The Dead Seekers

by Barb Hendee

He flipped the disk, catching its other edge without looking, and Mari inched back.

  “Now, where’s my other spirit shield?” he demanded.

  Tris looked to Mari but did not see the first disk. Had she put it away somewhere in her clothing?

  “A guard took it,” she answered, breathy and quick. “Grabbed it when I went down . . . protecting him.”

  Again, Tris wished he had dismissed, abandoned, or never encountered her. He had destroyed her life in childhood. She did not deserve to lose it because of him or to be treated this way.

  Heil stepped on the dagger. With a backward scrape of his boot, he sent the blade skidding across the ground, away from Mari. Tris looked down on where the dagger stopped, only two paces before him.

  “Don’t get stupid,” Heil warned Mari, “or you will get a nap. Now, how many have you banished?”

  Tris looked up, saw Mari watching him, and glanced toward Heil. “Three.”

  “Then there’s one left before we—you—get out of here. Sooner the better.”

  Tris took a long, shaky breath. “Then the conch should—”

  “It’s not working anymore,” Heil interrupted. “And we won’t need it. The last one will be coming for you, after what you did to the others. Kitty there’s not the only one looking for some misplaced revenge.”

  Heil was wrong. It was not misplaced.

  Mari regained her feet, though she neither ran nor charged. She watched both of them, and Tris could not tell which she would go at now.

  “What is that thing?” she asked angrily. “That black one that tried—”

  “Not now!” Heil barked at her.

  Tris looked to Mari, wanting to try to answer her.

  “Not you either,” Heil warned.

  Tris bit down against a retort, for his mentor was correct. Until the last spirit was banished, and they fled this place, that other him was too close. Even so, another portal would need to appear, and now it was so close to the next time on Heil’s calculated schedule.

  That was why he had nearly breached the portal—that and too many deaths in Tris’s presence. He glanced toward Mari and quickly away when he found her watching him again.

  “Where’s the guard who took my shield?” Heil asked.

  “Don’t know,” Mari answered reluctantly. “Off along the wall, somewhere.”

  “Then go get it. We might need both shields,” he ordered. “Sniff him out if you have to.”

  Her eyes widened slightly, as did Tris’s.

  “Ah, grief and guts!” Heil scoffed. “Like I couldn’t spot one of your kind, shifter. Now get moving!”

  How did Heil know what she was?

  Mari sidestepped wide around the alchemist, more than once looking at Tris. She turned suddenly and bolted off, and Heil sighed as if relieved.

  Tris watched Mari fade in the darkness.

  If he was fortunate, she would not return until everything was done.

  —

  Mari raced through the night along the city wall. She let her other form rise enough to see clearly in the dark—and to smell anything that had passed this way.

  She didn’t like letting Tris out of her sight, but something wasn’t right in all she’d seen and heard. That black thing trying to get out of the portal had to be him or a part of him. Still, that wasn’t all there was to it.

  The old man knew something more, seemed to know him more than anyone. And what he’d said—or hadn’t—about Tris needled her doubts again. Why hadn’t either of them just tried to run her off or kill her?

  Sooner or later, she’d make Heil talk.

  But right now, regaining one of his toys would be an advantage.

  Picking up that coward Kreenan’s trail ate up too much time for her patience. When fear’s stench grew, filling her nostrils, she followed the scent all the way to the turn in the outer wall. Another small tower was half-embedded in the city wall’s joint. She looked up to where it rose above the walkway high overhead.

  Mari ducked into the opening at the tower’s base and climbed the spiraling stone steps. She crouched before approaching the top, stepping up only enough to peek level with the walkway’s stone.

  Kreenan cowered down on the wall’s outside corner below its protrusions. His head down, one arm wrapped over it, in the other dangling hand was the first disk.

  “Kreenan,” she whispered.

  He clenched all over as his neck straightened. His head cracked against the wall’s inward corner as both hands gripped and thrust out the disk.

  She crept one more step. “Give me the disk, you coward.”

  He spotted her inside the deeper darkness of the tower’s exit. “No! It’s all I have against them. You can’t have it!”

  Mari’s impatience turned frantic. What if that Heil took Tris and ran while she was gone?

  “Kreenan!” she growled, fury rising.

  He scooted back tighter into the corner.

  Instinct forced pain through Mari’s flesh and bones.

  She held it back. A half shift was worse than a full change, so painful, and that made fury grow. She lunged out at him in a crouch. In the disk’s polished surface, she glimpsed a reflection.

  Half animal, eyes burning amber, pitch-black pupils, fur half-sprouted from cheeks, forehead, chin, and with ears and teeth elongated, and fangs . . .

  “Give it to me!” Her voice grated like a cat.

  Kreenan screamed, and she grabbed the disk with one hand, her claws squealing on metal. She raised the other hand to slash him.

  Kreenan convulsed, his eyes rolled up under fluttering eyelids, and he slumped into stillness.

  Mari froze, sniffed once. She shook her head, snorted to clear the stench of urine from her muzzle as she backed away. Disgusted and still in pain, she raced back into the tower and down through its darkness.

  —

  Once Mari was gone, Tris looked sidelong at Heil. His mentor did not understand what it was truly like to live this way. The fear and guilt had become too much. He had grown too tired of trying to survive until next time.

  Black Tris would always come again—sooner and sooner, by Heil’s calculations.

  “It’s coming,” Heil said quietly.

  “What?” Tris whispered. “Now?”

  “Yes, now,” Heil said. “You think that fourth ghost just wandered off?”

  Tris calmed for the moment. He did not ask how the alchemist knew this. If he let go of all else, he would have known as well. A cold quiet inside would warn him, but now he looked down.

  Within two steps lay the long, narrow dagger.

  White vapor rose and collected in the night air right in front of him.

  The boy spirit’s transparent face twisted—little lips curled back, exposing teeth over shrunken gums. It looked only at Tris, and he remembered . . .

  Bródy had said the first ghost looked at him and then turned on Brianne. For vengeance—for its own suffering—it went after someone it thought for whom he cared. It wanted the one it hated to suffer loss before death.

  Tris did nothing in watching that phosphorescent spirit. He did not need to do anything.

  The spirit dove straight for Heil.

  Tris snatched up the dagger and slipped it up his sleeve.

  —

  Mari raced back along the city wall, wanting to finish her pain, tear off her clothes, and change flesh completely. But she’d have to drop the disk if she did, and carry it in her teeth after that, and she couldn’t use it that way. She’d need it for what was coming, and maybe use it in dealing with that Heil.

  What about him? How did he know she’d come back?

  Of course she would, and he knew.

  The pain dulled along the way, replaced by the strain of flight. She knew her other flesh had faded completely when her breaths tur
ned ragged with every stride.

  —

  Tris tensed, even knowing what would come, as it always had before.

  Heil whipped the disk out, and the boy collided with the metal, face-first, and splashed into vapor.

  Tris saw within that curling mist what other eyes would not have at first. The small spirit coalesced. The instant one small leg materialized, he grabbed it. He did not need to look beyond the spirit to know the portal was already forming.

  It happened whenever he gripped death as if it had flesh.

  Night began to turn and twist beyond the boy, warping sight of anything beyond that swirl. Darkness bled inward, draining to its center. The little spirit shrieked, looking behind itself at what was there.

  “Finish this, now!” Heil shouted at him. “And shut that damn hole!”

  The spirit twisted back and screeched into Tris’s face.

  He grabbed one of its arms and shoved it toward the black swirl. Its free leg caught in the turning current and began coming apart. This time was easier than the last three.

  “Ah, no,” Heil moaned, and then whispered, “Damn it!”

  The last of the boy shredded in the black portal. As Tris was about to look for Heil, something glimmering and white shot past in the air.

  And then another.

  —

  Mari heard a shriek in the night. She still hadn’t reached the barracks’ stable. It was another dozen hard gasps before she did, and another before she saw that first wisp of white in the dark. Another pant, and three more swirled downward beyond the stable’s far end.

  White vapors raced by her face as she ran. Terror choked her as she rounded the stable and stumbled to a halt. There were so many—too many—everywhere, as in that night within the Wicker Woods.

  She had waited and watched to see him call them up and prove his guilt, and now she knew that he’d been there. Out in the path before the barracks, Tris and Heil were surrounded, white wisps diving everywhere.

  But only there.

  They weren’t going for any other living thing. Not like they had with her family.

  Heil swatted off one after another with the disk, as Tris tried to shred others out of the air with his hands. He was not a silhouette so black that nothing showed of it, even in movement. He was just himself except those pinprick lights in his eyes.

  A wisp shot like an arrow at the alchemist.

  Heil bashed it into vapor with his second disk. Another passed too close to Tris, and he swung at it.

  Spirits rushed, and the sight dragged Mari back to that night where loss swallowed her whole life. She was ten years old again and lost in fear, until fury came and ate it.

  A wisp rushed at her. She ducked and dodged, forgetting she held the first disk.

  Beyond Tris, a black whirlpool hung sideways in the night.

  Another ghost came straight in for Mari’s stomach. This time, she struck down with the disk, and it exploded silently into powder. And then she hesitated again.

  This wasn’t what she’d wanted.

  A clean, certain kill—that was what she’d needed to end the pain.

  Heil suddenly bolted away from Tris’s side. Ghosts veered after him. What was he doing?

  Tris had said Heil knew what he was doing. Then she saw Tris stumble. His eyes closed as he turned toward the black whirlpool in the air.

  Was he trying to close it? How—why? There were so many spirits all around, and they couldn’t hurt him, from what she’d seen since finding him. What was he doing now?

  Something caught in the corner of her sight. She barely dropped and rolled as a wisp passed just above her face. She swiped the next one into vapor with the disk and rolled to her feet.

  Inside the whirling blackness before Tris, something moved—something blacker than that swirl. A hand and then a head pushed outward. Not even the glimmer of the ghosts reflected upon it, like its form swallowed any light.

  That hand reached out for Tris, but he just stood there.

  Mari froze and was almost struck. She barely swatted aside the next ghost coming at her with the disk. When she looked again . . .

  That black hand gripped Tris by the throat. He still did nothing.

  Mari’s flesh and bones began to ache.

  Tris raised a hand, but not to grab the black hand on his throat. And that grip on him began to spread, like it flowed into his flesh. In his own hand he held her dagger.

  With a gasp, Mari charged.

  —

  . . . us Tris . . . we Tris . . . me Tris . . .

  Tris heard the other him. A swirl of desires overwhelmed him—its and his own. He longed to live a normal life that would never come. He longed for no more death because of whatever he was.

  In the touch of that other him, he felt a powerful hunger for life. That nearly took him whole, made him want to live at any cost to anyone. Nothing had ever terrified him so much as it tried to become him.

  “Stop him!” someone shouted.

  Tris flipped the dagger in his hand, blade inward to ram into his heart.

  —

  Mari lost all reason as her other form surged up. She fell, skidded, dropped the disk; clothing tore and ripped as bone and flesh changed. She was shuddering in both panic and pain as she thrashed free of her shredded clothes.

  “Stop him!” Heil shouted from somewhere.

  Mari saw Tris turn her dagger blade down in his grip. The blackness of that other him bled across his throat, wrapped around his neck, and began to bleed upward into his face.

  If that thing touching him touched her, would she die?

  Did she screech like the animal as she leaped?

  She’d never know the latter; there was only instinct within a fury that now fed fear.

  Mari slammed into Tris at the peak of her leap.

  —

  . . . I Tris . . . not you Tris . . . now . . .

  Those words whispered inside of Tris’s thoughts. They were a chill in his mind to match the one spreading from his throat into his head and chest. What if that chill reached his heart before he died?

  Something came at him from the corner of his sight. Startled, he rammed the dagger toward his heart, and then his head wrenched at an impact.

  The blade’s tip ripped through his pullover and shirt, tore skin from the right side of his sternum and outward. He slammed down too hard on his other side, and another weight crushed breath out of him. He heard its harsh, rumbling breaths panting near his ear, but he did not care.

  Tris craned his head back along the ground. There was the dagger within reach.

  —

  The lynx struggled to regain footing, paws shifting over its downed prey.

  Mari pushed up off Tris, didn’t care about white wisps whirling all around, and twisted her head back for that other him.

  That black man-thing stepped toward her, though maybe too slowly. Its footfalls made no sound that her tall ears could hear. Her jowls pulled back, exposing teeth and fangs in a threat for it. After one hiss at that black thing, a screeching yowl smothered any other sound.

  It didn’t stop; it stepped closer.

  Someone ran by behind her, but she didn’t take her eyes off her enemy. She curled all the way around to face her enemy.

  Her true prey.

  His black hand reached out. She peeled back her jowls, spreading her jaws to snap on it and tear it off.

  “No!”

  Something struck her head hard, making her flinch away. The impact rang metallic in her ears, startling her even more.

  She twisted back, fury faltering.

  Heil swiped at that black shape, again and again, striking its hands as it tried to grasp him. Though the metal rang with each impact, those hands didn’t turn to vapor like a ghost. Then she saw the wisps of white.

 
; Those were spirits all around her—Mari.

  “Put him down, now!”

  She stiffened at Heil shouting at her. He dodged a slow—too slow—swipe of the black one’s hand. In turn, he pounded that hand down with the disk. The clang of impact barely came before he slapped the other disk against its head.

  Another clang woke Mari to full awareness.

  He had both disks now? Why was that thing moving so slow?

  “Knock Tris out!” Heil shouted.

  Mari twisted the other way. There was Tris struggling to reach out for the dagger that had fallen beyond his head. He looked dazed, hurt, half-aware.

  “Do it, or we’re all dead!”

  She didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t trust that old man. But Tris still struggled—slowly—to get one hand on her dagger.

  He had tried to kill himself.

  Mari leaped on him and pinned him, flat on his back. At her weight, his face twisted in pain, but when his eyes opened, he wasn’t afraid of her. She couldn’t strike, not as she was, or she might kill him.

  “Get off . . . please.”

  His words came hushed with too little breath. All thoughts of vengeance fled from Mari at the sight of agony on Tris’s face. When she didn’t move, his eyes widened and his jaw clenched. He punched her.

  The blow barely whipped her head, and she struck back.

  The first strike of her paw dazed him.

  “Again, damn you!” Heil shouted.

  The next strike wasn’t as much paw, more of a fist, and she punched him hard.

  Mari whimpered in the pain of her other flesh leaving her.

  Tris’s head lolled on the ground, and his eyes rolled up before they closed. Thin lines torn through the hair at his temple started to bleed. Blood seeped from thin lines of claw marks down across his cheekbone.

  Everything became suddenly too quiet, even to her ears, and she heard her own whimpers.

  What had she done?

  In pain and exhaustion, she collapsed.

  —

  Mari lay naked and panting atop Tris. All her fur gone, the cold of night began to chill her from outside. It didn’t match the cold inside of her. Someone dropped to the ground too close, and she twisted, ready to lunge.

  Heil sat there near enough to strike, but he was gasping for breath and sweat glistened on his old face. He dropped one disk with a dull thud on the ground.