A battered Harker tetro screamed at her crew, holding a dented silver pane, trying to draw the ghost’s attention—my ghost’s attention—away from my father, who leaned on Damian and pressed a hand into his abdomen, his fingers gore-blackened, maybe holding himself together.
Real-time hit—a chain whistled through the air and sliced a man’s head clean off. The body stumbled about and fell to its knees, blood fountaining form the sawed-off stump of his neck. The Harker guys ducked and scattered.
My anger snapped and caught fire. “Enough,” I shouted, mimicking my father’s authority and fury, the very emotion that had put the bruise on my cheek.
The entity stilled, its miasma massing like ocean fog.
“Your fight”—I unholstered my camera—“is with me.”
“All grown up and sounding just like Daddy,” the entity spat. “I always knew you had too much Helsing in you.”
“I am all Helsing.” Blood roared in my ears as I lifted my camera, shutting everything out but the ghost. I tracked it with my lens, moving into the courtyard. The boys spread out and created a perimeter around me, mirrors pointed in.
The ghost’s split-second hesitation gave me an edge.
I ran toward it and swung my lens in Ryder’s direction. My flash exploded with the press of a button, the light ripping apart the shadows and dissipating the black chains. Energy crackled in the air like lightning, static hissing along my camera’s casing. My shot hit home—the entity screamed and stumbled toward Ryder. The upgraded shot also scattered the entity’s miasma for almost a full second, allowing me to see the ghost in all its radiance: pale hair, lithe legs, and arms that ended in clawed hands. I didn’t see her face, the shutter closed too quickly.
Her face?
The entity is female?
I’d been prepared to find Luca on the other side of my lens. But this … Who is she?
My shutter clicked open. The entity’s miasma congealed as she turned and blurred toward Ryder. Side-stepping, I lined up my lens with his mirror and fired again.
Another burst of shadow, another scream. Another shock of electricity burned against my fingertips, but the ghost still charged toward Ryder.
“Move, Ry!” I shouted, pointing my lens at the floor. He leapt aside as the entity barreled past him. Her miasma collided with the wall, billowing up toward the ceiling as she climbed out of our reaping mirrors’ ranges.
“Amplifying your energy transfer with mirrors, how clever,” she rasped. “After your little trip to the Presidio warehouses, Luca and I thought you might try that.”
Luca? I had no time to process the information—one of her chains cracked toward my head. I hit the ground, spine bruising on my monopod, and turned up my camera. I blew the flash and lit the whole room, shredding the ghost’s shadows. For a split second, I saw the entity in all her fierce, terrible beauty, staring down at me.
Her face looked like—
No, it was a trick of the ghostlight—
A PTSD flare.
I dropped into a crouch. “Ry, bring your mirror here!” I covered Ryder as he ducked toward me, chains screaming past him. On my left, Jude ran in behind me to maintain our perimeter. To my surprise, the Harker tetro stepped in, hovering on my right. Her crew covered us from necro interference and kept the flares hot, while Damian and Dad staggered toward the exit.
When Ryder reached me, I slid the mirror to the floor under the entity to reflect the deepest point of her miasma. A heavy chain formed above our heads and whipped down, forcing Ryder and me to leap apart. The impact dented the reaping mirror, the chain rattling over the floor. I broke the chain with a flash, and pointed my lens into the mirror. Said a quick prayer. And fired.
A crack of lightning stretched from the mirror to the ceiling, burning my fingertips. The entity fell with a shriek. Her miasma touched down with liquid speed, spilling over the ground and bubbling over corpses, the flares, killing most of the light in the room. She growled—a low, animalistic sound—as she gathered herself off the floor.
“Re-form perimeter,” I shouted, covering Ryder as he snatched up his mirror. He ducked under a chain and fell into position. The Harker tetro slid behind the entity, her mirror aligned with my lens. I scattered the entity’s miasma and slammed her with a full-blown shot.
In the fractured second between my shutter reopening and the entity’s miasma rushing back, I saw her ghostlight flicker.
It’s working, her ghostlight is failing! But my elation was cut down as the entity whipped one of its chains around and smashed it into the other tetro’s head. She crumpled, her mirror clattering to the floor. Please let her only be unconscious.
I blasted the entity again, not catching her against a mirror. She spun, lashing out with a chain that wrapped around my thighs and hips like a steel snake. It jerked me to the ground. I fell hard, hit my hip, and lost my breath. She reeled me in.
“Mirror.” I barely had breath to shout—Ryder was too far away, but Jude ran in from the right, almost close enough.
The entity’s miasma frothed over my feet.
I turned my lens toward the ceiling.
The entity grabbed the front of my shirt, but the edge of Jude’s mirror appeared behind her. I breathed in her thunderstorm scent, aimed my lens, and shot her point-blank. The flash exploded and blasted her miasma apart. Electricity jumped from my camera into my body, singeing my skin.
I captured the entity’s entire face, one I knew as well as my own.
One I’d missed so much.
No, she would have passed on. It’s not her, it’s my PTSD, it’s not …
One good glimpse confirmed a fear so dark, I’d locked it in a dead corner of my heart.
“M-Mom?” I stuttered.
The ghost threw me to the ground and vaulted past me, sliding into a corner outside our perimeter. I rose to my feet, shaking so hard I thought I’d throw my shoulder back out of its socket. Everyone in the room stopped. On the periphery of my sight, I saw Dad pause. Turn.
“Tell me it’s not you,” I said, rising to my feet, my voice whittled down to its rawest notes. “Tell me you moved on.”
Her miasma frothed, almost indecisive, then fell down like a curtain. She looked like she had in life—her cheekbones high, pale hair spilling down her shoulders and chest. She wore the white gown Dad buried her in, perfect and unblemished, save for the blood staining her hands. Black shackles of miasma clamped around her wrists, her arms mapped with inky veins extending from the cuffs. Her ghostlight flickered like a light bulb on the verge of sputtering out, her energy failing.
I had her on the ropes—
But my trigger finger just … stuck.
“Why?” I whispered, my voice breaking on the word. I shuddered through another heartbeat, through another breath, my whole body in a vise and shattering, shattering. Gathering up the dregs of my fury, I shouted: “Why didn’t you pass on?”
“Pass on?” Chains slid out of her miasma like serpents, swishing along the ground, making the music of my despair. They curled up my ankles and calves, forcing me to step toward her. “Not until Helsing burns.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, but she just threw back her head and laughed. The sound stabbed into me like shards of broken glass. An old darkness rose up in my soul, plucking away my rational pieces, the ones screaming danger and murderer and she’s not your mother anymore, swallowing them whole. I knew this old blackness, this monster, the misery I’d battled for so many months … I didn’t fight when its fists closed over my heart again.
Violet-blue light fell over me. Mom took my chin in her cold hand, her claws like pins on my skin, her chains clinking.
I never wanted this half life, I thought. I never wanted the guilt of surviving.
I miss you.
“Do you know who killed me, shutterfly?” she asked, turning my head so she could whisper in my ear. “Luca tells me it was you and your little boyfriend.”
“No,” I whispered. “You were alr
eady gone—”
“Was I really?” She pressed a thumb into my tear duct. “Then why do I remember your fists and his bullet?”
“You can’t trust Luca, h-he’s—”
“You betrayed me.” One claw grazed my eyebrow, spilling a wet warmth down my face. “Only in death did I realize you’re not my daughter. You’re Helsing’s child, his child, not mine.”
“I…” But pain made my breath tight, too tight for more words.
Someone shouted my name. Rough hands clapped over my shoulders and threw me to the floor. Pain seared my face, setting my synapses aflame. Breathe, I told myself, stanching the blood flow with my palm. My eyeball pressed back against the heel of my hand, intact, throbbing. I pushed myself onto my elbow and looked up, groaning from the pain.
Ryder stood in front of me, fists clenched, staring down the space my mother’s ghost occupied, willing to pay with his life to shield me from death. Mom’s ghostlight outlined his form, and before I could scream run, she thrust her clawed hand into his chest. He stiffened, convulsed, ripping the torn sections of my heart apart.
I screamed his name with no power or sound, felt his syllables slipping out of me in a whisper. Mom embraced him as he sagged.
“Now we play this game in earnest, Micheline,” Mom said, her gaze locking on mine over Ryder’s shoulder. Her miasma crashed around them like a tidal wave. The darkness swept over me and drained into Ryder’s discarded reaping mirror, leaving only sparks and static in its wake.
Someone screamed and screamed.
The voice disembodied, raw, far away,
And somehow mine.
SUNDAY, 8:30 P.M.
I SCREAMED SO LOUD the room’s silence fractured and stabbed into my skin. I scrabbled at the newly darkened antimirror, smearing my blood and tears all over its surface. I’d rend the metal with my bare hands, dig until I found the place she’d taken him—
Jude grabbed me and pulled me into his arms. I buried my face in his neck and sobbed, not caring that we touched, not caring what he saw. “He’s gone,” I said. “She took him.”
“I know.” He rocked me, holding me so tight I could barely breathe, crying into my hair. I dug my nails into his back, his shoulder, seeking purchase on something solid, grasping any anchor.
Everyone kept their distance, even Dad and Damian. Everyone saw Ryder sacrifice himself for me, for my stupid, loser sake. I wasn’t worth half of him; I couldn’t protect the people I loved most from darkness and death. I couldn’t lose him; I’d never told him everything I meant to:
I’m sorry for making him choose between having me and following the rules.
Thank you for being there for me, always.
Or even I love you.
A disembodied snicker wound into my ears. “I can take you to them.”
Sniffling, I lifted my head. The antimirror rattled on the ground for a moment, static sparking across its surface. As the mirror rose on its own—reflecting Luca in its depths, setting the mirror upright—Jude and I scrambled away, ending in a tangle on the floor, our hearts jackhammering in perverse syncopation.
My fear died fast. “You.” I shifted out of Jude’s arms and pushed to my feet. “Everything—this is all your fault, you warped my mother.”
“Manipulation is easy when one’s target is desperate and alone,” Luca said. “She accepted my help, thinking I would help her discover the identity of her murderer. Little did she know she would be exacting my revenge, not her own.”
“Monster,” I spat.
“Are you surprised, truly? Death’s been so dull. The chaos dear Alexa has wrought in the last few days has been the most exciting thing I’ve experienced in years, and the most damage I’ve dealt to Helsing in almost a century. What do you people call that nowadays? A win?”
“Why not just come through the mirror yourself?”
He laughed. “You don’t know, do you? What I am? Only human ghosts can travel through mirrors, nymphet. Now choose.” Luca pressed his hand to the antimirror. Showers of blue sparks danced down the pane. “Life or death, though I can’t say which fate you’ll find in the Obscura.” He smiled as if it were some private joke.
Crocodiles must smile like that at little birds, I thought.
“Don’t,” Jude said, but I put a finger to his lips. The Harker guys shifted on the perimeter, looking to Dad, to Damian.
“What’s your price?” I asked Luca. I wouldn’t lose someone again, not Ryder, not when I could stop it.
“Micheline, step away from the mirror.” The words sent Dad into a coughing fit. I ignored his warning.
“You become a pawn in my little game,” Luca said. “We’ll see if you can make it to where Mommy Dearest is hiding before I can capture you.”
“And if you catch me?”
He licked a corner of his lips and shrugged one shoulder.
“Deal,” I said, starting for the mirror.
“Micheline, don’t,” Jude shouted.
“Stop her,” Dad shouted to the men. The order came too late—I pressed my bare palm against the mirror. Cries erupted. Luca’s blue sparks melted into my skin, lighting up my veins. My hand broke through the surface, the metal bowing around my arm, cool as mercury. Luca’s solid hand closed over my wrist, his skin smooth. Dry. As he started to pull me through the mirror, Jude tackled me, locking his arms around my waist. His momentum broke my grip on Luca’s hand and knocked us both through the antimirror. We fell into a silence so perfect, I thought I’d gone deaf.
Darkness consumed us. I tucked my head into Jude’s shoulder, feeling my stomach and lungs press against my ribs in the free fall; the air tore at our skin, hair, and clothing.
I felt like we’d fall forever.
OBSCURA, −1:30 HOURS
I WOKE SLOWLY. Rocks bit into my hip, my injured shoulder, the back of my head. Exposed skin on my arms and face stung in the cold.
When I opened my eyes, I stared up at the ribs of the Golden Gate Bridge. Large, toothy holes were busted into the deck, and chunks of concrete dangled from rebar sinews. Graffiti covered the bridge tower. Dripping water pealed like death knells and the whole structure creaked, its bones fracturing. The sky overhead had the livid darkness of dead flesh, of twilight dying.
“Ryder?” I whispered, sitting up. No answer, save for the groan of atrophying steel. I sat atop a twenty-foot-thick fender that protected the bridge’s southern tower from wrecks and weather, a concrete island surrounded by a mirror-smooth, oil-slick sea. A moat filled the space between tower and fender. To the south, San Francisco cut a dark profile against the bruised sky; to the north, I saw the bridge’s second tower, pinned into the edge of Sausalito. The bay water smelled like used motor oil, its surface pimpled with air bubbles.
Dread clung to my ribs, my chest aching inside and out. “Jude?” I expected my voice to echo over the water, but the darkness absorbed the sound. The only thing moved by my voice was a bat-like creature—it launched itself off the tower’s side and disappeared into the darkness. Rising to my feet, I looked back and forth, turned 360 degrees, disoriented and confused. Jude fell through the antimirror with me. Jude, where are you? I jogged around the fender’s perimeter, panic rising with every step. How did I get under the bridge? Luca, what have you done with us?
“Jude!” I screamed into the night, and when he didn’t answer, I sat down on the fender and buried my face in my knees. Little earthquakes seized my muscles. I was stranded in the midst of a dead sea, alone, and beyond help. Jude was missing, Ryder in mortal danger; Oliver, possessed.
Worst of all, my mother was my enemy, my monster, my quarry, my captor—a withered shade of her former self. I didn’t want to believe it, but my eyes hadn’t lied and my heart wasn’t blind: Mom murdered innocent people to lure me close. She soulchained me and my friends, possessed Oliver, and stole Gemma’s eyes. She loosed necrotic monsters on Angel Island and turned the compound into a nightmarish menagerie, killing countless reapers and wounding my father.
; No, not my mother—
Luca.
Somehow, Luca managed to warp her mind and her memories—why else would she believe she died by my hand? By Ryder’s hand? Why else would she seek vengeance against an organization she’d served so faithfully and loved so well? I had to get off the bridge and find her; she needed my help just as much as Ryder did.
My soulchains had grown down my legs, far enough to grate my shinbones. They wriggled in my nail beds and roiled at my throat like a collar, pressing past the cross around my neck. I clenched my fists until my fingernails bit into my palms. So many lives and souls—mine included—hung by a noose and almost all my loved ones were heartbeats away from death and worse. I couldn’t fail them, not Ryder, not Jude or Oliver; not my father, and certainly not my mother.
Mom had to move on, by my hand. Everything now depended on my lens.
I have a duty to do—
I got to my feet. Dusted my pants off. Rubbed the Helsing cross tattooed on my hand, for luck.
A duty to others—
My Colt was missing, the holster torn. My camera looked fine, though. My lenses, whole.
A duty to you—
It still worked, and the flash pushed back the shadows for a moment. When the light faded, the murk raced back in like a wave and sloshed around my feet, unconquerable.
A duty to the dead—
I had to get off the bridge tower, find Jude, exorcise my mother, and save Ryder.
By God, I shall do it.
Then I’d go after Luca. Destroy him and send him to whatever layer of hell he deserved.
My thoughts coalesced as I started to pace back and forth along the fender: swimming to shore was out, as the water would ruin my camera. Option two? I craned my neck to look up at the bridge’s tower. Pitted with age and lots of handholds, it looked like two hundred feet of red, rusted hell. Pain wracked my shoulder at the thought climbing the tower like I would a rock wall.
No way off but up.
Part of the fender had crumbled inward against the tower, forming a kind of footbridge. I crossed over and found a service door welded shut with rust, and stepped back to scout the tower’s western face.
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