The Duals (An Urban Fantasy Thriller) Read online

  The Duals

  a novel

  by Karen Hayes

  Magic Dome Books

  The Duals

  Copyright © Karen Hayes 2017

  Cover Art © Vladimir Manyukhin 2017

  Editor: Neil P. Mayhew

  Published by Magic Dome Books, 2017

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-80-88231-43-1

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is entirely a work of fiction.

  Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Sarah

  THEY'VE COME for me.

  I open my eyes and immediately shut them again. The light is so bright it makes tears run down my cheeks.

  The bedsheets are cool to touch. My fingers search further but close around thin air: the mattress is too narrow.

  I can hear voices coming through the wall. A cold knot is forming in my stomach. This isn't good.

  It can only mean one thing. They've found me.

  They must have tracked me down.

  No idea who "they" might be, though.

  Where am I, anyway?

  Who am I?

  The hospital room is small. Everything's white: the walls, the bed's footboard, the sealed window. Rays of sunlight fall upon the bed and the floor. One of them seems to point at a picture on the wall: a stern landscape of wooded mountains. If you take a closer look you can see that the picture is scratched. Four parallel scratches, like a claw mark.

  Clenching the bed, I stagger to my feet. I'm wearing a loose one-size-fits-all blue hospital gown. I check the chair and a small locker for my clothes: nothing. No call button for the staff, either. Which is weird. Hospitals are obliged to have them in every room. I seem to know this somehow. Have I stayed in hospitals a lot?

  I walk over to the window and look down. I'm on the third floor. Bare trees obscure the view. More squat red-brick structures rise outside. Puddles of rainwater glisten on the wet driveway, littered with waterlogged yellow leaves.

  My temples begin to ache. Fear clenches my stomach. My fingertips prickle as if someone is sending an electric current through me. My ears are ringing: a thin, intense buzz.

  I need to get a grip. How I got here is irrelevant. I've got to get out first.

  I pull the door handle. It won't open. What's that, for crissakes?

  I raise myself on tiptoe and peer through the glazed top part of the door. I can see a corridor lined with other doors, some of them open. Further on, patients in pajamas and hospital gowns amble about a small area with a few easy chairs and a TV.

  A woman in pale-green surgery scrubs is busy dialing a number on her phone. She is tall and burly - LeBron James-type burly.

  The place looks suspiciously like a mental asylum. Which it can't be. I'm not sick.

  I just can't remember who the hell I am.

  I knock on the glass. The nurse looks up from her phone, then turns her head to the sound. She's wearing a white face mask. Noticing me, she slides the phone down her pocket and walks over to the door, peering through the glass. Above her mask, her eyes seem to be squinting at me. Is she smiling? Her expression sends shivers down my spine.

  "Open the door, please," I say in a loud voice.

  She nods. "Just a sec, " she turns round and leaves.

  What do they think they're doing?

  "Wait!" I slap my hand on the door. Too late. She's gone.

  My heart is racing. The ringing in my ears becomes a cons
tant mosquito-like whine.

  I take a deep breath. This is a hospital. Nothing bad can happen here. I'm having a panic attack - which will be over soon provided I breathe nice and deep.

  The door lock clicks. The burly nurse enters the room, stooping slightly to prevent her head from hitting the door frame.

  It takes all of my self-control not to push her out of my way and run for it. She must be sensing this because she closes the door behind her, once again cutting me off from the freedom of the echoing corridor.

  "You've come round remarkably early," she comments.

  Yeah, right. Is that why they locked me up, then? To prevent me from sleepwalking out of here? "What is this place?"

  "This is Kings County Hospital."

  Kings County. So I'm in Brooklyn, then. Okay.

  "And," I gesture with my hands, "why?"

  She peers at me. "Don't you remember?"

  "If I did, I wouldn't have to ask you, would I?"

  "What, nothing at all?"

  "No!" I'm about to explode. My hands clench into fists. I hide them behind my back.

  The burly woman nods, patient and attentive, as if my answers have explained a lot to her. But of course. Now it all clicks: the patients' stifled voices, the locked door with an inspection window, the nurse who seemed to evade answers to the simplest of questions...

  I've been right all along. This is a mental ward.

  No. No, no, no. I need to get out of here. All my senses scream danger. I need to ask someone to discharge me. This place isn't safe.

  The nurse produces a syringe and points it upward, tapping her finger on a vial.

  A shiver runs down my spine. "What's that?"

  "Just a sedative. Don't worry. It won't hurt."

  Did she just say Don’t worry? "I'm fine," I'm trying to speak calmly. A panic attack is the last thing I need. Then she'll be obliged to give me a sleeping shot in the backside. "I feel pretty good, actually. I don't need to stay. I'd like to leave now."

  My voice does break. I force a smile. The nurse's eyes above the white mask smile at me. "Absolutely."

  She didn't believe me, of course. She approaches me, syringe at the ready. I recoil, pressing my back against the window. I'm cornered. I can't take my eyes off the needle in her hand.

  "This is a mistake," I mumble. "I need to speak to my family."

  "You will. But first you need to have some rest."

  Her burly frame looms over me. I cast a desperate glance around. The room's on the third floor, it's not that much of a jump, not with all the shrubs below. But the window's locked. The furniture's bolted to the floor. The table's bare - nothing to hurl at her. They've thought of everything.

  The door clicks open. A young male doctor lingers in the doorway, raising his eyebrows in disbelief as he shifts his gaze between myself and the nurse.

  Finally his stare alights on the syringe in her hand. "What are you doing?"

  Come on, don't just stand there! Do something! Can't he pull her aside or something? Like call security?

  I think he was going to. He just didn't have the time. Neither did I. I failed to warn him and equally failed to ask for help.

  The burly nurse takes a swing and lunges at him, packing an almighty punch that sends the man flying across the room. His back hits the wall and he collapses to the floor like a broken spread-eagled doll. He doesn't move anymore.

  The nurse reaches for the door and shuts it. The lock clicks. She turns to me.

  My throat is seized with fear. I can't scream. I make a dart along the wall but in two bounds the nurse catches up with me. Her hand closes around my throat, pinning me to the wall. She lifts me until my eyes are at the same level as hers.

  They're not smiling anymore, though.

  I grasp her syringe hand with both of mine, kicking my legs in the air. I can't breathe. My vision ripples. The nurse points the needle at my throat. I try to force her wrist aside but she's devilishly strong. Is she human?

  "Let me go," I croak.

  Her hand freezes mid-air. The woman zones out for a while. Then she shakes her head.

  "I have to do it," she says in a stifled voice.

  The needle is close. It pricks my skin.

  "Let me go!" I yell, using what's left of my lungful of air. "Stick it in your own ass, you bitch!"

  I squeeze my eyes tight. A wave runs over my body. It's rolling from the soles of my feet upwards, clenching my stomach, then chest, then pouring out of me, filling the room.

  The grip on my throat slackens. I drop to the floor. My legs are rubbery, my head spinning. All the sounds seem to be switched off: all I can hear is a nasty repetitive whining noise.

  I lie on my side in a heap. The nurse towers over me. I watch her, uncomprehending.

  She freezes, zoning out again. Moving awkwardly, she switches the syringe into her other hand, turns and buries the needle into her own body. Her thumb presses the plunger as she injects herself. Finally, she pulls the needle out. Her fingers relax. The empty syringe clatters to the floor.

  Then she collapses too, thumping onto her back, and lies unnaturally straight.

  Silence. The male doctor lies by the wall, the nurse next to me, her long body blocking almost half the room. A voice is humming a monotonous tune in the corridor.

  I get up and hug my shoulders, staring at the nurse. She looks as if she might jump up at any moment and lunge at me again. Murderous bitch. The doctor is still K.O. from her punch. He looks dead as a doornail.

  What a predicament. Could they accuse me of what has just happened? What if they say that I killed the doctor and injected the nurse with some nasty stuff? Okay, so she probably wasn't a nurse at all, but somehow I don't think anyone would want to look into that.

  No one in their right mind would believe that this woman smoked the doctor, then injected herself with a sedative or whatever she had in that syringe. Could be poison. What if she wanted to kill me?

  I'm totally nuts. Then again, this is a nuthouse. Ouch. Talk about predicament.

  I glimpse a movement in the window and turn to it just in time to see a Jeep park up by the clinic. Three men in dark business suits climb out, followed by the driver. The car doors slam simultaneously. One of the men looks up, staring directly at my window as if he can see me. Fortunately, he can't: not from where he stands, not at this angle.

  He's young. His face is pale with high cheekbones. His hair is as golden as the fallen leaves under his feet; the wind tousles it, blowing strands across his forehead and into his eyes.

  He sees me, after all. For a few brief moments, our gazes lock. His face seems familiar. Do I know him? The whining noise keeps boring into my ears.

  The guy lowers his head. He seems to be ordering the others around. They head for the clinic's entrance.

  I have to get out of here. Now!

  I peel off my gown and kick it under the bed. Then I rush toward the nurse. I pull off her hospital smock and pants and hurry to put them on. Her t-shirt is like a tent. You can barely see me in her clothes. This isn't a person, this is a freakin' dinosaur! Even the male doctor lying next to her looks small in comparison. But there's no way I'm gonna undress him.

  I roll up the legs of the pants, then remove the mask. The face behind it is stern. She looks about forty, with sharp cheekbones and thin, tight lips. What an unlikeable face. She would have suited the police force better than any hospital staff. Then again, she wasn't staff, was she? At least I don't think so.

  I discover a pass card in her shirt's pocket and swipe the door lock. It blinks a green light.

  * * *

  Freedom stinks of disinfectant. I close the door behind me. The green door sign sports a number 5. I walk quickly past identical rooms, following the bright strip of lamplight on the floor. Some of the doors stand open, others are closed.

  I thread my way past a man in pajamas who is staring at the ceiling, pensively picking his nose. His gray hair seems to glow, halo-like, around his bald patch. His gaze wa
nders; his lips are moving as he hums a song.

  I use the card to unlock another door at the end of the corridor and leave the unit. A guard is sitting outside the door. His gaze slides over my masked face and my name tag.

  My throat seizes. I don't seem to remember how to breathe. I keep going, trying not to look in his direction, suppressing the desire to dart off like a hunted hare. This is a big place, a large hospital with tons of staff including new workers and interns working all sorts of crazy shifts. He can't possibly remember them all. But those four men - they'll be here soon.

  I expect the guard to shout after me, realizing that I'm not a nurse but the nutter from Room Five. He'd whip out his gun and point it at my back, then tell me to raise my hands slowly... I must have fake written all over me.

  But no one's shouting, no one's pointing a gun at me. It's business as usual.

  I walk past doctors' offices and staff premises until I reach the reception area: a small hall with a few easy chairs lining a long window and a vending machine stuffed with candy bars. A large U-shaped reception desk rises at the center, complete with a nurse on duty.

  Her telephone makes a soft bubbling noise. She answers it, then continues to rustle though some paperwork. An electronic clock behind her back shows 3 p.m.

  I might just walk downstairs, exit the building, then dart off. I could do, I suppose. Then again, where am I supposed to go? No idea what I can do once I get out of here. I need to find out something about myself first. They must have checked me in, right?

  Watching the receptionist out of the corner of my eye, I steal toward a computer standing on the corner of the large desk. The woman doesn't seem to care. She's sitting there with her back to me, leafing through a magazine. That's what made that rustling noise.

  She turns a colorful page; I can see the picture of Ben McAllister raising a champagne glass: a black suit, a pearly smile and the Stars and Stripes in the background. Picture perfect.