Hellion_Asylum of Ash Read online

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “He walked me to my appointment this morning. Is that a new hiring practice? Or did he sneak in here under your noses?”

  Her eyes go unfocused as she works to remember who dropped me off at her office. I see the moment the memory comes to her, and she glares down at me with a hatred in her eyes the likes of which I’ve never seen. “There is no way a Counterfeit has infected our ranks.”

  Counterfeit? The word registers and then flits away. With the chemicals in my bloodstream, I’m having a hard enough time trying to understand the things I’m familiar with at the moment. “Tell me how you really feel about people who aren’t human. People like my friends,” I rasp, coughing.

  “And you, Gray.”

  She stalks toward the wall, hits a button, and speaks into a small intercom. “Get in here, now.”

  I raise my head up, doing my best to keep her in my sights. “What do you mean, and you.”

  “I mean you’re no different than the rest of them,” she says, returning to me to grab her clipboard. “You’ve spent the last two weeks telling me that you can see demons.”

  My mind is still hazy and I don’t take her point. “I can. That doesn’t mean…”

  “You know who can see demons, Gray? Other demons.”

  Flashes of the night I killed my father slice through the fog in my brain. Him inviting me to join him as he dined on Mrs. Mance’s corpse. The way he came at me. I’d thought it’d been aggressive, but maybe it had been… welcoming?

  “Your father, he told you that you had much to discuss, yes?” Kavanagh continues. “What did you think that meant?”

  “That he was going to tell me what he was, even though I could already see it…”

  She’s shaking her head, though, and I trail off. “You’ve been under the illusion that you’re special because you’re some sort of supernatural seer. You’re not. You’re supernatural, period. A demon. Just like your parents. Thank you for killing them, by the way,” she sniffs. “Saved us the trouble.”

  Three orderlies enter the room from a door at the back wall. She waves them over, handing one of them the clipboard. “Bring that upstairs.” He shuffles off as she gestures to another and says, “Get me the records of the recent hires.”

  “You’re lying,” I say, overwhelmed by the drugs and the pain and her words, which can’t be true.

  “No, the time for deceit is done,” Kavanagh says and turns to the last orderly. “Get me the syringe from the second drawer.” He moves to a metal cabinet and pulls a wicked needle from inside. “If what you say about a demon in Ash City Asylum is true, it’s time to wrap things up for good.”

  The orderly hands her a syringe with an opaque black liquid that I don’t like the looks of. She moves toward me, depressing the plunger so that a bit of the liquid spits from the needle. It hits the ground and I swear there is a hissing as it hits the tile.

  “This is going to hurt,” she says as she jams the needle into my thigh.

  I scream until I pass out.

  ***

  I wake to find Mad staring down at me, her brow furrowed with worry. Someone else is in the room, pacing, I think, but it’s dark, and with whatever’s still in my system I barely know my own name at this point.

  “Winter,” she whispers excitedly, and the pacing stops.

  Winter races to her side. “Goddamn, Grey, don’t make us worry like that again.”

  “It was a bad plan,” I say, and I hope they can understand me because I’m not sure if the words coming out of my mouth are the same as the words I tell my brain to use. I have to tell them… something. Something bad. I can’t remember…

  “What happened?” Mad says, and sits on the edge of my bed.

  “I think I did a bad thing.”

  “Yes, you definitely did. They don’t bring you back to your room in the shape you’re in if you’ve been a good girl,” Winter says, and starts to pace again. “I’d like to tear their throats out.”

  “I had my session with Kavanagh,” I say, slowly pulling myself up to sitting. “And I got sassy.”

  They chuckle at that, and the tension and worry in the room seems to break a bit. If I’m joking, I must be okay, right?

  “I took a page out of Ruby’s book and made a scene. I guess I thought that’d get me sent down to where she is, and maybe I could get to her somehow.”

  “And do what?” Winter says, throwing up her arms.

  “I told you it was a bad plan,” I say, and then I remember. “It’s worse. Oh, no, it’s worse than that.”

  “Jesus, Gray,” Mad says, running a hand over her face. “What did you do?”

  “I’m a demon,” I say.

  “You see demons,” Mad says.

  Winter nods, adding, “She’s just confused with all the shit still in her veins.”

  “I’m just like my parents. I killed them and I am them,” I say, my voice rising. “Kavanagh knew it and she didn’t tell me.”

  “She definitely knows I’m a vampire,” Winter says. “With Ruby’s attack the other night, that’s another one in the definitely supernatural category.”

  “And she knows about me, too,” Mad says miserably. “In my last session, they pushed me and pushed me and pushed me, and, uh, maybe a dead mouse suddenly jumped up in its cage and started trying to bite an orderly.”

  An orderly… “The orderly that took me to my appointment today was a demon,” I say.

  “What?” Mad exclaims.

  “I told her,” I say, the words coming out in a rush. “Kavanagh. I was upset and so hazy and I told her and she got really upset and now it’s all going to end. She hates us. I’ve never seen hate like that.”

  My mind is finally starting to clear, and with each passing second, I grow more certain that we are in real danger here.

  “I know that we were going to try and find an elegant way out of here. Really sit down and plan our big escape. But I’m not sure we have that kind of time anymore.”

  “Agreed,” Winter says, and Mad nods along with her.

  “Winter, you still have some of your vampy powers, yeah?” I ask. She nods, and I turn to Mad. “And you, apparently, can still manifest some of your mojo?”

  “Apparently,” Mad says, as surprised as anyone. “And I’ve been getting flashes of memory back, and I think I can do more than just reanimate dead things.”

  “Good. And my chip apparently doesn’t do shit,” I say, “because I could see that orderly was a demon as plain as day.” I lean forward. “Keep your heads down today, and Winter, meet us in here after evening bed checks. Tonight, we’re going to get Ruby and get the hell out of here.”

  9

  “What do you think we’re going to find when we get there?” Mad tosses the question over her shoulder as we creep down the darkened hallway toward the solitary confinement wing.

  “I think we’re going to find a tired wolf, and maybe more blood than you two are used to,” Winter says.

  I’m afraid that we’re going to find Ruby in much worse shape than that but I keep it to myself. This plan, if I can call it that, is already just this side of insane. Negativity is the last thing we need right now.

  Step one: get to solitary.

  Step two: find Ruby.

  Step three: somehow break her out of solitary.

  Step four: somehow break all of us out of Ash City Asylum.

  Admittedly not my finest or most well-thought-out plan.

  First, though, is step zero: dig these chips out of our arms. I’m certain now that when they discover we’ve escaped, they will try to kill us. An empty cell won’t mean a call to the police. It will be handled in-house, just like all of their torture. They keep track of us via the tiny computers in our arms. It’s time to deny them access.

  I move past Mad, spinning around and holding a finger to my lips. She and Winter stop, awaiting my next move. We’re at the door to the Infirmary. At this time of night, the only ones in here should be the sick and injured and maybe a n
ight nurse. If we’re quiet, we can pull this off.

  The knob is cold in my hand, and I turn it gently, so gently, and slowly push the door open.

  The lights have been dimmed to allow the patients to sleep. At the far end of the room, a lamp burns on the night nurse’s desk, but the chair is empty. A low, masculine humming comes from around a corner in the pharmacy portion of the infirmary, where they keep the pills and powders. The nurse is busy, for now.

  I move to the closest empty bed and slide the hanging curtain partition down to the foot of the bed to block us from view. The rings slide and clink in the runner, but nobody stirs, and the humming continues from the far end of the room.

  Winter moves to a small cabinet next to the bed and begins pulling out gauze and rubbing alcohol. Mad heads to a rolling cabinet and opens the top drawer. Scalpels, scissors, and all manner of terrifyingly sharp equipment lie nestled within. She pulls out a scalpel, its wicked blade gleaming in the meager light, and quickly sets it on the empty bed.

  Winter hands both of us a gauze pad soaked in alcohol, and we disinfect our wrists.

  She snatched up the scalpel. “We’ve all been through worse than this here,” she whispers “most of us in the last day or so.” With one last glance at us, she runs the edge of the blade along her skin.

  There is no blood.

  For a moment I’m confused. What kind of person doesn’t bleed? And then the realization hits: Winter is technically dead. Her heart doesn’t beat. Her blood doesn’t pump.

  She frowns as she works the blade inside the small cut and digs out the tiny chip. It slides out and drops to the floor with a clink. We all freeze, but the humming from the pharmacy is unbroken. We’re still safe.

  Mad stares at the wound on Winter’s wrist and digs her fingers into the thin comforter on the bed, seeming to need something to keep her grounded and keep her upright. For someone who’s magic deals with death, she’s surprisingly squeamish.

  I guess I’m going second.

  Winter wipes the blade with more alcohol-soaked gauze and hands me the scalpel, handle first. It’s thin and light, and yet I feel clumsy as I hold it. Swallowing back panic and a good bit of bile, and bite my lip and cut into my wrist. The steel stings as it slices and cold nausea rolls through me. Black dots swim at the edge of my vision and I shut my eyes and try to control my breathing.

  I’m going to faint.

  Cool flesh meets my own, and I open my eyes to find Winter gently pulling the scalpel from my grasp. She nods at me as if to say I got this, okay? I nod back and look away as she goes to work wiggling the chip from my wrist. I only venture a glance when I hear the small piece of metal hit the floor next to her own.

  There’s no way Mad can do this, and Winter knows it. She sets fresh gauze in front of me and turns to work on Mad’s wrist. Mad leans against the bed, grateful, and turns like I did.

  I’ve just finished wrapping my wrist, binding it with some white tape I found in the drawer, when I realize that the whistling from the pharmacy has stopped. It’s been replaced by the squeak of soles on the tile as the nurse makes his rounds.

  Mad’s chip hits the ground, and I toss her the gauze.

  “How do you feel?” I ask Winter.

  “Stronger,” she says, flexing her hand as the slice on her wrist stitches back together before my eyes. “I don’t think I realized how that chip was affecting me until it was gone.” Mad nods, mouthing the word same.

  The night nurse’s shadow grows larger on the curtain partition, lumpy and hulking. He’s mere seconds from finding us.

  “What do we do? Mad whispers.

  I glance toward the door out of here. It’s too far away, and out in the open. There’s no way we can get to it without being seen. Instinctively, Winter and Mad move to stand on either side of me. Side by side, we are a unified front.

  The footsteps stop just on the other side of the curtain.

  “I can kill him,” Winter says. “He probably deserves it.”

  “Just… wait,” I respond, and brace myself. “Get ready.”

  His shadow lengthens as he reaches out to pull the curtain back when a pained moan emanates from another one of the beds.

  The nurse hesitates, his fingers wrapped around the edge of the thin fabric, certainly about to rip it open and discover us, when a second, louder cry of pain startles us all. He drops the curtain and hurries back the way he came.

  “Go. Now,” I say, and we quickly creep toward the door, slipping out into the hallway undetected.

  ***

  Ruby is in the same room where we left her, but she is not the same monstrous nightmare that I had to lock behind the heavy metal door.

  She is human again. They have tied her down to a gurney, and she looks like she is in no shape to fight it. Dark smudges mar the skin under her eyes and bruises are beginning to blossom on her limbs. Her head lolls to the side as she sleeps fitfully.

  The blood is gone from the walls and the floor, as are the bodies of the doctor and orderly that Ruby killed. It’s as if it never happened. The relative normality of the scene, after seeing such horror, sets my teeth on edge.

  I pull back from the window that allows me a glance into Ruby’s room. “Does it strike you as odd, guys? Aside from the nurse in the infirmary, we haven’t seen any staff all night. Same thing as yesterday.”

  “Given what we know about what goes on around here, I’m guessing patient maintenance and care are at the bottom of their priority list,” Winter snarks. “Between the intermittent torture and study of supernatural creatures, I’m sure they don’t have much time to wander the halls. Just taking a stab in the dark here.”

  Mad nods. “I’ve been here for months, and the only time I see guards or orderlies are when I’m given my pills, taken to therapy if you can call it that, and being punished. This place is not normal.”

  “I don’t like it,” I say, worry fluttering in my stomach. It feels like this place is holding its breath, waiting for a domino to fall or a switch to flip, and when it does it’s going to be a shit storm of epic proportions.

  “So then let’s get the fuck out of here,“ Winter says, grabs the door handle, and pulls.

  It’s locked. Of course.

  “I’m strong, but I’m not strong enough to yank this door from its hinges,” she says.

  “I can do it,” Mad says, and I turn to find her staring at the door handle with an intensity that sends a shiver down my spine. “Not rip it open. Unlock it.”

  Winter must be unnerved by the look in Mad’s eyes too because rather than tossing out a sarcastic remark she steps out of Mad’s way to stand beside me.

  Mad places her hands on the door handle and closes her eyes.

  And we wait.

  Winter leans over and whispers into my ear. “I thought she could only do death magic?”

  A soft squeak and the scrape of metal on metal has us both looking back toward the door. The lock is glowing blue, and sweat beads on Mad’s forehead with the effort.

  “I think she can do a lot more than that,” I say, and jump as the bolt fully unlatches and the door swings open a fraction of an inch.

  Mad slumps down next to the open door, propping her back up against the wall. “I’ll get better at stuff,” she says, her voice weak, “I just need some practice.”

  “You did great,” I say. “Stay here. We’ll get her.”

  She nods and closes her eyes.

  Winter and I slip into the solitary confinement chamber and race to Ruby’s bedside.

  “Ruby?” I whisper as Winter and I begin undoing her restraints. “Ruby, get up. Come on.”

  She moans and stirs, but doesn’t wake.

  “They’ve given her something strong,” Winter says. “I can smell it, and it’s a nightmare. There’s no way she’s gonna wake up unless…”

  I move to undo the restraint at Ruby’s leg. “Unless what?”

  “Don’t get weird,” Winter says. Confused, I nod, and she bites into her wrist and
holds it to Ruby’s lips.

  “Atta girl,” Winter murmurs as the liquid slides down Ruby’s throat. One swallow of Winter’s blood and Ruby’s eyes shoot open as if she’s been shocked.

  “What in the ever-loving hell,” Ruby says, panting and wiping the crimson from her lips. She looks down at her stained sleeve, then up at Winter with disgusted recognition.

  “You’re welcome, wolf,” Winter says. “Now get up. We’re rescuing your ass.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” The hair on the back of my neck stands up as I slowly turn to face who spoke.

  Doctor Kavanagh stands framed in the doorway. In the hallway behind her, two orderlies have Mad propped up between them. She is gagged and her eyes are wide with fear.

  There’s a shuffling of footsteps behind us and I spin to see a dozen orderlies file in through a door in the back of the room.

  We’re surrounded.

  We’re trapped.

  “You all are proving to be more trouble than you’re worth,” Doctor Kavanagh continues. “We’ll have to do something about that, now won’t we?”

  10

  I’d like to say that we took out our captors one-by-one in a shocking display of combat skill and magic. That we left piles of unconscious orderlies in heaps and made Doctor Kavanagh beg for her life. I’d like to say we dragged Ruby to freedom.

  In reality, we put up a valiant fight. Not a good fight, but a fight nonetheless.

  Winter, strong without her chip, managed to fling a couple of guards across the room. One hit the cabinets with a force that must have broken his back and another slammed into a wall with a bone-crunching hit. I ducked and scrambled, managing to evade them but never really getting anywhere.

  And Mad. Poor Mad. With her hands restrained behind her, there was no way for her to focus her magic. She struggled against the two orderlies that held her, but as I was slammed to the ground, my hands tugged violently behind me and shackles put on my wrists, I watched one of them strike her in the back of the head with some sort of club.