“And trap her,” Lloyd said. “Right?”
“Not if we get her out first.” But he was right. All someone would need to do was activate the spirit device and it might easily kill anyone who touched it. “Look, I’m trying to think. Those people are going to die unless we get in there, but they might sacrifice her life if they realise they’re cornered.”
Mackie, of course, would have sensed us coming the instant we got within range. It was up to her whether she wanted to alert the enemy or not.
“I think we’re best off going in through the spirit realm,” said Ilsa. “The humans won’t panic because they won’t be able to see us.”
“And we can take out the vamps that way.” I nodded. “Just… don’t be too obvious about it. We have the element of surprise as long as Mackie doesn’t give us away.”
Lloyd shifted in position. “What you said about candles,” he said. “I can booby trap the outside of the house in case she makes a run for it again.”
“Good idea. She’ll be watching me, and probably Morgan, so you can probably sneak under their radar. Just don’t get caught.”
I tapped into the spirit realm again. Mackie appeared floating before me, her gaze panicked and pleading. She mouthed help.
That was all I needed to tell me she had no control over what she’d done.
I scanned the spirit realm for the device, and spotted its glow, brighter than before. Too bright. A human held it in his hands. Crap. It’s switched on.
The glow grew brighter, covering one human, then another. The vampires planned to suck in all their souls in one go.
“Let go!” I yelled at the human gripping the device, not that he could hear me through the spirit realm. The device continued to glow, mirroring the glow in the vampires’ hands. Oh, god. It’s the vampires—they’re the only ones who can activate it.
One of the vampire’s heads snapped in my direction, and I lunged through the spirit realm, blasting kinetic energy into the human’s back. The device fell from his hands as he turned around in confusion and alarm, and a shadowy vampire surged on the device, scooping it up.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Put that down, moron. It’s set to blow your head off.”
He ignored me. Either he had a death wish or someone else was telling him what to do, over a distance.
The device sparked in his hands, its blue light glowing brighter.
Mackie screamed.
The noise blasted me back into my body, shaking the spirit realm. I heard Morgan and Ilsa both exclaim in pain from beside me. Not again.
Dim candle lights at the house’s perimeter told me Lloyd had managed to complete the circle. At least one thing’s going according to plan. Now to get Mackie out of there.
Head swimming, I sprinted the rest of the way to the doors and kicked them open. I was the only one of the group still on my feet, but the vampires would be equally off balance.
Inside the room, a dozen bewildered humans stared at me, in front of the three blank-faced vampires at the back.
“Give me that device!” I snapped, shoving the nearest human aside. Mackie’s hands gripped the piece of metal, and her wild gaze met mine. She hadn’t screamed in pain. She’d been diverting them on purpose, and had taken back the device for herself.
“Mackie,” I said, elbowing another human out of my path. “Give that here.”
A vampire struck her from behind, snatching the device out of reach. My hands tingled with static as its blue glow grew brighter, expanding to cover the room.
“Get out!” I yelled at the humans, shoving two of them in the direction of the door. Sure enough, one of them dropped a ‘Society of Ley Hunters’ business card on the way out.
The vampire raised the device, his face to the heavens, and I tackled him, taking him off his feet. The spirit realm rose to meet me, grey blurring the world, further blurred by the aftereffect of Mackie’s scream. Tremors rocked my body, and Evelyn Hemlock’s magic rose to the surface.
Magic poured from my hands and the device shattered, pieces of it flying in all directions and striking the walls and ceiling. I fell backwards, blood soaking through my shirt. An urgent male voice—Keir?—broke through the fog, but my spirit was already slipping free of my body.
Ah, crap. I was dying all over again.
12
I’d probably spent longer than the average person imagining how I’d die. I mean, being a necromancer, it kind of went with the territory. Being blown up by a spirit device made by an amateur, though? That was pathetic. Not to mention undignified. I floated through the spirit realm, propelled by the impact of the blast. Even the vampires had vanished, and I hoped the others had caught them in time.
Perhaps if I floated over into the forest, I’d get to avoid passing through the gates, but the idea of spending an eternity with Cordelia Hemlock wasn’t any more appealing as a ghost, to be honest.
Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t die that easily.
The voice sounded almost like Evelyn. If I died, she’d never escape her prison… and even if she did, she wouldn’t have a body. Maybe this was how she’d felt when she’d been ripped out of her body and bound to me. Really, Jas. I had no business feeling the slightest bit sorry for her. Maybe I was growing soft in my almost-dead state.
Blue threads of light caught my vision, reminding me of the voice I’d heard screaming my name. Keir. It would have been nice for him to tell me what was bugging him before I took a one-way trip into the afterlife, but death was never simple, and always left a mess for the living to clean up.
A scream jolted the spirit line, snapping me to alertness. “Mackie?” I called, realising that I’d stopped flying and started hovering instead.
I concentrated on the screaming, seeking its source. The spirit realm grew clearer as I floated, and Mackie appeared before me, struggling in the grip of a tall shadowy figure.
Vampire.
“Let her go,” I warned. “Now.”
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Evelyn Hemlock,” said the shadowy man. It was him… the man who’d looked at me through the necromancer’s eyes.
“Jas,” I corrected. “Evelyn’s dead. Very dead.”
“Not as far as I can see.” His form became more distinctive, and less vampire-y. His eyes glittered, silvery grey, and his grip on Mackie tightened. “Why are you hiding?”
“I have no idea who you even are,” I told him. “Do you have a name?”
“They call me the Soul Collector,” he said.
Mackie struggled against his grasp. “You won’t take my soul.”
“Let her go,” I warned. “I was the one who destroyed your little contraption, not Mackie.”
“Yes, I suppose you did,” he said, looking me up and down over Mackie’s flailing arms. “Luckily, you did me more good than harm… thank you for that.”
Mackie squirmed, freeing one of her arms, and I lunged to grab her. My hands glowed white-blue, as I took her arm, pulling her away from the vampire. He remained still, a shadow in the shape of a man, and didn’t try to stop me.
Why would he need to? He could reach her, mind-to-mind, whenever he wanted to. Unless I finished him off.
I pulled Mackie behind me, my other hand reaching to grasp his throat. My hand passed through thin air, and not so much as a shadow remained of the vampire. It was like he’d evaporated into thin air.
“Get back here, you bastard,” I shouted at the spot where he’d vanished. I’d never seen a vampire disappear so quickly.
“He’s not really here,” Mackie said from behind me. “He’s everywhere—everywhere at once.”
“Mackie,” I said. “Get back to your body. To the guild.”
She shook her head, silent tears spilling down her ghostly cheeks. “I can’t shut him out. He’s always there, always. Please… help.”
My heart wrenched. I was dead. There was nothing I could do—I think. “Go back to the guild. I’ll be right behind you.”
Mackie quietened, and I remai
ned floating on the spot. Death seemed a long time coming, but a familiar chill rose at the sight of the gates on the horizon, transparent and endless. Mackie’s presence slipped away, and a thousand ghosts surrounded me. Dammit. There’s got to be a way out of this.
A pair of shadowy hands gripped mine. I fought, kicking out, and a familiar sensation brushed against my spirit. “Keir?”
“Jas,” he said, his voice quiet, his shadowy form barely there. “Don’t let go of me. I’m going to get you out of here.”
“I think you’re a little too late.” God, it was good to feel something familiar, even the coolness of a vampire’s lethal touch. My spirit pulsed like a heartbeat, aching to feel again…
The spirit realm turned transparent, the gates fading away as I tightened my grip on him. Hazy greyness smothered the world, and unbearable cold gripped my arms. Not pleasant vampire-related cold, but the chill of Death itself.
I gasped, jerking upright, my body stiff and frozen like I’d dived into the sea. My body. I’m alive. I survived.
Keir’s face swam above me, then solidified. “Hang on,” he said. “Don’t move too fast. You lost a lot of blood.”
“I should… be dead,” I said through chattering teeth, shivering violently. Keir leaned in and pulled a blanket over me. Oh, right. I was lying on a bed… and not in the guild’s infirmary. The coppery smell of blood mingled with laundry detergent.
“I barely got to you in time,” Keir said. “You had a healing spell on your wrist, but you were already in Death. I had to pull you back here.”
“I remember.” I licked my numb lips, clinging to the now-blood-covered blanket. “Where am I?” The compact bedroom with its expensive-looking wooden furniture didn’t fit the same layout as one of the guild’s flats. The ceiling was high, two of the walls lined with bookshelves. A set of odd-looking hand puppets faced me. Their stitched, lopsided faces were kind of creepy.
“This is my apartment,” he said. “It was closer than the guild, and I needed to get you away from the debris before I brought you in. Your friend threw a shielding spell up, but that explosion brought the ceiling crashing down. The humans barely got out.”
I screwed up my forehead, thoroughly disorientated. “Your apartment? I don’t see any holes in the walls.”
His jaw tightened. “This is—was—my brother’s room. I’m in here now, since the furies trashed my own room.”
“Oh. Sorry, I’ve got blood all over the bed…” I lifted the blanket. My clothes were a shredded mess, and my necromancer coat was in tatters. “I look like I stole from the Grim Reaper’s wardrobe.”
His mouth pinched together. “I thought you died.”
“I did die. I have nine lives, Lloyd says. Crap, where is he?”
Keir pushed his hair back with one hand. “He’s not hurt. He helped those two other necromancers banish the vampires, after the house collapsed on them. They got the humans out first.”
Right. Of course. Ilsa and Morgan were more than a match for the vampires. Mackie had survived and escaped the Soul Collector… but he’d let me go on purpose. This isn’t over. Far from it.
“At least there’s that.” I didn’t want to take off the blanket, but I couldn’t stay here all day. “I need to report to my boss. Should probably leave the nearly died part out, considering it’s happened enough times that she’s probably suspicious by now.”
“You were in Death a long time, Jas,” Keir said, his eyes unusually serious. “I thought—I was too late.”
“I had to get Mackie out.” I looked away, his intent stare making me feel—something. Whatever it was, I had no time for it at the moment. “The person behind this scheme, the one who forced her to betray us—it was him. I think he’s a vampire, but he has some serious glowing going on. Maybe he’s eating all the souls he captures.”
“A vampire?”
“Yep.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and he took a step backwards—not too fast, but enough to catch my attention. Like yesterday, he looked a little worn, to say the least. His skin appeared stretched too tight over his bones, and in the spirit realm, he hadn’t been nearly as shadowy as usual.
I frowned. “Something wrong? You didn’t feed on anyone yesterday, did you?”
“I was too busy repairing the damage to my wall,” he said. “I also had to tell John that attacking us was a bad idea, so I stole his vessels and turned them on him.”
“Vampire warfare. Fun.” I felt less than charitable towards vampires in general now I knew several of them were in cohorts with this so-called Soul Collector, but Keir’s subdued demeanour bothered me more than I expected. I had to admit, I’d had a moment or two when I hoped he was wallowing in guilt for not getting in touch with me, but it wasn’t like he’d given me a reasonable explanation. “I guess I should head back to the guild. Will you be joining me?”
He paused for a moment. “I’ll walk you.”
“You should probably grab a snack on the way. Not that I’m encouraging ambushing more humans, but if people sign up to join a murderous death cult, they probably deserve it.” I searched the spells on my wrists for a repairing charm, which I applied to my shredded clothes. I’d need to change them later, but at least now I looked less like I was on my way back from a Halloween party. “What’s with the puppets?” I indicated the row of crudely stitched faces on the bookshelf opposite. “They kind of look like they’re plotting to murder me.”
“Ah, they were my brother’s,” said Keir, not catching my gaze. “He made them so he could teach me how to pilot vessels from a distance.”
“Oh. Sorry I said they were creepy.”
“They are,” he said, in an attempt at an offhand tone. “Especially when he used them to practise ventriloquism.”
“So that’s how you learned to throw your voice and speak through a vessel?” I’d kind of figured that type of thing came naturally to vampires. Like feeding on souls.
“He was better at it than I am,” he said.
Silence fell, and I returned my attention to my newly repaired coat. “Cleansing… eh. I’ll deal with that later. The Lynns will get suspicious if I show up squeaky-clean.”
“You’ve certainly grown proficient with witchcraft.” His gaze followed my movements as I tugged my cloak shut. My skin heated at the memory of his hands on my soul, his vampire’s touch. I’d wanted him to drain me, even when I was dying. That was one lethal power they had.
I looked at him. “My soul is in one piece and I don’t want you snacking on another necromancer. Go on.”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t.”
“Look, it’s that or get kicked out of the guild. And you want to tell my boss what you know… right?”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “The guild is effective, but too slow. If you hadn’t gone behind their backs today, Mackie would be dead.”
“They’re fast when they want to be,” I countered. “Also, there’s a vampire behind this. Several. Look, I have no idea what your problem is, but the guild could use the help and I’m not going to blow our chances of catching the villain just because you blew me off.”
“I said I didn’t want to help the guild. Not that I wouldn’t.” He stepped towards me. The air felt charged as his hand reached out to brush my cheek. “I’m sorry I didn’t return your messages, Jas. I’ll explain later, but I have to…” I felt the cold touch of his spirit against mine. “I apologise. It’s been a while since—”
“Go on.” I remained where I stood, my head turned pointedly downwards. This is nothing. Vampires do this kind of thing every day.
He placed both hands on my shoulders, carefully, as though afraid I’d snap in two if he pushed too hard. I held my breath as his mouth moved down my neck, and all the coldness of the spirit realm melted away.
I’d forgotten how it felt to be fed on by a vampire. It felt more like a full-body, or full-spirit massage—and then some. Coldness turned to warmth, trickling down my spine to my toes, and there was that openne
ss—like he was giving something to me rather than the other way around. I found my hands slipping around his waist. His strong arms held me tightly, trembling a little, as his spirit fed on mine like a starving man.
Whoa. He was draining me, too fast. “Slow down.”
He wasn’t listening. Just how long had it been since he’d fed on someone?
“Keir!” I shoved his shoulders backwards, breaking the connection violently enough that he slammed into the opposite wall. Several books fell from the shelves, the clattering noise seeming to bring him to his senses.
Keir pressed a hand to his forehead. “Jas.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“What the hell?” I gasped out. My skin burned, my soul burning brighter, if anything, but the outright panicked look on his face kick-started my heartbeat. “Keir, what is it?”
“Fuck,” he said, again, replacing the books roughly on the shelves. His hands were visibly shaking. “Something is wrong with my vampire abilities.”
“Wrong… how?”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand how. Maybe it’s because you have two souls, but whenever I feed on anyone else, it has next to no effect, compared to yours. My vampire’s ability seems to have latched onto you—or your shade. It’s been driving me to distraction for weeks.”
“Oh, come on.” I rolled my eyes at him, though my heart continued to pound. “I’m not that unique.”
“No, you’re deadly to vampires,” he said. “Any other vampire who tried to feed on you would experience the same. I nearly killed two people the day after you left for the forest.”
“You’re serious. Oh, bloody hell. I didn’t know.” How could I? It wasn’t like I’d looked up the effects of a vampire feeding on a shade, since I’d only discovered both of them existed in the same week. Deadly to vampires?
“No, it wasn’t a pleasant surprise, I’ll give you that.” His mouth curved, though his eyes remained shadowed. “None of my usual coping mechanisms worked. I usually lift weights or spar with other vampires as an outlet to take the edge off the hunger, but my concentration levels are fucked. I even tried feeding on a necromancer or two, but it’s like my abilities shut down. I thought I was dying.”
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