Chapter 12
The cops were the first thing I noticed. They were moving. It’s a survival instinct—when you’re frightened, you always notice the moving things first. The cops were working in small teams to take pictures, put down markers, and bag evidence. Falin stood on the far side of the room, talking to the coroner.
Then I noticed the furniture. Yesterday this room had been deserted without so much as dust to disturb the emptiness. Today plush throw rugs covered the floor. On the rugs were dozens of large mood candles, most still lit. The candles were gathered around an ornate bed in the very center of the room. And the center of the circle.
A small round table stood to the side of the bed, a bottle of champagne and two flutes on top. A white silken cord looped around the bedpost closest to me, the white turning scarlet where it was attached to a crimson object.
I stared at it, knowing it would be bad when my brain took time to puzzle out the red lump.
A bloody foot.
I took a deep breath, hoping it would help the tightness in my stomach. It didn’t, but I forced my eyes to move on. To move up the bloodstained leg, over the bare hip. My gaze snagged on what logic told me was a torso—all I saw were wet, dark shapes flowing from the crimson skin. Bile crept up my throat and burned my tongue, and I forced my gaze higher. The woman’s face was washed in red. Her glazed, sightless eyes stared out at the room, her lips twisted in an endless scream.
It was too much.
I swayed. Only Death’s arm sliding around my waist kept me standing as my knees gave out and I doubled over. My stomach heaved, and I gritted my teeth, fighting the convulsions in my throat. I will not get sick at the crime scene.
Death’s cold hand moved to the back of my neck.
“Breathe, Alex. Just breathe.”
The cold helped calm the sick heat gripping me, and I nodded, obediently gulping down air. As I fought my body, the magic in the room grated against my mind, trying to worm its way inside my defenses. The circle was down, but the dark, cutting magic in the air was still very active.
I have to get out of here.
I straightened, ready to run as far as my shaky legs would take me, to flee and never look back. Death stopped me. His arms wrapped around my shoulders, dragged me against his broad chest.
“Come on, Alex. Deep breaths.”
The gray man made a rude sound somewhere behind me. “This is your idea of help?”
The cutting iciness of Death’s touch was fading, replaced by a growing numbness. It crawled over my cheek, across my chest, down my legs. Numb is good. Or it meant I was dying.
Death released me and stepped back. His hand moved to my numb cheek, and he tilted my head back. My gaze dragged up to meet his. The cool depths of the grave reflected in darkness in his eyes. The chill, already saturating so much of my skin, seeped deeper, drawing out the part of me that touched the dead. My shields ripped away and my heat fled as a gray patina washed over the room. Without a circle, inside a room with malicious magic, I was now straddling the chasm between the living and the dead.
Death dropped his hand, a pained expression crossing his face. He didn’t change in my grave-sight—he was exactly what he was—but the walls behind him crumbled, the rusting supports underneath revealed. I took a deep breath. The air was warm, but my breath condensed as I blew it out. I turned.
The gray man was staring, his cane suspended in midspin.“
That was risky,” he whispered, and I had no idea if he was talking to me or to Death.
Death stepped closer, but he didn’t touch me. He pointed toward the center of the room. “You asked if we collected the soul of the victim. We did not. We could not. We need you to find what is left and pull it from the body.”
I blinked at him. “The soul is still in the body?” I turned. In the center of the blood and entrails was the faintest glow of blue. A dim soul still locked inside dead flesh. Even filled with the calm chill of the grave, my stomach twisted.
I shook my head. “No.”
Death raised an eyebrow. “No what?”
“She can still feel …” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
The woman—not breathing, her heart not in her body, her skin in threads—was somewhat alive. Somehow, on some level, she had felt everything that had happened to her.
I squeezed my eyes closed. That didn’t help. I was seeing things on a psychic level, so if anything, closing my eyes brought the faint pulse of her soul into sharper focus. I looked down at the floor, and as I stared at the crumbling cement under my feet I realized something was missing. The rugs.
I looked up. There were no rugs, no candles, no round table with a bottle of champagne on top. My gaze moved to the woman. She was very much still there, her soul pulsing weakly, but the ornate bed she’d been tied to was now a cheap folding table.
“I don’t understand. What am I seeing?”
“You are Seeing,” Death said, as if that meant anything.
“You are looking through planes of existence, through truth.”
Nothing in this room exists? Well, not nothing. There was the folding table and the markers the cops were setting down; while those were rotted in my grave-sight, they were in fact real.
I stepped forward but stopped before crossing the inactive circle. It had been broken, not released. I could feel the backlash still threading through the remnants.
The ritual was interrupted?
I crossed the edge of the circle, and it was like stepping into a vortex. Every dark, angry wave of energy that crashed into me during my first visit was like a single raindrop compared to the tempest of what I stood in now. My body shook under the onslaught. I could see the sickly black strands and dangerous red knots of magic in the air, and for a moment I thought I’d been jettisoned into the Aetheric. But no. There was just that much magic here.
I took another step forward, and as if the magic could sense me, black and red tentacles of magic snaked toward me. A dark tendril reached me. It twined up my boot to encircle my bare calf.
Pain pulsed into my skin as the magic attacked what few personal shields I had remaining while consumed by grave magic. The pain turned to a burn, and I backpedaled out of the latent circle. Death knelt, his hand moving to my leg, and the magic dissipated, leaving a dull throb behind.
“We’ll have to get her through,” Death said, looking at the gray man.
“I was afraid you’d say that.” He lifted his cane straight in front of him as if it would ward off evil. Then he walked across the edge of the circle. “Come on, then. We’re running out of time.”
I shot an uncertain look at Death.
“Walk where he does, and stay close. I’ll guard your back,” he said.
Okay. Next time I was asking for more specifics before agreeing to any favors for Death. I fell in step behind the gray man, crossing the circle where he had.
Again the onslaught of magic cozied up to my senses, leaving oily marks on my mind, but the tendrils of magic didn’t attack this time. They flowed around us, opening like a tunnel before the gray man. Behind me, Death walked backward, his palm out. They looked as though they’d formed a protective bubble.
“Hey, who are you?” a cop yelled to my side. The collectors didn’t stop, so neither did I.
“You two can’t be in here!”
Two? They can see Death?
“Alex Craft!”
That voice was Falin. Definitely.
I kept walking.
“Sir, they just walked through the table.”
Oops. He must have meant the table with the champagne I’d seen when I first entered. I couldn’t see it at all now.
“What the hell is going on?” Falin again.
The cops closest to us drew guns.
“Don’t shoot,” Falin yelled. “Alex, get over here. Now.”
We reached the bed, or table, as it now appeared in my grave-sight.
“Now what?” I whispered.
“Get her out of that body,” Death said, still behind me.
How the hell do I do that? I looked down at the body and winced as I saw the glowing glyphs cut into her skin.
When all I could see was blood and gore, I’d thought the attack on her had been savage, but now I saw it had been precise, each slice purposeful. One symbol was repeated over and over. The foreign glyphs were both similar to and different from what I’d seen on Coleman’s body.
As I watched, the glow of her soul faded further as the crimson glyphs burned brighter.
The gray man grabbed my arm. “If you can free her, do it now.”
I nodded, and I thrust my power into her. There was a struggle of life and death in the corpse, and life wasn’t winning. I wished my power could heal her body, her soul, but it couldn’t. My power was with the grave.
I could feel the spell on her body burning into my own skin. An icy, cutting spell. Pain stabbed through my shoulder, and I knew my personal soul-sucking spell was growing, devouring me. I recoiled, drawing my power back. Then I felt her soul.
In all the darkness of the spell, her soul was a thing of light and warmth. Like a moth drawn to flame, my power reached for her. But souls and the grave don’t mix. The soul, weak from fighting the spell, sank deeper into her being. Hiding.
I poured everything I had into the corpse. My body temperature fell, but I barely noticed. I had no more heat, no more life-power to feed the body, so I filled the body with grave-chill. My power chased after the soul as it retreated. Her soul sank into the space her shade should have filled, and I found a misshapen, shredded shade. Just like Bethany. My power flooded the space, and the soul retreated farther. I pushed on.
The spell was sluggish and methodical. I wasn’t. My power swept deeper faster, both recoiling from the spell’s touch and pursuing the soul. I reached the innermost base of her being and filled it with everything I had, every ounce of power.
The soul sprang from the body, and I collapsed to my knees. Above me, glowing faintly blue where the darkness didn’t touch her, was the soul. She screamed, still weak from fighting but filled with my power. I’d never understood how ghosts came to be, but I was looking at one. And this one wasn’t sane.
The ghost wailed, lashing out at the gray man. The spell had come with her. The glyphs on her body were now dark patches surrounded by thick twisting tendrils.
Just like the scratches. But unlike the spell on me, I could see this one growing, and it was growing fast.
The gray man reached out, and his fingers closed around one of the dark glyphs. He pulled, and the ghost screamed louder, tearing at his arm. He kept pulling, ripping the glyph free with all the tangled roots it had grown. Once free of the ghost, the dark glyph dissipated.
The gray man grabbed another of the dark symbols, and Death joined him.
With neither of them guarding against the other magic in the circle, the knotted tendrils were gathering again. It’s time for me to get out of here. I pushed to my feet. My knees buckled, and I stumbled, nearly falling again. Righting myself, I took another step. That one worked better. A dark tendril moved within a foot of me, and I broke into a jerky run.
I crossed the edge of the circle but didn’t stop until I’d reached the far wall. Then I collapsed against it and drew my shaking knees to my chest. Death and the gray man were still in the center of the circle, still pulling dark glyphs off the ghost, but they were almost done.
With each glyph they destroyed, the ghost grew brighter, more solid. But she didn’t stop screaming.
Several cops were on their knees, their hands over their ears. Another had fainted. Two still had their guns drawn and pointed, but they were staring at the ghost.
Falin was on the other side of the room, and he was the only person looking at me. My vision was starting to blank out, my grave-sight shutting down, so I could only just see the silver of his soul burning under his skin.
But I didn’t have to be able to see him to know he was pissed.
Death pulled the last glyph from the ghost. The gray man saluted him with his cane, turned, and then sank a hand into the ghost. She didn’t stop screaming until both she and the gray man had disappeared.
Death turned and smiled at me, and the trance the cops had been in broke. One yelled for him to freeze.
The other opened fire.
I tried to jump to my feet, but my legs didn’t listen, and I slammed into the wall. My breath whooshed out, and I blinked. My vision was darkening. But I could see Death. He looked surprised, his hand covering his stomach.
Time moved in slow motion as he pulled his hand away, his palm soaked in crimson.
“No.” I meant to yell, but my voice barely carried.
The sound of the cops yelling turned to a buzz in the back of my head as Death fell to his knees.
My body felt unreal as I struggled to stand. It took three tries. I had no breath, no strength, but I had to make it to Death. He can’t die. He’s Death.
A shadow moved in the doorway beside me. “Damn boys can’t do anything right.”
The raver collector sashayed into the room, her nails clicking as she strummed her fingers together. “I guess this is your fault,” she said.
I just blinked at her—I wasn’t good for much else. I was out of magic, out of strength. The raver shook her head, making her neon dreads quiver. Then she marched across the floor. She pulled Death’s arm over her shoulder and half carried, half dragged him out of the circle.
Somewhere behind her a gun clattered to the cement.
“Come on.” The raver grabbed my arm and dragged me, while still carrying Death, through the doorway and back into the dusty storeroom we’d entered when we first arrived. I stumbled after her.
“Well, get to it,” she said, depositing me against the wall and, at least momentarily, out of sight of the cops.
“I, uh, what?”
“You swapped life essences. Take it back.” She moved Death closer.
I reached out, brushing his dark hair back behind his ear. I’d always wanted to do that but never had the nerve. My fingers trailed over his cheek, and his skin was blisteringly hot to the touch.
His dark eyes opened and locked onto mine. “I’m sorry, Alex.”
I almost laughed. He’d been shot and he was the one sorry? I shook my head.
His hand moved to mine, pressed my palm against his face. “You’re trembling.”
I blinked back the moisture blinding my eyes. “Don’t worry about me.” The words burned the back of my throat.
“Get on with it,” the raver snapped.
I nodded. I had no idea what I was doing, but I hadn’t with the soul, either. I could only hope I hadn’t used up the last of my luck.
I didn’t have any power to reach with, but it turned out I didn’t need to. I opened my mind, myself, and just as it was with a corpse, my heat, my life essence, flowed back into me. Warmth filtered into my body. Not much warmth, just enough to accent the cold.
Then the pain hit.
My world went red. The pain was everywhere, everything.
I was dying. I could feel every cell in my body dying, withering.
Strong arms wrapped around my body, and I realized I was shaking. No. Convulsing.
“It will pass,” Death whispered, his hand pressed in my hair. “It will pass.”
Death lowered me to the ground, and I lay there, gasping. The pain had passed, but I could still feel my body dying all around me.
I’m dying.
I must have spoken the thought out loud, because Death shook his head.
“You’re mortal. You’ve always been dying.”
“It’s time to go,” the raver said.
Death glanced over his shoulder at her.“I have something left to do.” He turned back to me and smoothed away curls that had fallen in my face. His fingers, while not blisteringly hot, still felt warm. I was coherent enough to realize that Death feeling warm to me was a very bad sign.
“The consumption spell on your shoulder—” he started, but the raver cut him off.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m oath-bound to aid her, like she aided us. Now listen,Alex. I can’t pull the spell free while your soul is still inside your body. You have to track down and destroy the one who cast it. That is the only way.”
Peachy.
He wasn’t done yet. “The spell is malignant and contagious, but very specific in whom it targets. Your soul is strong. It’s fighting. But if the spell wears you down or spreads too far, I’ll come for you. I won’t let it consume you.”
He’d kill me? Better than being eaten, I guess.
He leaned forward until my world was filled with his face. His dark eyes were warm, his breath close enough to caress my skin. “But please, Alex, find the one who cast it.”
The raver cleared her throat. “This is so sweet I’m going to end up diabetic. Now let’s get out of here.”
Death frowned, but he stood. Then they vanished.