Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ A Touch of Death ❯ Chapter 10

WARNINGS AND DISCLAIMERS: These are all fictional characters and any similarities to anyone living or dead is completely incidental. And anyway, I'm not making any money off of this.

 

This is my NanoWriMo piece, which I managed to turn out in half the time allotted. If you don't know what Nano is, check out www.nanowrimo.org for information and a chance at a really good time.

 

The hospital hallways passed by her like a dream, some part of her registering the spirits loitering and the constant patter of Erec's voice behind her.

“Calm down,” he was saying for the five hundredth time. “Just take a few deep breaths.”

“Don't be an idiot,” Lathe said darkly.

“You're right,” Erec said as he shook his head. “She doesn't breathe.”

Kathryn didn't hear them. It was a dull buzz wandering around somewhere in her mind. She looked around, her eyes desperate and then finally landing on one of the nurse's stations. She shoved forward to the counter, barely registering it as she slid through both the living and a few disgruntled ghosts.

“Where am I?” she demanded, her voice bordering on hysterical. “Tell me where.”

“They can't hear you,” Lathe said gently.

She shrugged off the comforting hand he rested on her shoulder and spun to Erec. It killed her to do it, but she had to rely on him. She had to ask him for something and it made her jaw clench and stomach roil with acid.

“Find out,” she ordered sharply. “Ask them where my body is.”

Erec stared at her for a moment, something off in his look, but then he pulled out that smile she recognized so easily and leaned against the counter. Dark bruises were running down one side of his face and his breathing was still a little ragged, but that didn't seem to matter as he winked at one of the passing nurses.

“Excuse me,” he said silkily. “I'm looking for the room of a friend.”

“Sure,” the nurse said and smiled with a slow pass of the eyes up over Erec. “What's your friend's name?”

“Kathryn,” Erec said. “Kathryn McKarthers. She was in accident a couple of days ago.”

The nurse's face twisted and one hand shot out to rest on Erec's forearm.

“Oh, yes,” the nurse said gently. “Of course. You're a friend of hers. I'm so glad someone's come to see her. She's been all alone since they brought her in.”

Kathryn was anxiously pacing back and forth, her head shaking as she chewed at one thumb nail.

“Just find out where I am,” she snapped.

“No one's come to see her?” Erec asked with a little hurt.

“No,” the nurse said. “Not a one.”

“Then I'm lucky to be the first,” Erec said and leaned against the counter. “So when's your shift over?”

“YOU ASS!” Kathryn screamed in his ear.

Erec flinched sharply and then gave the nurse a cautious smile as he rubbed at his ear.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just a trick ear. Which room did you say she was in?”

“Five-oh-eight,” the nurse answered and leaned forward to lightly breathe in Erec's ear. “And nine o'clock.”

“Thanks,” Erec said. “For everything.”

Kathryn took off down the hall, her hands shooting out as she uselessly tried to shove her way through the churning masses of people and spirits that filled the hospital's hallways. A few angry shouts slammed after her and Kathryn shook her head.

“Get out of the way!” she screamed. “I'm still alive! I'm alive!”

“Poor deluded girl,” an old ghost muttered as he shuffled past and gave Erec a wary smile. “Just give her time.”

“This is a bad idea,” Lathe said dully.

The halls split apart for him, the spirits falling to a soft hush as he walked past them, all whispering and then cowering away from him. His features twitched behind the dark fabric hiding his face and his fingers itched with something like madness. None of these ghosts deserved the wrath that he dealt out everyday, but they still were afraid of him. They were all afraid of him.

“What exactly do you want me to do?” Erec asked boredly. “Let's just see where this is going.”

Lathe paused and glanced over with a small frown.

“You're acting strange,” Lathe said.

Erec chuckled and glanced over at the other man.

“I was beaten up by a pack of phantoms pretending to be me,” he said. “That has an effect even on me.”

Lathe's eyes narrowed and for some reason he felt closer to drawing the scythe than he had for a long time.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

He waited, but Erec didn't say anything. Lathe's fingers itched again.

“Here,” Kathryn breathed down the hall.

She was standing outside of a private room, her arms hanging limp at her side and eyes distantly peering through the thin window streaked with fingerprints and mesh wiring. The hallway seemed to fall away from her, everything now centered completely on the pale body resting inside.

“Oh,” she breathed.

Lathe and Erec stood behind her, Erec staring down the hall and Lathe silently watching Kathryn. She was leaning forward now, still not touching the door, but bare inches from falling through it. Her mouth was moving silently and Lathe tried to catch the words, but the hallway wasn't silent for him. He could still hear the quiet murmur of the other ghosts, growing louder now as his attention drifted away from them.

“Well?” Erec said finally, his boredom practically making the word attack them both. “Are you going inside or what?”

Kathryn's hands flexed into fists and her eyes remained locked inside the room.

“Open the door,” she said quietly.

“You can--”

“Just do it,” she snapped.

Erec sighed dramatically, but held the door open for her as she quickly darted inside. Lathe followed with one glance at Erec's blank face, and then the door was closing behind them. Now this room really was silent, and it was the kind of silence that went beyond what the mind could conjure. This was more than just people being quiet, this was more than a graveyard at night, this was a place where life itself was laying in perfect silence.

The dull beep of the monitors and the whoosh of the ventilator connected to the body's mouth were feeble against that vast all consuming quiet. It washed through the room in waves and seemed to run up and down their skin as they stared at the sleeping figure. Kathryn's breath slowly ran out of her lungs and she found herself `breathing' in time with the dull whoosh thump of the machine pumping next to her.

“I'm alive,” she murmured.

She turned again, though it was painfully obvious that it was almost impossible for her to look away from her body, and stared at Erec.

“How do I get back inside?” she asked.

Erec shrugged a little and slumped down into one of the prepared visitor chairs.

“There are a couple of ways,” he said absently.

“Then tell me what they are,” she hissed at him.

Erec's lips thinned and he shook his head.

“Shouldn't you be thinking about this at all?” Erec asked.

Kathryn stared at him in disbelief and Erec sighed again.

“Look, even if you go back to your body, the phantoms have you marked now. Living just means that you can't see them before they come after you.”

Kathryn face molded into a snarl of rage and she shook as she fought to keep from lunging at him.

“I don't care,” she said lowly. “You lied to me. You told me I was dead.”

Her head jerked back to her body and one hand slid up to run over her throat. A tube was taped in place against the comatose body's cheek and slithered unseen down to keep life pumping in and out of the lungs. An IV drip pulsed in one arm and Kathryn shook her head.

“I felt it,” she whispered. “When they did it, I felt it. I was still alive, and you knew it. You knew what I was feeling.”

“It was in your best interest,” Erec said.

Kathryn's head lifted and Erec stared back at her, his face completely empty.

“We didn't know why they'd attacked you, we didn't know why they wanted you dead, this way I could keep an eye on you,” Erec said.

He sighed and his eyes drifted away from her.

“Is it really that much of a loss?” he asked quietly. “You heard the nurse. You were in a tragic accident and the only person who's come to see you is someone you met when you thought you were dead. What does that say about your life?”

“Get out,” Kathryn breathed.

Erec glanced back at her again and shrugged.

“I'll come back when you've had time to think,” he said.

Kathryn wanted to tell him not to come back at all, but he was the only one who knew how to get her back into her body. She bit down on the screaming threats that wanted to leave her and closed her eyes. She had to focus now, but when the time came, when she was back in her body, she was going to ruin him. She'd see to that one way or another.

Lathe shifted absently on his feet and Kathryn turned a little to look at him from the corner of her eye.

“You can do it, right? Give me corporeal form?”

“Yes,” Lathe said quietly.

Kathryn nodded, her teeth tugging at her lip for a moment as she stared down at her body.

“Please do it,” she asked softly.

The air tingled over her skin and then she reached out and pressed her palm against her own cheek. She could feel it, the warmth of her skin, the softness of her skin. One thumb strummed down over her pulse and she could feel the sluggish beat of her heart as the monitors kept it measured and controlled.

“It's going to hurt when I go back, isn't it?” she whispered.

“Your body took a lot of damage,” Lathe said.

“You knew about this,” she said.

It wasn't a question, it was just a knowing statement. Lathe looked away as she lightly petted through limp hair and petted across delicately closed eyes. It felt wrong to watch, like he was seeing something too personal.

“Yes,” he said. “Erec told me.”

“What happened?” she asked. “I was dead.”

“No,” Lathe said. “Not for very long at least. When the soul gets pushed out of a body, it can put everything into a kind of…stasis. It's not surprising that they thought you were dead, that you thought you were dead. The EMT's found your pulse and then they brought you back to the hospital. You've been here since then.”

“I was alive the whole time,” Kathryn said. “And no one told me.”

“Cinna's…” Lathe paused and closed his eyes a moment. “He has his reasons. He really thought that you was protecting you.”

“By keeping me dead?” Kathryn snapped.

Lathe stared at her and she frowned a little as his eyes locked coolly with hers.

“By keeping you alive,” Lathe said quietly.

 

***

 

Ms. Anderson sighed and lightly tapped her pen against the desk as she stared at the clock. They should be back by now. Her eyes wandered to Erec's office door and another long sigh escaped her. Something about all this was making her uncomfortable. Her expression darkened with annoyance and she shook her head.

What about this wasn't supposed to be making her uncomfortable?

She'd let a client into Erec's office earlier that morning, a strange man who had waited quietly and had politely and vacantly smiled as he passed through. She hadn't taken a close look at him, for some reason she hadn't felt the need to really look at him. Something had filtered over her brain and she just couldn't remember him. And then Lathe had come back, that spirit in tow, and they'd opened the door and…

Ms. Anderson winced and slumped back into her seat. And then she had no idea how to explain just what had been happening inside the modern office.

Two Erec Cinna's, one beaten and bloodied and the other staring as cold as a madman out at them. Her fingers paused over the keys and she stared down at them. She shouldn't be working here. She should have listened to her mother and taken that job with that nice entomologist who had been looking for a secretary. She wondered if he'd ever managed to fill the position. Maybe she should call and check.

Ms. Anderson, first name (which Cinna always wondered about) Rebecca, had been working in various fields of the occult for the last fifteen years. She'd been about to get out, to quit making appointments for backwards wizards and stupid looking Goth pretenders when she'd gotten the call from Erec Cinna. And anyone who knew anything about the occult world would have jumped at the chance. She'd more warily shuffled forward, but either way the end result was the same.

The office was closed now, a little sign placed on the door of the discreet building, several fists noisily slamming into the glass or angry curses reaching inside the office as people noticed it. Ms. Anderson sighed and looked over the little waiting room. It was always a little frightening to be here when it was empty and quiet like this. Her frown shifted down a little more.

And Rose Marie still hadn't made an appearance.

“I should probably look for her,” Ms. Anderson said and another of those perfect martyr sighs escaped her.

It was easy enough to check the waiting room. The place was made so that everyone seated or standing in it could be easily seen. Like the man from that morning. She should have known something was odd about him. After he came, one by one all the others made excuses to leave. Usually, she had to practically throw them out of the door at closing time if they hadn't managed to see Cinna. But something in the room had shifted and while it had left her vaguely distracted and unable to focus on little details like the client's face, it seemed that it had some much more drastic effects on the other people in the room.

A flash of Erec on the floor ran through her mind, his eyes weirdly shifting around, unfocused and dark, not looking like himself at all, and she had to pause a moment to shake her head.

“He was under stress,” she murmured to herself. “That's all.”

She opened the door to his office, her face automatically falling into that sharply disapproving look that he so often earned for himself. An empty room stared back at her. She couldn't help it when she hesitated again. Just because his office looked empty didn't mean that it was. She forced herself to focus, a skill that had always been weak before she'd started working here, but Erec Cinna had needled her and subtly mocked her until she developed it enough to snap it into place at will. She scanned the office now through eyes that were looking too hard at everything else and still found herself alone. It was a relief that was shattered apart at the quiet scratching behind the door.

Ms. Anderson prided herself on her ability to accept things. She was working in a field that relied largely on faith after all, so it required a sort of perfect belief to not go insane. But there was one thing that she just couldn't get used to, and that was Erec's office door.

He'd explained once that it had a few spells attached to the wood, but he hadn't been overly explanative about just which ones. Ms. Anderson had her suspicions, but she wasn't going to ask. There were times when it was just better not to know.

She shut the door behind her and carefully regarded the wood. Sometimes Rose Marie would just stare at the door for hours, her eyes even more distant than usual and mouth working around silent words. Ms. Anderson remembered the way the girl had remained stock still with a coffee tray balanced in her fingers, apparently distracted from whatever she was supposed to be doing by something happening in the wood. Ms. Anderson did not question what Rose Marie did, it was too easy to teeter on the brink of the girl's insanity.

One hand slid out to run over the wood, the door smooth and cool against her palm and not reeking of anything so fantastic as magic. It just felt like any other door. Ms. Anderson supposed that was part of whatever it was that was buried down in the spells. It wouldn't help anyone if the whole world could look at it and know it was a magical door.

Turn the handle to the left and the door opened back out to the waiting room and the mundane little desk were Ms. Anderson sat. Turn it half way to the right and it opened to a blackness that Ms. Anderson couldn't stand to look at. She'd only seen it once and it had been enough for her to decide that she was never going to open the door like that again. Turn it completely to the right, and the door opened back into the office itself. She remembered when Erec had insisted she do it, that she look into each of the places that the door led to, and she remembered the weird confusion that had run over her.

If there'd been another her standing in the doorway, she could have written it off as simply some kind of mirror spell. If there had been something different about the office on the other side she could have assumed it was just a connection to somewhere else in the building that she hadn't noticed before. But the office was a perfect mirror of everything behind her and her head had jerked back and forth looking between the two enough for her to know. Erec explained it was the After world, and she'd should probably keep in mind exactly what that meant.

Ms. Anderson's fingers wrapped around the knob now. It was impossible not to know about Erec Cinna's dealings with the dead, especially considering how inept the man was at handling the most everyday tasks. That was where she came in. She oversaw all the contracts (not writing them, he did that part flawlessly, but making sure that none of them were misplaced or vanished outside of the office) and kept the date books with every odd instance that he insisted had happened. If anyone who knew nothing about the dead ever managed to find that record book, she was going to come off as royally insane.

The door handle was warming up in her hand now, the metal taking on that softly comfortable feel that it always got when it was happily imbued with the warmth of skin.

“Oh, I can't believe I'm doing this,” she murmured.

She'd start with After world, and if there was no one there, she'd find Erec's vodka, have a stiff shot, and then take on the weird flexing shadow. She turned the knob completely to the right and tugged.

“Oh,” Ms. Anderson breathed again.

Rose Marie was crouched on the floor, Erec Cinna's head resting in her lap as he noisily breathed through a pair of split lips. His eyes were closed, but as she watched one rolled open and sloppily locked on her.

“Barrier,” he muttered and closed his eye again.

Ms. Anderson's eyes shot down to the floor and she saw a strange circle around them, drawn apparently in blood. Her gaze shot to Cinna's hands, and she saw the long thick cut stained over one palm. Whatever he'd put a wall up against, it was something strong enough that he felt the need to make a blood seal with his own blood.

She spun around, Rose Marie watching her with dull eyes as the secretary slammed around through the office. She finally found the bottle of liquor, her fingers fumbling with it a little before she flew back to the door.

“Don't come in,” Rose Marie said.

Ms. Anderson froze and stared at the girl, Rose Marie still looking at her with that completely blank expression.

“You don't belong in here,” Rose Marie said.

Erec's eye rolled open again and blearily managed to lock on Ms. Anderson.

“She's right,” he slurred. “God help me I can't believe I'm saying this, but just throw it.”

Ms. Anderson's lips thinned and she raised the bottle up over her head.

“Serves you right,” she said sternly and flung the vodka through the air.

It crashed against the marble flooring in front of her, a perfect strike on the weakly drawn circle of blood. The blood flared a moment, as if hissing in anger, but the damage had been done. It always amused Ms. Anderson a little. A blood barrier was supposed to be so powerful, a magic drawn on the very force of someone's life, but wipe even an inch away and it was just a crudely drawn mess. The vodka smeared it over the floor and then Rose Marie leaned forward and used one of her sleeves to fully break the circle. The barrier crackled apart and Erec sighed.

“I don't know if I can stand up,” he said weakly.

“What happened?” Ms. Anderson asked and then shook her head. “More importantly, if you're here…”

 

***

 

Kathryn stared down at herself, her fingers still absently wandering over her face and touching across her skin. It felt strange, because she could almost imagine that she felt the feather light touches on her own face. She frowned a little; maybe she did.

“Would you ask him to come back in, please?” she murmured softly.

“Yes,” Lathe said and his lips tightened. “You're going to lose your form when I step outside. I can keep it going for the room, but not out in the hall.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

The door opened and closed and Kathryn waited, her hands now hanging uselessly at her sides. It would drive her insane if she reached out now and watched her hands pass through her own body. She could remember it happening at the crash scene, the way that she had tried so desperately to find out what was happening, and everything had just passed right through her. She shivered and tried not to hear the sound of the car hitting her over the steady beep of the monitors. She was alive, it was better to focus on that.

“Kathryn?” Erec said softly.

She didn't turn to look at him.

“Put me back in my body,” she said, her voice level and dead.

She heard him sigh behind her and the full whompf of one of the chairs as he dropped gracelessly into it.

“Kathryn, going back into your body really will just leave you at the mercy of the phantoms. They aren't going to just forget about you. You're a loose end and they'll want you taken care of.”

“I'm not dead,” Kathryn said. “I don't deserve this.”

“Most people don't think they deserve what happens to them,” Erec said. “It just the way the world is set up.”

“Put me back in my body,” she repeated.

The chair squeaked as he got back up and slowly moved to stand behind her. She couldn't feel him, but she could sense him there, standing just close enough to almost touch her, just near enough to almost pass through her. She stared down at her body and she knew he was doing the same thing.

“You're going to die some time,” he said lowly.

“Forty six years is a long some time,” she answered.

“For you, I guess it is,” Erec said. “Close your eyes for this.”

“What are you going to do?” she murmured as her eyes obediently dropped closed.

“Put you back in your body,” he answered. “I just have to kill your spirit form, and you'll return.”

She tensed and one of his hands somehow managed to rest against the small of her back.

“Just let me,” he whispered.

 

***

 

“They went to the hospital?” Erec grunted as he yanked on a jacket.

“Yes,” Ms. Anderson said. “Kathryn just…took off. Lathe went after her and you, or it, or…he followed them.”

“So Lathe's with her,” Erec muttered and winced as a sharp frown sent a shock of pain through his face. “She might have a chance then.”

“What exactly happened?” Ms. Anderson asked as she shoved Erec's fingers out of the way and began to button the coat for him.

Erec shook his head tiredly.

“If I knew, I'd tell you.”

 

***

 

“Just keep your eyes closed,” Erec breathed in her ear.

She wanted to ask if it would hurt, she wanted to know if there was going to be pain, but she couldn't make her mouth move, because in all honesty, she didn't want to know. Instead, she swallowed and tried to stay calm as his hand swiped soothingly up and down her back.

“Shhh,” he murmured.

The first pin prick of pain against her consciousness made her grimace and clutch her hands into fists. It bloomed across the back of her neck, fanning out over her skin like fire teasing against it. She swallowed and gasped as another dart slammed into her spine, lower now, and ripping into her with razor sharp teeth.

“It hurts,” she bit out.

“Don't fight,” Erec whispered. “Just don't fight.”

She cried out as something stabbed into her lower back, digging and snarling through her skin as she struggled to stay on her feet. Her head lolled backwards, eyes opening now as she stared up at the ceiling. It hurt, it hurt, oh God it hurt.

“Just let it happen…”

Erec's words slithered into her ear and she shuddered at something inside of them. This was wrong. Something about this was so wrong. She shook her head desperately.

“Stop,” she moaned. “Stop it.”

“Shhh,” he hissed again.

Kathryn forced her eyes open again, she wanted to cry out now, to scream for some kind of help, but her mouth just hung limply open as more of the excruciating pain was jammed over her senses.

“It'll be over soon,” Erec murmured.

And the words sounded more like a well satisfied threat than anything else. Her eyes uselessly struggled over the ceiling, bright spots now dancing across her vision as she stared up at the florescent light overhead. It hurt. The light flickered suddenly, a barely there change, just a slight difference in the timber of its buzz, and then something dark was moving across her vision.

The scythe was silent, Lathe had worked long and hard to see that it was, but he still hadn't managed to rip the cold that followed in its strike away. So it was numb all consuming ice that covered Kathryn as Erec let out an aborted yell of pain and rage and released her. She staggered through her own body, dizzily trying to pretend it hadn't happened as she crashed to the floor. She turned weakly onto her back and stared up, Lathe now backing Erec into one of the other corners, his eyes narrowed and dangerous.

“I knew it,” Lathe said quietly.

“Tsk,” Erec answered with a dark smile. “If you'd known it, you wouldn't have pulled that hit. You would have cut me in half.”

Kathryn pushed herself up from the floor a little, the complete lack of any sensation now welcome as the pain became nothing but a dull memory. She stood up, and now she could see the strange misting darkness that was bleeding out from Erec, phantom blood coming from the wound Lathe had made.

“Who are you?” Lathe asked lowly.

“I already told you. Erec Cinna.”

“That's a lie.”

The dark thing smiled lowly, his lips curling with coldness and madness and everything that ran between.

“No, it's not,” he said quietly, the smirk growing darker. “And that's why you're so afraid.”

 

***

 

“No one's looking,” Rose Marie said dully.

Erec's eyes shot to her and then to the cab driver boredly steering them through the streets. The bruises had been a convenient excuse to keep the cab driver from asking why they were going to the hospital, but the steady throbbing pain was beginning to annoy Erec. And he didn't need anything distracting him while he tried to think.

He turned a little in his seat, his face tucked down out of sight a little now as he rubbed his hands roughly over his skin. It was like the marks had just been painted on; they disappeared now as he wiped them away. Beneath his heavy coat, bones knitted and repositioned and his whole body fixed itself completely. There were some perks to being Erec Cinna, though they seemed to be few and far between lately.

“You didn't have to come,” he murmured to Rose Marie. “You should have stayed in After world. I could have put up another barrier for you.”

“No,” Rose Marie said, her fingers restlessly running over the car door. “They won't know you without me.”

Erec's lips thinned and he slumped back in the thick fake leather a little. She was right. If the other was still running around with his face on, then Rose Marie was probably the only sure way he had of making them recognize that he was in fact Erec Cinna. He sighed almost bitterly. No longer the one and only.

Things were getting out of hand. He shouldn't have ignored this problem for so long. Hell, he shouldn't have pretended to be completely oblivious about it. If he'd told Lathe what was happening, they probably could have taken care of all this before the phantoms became strong enough to block their movements from him. But he was tired and he didn't want to be responsible for them anymore. He sighed again, but this time it was an exhausted suffering sound.

He just wanted to be Erec Cinna.

 

***

 

“You're so pathetic,” the phantom said as he stared at Lathe with a face that was fast crumbling into shadow and smoke. “Look at you. Don't you care about your bloodline? Where's your pride?”

“That's none of your business,” Lathe growled, the sound dangerously quiet and deadly. “What I do with my life is none of your concern.”

“Yes it is, oh might prince of the underworld,” the shadow thing hissed. “You forget who I am.”

“You are not him!” Lathe yelled angrily.

“Yes, I am,” the phantom answered and some of the smug satisfaction slid back into his voice. “Did you think he could bring all that he was here with him? Did you think the world wouldn't crack if he poured his complete self here? Only bits and pieces could come, only shards of the king could filter out from the throne. He had to leave some things behind.”

Lathe's face was slowly shifting, realization working over his features as he stared at the other man.

“Oh yes,” the dark thing continued triumphantly. “He knew what we were from the beginning, he knew just what it was we were doing and he didn't tell you. He's developed a streak of fascination with this game we've played and he didn't want it to be over.”

Shadowy fingers flexed and the dark clouds around the shifting form pulsed and swayed in the touch of unseen winds.

“But it will be soon, he cannot win. We have life, more than him now, we've taken the last of what we needed while you watched over this one pathetic soul. We're ready to consume now, and Hell will have its king again.”

The thing's head, now almost completely insubstantial, threw back and mad laughter escaped it.

“Let the chaos return to the underworld.”

It exploded then, fanning out through every inch of the room like smoking death. Kathryn cried out and threw one arm up to protect herself, something acidic and dangerous curdling in her throat and eyes as it burned over her.

“Don't worry,” something breathed in her ear. “We'll still see to you.”

 

***

 

Erec threw some money at the cab driver and sprang out before the man could mention his miraculous recovery. Rose Marie was close behind him, her odd absent minded shuffle somehow managing to keep up with the quick steps that led him inside. He looked around, his lips narrowing as he tried to concentrate.

“Dammit,” he muttered.

That was the problem with hospitals. There was always too much spiritual interference here. The ghosts just seemed to love hanging around here, as if they felt it was expected of them to hover around bodies and doctors and mourning people. Erec personally believed he'd prefer a nice jazz place or something with a non-anti-septic atmosphere, but he tried to ignore thoughts about his death when they came up. Like it was ever really going to happen.

He pulled on a quick smile and sidled up to one of the nurse's stations.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I'm looking for someone.”

The nurse staring at him blinked and then pulled on a rather seductive smile.

“I told you, nine o'clock,” the nurse said and dropped him a quick wink. “Or did you already miss me?”

Erec blinked in confusion and then his head jerked a little as Rose Marie tugged at his sleeve.

“You've already been here,” Rose Marie said.

That flat statement was enough to make Erec's jaw tense with an unspoken curse. His eyes snapped back to the nurse.

“What else did you tell me?”

 

***

 

Erec sprinted down the hallway, the spirits not bothering to scatter as he burst through them. There were a few annoyed shouts after him, but most disappeared into confused babbles as Rose Marie absently passed. She was talking to them, a constant stream of words running through her mouth that she couldn't seem to stop. She sighed softly and followed.

Erec slammed into the door and wrenched it open, his eyes darting around the room and then widening as a well known black scythe pinched against his throat. Lathe was staring at him with narrowed eyes, the dark fabric seemingly stained now with the very essence of the phantoms. It was disappearing even as Erec watched, but he knew that the feel of it wouldn't be pleasant.

“Rose Marie,” Erec called cautiously.

The girl moved further down the hall and pushed past Erec to step into the room, one hand absently knocking the scythe away.

“It's him,” she said flatly and sat down at Kathryn's bedside.

Rose Marie's head cocked to one side and she stared at the body kept alive in front of her.

“She'd still live without all this,” Rose Marie said. “At least for a while.”

Kathryn was in one corner, her knees pulled up close to her body and head buried down in her arms. She hated this, and she'd give anything for it to be over, but just what was she supposed to do?

“Are you alright?” Erec asked Lathe lowly.

Lathe nodded and then his shoulders slumped tiredly.

“He was supposed to put Kathryn back in her body. That's why we came.”

Erec's mouth thinned and he looked at the frail ghost now huddled in the corner.

“It's not time for that yet,” Rose Marie said blankly. “It wouldn't be right.”

“Rose Marie,” Erec said with a chuckle. “When have I ever been overly concerned about doing the right thing?”

“I'm not going back.”

The soft timbre of her voice fell through the room like a skeleton's fingers running down stone. All eyes snapped to her, but she still wasn't looking at them.

“Not yet,” she said in a voice muffled through her own body. “I'm not going to walk away from this. I'm not going to trust you.”

Erec glanced at Lathe with confusion and the man in black shook his head.

“She knows,” Lathe said. “Who you are.”

Erec sighed and his eyes glided to Kathryn as she slowly lifted her head. She stared at him through dark eyes, something in her either dying or hardening itself to the world.

“Say it,” she whispered. “Someone just say who he is.”

The room crackled with the silence that followed. Rose Marie's hand slid out to pet over one of Kathryn's pale palms, the skin soft and warm beneath her fingers. She sighed musically and then leaned forward to whisper in the body's ear, the words loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Erec is the devil.”