Chapter 18 - Sam

For a moment, it seemed like the most natural thing to do, the only thing to do. While the moment lasted, Sam’s fingers danced down the length of the severed link, ending the feeble life that each thread still held. It didn’t take long to put an end to the husk of what once had been a powerful connection between two beings.

Like an expert chef handling the most expensive delicacy, Sam’s hands progressed from the vinculum’s dangling end to the top of Elizabeth’s head. With every inch her hands covered, the link grew shorter. To anyone, it might have looked as if Sam were reeling in a severed ribbon, like a fisherman bringing his line back in. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. The line wasn’t being stored away to be brought back out later. No, the line was becoming shorter, burned away by Sam’s touch, a dynamite fuse wasting away as the flame got nearer to its destination.

It all ended when Sam finally laid her hands on Elizabeth’s head and touched her wiry hair. Trembling, Sam pushed away. Her eyelids were fluttering. Flashes of white blinked before her eyes. Someone was screaming and someone else was calling her name. Sam tried to stand but stumbled backward.

“I got you.” Greg caught her and eased her down to the floor.

Sam pressed her hands against her ears to keep the awful, shrill sounds out of her head.

“What did she do?” Mateo demanded. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth! Are you all right?”

Mateo was kneeling next to the woman. She had fallen off the cot and now lay on the floor, shrieking and twisting. Her head was thrown back, her back bent in an unnatural angle.

Sam’s heart pounded at the sight. Elizabeth looked like someone possessed by a demon.

“Please, stop. You’ll hurt yourself,” Mateo pleaded and tried to hold her still. His dark eyes flashed accusingly in Sam’s direction. “What did you do to her? Make it stop.”

Sam shook her head, her thoughts a muddy whirlpool. What had she done? Her actions made no sense, even in her own mind. She couldn’t yet explain what’d just happened, even if her own hands had done it.

“Oh, my God,” she murmured in an eerie, guilty breath.

What did I do? What did I do?!

Sam tried to sit, a hand outstretched toward Elizabeth. Mateo gave her a murderous look that made his message very clear. “Don’t you dare touch her again,” his eyes said.

“Greg.” Sam looked up at him as if he could fix what she’d done.

He knelt next to her. “Are you okay?” His eyes were full of concern for her only.

Sam couldn’t answer. Her mouth was dry, her throat closing in by the second. Weakness spread through her like a long dress slipping over her head, then falling all the way down to her feet. She wanted to stay, to help Elizabeth. But she’d tried, hadn’t she? And she had failed, and now the poor woman was going crazier than she’d been before. She could even be dying.

“Hey, hey, Sam look at me,” Greg was saying. His hands came to her cheeks. He slapped her gently. She blinked. Greg was a blur and so were Mateo and Elizabeth.

The woman’s shrieks seemed to move away, stretching, stretching into the distance. Sam’s world went black. She fell into Greg who cradled her against his chest, calling her name. She heard his worried voice for what felt like a long time before all her senses left her.