by C. C. Mahon
“Go ahead!” ordered Lizzie. “I’ll meet you at the club.”
“I’m not leaving you here!”
“It’s her they want. They want to kill her to free themselves. They don’t care about me…”
The dead exploded. Almost all at the same time, their rotting bodies gave way to the influx of magic brought by the electric arcs. They burst, projecting flesh and pieces of bone around them like shrapnel.
Without letting go of Chloe, I spread my wings and brought them back in front of Lizzie and me as a shield.
When I lifted my head, I was in the middle of a field of decomposed flesh, surrounded by two dozen luminous specters. Everyone was staring at Chloe with a menacing look.
Lizzie emerged from the shelter of my wings and said, “Save her, quick!”
I hugged Chloe against my chest and took off. A horde of angry ghosts came after us.
31
The storm broke out.
I had never flown more than a few yards before that and never while carrying someone in my arms. I had a band of murderous ghosts on my heels, and of course, that’s when the storm decided to burst.
I will spare you the swearing I declaimed as I flew, two or three yards above the ground, through the streets of Vegas. Drops of water as big as chestnuts were bombarding me, hiding the city behind a grayish curtain and running into my eyes.
Where did this water come from? Did magic end up creating real clouds? Could magical energy be transformed into matter? What would Albert Einstein have thought of that?
These parasitic questions crossed my mind as I did my best to keep the specters at bay without crashing into a building’s facade, billboard, or set of traffic lights. Fortunately for me, the specters had even less experience with their new abilities than I had with my wings. Even from a distance, I could feel their presence. Free of their bodies, all that remained of them was their minds, frozen in pain, fear, and anger. And they were linked to Chloe by a shared piece of soul. I had made some mistakes when I was fifteen years old, but this kid went beyond what any parent could fear from a problematic teenager.
I didn’t try to lose our pursuers; as long as Chloe was alive, they would be able to find her. I was just hoping to get to the club before they caught up with us.
As we crossed an intersection, something caught my attention on my left. A group of ghosts was trying to cut us off. At their head, I recognized the woman with long red hair. She had also lost her colors, and her hair was now the same greenish shade as the rest of the ghosts.
This small group of specters had separated from the pack, taken a parallel street, and slid back into a perpendicular one in an attempt to cut me off. They were not just rabid minds; they were starting to think and organize again. That’s all we needed.
Fortunately, Vegas was not that big as the Valkyrie flew, and I now recognized the warehouse district where I had installed Club 66. What worried me was how I was going to open the door without giving the ghosts time to catch up with us. My sword could undoubtedly cut through the sheet metal wall. But what about the protective spells?
In its makeshift sheath, the sword vibrated. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
Part of my mind noticed that the sword had just quoted Darth Vader, and I wondered if she had hung out with Gertrude. But already I could see the silhouette of my hangar at the end of the street. I tried to free my right hand without letting Chloe down, but…the hangar door was open. Nate was pacing on the threshold, like a parent waiting for a teenager in the middle of the night.
God bless this man and his mother hen instincts!
“On the ground!” I shouted with all the strength of my lungs.
Nate lifted a stunned face then flattened down on the ground to let me pass.
I crossed the threshold without slowing down.
The hangar was large, but the back wall was approaching too fast for my taste. I tilted my center of gravity, put my feet forward, and tried to brake with great strokes of my wings. It wasn’t going to be enough…
I hope I don’t go through the wall, was my last thought before hitting the metal wall, feet forward. A gong sound filled the hangar. The impact went up along my legs, and my knees tried to fit behind my ears. Then my back met the ground, and the shock drained my lungs.
Chloe landed on my stomach. I pushed her to the side. I was going to have to stay there for a few moments, just to remember how to breathe…
I felt the protective spells coming alive around me. I opened one eye and recognized the multicolored lights of the signs traced by the sorcerers of the Guild. One color per level of protection, for a total of seven.
My lungs finally agreed to let some oxygen pass through to my brain. Which sounded a small alarm. The protective spells shone like neon lights around us. Which meant that the spells had gone into emergency mode. Which meant…only I could now enter or leave the club.
Brit, Lizzie, and Lola were still out there. Not to mention the poor high school principal, who hadn’t asked for any of this. They were outside, with Harriet and a bunch of angry ghosts, under a magic storm.
I stood up, and Nate rushed to help me.
“Are you hurt? What’s going on? Why did the spells…”
“Chloe?” I said, pointing to the girl.
He knelt next to her and after a quick examination said, “Stunned but nothing broken. She has a mark on her neck, but the trachea looks intact. What happened? What’s that kid doing here? Since when do you fly? Is someone chasing you?”
“Shhhhh,” I said. “Easy with the questions. My head…”
Immediately, he was near me again. “Did you hurt your head? Where?”
I pushed him back gently. “I just did quite a stunt. I’m a little stunned. Give me thirty seconds and some air.”
He backed away, looking contrite. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Don’t apologize. If you hadn’t opened the door to watch for me, the specters would have caught up with us.”
“What specters?”
I tried to turn towards the door and growled in pain. “I think I pulled a wing.”
“I don’t know much about wings,” Nate muttered. “You should ask Barbie…”
“Is she here?”
He shook his head. “There’s still two hours left before sunset. I guess she’s asleep, like all the others.”
With a few growls, I managed to turn around towards the door. It had remained open, and the protective spells created a curtain of light on the threshold. Beyond that, I could barely guess the presence of the specters.
“These are the people who were resurrected at the morgue,” I said.
“The undead?”
“Except now they’re much more dead than undead. The magic geyser destroyed their bodies. All that’s left is their minds.”
“What do they want from you?”
I pointed to Chloe. “It’s her they’re after. She’s the necromancer.”
“Her?” Nate looked at the unconscious girl and shook his head incredulously. “How? Why?”
“The ‘how,’ I can explain. She inherited the grimoire of a powerful witch, and the influx of raw magic into the city allowed her to use it. As for the ‘why,’ you will have to ask her.”
“I did it for my parents,” said a flat voice. Chloe was lying on the floor, her eyes fixed on the luminous signs on the ceiling.
“What’s wrong with your parents?” I asked.
“They are dead,” she said. “Blown up in the first explosion on the Strip.”
My throat tightened. That explosion was the one Callum and I set off by destabilizing the giant crystals. The one I felt responsible for. The one I was responsible for…
“The irony,” continued the girl, “is that that same explosion finally allowed me to use my powers. When I noticed that I succeeded with new spells, I thought about the grimoire. There was a whole chapter on necromancy. It was worth a try. The only problem is that my parents’ bodies were never found. They were
destroyed by the force of the explosion.”
“Is that why you wanted to bring Harriet back to life?” I asked.
“Yeah. I thought she might know another way. And then… Forget it.” She sighed.
“And then she’s part of your family,” I said. “You were hoping for…some company.”
“And what a success it was!” said Chloe in an acid tone. “Auntie Harriet is not the affectionate type. I could have guessed it by reading her book. There’s some seriously dark stuff in there.”
“But why the morgue?” said Nate.
“I had to practice. I wanted to bring a guy back to life. I wasn’t planning on bringing everyone back.”
A scream of rage resounded in the hangar, and Alicia came out of the basement. She threw herself towards Chloe like a fury. Nate grabbed her and held her as she struggled.
“‘Practice?’ Did you bring Jeffrey back from the dead to ‘practice?’ Do you know what you did? How he suffered? He saw himself rotting! Rotting from the inside! Maggots in his eyes. And the pain, the pain…” She burst into tears mixed with screams.
Chloe, still lying down, still looking at the ceiling, simply said, “That’s why I had to practice. I won’t make the same mistake next time.”
32
“Next time.”
Alicia had collapsed into a small, sobbing pile. On Nate’s face, I saw the same revulsion I felt. Chloe had played with the lives and deaths of dozens of people, had caused more pain in a few days than most people in a lifetime, and all she could say was that she would no longer make the same mistakes “next time.”
The kid was a psychopath.
Of course. At the morgue, she had sacrificed thirty pieces of her soul. Probably more than most necromancers in their entire career.
“I don’t think you can do it again,” I said.
Chloe stood up to look at me. “And why not?” she said in a tone that challenged me to stop her.
“Because you have two dozen angry ghosts waiting for you on the doorstep,” I said. “And they only want one thing: to kill you in order to end their suffering.”
She turned to the open door and pointed to the multicolored curtain of light. “What the hell is this thing?”
“The protective spells that keep the ghosts from following you inside.”
“What if they come in? You always brag about the spells that keep the supernaturals from fighting inside. It’s time to prove that it works.”
I had already thought about it.
If I deactivated the emergency mode, could the specters cross the threshold? And if so, would the protections end the bond between them and Chloe’s soul?
It was likely. The protections had broken the spell for Susan and Jeffrey.
But the ghosts waiting outside were angry and filled with raw magic. I had no idea what they were capable of.
Chloe got back on her feet. She straightened to her height, and for a moment, her figure reminded me of Harriet’s.
“I’ve decided,” she says. “Open the door.”
“Chloe…”
“They don’t scare me!”
“What about us?” Nate asked. “Have you thought about what they can do to us?”
She shrugged. “I hear they’re after me. Anyway, we’re not going to spend the rest of our lives locked up in a stinking hangar.”
I repressed my desire to send this brat to bed without dinner—or slap her with a Valkyrie’s strength. Instead, I said, “Nate, take Alicia upstairs. I’ll open the loft door for you.”
My loft was equipped with its own magical protections. When I had moved in, I was a little paranoid.
Paranoia sometimes had its advantages.
I got back on my feet and followed Nate and Alicia up the stairs. The tip of my left wing was dragging behind me, and it was going to be a little while before I could fly again.
I placed the palm of my hand on the locking system and opened the loft door. “Make yourself at home,” I said.
“And what about you?” said Nate. “You’re not going to go back down?”
“I have to disable the protections,” I said. “The control spell is placed near the door.”
There was one in the loft, too, but I didn’t mention it.
Nate glanced at Alicia, motionless and detached from her surroundings. Then he turned to me, his face tortured. “I can’t protect you from ghosts,” he murmured.
“I know,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll talk about it later. But now I have to go. And I need you to let me do it. All right?”
He nodded silently, and I closed the door.
I took a few moments to focus on what was coming next.
I hadn’t yet decided to let a horde of ghosts break into my home. I hadn’t given up on Chloe yet.
I came down the stairs with heavy steps.
“Aren’t you going to hide with the others?” Chloe mocked.
I was tired. I hurt everywhere. I had seen enough human pain in twenty-four hours to fill a lifetime. And I had no desire to talk to an arrogant, psychopathic, and visibly suicidal teenager.
“Is it because Harriet rejected you that you want to end it?”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” spat Chloe. “I don’t need Harriet. I’ll find something else. I just need to get the grimoire back. I guess you didn’t think to pick it up.”
“I thought about saving your life.”
“Do I have to thank you?”
“That would be the polite thing to do.”
“Thank you, great Valkyrie, for tearing me away from these terrible ghosts. Now let me out of here.”
“Lizzie did everything she could to protect you. She warded off the undead by the sole force of her will.”
Chloe suddenly seemed interested. “Does she have a special spell to control minds?”
I shook my head. I was too tired for that kind of conversation. “No,” I said. “No spell. She frightened a man by the strength of her affection for you.”
Chloe’s face twisted with disgust. “All right, drop the preaching about the power of love and open the damn door.”
I thought for a moment about knocking her out. But that didn’t solve the specter problem.
“Can you kill spirits?” I asked my sword.
“No. Our job is to guide the bravest to Valhalla, not to kill them.”
Chloe was at least right about one thing: we couldn’t stay locked up there forever. We were going to have to disable the emergency mode.
I stood by the door. The protections were like a security system, and I could control them with a spell located on a point on the wall. I placed the palm of my hand on one of the light signs and turned it to the right. Immediately, all the signs died out, and darkness fell back into the hangar. Then the ghosts broke in.
33
The specters charged over the threshold in a concert of raging screams. At the lead, I recognized the redheaded woman and the tattooed man. The old pot-bellied man followed closely in his spectral robe.
As they passed, the spells spat out a shower of sparks, which did not seem to stop the attacking horde.
Chloe was standing in the center of the hangar. Alone, very straight. She raised her hand, palm forward, and pronounced with a loud voice, “I am your mistress, and I free you from this world!”
The screams died. The specters slowed down then stopped. Chloe hadn’t moved. That kid had more guts than all the adults I knew combined.
“It’s called psychopathy,” mocked my sword.
“Whatever it is, it seems to work,” I said, looking at the crowd of specters.
They had yet to attack Chloe.
She continued, “You are free to go where you want.”
“We want her dead!” a ghost suddenly shouted from the middle of the group.
Others shouted their assent.
Chloe raised her hand again. “Don’t forget who I am! I raised you from the dead. I can easily destroy you.”
“She’s bluffing,” said my swor
d.
“Shh!”
I was fascinated by Chloe’s assurance. She glared at the specters, held them in respect by the sole power of her will.
“What are we supposed to do?” shouted the man in the robe.
A new voice rose. “What were your plans before this unfortunate mess?” Harriet had stayed out of the hangar. Her lean figure shone faintly in the twilight. She too stood very straight, almost like Chloe’s reflection.
The specters turned towards Harriet.
“Projects?” repeated the man in the robe.
“We were at the morgue,” said the redhead woman.
“I didn’t understand nothing,” said a third voice.
Others made similar answers. “We didn’t know what to do!”
Harriet shook her head sadly. “Nothing worse than indecision to spoil your afterlife. What you need is a goal.”
Some specters nodded.
“Let’s start with the basics,” Harriet said. “Have any of you had to abandon ongoing projects? Who has business to attend to? Any messages to pass on, perhaps?”
All the specters spoke at the same time. Harriet let them talk for a few moments before raising her hand to demand silence.
“Perfect. In that case, I have a few things to teach you. Well, what are you waiting for? Follow me! It is getting dark, and we have a lot of things to sort out before daybreak. Then we’ll go to say a few words to these Customs fools. ‘Founding mothers,’ what nonsense is that…”
Most of the specters followed her. Some of them took one last look at Chloe before losing interest in the girl. Three remained in the hangar, visibly more lured by immediate revenge than by what Harriet was offering them. One of them was the tattooed man.
Chloe sighed dramatically, squared her shoulders, and said, “You’re asking for it!”
I left my observation post near the door to join the girl.
I couldn’t say the three avenging ghosts were totally wrong. Chloe had committed enough horrors for me to want to stop her, too. But I refused to let anyone get slaughtered in my house. It was a matter of principle.