"Don't you feel the least bit guilty?" Thredson asked.
"I'm not sure why I would," Lana replied. "I didn't kill anyone."
"I shared so much of myself with you." His fists clenched, Thredson narrowed his eyes. "I trusted you."
"You don't know what it means to trust someone. Or even to have any kind of relationship with them."
"And now you're going to betray me," he continued, ignoring Lana's comment. "You're going to write about all we went through together and show it to the world. That tape you recorded will be played on television, radio, our most intimate moments will be splashed across headlines. Don't you want to leave it between us? Keep it special?"
Lana laughed at the absurdity. "Actually," she said, "there is something I really want to share with you. And I do want to keep it between us."
She reached into her purse, and, with a rattle, pulled out a small bottle.
"What's that?" Thredson asked suspiciously.
"This?" Lana held up the bottle for him to barely see in the flickering light. "This is pennyroyal. You know what that means, right?"
Opening his eyes, Kit could just barely make out the floor of the common room, despite the fact that he was laying on it. With effort, he lifted his head. Three feet around him in every direction was empty space, ringed by Braircliff's patients, their eyes wide with confusion and fear.
His shoulder still aching, but only dully, Kit stumbled to his feet. A gasp went up around him, and the first row of the crowd surrounding him tried to force their way deeper into the throng. The patients further back didn't allow it, and pushed back, propelling some of the frantic mob forward and increasing their desperation.
Ahead, Kit could see the same thing happening around the guards, whose guns were still drawn. The panicking swarm struggled with itself, the crush nearing the guards, whose faces would be ashen even if it weren't for the moonlight.
When the mob lunged forward, the guards didn't hesitate. They'd already shot once; the taboo was no longer in place. Aiming to kill, they pulled their triggers.
Against the screams and moans of the patients, the clicking of the jammed guns was lost. To the first row of lunatics, however, the guards' repeated attempts to fire and the lack of response from their weapons was obvious. As the guards' eyes widened, Briarcliff's patients remembered their sadistic treatments, their days of confinement, their beatings, all performed or aided by the guards, impossible without their firearms to maintain their authority.
With manic grins, the horde began to deliberately move towards the guards.
"…nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen," Sister Jude's chant continued. "Pater noster, qui es in caelis…"
Flicking the aspergillum through the air, its silver catching the candlelight, Monsignor Howard splattered Mary Eunice with a spray of holy water. Weakened, she shrieked as her skin sizzled and burnt where the water had touched her face, making it look as if half her face had been splashed with ink.
"Go away, Seducer!" the Monsignor commanded her. "The desert is your home! The serpent is your dwelling!"
"You will never cast me out!" Mary Eunice howled back, digging her nails into her cheek. "I'll kill her before I let you win!"
"So be it," Monsignor Howard replied coldly. "Be humiliated and cast down. For even though you have deceived men, you cannot make a mockery of God. He has prepared Hell for you and your angels."
Mary Eunice let out another screech as he finished and pried her fingers under her tainted skin, peeling it away.
"As long as you're not planning on having my child," Thredson said, regarding the bottle of pills in Lana's hand, "I suppose you may as well kill yourself. It saves me some effort."
"I'm not stupid, Oliver," Lana replied. "I'm only taking one. I'll only take another once I know whether that's worked or not."
"And if that one doesn't work?"
Lana shrugged. "Then I'll find another way. But doing this now, right in front of you?" Using her thumb to pop the cap off the bottle, Lana grinned. "It's so much more… intimate. Don't you think?"
"Listen to yourself, Lana. You're ending a life, just so that you can enjoy my pain." Angrily, Thredson added, "That's sick."
"It's a better reason than you've ever had for ending a life," Lana shot back. "Besides, this way I can treasure the memory forever," she said, nodding at the tape recorder by her feet as she brought the bottle towards her mouth.
"Don't you think there's been enough death already?" Thredson asked with a look of concern that would be convincing if it came from anyone else.
"Not yet." Lana tilted her head back just enough to get one pill out of the bottle and swallowed.
Heedless of the gun, Thredson lunged forward, enraged. Lana pulled the trigger.
The tools of their oppression ineffective, the patients of Briarcliff charged towards the guards, swarming them. The one in the middle was the first to be submerged by the mob, and was quickly brought down to the dirty tile floor. Paralyzed by the sounds of his screams, the man on his right suffered the same fate within seconds.
As blows rained down on the two guards and patients clawed at them, flinging scraps of clothing and clumps of hair and skin behind them, the third guard bolted, racing through the door out of the common room. Wading through the crazed horde, Kit followed his lead, finally staggering out into the corridor.
Doing his best to ignore the shrieks of anguish from inside the common room, Kit looked around. The guard was already far down the hall to his left, about to turn a corner. Kit was about to go the opposite direction when he saw someone else emerge ahead of the guard. Both he and the guard froze.
Whatever had just appeared looked human at first glance, but the guard's wide eyes and rigid stance made Kit look again. He wasn't sure what the thing was, but knew he had seen it before, when Lana had led him and Grace through the escape tunnel. It was one of the creatures from outside.
Kit began to back away, slowly and quietly, putting as much distance between himself and the thing as he could, hoping to go around the corner before it spotted him. He was almost there when the creature let out a sound, halfway between a howl and a moan, and darted forward. It closed the distance between itself and the guard inhumanly fast, before the guard had time to react.
There was a thump as the guard was slammed into the wall. This was followed by more, progressively wetter thuds as the creature's fist pounded again and again into the unfortunate man's stomach, finally coming up red and trailing thick ropes of gore.
Barely breathing, Kit watched, unable to tear his eyes away. Finally, movement behind the bloody scene caught his attention. Another one of the creatures had materialized, and its eyes were fixed on Kit. Trying to appear as non-threatening as possible, Kit crept further down the hallway.
The second creature slowly stalked forward, focused on Kit. As the first creature sensed its passing, its head lifted, and it sniffed the air before following the second's lead, advancing towards Kit. Panicking, Kit gave up on stealth and hurried backwards, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste. The creatures let out guttural roars and broke into runs.
Suddenly, the door to the common room exploded outwards, and patients, many covered in blood, spewed into the hallway in a chaotic brawl, tearing and spitting at each other. Kit turned and ran, not wanting to see the ensuing melee.
Opening her eyes, Lana looked around the dark room. Despite the fact that she was bleary from sleep, she knew she had been awoken by a noise. She checked the time on her iPhone, sitting on the nightstand next to her bed. It read 2:27. Rubbing her eyes, she sat up, ready to investigate for the source of the disturbance.
And then she noticed the man kneeling beside her bed. The only light was from the streetlights outside Lana's window, but it was just enough to tell that he held a gun, pointed at her chest, and a large, obsolete tape recorder, covered in grime.
When he said nothing for a long moment, Lana asked, "What do you want?"
Wordlessly, he placed the tape recorder on Lana's lap and pressed play. With a stutter, the wheels of the tape recorder began slowly grinding the ribbon and years of dirt in slow circles, and the crackle and hiss of decades-old tape filled the room.
"Listen to yourself, Lana," an angry voice, warped by time but still recognizable, addressed her. "You're ending a life, just so that you can enjoy my pain. That's sick."
Lana's heart nearly stopped and ice settled into her stomach. She would never forget that voice, that conversation, no matter how long ago it had been.
"It's a better reason than you've ever had for ending a life," her own voice replied. "Besides, this way I can treasure the memory forever."
"Don't you think there's been enough death already?"
"Not yet."
The tape recorder ground to a halt. It looked like it would never play again, but Lana guessed that it had already served its purpose. She looked from it to the man next to her, still staring at her furtively.
She asked again, "What do you want?"
"Payback," he replied, "for my father."
"What?"
"You killed my father." The gun twitched towards the tape recorder. "After that conversation. After you told him you were going to kill me."
"No," Lana said, her eyes wide. "That's impossible."
One more chapter to go, guys. Let me know what you think so far!