Crystal was having a hard time processing information. “The flu? Maybe — I don’t know. I think I may be pregnant, and I assumed a lot of my symptoms were related to that. Ron was sick about two weeks ago. He had to take some time off from work because of it. Why? Do you think that has something to do with it?”
“Did Karen get sick?” His question was pointed. He had warned her several times that she had to do everything necessary to keep Karen from being exposed to contagions, especially the flu.
“Maybe. It wasn’t bad. She had a fever for a day and coughed a lot, but then she got over it,” Crystal answered defensively.
“The parents of the other two children both got sick, and their children had a very mild case, just like Karen. There has to be a connection. The changes are too amazing, and the coincidence too great. I’d like you to do a pregnancy test while we check out Karen. Is that all right with you?”
Realization finally crashed in on her, and Crystal broke down. “Are you saying that Karen is cured?” she asked through choking sobs.
“I wish I could, but I just don’t know,” Ryan said, trying to maintain a degree of professional detachment; but Crystal’s emotions were close to overpowering his restraint. He was in uncharted territory. On occasion in the past, he had discussed remissions; and even then, he had to temper his responses, but this was different. This wasn’t a remission, it was an eradication, and he wanted so much to tell her that what was happening to Karen had never happened before, anywhere. But twenty-two years of experience held him back. Miracles happened only to other people, and he and his patients had to deal with reality, no matter how difficult. The best he could do was to let Crystal cling to her hope, and he hoped that he wasn’t making a mistake.
“But we have a chance. Tell me, Doctor, that my daughter has a chance,” she pleaded.
“Mrs. Heller, Crystal, your daughter has a chance to grow up.” He would have finished, but she flew across the desk and pulled him out of the chair by his neck, covering his cheeks with kisses and tears.
Chapter 16
Amanda was beginning to calm. Her heart was still racing, but it was starting to slow. She turned away from the mirror and began to pace the length of the hotel room. She was a little off balance and swayed into the bedside table, nearly knocking it over.
“Damn it,” she cursed, and slowly cruised back to the bed, where she carefully sat down. For a moment, the room spun around her; she closed her eyes and waited for the vertigo to pass.
She could still feel Him. “Klaus Reisch,” she said unexpectedly. The name reverberated in her head. He was the one, and he was just like her. She wasn’t alone anymore, and in fact, had never really been alone.
That thought should have made her happy, but it didn’t. There were times over the past seven years when she had thought that she felt Another—a consciousness beyond her own that always seemed to be just beyond her mind’s reach. Someone, who had survived and then Changed, just as she had survived and Changed. Someone who could answer all her questions and finally set her on the right path; someone whose very existence would confirm that her survival had not been some random event that only served the laws of probability; someone who would finally prove to Amanda that her survival, and everything that had come before it, served a purpose — that it all had meaning, even the deaths of her family. Except Reisch wasn’t Another, he was just an Other.
She tried to close her mind to the experience, but his name continued to echo in her head. She replaced the clock on the nightstand, hoping that the insistent need to explore what she had just learned would begin to abate. It didn’t.
She turned her mind to the priest. John Oliver, she thought, but there was little more. How does he fit into this? He hadn’t been on the beach, and he hadn’t been with Reisch, but he had been somewhere, because a trace of him gently floated through her mind. Greg had mentioned that his priest had abilities similar to her own, and she had doubted him. It was clear that she’d been wrong; they were now a group of three.
She looked up at the mirror and tried to focus on Oliver, but Reisch would not be denied. He was many more times powerful than Oliver, and the small remnant of his mind that she retained after they were so suddenly ripped apart clawed at her.
He was German and purposely infecting the people of Colorado Springs while he searched for her. It was all part of something bigger, but the details were lost in a fog of half-formed thoughts and violent memories.
A need to move overwhelmed her. She suddenly had to get away from this hotel room. She looked around and was repulsed by its shabbiness. It reminded her of rooms that she had shared with her mother and brother when she was young. A powerful wave of claustrophobia washed over her. She jumped off the bedspread, certain that something was crawling up her leg, but there was only the sheet. It was Reisch. The part of him lodged in her head was spilling out and infecting her. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. Years earlier, when she had first started invading the minds of others, she found that if she wasn’t careful she would take something from them, a remnant of their psyche that would quietly insinuate itself into her own. The remnant of Reisch wasn’t quiet though, and it was more powerful than anything she had ever felt before. It began to crawl through her mind like some subterranean rodent. She tried to force it from her mind, but it resisted. It took several moments, but she finally trapped it and squeezed it out of existence. The effort forced her to sit back on the disheveled bed. Klaus Reisch is a monster, she thought breathlessly.
She felt nauseous. He had been inside her mind, and they had just been more intimate than she had ever been with her husband. That thought nearly made her vomit.
“Why?” she asked after her stomach had quieted down. Why was she reacting so strongly to Reisch? She had more in common with Reisch than any other living thing. The same thoughts, questions, and desires occupied both of their minds. They both had survived the same lethal infection, and then miraculously Changed into something beyond a human being. So, how were they so different? Maybe that’s why he disgusts me, she thought. “Because we aren’t so different,” she said out loud.
Had the virus turned her into the female version of Klaus Reisch? Was his depravity her destiny? She tried to reject that thought, but she knew objectively that they weren’t that different. They had both knowingly taken lives, and the willful taking of a human life represented the ultimate disconnect from humanity. They were both outsiders. Reisch had made peace with that fact, but Amanda still struggled with it. A large part of her longed to be free; to embrace who she was, and live outside the restraints of society, just like Klaus Reisch.
Amanda felt Mittens stir deep in her mind, and the old cruel smile returned to her face. The “whys” didn’t really matter; she knew what Mittens would have her do. They would find Reisch, tear open his mind, and then, when they knew everything, Mittens would kill him, slowly, very slowly. The lust for blood filled her heart. Killing Reisch wouldn’t count against her promise to the Flynns. He wasn’t human anymore.
* * *
Confusion was his first clear thought. Where was he and why was he on the floor wrapped in a blanket? He tried to move, but he had managed to mummify himself quite securely, and it took a minute before he finally figured out how to extricate himself. He rolled onto his back, trying to catch his breath. The room was dark, so dark he couldn’t see a thing. How did it get to be night? He thought. His mind was thick and sluggish, and he slowly began to piece together what had happened. “Amanda,” he whispered. The name caused his heart to race with hopeful anticipation, but then he remembered their meeting. She was what he had hoped, but not who he had hoped. She wasn’t Eve to his Adam; she was like everyone else, unworthy; except unlike anyone else, she could hurt him. He blinked and saw blue dots. It dawned on him that the room was too dark even for night. He painfully turned his head and could only dimly make out the bedpost and tousled bed sheets. He blinked several more times, and each time, the blue dots became fainter. He turned his head the other way and looked up at the curtained window. Muted sunlight was streaming in through the cheap drapes.