From overhead where soil hung like the sky, roots curved down to dangle in the air, a kind of crazy jungle gym where one might swing if the impulse hit. Here and there I spied steel and concrete supports, buttressing slabs of concrete overhead. I couldn’t imagine how it didn’t fall down on our heads. Score one for man’s engineering prowess.
It was an utter ruin down here with the exception of the library. In the darkened wasteland of old Fulton Falls, the grand building shone like a jewel. My jaw dropped to see how it stood tall overhead, somehow appearing whole despite the roof of concrete and soil that should have cut it off halfway down. The tabby steps with the surrounding rails, complete with two lion statues on either side, marched grandly up to the polished wood double doors set in the brick wall. Even the windows were intact, and inside I saw people in old-fashioned suits and period dresses wander past.
“This is crazy,” I breathed. “I’ve lived in Fulton Falls all my life and never knew this was down here.”
Dan looked at the building like a man in love. “Most people don’t.”
“Why does the library look that way? Like it’s still whole?”
“As I told you, sometimes a place or object can retain a kind of personality and manifest its own ghostly presence. The library and a few other buildings around here are like that.”
I turned to take in the strange netherworld around me. With the exception of the lovely old library, the original Fulton Falls was a corpse, slowly rotting in its coffin. I swallowed. “I can’t say I like the rest of this much.”
Dan squeezed my hand. “Being in the dark like this feels depressing, but you can go above ground anytime you like.”
A small beam of light two buildings down caught my attention, and I let go of Dan to carefully pick my way down the debris-rubbled street to look. A grate covering a storm drain let sunlight in overhead, and I listened to the sounds of life I still took for granted; car motors, the thrum of conversation, and birdsong.
Dan followed me and I looked at him, grateful to see him in the golden light instead of the strange wash of gray that permeated the ruined city. “Are we under a street here?”
“Altamaha Drive is right above us.”
I shuffled through the debris below the grate, trash washed down by the frequent spring rains, no doubt. A gleam of metal caught my attention, and I stooped to see a woman’s gold class ring with a dainty sapphire stone. “Look at that,” I said to Dan. “Someone’s going to be upset she lost it.”
I reached and closed my hand over it. I felt the cool metal against my fingertips and then a strange numb sensation as the ring passed right through my grasp. I looked up at Dan with wide eyes.
“Okay, I don’t like this at all.”
He crouched next to me, his expression soothing. “You can manipulate physical objects from the living world, but you have to draw energy.”
“How do I do that?” For some reason not being able to pick up the ring really bothered me.
“Most of us pull from the natural magnetic field around us.” At my impatient huff, he coached, “Close your eyes.”
I did so, though shutting out his handsomely craggy face seemed like a crime.
“Do you feel a pulsing around you, like a soft heartbeat?”
I went very still, trying to sense the atmosphere around me. A horn honked in the world above. Someone laughed, the sound an eternity away. Beneath it all I sensed a low thrum that ebbed and flowed, something deep enough to pull at me. “Yes, I feel that.”
“Now relax and think about drawing it into you. Think of yourself as a magnet attracting it or a sponge soaking it in. There you go.”
The approval in his voice strengthened me, and I felt a prickly hum run through my body. “It kind of tickles,” I told Dan.
“Okay, now try to pick up the ring.”
I opened my eyes and noticed how my hands seemed to exude the same glow as the old library. Fascinating. I closed my finger and thumb over the ring again, and this time I was able to lift it.
“Wow, it works. Hey, am I brighter to you?”
He grinned at me. “Yes, brighter and more solid. If a living person was here, he might see you as an indistinct shadow or mist right now.”
My grip suddenly felt numb, and my finger and thumb met. The ring clattered to the ground. “Fudge,” I griped.
Dan patted my shoulder. “Pulling energy will become second nature as you get used to it.” He straightened and pulled me to my feet. Tugging me along, we ventured further down the street. “It just takes practice, and you have eternity to get it right.”
I skipped over a large rock in my path. “Are there stronger sources than the magnet field?”
“Magnetic field,” he gently corrected. “Batteries are excellent sources to pull from. We can also pull from each other, but it’s bad form to do so. It’s incredibly painful and stealing energy from another spirit will turn them into wraiths. Do it long enough, and the wraith will wink completely out of existence.”
I skirted a rusted spike of rebar despite realizing I could probably walk right through it. “I thought wraiths were spirits of the dead. What’s the difference between me and a wraith?”
He grimaced. “What we call wraiths down here are ghosts of ghosts. It’s a terrible way to be, and an even worse way to die.”
I shuddered. “Sounds like it.”
Dan toured me around the remains of old Fulton Falls’ downtown where most businesses and government buildings had been buried. One building in particular was completely missing: the Armory, where the Fire of ’36 had started. A drunken private had accidentally set off some rounds of ammo, hitting several hydrogen tanks. The nearby naval airbase, which had a small fleet of zeppelins, stored their surplus there. In a conflagration that seemed an ominous foreshadowing of the following year’s Hindenburg disaster, a sizeable portion of Fulton Falls went up. It was said the explosion at the Armory could be felt clear out to Jesup, a town that sat an hour away by car.
The resulting fast-moving fire, fed by a drought that had lingered for the last two years, took over six hundred lives. A thriving port town, Fulton Falls had once rivaled its northern neighbor Savannah for supremacy. The fire had pretty much put the kibosh on that. Fulton Falls recovered, but has lagged behind ever since. A pulp mill and the Glynco Naval Airbase, later taken over by Homeland Security, became Fulton Falls’ main employers, with shipping lagging a distant third.
The decayed remains of old Fulton Falls was one of the most depressing things I’d ever seen. A couple of buildings glowed similar to the old library, appearing whole from the outside. One was a pub, in which the sounds pointed to a full-on brawl going on inside. Another ‘live’ building proved to be the original First Baptist Church. A doleful mixture of groans and sobs emitted from its open doors. I decided I liked the pub better.
There was a lot of the pitiful sound of weeping down here, rising above the mumble of traffic in the world above us. Mourning apparently continued, as souls bemoaned lives not lived to the fullest and ended too young. The odor of the underground town, alternatively dank or burnt or, especially beneath the grates overhead, laden with motor oil and gasoline, wasn’t exactly a pleasure to inhale.
Dan brought me to the old City Hall, one of the brighter structures. A building that lived on despite physical ruin, it presented itself with gleaming white columns and stately red brick. Men wearing old-fashioned suits and hats of various bygone eras mixed freely with more modern men and women. I recognized Judge Anthony Monroe, who’d presided over Fulton Falls’ criminal court until only a year ago when he’d died in his
private chambers of a sudden stroke. He rested a companionable plump hand on the shoulder of a spare black man as they spoke in low, sober tones.
“What’s above us now?” I asked, frowning.
“The courthouse.”
“Which one?” We had two courthouses in Fulton Falls. The older had been built soon after the fire and these days officiated paranormal residen
ts’ legal concerns. The newer, built only twenty years ago, was concerned with human law.
“The Old Courthouse. Judge Monroe presided over that one until the new one went up and para justice was separated from human.” Dan’s lips tightened as Judge Monroe caught sight of him. The two men exchanged stiff nods.
“This isn’t much of an afterlife,” I observed, my mood definitely shading to blue. “This place is so depressing.”
“That’s why I stick to the library. You’ll find mainly those who died in the Great Fire down here. Most ghosts haunt the place of their deaths, their old homes, or follow loved ones around.”
The heaviness in his voice got me wondering for the first time how Dan had died. “What about you? Where are your people?”
“My family moved away.”
Getting personal information from Dan was like pulling teeth. But hey, I’d given him sex, so he could satisfy my curiosity. “Children?” I pressed.
“Two boys.”
I noticed Judge Monroe scowling at us. What was his problem? “Do you ever check on them, see what they’re up to?”
Dan glanced up at the judge and took my hand. Pulling me down the street, heading back in the direction of the library he said, “I caused them enough pain in life. They don’t need me hanging around after everything that happened.”
I looked at his careworn face, wondering if I should pursue my questions after all. Something dark had appeared in Dan’s eyes. Inquisitiveness is one of my failings, but I did manage to change my line of interrogation. “You must have died young.”
He nodded. “I was thirty-eight. That was pretty young to go from a heart attack.”
I stopped in the middle of the street. “Wow Dan, that’s ridiculously young. How awful. Don’t you think your family would want to know you’re okay, so to speak? I mean, you could get a message to them, right?”
His voice stayed steady, but the darkness in his eyes grew. “I died in prison.”
I blinked. Okay, there were lots of things that could put a guy behind bars. And Dan didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would knock over a liquor store or beat on his wife and kids. Definitely a white-collar offender.
“Can I ask what were you doing there?”
“I killed a man.”
His statement was too bald to be a lie. He looked at me, and I fought a shudder. Dan a killer? But he’d done nothing to make me feel endangered.
Self-defense? Involuntary manslaughter? Had to be.
“You’re not a murderer.” My firm tone buoyed me.
“Actually I am.” The darkness in his eyes overwhelmed him, and I saw pain, deeper than any I’d ever known, flood his face. “My business got into trouble, and the IRS agent in charge of my case was looking to shut me down. I would have lost everything. My family would have been out on the street. When the agent came and started up with the questions and warnings, then offered to look away for a bunch of money I didn’t have, I snapped.”
“Just like that?” My voice sounded small and hurt. My fantasy Marlboro Man, all studly and strong and beyond reproach was just that: a fantasy.
Dan snorted. “I’d never even gotten so much as a speeding ticket before in my life. Can you imagine?”
“Wow.”
He studied my face and nodded, as if confirming something to himself. “Not much to say about it, is there?” He drew himself up. “It was a horrible thing I did, something I’ve never forgiven myself for. I went to the police and turned myself in that very night, told them where to find the body. I would have done anything to take it back.”
I licked my lips, unsure how to treat Dan now after his stunning confession. “Have you ever run into him down here? The man you killed?”
Dan shook his head. “He either haunts some other place or didn’t become like us. Sometimes I wish he’d stuck around just so he could kick my ass.”
We endured several moments of awkward silence. I didn’t know what to say to Dan. He’d killed somebody.
Okay, the agent had tried to blackmail him. Threatened to take away his livelihood. Tried to ruin him.
But Dan had done even worse, had ended the man’s life.
On the other hand, my Marlboro Man had been so nice to me, taken care of me when I was lost and scared.
But he’d killed somebody.
As my interior debate raged, Dan shuffled. “It’s getting late. We should get over to the King George Hotel.”
I was grateful for a change in subject. I so didn’t want to think about Dan being a murderer. “The King George is here?”
“It’s where all the important stuff happens for paras. That’s where Tristan holds court, so to speak.”
He tucked my arm into his, and I had to fight to keep myself from pulling away. Dan would never hurt me. To cover my sudden stab of fear I said, “The King George was by the waterfront. That’s going to be a bit of a walk.”
“Teleporting is faster.”
“Like how you brought me from the woods to the library. And how Tristan left us.” Could I do that, I wondered?
Dan relaxed a little now that we weren’t discussing his past. “Would you like a lesson? You know the library now, so we can jump there first. Then I’ll take you to the hotel.”
“Okay.” A rush of anticipation made me smile. How cool to just zap wherever you wanted whenever you wanted. I was psyched for this.
“I’m going to hold tight to you. That way if you go off course, you’ll take me with you.” He brushed a lock of my hair from my forehead, and instead of thinking of him taking another man’s life, I thought of him taking me so deliciously in the library.
Well, he did say the agent threatened his family. Who wouldn’t lose it just a little with that kind of pressure?
Murder is not ‘losing it just a little’.
Dan was still talking, and I shut down my internal argument. He said, “We can’t be misplacing our one and only witness to the Ripper, so don’t let go of me. Tristan will have my head.”
I snuggled close to him. Tristan trusted Dan. He didn’t strike me as a man who chose his associates without care. I’d have to ask him about Dan’s conviction.
Then again, reports estimated at least ninety percent of all vampires had killed someone at some point in their undeaths. No one knew for sure, because the vampires obviously weren’t going to admit to it. I wondered how many had died at Tristan’s fangs, whether by design or accident.
How do I know Tristan isn’t the Ripper?
Talk about your unwelcome thoughts. Oh boy, maybe I needed to get new friends on this side of death. But I’d always considered myself a good judge of character, and neither Dan nor Tristan rang any alarm bells. Wouldn’t I know it somehow if Tristan was indeed the monster who’d murdered me?
Dan was waiting for me, and I put thoughts of killers aside. “What do I do?”
“Think hard about the library. Remember how it looks, smells, and feels to be there.”
“Okay.” I thought about the library, its musty old book smell and the underlying odor of smoke. I thought about how hard the table had been beneath me while Dan took me. How muscular and exciting his body was, how bad I had wanted it from the moment we’d met in the woods. He’d been my strong and true Marlboro Man, saving me from those woods where my body lay on the straw-covered ground, bloated and bloodless.
Dan said, “When you have your location, reach for it with your mind, and make yourself go there in your head.”
I ‘reached’, still thinking about how he’d smiled so gently, held me so carefully, calmed my fears when he’d found me. Could a good man commit murder? Was that a possibility?
The street of old Fulton Falls and the crumbling remnants of the town blurred around me, and I felt a rush of elation. I was doing it! I was teleporting us to the library, just like a pro.
The blurring froze in place, and reddish-gold light replaced it in tossed can of paint splashing. The space around us solidified, and my excitement plunged into horror.
The sun was setting behind perfectly lined up trees. We were back in the woods where my body had been dumped. Crime scene techs worked like ants around the place.
“Aw, heck no!” I wrung my hands, the motion yanking me free of Dan.
His arms went around me in an instant. “Calm down. It can take awhile to get the hang of this.”
I barely heard him. I wasn’t crying, but I was darn close. “Not here! I don’t want to be here!”
“It’s okay, baby girl. We’re going.”
With a slight tug, the woods blurred away.
Netherworld: Drop Dead Sexy Page 5