Shudder Page 9

  “Should we... should we have saved it?” Boone’s voice was tiny and a little afraid. “What if they don’t open the door?”

  “Saved it?” I said. “You don’t mean...?”

  “Wouldn’t have made any difference,” said Jason. “Drinking urine is like drinking salt water.”

  I gagged at the thought of it. It didn’t help that the room smelled like one of those portables they set up at outdoor concerts. “What are they doing to us? Are they trying to kill us? You can’t live without water for more than a few days, can you?”

  “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” said Boone. “I know we’re tough to kill. But can we die of thirst?”

  No one had an answer.

  “It’s only been a day,” I said. “They’re trying to scare us. They don’t want us dead.”

  “They need us for something,” said Jason.

  “Right,” said Boone. “Right.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

  Moments passed.

  “It’s just,” Boone spoke up again, “what if we can’t die from thirst? What if it’s just like what happened when Jason got shocked? We go through the whole process of dying and then... we heal and wake up? They could do it to us forever.”

  I whimpered a little.

  “It can’t work like that,” said Jason. “We can heal, but our bodies still need sustenance. How could we heal without water? Human bodies have to have water.”

  “So, you think they could kill us?” I said, unable to keep the horror out of my voice.

  “No,” said Jason. “I...”

  * * *

  I was surprised that I fell asleep as quickly as I did, but I felt very tired, even though I hadn’t done anything but sit in the room all day. My sleep was filled with restless dreams. I was running after a man in black clothes. He had a bottle of water. I caught up with him and tackled him, but every time I did, he wasn’t holding the water anymore. Instead, the water bottle was a gun.

  I woke up in darkness, but I was extremely hot. Sweat was pouring out of my forehead, and making my jumpsuit cling to me. I was desperately thirsty, so thirsty that I wiped my hand on my forehead and put my fingers in my mouth, sucking at the salty liquid.

  My tongue felt thick and furry in my mouth. I was tired. So tired. But I was hot.

  “Why is it so hot?” I muttered, feeling cranky and annoyed.

  Boone’s voice in the darkness. “This is what they do when they want to get me out of my wing and go find Grace. They’ve turned up the heat in here.”

  “Why?”

  “To make us suffer,” said Jason. I heard the sound of the door knob being rattled again. Jason’s voice was hoarse. “Still locked. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “We can’t,” I said.

  I heard the sound of something heavy being dragged against the carpet. “Help me with the exercise equipment,” Jason gasped. “Maybe we can throw it at the door. Break it down.”

  I got to my feet, but I fell back down again right away. I was dizzy and lightheaded. My stomach clenched on itself, but there was nothing inside it. “Can’t,” I said.

  “You can .”

  “Take it slow,” said Boone. He was hoarse too.

  I tried to stand up again. The waves of dizziness and nausea hit me again, but they seemed a little more manageable this time. I stumbled over to where Jason was, and I did my best to help move the exercise bike.

  But it made us sweatier and hotter. We managed to scoot it a few feet.

  Boone said, “There’s no way we can lift this.”

  Jason heaved on the bike, only inching it forward. “Fuck!”

  Then, abruptly, the heat kicked off and deliciously cool air began to seep into the room. I collapsed on the floor. Before I knew it, I was asleep again.

  * * *

  The breakfast bell woke me up in the morning. I tried to sit up, but it was an effort just to open my eyes. The lights were on again, and I could see. Jason was lying on the floor next to me. His face was pale, and his lips were dry and cracked.

  Boone was propped up against the door. He was whispering.

  At first I thought he was talking to himself, but then I heard Grace’s voice on the other side of the door. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know,” said Boone. He wasn’t holding up his neck. His head lolled on his shoulders, and he stared up at the ceiling.

  “You have to be okay,” said Grace. “If something happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “We’re...” Boone didn’t finish.

  “I would bring you food if I could. But I can’t get anything under the door.”

  “We’re thirsty,” said Boone. “Maybe if you got water. You could pour it in. There’s a crack.”

  I sat up. The thought of water made me frantic. “Get water, Grace,” I said.

  “I can try,” said Grace. “I’ll be right back.”

  Jason was up too. We crawled over to the door and waited.

  In a few minutes, we heard Grace’s voice again. “I’m here. I have a water glass. But you want me to just pour it under the door?”

  “Yes!” I said.

  “Please,” said Boone.

  We were flat on the ground, our faces pressed against the floor, looking at the tiny crack under the door, waiting for it. Needing it.

  “Pour the water, Grace,” said Jason.

  A trickle of water appeared under the door. We all leaped for it, our tongues out.

  And jumped back a second later.

  Grace shrieked.

  A jolt of electricity had just gone through me. It was like the time I’d accidentally touched an electrified fence, a tingling, painful sensation.

  “They shocked me,” said Grace. “But I’m trying agai—” She broke off, screaming.

  “Grace?” said Boone, his voice panicked.

  She didn’t respond.

  Boone banged on the door, but he was thrown backwards. He jerked spastically on his back. “Door’s electrified,” he gasped.

  “Bastards,” said Jason. He rubbed his forehead. His hand was shaking.

  “I’m okay,” Grace said. Her voice was tremulous. “I spilled all the water, though. I’ll get more.”

  “No,” said Boone. “They won’t let you. Don’t try again.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Just leave us alone, okay? They’ll go worse on you if you’re helping us.”

  “What are they doing to you?” She was edging on hysterical. “Let them out!” she yelled. “Let them out. You’re killing them!”

  “They won’t kill us,” said Jason.

  They wouldn’t. Would they?

  * * *

  Jason grabbed me by the chin. “Your scar,” he said. He sounded raw. His voice was a harsh whisper.

  “My scar?” I could barely talk either.

  “It’s coming back.”

  I felt for it on my forehead. It was there again. I shook my head. “Why?”

  He pushed up his sleeves, looking for his own scars, but his skin was smooth and perfect still. “Mine aren’t coming back. Why are yours?”

  “I don’t know.” I couldn’t think about it. The second day in the room had to be almost over, didn’t it? It felt like we’d been in here for an eternity. The air was rank, both with the smells of our waste and with the stink of rancid sweat. I was having a hard time staying awake. Several times today, I’d dozed. Everything seemed strange and a little unreal. “Does it matter?”

  “It might,” said Jason. He turned to Boone. “Do you have any scars?”

  Boone was lying on the floor on his side. His skin was starting to take on a sort of grayish look. He hadn’t moved in a while. “No.”

  “None?” said Jason. “Never?”

  “No,” said Boone.

  “What the hell?” Jason turned back to me. “What is going on here?” He ran his finger over my scar. His touch felt dry and fluttery, like tissue paper or insect wings. “Maybe we aren’t like them, baby. Maybe this whole
thing is a mistake.”

  I didn’t respond. I wanted to go back to sleep.

  I dreamed about being the Witch of the OF, the heady feeling of having thousands of minds and bodies at my beck and call, about being all powerful, the world subject to my whim. I dreamed of blood and death, of the smell of discharged firearms, of Jason’s face and Jason’s lips. Of how it all seemed to whirl up together—sex and blood and death and pleasure and power.

  And when I woke up, I had no power whatsoever. I was helpless and trapped.

  So I went back to sleep again.

  They made it hot again that night, but I didn’t sweat. There wasn’t anything to sweat out. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t have the energy to move. I stayed where I was. I dreamed again. I could escape in my dreams, and that was all I wanted. To be free.

  * * *

  I could hear Jude outside the door. “How’s Azazel?”

  “We’re all kinds of fucked, thanks for caring.” Jason. I couldn’t believe he could still talk. I wasn’t going to move. I was going to lie here.

  “Listen, this is important,” said Jude. “Is she any worse than the two of you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jason.

  “I can’t say more.” Jude was whispering. “They’re watching. Is she worse or not?”

  “Maybe,” said Jason.

  * * *

  I was waking up again. I didn’t want to be awake. If I stayed asleep, I could pretend none of this was happening. I could be somewhere else. Anywhere else. I was supposed to be somewhere else anyway, wasn’t I? Hadn’t I been dying in the hospital? I thought I remembered something like that. I thought I remembered a grassy hill, a screen in front of me, pictures of people I loved. I was supposed to die.

  I opened my eyes. My head was in Jason’s lap. He was bending down over me, and his face was contorted like he was crying, but there were no tears. He was shaking me. “Wake up,” he rasped. “Azazel, wake up.”

  “I’m awake,” I said. I tried to say. It didn’t make any noise when I moved my lips. And it hurt. My lips cracked at the movement.

  He bent his forehead down against mine. “Stay awake, baby. Stay with me.”

  “Tired,” I tried to say.

  His fluttery fingers were moving over my face. “Stay with me. Stay with me.”

  I tried to keep my eyes open. I couldn’t.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Water was splashing all over me. It was going in my mouth, and it tasted so good. I opened my mouth.

  It stopped.

  “Zaza?”

  I opened my eyes. I was lying on the floor of the gym. Jude had me in his arms. He had an empty cup in one hand, but there were a few drops of water in it. I grabbed for the cup eagerly, but I was clumsy. I couldn’t make my hands work properly.

  “You’re alive,” said Jude.

  “Water,” I croaked.

  “I’ll get more,” he said, dropping me to scramble to his feet.

  He was back in seconds, helping me sit up to drink. I gulped at the water. I’d never tasted anything so good in my life.

  “Not so fast,” said Jude. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

  “Jason,” I said.

  “Grace is helping him,” said Jude, helping me upright. Jason and Boone were sitting up, on the other side of the room. They were holding cups on their own.

  Jude cast a glance up at the broken cameras in the gym. “Listen,” he said in a soft and urgent voice, “this is important. I need to know everything that happened before you got here. How did you heal?”

  I couldn’t possibly make my brain work well enough to tell him all of that. I shook my head.

  “Write it down,” said Jude. “Write it down in one of the books and give it back to me. Write down everything .”

  Emma was standing in the doorway to the gym, hugging herself. “I told you not to cause trouble. I told you.”

  When we left the room, the door to the gym locked behind us, and it didn’t open again. They hadn’t killed us after all. But I wasn’t about to try breaking any more cameras.

  * * *

  I was lying in Jason’s arms in our room. He traced my scar with one finger, staring down into my eyes. I’d been lying down for over a day now. No one would let me get up, even though I was feeling much better. Jason and Boone didn’t seem to be nearly as bad off as I was, and I didn’t know why.

  Right then, I had to admit that I was glad to be close to Jason, just the two of us.

  And the cameras that were watching our every move.

  “You scared me,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  He kissed my forehead. “I wouldn’t be able to handle living without you.”

  I burrowed close. “Sure, you would. You’d be sad for a while, but then you’d eventually move on, and you’d meet some nice lady with red hair—”

  “This is not funny,” he said. “The last time I was away from you—”

  I put my fingers against his lips. “I’m fine. We don’t have to talk about this.”

  He tightened his arms around me. “You have no idea how much you mean to me. How much I love you.”

  “I love you too.” I snuggled into the crook between his shoulder and his chest. There was never enough of this for us. No matter what happened, we were always rushing from one danger to the next. We were always on the run. Someone was always out to get us. I always wanted more moments like this, where we got to relax and be close.

  He shut his eyes. I did too. We lay that way, and I could feel the steadiness of his breathing as his chest rose and fell. It was so intimate, so reassuring. I was wrapped up in Jason, and that was my favorite place to be.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said.

  And then he ruined it. Of course we had to get away. But I wanted more time to just be close like this before everything got crazy again. “Can’t we just pretend that we don’t for a little while?”

  He lifted his head. “What?”

  “I like this,” I said. “I like cuddling. There’s never enough cuddling, Jason.”

  He smiled. “We’ll cuddle for three weeks straight once we’re free of this place.”

  “Will we? Will we really?” Somehow, I kind of doubted it.

  “I promise,” he said. “We’ll find someplace private, just the two of us, and we won’t get out of bed for days.”

  “Mmm.” I kissed him. “That sounds good.”

  “But I want you all to myself,” he said. He looked up at the cameras. “I’m sick of sharing you with them.”

  “I’m yours,” I breathed.

  And he kissed me again. Soft and slow, and I felt safe in his arms, protected and small. But there was a tinge of fire behind the kiss, the way there always was with Jason. Something urgent and passionate. Excitement. Danger. Need.

  Was there any way that we could actually just spend our lives cuddling, or was there something about the two of us that demanded we be moving and fighting all the time?

  “You could have died,” he murmured.

  “But I didn’t.”

  He sat up, dislodging me. “But you could have.” He made fists. “I won’t let them get away with that. No one hurts you, Azazel. No one.”

  I looked into his fierce eyes, and I believed it all the way to my bones. “No one hurts you either,” I said, managing to find my own fiery anger somewhere deep down.

  * * *

  I didn’t remember what Jude had asked me to do until later, when I’d finally gotten so bored that I decided to read something. There wasn’t anything but books left to entertain ourselves with. They’d taken the television and DVDs when they repaired all the cameras. Apparently, they’d figured out that Boone and I had been planning something when we turned up the volume really loud, and they didn’t want to deal with a situation like that again.

  When I looked at the books Jude had given me, I remembered that he’d asked me to write it all down. So, I did.

  I was pretty surreptitious abo
ut it, because I didn’t want them to have any idea what I was doing. I pretended to be reading and making notes, which meant that my story sprawled through the margins, with notes at the end of each few sentences, telling Jude what page number to go to next.

  It took a long time, even though there wasn’t really much to say. Still, I put it all down, from waking up thinking that someone had put a needle with Jason’s blood in my arm to being taken away and being told we were going to a specialist.

  I wasn’t sure why I did it. I wasn’t sure why Jude wanted to know. He’d been here a long time, maybe longer than any of us. Maybe he knew something we didn’t. He was trying to tell me something with the books he’d given me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. What did Greek gods and Nephilim have to do with this place? What did they have to do with anything?

  I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

  When I was finished writing everything down, I figured it would be suspicious if I went and gave the book back to Jude right away, so I looked at the other books he had given me instead.

  There was one about Hindu mythology. What was up with the mythological kick already? It had some underlined passages about something called amrit, which was basically the same thing as ambrosia, apparently. It was something that the gods drank that made them immortal. I could see how all these things connected to each other, but I couldn’t see how they were connected to us.

  The last book was called Vampires in Folklore . That confused me even more. I didn’t understand what vampires had to do with anything. I was beginning to feel like I’d fallen into a bunch of very bad teenage romance books. Angels and vampires? What was next? Werewolves?

  But Jude hadn’t given me any other books, so I could only assume that werewolves were off the table. Of course, maybe he’d give me some other book tomorrow that would be all about shapeshifters or something. It wasn’t that I didn’t know for a fact that there was more to the world than I might have previously thought, that the extraordinary was possible.

  But I didn’t believe in ancient gods. Even the Sons, who’d placed an inordinate amount of interest in mythological stories when it came to predicting the path of Jason and me had thought of the stories as guidelines, not fact.