I focused on the windows, scanning the night for my backup, and then I caught sight of them. “Look …”
Henri and Bres stepped closer to me. I grabbed their hands, channeling my sight into them so they could see the ethereal shapes rushing toward us. Six, seven, eight—no—eleven of them. Eleven ghosts whooshed into the lantern room and whirled around us before settling.
Philip was among them. He stepped forward, his expression grim. “Whatever you need to stop this thing,” he said.
The ghosts around him murmured in agreement.
“It took Jacob,” a female ghost said. “He’s been with us for decades, and it took him. It … it killed him.”
“Marg too,” another ghost said.
“It hurt Hannah.”
Names were thrown at me, reasons to stop the thing that I had no doubt I’d unwittingly brought here with me. If anything, that was enough reason for me to try this. Enough reason to take the risk. I owed these souls. This was my mess to clean up.
“I’m sorry.” I looked at each of them. “So sorry for your loss, and I promise, no more. I’m going to stop it. I’m going to take it back to where it belongs.”
“What do we need to do?” Philip asked.
“I need you to shine. The monster will come, and when I tether to it, I need you to lend me your energy just long enough for me to force it off this plane.”
Several ethereal, determined faces looked back at me. They were with me. I could do this.
The specters huddled together and began to glow. The air crackled, charged with their collective energy and the buzz of the power in the leyline cluster beneath us. They were drawing on it to ground them, to boost their power.
The lantern room was suddenly bathed in light that pricked my skin with ethereal energy.
“I feel it,” Bres said, rubbing his arms.
Yeah, to him, it was probably gooseflesh all over his skin.
“Something’s down there,” Henri said from the window.
I joined him and looked down to the rocks to see a huge, dark shape moving sinuously toward the lighthouse. Yep, that was our monster.
Ignoring the chill of foreboding that pricked my spine, I backed up toward the specters.
“Henri, Bres, stay back. Do not try and intervene.”
“Wait, where did it go?” Henri was still looking out the window, while Bres had his attention fixed on the trap door.
And then a shadow fell over us.
“Fuck!” Henri stumbled back as the Shade monster’s face pressed to the glass of the lantern room. He’d bloody scaled the building. My heart rammed against my ribs as the monster pulled back a clawed fist.
“Get down!”
Glass smashed and sprayed, peppering the leather sleeve of my raised arm and nicking my forehead, and then the monster was rushing toward me, toward the specters.
Focus, Kat. Oh, God, it was huge. Hungry. Deadly. My knees trembled, feet aching to turn and run, but I held my ground. If I failed, the specters who’d put their faith in me died.
Only one way to go. Forward. With a battle cry of my own, I charged the monster, meeting it head-on, tether at the ready. The snap of ice hit my chest, stealing my breath. Fuck. But then white-hot power surged through me, combating the chill. It was the power of the collective specters, the power of the leyline channeled through them and into me. It staved off the chill, and the tether thickened.
Yes.
Now.
I ran for the shattered window, calling to the Shade. Bres’s and Henri’s cries of alarm were a distant cacophony, and then the world was filled with blinding light as I tore a door into the Shade.
This time there was no falling, no stumbling. I was ready. My boots hit the gray sand, and I kept going, yanking the monster through the tear with me. The tether binding us burned in an effort to detach itself as the beast resisted. My calves burned with strain as I pushed on, dragging it through with me, battling its roar of rage with a bellow of my own, and then the light winked out.
We were through.
The door was closed.
I’d done it.
But the thing was still at my back, still attached to me, and the leyline power was ebbing, allowing ice to edge in. Legs pumping to put distance between me and the monster attached to me, I grabbed the tether, twisted and pulled, detaching it.
The weight fell away, the ice fell away, and I was flying across the dunes.
The furious roar of the Shade beast was echoed by several more. Oh, shit. It was calling its friends.
Not good.
Time to get out of here.
Time to glow.
Nothing happened.
Panic grabbed me by the throat. No, this could not be happening. Shadows rushed over the gray sand dunes, moving fast toward me.
I was surrounded. Unable to shine. Unable to open a door out of here. Ice pooled in my belly as a hulking shape appeared up ahead, cutting off my only escape route. And then I caught the flash of neon eyes, and the band around my chest eased a little.
Help was here.
Right?
Then why was he speeding up? Why was he aimed right at me?
My scream was cut off as the neon beast hit me in the chest, and then my back was on the sand, and we were sinking into darkness.
Chapter Five
“Wake up!” a gruff voice demanded.
Something tapped my cheek.
“Up.”
Neon blue eyes hovered over me, set in an inky furred face with ivory fangs.
“Fuck!” I scrambled away from it until my back hit a wall, and then my brain came back online. Safe. This monster was safe. Where the fuck was I? Cavern? Cave? Dimly lit by some kind of greenish moss shit stuck to the rock. I sniffed. Water nearby.
Were we under the sand? Had I been dreaming the whole sinking-into-the-sand stuff? I reached up to touch my hair. Nope, there was sand in my hair. Urgh. Not a dream.
The monster canted its head. “Have you finished assessing the situation?”
“Yeah.” My voice was a dry croak. I coughed to clear it.
“Then you’ll know I’m not going to hurt you, but they will. You brought it back. Good. But why didn’t you leave immediately?”
I rolled my shoulders, working out the kinks. “You know, I thought I’d stick around and play tag.”
He stared at me steadily.
Right, not the time for jokes. “Look, I tried. I can’t seem to shine.”
He was silent for another beat. “You need to recharge. Rest for a few minutes. The forlorn you brought back has obviously fed. It must have taken a vast amount of energy for you to tether to it and drag it here.”
He knew about tethers. He knew what I did. “Who are you? How do you know what I can do? Why did you save me?”
“None of that matters. All that matters is that you get to safety. Away from here. And don’t come back.”
I snorted. “Don’t worry, I doubt I’ll have time for a trip back here. I mean with the world in peril and all.”
His ears perked up. “Peril? What kind of peril?”
“The regular kind that’s all too personal. You know, the kind that wants to use me as a bridge from the dreaming realm to the mortal realm.”
The monster backed up a step. “Oh, no. How? How did he find you? I thought we stopped him. I thought we trapped him?” He began to pace the chamber, his paws knocking aside bones I hadn’t noticed before.
Okay, so that wasn’t creepy at all.
“He can’t get out. You can’t allow it,” the wolf-monster said.
My scalp prickled. “How do you know about the shimmer man?”
“Is that what you call him?” He glanced my way then averted his gaze again. “How did he get to you?” he muttered.
“Answer my question.”
He sighed. “I know him because I was the one who let him out of his original prison.”
My mother had told me that she believed Death had freed the shimmer man, led him to
Somnium, and trapped him there.
Death.
“Who are you?” My voice trembled.
He padded closer and lowered his head so I was staring down his snout into his all-too-human eyes.
“I’m your father. I’m Death.”
* * *
Death was a beast? A monstrous, neon-eyed wolfhound thing? “No.” I shook my head. “You can’t be.”
He chuffed. “I suppose I don’t exactly look the part. But trapping the shimmer man drained me. Even after all this time, I haven’t fully healed. This form, believe it or not, is an improvement on the previous ones. For a long time, I was as ravenous and primal as the forlorn. My first act after trapping your shimmer man was to lock myself here, in the Shade.”
“What is this place?”
“The home of the forlorn and the broken. The souls of the tormented and traumatized. Before I lost myself, this was a haven for those souls to heal. I would come here, soothe them, and take them to the beyond once they were ready. As you can see, in my absence, these souls have deteriorated into ravenous monsters and this place … well, it’s not what it used to be. The forlorn have no sense of self aside from their hunger for the light, for the heat of memories, any memories.”
“The light? My shine?”
“No. The light of the beyond. It’s a need they don’t understand, and your shine reminds them of it on a subconscious level.”
“They think I can take them to the beyond?”
“They’re not thinking. They’re reacting on instinct.”
We stared at each other in silence for several beats. This was Death … my father. Weird fluttery emotions flared in my chest. “The shimmer man has my mother.”
Death’s eyes widened. “What? When? How?”
Oh, boy. Where to begin? “It started before I was born. Mother went back to Somnium after you trapped the shimmer man there.”
He shook his head. “No, Morpheus was supposed to warn her. He promised he’d make sure she stayed away.”
“Morpheus is gone. The shimmer man has his body, but we have no idea where Morpheus’s soul went.”
“Tell me everything.”
I really needed to create a recording of this account and carry it around with me because, frankly, I was getting sick of recounting it. Still, this was Death. This was my father.
I filled him in on everything that had happened so far, on the shimmer man’s attack on me, on his persecution of my mother, and his intentions to use me as a bridge. I choked up around the part about Tris and anger simmered in the pit of my stomach, making me want to smash my fist into something, but I forged on until we were here. In this moment.
“He wants me. I’m his way out.” I ran a hand over my face. “If I can’t find a way to free all the people he’s trapped in sleep, then I won’t have a choice but to go to him. To give him what he wants.”
“No,” Death said. “There has to be another way to stop him. I never had time to discover it. Everything happened so fast, and I was forced to act on instinct. But you have time to find out what he really is.”
I stared at him because he was confirming my suspicions once again. “You don’t know what he is.”
He shook his head slowly. “All I know is that he’s ancient, older than time. Older than me.”
Okay, so we needed to gather more clues. “You said you set him free. From where?”
“I was crafting a place for your mother and me, for us to be a family, and I pressed into a hidden dimension. I don’t remember much but the stench of burning flesh and the cloying scent of blood.”
Sounded delightful. “A bad place then.”
“I believe so.”
The shimmer man had been trapped in a bad place; whether it was bad by design or whether he’d made it horrific was another question. We needed to focus on the problem, which was stopping him from turning our world into his playground.
“We have to get out of here.” I pulled myself up. “You need to come with me. You trapped him once, we could use your help to put him down for good.”
His ears did that flick-up thing again. “Leave … I’ve contemplated it, of course, but I can’t, not until I’m whole again. There is no way out for me. I made sure of it. I placed a lock on each exit to be opened only by Death in his whole form.”
This place had actual exits? But I’d managed to get in and out. “Who says we need to use an exit?”
He shook his head. “No. I know what you’re thinking, I thought the same that first time I saw you tear a hole into the Shade, but tethering to me could kill you. The forlorn you brought back is nothing compared to me. If you tether to me, then my essence will claim yours. I’m not whole enough to control the primal power inside me, and it still begs to be fed, to heal.”
“I don’t know. You seem pretty on the ball to me.”
“Why, thank you. I have been feeling more myself the past couple of months …” He was considering it. “No. It’s too much of a risk.”
Maybe it was, but it was a risk we had to take. He was my father … Whoa, even thinking it sent my brain into a tailspin. Daddy, Daddy-O, Papa, what the fuck did I call him? No time to worry about that now. No, right now he needed a final push because there was no doubt in my mind that if we were going to beat the shimmer man, then I needed to gather all the allies I could, and Death … Well, he was a big one.
I crossed my arms under my breasts. “Look, Mother was adamant I needed to find you, that we could defeat the shimmer man together. I don’t believe your primal power will hurt me. After all, I am your daughter.”
His heavy, furry brows shot up in an expression that was way too human for a wolfy creature.
“We have to try, and deep down, you know it.”
Death paced back and forth. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t, and if it gets too much, I’ll snap the tether.”
He stopped and approached me, looking down on me intensely. “Swear it. Swear you’ll leave me behind if my power attacks you.”
My throat was suddenly dry because there was Death and his power, and then there was me. What made me think I could do this? Had I slipped into cocky mode? “I swear.”
“In that case, we will try.”
Try to shine and get the fuck out of here.
My hands tingled and began to glow softly. “I think I’m ready.”
* * *
It turned out that the dunes hid a network of tunnels that lay beneath the sand and soil like a honeycomb maze, and Death, my father, happened to be a resident of the honeycomb underside of the Shade.
We exited upward, and yes, that meant sand in my hair and on my face, but the world was silent. The forlorn were gone.
“They’ll come as soon as you begin to shine,” Death warned.
“Yeah, I got it. I’ll be quick. Just don’t resist when I tether to you.”
“I’ll do my best.”
We stood face to snout for a moment. There were so many things I wanted to say to him, ask him, stuff unrelated to the end of the world but important to me. Now was the time to ask, because if our little experiment failed, I’d be leaving him behind, and who knew when or if I’d be able to come back.
“No,” Death said. “We don’t think the worst, because if we do, then we tempt fate.”
An optimist like me then? I couldn’t help but grin. “Heck, with two lots of optimists to fight against, the dark side of fate won’t have a chance.”
He offered me a wolfy grin. “That’s my girl.”
Ah, there it was, that warm, fuzzy feeling of connection. Daddy-O, I think. Dadster. We’d iron out the edges, but first, we needed to get the hell out of here.
I reached out and placed a hand on his flank. “Ready?”
“I’m ready.”
I latched on to him, and for a moment, there was nothing, but then his power slammed into me, knocking me to the ground. Light and dark swirled together, ancient, potent energy. Confused, wary, intrigued.
&n
bsp; My breath was trapped in my lungs, eyes bugging. Fuck. Needed to detach.
“Let go,” Death said. “Let me go.”
But then the pressure retreated, and air flooded into my lungs. His power was still there, watching, wary, but no longer attacking.
Is this what a willing tether was like?
“Are you all right?” Death asked.
I nodded. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
I turned and ran, taking him with me, and then the world began to glow.
Chapter Six
I landed back in the lantern room, and Death slammed into me a moment later. A burning, searing pain flared at my solar plexus as Death’s primal power whiplashed into me. The tether. I had to detach it.
Death lay on the ground next to me, his huge body turned away from me. If I didn’t know better, I’d have run from the room screaming, and from the look on Henri’s and Bres’s faces, they were wondering why I wasn’t doing exactly that.
“It’s okay.” I detached the tether and rubbed my chest as the burning ache dissipated. Death was breathing. Unconscious but unharmed.
The specters gathered closer, no longer glowing as brightly, but still pretty to look at. “What is it?” Philip asked.
“That was going to be my first question,” Bres said. “And the second is, do we need to kill it?”
I moved on instinct to shield my father’s beastly form from the guys. “No. You don’t hurt him. No one hurts him. But I am going to need your help getting him to the van.”
“Kat?” Henri asked with a frown. “Who is this?”
“This is Death.” I licked my lips nervously. “This is my father.”
* * *
Karishma’s hands hovered over Death’s body. Henri had carried him up to my room and laid him on my bed, which had promptly creaked and cracked under his weight. So, now he was on the floor, taking up the whole of the king-size mattress. Not that it mattered because I wasn’t planning on sleeping anytime soon. Not unless Lark and Poppy came up with a solution to our problem.
Lay the Ghost: Nightwatch Series book 4 Page 4