Dead Waters - Anton Strout [122]
“If you got anything better than a bat,” Connor said, still orchestrating the spirits in their attack, “now’s the time to use it, kid.”
The bat was doing nothing more than distracting her for a few seconds at a time. I collapsed it and slid it into its holster. I reached into my satchel to assess my other options. My hand slapped against what I thought was my emergency medical kit, but when I pulled it out I saw it was the Ghostbusters lunch box Jane had given me. Without hesitation, I opened it and shook out the contents. I grabbed it by its handle and lid, thrusting it toward the woman. I had been going about this the wrong way. I thought back to the vision where I had first seen Mason Redfield. He and the Inspectre had tried going for the ghouls’ hearts as a first means of stopping them. Even tonight, the Inspectre had tried that tactic, trying to stab her there, but that wasn’t the way to go about it. A blade or a bat could pass through water, no problem. What I needed was to take the woman’s heart from her in whatever form I could.
I swung the lunch box at her. Her body went liquid and it started passing through her like all my bat attacks had. When the lunch box was fully within the water, I stopped it in the center of her chest, slamming the lunch box shut and pulling it out by its handle. . . full of water. The woman screamed out, her eyes widening and her body stumbling. I stepped back from her, but she kept coming for me, clutching wildly for my lunch box.
I spun around and found Connor off in a crowd of ghosts. “Connor, catch!” I shouted and threw the lunch box over to him, but not before I felt a wave of the water woman wash over me. The fight was going out of her, but not fast enough. I spun back around and all the hate and surprise in her eyes were focused on me. She was going to make it her dying wish to take me with her, and there was nothing I could do to stop it now. With Jane gone, I didn’t care.
Falling to my knees on the slats of the bridge, I felt my strength leaving me. I was drowning. My last thought as I drowned was wondering if soon I’d be just another bridgebound spirit that Connor would be able to talk to in a few minutes.
Then another thought struck me. As my world went dark, I wondered if Jane was already waiting for me on the other side or if Connor would find her standing around on the bridge, too.
31
White light, I thought. That’s a good sign, right?
The blur in my eyes roused me and I struggled to awaken the rest of my senses as well. The ringing of an angelic host, complete with accompanying harps, sounded more like the beeps, pings, and whirs of . . .
“Hospital equipment,” I croaked out. “I’m not in the afterlife?”
“I don’t know, kid,” Connor’s familiar voice spoke out. “Does your personal vision of blissful eternity include me?”
“Or me?” another voice asked. The Inspectre.
I willed my eyes to fully open, and to my surprise they did, the world coming into focus. I was in a hospital bed, the overhead lights of the room turned off, the white blur that woke me coming from the hallway outside my room.
Connor was already standing at the side of the bed. The Inspectre stood up from a nearby chair, using the empty scabbard of his sword cane to help him up. I tried to turn my head to him but couldn’t. I went to speak again but managed only to get out a dry croak before Connor grabbed a Styrofoam cup with a straw sticking out of it from the table next to my bed. I sipped from it, and the hit of refreshing water shot through me like a jolt of energy. Once I was done drinking, I tried speaking again.
My mind stumbled forward slow, the world and everything around me a fog. “Why can’t I move?”
“That’s probably the pain meds,” Connor offered. He put the water back down