Starlight Web (Moonshadow Bay #1) - Yasmine Galenorn Page 0,63

done everything they could, how my mother had fought for life but she was just too injured and hadn’t made it. He then asked me what I wanted to do about my father, who was brain-dead, but being kept alive through the ventilator.

“Let him go…let him be with my mother,” I had said, starkly realizing that I held his life in my hands, and the only conscientious thing I could do was to sign his death warrant.

Then it hit me that I was an orphan. Aunt Teran had come running into the waiting room. She had been out of town and had only gotten home. She took one look at my face and knew.

We had settled on a sofa, numbly waiting for the nurse to bring my parents’ belongings. Teran and I didn’t say much. What was there to say? In the matter of a couple hours, my parents had been wiped out—their lives swallowed into the well of time.

I had looked around the hospital, never wanting to see it again. The sounds and smells all jumbled together. The clicking of machines and alarms and the wheezing of oxygen as it flowed into patients’ lungs, the soft hush of the corridors that seemed all too silent for how busy it was, the smell of disinfectant and beneath the cleansers, that unmistakable smell of coppery blood—it all washed together to form an indelible imprint on my memory.

All those memories came streaming back as we followed the nurse. Tad was awake, though he looked pale. And Hank, who was next to him, was still unconscious, but the machines hooked up to monitor his heart rate and oxygen chugged along at a nice steady pace.

I stood back as Caitlin approached Tad. She turned, motioning for me to join her. As we stood by his bedside, he opened his eyes and flashed us a wan smile.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Caitlin said. I could feel the rush of emotion streaming through her. “I called your parents. They’ll be here soon.”

“How are you feeling?” It was a lame question, but I didn’t want to jump right into grilling him over what had happened.

“Like I’ve been steamrolled. The doctor told me that if they had brought me in twenty minutes later, I might not have made it. Hank’s showing the same symptoms. I asked them to bring in a specialist who deals in ailments for the Otherkin, because while this manifested physically, I suspected the problem’s magical in nature. So he’s got someone coming in. They should be here soon.” Tad deflated, looking exhausted.

“That’s a good idea,” I said. Then, after a pause, I asked, “Do you remember what happened?”

He shook his head. “Not so much. We were waiting for you to return when there was a loud crash in one of the rooms. We decided to investigate and…the cameras! We took a camera in there. It’s probably still there. If you can get the footage, we might know what happened. I blacked out at some point around then, and I’m pretty sure Hank did too.”

“The search and rescue team didn’t mention finding a camera anywhere near Hank. I doubt if we want to go back in looking for it at this point,” Caitlin said.

I leaned forward, looking at the sucker-like spots all over his face. “Did the doctor say what made those marks?”

“Again, they have no idea. The doc said that if he didn’t know better, he’d think I was attacked by…something like an octopus. But Hank doesn’t have any marks on him.” He paused. “You know, I was watching a Star Trek—the original series—rerun the other day. I remember thinking about the creature in it. It was the one about the monster that craved salt—and it left sucker-like impressions on the skin of its victims.”

I blinked. “You don’t really think that’s what attacked you, do you?” I didn’t say it, but I wanted to point out that Star Trek was just a show.

Tad snorted, then groaned. “That hurt. No, but I was thinking about that episode as we were investigating. I wonder…did whatever it was…did it play out my thoughts?”

I suddenly understood what he was saying. So did Caitlin.

“You mean did it read your thoughts and manifest as what you’re most afraid of?” she asked.

He nodded. “That’s it—because Hank doesn’t have them on him.” He paused as the doctor returned, another white-coated person behind him. The woman, who had so much magic dripping off her she practically reeked of it, gave both Caitlin and me a