Notes: Writing action scenes is hard. Damned. Lots of violence in this one.

Dedications: To Crimsonoaks and Magical. Narrator! And everyone else!

Stage Fifteen

”Damn.”

Gregory stopped in the doorway to catch his breath, which felt like swallowing icy water down his throat. As a smoker he was not in particularly good shape. His insides hurt from being so near an active nova and the mass amount of ghosts that were within the building. Shouts carried down the corridor, accompanied by children crying and things breaking. He had gotten here as quick as he possibly could, but maybe it hadn’t been quick enough, he thought and pressed a hand to his chest, right above the pounding heart. He crossed the doorstep and headed for the source of noise.

A group of children, all ranging from age six to ten, were guided by two men that Gregory recognized as co-workers, and a teacher. Judging by their expressions the teacher was the most hysterical one, not the children. The tallest of the two barked his name when he spotted him. There was blood on the man’s face both from a cut on his forehead and the split lip. Bruises had already started to surface on the skin.

“The second floor, Jade. Blue, Turner and Myers need back up. We’re taking the kids out of here.”

“Are there more of them?”

“No, this is the last bunch. The police will be showing up soon, so you better be quick.” He turned his head to shout something at his companion. “Don’t know how we’re supposed to cover up this mess. Good luck.” The group left.

Gregory wasted no time in staring after them. The stairs were slippery under his feet, wet from a major leak of water somewhere nearby. Ascending the stairs was much like walking in shallow water, and it was fucking cold to have his shoes and socks soaked by it. He grit his teeth and bit back the moan that wanted out, balled his hands into fists and ran the remaining few steps to the top. Up here the lights had gone out, which left him more or less in the dark since it was only eight thirty in the morning.

“Sam!” he yelled. “Nathan, where are you?”

Something brushed against his left side. The jolts of pain and cold it caused made him groan and turn on his heels. Great, just what he needed- a hostile ghost.

He came face to face with a shimmering figure that had once been a human, but now more closely resembled a being from a horror story. The silvery, translucent skin was bloated, its colour a pale shade of green and grey, and one eye had gone missing whereas the other rolled around inside the socket. Gregory raised his hands to clap them together, to begin an exorcism, but the hand that shot forward and grabbed him by the throat was firm and real. He cried out when he hit the wall nearby and tried to pry the fingers from his wind pipe. They pressed hard, taking their time in cutting off his air and choking him, the fingertips rough and calloused.

“Take your fucking hands off him!”

The hand was torn from his throat by another force stronger than itself. Gregory half sank to the floor, touching his sore voice box while gulping down much needed air. Before him a violent scene unfolded; Trent drove his hand into the ghost’s empty eye socket with a feral snarl, jabbing his fingers into it, dug his other hand through the bloated chest to grab the dead contents within and pull them out. His mismatched eyes glowed with wrath, literally glowed in a way Gregory had never seen before. His legs were frozen, his heart on a rampage in his ribcage. He could not do anything but sit there while Trent tore the other ghost apart with his bare hands.

“Greg- now! Dust the fucker!” Trent snarled. There was a sickening crack as a neck broke, the sound of bones breaking distorted by the ghost’s lack of mortality. God, he hadn’t even known that one ghost could do that to another. “Do it already!”

He clasped his hands together, coughed, and directed his energy through the connected hands. Words that would exorcise the bloated, disfigured ghost left his lips, spoken with clarity and confidence despite the tremor in his voice. This was what he did. He could do this with his eyes closed. A wail rose in the air, keening and climbing higher until his eardrums might burst, though they held, and moments later it was over. He became acutely aware of his own panting.

“Slowpoke.” Trent grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him up from the floor, grinning madly.

“Thought you weren’t…coming.” Gregory raised an eyebrow.

“Knew you couldn’t manage without me, honey,” Trent chuckled and patted his chest. “Come on, we go this way.”

Even if Trent hadn’t told him that, the loud noise of something crashing into a wall nearby would have pointed him in the right direction. He ran ahead without waiting.

Max came tumbling through a doorway just as Gregory reached it. The two of them grabbed at each other on instinct, went down together and ended up in a tangled mess on the floor, with hands and knees pressing into the wrong places. Gregory groaned, rolled off him and let Trent hoist him up again so he could help Max. The man’s glasses were broken, his hair tousled and his face an absolute mess as he blinked up at him. On his white shirt there was blood, splattered about in random patterns, probably from his nose, which looked swollen. “Right on time, Greg,” Max coughed and took his hand. “We are getting our asses handed to us, damn it.” This was a side of Max Turner that one rarely got to see, but Gregory was always relieved to be assured of its existence.

“Anyone hurt?”

“No serious injuries.”

Nathan’s voice had them both snapping their heads up, and neither man hesitated to burst into the classroom to offer his help. Two seconds after he passed through the doorway Gregory stopped, doubled over and clutched his chest to relieve the pain that pulsated in his upper body. Damn it, why was he so useless in these situations? He was a good exorcist, excellent at what he did for a living, but this damned handicap of his slowed him down. Through narrow eyes he looked up, saw Nathan and Sam cooperating to exorcise a bundle of ghosts that had melted together. You could no longer tell them apart. They were feeding the nova that might go off at any second. A cold chill went through him when he laid eyes on the ball of explosive energy hovering two feet over the ground. It had no distinctive colour, no smell or shape that let you separate it from the regular air with your eyes, but you could bloody well feel it. It was a gut wrenching sensation.

“Get yourself together, Greg,” Trent hissed into his ear. “This isn’t the time. Come on!” A hand grabbed hold of his ponytail and pulled him upright again with force. He yelped, hadn’t expected that, but Trent was right. God, he was. A motion to his right caught his attention. From the corner of his eye he recognized it as a chair, saw it coming for his head, but he could not react quick enough to duck his head and avoid the impact, knew he couldn’t. Trent took the blow for him.

“Trent! Fuck, what are you doing?” he shouted, eyes wide and mouth agape with surprise.

“You’re such a blind idiot,” the ghost wheezed. “I got to go, can’t stay here.” Gregory followed his eyes to the struggling Nathan and Sam. “Can’t watch out for you all the time.” He vanished in thin air.

“Greg! Give me a hand here!” Max didn’t bother to look at him. The man’s face was covered in sweat from concentrating so hard to keep up a bond on two ghosts. They were suspended in the air, unmoving, but as soon as his concentration faltered they would be free. Every thought of Trent disappeared from Gregory’s mind. He was at Max’s side in a split second, took one of his hands and squeezed it hard to lend Max his own energy. There were no fancy sparks, no show of light, no visible reaction to the connection, but Max’s mouth fell open, his eyelids peeled as far back as possible, every limbs trembling. Words flew from his lips, the same words that Gregory had spoken earlier, and right away they took their toll on the unmoving ghosts. Their half translucent forms faded without a struggle and left no trace of their existence behind.

Gregory was only vaguely aware of the new people that arrived as he separated himself from Max. Co-workers, he realized, but he had no time for stopping to see who they were. Time was ticking faster, he could tell. In a couple of minutes, maybe less, the room would be blown up. They needed to wrap this up right now, before they all got killed in the explosion that was near inevitable. He wanted to call out for Nathan, was almost about to, but to break his friend’s concentration could backfire in his face.

There was too much tension and bad energy gathered in this room.

That he had been able to spend more than three minutes in the presence of it was a miracle, and the effect of it was catching up to him. In his chest it awoke without any warning but a painful tingle in his gut, spread through his arm like fire on the surface of oily water and took away his control of the limb, of his upper body, his legs, himself. Gregory opened his mouth and screamed. It was only its presence that kept him standing on his two feet, because the agony that tore through him would have made him collapse had he been the one in control of his body. Whispering inside his head was its voice, mournful and insane and pissed off all at once, climbing in volume until it was all he could hear. ‘Eat’, it said, ‘eat it, eat them, eat us, swallow them all down, make them hurt’.

Trent, Oh god, Trent.

With the passing of thirty seconds a million different things seemed to happen; Nathan got in Max’s way, a wrist snapped and broke, skin split, blood ran, Sam shouted as Nathan crashed to the ground, heat spread through the room. And everything felt like it centered itself in Gregory’s arm. Outstretched and with the hand open it sucked in everything it could reach to quench the thirst its thirst. The skin in his palm split open from the pressure, blood ran thick down his wrist, to the floor, everywhere, and Gregory thought he would lose it. Thought he might have with the head splitting migraine in his skull that pounded and pulsed in steady rhythm with the ghosts that were absorbed into his body. Heat mixed with cold, cold tried to overtake the heat, and everything was chaos. Not even when he was a child and got the injury in the first place did he feel pain on this level. Around him things broke, chairs and tables fell to the floor, no longer held up by the ghosts that had gone mad, and the nova calmed down and eliminated as a result of both the ghosts disappearance and Sam’s help.

He was still screaming his throat raw when Max put a hand on his shoulder and shook him. The sound faded and died.

“Greg, are you okay? Fuck, tell me you’re okay? I’ve never seen anything like what you just did.” Max was breathless, shaky and pale as a white sheet of paper. His hand gave Gregory’s shoulder a firm squeeze, its warmth reassuring. It helped ground him to reality again. “Say something.”

His eyes slowly came into focus. The last tendrils of its power fell away and went back to sleep, its wrath sated for now. He felt the control return to him, knuckle by knuckle, and the moment he was fully himself again his knees gave away under him. Max caught him, and Gregory caught a glimpse of bone sticking out from bloodied skin. “I’ve got you, pal. I’ve got you. Breathe easy.” Max eased them both to the ground and smoothed down Gregory’s tangled, blonde hair with his good hand. The other was a mess. Max’s left wrist had been broken, possibly in the worst way one could imagine, but the blood covered up the true brutality of the damage. The wrist bone jutted from the skin at a terrible angle that had Gregory’s stomach sick with nausea. “I’m okay,” Max insisted, but his skin was damp with sweat, his eyes glazed over with an oncoming fever.

“Jade, Turner!” Sam’s eyes had a wild look to them.

She was kneeling on the floor next to a limp body, and Gregory felt a rush of horror when he realized it was Nathan. Her hands rested on his chest, clenched and balled into tight fists, as though she was trying her best to keep from hitting him.

“Nathan…” Gregory felt bile rise in his throat. “What happened? Why is he-“ He forced himself to sit up and swallow it down, to ignore how much his chest hurt and crawl over to Nathan. Max crouched down by Sam with his wounded wrist held close to his body.

“One of the tables, it hit him in the head,” Sam said hoarsely. “Fuck, we need to call an ambulance!” Her teeth were bared in a grimace as she got up and walked over to one of the others that had arrived later. His companion lay unconscious under a chair. The man was barely standing on his feet, pain etched onto his face, and when Sam grabbed a fistful of his jacket and pulled him forward he fell against her. “Give me your phone, Jackson.”

“Already c-called, Sam.”

She released him and stepped away with a frustrated noise. Outside the wails of sirens approached. The police would be here in a couple of minutes, and none of them were in any shape to come up with a convenient story that would save them from being taken into custody. “Call Removal. We need them here ASAP. Exorcists aren’t trained to deal with the cops.”

“Give me two seconds.”

Cleaning up any mess after an incident was the job of the fourth branch of the Organization- Removal. They were a group of talented employees, many of them former cops who knew how the business worked. The Organization they all worked for was by no means top secret or kept hidden from the government, nothing like what you saw in movies, but it was better to keep a low profile. Civilians easily panicked, and it was a known fact that humans feared the unknown. Most of the government scoffed at the work they did, which was natural. Not all humans were spiritually aware enough to believe in the existence of ghosts.

“Your hand,” Max pointed out. “It’s bleeding.”

A slow burn was spreading in his skin where it had cracked open, but Gregory couldn’t feel it, not when every nerve ending in his chest had come alive. And the cold, the bloody cold, must have fallen another notch, because if he had trouble drawing his breath properly before he sure couldn’t do it better now. He breathed through his nostrils, scared that he might just stop breathing if the terrible cold spread any further. His lungs were under presure, likely from the ghosts he had absorbed. He stared down at Nathan with a forlorn face. The man was bleeding from his right temple, where the table had smashed into his head, and it had left behind an open wound. Nathan’s skull might be cracked, and if that was the case he could be bleeding into his brain badly enough that the pressure would kill him.

Neither of the people present moved as the police arrived.

-

Hospitals had a dreary atmosphere.

You knew, the moment you came inside, that this was a place where people died and suffered. The walls that were painted in a toothpasty green and white, the abstract art on the walls that was a desperate attempt to cheer up the halls, the blank stares of the people in the waiting room…All these things and a million more subtle details rubbed Gregory the wrong way.

He sat outside Nathan’s room with his hands in his lap and a heavy lump in his stomach and waited for Alexandria to come. His hand had been patched up in the ambulance and no longer bled. Sam was too restless to sit and wait quietly; she kept walking back and forth, sitting down and getting back up two minutes later to pace some more. They hadn’t talked since they left the ambulance four hours ago. Max and Nathan had both been taken to the OR- Max to have his wrist fixed, Nathan to have his head checked. Both men had been in a bad shape when they parted ways with Sam and Gregory, and Max’s fever had been climbing steadily even as he was put in a wheelchair by two doctors and rolled off.

The other two that were with them, Jackson and O’Rale (or, that’s what Gregory thought the name was) were in the waiting room because the hospital didn’t have the capacity to check them out right away. Neither of them were seriously injured, but they were exhausted and in pain.

“-ank you, doctor.” Alexandria’s voice was shaky. She stepped out of Nathan’s room, accompanied by a male doctor who nodded at them both and hurried off.

“How is he?” Sam was on her case in a second.

“He’s…okay. For now, at least.” To speak these words cost her a lot. The hesitation in her voice was obvious, as was the tremor that told Gregory that she was holding back tears. But looking at her face you couldn’t tell this. Alexandria was the picture of a calm, collected person. Gregory felt number than he had in years.

“What did the doctor say?”

“That he most likely hasn’t suffered any brain damage, but they can’t say for sure. He might stay asleep for weeks, he might wake up tomorrow.” She looked away. “He may have lost some basic memories or abilities…when he wakes. Like how to drive, or how to use the washing machine, things like that.” Gregory couldn’t say anything. What she told them meant that Nathan might not be able to work anymore once he regained consciousness, and that was a bitter though. Though, if that happened he’d at least be awake and alive. At the moment nothing was certain.

“Sam, what did Removal tell you?”

“They talked to the cops and gave them a story to pass on. It can’t be covered up, really. The kids know what they saw.” She stuck her hands in her pockets, shrugged and leaned back against the wall. “They’ll be having nightmares for months after that.”

They fell silent after that, each of them caught up in their own thoughts and concerns.

Gregory felt better now. His chest no longer hurt, though it still felt too tight, and he wondered if anything had changed. Had he become more like a ghost with this incident or did he still retain his full humanity? The effects of absorbing those ghosts could appear at any time.

“I need to get some coffee. Will you two, um, stay here in case the doctor comes back?” Alexandria glanced at them both and showed them a weak smile when they nodded. “Thank you. I’ll be back soon.” As if either of them were going anywhere for a long while yet.

He saw Sam go stiff where she stood, but he didn’t need to ask, for he soon enough felt the chilly presence of a ghost nearby. That there would be ghosts in the hospital was hardly a surprise, but that said ghost would be Trent was unexpected. He came ‘walking’ around a corner, and the moment he saw Sam he gave a start and forgot to stay on the ground.

“Get the fuck away,” Sam warned. “I’m not in a mood to play.”

“Screw you, it’s not you I’m here for,” Trent spat back and flipped her the bird, which Gregory instantly knew was a very bad move. He was out of his chair the moment Sam removed her hands from the pockets and straightened herself to be at her full height.

“Finally grew a pair of balls, huh? Last time you were too scared to even come near me,” she mocked and cracked her fingers. Every pop and crack of the joints sounded ominously loud. “Jade here might be having trouble with you, but believe me, I can have you tamed in no time.” She flashed him a crooked smile that sent shivers down Gregory’s spine. She was serious, and they could not have a fight here in the hospital. Granted, there wouldn’t be much of a fight if Sam put her power to good use. She was too skilled for that.

“Try it, bitch.” Trent returned her grin and pointed a finger at her.

Gregory was between them when Sam took a step forward. “Stop it, both of you. This is a hospital, damn it!” Sam quirked an eyebrow. He could see her trying to work out what was going on here, and she did not like what she concluded from the situation.

“Don’t stop me, Jade. It is just another ghost. I know you feel sorry for them, but won’t it be easier for you too if you let me handle it? You should have come to me in the first place.”

“Just...Just leave it, Sam. I can handle Trent myself.”

“Trent,” she repeated. “God, how pathetic. You call it by its name?”

“They were human too. The only difference is that they died and we didn’t,” he said somberly. Sam was not backing off, and Gregory had no wish to physically fight her or step aside.

“This isn’t just pity.”

Her comment was simple, but the meaning it held made his palms grow clammy with sweat. She was so close to realizing just what his feelings for Trent were that any confirmation from him would give her the final push. His mouth was dry. What should he say? Trent was, for once, blessedly silent.

“For fuck’s sake, Gregory, don’t you see how twisted that is?” She snarled. “It’s dead! It’s not breathing anymore! Sure, it has a personality, but a damned destructive one.” It was reasonable that she was upset- no one despised ghosts as much as Sam did, though he never knew why.

“Don’t, okay?” Gregory mumbled and lowered his head. “Just don’t. I don’t need you telling me this.”

“Oh, but I think you do.” She came forward and grabbed him by the front of his sweater, as she had done to Jackson earlier and got in his face. “I should tame it and rid you of this ridiculous crush. I would be doing you a favour, if I did.”

“Fuck you!” Trent shouted. “Like you’re one to tell him what to do! Keep your fat paws away from me.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed in a glare. “You should be buried six foot under, like every other ghost out there. None of you have the right to be pestering us living.”

“You’re a little bitter, aren’t you?” Trent snorted. “What, did someone haunt your house and play with you a bit? Is that it? You ought to let go of the past, cunt.”

Sam exploded. She shoved Gregory away and raised a hand to perform her taming spell. Gregory’s heart hammered violently. If he let this happen he’d lose Trent, and Trent would lose himself. Nothing would be solved. He couldn’t think or come up with a good solution. Instead he kicked Sam in the shin with all the strength he could muster and threw off her balance. She crashed to the floor with a grunt, but clearly he hadn’t hurt her that much since she sat back up and rubbed at her sore shin. “You don’t know what you are talking about, ghost. You fucking don’t know,” she said quietly, voice shaking with mixed emotions. Gregory thought he saw wetness in her eyes.

Oh, damn, he felt dizzy. He took a deep breath and waited for it to pass.

It didn’t.

His mind went blank as he fell over.

-

“Where…am…I?” were the first words to leave his mouth when he came awake. The light stung his eyes and forced him to open them slowly. His head ached, as did his body. Mint coloured walls met him as he stared up at the ceiling and blinked heavily. This was obviously the hospital, but why was he-

Oh, that was right. He passed out earlier.

“You fainted.”

He turned his head and found Trent ‘sitting’ on the edge of the bed. The ghost looked oddly guilty, as though he was the one who put Gregory in this bed. In some sense that was right, he supposed. Trent wrung his hands on his lap and bit his bottom lip.

“The doctor took some of your blood. She told Alexandria that you have iron deficiency. That makes you tired.”

Gregory’s head was filled to the brim with fog, he couldn’t properly, so when Trent asked him the next question his vocals shut down and couldn’t find the words to answer.

“What she said…that awful woman, is it true?” Trent fidgeted. “That you have a crush on me, I mean.”

“Trent…”

“Because I-“

Max chose that moment to come through the door without knocking. Two pairs of confused, wide eyes met him, and he laughed at their dumbfounded expressions. “Sorry if I interrupted anything. Sort of looks like I did, doesn’t it?” His broken wrist had been put in a cast that rested in a contraption of fabric hanging over his shoulder. His face was tired, the skin under his eyes tinted blue, but his smile was genuine. “How are you feeling, Greg?” He closed the door.

“Groggy.”

“That’s to be expected, I guess. We’ve all had a pretty bad day.” He turned to Trent, chuckling. “I heard you had a fight with Sam.”

“Yeah. The bitch tried to put me down,” he sulked.

“You shouldn’t provoke her, Trent. Sam’s had a rough time. She has her reasons for disliking our kind so much.”

“You don’t really qualify as a ghost any longer,” Trent said. “Since you have a body, you know.”

Max laughed. “You’re right. Everyone else thinks of me as a ghost, though, and they too are justified in doing so.”

Gregory touched a hand to his face and rubbed at his tired eyes. He had slept, probably for hours, but this was a bad time to be in bed. There was too much to do when he knew where Trent’s body was and what was meant to take place a couple of days from now. With that thought in mind he forced himself to sit upright and swung one leg over the bed’s edge.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Trent blurted out. “There is no frickin’ way you are leaving this bed!” He grabbed hold of the collar of Gregory’s hospital gown and held him there. “You are on the brink of exhaustion, and you haven’t eaten, so get your sorry ass back in bed.”

“I need to-“

“No, you don’t,” Max cut him off. “Rest, Greg. Please. We all need it.”

“Why are you even here?”

“Um, I stopped by to say that Nathan’s condition is completely stable. He’ll be waking up sometime during the next couple of days. And the bosses are holding a meeting tomorrow at noon. Everyone needs to be there.”

Gregory shuddered when Trent’s icy fingers brushed against his neck. He looked at the two of them, assessed how worried they were for him and sighed. “Fine, I will rest for a while.” Defeated he put his leg back under the covers and let himself fall back onto the fluffy pillows.

“Good boy,” Trent grinned.

“I’ll leave you boys to it, then,” Max winked. “Make sure he stays in bed for at least a few hours, right Trent?”

“Hush, go away.”

“Yes, yes, hint taken.”

Gregory draped an arm over his forehead and peered up at the ghost, whose eyes were intently focused on Max’s disappearing back as he left. Their gazes met, and though he felt that he should say something his mind was blank. Nervosity bubbled in his stomach. Was Trent going to repeat his question from before? Would he have to answer it? If he did, what would it result in? He swallowed hard. They were fine as they were now. What use would it be to complicate things with love confessions? It would be a short lived romance, should it work somehow, and Gregory was not ready for that. He wasn’t so sure that Trent was either.

The two of them stared at one another.

To be able to watch Trent so openly without having words get in the way was a curious experience. Trent was just sitting there, his expression soft and the corners of his mouth tilted slightly up in a small smile. Cold fingertips touched his hand, stroked the skin with a minimum of contact to keep it from getting frozen. The tenderness of the gesture and the way Trent looked at him gave him butterflies of the large kind, the one that felt more like little airplanes flying around inside of you, and he was reminded of everything that had happened that day- the school, Sam threatening and trying to tame Trent out in the corridor earlier, almost losing Nathan. He choked up.

Today he’d almost lost his closest friend and the boy he lo-

No, the boy with whom he was in love. There was a difference.

He’d almost lost them both.

And he hadn’t realized it until now how close to death Nathan had been back there in the classroom, how he might have died from a hemorrhage in his brain or a crack in his skull. He hadn’t realized just how much Trent meant to him before Sam tried to take him away.

“What’s wrong?” Trent frowned. “What’s going on in that silly head of yours?”

He tried to smile, but could not. The next thing he knew he was crying into his arm, sobbing without a sound while the tears were smothered over his face.

I love him, don’t I?

I love this boy. This ghost. I love him. It’s not just ‘being in love’ anymore.

I almost lost him.

“Fuck, you’re scaring me here,” Trent whispered. “You’re not supposed to cry. I’m not that ugly, am I?” Gregory felt the ghost’s weight settle on the bed, felt arms slip around him and pull him forward into a tight hug. Fingers threaded through his hair, loosened the ponytail to play with the blonde strands to soothe him.

This thing they had, Gregory didn’t known how to describe it in words. But he did know, that for the first time in his life he was scared of being heartbroken, and that there was nothing he could do to stop it from happening.

He wrapped his arms around Trent and cried harder.

-

Note: This got more emotional than I had planned, but I do enjoy to see my characters reduced to crying wrecks. Ahem. Next chapter is calmer/not so quick paced.

I think I deserve some cake for finishing this chapter in one go –saunters off to find cake-

ps: go vote on my poll!