Chapter 28
Shit.
I tried to cut off the flow of grave essence, but the chill continued to pour into me. No!
“Cross the planes, Alex. Merge realities.”
Coleman’s command crashed through my mind, vibrated through my body. A cold wind raked through me, the grave drawing itself into my being. I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it. The power clawed into me, and I screamed, squeezing my eyes closed.
“Alex?”
Roy. My power reached to him. He was dead, a ghost, a familiar aspect, and I had too much grave essence. Way too much.
He backed up as if he could sense the reaching power, but it wrapped around him anyway. I siphoned chill into him, made him a repository for power I had no ability to stop drawing.
The Shadow Girl’s head snapped up, her attention torn between the now-visible ghost and me. Roy looked down at himself. He lifted his hand—a hand that wasn’t translucent—and a grin crawled over his face. He hurled himself at the Shadow Girl. They went down in a tumble of limbs.
I didn’t have time to watch. I needed something else to do with the power surging through me. I reached out, searching. Shades rose from the three bodies on the ground.
Still the power burned.
“Freeze, Coleman,” a voice shouted as a door banged open.
Falin? I turned. In my grave-sight, he shone, his silver soul glowing below his skin. He limped as he entered, but his gun was drawn. He’s alive. Relief surged over me, made me feel lighter, as though a space inside me that had crumpled had opened again. That new space was quickly overwhelmed by waves of power with nowhere to go.
A bang crashed through the air, and I ducked, throwing my hands over my ears. The bullet, having no magical properties, passed through the circle. Coleman jerked.
Blood blossomed across Coleman’s chest as he fell.
He hit the ground. Falin dragged himself toward the edge of the circle. The Shadow Girl broke away from Roy. She ran toward the edge of the circle as if anticipating it would collapse. It didn’t. She stopped, turned, and we all stared at the corner of the bed.
Was it over? Was that it?
Coleman’s laugh crawled over the carpet. He pushed himself off the floor. Blood no longer spurted from the hole in his chest.
How … ? His heart wasn’t beating. He’s dead.
Being dead didn’t stop him.
He glared at Falin.“The Winter Queen’s lover and assassin? She always did oppose me.”A dark smirk spread over his face. “I’ll bring your mistress to heel once I’m King.”
The Winter Queen’s lover? I glanced at Falin, but he didn’t look at me. Wouldn’t look at me. His face was hard, not denying Coleman’s claim.
I squeezed my eyes shut. The cold tore into me as if I were an open wound filled with ice. I embraced it, wishing the chill would numb me. It didn’t. It just built. And built. More power than I could contain.
I needed release.
Falin leveled his gun. Three more shots sounded.
Coleman stumbled, but he only laughed.
“Go ahead and destroy this body, assassin. In a few minutes, I will have a body of energy, of power.” Coleman turned to me. “Alex, merge this world with the Aetheric.”
Power hemorrhaged from my body. I screamed, and the sound ignited into sharp sparks of color. Swirls of spells became tangible. A blue thread of raw magic appeared, then a green, then a purple. Oh crap. The Aetheric plane.
Coleman reached a hand toward a raw string of magic and drew it inside his body. “Magnificent.” The black wisps of magic swirled closer to him, seeping below his skin.
He’s high on power.
But he wasn’t done. Casey still struggled under him.
Her soul, a pale blue glow, already had several dark spots expanding over it. I had to do something. I had to stop him. The moon overhead was more red than not.
Time was running out.
Magic poured through me, still seeking an outlet.
Coleman’s body is dead. I reached out, guiding the power. In my grave-sight, the body was already decaying, but my power slid over the spells on his skin, not touching. Dammit.
“Alex, I think now might be the time to do something,” Roy whispered.
“I’d never have guessed.” I climbed to my feet.
The Shadow Girl turned to me again. She rushed forward, her hand lifting. Magic gathered around her fingers.
Inside Coleman’s circle the Aetheric was part of reality, and I drew power, gathering blue swirls from the air. I’d never held both grave magic and Aetheric energy inside my body at once. The raw energy burned, its heat fighting the chill of the grave for dominance. It felt like blistering steam replacing my blood. My skin glowed, and the Shadow Girl hesitated. Without any elegance, just a hell of a lot of pissed-off will, I released the power.
It burst from my body and crashed into the Shadow Girl. It caught her in the torso, lifting her off her feet.
She flew backward, and I sagged from the rush of power moving through me. She landed a yard from the bed.
Her hood fell back, revealing lank red curls, sunken and bruised green eyes.
Rianna.
No. It can’t be.
My old roommate stared at me. Tears wet her cheeks, but she held up her hand. Power gathered around her fingers. Roy jumped forward. Whatever spell she’d prepared fizzled, sliding off the ghost. I tensed as his fist hit her in the jaw. She’s not my best friend right now, I reminded myself.
She was Coleman’s Shadow Girl.
I looked away. I’d expended a hell of a lot of power with that blast, but the grave essence kept pouring into me. I have to stop it. The only way to stop it was to stop Coleman.
Falin banged on the barrier, his cell phone gripped in his hand. “Alex, how do I get inside?”
“You don’t.” If the circle failed, I didn’t know what would happen. Would realities continue to merge throughout the city? The country? The world?
Grave essence seeped into my body. It had to go somewhere. I reached out, searching for a vessel, something I could siphon off the power into. I couldn’t touch Coleman. I’d already raised the shades in the bodies. I could feel Casey’s soul struggling against the spell, but I forced the power away from her. I needed something else, some other source.
My power trailed over something I couldn’t see. Then it latched on, and I let it flow through me. A new scream tore through the room, followed by a second, a third.
Six vaporous women escaped from an item near Coleman’s feet. The souls. Or really, six pissed-off and insane ghosts.
Filled with my power, the ghosts solidified. Their screams of terror and hatred erupted as red flashes in the Aetheric. As one, the group turned. Like a half dozen angry cats, they tore into Coleman, ripping at him with ghostly nails.
“Stop them,” Coleman yelled.
His words tumbled through my mind as a command, but I only smiled.
“I can’t stop them. They exist in our reality now.”
And they certainly didn’t like Coleman. Their rage emerged without words as they gouged his flesh. Their screams snapped and cracked in the magic-laced air.
“Alex!”
I turned. Death stood outside the circle, the gray man and the raver at his side. His dark eyes were wide as he scanned the bubble of chaos around me, but he didn’t enter the circle. He can’t pass the barrier.
“Alex, you’re running out of time.” He pointed at the bed.
Casey lay amid the decayed cream sheets, unconscious.
Not yet dead, but close. Her soul was only a dim glow inside her body. No. I looked up. The moon hung swollen and red above us. The Blood Moon.
Coleman looked up as well. Then the magic he’d been gathering swept out of him. It bound the six ghosts in chains of darkness. “It’s time.”
No.
I looked around. Falin and Death were both stuck outside the circle. Roy still struggled with Rianna. The ghosts were bound. I was the only one left. What can I do?
In my grave-sight, Coleman was a decaying corpse now that Falin had killed Graham’s body. He obviously hadn’t had time to bind all the spells he’d cast on Roy’s body on Graham’s, but that didn’t help me. I couldn’t reach inside him the way I had Ashen. Not with the spells on his skin. What if he didn’t have skin? If what I was seeing was true, if he really was just a corpse …
“You must See under the Blood Moon. You must know what you See is true,” the gargoyle had told me.
Fred, I hope you were foreseeing this.
I rushed forward. Coleman wants me to merge realities;
I’ll merge realities.
My hand landed on his wrist, and I pushed with power. The chill burst out of me, rushed into him. Dead skin sloughed off under my fingers.
“No!” Coleman’s other hand angled toward me, his knife clenched in his fist. Pain exploded in my stomach.
My vision went red with agony, and air suddenly wasn’t there. But Coleman’s strike was too late. The decay spread up his arm, his skin withered, and his bones crumbled to dust.
“Welcome to the land of the dead,” I whispered, gasping for air I couldn’t find. I looked down at the hilt of Coleman’s ceremonial blade where it emerged from under my ribs. Seeing it made the pain worse. I stumbled back, collapsing onto the bed. Don’t pull it out. Don’t pull it out. You’ll do more damage. But I wanted it out of me.
There wasn’t time. Destroying Graham’s body wouldn’t kill Coleman. As the body dissolved, the black stain of the true Coleman, of an unguarded soul, was revealed.
With my mind, I reached out. Instead of pushing power into the soul, I drew energy out.
Coleman screamed. His essence felt like sucking sludge from the bottom of the swamp into my body, but I didn’t dare stop. Casey’s soul was almost gone. I had to stop Coleman, and I had to stop him now.
I drew harder, and Coleman’s soul thinned, fading from existence. Existence on any plane. He diminished to a shadow, his scream an echo. And then there was nothing left.
The chill he’d commanded me to draw stopped. I let go of the excess, letting it flow out of my body. I didn’t release it all—I didn’t want to lose my sight, not yet.
Coleman’s circle shattered, his spells dissipating. The six souls screamed again, freed but with no target for their desired vengeance. Rianna tore herself away from Roy. I heard her say something about being under Coleman’s control, but I was beyond following her words. I curled in a ball around the dagger in my stomach, trying to remember how to breathe. Casey was unconscious beside me, but the glow of her soul was brighter, stronger.
“Alex!” Two male voices yelled my name simultaneously.
Death reached me first. He knelt beside the bed, his face level with mine. “Alex …”
“I stopped him,” I whispered.
Death’s dark eyes creased with concern, and his hand moved to my face. His skin felt warm—which meant I’d taken way too much chill. “You did,” he said, his thumb stroking my cheekbone.
The gray man appeared behind Death. “It’s time.”
Death jumped to his feet. “No. No, leave her.”
The gray man tapped the skull on his cane against his arm. “We’ll take care of the others first. But we have to take her.” He turned away, spinning his cane as he walked toward the displaced souls. The raver followed.
They began collecting the screaming ghosts.
Death knelt in front of me again as Falin reached the bed.
Falin’s expression was ragged. He stepped around Death, scowling at the collector as he moved to the head of the bed.
“Alexis.” Falin’s hands hovered above me, as if he was afraid I might break if he touched me. He sank onto the mattress near my shoulders. “An ambulance is on the way,” he whispered.
“They won’t make it.”The world was becoming fuzzy.
I looked at Death. “Will they?”
Death shook his head and squeezed his eyes closed.
He took my hand, pressing his lips against my skin.
“There is no pain in the end,” he promised.
Good to know. I blinked and lost time in the darkness.
Falin’s hands were on my face when I opened my eyes again. “Stay awake. Stay with me.”
I tried to smile at him, but my lips cracked into a grimace I couldn’t control. Breathing was becoming too much of a chore.
“It can’t wait any longer,” the gray man said, appearing behind Death.
“No.”
Falin’s hand moved to his gun. He drew it, leveling it on the gray man and then swinging the barrel to Death.
“Stay away from her.”
“You can’t shoot them,” I whispered.
He looked as though he wanted to. Needed to. But there was no one left to fight. His arm sagged, and his fingers moved to my hair.
I closed my eyes. I was tired. So very tired and hurt.
“It’s time,” the gray man said again, placing his hand on Death’s shoulder.
“No. I love her. I won’t do it.”
My eyes snapped open. Death loved me?
The gray man’s fingers flexed on Death’s shoulder.
“Then stand aside, friend.”
“No,” a female voice said. “Get away from her.”
The two soul collectors turned. Falin stood. He drew his gun again and stood between Rianna and the bed, the gun leveled at her chest.
Rianna glanced at the gun. “Please, I can help her.”
Her eyes moved to the collectors. “Give me a chance.”
“You were working with Coleman,” Falin said, not blinking. His finger hovered over the trigger.
“Not by choice.”
“Rianna.” Her name emerged from my throat as a rasp instead of a word.
“Alex.” She swept around Falin and his gun, moving to my side next to Death. “I tried to warn you, to tell you. I’m so sorry. Coleman forbade me from telling anyone his plans, and from warning you in particular. Coming up with a verse cryptic enough to get around his command was a bitch. And don’t even ask how I talked a thorn fae into delivering it.”
“Time is an issue,” the raver said, turning from where she’d collected the last ghost.
Rianna looked up. “I’m going to need someone to pull out the knife and someone to hold her shoulders.”
“I’ll hold her,” Death said, moving around the bed.
He lifted Casey, sliding her farther to one side. Then he climbed on the mattress beside my shoulders.
Falin frowned at Rianna. “She needs a healer.”
“Well, I’m all she has. You take the knife. Be ready when I say.” Rianna motioned for him to move to her other side.
He walked around her and climbed on the bed near my hips. He grabbed my hand, squeezing it once before his fingers moved to the hilt of the knife.
Rianna looked down at me. “Sorry, Al—this is going to hurt.” The Aetheric and reality were still merged, and Rianna gathered pale blue strands of magic around her.
Then she placed her hands on my ribs.
“Now.”
Falin pulled the knife. I screamed. The knife sliding free was like a hot poker dragging through my body.
My back arched as I twisted in pain. Death held me.
He pinned me to the bed, but I thrashed in his grip. The knife pulled free. I sagged on the bed, damp with sweat.
Rianna’s cool magic pumped into me, dulled the searing pain to an ache. Blue swirls of Aetheric energy swirled around all four of us. It sank into my body along with Rianna’s will-turned-magic. She’d always been a master spell crafter—I didn’t remember her being a healer, but when she pulled back, only a memory of the pain remained.
Falin slid my shirt up my torso, his hand exploring my stomach. A smile broke over his face, melted the tension in his icy eyes. He leaned forward, and his lips moved to mine without ever losing that magnificent smile.
“You’ll be okay,” he whispered when he pulled back.
I looked at him. At the relieved smile claiming his entire face. He’s the Winter Queen’s assassin? Her lover?
Then my gaze moved to Death. He glared at Falin, his hands pressed possessively over my shoulders.
How did things get so complicated?
But we’d won. Over my head, the first sliver of pale moon appeared around the red shadow. Coleman was gone. John would live. I’d keep my soul. Casey was alive.
Rianna was free. We won.
A small smile crawled over my face. A siren sounded in the distance. Rianna looked up, her face alarmed as the siren hurtled closer.
“I have to go.” She backed away.
“Go? Go where?” I asked. I’d only just found her again, and she was going? I struggled to sit, but I didn’t have the energy.
Rianna’s pale lips tugged down at the edges.“Back to Faerie. I’m a changeling now, and so many more years have passed for me than for you. I’ll turn to dust if the moon sets and I’m still here.” She gathered magic to herself and then ripped a hole in space. “Visit me at the Eternal Bloom, Al. We have a lot to talk about.” She stepped through the rift and was gone.
The sirens stopped outside. A door burst open downstairs.
“Alex?” both Falin and Death said at the same time.
I just closed my eyes. I was so tired. “I think I’ll pass out now.”