?" Aside from being frozen solid, Red Grove Lake was miles behind Rick's place at the heart of Monk's forest. The only access was by foot through unmarked footpaths. I wouldn't even know about the lake if not for Rick. He'd taken me back there a few weeks ago to show me where a rare form of holly grew.
"Not sure."
"Well, who found her?"
"Not sure."
"Jay! What do you know about this patient?"
"She was crazy enough to almost drown in a frozen lake in the middle of nowhere on the Friday after Thanksgiving."
The automatic doors flew open and a familiar paramedic rolled a woman in on a stretcher. "Unidentified female, abandoned at a Fuel Up station on the edge of town. Attendant was told by the man who dropped her off she was found crawling out of Red Grove Lake. We tried to get her cooking for you, but she's still below temp and unconscious. Heart's pumping but her breathing is erratic."
I took over her ventilation bag while Jay checked her vitals. Pulse was thready, and she was still cold as ice. She looked to be around forty with wavy brown hair and a round but muscular build that gave her a sturdy appearance. She'd been wrapped in a blanket with heat packs tucked in her armpits and groin.
"Grateful, warmed IV," Dr. Anderson ordered. "Jay, forced air blanket. Hopefully we can get her breathing on her own again." Dr. Anderson took over the bag and began assessing her airway, talking to the patient in an attempt to elicit a response.
I went to work. In a flash, I'd found a suitable vein, high on her shoulder, near her core. I ran the tips of my gloved fingers over the raised blue swell, and pierced her skin with a large gauge needle. The warm fluids began to flow.
"Come on." Dr. Anderson said, removing the bag and shaking her shoulder. "Ma'am! Breathe."
The gasp the woman gave relieved us all.
Her lids flipped open, and she fixed me with a blood-tinged stare. "You!" the woman yelled. "Where is it?"
"Welcome back, miss," Dr. Anderson said, patting her shoulder. "You're in the emergency room at St. Johns. You've had an accident."
The woman refused to look at him, but her eyes drilled into me, through me. I had an impulse to reach for Nightshade but, of course, my blade wasn't on my back.
Overriding my panic impulse, I forced my voice to respond in a gentle, even tone. "Just relax. You're going to be fine." I patted her shoulder.
"Not fine," she rasped. A hand shot out from under the blanket and grabbed my wrist, pulling me toward her. Before I could register what she was doing, a pillar of water exploded from her mouth, drenching me in icy cold vomit.
I jolted backwards, the witchy part of me going all five-alarm tingly. Either this woman was possessed or someone had released a can of bees up my spine. Her voice echoed, a deep baritone hiss, and the smell of wet vermin filled my nostrils.
"You can't hide the book forever. We know you have it."
"What?" I whispered.
Dr. Anderson shot me a beware-the-crazy-patient look, and helped me pry her fingers from my arm. "What's your name?" he asked.
The woman laughed, low and cruel. "I have a message for you, Hecate. The book is as good as ours. You can either cooperate or be eliminated."
With a confused glance in my direction, Dr. Anderson piped up. "Your name, ma'am? We need to know who you are. Can we call someone for you?"
She rolled her head on the table, finally training her eyes on the doctor. A wicked cackle turned into a rattling cough. I watched a dark mist escape her lips, waft to the ceiling, and disappear into the nearest vent. Shit! Instantly, the woman seized on the table and the steady tone of a flat-lined heart monitor filled the room. I started CPR. Jay grabbed the paddles and we defibrillated the woman. But she never regained consciousness.
I didn't have to ask if Jay or Dr. Anderson had seen the mist; they couldn't see the supernatural and that wasn't indigestion oozing out from between her lips. The buzz of my power pressed against my skin. I itched to have Nightshade in my hand.
As soon as the woman's body was processed, I took a moment in the break room and consulted my Book of Light app. Yep. I'd seen this baddy before in a past life. The vaporous demon was called a Nightmare or Cauchemar. Usually, the black mist was relatively harmless. At night, the demons only became corporeal in the presence of a sleeping human. Named for their habit of weighing down people's chests while they slept, they fed on the resulting fear. As terrorizing as they could be, in their natural form they couldn't actually hurt anyone. The person affected would simply wake up and the nightmare would disappear. Obviously, this one had graduated to more sinister pursuits. Possession was a serious metaphysical felony and something the creature couldn't accomplish on its own. It would take a witch or other magical creature to facilitate the possession. I owed this thing judgment and prison time, along with whatever entity had enabled it. Worse, the grim vapor was asking about the book, which meant it was probably working with Julius and targeting me.
