Page 25 of Consume
The doors shimmered the closer we drew, and they rolled to the side with a low rumble. But they hadn’t really opened. The door was as solid as ever, but a faint outline of the inside of the elevator had painted itself over the closed doors. It was a residual haunting, like a vision of something that had happened in the past and replayed itself in a loop. A ghostly chill curled from the vision of the inside of the elevator and penetrated the hallway. It was weighted with sadness, so much so that it hesitated my steps.
“Something’s down there.” Ellison stopped behind me, her breath gusting a steaming cloud over my shoulder. “Isn’t there, Absidy?”
“I can feel the cold,” Mase said. “I don’t see anything, though. Do you?”
He was always able to sense ghosts and occasionally see them. Some people could and some couldn’t.
“Keep...moving,” I said, but the sadness punching into my lungs choked the words.
As we drew closer, the sound of a child crying squeezed my chest. A girl stood in the corner of the inside of the ghostly elevator, maybe nine or ten years old. She had long blonde curls and wore an old-fashioned lacy dress that skimmed her knees. She pressed her hands to her face, her shoulders hitching, and her grief poured out of her in shaky sobs.
My heart broke for her. I wanted to fold her close to me and tell her everything would be all right, but because she was only a vision, I couldn’t. It wouldn’t do any good. My gaze caught on a toy baby carriage next to her. It was angled away from her, enough so I could see inside as I strode nearer.
At first I couldn’t tell what I was looking at bundled underneath a pile of blankets. Or my brain just refused to process it. My body jerked to a stop as if it had figured it out long before the rest of me. A sorrowful wail that didn’t belong to me rose up from deep inside myself and battered my senses. The Saelis ghosts inside me knew it was one of their own.
It was a baby Saelis. Gray scales covered what little of it I could see. Its head tipped to the side so that its pointed snout was half buried in the blankets. It wasn’t moving. Its eyes were closed. I didn’t have to inspect if further to know it was dead.
I flew my hand to my mouth, afraid I would puke or scream or both at the same time, and I stumbled backward.
“Absidy?” Her half of the guard forgotten, Ellison dodged to my side and kept me upright.
“What’s wrong?” Mase dropped his half of the Byrian with a thud and rushed to my other side. He searched the closed elevator door, but I pulled his chin back to me and held it there.
He didn’t even know. He had no idea I was pregnant, andwhat if that was what our baby looked like?Because of me. Because of what I was and what I couldn’t figure out how to do. Because I was turning into one of them.
I shook my head up at him, trying not to have a nervous breakdown and failing miserably. Trying to convey the numerous times I’d screwed up and how sorry I was. I didn’t want the dead baby Saelis to be the image he thought of when his scaled ghost magnet college girl finally told him the truth.
He cupped my face, scales and all, in his warm hands. “What do you see?”
My body simultaneously melted at his gentleness and iced over at the horror in the elevator. “Ellison, please. Open the doors.” The words came out so broken with sobs, it was a wonder she could understand me.
But she did. The real elevator rolled open, washing away the image of the little girl and her dead baby Saelis. Someone must’ve allowed her to keep it as a pet, which only underscored the fact that Byrians thought the Saelises were a lower lifeform. At least the little girl had had it in her to feel sadness, while her family members hadn’t given a second thought to the slaughter of half an alien race to power their space rings.
Rage boiled up to the surface of my scales, so powerful I knew it couldn’t just be mine.
After we piled into the elevator, I hit the R button, presumably for rooftop. Ellison and Mase cast me worried glances, the guard dangling between them, as the elevator began to rise.
A great thud over our heads rattled my teeth together. And then an even greater mechanical roar.
The three of us stared upward, frozen.
“This is the only way out?” Ellison asked, her voice shaky.
“Well, this is the way we’re going,” Mase said. “When these doors open, get ready to run.”
“Run where?” Ellison grimaced down at the Byrian guard. “There’s more where she came from. They’re not going to just let us steal a helicopter.”
What other choice did we have though? We had to get out. Now. Not wander the mansion looking for some other exit with ghosts, guards, and BioWaves around every corner.
Tension gripped the inside of the elevator as it climbed higher. I could stop it. We could get out on the very next floor with a touch of a button. My fingers twitched to do just that. The roar above grew louder. My heart banged a warning between my ears.
My hesitation cost me. The elevator shuddered to a stop, and the doors slid open.
Dust and smoke rolled clouds through the air, but it wasn’t so thick that we couldn’t see the helicopter hovering on the far side of the roof. Someone was already in it, our only way out of this house.
“Run toward it,” Mase shouted. “We’ll make them stop by threatening to shoot the guard.”
We dashed out, Ellison and Mase taking the lead with the guard between them, and then me.
