Page 38 of Bad Enough

“Are you in the house?”

“Y-y-y-yes.” Her teeth began to chatter.

Sylvan could hear talking in the background, but her fear blocked out any understanding of what was being said. Then Kai’s voice came through loud and clear like a lifeline to a drowning victim. “Lock the door. Stay right where you are. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Don’t hang up!” Sylvan pleaded.

“I won’t, sweetheart. I’m staying on the line.” There was a murmur in the background again, but now it was Sylvan’s sobs that were counteracting her ability to hear. They sounded loud and chaotic to her, almost echoing off the walls surrounding her. “We’re on our way, Syl.”

The quality of the call changed with Kai’s last words. Tin-like. As if she were speaking from a long, man-made tunnel. She was on speaker so that whoever Kai was with could hear the conversation. Sylvan curled tighter into herself and lay on the floor in a fetal position, still clutching the mail and the phone.

Even with Kai’s continual crooning in her ear, ten minutes felt like ten hours. When Kai physically arrived at Sylvan’s door, she pounded on it. “It’s Kai, Syl! I’m using my key!”

From her place on the floor in the corner, Sylvan stared at nothing, heard the key turn the lock, and shrank further into herself. Maybe if she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, no one would know she was there.

“Oh my God, Syl!” Suddenly she heard a terrible clatter as something was dropped on the hardwood floor at the door. She felt herself being raised from the floor to an upright sitting position, then hugged tightly to another body. A strange keening sound could be heard in the distance, along with muted voices as if they were background actors on a TV show. “Jesus Christ on a crutch!”

“Kai, your creative swear words and phrases do not induce calm reactions,” a low rumble replied.

“She looks like a fucking vampire drained her of all of her blood. How do you expect someone to react?”

“She’s clearly in shock. I’ll call 911.”

“No!” Kai shouted to her companion. “We can’t take her to the hospital. She’ll get worse when she comes out of it if we do.”

“Fuck… Kai, she needs help. We have to call someone.” Sylvan, still locked away in her head, could hear the companion Kai had brought with her, and she retreated a step further into her brain to avoid the stranger. “Double fuck. God’s going to fucking kill me if he finds out.”

“Then don’t let him find out.”

Sylvan heard muttering that moved further away from her out onto her front porch. “Demon. Ping me. We need emergency medical attention for someone, and we can’t call 911. Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone else.”

She felt herself being rocked gently, a soothing voice cooing nonsense in her ear, a cool hand stroking her hair. And yet, she felt herself drifting further and further away, the sounds and touches fainter with each moment.

Then she felt herself gently fall back toward the floor, her head leading the way. Her chest began to feel less restricted, cool hands touching her neck and chest, followed by a warm weight that seemed to cover her from neck to toes. And then blessed nothingness.

Sylvan heard a groan. Opening her dry and heavy eyes was a near Herculean task, and her mouth tasted like it was full of cardboard. She realized the groan had come from her and that, for some reason, she had passed out.

“That’s it. Come on. Wake up a little more.” Sylvan tried to clear the blurriness from her eyes, but her vision just wouldn’t clear out. The deep Irish-lilted voice was nice to listen to. It must belong to the shadowy figure leaning over her, touching a hand to her forehead, then pressing against her wrist at the pulse point. “Do you think you can sit up?” A pair of strong arms wrapped around her shoulders from underneath and helped her rise to a sitting position on the couch.

“Syl?” It was Kai’s voice. “Syl, oh, thank God.”

“Kai?” she asked weakly.

A wrecking ball plowed into her side on the couch, and a cat-o’-nine-tails smacked her in the face. Slowly, Sylvan’s vision started to clear. Now, she could identify the wrecking ball as her best friend, Kai Serrano, and the cat-o’-nine-tails as her long blonde ponytail. The woman appeared to be both gasping in relief and shaking with anger. “Dammit, Syl, don’t you ever, ever, ever scare me like that again!”

“For fuck’s sake, Kubrick, let her breathe, or she’ll pass out again,” a deep voice rumbled from across the room.

“Fuck you, Waters.”

“Seriously?” the Irishman griped. “You two say ‘feck’ more than I do.”

“That’s because you don’t say ‘fuck,’ you say ‘feck.’”

A grunt, one that Sylvan supposed might pass for a laugh, came from the slicked-back, shoulder-length, dark-haired stranger kneeling in front of her who was wearing a tank top, board shorts, and flip-flops.

She had a terrible headache. “What’s going on?” Sylvan asked weakly, a hand raising to her forehead as she glanced around the room.

“You called me in a panic. All I could get out of you was, ‘He found me.’ I raced over here and found you near catatonic in a corner.” Kai stroked the side of Sylvan’s face, attempting to smooth the damp hair back into her hairline. “What happened, Syl?”

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