Raising Innocence: A Rylee Adamson Novel(72)

“You have other children here.”
She nodded, lowered her eyes. “I could not bear to be alone. But they . . . they didn’t need their families anymore. Death stalked them. I gave them life.” Her voice grew in intensity as she spouted her beliefs.
Shifting my weight to my heels, I tensed, expecting an attack. “It’s time for them to go back to their families.”
Nodding, her hair floated out around her face. “Yes, now that Brittany is here.” She smiled, her lips trembling as she reached for Pamela, who I could see was fighting her natural inclination to shrink away from the crazy woman in front of us.
“You and I are going to take those kids back to the hospital,” I said. “Brittany.” I squeezed Pamela’s shoulder. “Will wait here for us.”
Anne put her hands over her heart. “Of course, of course. What you say, it makes perfect sense. These babies don’t need me.”
She turned her back and stepped into the room she’d come from.
I spoke quickly. “Just wait here, go up to the roof and hide.”#p#分页标题#e#
“You think she’ll try to come back without you?”
“Yes, I’m almost sure of it.”
“What if she—”
“If she takes you, I can find you no matter where you go. I won’t leave you with her if it comes to that.” I touched the side of her face. “Trust me.”
Pamela nodded, and I left her standing there in a dead girl’s dress, trusting that I wouldn’t let her down.
As I crossed through the open door, I couldn’t stop myself from recoiling, almost falling backwards.
What lay on the floor and in the cribs spread about the room was worse than any adult zombie I’d seen. Little limbs, little teeth, ears half-falling off, flesh peeling away from miniature ribcages, the stench of death and rotting flesh. A hint of baby powder and lilacs, as if someone had tried to cover the smell. Fingers reaching toward me, eyes missing and glazed over, clumps of hair caught in teeth and fingers. I gagged, biting my tongue to keep the puke in, bile coating my throat. This was the stuff of nightmares.
“Come along, babies, time to go!” Anne called cheerfully—as if this was normal, which for her it was, of course, but FUCK—and the babies did just as the adult zombies did. They lined up and toddled, crawled, walked and wormed their way to Anne. She made a slash with her hand and the air parted in front of her. I could see the hospital furnace room, the first place I’d Tracked her to.
“Holy fuck,” I whispered. She could make entryways into the Veil. That’s how she’d been jumping around so easily!
Anne gave me a dirty look. “Please, no bad language in front of the children. Hurry babies, time to go.” She directed them and they crossed the Veil easily, disappearing one by one.
I drew closer, seeing the children spread out on the floor. “You have to release them.”
Anne drew herself up, breathing in deep. “I love them all so much. You don’t have a child; I can see it in you. You can’t possibly understand the grief of losing a child so young.”
I hated that I felt compassion for her, that my heart understood all too well. “I think you’d be surprised by what I know.”
She turned to face me, denim blue eyes piercing into mine as if she searched me for the truth. “Perhaps you are right.”
A flick of her hand and the babies stiffened as a unit, slowly slumping to the concrete floor. “Sleep well, my sweet darlings. Your love carried me through so many years.”
Creepy as hell? Yes. But again, I saw too much of Giselle in Anne, the same kind of madness that made them say and do things that were so—
She shoved me, catching the edge of my shoulder as she tried to force me to cross the Veil.
“And I felt sorry for your half-rotted ass,” I said as I used her momentum, grabbed her arm and pulled her with me, through the Veil and into the furnace room. She screeched and reached back the way we’d come, the threshold still open. Pamela ran to peer in.
“Go,” I yelled as I wrestled with Anne. She had almost no muscle strength I could feel and so it wasn’t much of a contest, but when she raised her hand and the babies twitched I knew I had to get the hell out of there. Like now.
A swift twist of my arm and I was free of Anne’s grip. Leaping through the Veil back to the house, I crashed onto the floor on the other side and spun on my knees, sword raised. The slash in the air was gone. The thump of feet going up the stairs told me Pamela was on the move.
The stomps coming up the stairs told me Anne was pissed. Of course, the bottleneck of the lower stairway worked to my advantage. Stepping up, I starting removing heads as they came into range. One after another, the zombies kept lurching and struggling forward over their dead comrades.