Chapter Eight
Dani lurched back and pulled free from the maid’s clutches. She stumbled over the bucket she’d brought with her, caught herself on the end of the bed, and struggled to regain her footing.
At the cry and clatter, several of the patients woke with loud moans. The nurses shouted, but Dani paid them little heed even though she knew they noticed her quite clearly at this point.
Contain the maid, she told herself. The scrub-team can wash away people’s recollections of what goes on here afterwards.
But that meant getting enough time to actually call in the scrub-team.
Dani ducked as the maid grabbed a bed pan and flipped it her way. It spun over her head; someone cried out as they became the unintended target.
Okay. First subdue crazy maid, then radio in.
The maid yanked her IV cord free from the bag. Saline solution sprayed across the bed and floor.
I really should mop that up before someone slips, was Dani’s detached observation as she backpedaled, trying to figure out a defensible position. Her mop had fallen over from where she’d set it, well out of reach by now.
“Any of you nurses got some sedative?” she called out.
The maid stalked her way. Her features, already mangled, had twisted into demonic fury.
A young nurse appeared Dani’s side, at first focused on the maid, and then staring at her.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Where’d you come from?”
“Sed-a-tive,” she said. “Priorities, buddy.”
With a yowl, the maid threw herself at Dani. One of her elbows caught the nurse in the face and he stumbled aside.
The maid whipped her IV tube around with the needle still taped to her forearm. She snapped the cord around Dani’s neck. A twist and pull tightened it.
Straining for air, Dani grabbed the maid’s wrists. With a twist of her hips, she heaved the maid over a shoulder as she pitched forward. The cord went slack and fell away. Dani sucked in a breath as the maid writhed onto her stomach.
While Dani had grabbed her arms, the maid had also clutched hers. With manic strength, she now used this hold to flip Dani onto her back.
The maid clutched Dani’s uniform and bent in so all Dani could see were her hate-filled eyes.
“Kill …” The maid shuddered and moaned the words. “Killll meee …”
A pair of nurses leapt on the maid and struggled to pin her. Another nurse remained in the background, a syringe readied.
The first tickle of wind on her face warned Dani. As the air current accelerated, she tried to shift her sight into the elemental realm, to sever the channel of power the maid used to animate the air—but she moved too slowly.
A blast of air swept through the emergency room. It scattered stacks of paper, flipped trays and carts, blew blankets and bandages to all corners. Those nurses standing were slammed against the walls, the desk, the columns, to drop senseless once more.
The two holding onto the maid strained to anchor themselves. Both lost their grips and tumbled into the nearest beds, where patients screamed in terror and pain.
Dani let the wind skid her across the floor, past the maid, and against the foot of the bed where her mop lay. Gripping the handle, she rose to one knee and waited for the lull she knew to be coming.
Her power urged for her to employ it, to blow the lights in the room in an electric storm and fry the maid. To take control of the air and turn it into her own whirlwind.
Gritting her teeth, Dani subdued the volatile energies. She couldn’t trigger her abilities in here. Too many potential victims.
The maid sagged, her bandages soaked red from reopened wounds. In that instant, the wind died.
Dani sprinted out and swung the mop with all her might. The spongy end caught the maid across the back of the head. It didn’t lay her out, like Dani had hoped; rather the maid caught herself on her hands and spun in one motion, snarling. The wind picked up once more.
Dani raced by, crying, “Come on, then!”
She leaped over a prone nurse and bolted out the double-doors. A blood-chilling shriek resounded behind her, and feet slapped against the floor as the maid pursued. Bowing her head, Dani pushed herself faster, ignoring cries from the waiting room and squawks from the intercom.
At last, she reached a wider intersection and saw, in that instant, no one appeared near enough to get in the way of what she had planned. She spun and braced herself in the middle of the hall. No time to check the rooms she’d passed along the way. She just had to hope they stuck things like the nursery and cancer ward far from the emergency unit.
The maid raced her way, borne along like a banshee by her conjured wind.
“Sorry about this,” Dani said.
She planted the mop and unleashed her power. The energies she’d fed into the earth triggered, and the floor bucked with a miniature earthquake. The fault line shot out from her feet in a tight zig-zag, building momentum. Tiles shattered and sprayed about as a wave of concrete and dirt barreled toward the maid.
Dani attempted to rein in the spell, but it felt like trying to hold back a stampeding elephant with a bungie cord.
The maid didn’t hesitate in the face of the tumbling debris. She collided with it and clawed forward as if it was an opponent she could rake to pieces.
The gale she’d summoned blasted past and hit Dani with enough force to somersault her backward. She rolled against a wall, bruised but intact as the wind died off with a last howl.
Alarms sounded in the distance. People screamed and shouted at one another.
Dani shook her head, trying to focus. What had happened to the maid? Had anyone else been hurt?
She stood with a groan and staggered over to the mound where the maid had been. Dani edged around to the far side, where she spotted the other Cleaner.
The maid had been half-buried in shattered concrete and tile. As Dani approached, her head lolled and one eye opened, the other having swollen to the size and color of several red grapes. She had gaps where teeth once were, and one of her ears had been mashed into pulp.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Dani said. “Just don’t do anything. Let me call for help.”
Blessedly, her radio had remained clipped to her belt. She grabbed it and thumbed the speaker button.
“This is Janitor Dani. I’ve got a … a code red, or whatever is the highest level code we’ve got for emergencies. I’m at St. Joseph Hospital. Emergency Care Unit. There’s been a …” She swallowed hard. “Another maid gone berserk. Came in with a whole slew of attempted suicides and …”
Dani paused as the maid lifted a hand with something gripped in it. The radio buzzed with a confused reply.
“Janitor, please repeat? Janitor Dani, can you respond? Can you confirm?”
At last, Dani recognized the object the maid held—a piece of rebar, snapped loose by the quake. The woman moaned two words she didn’t catch.
Dani leaned in. “What’d you say?”
Several deep huffs shook the maid, and Dani recoiled on realizing the woman was trying to laugh.
“It’s … worthless,” she croaked.
“What? What’s worthless?”
The maid made a wet clicking noise in the back of her throat.
“Ev—everything.”
She raised the rebar and thrust it at Dani.
Dani reeled. “No, hey—wait!”
The rebar dropped from the maid’s hand as she went into convulsions. Moments later, the woman’s body went limp.
Dani dropped to her knees. The mop fell from her hand as she looked around, feeling battered in both body and spirit. Chatter continued over the radio, but she couldn’t spare the attention to make sense of it. These deaths … so senseless. What was happening?
She raised her eyes from the wreckage—and stiffened. A doctor stood at the end of the hall. The same doctor who’d been taking notes in the Emergency Unit, monitoring the patients.
He surveyed the scene, head tilted, showing no emotion beyond curiosity. She started to call out to him, to tell him to get back to the other patients and make sure his staff was all right.
Then he smiled. The distance didn’t disguise the unnatural way his lips peeled back, so far it almost bared the entire top and bottom rows of his jagged, yellow teeth. Dani noted the black and blue discoloration of his gums and the way his eyes flickered black for half a heartbeat.
His face reverted back to normal, and his gaze shifted from the cooling body to Dani. He blinked as if he hadn’t noticed her until right then.
She scrambled to her feet.
“Hey. Hey you! Got a moment?”
The doctor whirled with a flap of his lab coat and sprinted away.