"If things get critical," Gaby whispered, "this just might be the perfect place to hide."
Chapter Four
Curiosity kept Gaby studying the area. Toward the back of the largest building, which she assumed to be the main part of the hospital, smaller buildings sat like forsaken headstones. Picking her way past poison ivy, needle-sharp thorns and hungry insects, Gaby moved to see all the property.
Icy, murky auras shadowed the perimeter of the grounds, moving around her in unsettled displacement, possibly depicting paranormal activity. Unhappy spirits? Vengeful wraiths?
Evil?
Through practice, Gaby had learned to see all the layers of an aura, to disentangle the meanings and nuances. Proper diet, fresh air, exercise, and sunlight strengthened an aura, just as neglect, alcohol, drugs, stress, and lack of rest weakened them.
These auras looked massive, filling the surrounding sky, the very air that fed her lungs. It was as if many small auras had combined into one, because despite the size, they lacked real power or purpose.
Beneath the menace lurked great suffering, crippling pain.
And more.
Contact with others could enable an exchanging of energy, or in some cases, the draining of it. Certain people, places, even memories, could suck the very life out of a being. Whenever Gaby felt herself tiring too quickly, as she did now, she removed herself from the source. But this time, she couldn't.
She edged closer, drawn to a courtyard overlooking the abandoned hospital. The property was so bulky that it even had its own power station.
A mosquito buzzed past Gaby's ear, landed, and bit her neck, drawing a bead of blood. She swatted it away, engrossed at the sight of yet another structure.
Enormous trees and waist-high weeds cloaked a ramshackle house off to the side, perhaps the home of someone who once ran the hospital. Between it and the hospital, a swamp that had once served as a pond festered with mosquitoes and thick moss. A disturbed breeze carried an awful stench off the pond to the air around it.
Wrinkling her nose, Gaby looked back at the house. The roof of the covered porch sank low, threatening to collapse. Paint peeled from every surface. Shingles and shudders had gone missing. Toxic vibes emanated from every unbroken window.
Remnants of a past life, or warning of a current resident? Gaby didn't know. At that moment, she didn't really care.
A deserted playground, hazardous with broken equipment that had once held swings, a jungle gym, a teeter-totter, indicated there had been a children's ward, too. Now only crows flapped around, pecking at crawling insects and cawing to one another in high-pitched screeches that cut the stillness with alarming ferocity.
Gaby started to move closer to the pond, and from nowhere a cold wind went up her spine, making her flesh prickle and the hairs on her nape stand on end. She jerked around, her knife already in her hand as she prepared for battle, ready to face another nightmare.
Only the eerie, soundless lull of the woods greeted her.
Cautious and unconvinced, Gaby turned back to the isolation hospital. Multipaned windows were broken, boarded up, or black with age, cobwebs, and filth. No one looked out at her—at least, no one with eyes that she could see.
And still Gaby had the disquieting sense of being watched, of being mentally dissected. It unnerved her and, knife still drawn, started her on her way in a rush.
"Fucking paranoia," she cursed to herself, but it could have nothing to do with the eerie hospital and everything to do with the meddlesome detective hot on her trail, so she thrashed her way out of the clinging underbrush.
Burs caught in her jeans. Muck stuck to her flip-flops and oozed up between her toes. Her panic was a strange counterpoint for a person who fought and defeated the vilest evils, and yet she left the ominous woods as fast as possible.
One smaller building she passed, separated from the isolation hospital, had brick walls riddled with graffiti claiming it to be someone's "place." A sign even pointed to the Beer Room, making Gaby wonder if it had once been home to a fraternity of some sort.
Did college kids lurk inside, chuckling at the way she fled? Did she care?
No.
She'd always been a freak to society. Nothing new in that.
As she circled the grounds and finally found her way to a clearing, she tucked the knife away in her sheath at the small of her back.
Oddly enough, she found that the main complex of the Cancer Research Center was visible from the road. The broad face of the building easily hid the smaller hospitals behind it, but anyone driving by would see it.
Did they not sense the evil? Were they all so obtuse, so self-absorbed, that they paid no attention at all to such a blatant, rancorous threat?
To get her bearings, Gaby looked around and saw unkempt, suspicious businesses, dark alleyways, bums, homeless transients, and prostitutes.
The unfamiliar slums reeked of depression and poverty, but it didn't frighten her. In a way, it explained how the hospital remained so obscure. Once upon a time, the area might have been lucrative and in need of a hospital. In days gone by, the old houses, tall and built close together, might have been the homes of doctors.
Now they accommodated several families, and from what she could tell, a few of them served as crack houses.
Relieved that no one would recognize her here, Gaby set off again.
Every bone and muscle in her body ached. Exhaustion pulled at her. She felt like she could curl up in a corner and sleep—but the luxury of rest was something she couldn't afford, not until she'd reached the safety of her apartment.
Wherever that might be.
As she walked along, she looked down each alleyway, always guarding against threats. After a time, she spotted three men in an alley between an ambiguous novelty store and a vacant building. They clustered around a can fire, cooking something and, given their postures, stoned out of their gills.
Surrounded by cardboard boxes and shopping carts laden with other people's discards, it appeared that they lived in the narrow lane.
Perfect.
Most sane people would have avoided darkened seclusion that harbored sinister, desperate men; Gaby thanked God for it.
When she'd gotten within six feet, one man pulled out a knife. That amused her. He shook so badly and his eyes were so unfocused, he wouldn't be able to hit the wall, much less a person with her skills. "What're you cooking?" she asked, hoping to ease the tension.
"There ain't enough fer ya. Go away."
It looked like squirrel to her, probably roadkill. Her still-jumpy stomach pitched in revolt. Such pitiable people. Desolation clung to them, but not malice.
It'd be best for her to get to the point. "I need a shirt."
"Ya got a shirt. Now git."
"I need a different shirt." She dug in her pocket. "Here's five bucks. I'm not picky."
Two of the three men conferred. The third was too high to even acknowledge or notice her. He stared off at nothing in particular, swaying gently from his cross-legged position near the wall. Gaby briefly studied him. Eyes sunken, complexion sallow and damp, body gaunt, he wouldn't last out the week. His addiction was so ripe that disease riddled his body. Poor schmuck.
The man with the knife lumbered awkwardly to his feet. Holding the blade out straight, as a novice might, he staggered, steadied himself, and said, "I'll take the money, then you'll git."
"Not without a shirt." Gaby held his gaze. She felt the power blossom in her and knew he wouldn't cut her—even if he really wanted to, which she doubted.
As she stared at him, he blanched and backed up a step.
Gaby followed. "I don't want to hurt you, but I can." She kept her tone even, calm, and filled with dead sobriety. "If you don't play fair, I'll show you the kind of pain you've never experienced."