The other man with her stepped closer against her side and protectively in front of the one I’d just knocked out. The man raised his rifle and aimed it at Shax.
“You’re only going to kill us anyway,” she replied.
“If I wanted you dead, you would be already.” To emphasize my point, flames rose around my wrists. “Now, put it down!”
Her hand wavered, and her blue eyes widened on my flames before she lowered the weapon. Stepping forward, I ripped the rifle from her hand and tossed it aside as Shax and Bale approached the man. They both looked mad enough to kill. Shax jerked the rifle out of the man’s grasp and threw it into the woods.
“Morax, you okay?” I demanded.
He shook his head as he sat back. A bullet was making the way out of the back of his skull, and more holes riddled his shoulders and back. “Fine,” he grunted as the bullet in the back of his skull finally fell out.
Verin sat up before him, her hand resting against his cheek. She leaned forward to kiss him before leveling the human woman with a lethal stare. The woman stared back at her as I lowered the rifle and set it butt first onto the ground.
“What’s your name?” I asked of her.
“What does that matter?” she retorted.
I shrugged and threw the rifle into the trees. “It doesn’t.”
“Why aren’t you going to kill us?” the man inquired.
“I never said I wasn’t going to,” Verin muttered as she wiped away some of the blood on Morax’s cheek.
Across from me, the woman lifted a blonde eyebrow and wiped her forearm across her dirt-streaked forehead. Her pale blonde hair hung over her shoulder in a braid. Leaves and twigs were interwoven through the braid causing it to blend in with the forest around her.
“Bale, go back and let the others know they can proceed, and bring us some rope,” I requested.
She nodded then turned and disappeared into the forest without a sound.
“I’d rather be dead than be a prisoner,” the woman grated through her teeth.
I chuckled as I folded my arms over my chest. “We don’t do prisoners. You’re going to be staying right here.”
Her eyes widened as realization dawned on her. “Tying us up here is as good as killing us. You have no idea the things that are in this forest.”
“I have a very good idea what is in this forest. You had better hope your friends regain consciousness in time to untie you two, but I’m not leaving you free after you tried to ambush us.”
“No one ambushed you. You came into our territory.”
“Wren—”
“Shh,” she hissed at the man beside her when he started to speak.
Verin helped Morax to his feet; they spoke in a low whisper before she broke away. She continued to glare at the two humans as she stalked over to stand beside me. “What would you call it then?” Verin demanded. “You were setting yourselves up to attack us when we came down the hill.”
“I’d call it protecting what is ours,” Wren replied flippantly.
“Those supplies and trucks are ours, Wren,” I said, drawing her infuriated gaze back to me.
Her lip curled up in a sneer. “Not if they’re in our territory. Besides, we always have to defend ourselves against demons such as you.”
The woman irritated me, but something about her reminded me of River. Most likely, it was her unwillingness to back down. They were both stubborn and defiant, but this woman had a savage air about her that River didn’t possess. This woman would cut off someone’s head as easily as shake their hand.
“You have no idea what kind of a demon I am,” I told her as the rumble of the trucks neared. “Or the things I am capable of. Consider yourself lucky to still have your feet attached to your body and your tongue in your throat.”
For the first time since the altercation began, the woman showed some hint of alarm as the color drained from her dirt-streaked face. Beneath the layers of grime and her abrasive demeanor, she may have been pretty, but it was difficult to tell.
“If it wasn’t for us, your entire species would be dead already!” Verin said. “And believe me when I say you’re walking the edge of death right now.”
Wren shot her a look, her mouth clamped together but hostility radiated from her.
“Easy,” Morax said and walked over to rest his hand on Verin’s shoulder. “I’m fine.”
Verin took a deep breath before relaxing her shoulders. She brushed her fingers over the dried blood still sticking to the fading bullet hole in his cheek. “Yes, you are,” she murmured.
Wren’s eyes shot back and forth between them before her gaze landed on me. I stared back at her, keeping my expression blank as I felt the sting of the rest of the bullets working their way out of my body. A door closed, and a minute later, Bale returned with rope in her hand.
“You can’t tie us up and leave us here,” the man said. “Just kill us. It would be kinder in the end.”
“Tempting, but I promised someone I would try not to kill humans anymore. Maybe leaving you here is a death sentence, but maybe it’s not. Not my problem either way,” I replied. “Hands out.”
Wren tilted her chin up further but didn’t move her arms.
“Either do it willingly, or I’ll knock you out and tie you up. I think you have a better shot of surviving if you’re not unconscious,” I told her.
She hesitated before thrusting her hands out before her. Taking hold of her wrists, I tied them together before wrapping the other end of the rope around a tree and binding her there while Shax and Bale worked to tie the man up. Retrieving the rifle, I propped it against a tree.
“We are not all monsters,” I said to her.
She jerked on the rope and lifted her hands into the air. “Are you sure about that?”
A cruel smile twisted my mouth as I leaned toward her. “You have no idea what monsters truly are, but if we fail, you will. If that happens, you will look back on this moment and know I was right.”
“Fail at what?” she demanded.
“I see you again, I will kill you,” I told her, ignoring her question. She glowered at me but didn’t say a word. “Let’s go,” I said to the others. “We’ve already wasted too much time.”
A sense of urgency drove me as I ran through the woods to the waiting trucks. I had to get to River before it was too late.
CHAPTER 21
River
“Shit,” Corson muttered as he stared at the ghosts floating above and swooping toward us.
“Please don’t piss them off,” Erin whispered.
“This way,” Daisy said as she hovered before us.
I tried to take them all in, but there were so many various ages, eras, and races of ghosts, that I couldn’t quite process what I was seeing. They clustered against us, causing the air to grow colder from their nearness, as Daisy led the way across the concrete floor of the vast warehouse.
None of the ghosts touched me, but the hair on my arms stood on end. The temperature couldn’t be more than twenty degrees at the most, something for which my thin, brown shirt was completely inadequate. I understood why this place had been so bright now though; there were enough apparitions in here to light the entire barrier wall.
“Is this her?” one of them asked as he floated by my face, peering at me far too intently for my liking after what I’d put up with from Pervy and freaky Pompadour.
“Shh,” Daisy murmured. “They’re being hunted. We must get them to safety.”
“Is it her?” he asked again.
I realized as we continued forward that ghosts really had no concept of manners, life or death urgency, or being discreet. Daisy disappeared through another set of swinging doors and I hurried behind her, eager to escape from the thousands of ghosts staring at us.
One of the doors squeaked when I pushed it open, but not loud enough to carry far. I assumed we’d be outside once we left the warehouse; instead, we entered another room full of more ghosts. There was absolutely nothing else
in what I assumed was another storage room except for the ghosts and us. We were never going to escape them, I realized. Even if we could lose the demons, we would never be free of all the freaking ghosts.
“Is it you?” my new persistent stalker demanded of me.
“I am me,” I replied, wishing I could hide in a vat of salt right now.
He zipped around so he was floating less than a foot in front of me, causing me to stop abruptly. He didn’t look much older than I did and the military fatigues he wore resembled the cut and design of this time period.
“I can’t talk to angels,” I said in exasperation before he could ask.
He hovered in front of me before darting away to join the mass of others forming a circle no more than five feet away. It was like being enclosed in a blurry, gray bubble as they zipped back and forth all around us. I couldn’t tell if they were agitated or excited, but I wanted out of here and away from them.
“Maybe you should tell them you can talk to angels,” Vargas murmured.
“I’m not going to lie to them,” I said.
“They’d follow us all the way into the pits of Hell if she told them that,” Corson said. “They may not like to move around at night, but they can cover a lot of distance during the day.”
“Can you close the unnatural gateway into Hell?” another asked as she floated up beside me.
I took an involuntary step away from her. “I don’t know.”
“I think you can do it.”
I had the backing of the ghost population, good to know.
“Looks a little too skinny and weak to me,” another said.
Okay, I didn’t have the backing of all of them.
“She does,” some of the others murmured.
There really was nothing like being insulted by a bunch of ghosts to help build my confidence.
“Looks can be deceiving,” some of the others murmured.
“I think she looks strong.”
“Maybe she is.”
“I wonder what she can do.”
My head bounced back and forth as I tried to follow their conversation.
“She’s a World Walker, of course she’s strong.”
There were those words again. My forehead furrowed when that statement caused them all to become more agitated and their whispers grew louder.
“What does that mean? What’s a World Walker?” I inquired, but none of them heard me, or at least they didn’t respond as they continued to swirl and talk excitedly amongst themselves.
“Shh,” Daisy said. “They’ve come for her. If you don’t quiet down, they’ll find her and then we’ll have no hope.”
The ghosts’ murmurs died down and they stopped zipping around. Daisy waved us forward and passed straight through yet another set of swinging doors. I hesitated outside the doors, wanting to question the ghosts more, but Erin nudged me forward. “Later, let’s get out of here first.”
I relented to her prodding as the ghosts hovered closer to me once more. Vargas and Corson were the first ones to push open one of the next doors. I followed behind them and stopped abruptly when we entered into a garage bay.
A Mac truck was parked on one side of the bay. The passenger side door was open to reveal the black interior and a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror. I spotted dusty and faded pictures sticking out from around the flipped up sun visors.
The lack of ghosts in the room caused me to stop abruptly on the other side of the door. After encountering so many of them along the way here, the bay seemed barren. The only light came from a bare bulb hanging from a ceiling cord next to the truck’s driver side window.
“Why are there no ghosts in here?” I asked Daisy when we caught up to her at the back of the garage.
“It smells funny,” she replied.
I exchanged a look with the others. It smelled of motor oil, rubber, diesel fuel, and grease, but nothing so outstanding I would find it repelling.
“What is it you don’t like about the smell?” Hawk asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied absently. “It just smells off.”
Something more than salt repelled ghosts. I’d have to find out what that was in case I started to develop a following of spectral beings who believed I had a direct line to the angels. I’d bottle it and use it as a perfume if I had to.
“What do the ghosts think I can do for them, besides talk to the angels?” I asked her when she stopped beside a single, metal door.
She glanced over her shoulder at me. “You might be able to close the gateway.”
“What good will that do for ghosts?”
“We want to be invisible again. At one time we believed nothing could be worse than being invisible and unable to communicate with the living. We were wrong. We now know there is nothing worse than being a constant source of fear to most humans. There are those rare humans who accept us, but we have become outcasts, trapped out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“And if I can close the gateway, you’ll go back to obscurity?” I inquired.
“We hope so,” she whispered.
I didn’t say there was a good possibility I couldn’t do what so many hoped I could. I tried not to think about it myself. If I failed, I failed all humankind and demon-kind. And now, apparently ghost-kind too. If I thought about all of that too much, I’d climb into the black pit where the mechanics once worked underneath the truck, hug my knees to my chest, and never come out again.
I was twenty-two years old and they’d plopped an entire destiny I’d never known about into my lap. I took a deep breath to steady myself as the weight of the world settled onto my shoulders. Now I knew what Atlas had felt like, but he’d been a titan and I was a mere mortal. I may not be completely human, but I was still susceptible to death and dismemberment.
Now thousands, probably millions of ghosts around the world, either believed or doubted I might be able to pull off something I didn’t pretend to comprehend.
If you can’t do it, it doesn’t mean you failed. It simply means all of them were wrong.
I told myself this, but if I failed, it would haunt me for the rest of my days, and I would blame myself.
“Are you okay?” Erin asked from beside me.
I forced myself to speak through the lump in my throat. “Yes.”
“This door goes outside,” Daisy said.
In the room behind us, shouts erupted. “Get out!” someone screamed.
“Not welcome! Not welcome!” Became a chanting mantra that blocked out any other noise.
“We have to get out of here,” Corson said.
Daisy vanished through the door. Corson grabbed the handle and twisted it hard enough to break it off as he pushed it open. No light illuminated the alley when we stepped into the hushed night. I froze when I discovered Daisy flattened against the side of the building, somehow looking paler than she had before.
“Daisy, are you okay?” I inquired.
“Hate the dark,” she murmured.
“Unbelievable,” Vargas muttered.
“Go back inside,” I said to her. “Thank you for your help.”
“We’ll keep them distracted for as long as we can. Good luck to you. I have faith in you,” she gushed before fleeing back inside the building.
CHAPTER 22
Kobal
“Have you ever considered staying on Earth if we close this gateway?” I asked Bale as I drove the truck.
I barely paid attention to the ruts and holes in the roadway as my teeth clacked against each other and my head bounced off the ceiling numerous times. Most of the bullets had worked their way out of me and my flesh was repairing itself, but the jarring of the truck caused some of the wounds to tear and spill fresh blood over my clothes.
“I think we all have,” she replied. “But that is your choice to make. It would be your decision to allow us to remain.”
I glanced over at her before swerving out of the way of a hole in the earth. The tires spun in the grass and dirt lining the
side of the road, pinging the undercarriage with debris before I corrected the truck back onto the road.
“Are you thinking about it?” she asked.
“I’m considering it.”
“Because of River?”
“She would be part of it,” I admitted.
“And the other part?”
“We’ve been screwed over by angels and humans for thousands of years. I see no reason to be locked away in Hell again if we don’t have to be. Before it was necessary to keep our existence secret because that was the way our world coincided with the human world, but that isn’t necessary anymore. We no longer have to live in secret. Granted, a good chunk of the human population still doesn’t know we exist, but I see no reason why these desolate areas can’t become ours when this is over.”
“You’ll have demons around you all the time, looking to pass back and forth in order to feed and retain their immortality. You won’t be able to keep your gate open to allow us to survive on Earth. There are still things living within Hell that should never be allowed to roam free here,” she said.
Hunger seared through my veins and made my gut clench at the mention of feeding. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d fed. It had been longer than my customary week, but I couldn’t stop now, even if it would only take a few minutes to find some wraiths to feed from.
“There will be a lot to work out in the beginning, but I see no reason why we should be denied a world of light when we’re the ones helping to keep it that way,” I said. “Most will probably prefer to return to Hell, but some would probably stay.”
“Most will probably stay here,” she said quietly.
I glanced questioningly at her.
With a sigh, she rose up from where she’d been leaning against the door to sit straight in the seat. “Many of us prefer it here. It smells better. The humans can be annoying, but a few of them are enjoyable, and you have to admit, Earth is just an overall nicer place to be. We’re the monsters here, and I’m okay with that. Lucifer has to be stopped, the gateway has to be closed, but afterward, many would stay if they could.”
Carved (The Road to Hell Series, Book 2) Page 15