I held my breath as the sound of fighting intensified. Prim shouted my name in warning. The angel seemed to ruminate over my benefaction. A sliver of doubt wedged in my mind. Maybe I should have gone with the eggplant.
I drove my fingernails into my palms, and then I heard it—the gravelly scrape of stone on stone. The temple door opened. I rushed into the mausoleum’s shadowy mouth and was devoured by darkness.
****
I shouldn’t have looked back, but I did. There was so much more blood than I would have thought possible for newly reincorporated bodies. Each brave soul had answered my call to battle and sacrificed its first taste of life in more decades than could be counted. Not for the first time, I wondered how my will affected them. Could a noncorporeal spirit refuse me? Was it a matter of their strength, or how much time they’d been gone? Some of the gathered specters had ached with age. Their wandering presences had felt older than the cemetery, older even than the city. Some could have been Romans who’d migrated to the colony for a sense of adventure and the promise of a new life, taking stories with them of a man named Jesus who’d died only years before. Now they faced the ebb of precious life again for me. Could they have simply walked away?
A more pressing question lanced through my thoughts. I scanned the horrid tableaux. Was Primrose among the dead and dying? Had any hapless tourists been swept up in the murderous frenzy?
I caught sight of Celene, or at least the monster wearing Celene’s face. Its seething gaze fastened on me from behind its mask of translucent flesh, and I couldn’t look away. Every sultry curve, every freckled imperfection that made her so appealing, was a ruse. She licked a glob of gore from her mouth, and her mirage of humanity wavered. Beneath it lurked a dark and maddened thing. Terror tangled my thoughts until my brain became a numb and buzzing place.
A bright flash of scarlet hair snatched the nightmare away, and I was looking at Celene again. The blood dripping down her chin could have been from a cut, or maybe she’d taken a bite of some red-fleshed fruit. She pointed at me, and Mephos turned. We locked eyes as the stone door ground through its track. The weight of his bestial stare settled over me. The portal was only halfway closed when he launched into motion.
Panic bloomed in my chest, and I stumbled backward. Was he stronger than the stone? Could he stop the door from closing? Or, even worse, would he make it through the shrinking space in time for us to be sealed in together? The idea of being locked in a dark tomb with an angry vampire sent a wave of cataplexy through me.
Icy chains flew from my palms in all directions. Some shot through the shrinking doorway and crashed against the artifice of Mephos’s young, raw-boned chest. Others passed through the stone of the vault’s walls in search of any entity still standing outside. Those who had fought to protect Prim were gone. Those who hadn’t must have escaped my will and fled back to their cliffside coffins to wait out the danger below.
My muscles weakened as Mephos rushed the door, but only a crack remained. The stone ground shut. My knees buckled, and I fell backward into waiting arms.
I screamed as the fleeting light of early evening snuffed out and strong arms locked around me.
Chapter Thirty-Three
You were made for the darkness.
Melisande
“Be still,” a voice growled, but my limbs jerked of their own accord. One muscled arm loosened, and a large, rough hand raised to my mouth. “They can’t come in without a proper offering. If they had spent more time in the cemetery, they’d know that.”
I tried to breathe past the hand clamped over my mouth, but it was too close to my nose. Panic washed through me. Bad things happened when my oxygen levels dropped.
The scrape and rumble of moving stone rattled through the vault again, and my heart stopped. Mephos was a smart man. If he hadn’t already known about the offering, he’d probably figured it out. I was as good as dead. But the thin light flooding the chamber didn’t come from the door. It came from behind us.
My captor turned us to face a second entry. The smaller door was made of marble and slid open to reveal a steep stairway leading down. A violet-blue light emanated from the depths below the mausoleum. Voices called to me. Some spoke my name. Some spoke in languages I couldn’t identify. But they were all saying the same thing. Come and take your rest. The world of the living burns too brightly. You were made for the darkness, Melisande. You were made for us.
Frost crept across my skin to sting my captor. He released his hold on me.
“Melisande.”
I whirled on the man who’d restrained me. Golden hair glimmered in the pale grave light. Bertrand’s hammered face studied me intently.
“I’m here to help.”
The bite of ice stabbed my palms as chains, formed of anger, surged from my hands. Each link that manifested from my flesh hissed with contempt. The big man’s eyes shifted from me to the entities drifting up the stairwell behind me. I felt the twisted souls that answered my rage. They housed the same fury. Their faces wore the torment of ancient resentments. Their bodies bent beneath withered wrongs. They were wraiths of vengeance, and my wrath attracted them like moldering moths.
“Melisande, please believe me. I have learned to play their game while, at the same time, steering them away from their darker impulses. I was with you last night as a guardian. I would not have let them hurt you.”
“Are you a…a…?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not like them.”
“That’s not exactly an answer.”
“You have my word as a Knight Templar. I will protect you.”
“A what?”
“I am as strong as they are. No harm will come to you.”
“Templar?” I had a feeling he didn’t mean some modern-day masonic version of the centuries-old order. “As in Crusades…Templar?”
He nodded slowly.
Pieces of Bertrand clicked into place. The old rage. The shame. If he wasn’t a vampire, what had kept him alive this long while?
“Why are you with them?”
“I am their companion.” He frowned as if the title left a bad taste in his mouth.
“What kind of person spends his time with creatures who feed on life?”
“That’s a philosophical question for another time, I think.” Bertrand raised his hands to ward off the hellish phantoms behind me. Or was it me he shrank from?
“A Crusader is afraid of a few ghosts?”
“No.” He lowered his hands. “I’m afraid of what they are doing to you.”
My mind tripped along his statement. The contemplation gave me a moment to evaluate my situation. I felt so light. So powerful. So not in control of my thoughts. I looked down to see the toes of my sandals barely touching the stone floor of the mausoleum. Ghostly hands wrapped around every part of my body. My heartbeat had slowed to a quiet echo that traveled down the dusty stairs and through a catacomb of sleeping souls. I was waking them all. Fear spread through the hushed places in my brain. If I woke every spirit in the underground, would they all want a piece of my mantle of life?
I jerked on the vaporous chains that coiled through every part of the vault. Some of the icy tendrils had already found Bertrand’s throat. He didn’t fight them. He held stone still in the weak half-light.
What was I doing?
“I’m…I’m sorry,” I whispered, and the disembodied voices wailed. I squeezed the ice, and the links fractured all at once. A fine mist of frost sparkled through the mausoleum. The disquiet spirits bristled with disappointment.
Something solid struck the front door from the outside. The shock of it woke me up. When had I fallen asleep?
“Bertrand?”
“It’s Mephos. He’s in a very bad mood.”
I turned to the doorway behind us. One by one the angry ghosts peeled away and curled back down the stairwell.
Come and take your rest.
Another blow shook the stone barrier, and something cracked.
“We have no choice.
” Bertrand tipped his chin in the direction of the catacombs.
I agreed. I’d take ghosts over vampires any day.
I bent my head and squeezed into the stairway. Twelve steps later, I stood at a crossroads. With a bone-chilling crunch, the door sealed shut above us.
****
Three tunnels with skull-encrusted walls crept away from the musty chamber we stood in. The ceiling was high enough for me to stand upright, but Bertrand had to hunch his shoulders. He fanned the mildewed air in front of him. The movement stirred the currents of phosphorescent energy around us. It was enough for me to see by, but I had no idea if the light touched Bertrand’s eyes.
“We need to talk.” The knight whispered as if the dead would not hear him. He held a hand up to stop an empty-eyed wisp from threading through him. The spirit slipped through his palm and disappeared into his chest. Bertrand grabbed at his silk shirt as the spirit passed through, exiting his back and drifting on. It seemed he could see as well. “That is not a good feeling, and that smell…”
“I’m sure you’ve dealt with a little decay in your long years on this planet. Everything decomposes.”
The big man gave me an annoyed look. His recent years had likely been pampered, but I could tell he’d had hard centuries before that. He was not a stranger to death. Still, there were worse things than the smell of desiccated flesh. He was being a baby.
I stared at the faded paladin and lifted my hand to a passing spirit stream. The burning cold of its electromagnetic field numbed my fingers. The GTI guys would love this place.
“These are just ecto-remnants, echoes of souls.” I smiled. “They won’t hurt you.”
“Where are their real souls?” he asked in a tone that suggested something was rattling the cage of his belief system.
“Good question.”
Another shuddering thud from above powdered us in grave dust.
“We’ll talk and walk,” I suggested and headed down the hall to the right.
“I’m sorry about last night.”
“Which part, the compulsion spell or the drugging?”
A look of innocence washed over his golden features and, for a second, I thought he was going to claim ignorance. He summed up my glare and dropped the act.
“Both.”
I let silence be my response.
“Anyway, I’ve spoken to Mephos and Celene, and they understand that they’ve moved in the wrong direction with you.”
Another impact echoed dully down the passageway.
“Really?”
Bertrand rolled his eyes and batted at the cobwebs and hanging roots obscuring our path.
“They really just want your help with the Cauldron. It’s malfunctioning.”
I stopped in my tracks, and he bumped into me.
“You mean you’re actually going to tell me why I’m here?” My voice rang down the passage.
“Melisande. It really is much easier to show you than tell you.”
I started walking again.
“You almost sounded reasonable for a second, Bertrand.”
“Stop.” He raised his voice to a boom then caught himself. “Please, stop.” He took a calming breath. “I can tell you that the gate is the second one ever created, and it has worked harmoniously with humans for fifteen thousand years. Now, all of the sudden, it’s not working.”
“Worked with? Hell gates don’t work with humans. They destroy humans. What does that mean?”
“If you would allow us to show you, then you can tell us how to close it if need be.”
“If need be? Bertrand, those rips in the universe are doorways. I don’t know about your gate, but mine led somewhere bad. Really, really bad.”
“This gate is different. It’s…natural.”
I gave him a confused look.
“If left in its current state of deterioration, I fear it might become, as you say, ‘bad.’ ”
Apparently, air-quotes were not just an American thing.
“Bertrand…”
“Rand.”
“Bertrand, I don’t feel safe with Mephos and Celene. They didn’t tell me what they were. They kept me captive.” My mind flashed on the fresh image of that thing wearing Celene like a suit. I paced in the wavering, otherworldly light. “I never ever wanted to be around another hell gate again. But if you think there is something I can do to help close it or fix it, whatever, then I guess I can take a look. But only if you can guarantee my safety. Can you do that?” I crossed my arms and stared the big man down.
“Yes. I can definitely do that.”
The thudding stopped, but I still wasn’t excited about stepping back into that graveyard with angry vampires waiting. If it weren’t for the smell, I could have probably set up camp in the catacombs and waited them out.
“If you can calm them down and keep me from being killed or turned into a vampire…”
“What?”
“I don’t know anything about vampires. How does one become one?”
“Not in the way you think.” He chuckled.
“Fine. More secrets.” I heaved a heavy sigh and instantly regretted it. The air really was terrible in the underground. So far, I couldn’t see why the angel was guarding this place. It was dark and dirty and, besides the withered welcome wagon of angry wraiths I’d met just a minute ago, I’d sensed more powerful ghosts drifting randomly in the city. What unearthly treasure waited down these dusty halls?
“I’m not leaving here without a weapon.”
Bertrand produced a thin stiletto-style dagger from his boot and handed it to me hilt first.
“What? No. I’m not going to stab someone. I mean, my kind of weapon. Rasmus destroyed my poltergeist. I need to find something just as powerful.”
“You have a poltergeist?”
“Had.” I put my finger to my lips so he would hush. “Let me see what is down here, okay?”
He nodded.
I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose until my wobbling heartbeat steadied. A piece of my brain went to sleep, and my senses expanded out. Chattering, whispering, crying, it all reached me at once. I opened my eyes to see an ocean of souls surrounding me. Their glowing bodies slid over my skin like eels.
Curiosity, longing, identity, the keepsakes of a thousand souls were stashed within the hillside like buried treasure. It was beautiful. Laughter trickled through me, and on its heels, loss. I let the sorrow and desolation of death wash over me. They were keepsakes too. Every feeling the Lord allowed us, was a gift. Life was a blessing, and no one knew that better than the departed.
I turned to Bertrand as my mind mingled with theirs. I thought to try and explain it to him, the quiet ecstasy of the dead, but there were no words. Only the ceaseless calling of eternity and the fear of forgetting. Between those two, were where all ghosts existed.
Bertrand stared at me. His large hand hovered over his mouth as he studied every inch of me. I couldn’t know what I looked like in that moment of communion, but I knew how I felt. I felt free.
“There are so many,” I whispered, and my voice sounded as if it traveled from a great distance to reach my ears. I lifted my hands and sent tiny frozen tendrils through the stones and bones and soil. There were larger presences hovering at a distance, things that raised the hair on my arms. They sensed me too and were staying away from my chains.
I wove the links into a net with my will and sifted the burial ground for entities with more photonic mass.
Long minutes passed until finally I got a bite.
“Something,” I breathed as I coaxed it closer. I felt Bertrand tense next to me as the specter drifted into the frail ambient light. I turned and peered into the darkness. My body froze.
There he was. His hair. His eyes. The set of his shoulders when he was just about to walk away. It was him. The other part of my heart stood in the dimness of a tunnel of death thousands of miles from where I’d left him.
“Grayford?” I barely whispered.
Heat flooded
my veins. It straightened my back and poured strength into my muscles. If Grayford was here, everything would be okay. I would survive. I’d survive anything with him.
“Is it you?” I called, disbelief and hope lacing my shaky words.
His mouth twitched. The tease of a smile rested on his lips. I raised my hand an inch. That was usually all it took to make him come to me, but still he leaned away, on the verge of turning.
“No,” I mumbled. I tightened my net of ice behind him, but a knife of apprehension sliced through the links like butter. What was he doing here?
He turned. He turned away from me and vanished around a corner. The geas of longing and disbelief fluttered from my body, and I launched forward.
“Melisande, no.” Bertrand put an iron arm out and caught me around the waist. I pressed my palms to his skin, and ice crept across his skin.
“Let me go!”
“No,” he grunted. “It is a Fetch!”
“Grayford!” I shouted loud enough to rattle every skull and bone. I screamed, and my torment spread along the shadowed, forgotten stones. It swirled in the hollowed eyes. It reached for every remnant of a mind that had once known pain, and we screamed together. Our agony shrank the roots that hung from the ceiling. It gouged the dusty floor.
I lifted my hands from Bertrand’s arm and shot my chains into the darkness.
“Grayford, please!” Chain after chain after chain peeled from my body in a tangled web of heartbreak.
I drew a sobbing breath. It couldn’t be a Fetch. They only appeared to someone when their loved one had just died. They take on the loved one’s appearance and disappear down an alley or around a corner.
“No. It’s not a Fetch. It’s…it’s a doppelgänger or…or a will-o’-the-wisp.” My mind grabbed for any entity that mimicked or sought to lead the living astray.
“He’s not dead. You’re not dead!” I told the fleeing form. “You’re not!” I told the catacomb. I told the land and the ocean. “No!” I told the worthless planet that would let him go again.
A Shiver of Shadows Page 16