Ghostland (ghostland)

by Jory Strong

  Feminine intuition guided her actions, steered her away from anger and hurt. She placed her palms on his chest and felt the wild, fast beat of his heart. He was worried for her, afraid. “I know what’s at stake. But I’m not without protectors in the spiritlands. Trust me.”

  The anger fled from his expression. His hands framed her face. “I already trust you far more than is wise or safe for either of us.”

  She wanted to lean into him, to wrap her arms around his waist and press against his hardened body. She wanted… impossible things, even if there’d been time to pursue them.

  “They’re watching,” she whispered. “They’re waiting.”

  Zurael released her and they continued to the house.

  “This is a neighbor, Nicholette,” Raisa said in greeting. “Her brother is missing.”

  Dark smudges underneath light brown eyes gave Nicholette a bruised, fragile appearance but didn’t diminish her beauty. Her hand trembled slightly when she took Aisling’s. “We’re new here and I can’t offer much in the way of payment, but I’ll give you whatever I can if you’ll…” Her lips trembled. “Please, can you find Nicholas?”

  “Your brother is the missing sex witch?” Aisling asked.

  “Yes. He’s also my twin.” Delicate fingers tangled and twisted in strands of wavy brown hair.

  Aziel’s sharp claws slid through the fabric of Aisling’s shirt. She said, “Let’s go inside and you can tell me what you know.”

  When they were seated, Nicholette said, “My brother was with a client last night. It was an overnight visit, not the first with this woman, though all the others were… spontaneous… or at least he didn’t go to her home intending to stay.”

  “But last night he intended to stay,” Aisling said.

  “Yes. He’d scheduled the visit.” Nicholette glanced down, smoothed her hands over the bold flowers captured in the material of her dress. “Some clients are easier to… serve than others. He expected to return shortly after dawn. He scheduled another appointment at noon.”

  So he’d have an excuse to leave.

  The words hovered unspoken in the air. Aisling’s stomach tensed at the thought of intimacy, of engaging in the sexual act with someone she didn’t care for.

  There were places where all sex witches were labeled prostitutes. Just as there were practitioners who were non-gifted humans making a living selling sex. But true sex magic was powerful, and those born with the ability to wield it were as talented as any healer, as holy as any priest or priestess called to serve a fertility deity.

  “Nicholas didn’t return from his overnight visit,” Aisling said.

  “No.” Haunted eyes met hers. “I thought he’d been delayed. His client… She’s very demanding and not used to being denied. We have no telephone. Noon came and went. With each hour I felt more anxious. Finally, I went to his client’s house. Things were in an uproar there. One of the family cars was found abandoned shortly before noon. There was blood on the seat.” Huge tears welled up and spilled down Nicholette’s cheeks. “She has a son, older than Nicholas and me. This morning her son offered to drive Nicholas home in exchange for using the car. They left just after dawn.”

  Aziel slid from Aisling’s shoulder and shocked her by scrambling across the coffee table to settle on Nicholette’s lap. Nicholette gave a watery smile, busied trembling hands by stroking his fur.

  “What area of town?” Aisling asked, hating that she felt a touch of jealousy at Aziel’s defection, hating the hint of insecurity that made her glance at Zurael to see if he, too, wanted to go to Nicholette and offer comfort.

  “The car was found on Rhine Street,” Nicholette said.

  Petty emotion gave way to icy chill. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Nicholas was taken to serve as bait in a different kind of trap, a direct challenge from someone who knew about the death of the dark priest and his acolytes on that same street.

  “Can you find him?” Nicholette asked. She touched a delicate hand to her chest. “He’s alive. I think I’d know if he weren’t. But the disappearances… the deaths… Raisa said you found a wealthy man’s mistress who was also taken. Will you help me?”

  Nicholette’s gaze slid to Zurael then back to Aisling. “My brother and I can pay you in a trade of services, or with fresh food. We’ve got a few chickens and a small garden.”

  Heat moved through Aisling’s cheeks in acknowledgment of the first offer, though she couldn’t imagine any other lover than Zurael-or the need for one. A touch of homesickness spun through her with thoughts of garden-fresh produce.

  It was Aziel who decided her. Their eyes met and his communicated a message as clearly as if they were in the spiritlands. He wanted her to accept the task of looking for Nicholette’s brother.

  “I’ll help you,” Aisling said and felt Zurael stiffen next to her. His displeasure was like a living flame reaching out to surround her and steal the air from her lungs.

  Aziel slid from Nicholette’s lap and onto the floor. Aisling watched as the ferret jumped onto a chair, then the eating table, raced across the counter with seeming abandon and sent the saltshaker bouncing to the floor and spilling white crystals as it rolled.

  It was a message. Aisling couldn’t be sure of its meaning. She wouldn’t know if she fully understood it until she was in the spiritlands-and even then, confirmation would come only if she was proven right or Aziel joined her and elected to communicate mind to mind.

  The magic in the living world wasn’t readily accessible to her, not in the way it was to witches or sorcerers or those with healing gifts. She’d rarely been able to leave the ghostlands in an astral state as she’d done the night she’d located Elena. But thinking back on it now, comparing what she’d done that night to other times when she’d been drawn back to the living world while traveling outside her body, Aisling couldn’t repress a shudder. In every instance, a magic practitioner was involved, either performing a ritual or shoring up a curse-their acts thinning the barrier between the world of the living and the dead. If Nicholas was still alive, she would find him only if he was in the hands of a dark priest as Elena had been.

  Aisling’s hand went to the hidden fetish pouch. Misgiving filled her, worry that it was a trap.

  Aziel returned to Nicholette and climbed onto her shoulder. He nuzzled her hair, her ear, and she laughed softly. “Is he always so affectionate?”

  A tiny ache speared through Aisling’s heart. On rare occasions Aziel had stoically allowed himself to be handled by some of the children in Geneva’s home, but he’d never been demonstrative with anyone other than her.

  “I don’t know much about a shaman’s craft,” Nicholette said. “Will you look for Nicholas now?”

  Aisling hesitated before answering, not wanting to reveal the limits of her gift. She could find Nicholas now if he were already dead, or she could find him alive but only if he were in the hands of someone using him to work magic, as she suspected. It wouldn’t be a comfort to Nicholette to learn either.

  “I’ll have to wait until after dark.”

  Nicholette’s face lost the color it’d gained because of Aziel’s antics. Fear and worry returned with a tremor. “If you find him, there’ll be no way for me to get to him. Maybe for his client’s missing son, the police or guardsmen would go out in the night, but…” She glanced at the window, to the approaching dusk. “There’s no time to get to his client’s house.”

  Caution and compassion fought inside Aisling and struck a balance. She leaned forward, touched her hand to the back of Nicholette’s. “I’ll do what I can to find Nicholas and help him. Go home or stay with friends tonight, be with someone.”

  Aisling could read Nicholette’s desire to remain. But she couldn’t offer that comfort, and Nicholette didn’t press, perhaps believing a shaman’s magic required privacy similar to a sex witch’s.

  “Can I return at first light?” Nicholette asked, her hand trembling under Aisling’s.

  “Yes. Do you have something that be
longs to Nicholas? Or something he’s given you?”

  Nicholette pulled her hand out from underneath Aisling’s and unclasped a necklace. An entwined couple hung at the end of a thin chain, their sexual joining captured in jasper. “Nicholas wears an identical amulet. Our mother had them made for us. They were crafted from the same piece of stone since he and I are twins. I think this will be better than anything else I can give you.”

  Aisling took the necklace. And minutes later, her guests departed, hurrying to stay ahead of the darkness.

  ZURAEL didn’t like the jealousy burning in his veins. It was unfamiliar, uncomfortable, unwelcome. He’d known almost from the first that Aziel was more than he appeared, but witnessing the silent communication between Aisling and the ferret, how easily she let herself be guided by a creature whose true nature she didn’t understand, had left him edgy, unsettled-feeling challenged-as if his possession of her was an illusion. He wanted to argue against Aisling searching for Nicholas-not because he hadn’t been touched by Nicholette’s distress, but because he knew it was a trap of some kind, and he couldn’t protect Aisling in the spiritlands.

  He studied the ferret sitting at Aisling’s feet in the kitchen and waiting for her to finish preparing the meal. In his mind’s eye he was once again in the House of the Spider, sitting before Malahel’s altar and seeing the stones he’d cast.

  Had one of them represented Aziel? Or did Aziel serve a greater power?

  Zurael’s attention shifted to Aisling. The fire burning through him intensified, jealousy yielding to something more primal and threatening to burn out of control.

  Images of tethering her to the bed, of having her helpless, her world reduced to him and the pleasure he gave her, tempted him to abandon the course of action he’d set for himself. He closed the distance between them without intending to, pressed his hardened cock to the curve of her buttocks, only to be assaulted by different images, recaptured moments of taking her anally.

  “You’re trusting him with your life,” Zurael said, his mouth finding the satin skin of her neck as his hands stroked up her sides then around to claim her breasts.

  “I always have,” Aisling said, but the huskiness of her voice and the way she softened against him kept the words from inflaming him further.

  Zurael closed his eyes and fought the need pulsing through him. They didn’t have time, not if he intended to make the most of the night by searching The Barrens, as he’d told her he intended to do after they’d left The Mission. Still, he hesitated over leaving her body unprotected while her spirit traveled in astral form.

  He’d seen the protective sigils carved into the wood around her windows and doors, but they hadn’t kept him out, wouldn’t have protected her from death the first time he entered her home if killing her had remained his purpose. Few of the Djinn dabbled in spell craft, fewer still-if any-understood or used most of the magic wielded by human sorcerers and witches.

  “I can search tomorrow night,” he said.

  “You might have to do that as well. Finding the Fellowship’s compound is important. I’ll be okay by myself tonight.”

  It was a show of weakness, an admission of the power she held over him, but Zurael couldn’t force himself away from Aisling. He stroked her, placed kisses along her neck, held her against him while she prepared their meal, and only reluctantly released her so they could eat.

  When the meal was done, he gathered her in his arms again, hungered and burned with the need to carry her into the bedroom and couple with her. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “I will be. Promise me the same.”

  Zurael laughed. “There’s little I fear in this place.” And for an instant he was trapped in the warmth of her concern, caught in angelite eyes and unfamiliar tenderness. But too soon it faded, replaced by a remembrance of rage and true terror, scenes of the dark priest and his acolytes. “Do not summon me.”

  “I won’t,” she whispered, shivering at the promise of death in his eyes, but he didn’t offer comfort. If she summoned him while he was in her world, the angels would hear it and come.

  Zurael stepped away from her. With a thought, he let flesh and blood, muscle and bone give up their shape, become the potential for a swirling wind before gathering, re-forming into an owl.

  At Aisling’s gasp of surprise and pleasure, Zurael spread his wings so she could further admire him. He allowed her touch and wasn’t any more immune to her as an owl than he’d been in the serpent’s form.

  An owl-voiced protest escaped when she stopped stroking him. He watched with approval as she wrapped a burlap sack around her arm before offering him a place to perch.

  Sharp talons dug into the material, touched her skin. He used his wings for balance so he wouldn’t pierce her flesh as she lifted and carried him to the back door, offered him the night.

  Zurael hesitated for an instant, torn between the urge to remain with her and the need to take flight. Finally, reluctantly, he launched himself from her arm and headed toward The Barrens.

  What had taken a good part of their morning now took only a short time. He soon flew over The Mission, its doors locked and most of its windows dark.

  There was no sign of human life close to the city, but the streets weren’t empty. A flash of gray marked the presence of a lone werewolf. Larger packs of feral dogs ran boldly through abandoned streets. Somewhere in the distance, a cougar-Were or pure animal-screamed.

  Beneath the owl’s wings, bats swooped on insects. Cats hunted for rats in blackened, fallen buildings while others yowled from the hoods of rusted cars, announcing their desire to mate.

  The farther into The Barrens he traveled, the more nature dominated. Trees grew among rubble. Vines crawled over objects and sites no longer identifiable.

  He looked for light, for fire. Listened for the sound of voices. He abandoned his task only when he required food in order to sustain flight. And in those moments he savored the hunt, the kill, relived the primitive beginnings of the Djinn when this land belonged only to them and they hunted it just as he was hunting it, in whatever form would bring success.

  Thick forests of pine, juniper and oak rose and went on for miles. He banked and circled, knew the night wasn’t long enough to search where leaves and darkness created an impenetrable shroud of secrecy.

  The passing of time was marked by the way the light changed as stars were added to the sky and the moon traveled across it, by in the rising crescendo of insect song, the howling of wolves and yipping of coyotes.

  He flew and perched. Waited and observed. Took flight again and again, until the sound of engines and gunfire exploded into the night, abruptly silencing all other noise and filling the air with the promise of unnatural violence.

  The jeeps arrived moments later, four of them racing down parallel streets. Spotlights struck the sides of long-deserted buildings and patches of vegetation. Any movement caused a barrage of bullets, followed by whoops and hollers.

  A feral dog lost its nerve and darted from underneath a burned-out car. Its body danced over cracked sidewalk long after it was dead.

  “One confirmed kill! You got that?” a man yelled and radios crackled to life, each of them repeating, “One confirmed kill. Got it.”

  Hatred and fury roared through Zurael. He only barely suppressed the impulse to become a thing of human nightmare, a demon swooping from the sky to deliver terror-filled death to the guardsmen in the jeeps.

  AISLING knelt in the shaman’s workroom, laughing at Aziel’s antics, enjoying the moment even as the time to enter the ghostlands approached. The ferret sat on top of a mound of salt, gleefully digging into the white granules and tossing them onto the floor underneath the table.

  She’d assumed the heavy sack contained cheap stones used for making inexpensive amulets or fetishes. But when she entered the workroom, Aziel’s chatter insisted she open the bag.

  Have I been doing it wrong all along? she wondered, thinking on how Father Ursu had given her the bowl of salt
the night she searched for Elena, and how Aziel had tossed those grains to the floor, too, subtly telling her she was to form a protective circle using them.

  Aisling rose long enough to find a container, a can that had once contained peaches. She dumped the collection of polished stones it held on to the workbench, couldn’t stop herself from remembering how she’d returned from her unwilling Ghost trip into the spiritlands to find herself in this room, and how Zurael helped her to the kitchen, fed her peaches by hand. It was the beginning of her downfall, her seduction.

  Aziel chattered urgently. He tossed more salt onto the floor, his movements shifting from playfulness to the beginnings of agitation, hinting that his uncharacteristic show of affection toward Nicholette was more than a means of communicating to Aisling that she should agree to search for Nicholas.

  She knelt and filled the can full of salt then took her place on the dirt in the middle of the room. The ferret scrambled onto her lap. But when she would have traced protective sigils in the dirt as she cast a circle in salt, Aziel went completely still-his signal for her to stop and think, to consider past lessons-and she understood she needed to duplicate what she’d done the night she searched for Elena.

  Do not summon me.

  Zurael’s earlier warning, the promise of death she’d read in his eyes, made her heart race just as surely as did the knowledge that she’d encounter another dark priest tonight. Only a lifetime of trusting Aziel gave her the courage to allow the spirit winds to rush through her, to pull her into the world of the dead.

  When the ghost winds settled, Aisling welcomed the gray nothingness around her, the calm stillness requiring no action, no decision, no payment. It could last seconds, minutes, hours if she let it, and a part of her wanted to let it go on, but instead she lifted her hand and touched the necklace she’d gotten from Nicholette, let her fingers caress the entwined lovers carved from jasper.

  Gray swirled and parted, allowing a familiar figure to step through, though it wasn’t the one Aisling expected. Sinead’s husky laugh filled the space around them, became the purr of a predator. “You’d prefer John?” she asked, touching the scarf tied around her neck, stroking the instrument of her death as she lightly tapped the crop she carried against her leg. “Oh, he’s dabbled in the sex trade, if you can call taking money so guardsmen can have a little sport on their days off being part of the pleasure business.”