"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 gla.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed 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."
ALEX KNELT BESIDE HIS MOTHER"S BODY, in shock that she was dead. As Jax turned his face away from the terrible sight, he looked up into her sad eyes, eyes that seemed to understand all he was feeling, to sympathize with the long, dark journey that had started when she first showed up in his life.
Seeing bright red blood matting the right side of her blond hair brought Alex abruptly to his senses.
He reached out, putting a finger to the side of her chin, turning her head a little so that he could take a look.
"I"m sure that it looks worse than it is," she said. "It stunned me for a moment, that"s all."
It wasn"t bleeding heavily, and her eyes weren"t dilated. She didn"t look disoriented or confused. He wasn"t an expert, but it looked to him that she wasn"t badly hurt. The ordeal of hanging in the shower was much more of a continuing worry.
Alex knew that he couldn"t sit there mourning his mother or they would die, too. His mother had just saved his life. He couldn"t let that sacrifice be for nothing.
He had to fight against the dulling effect of the drugs that he"d gotten from the syringe. It was only a portion of the dose that had been in the vial, but it was enough that he could feel it slowing his thinking. He had to force himself to focus, to move, to act.
The immediate problem returned with clarity. It was night. Patients were asleep. He had to alert all the people in the hospital or they would likely end up trapped in a burning building.
The man on the floor not far away lay on his side, both arms across his abdomen, holding the grievous wound closed.
"Please," the man moaned, "help me."
Alex ignored him, stood up, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the fire extinguisher off the wall. As he did, Jax straddled the nurse who had blindsided her and tried to inject Alex with whatever was in the syringe. Before the woman came to, Jax sliced the artery on each side of her neck so she would quickly bleed to death.
Jax flipped the woman over and swiftly cut symbols in her forehead. When the woman vanished, Jax looked up at him.
"I guess that answers that. There seem to be a lot of people from my world working here."
He wondered how deeply the tentacles from another world reached into his. There was no time to consider the problem, though. Fire extinguisher in hand, he headed for the blaze.
Alex yanked the pin out of the extinguisher as he rounded the corner and raced toward the shelves. He knew that if he was to have a chance to knock down the fire he would have to act quickly. He doubted that one extinguisher would be enough, but one was all he had at the moment.
He pointed the nozzle and squeezed the lever. Nothing happened. The extinguisher was dead. It was a sickening, helpless feeling to be facing leaping flames with a dead extinguisher.
When he looked up he came face-to-face with Dr. Hoffmann.
The doctor held his hands out, urging Alex to stop and listen. "Alex . . . you don"t understand."
Alex gritted his teeth and rammed the bottom of the extinguisher squarely into the man"s face. Grunting in shock, the doctor put his hands over his face as he staggered back. Blood in his eyes blinded him and ran out between his fingers. One arm waved blindly, trying to find something for support. He stumbled and fell backward into the pile of burning files.
An alcohol bottle in his pocket broke when he hit the side of the shelving. His pants, soaked with the alcohol, burst into flames. As he scrambled to his feet, fire ascended his white coat with a whoosh. The roaring orange flames engulfed his face. His screams went up an octave.
The orderly who had been working at pulling down the files heard the screams and came running from behind the next row of shelves, where he had been working to burn files. Alex swung the extinguisher. Even over the sound of the fire, he could hear the clear ring of steel on bone as the heavy extinguisher caved in the side of the orderly"s skull.
Jax seized his arm and pulled him back. "Alex! Hurry! We have to get the people out of here or they"ll all burn to death."
"Wait. Maybe there"s a fire hose and I can put it out."
Without waiting for her to answer, he ran around the outside of the shelves, making his way toward the back. The growing flames leaped and lapped at the ceiling. He found the hose on the wall near the stairway.
He yanked the hose off the wall and spun the wheel to turn on the water. No water came out. He spun the wheel until it came to the stop at the limit of its travel. No water. They had shut down the fire hoses along with the sprinklers.
Growling in anger, Alex ran back to find Jax kneeling beside his mother, closing her eyes. She looked up at him.
"I"m sorry, Alex. I wish we didn"t have to leave her."
He nodded as he took her by the hand. "I know. Come on, we need to open the fire-escape doors and get people out of here or they"ll be trapped."
Alex left the door leading to the men"s side closed for the moment in the hope that it would keep the fire from spreading. Together, they ran into the darkened corridor of the women"s wing.
"Wake the people in every room. Tell them there"s a fire and they have to get out. I"ll go unlock the fire-escape door. Send them down there."
Jax nodded and turned in to the first room as he continued on. He screamed "Fire!" at the top of his lungs, hoping that it would wake at least some of the women. It did. By the time he got to the door he could see women in nightgowns emerging from their rooms to see what the shouting was about.
Alex worked frantically at the door, finally found the right key, and got the door unlocked. He threw it open and waved his arms, signaling to the women farther back up the hall.
"Come on! Fire! Everyone out!"
A few of the women started down the hall, but more simply stood staring. Jax came out of a room, pushing two women. She gathered up others along the way, shoving them, urging them to hurry.
Alex started going into rooms on the opposite side of the corridor from Jax, pulling women out of bed and herding them toward the fire escape. In short order they had most of the women moving out of the fire-escape door.
Alex took Jax by the arm. "Come on, we need to get the men"s wing opened."
"I don"t think we have all the women out. Some ran from me and hid."
Alex could see the flames leaping out toward the counter in the nurses" station. "There are nine floors in this building. We don"t have time to do more than what we"ve done. We need to keep moving and get as many people out as we can. I"m hoping that as we go down to the other floors, where the people aren"t as mentally ill or as heavily sedated, we can get some of them to help us. But we"re running out of time."
Alex unlocked the fire-escape door at the end of the corridor on the men"s side as Jax started rousing the male patients. All the while he screamed, "Fire!"
When the two of them had ushered the men out onto the fire escape, telling them to go down to the ground where they would be safe, Alex and Jax turned back in to the heart of the building. The fire, already racing through the ceiling, had jumped over the walls of the nurses" station into the wards on both sides.
Gritty black smoke billowed along the ceiling. As they ran toward the center of the building, Alex could see bright yellow and orange tongues of flame licking out through the greasy black smoke. Paint on the walls bubbled and crackled and curled.
Alex couldn"t believe how fast the fire had gotten out of control, or how hot it was. Just since they got the men out the fire escape, the smoke rolling along the ceiling had lowered to half the height of the hall. He worried about being caught by the flames, but he knew that smoke was deadly, too. It could render a person unconscious.
Pulling Jax by the hand he headed for the nurses" station. He could tell by how much effort he had to put into urging her along that she was well beyond exhausted. She stumbled several times. The drugs were making it difficult for him to hurry. He hoped Jax didn"t simply pa.s.s out. If that happened he didn"t know what he would do.
Beyond the front of the counter, on the other side of the nurses" station, he could see the body of his mother. There was nothing he could do for her now. There were people still alive who would die if he didn"t leave her and try to get people to safety. He knew it was the logical thing to do, but he hated how cruel it felt.