by Jory Strong
“I want to know how I ended up on that altar. The last thing I remember is being at a club. Then I woke up in a room at the church. A nun was washing the bottom of my feet and Father Ursu was praying over me. They wouldn’t let me leave until they were sure I wasn’t possessed.” She shivered, and for an instant the anticipation glittering in her eyes gave way to a fear.
“Won’t the authorities investigate?”
“No. Not now. Luther swallowed his pride when he asked Bishop Routledge for help.” Elena’s lips twisted in distaste. “Luther’s wife is devout and from an extremely influential family. She’s been confessing her sins to the bishop since she was a child. I’m sure he’s heard an earful about Luther’s affair with me. I doubt the good bishop would have helped if Luther wasn’t the mayor and married to one of his important constituents.”
Elena leaned forward with the intensity of a predator. “Father Ursu told me you were there when something went wrong during the ceremony. He said a powerful demon slaughtered them all.”
“I was there in an astral state.”
“Can you find their souls? Can you ask them why I was picked as a sacrifice?” Elena slid forward, to the edge of her seat. “The police won’t investigate because the dark priest was Anthony Tiernan. His family is wealthy and powerful. His followers were from similar families. Luther won’t push because all of the families involved want to keep what happened quiet. The Church wants the matter closed, too, because of the demon. Everyone I’ve gone to thinks justice was served, everyone but me.”
Aisling shivered. Even for a purse of silver she wasn’t sure she wanted to seek out the dark priest or his followers in the ghostlands. There were malevolent beings that collected human souls just for the song of their terrified cries and the pleasure of hearing their tortured screams. There were dark places that required a heavy toll to enter and an even heavier one to exit. There was knowledge that could shatter a person’s mind and entities who would separate a travelers’ spirits from their body in order to take possession and clothe themselves in human flesh.
“Could you find them?” Elena asked.
“I don’t know.”
Elena’s hand settled on the purse. She pushed it toward Aisling. “We could call this a third of your fee instead of half.” She blinked away tears. “Please, I’ve got to know why they picked me. I have to know if I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time or if someone put Anthony up to it. He was arrogant and spoiled, but he had no reason to hate me or to strike out at Luther. I didn’t see him or any of his followers at the club.”
Aisling looked down at the brightly patterned purse. Temptation writhed with fear in her belly. The bills Father Ursu had given her represented more money than she’d ever possessed, and yet they weren’t enough to buy fresh fruit or vegetables. The silver Elena was offering . . . it was a down payment on a dream Aisling had never dared to believe was possible for her or her family, a life without the fear of being collected by the authorities at will or evicted from land they didn’t own.
She glanced at Aziel, but his eyes were hidden by the curl of his tail. He slept, or pretended to sleep, leaving the decision up to her.
Aisling pushed the pouch back to the center of the table. She couldn’t agree, not now, when the hunger for security burned in her belly so hotly its presence nearly overrode her caution. “I need to think about what you ask.”
Elena’s lips tightened. Irritation flickered in her eyes, only to be followed by more tears. “I’m begging you. At least try. You saved my life last night. You’re the only one who can help me.”
“I can only promise to consider it.”
Elena wiped the moisture from the corners of her eyes. She shoved one hand into the expensive jacket. She ducked her head as if struggling to regain her control, but Aisling was wary, suspicious of the easy tears after the flash of anger.
“Have you heard of Ghost?” Elena asked, taking her fisted hand from her pocket but not looking up.
“No.”
“There’s a club I go to sometimes, when Luther attends social functions with his wife. It’s in the red zone.” Elena glanced up then. “Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“The police don’t patrol at all. They don’t respond to calls there.
You go into the area at your own risk, knowing it’s dangerous. The clubs hire protection and serve justice in their own way. They lock their doors at dusk and don’t open them until dawn. Some of the clubs are membership only.
“Some of them are open to anyone with the money to get in. Well, anyone human. No shapeshifters, vampires or other supernaturals.
“There are bouncers to make sure only the fully human are allowed inside. Most of the clubs don’t look too closely when it comes to whether the humans have special abilities or practice magic. That’s part of what makes the clubs fun.”
She licked her lips. “What happens in any of the clubs during the night stays there. What happens outside the clubs isn’t questioned either.”
Aisling studied Elena’s expensive jewelry and clothing. She looked beyond it, to the privilege and security it represented. Emotion roiled in her chest, anger and sadness, a railing against the injustice that someone who took survival for granted would seek her thrills in a place like the red zone, while others, like Geneva McConaughey, scraped and toiled to keep a roof over their head and food on the table as they raised children they hadn’t given birth to.
The silence grew heavy around them. Aisling realized her own hands were clenched into fists. She forced her fingers open. She looked at the heavy coin purse on the coffee table and remembered Elena saying she’d been at a club before waking to find herself in the church.
Aisling made herself meet Elena’s gaze and ask, “Is Ghost the place you were taken from?”
“No.”
Elena edged her chair forward, crowding the coffee table so it moved to press against Aisling’s legs. She opened her hand to reveal an etched container. It looked like a miniature snuffbox or a pillbox, something seen only in private collections and the history books Geneva collected when she could acquire them for almost nothing.
“Ghost is a . . . substance. An incredible, powerful substance.” Elena rubbed her thumb over the top of the container. Her eyes sought Aisling’s. Without saying anything else, she opened the box.
Fear rushed into Aisling with a force that left her heart pounding violently in her chest. Ghostland winds filled her thoughts with shrieks and wails and tortured summonses. She scrambled to her feet, intent on getting away from the sickly gray paste at the bottom of the container, but the table held her trapped.
Zurael hissed. His coils tightened on her arm as his head lifted from the back of her hand, his mouth open to expose deadly fangs.
Aisling twisted away, trying to escape the trap of furniture and spirit winds. Elena dug her fingers into the container then grabbed Aisling’s bare arm.
There was no time for preparation, no time for Aisling to evoke the names of her guardians or set the necessary protections. Her spirit was ripped from her body and propelled into the ghostlands.
ZURAEL hissed for a second time when ice-cold wind buffeted him as if the spiritlands recognized what he was and tried to deny him entrance. The coils of his snake form tightened on Aisling’s arm. Her whimpered protest sounded in his mind along with the racing beat of her heart. Her fear washed over his tongue to blend with his own.
His father’s kingdom might be deep in the ghostlands, but it was a place apart from it. There were few exits, and those that did exist opened onto metaphysical pathways carved directly to the physical world now claimed by the alien god. Not even those who belonged to the House of the Raven entered this human-born land of cursed spirits.
Aisling’s fingers pushed on one of his coils as if it was a bracelet she wanted to reposition. Confusion slid over Zurael in a hazy overlay that made no sense until images from other trips into the spiritlands slipped through his thoughts
like the gray fog swirling around them. A spike of shock went straight to his core with the realization that he was a shadow in Aisling’s mind and she was a shadow in his.
She pushed on his coils again, and he noticed she was completely naked, her golden hair unbound, and even in a snake’s form he reacted to the sight of her. Heat swamped him, burned him almost to the point of pain.
She whimpered and shifted his coils again. Distress was written on her face.
With sudden clarity he realized he was hurting her. He was a creature of fire, and in this place the separation between form and essence was thin. If she stripped him from her arm and cast him into the mist, he would become ifrit as surely as those Djinn who’d killed the ones who bound them.
His coils tightened involuntarily. She whispered, “Stop. I can’t think. I can’t stay safe.”
Zurael watched her face as he slowly loosened the coils. He felt her relief as the swirling gray mist caressed and cooled her skin.
The landscape cleared as her heart rate slowed and her distress faded. He looked around and was surprised by the barrenness, by the endless sea of empty gray.
He’d expected horrific sights and terrified beings. He’d imagined a bloody landscape filled with tortured screams.
As he thought it, the scene around them changed. A wall of gray parted to reveal the skeletal remains of burned-out buildings.
Men and women wearing tattered clothing sat in hollowed doorways, moaning, rocking, oblivious to anything around them. Machine guns rattled in the distance. Rats made no pretense of hiding as they feasted on human carcasses.
Elena stood in the middle of the street shrieking. She stopped when Aisling stepped through the opening and into the scene.
“This isn’t what I want!” Elena screamed. Her terror became anger as she focused her attention on Aisling.
A man stepped out of an alley. His face was marked with a criminal’s tattoos. His hands were bound behind his back. A metal cable twisted around his neck then trailed down his back. It slithered behind him as he walked toward Elena, though Zurael couldn’t see its end.
“It’s not what you want,” the man said. “But perhaps it’s what you deserve, sister dear. I see you are unfortunately . . . still alive.”
Elena threw her hand up as if she could repel him with the gesture. She scuttled backward and sideways until she reached Aisling.
“No,” Elena said, grabbing Aisling’s arm just as she’d done in the living room with Ghost on her fingers. “Make this go away. This isn’t what I want.”
“What do you want?” Aisling asked.
Zurael saw the image form in Aisling’s mind. He felt the spirit winds swirl and eddy as they gathered in order to do Aisling’s bidding even before Elena said, “Sinead.”
Time slowed. Aisling’s heart lingered between beats.
The scene around them didn’t fade, but a woman stepped through the grayness. Black leather molded to her body. Bloodred lips curled upward. Her laugh was a throaty invitation.
She slapped the riding crop she carried against her thigh. “So you found me at last.”
Her attention shifted to Elena’s brother. Her eyes widened momentarily. She laughed again as she reached up and fondled the tightly wound scarf around her neck. “It appears dear John and I met similar ends, though of course I went out thrashing in orgasm. I imagine he can’t say the same.”
Her hand left her neck. She offered it to Elena. “Come, my pet. Let’s make your visit a good one.”
Elena released Aisling’s wrist and went to Sinead. The gray fog rose as soon as their hands touched. When they turned to leave, it engulfed them completely then spread to block out the gutted buildings and lost souls.
“Well, that’s an interesting turn of events and a titillating secret I’m sure my sister prays won’t get out,” John said. “You’ll come to regret saving her life. But who am I to complain?”
He shrugged and his hands were suddenly free. He stretched his arms and rotated his wrists and shoulders. “Your mistake is my gain.”
He waved his hands in front of them and the mist at their feet thinned. Zurael felt Aisling shiver as gray faded to red clay, and the scattered bone-carved fetishes along with her discarded athame were revealed.
With a casual toss, Elena’s brother threw the hawk figurine onto the ground. A hint of cruelty settled in his eyes. “Time to pay up.”
Four
AISLING knelt on the ground. Zurael could feel the wild beating of her heart, but her hand was steady as she picked up the raven and stood it on the dirt. The spider came next, to the right and down, just as she’d positioned it earlier, east to the raven’s north. South was marked by the serpent, west by the bear.
He rode the wave of her thoughts and knew whatever debt she owed would now be paid at a higher cost. And though he couldn’t touch the names of the ones she offered her blood in payment to, he could sense she didn’t fear the spirits represented by the fetishes.
Her heart thundered because she was afraid of what they might reveal to her. She feared what they might ask of her, what they might demand.
A tendril of guilt uncurled deep in Zurael’s chest. He regretted his part in this. He’d acted without thought when he’d pinned her to the ground and kept her from making this offering of blood in the shaman’s ceremony room.
Aisling leaned forward to pick up the hawk fetish. Unlike before, this time it didn’t yield its position in the center of the other four.
Elena’s brother clicked his tongue. Zurael’s coils tightened involuntarily when she picked up the athame. He felt the streak of fiery pain shoot through her arm and forced himself to loosen his grip on her.
Aisling placed the tip of the blade to the right of the raven and drew an arc to the spider. She placed the tip of the blade to the right of the spider and drew an arc to the serpent, and then an arc from the serpent to the bear and back to the raven so they were all connected in a circle.
“Take my blood as you will,” she whispered in a soft, melodic voice. “It is freely offered in payment for the aid you have given me.”
A quick slash across her palm severed the lifeline in a symbolic gesture. Blood poured from it in an unnatural, steady river of red, despite the shallowness of the cut.
It splashed on the hawk, then spread outward, long fingers reaching for the other fetishes. But even when it reached them, the blood continued to flow from her palm, to deepen and pool until the hawk disappeared and nothing could be seen but a perfect circle of red and the four carved sentinels.
Elena’s brother crouched down so his face was even with Aisling’s. When his gaze traveled over her body and his hand went to his crotch, rage whipped through Zurael. With a hiss he lifted his head and opened his mouth, exposing the glistening, deadly fangs.
John laughed. He stroked his cock through the fabric of his jeans. “Your pet’s jealous, beautiful. He might be long and thick, but I can please you better. What do you say, ang—” His words ended in a gurgle as the metal cable pulled taut, snapping his head back. A scream followed, a sound of such torment that Zurael’s heart raced in sync with Aisling’s.
The noise ended as quickly as it began. Elena’s brother toppled forward with his knees underneath him and his forehead touching the red earth as though he were praying, begging for mercy. His panting sobs replaced the tortured agony of his scream.
He shuddered and cowered and finally calmed. In a subdued voice he said, “The one I serve sends you a glimpse of the future and a chance to change it. The choice is yours but the decision must be made before you leave here.”
Dread vibrated through Aisling as she looked down at the pool of blood. The surface was slick and shiny, a screen for horrible images to play out on.
The breath caught in her throat as an orchard of trees rippled into existence. Her chest grew tight as the outline of a familiar house shimmered into place. The old barn and paddocks for the livestock followed. And despite the bloody medium the images were cap
tured on, for one precious second the scene was beautiful.
Then came the bodies.
Spiderweb-thin lines provided just enough detail so Aisling recognized each one of her family members. They were scattered, as though they’d died where they’d fallen.
Pain lodged in her chest and throat. Tears fell from her eyes, dropping into the pool and sending waves across its surface until there was nothing but her own reflection.
“How can I stop this from happening?” she whispered, turning her head so she could look at Elena’s brother.
As if her question released him from his supplicant’s pose, he stood. “Find the ones responsible for creating Ghost, then kill them.”
“Ghost is responsible for this?” She didn’t doubt the vision, but she found it hard to understand how it could be possible. No one in her family would be tempted by a substance that cast them into the spiritlands without protection.
“And more,” John said, waving his hand over the pool of blood.
Oakland’s skyline came into view and with it additional carnage. Only in this scene the living danced with glee, their heads thrown back in howls of victory.
They feasted on the dead, but they weren’t shapeshifters scavenging or the creatures that emerged from hiding after The Last War and the plague. They were malevolent entities from the ghostlands who’d found a pathway back to the place they’d once called home.
Aisling shivered at the sight of their maniacal pleasure. It was her darkest fear that while she was in the ghostlands her physical body would be possessed and whatever tied her spirit to it severed.
She closed her eyes and sought a place of calmness. On the screen of her thoughts the sequence of events played out like a net she grew more and more entangled in—the guardsmen and Father Ursu arriving to take her from her home, the bishop and Father Ursu giving her no true choice but to enter the spiritlands in order to look for Elena, Elena’s brother appearing, his help offered on the condition she remain in Oakland . . . Zurael.