The Lost (Celestial Blues, Book 2) - By Vicki Pettersson Page 0,10

were yellowed and pocked even in the pale, intruding light, as if the harsh, acidic scent had burrowed into and peeled away the plaster. Kit covered her nose, her every sense curling inward, but continued forward.

Cigarette butts and errant syringes lay littered among potato-chip bags and fast-food containers. Dirty Tupperware was stacked against the walls, and shattered glass winked darkly along the baseboards. Kit’s gaze finally fell on something familiar and innocuous: a black backpack slouched against the mattress. She reached for it, thinking it might hold some form of identification, and that’s when she saw the foot.

Kit’s gasp pulled in a lungful of the putrid air, and she immediately began to cough. The foot didn’t move. Backing toward the dresser, she again held the Maglite like a weapon, but this time she aimed the beam and switched it on. The powerful light flooded the room, giving stark definition to the foot, and the subsequent body sprawled on the floor.

It was definitely Jeap Yang, Kit thought, swallowing hard and advancing slowly, though he remained unmoving. His face was slack and oddly gray, the features the same as those in the photo, though the shock of black hair had been recently, and badly, shorn. His clothing was nondescript—a stained white T-shirt and torn black jeans—though he could have been wearing neon and Kit wouldn’t have noticed.

His body was in ruins.

Bruises littered his flesh, like someone had beaten it from the inside out. His right arm, splayed wide on the grimy carpet, boasted blackened veins beneath graying flesh. His wrist looked worse, scaly and green like he was some sort of reptile. Beside him lay a syringe clogged up with a sticky, yellowed gunk.

“J— Jeap?”

Her voice was low and sunken, the blistered air burning it from her lips. She licked them and tried again. “Jeap? Are you . . . ?”

Okay? Stupid question.

Still alive? A thoughtless one, if he was . . . and she was growing less sure of that by the second.

This is too big for me, Kit decided, pulling out her phone to call 9-1-1. Yet panic and nerves made her fumble it, and it cracked against a glass jar before landing next to Jeap’s arm. Surprisingly, this sound registered with Jeap, and he startled, twitched once, and moaned.

The scaly flesh on his splayed wrist fell away to reveal infected muscle, and bone glistening with pus.

The severance must have been as painful as it looked, because Jeap’s eyes shot wide. His throat moved, expelling a heartbreaking and tattered cry that rolled from him like a foghorn disappearing into an endless night. He lifted his left hand as if to cover his own mouth, but his voice cracked, and he grimaced painfully. Kit gasped, too, because that forearm was already stripped of flesh from elbow to wrist, the bone almost shiny amid the black, necrotic ruins.

“God.” Kit lunged for her phone, careful not to touch Jeap’s body as he began to shake. She punched at the numbers almost blindly, cursing when she misdialed. Jeap continued convulsing, body spasming like it was in nuclear meltdown. He looks at war with himself, she thought, staring as the tremors in his body alternated between sharp twitches and wild jerks. She’d have pulled a blanket around him, except there was no blanket, and she didn’t dare touch him anyway. His whole body was an open wound.

No way had he done this to himself, she decided, and dialed again as his agonized cries roiled around her. Someone must have taken a knife to him, then left him to bleed out in this sad little room. And the drugs were clearly for the pain. Kit would damned well take drugs if her flesh was hanging from her bone in strips.

Then her phone went dead.

“Shit,” she hissed. She shouldn’t have unplugged it earlier in the night. It was useless now. She’d have to leave Jeap alone again just to call for help. Ignoring the smells from his seeping body, she moved to his side and bent. She wanted to reassure him first, let him know that he wasn’t alone, and that she’d return. Yet she paused before touching his shoulder, not so sure the bruised gray skin wouldn’t fall away as well. Instead she lay a hand on his oily, matted hair. Jeap immediately arched his back, his eyes, so wild the whites showed, rolling her way.

He looked at her, then through her, then slumped.

“I’m going to help you,” she told him, but he didn’t move at