The Law of Nines

38

HURRY, ” ALEXSAID, avoiding looking at Jax in her half-naked condition. “Hoffmann is probably raising an alarm, getting together help. The last thing we need is to get trapped in here.”

“Yuri is due to show up, too,” Jax reminded him as she pulled her boots on. “Yuri is not someone to mess with. He’s not like these two in here were, or even Henry. He’s better than good with a knife.”

“Let’s see if we can get out of here before we have to worry about him.”

Jax was already moving before she finished pulling the black top over her head. Alex put a hand to the small of her back not only to guide her as she was frantically trying to finish dressing while they headed for the door, but to be ready if she faltered from exhaustion. He couldn’t imagine how she could even stand after having to strain up on her tiptoes all night just to get each breath. She had to be running on fumes.

“What happened to the nurse they were saying disappeared?” Jax asked as they both carefully peeked around the corner.

“I strangled her.”

“I expected something like that,” she said, still struggling to get her breath. “What I want to know is why they couldn’t find her body? How were you able to hide it in this place?”

Alex squatted beside the door that had been left open when the doctor had run out. He looked out into the well-lit bathroom and then under the row of stalls. It seemed to be clear. He turned back to Jax as she pulled her long blond hair out of the neck of the black top.

“I activated her lifeline.”

Jax froze. “You what?”

“I cut those symbols in her forehead, like I saw you do. When I finished, she vanished.”

Jax stared at him. “Alex, that was a complicated spell form. It has to be done precisely right.”

“Well, I guess I was precise enough. It worked. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I practiced for months before I was able to do it properly. Not only does it have to be drawn exactly right, but each part of it has to be added in the correct order, at the proper time. How could you remember it?”

Alex shrugged. “I remember visual things.” He winced a little as he leaned closer. “I didn’t do magic, did I?”

“No,” she said with a bit of a smile that put him at ease. “You merely activated a lifeline that was already there within her. It doesn’t take magic to do it, just the precise form to activate it.”

She looked back into the shower room at the four dead people sprawled on the tile floor. Blood was running toward the shower drains. “I think that maybe I ought to activate the lifelines of these people. I don’t think that we want the bodies left lying there to be discovered. It would be better for us if people wondered what happened, wondered where they were. Until word is sent here about their return we’d have the advantage of the others here in this world being in the dark about what happened.”

When she pulled her hair back from her face he saw that her hands were shaking. He didn’t know how much strength she had left.

Alex agreed with her but he feared they couldn’t spare the time. “I think it would be worse if we were to get trapped in here and have it start all over again.”

“Yes, but what if—” She paused and frowned. “Do you smell smoke?”

Alex realized that he did. “Yes. That can’t be good.”

He put an arm around her waist to help her as he started through the bathroom. At the outer door they squatted down again, pressing up tight against the wall to the side in case anyone burst through the door. With a finger, Alex slowly eased the door open a few inches. He carefully checked out into the hallway but could effectively look in only one direction: back toward the nurses’ station.

The partially opened door allowed a stronger smell of smoke into the bathroom.

“We’d better find out what’s going on. Are you ready?”

Jax nodded. “Which way are we going?”

Alex looked out again. He pointed with a thumb.

“Toward the nurses’ station. I want to know what’s burning. There are a lot of people locked in this place. Fire in here could end up being a disaster.

“Let’s stay to the side of the hall and stay low. If there’s anyone waiting in ambush, I don’t want to give them an opportunity to surround us.”

When Jax nodded, Alex took her hand to keep her close as he slipped out the door. Staying low, they moved quickly along the edge of the dimly lit corridor. He didn’t see anyone in either direction. The lights were on in the nurses’ station. He could see a gray haze of smoke beyond the glass windows. He wondered why the smoke alarm wasn’t going off.

Jax pulled him to a stop. She was breathing heavily. “I’m sorry. I need to rest a moment. I can hardly move my legs.”

Alex helped her sit and lean back against the wall. “I can’t believe that you can move at all, after what you’ve been through.”

She closed her eyes and worked at getting her breath. Besides the physical ordeal, she was still on a partial dose of the Thorazine meant to take the fight out of her. He had stopped taking his, but she was still far from clearheaded.

Alex pressed a hand to her shoulder. “Rest here a moment. I’m going to go take a peek into the nurses’ station. I want to know what’s going on.”

“No.” She seized his arm, holding on as if her life depended on it. “We need to stay together. I’m better now. Let’s go.”

She looked exhausted but he realized that in her drugged condition, in a strange place, in a strange world, she had to be terrified to be left alone, especially as weak as she was. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and hold her tight, protect her, and keep her safe. But they weren’t safe, not yet, anyway.

He realized that she was probably right, they should stay together. If anything happened, he didn’t know if she had enough strength left to defend herself. Although she never failed to amaze him.

“If you need to stop to get your breath just say so. All right?”

Jax nodded as she rose up into a crouch. They stayed low enough as they approached the nurses’ station to be under the bottom of the window. He could hear flames crackling on the other side of the door.

When he carefully rose up to get a glimpse, he didn’t see anyone at the counter inside. He tried different keys until he found the one that fit the lock. He turned the lock slowly, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Once he had the door unlocked, he again snuck a quick glimpse in the window. He still didn’t see anyone, so he opened the door and slipped inside. The smoke stung his eyes. He had to resist the urge to cough. They stayed low as they went in.

Alex peeked over the top of the counter and saw that way in the back the doctor was frantically throwing liquid on the fire already raging in the aisles between the files. An orderly pulled files off the shelves and threw them on the burning pile as the doctor doused them with yet more liquid.

Alex went back to the wall beside the door, out of sight of the two working to torch the place, and pulled the lever of the fire alarm. Nothing happened. He looked up at the sprinklers. They remained off. He snatched up the phone to dial 911. The line was dead.

Jax slipped in the door. Alex squatted down beside her.

“What’s going on?” she whispered. “What’s burning?”

“They’ve started a fire to destroy the files.” He kept his voice low even though the noise of the fire covered it. “The fire alarm doesn’t work and the phone is dead. They were obviously prepared to destroy the whole place to cover their tracks if anything ever went wrong. The doctor panicked and is implementing those procedures.”

They both rose up just enough to take a look over the counter. Alex could see that the fire was already burning strongly and spreading fast. It would be hard to put out.

He looked around and spotted a fire extinguisher on the wall, but he doubted it would be big enough. He was sure that the hospital had to have fire hoses. He didn’t know where they were, but assumed that they were in the back of the nurses’ station.

Alex knew that he had to put out the fire or the whole building would go up in flames. He tried to think of where there would be more extinguishers. There weren’t any out in the wards, because they couldn’t trust the patients. The extinguishers were heavy and could be used as weapons.

The doctor threw more of the flammable liquid on the burning mound of files on the floor until the bottle was empty. It appeared to be a bottle from the pharmacy, probably alcohol. The doctor pulled another from his pocket and threw it against the shelves. The bottle shattered against the steel shelving, spilling the liquid all down the files. Fire erupted up the side of the shelves, the flames roaring and crackling, lapping at the ceiling.

As he started to turn, Alex saw Jax on the floor. His first thought was that she had passed out from exhaustion. She tried to push herself up on her arms. It looked to be a struggle.

Realizing that something was wrong, Alex started to bend down to help her. Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a nurse behind him.

Almost at the same time as he saw the nurse, Alex felt a sharp stab in his left hip. With an icy flood of dread and alarm he instantly knew what she had done.

Almost at the same time, before he could react, a heavy office chair arced through the air, crashing into the nurse, sending her sprawling.

As Alex yanked the syringe from his backside he was shocked to see that it was his mother who had thrown the chair. She had thrown it just in the nick of time. The nurse had only started to push the plunger in before the chair had clobbered her. Alex had gotten some of the drug, but not nearly all of it.

His mother had just saved his life.

“The nurse hit her,” his mother said, pointing at Jax on the floor.

“Mom—”

An orderly loomed up out of the darkness behind her and threw an arm around her neck. As she screamed, Alex dove for the man. Even as he was still in midair he saw that it was too late.

His mother collapsed dead to the floor as he sailed over her, crashing into the orderly who had just broken her neck.

The man made the mistake of trying to catch Alex. He expected a fight. He wasn’t expecting a knife.

His eyes widened with surprise as the blade plunged deep into his lower abdomen. Alex gave it a mighty pull, slicing up until the blade hit ribs.

Alex shoved the suddenly stiff, gravely wounded man to the side and fell to his knees beside his mother. He stared in shock at her lifeless form for a moment, unable to think what to do. His mind went blank.

Jax appeared beside him. Her hand urged his face away. “There’s nothing you can do.”