Chapter 7
Erin bit her lip and clenched her fists in her lap. He'd warned her. He'd told her to leave. He'd all but begged her not to stay there and let her grief take control. And her refusal to listen may have more consequences than she'd ever imagined. "Did I just kill my parents, Davis?"
He looked at her, his face grim. The long pause as he considered how to answer her stabbed her with sharp blades of guilt. "Not if we're careful."
Hope sprang from inside her like bright beams of light. "We can stop him? How?" She leapt to her feet and tugged his hand. "Let's go get rid of him right now."
Davis pulled her back to sit beside him. "It's not that easy. You aren't strong enough yet. You just died and almost became a wraith."
"But I can't just sit here if there is something I can do to stop him."
He crossed his arms and raised a challenging brow. "Okay then. What will you do to stop him?"
That damn eyebrow pushed every hot button she had, but after chewing over a few smartass remarks, Erin slumped back. "I got nothin'."
Davis nodded. "Of course not. You have to learn a few things first. Like the devastating fact that you only get one, maybe two, shots at this. If you are lost in the battle, your parents will be unrecoverable."
Oh. Yeah, that was important to know.
"Then you'll tell me how to fight them?"
"Fighting is not my usual job, but we are all taught how to survive in case we ever need it."
"You mentioned jobs before. What do you mean? How can we work? Why would we work? Do we need to pay rent on where we haunt?"
He laughed. "No rent, but in a healthy community where one type preys on the other, we separate into specialties and help each other. Some of us are really good at protecting others and keeping them safe. Some are recovery agents, who specialize in turning wraiths back to people. Then there's me. I help ghosts ease into their after-life."
"Why do you want to do that?"
"Because once upon a time, very long ago, someone helped me. I like to meet people, get to know and understand them and help them adjust to this change."
More people than just her. She'd wanted to flirt, smile and have fun with a boy, but in the end, she'd been his job. "That's what you did with me tonight."
Davis smiled. "Yeah, but I gotta say you are the most fun."
Erin snorted. "Right."
"No, seriously. Accidents happen everywhere, all over the world. I’ve met some fascinating people who’ve done amazing things. But death was usually sudden and they took their losses really hard.”
She raised a brow. Did he think her loss wasn’t taken hard?
He acknowledged her silent point, but shrugged. “Tonight, in this place with you, I had fun. You were expecting to die, so your delayed realization and reaction allowed your curiosity to pour out. I got to know the living you, before there was a dead you.”
She bit her lip, understanding his point, even feeling complimented, but still feeling too crushed to enjoy it.
“Plus,” he shook his head, “I lived in a time where hospitals weren't nearly this fun for children. Life was one horror show after another. I don't want death to be the same. For anyone."
He hadn't talked about himself before. She'd been so focused on what she'd wanted and how she was feeling and what was happening in her life that she'd assumed he was a patient with a story similar to hers and never questioned her assumption. There was too much she didn't know. "Were you a patient? Did you die in a hospital?"
"Yes, but no. I had cancer as a child, but I actually died years later in a car crash."
"So now you haunt hospitals in order to explain death to the patients who pass?"
He shrugged. "I woke up in the hospital and there was this witty, sarcastic old man who made the whole thing seem like the most exciting adventure ever. Which can be appropriate in some cases. But when the person who just died has known it was coming, has been counting the seconds and trying to make each one count…"
Erin shifted. "Like me."
He nodded. "Like you. It's better to move slowly in that instance." He inhaled a rush of air. "There is supposed to be more time. Hospitals are protected and wraiths don't come so close."
Erin looked out the window, but the cityscape looked the same as it always did. Branches of lights in every direction with dark mountains in the background, hugging them close. "Is something particularly bad tonight?"
He frowned. "I don't know what's happening out there, but the wraith who's been chasing us is our problem to deal with."
"Right. So how do we do that?"
Davis took her hands in his and leaned forward. "Wraiths win by exploiting our negative emotions. Anger, jealousy, grief…"
Erin nodded, her eyes on his hands as they held hers. A man's hands had always been fascinating to her. Large knuckles, long fingers, skin that felt soft to the touch, but looked porous and rough. Capable hands. Davis had a man's hands. "So we hold them off with happy thoughts."
"Essentially, yes, but not just any happy thoughts. Not when he's standing over you and feeding you terror with his appearance and the sounds of souls from their collective."
She jerked back. "Those are real?"
"They don't talk. They are created from rage and terror to inspire rage and terror. The screams are the externalization of what they hold inside them."
Her hands tightened on his, drawing her gaze as she absorbed his words. She'd resisted becoming a wraith when it was just her own feelings she was fighting, but what he described was very much a battle with emotions becoming the weapons. "So which happy memories are good enough?"
"Usually the most exciting moments of a person's life. The birth of a child, marriage…" His words trailed off as if he just realized what he was saying and didn't know how to continue.
"And if you didn't live long enough for either of those?"
"Pick others. Moments you've won, when you've felt accomplished. When you had fun with a friend, graduated, got your license, fell in love." He looked around as if searching for more examples. "Whatever made you the happiest, it has to be a memory that will feed you despite your worst moments in life."
"And if I fail and the negative emotions overtake me, I am assimilated."
"That is one of the effects, yes."
"What else is there?"
"Once they have you, they have a tie to everyone you loved and/or who ever loved you. They become living batteries to constantly feed grief, despair and defeat to the wraiths. Until the battery runs out."
Death Is Becoming Page 7