4

Vic

He hated hospitals. How had he forgotten that?

Every taste of the cold air, bitter and sweet from antiseptic and the cleaner they used on the floors, mixed with the constant beeps to take Vic back to Eduardo, to the memory of his dad lying in a bed that inflated and deflated automatically to prevent bedsores. Eduardo had joked about it, or tried to, but Vic had known he only wanted to sleep off the chemo and wait for the good news that never came. Between the bed and the nurses always checking on him, Eduardo hadn’t been able to rest. Weeks of it had dulled his usually constant cheer.

Vic hadn’t thought that working security at Mercy for extra training hours and money would bother him. It looked good for a rookie, but now the incessant reminders of his dad’s slow end were piling up.

“It doesn’t get very exciting around here,” Carl said, leading Vic around the floor. “We mostly watch the cameras and take a walk every hour or so. You know, to get your steps in.”

He twisted his wrist to show Vic the pedometer app on his smartwatch. “Every once in a while a drunk wanders in off of Colfax and we call it in or chase them out.”

Vic forced a smile. At least Mercy didn’t feel anything like UC Health. Despite its age, the hospital was a weird mix of the modern laid atop a very old building. Undergoing renovation, it felt empty, a little lonely, as if it hadn’t seen a century of illness and sorrow.

And Mercy was close to City Park. Vic could get a run in after his shift, and there was a great bookstore nearby, somewhere to browse and pick up the latest sci-fi paperback.

He followed Carl, half listening as the older cop talked about the good old days of the Denver Police Department and some of the things he’d seen.

“There weren’t as many rules back then,” Carl mused. “But people were more ignorant too.”

He gave Vic a pointed look, as if prompting him to say something.

Vic didn’t know how to take that. He could tease Carl, poke the bear a little, but the older man meant well. He might talk too much, and overcompensate, but he was trying to train Vic.

“Thanks for showing me the ropes,” Vic said.

They went back to the security office, a little closet of a room on the first floor.

Carl picked up the ringing phone with a quick hello.

“Sure,” he said after a moment. “I’ll send the rookie.”

Carl hung up and smiled at Vic like he had a treat for him.

“You want to give someone a tour?” he asked, like he hadn’t already volunteered Vic. “Dr. Binder has asked for someone to take his brother around the hospital, especially the old parts.”

“Sure,” Vic said.

A break from Carl’s chatter and the little office would be nice. The older cop tended to hover, like Vic hadn’t graduated from the academy or gotten the job on his own merit.

He never liked it when someone tried to act like a mentor, like they were his father. He’d had a father, and it always annoyed him when anyone tried to fill Eduardo’s shoes.

It was bad enough that Vic’s mother questioned his choices. Sure, she was proud of him, but there was always an undercurrent, a worry about losing him and about what being a cop meant, especially for a Mexican.

Vic always argued that she’d been the one to push him to do something meaningful with his life. He reminded her that he was hardly the only person of color in his graduating class, and told her he hoped that he could make the force better. He didn’t know the job yet, and Carl’s experience could be useful.

Still, Maria worried, even more now that Eduardo was gone. She worried Vic would be shot. She worried he’d die too, and Jesse wouldn’t take it well if anything happened to Vic. Maria never said it, but it was always there, no matter how many times he told her the job wasn’t as dangerous as she thought.

Vic shook it off. His mother would relax. She loved him, and he’d never doubted that, not once. Her fears were born of love and that warmed him even if it chafed a little.

A guy waited at the nurse’s station. The brother.

Dirty blond, blue-eyed, and a bit skinny—he sat in a chair, legs a bit spread. He looked at Vic with an expression of curiosity—no, not that. The guy was checking him out.

Vic didn’t even have to introduce himself. The guy leaned in to read his badge, and Vic forced himself not to grin as he said Vic’s name with a nervous swallow.

Vic gave the guy the same tour Carl had given him.

When the guy said he was a writer then Vic knew he had to show him the old psych ward. It was stone, dark gray. The ceilings were vaulted, more like a church or a European college than a hospital. It smelled different too, like it had soaked up all the different flavors of the chemicals ever used on it.

And it wasn’t bad, the way the guy stared, trying to be subtle about it and failing miserably.

Hell, Vic was flattered. His mom was always buying Pride flags for her office to let her students know they had an ally and a safe space. He’d grown up with her gay and lesbian friends in the history department and any kind of dumb comment from him or Jesse, especially something sexist, had earned a quick reprisal.

It was probably the uniform. Vic knew he made it look good.

He grinned as he left the guy alone to soak up the creepy vibe, taking his flashlight to peek into some of the empty offices.

A shadow darted ahead. Vic couldn’t quite make it out. Too big for a rat. Maybe somebody’s cat had gotten in here. It rounded the corner, moving just beyond his flashlight beam. Vic chased it, but it had vanished. He shuddered despite himself. There wasn’t anything to be afraid of.

He told himself it was just this place that was creeping him out, but Vic couldn’t shake the sense that he’d done this all before, that he’d been in this exact moment another time, and that he knew the thing, the darting shadow, that he couldn’t catch up to.

The feeling stayed in the back of his mind through the end of the tour. He dropped Dr. Binder’s brother off with a parting nod and a smile that made the guy blush a little. Vic kept smiling as he took the elevator to meet Carl for lunch.

The guy was all right, but he talked with food in his mouth. He kept telling stories of the past while Vic kept trying to shake off the déjà vu. Hadn’t Carl told him all of this already?

They were walking the floors again when Carl got another call from the hospital’s security desk. He wasn’t smiling this time. Dr. Binder had reported his badge missing about the same time it was used to access the HR records room. Whoever was there was definitely not the arrogant Dr. Binder.

Carl and Vic were already in motion when the office relayed the trespasser’s description over the radio.

“It’s his brother,” Vic explained to Carl. “The guy from the tour. I don’t think he’s a threat. He’s curious about the hospital.”

“Let’s find out what he’s up to and we can escort him off site if no harm’s been done,” Carl said.

Vic had been wrong though. The guy was clearly up to something. His blue eyes dropped to the floor, but the situation was under control. Then Carl let out a growl, a sound more guttural than human.

Vic turned in time to see Carl raise his gun and moved without thinking, throwing himself in front of Dr. Binder’s brother. A thundering bang he knew too well, always so much louder than in the movies. The tear through his body felt like a piledriver against his chest.

Then he couldn’t breathe.

Vic’s ears rang, and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t pull in oxygen, couldn’t stay upright. Arms were around him, holding him, reaching to apply pressure.

Carl looked like a rabid dog, his mouth wide like he’d choked on a snake. His eyes had burst, filled with blood. He growled. He struggled, fighting with himself, with something inside him.

Smoke was everywhere. It resolved into a shape, almost a person.

The gun wavered, trying to fix on Dr. Binder’s brother.

No. No. No.

But Carl put the barrel to his mouth and thunder roared again.

The shadows closed in. Ice bit into Vic’s heart, into his head. He felt the fingers digging like claws, worming into his mind, each tip a hungry mouth gnawing at the pain, slurping it out.

Then blackness.

The roar of the gun again, the pain—the slam into Adam, the feeling of his life racing away. Everything hurt. Everything.

Carl put the gun to his mouth. He pulled the trigger again.

Then blackness.

Then again.

Vic lost count of how many times the moment looped and how long the devil drank his pain.

He was dying. Adam had him. Carl died.

The moment, the memory, went on and on.

With a gasp Vic surfaced, waking from where he’d gone—into the past.

He blinked.

The masked creature, the demon, loomed over him. It put its smoking fingers to the mouth of its mask. A tendril flickered out, a tongue, drinking the green fire dripping from its nails. It licked at what it had extracted from Vic’s skull.

The pain, the ache of that memory—getting shot, Carl dying. It was all gone.

Vic could feel the hole, the shape of it in his heart, but the memory was distant now, like it had happened long ago.

“Mom?” Jodi sobbed from somewhere beside him.

Vic shuffled, heard a clink, and realized he was chained to a wall by an iron manacle attached to his ankle.

He’d been captured before, but he’d had Argent for backup last time, and there hadn’t been devils surrounding him. The elf would have made short work of them.

“You out there, Queenie?” he said to the smoke-wreathed ceiling, scanning the ever-burning walls. He could hear the pleading in his voice. “Now would be a good time for one of your big entrances.”

No answer came, not that he’d expected one.

“I’m so sorry,” Jodi said. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

Jodi’s chain rattled as she hugged herself and shook. A pair of demons stood over her. One of them had its hand driven into her skull. It wriggled its fingers as if searching for something.

Vic cast about, trying to get more information, to find out everything he could.

This had to be the burning building, the dance hall. The walls smoldered. Sweat soaked his underarms and the small of his back. He could smell his own terror from the moment of the gunshot. His ears still rang—but it was in the past now, the far past.

And he couldn’t feel it, like it had happened to someone else.

Focus, Martinez, he thought. He could use the calmness, the empty feeling to figure out how to get them out of here.

The devil leaning over Jodi found whatever it was looking for. It stopped rooting in her head and closed its fist.

“What are you doing?” Vic demanded from the demon looming over him. “What did you take?”

It didn’t answer. Vic didn’t even know if it could.

He tried again to feel the memory, but came up with nothing. It had been a horrible day, but it had been the day he’d met Adam. The good of that was mixed up in the bad, the pain and horror, the things they’d taken.

Vic narrowed his eyes. If he found a way, these devils would pay.

“I’m so sorry,” Jodi said again, trapped in whatever they forced her to remember.

The devil removed its hand from her head. It held something green and glowing, brought its hand to the mouth of its mask. The light moved down its throat, swarming through its body like fireflies. As it ate, pieces of it flickered, like a person emerging from the smoke, a bit of skin here, a little clothing. They swam atop the smoke, disconnected, out of focus.

Jodi went slack. Whatever she’d been remembering, the death of her mom or something else, they’d taken the feeling of it.

“No,” Vic said stiffly.

If they could do that to Jodi, they could keep doing that to him.

He’d had a worse day, only one, and Vic did not want to lose it.

He didn’t want to stop feeling it. If Vic stopped feeling it, his dad really would be gone.

Vic wasn’t ready for that, for it to be numb.

Adam, he called. Adam, please.

The devil in front of him shifted, moved to its fellow. They stepped into one another, their smoky forms intermixing, the green embers they’d eaten flowing between them in a weirdly intimate way.

Taking heaving breaths, Vic scanned the room. The wooden floor, that old-fashioned square design. It didn’t burn. The flames were hot, but he wasn’t certain they were physical. They may not hurt him if he could get out of the manacle.

Then he spied something, someone, chained to the opposite wall. She looked alive, but her eyes were sleepy, like someone heavily sedated.

The devil came closer, blocking Vic’s view. It lifted its hand.

“No!” he screamed, straining at the length of chain. He could only go so far, stay in its reach or back into the flames and risk lighting himself on fire.

The devil’s fingers plunged into his forehead.