The Cold Kiss of Death

by Suzanne McLeod

  I looked at the red thread dangling below me. Necro Neil said he had hooked into my soul at HOPE—

  I took a deep breath - not that there seemed to be any air to breathe - and loosened my tight hold on the thread ...

  ... and beige vinyl floor tiles rushed up to meet me. Blurry peach-coloured walls and bright orange chairs jarred in my vision and in the distance I saw myself talking to Necro Neil. Thaddeus, the monster Beater goblin, was standing next to him, his high horse’s tail of red and grey hair fanning over his shoulders—

  I slammed into something solid and cold, something I couldn’t see. I stared into Necro Neil’s blank, mind-locked face, and our tiny shared past stretched out behind him like a stack of freeze-frame photos, right up to the point where he handed me his handkerchief and I pressed it to my bleeding hand.

  That had to be when he’d hooked me.

  ‘I bin lookin’ for you, sidhe,’ a girl’s shrill voice broke in. ‘I got somethin’ to give you.’

  I turned towards the voice and the girl pointed her foot-long carving knife at me. Her hip-length white hair floated in a nonexistent wind and scraps of washed-out grey lace, satin and velvet fluttered like hundreds of wings against her anorexic body. The faint scent of liquorice and blood clung to her like day-old smoke.

  The fact that Moth-girl could see me didn’t bode well for either of us.

  I looked behind her.

  Bobby, a.k.a. Mr October, huddled against the lift door, hands clutched to his stomach, a dark pool of blood beneath him. Malik, a fine line creasing between his black brows, watched the Glamoured blonde-bimbo me as I stared down at Grace, who was kneeling, checking for a pulse on Moth-girl’s unconscious - or more likely dead body, judging by the girl standing next to me. The two security guards hovered nearby.

  It looked like I’d arrived in the middle of Malik’s mass mind-lock - was that why I couldn’t go any further?

  The red thread in my hand gave a slight tug.

  ‘Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, sidhe,’ Moth-girl shouted in my ear. ‘Can you ’ear me?’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ I said, flinching as I turned back to her.

  ‘Good, I’ve got sumfing to give you.’ She waved her carving knife at me, then plucked at the white ribbon tied round her throat. ‘D’you know wot this is?’

  ‘Yes.’ I pursed my lips. ‘You’re supposed to be a gift, from one vamp to another.’

  Her own purple-painted lips grinned. ‘That’s right; well, see, my Daryl, you knows ’im as Darius, ’e said to tell you—’

  ‘Darius?’ I interrupted. ‘The vamp that’s shacked up with the sorcerer?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s ’im. ’E did ’is dance for you.’ She gave a little wiggle of her hips. ‘Well, ’e’s my Daryl, ’as bin since we was kids togevver at school.’ Her fingers toyed with the ribbon again. ‘And ’e said, if I come an’ show you this, then it means ’e can ask for your ’elp.’

  I held my hand up to stop her. ‘Wait a minute, Darius sent you as a gift, not some other vamp?’

  ‘Course ’e did! Anyways, Daryl said as ’ow you’d understan’, an’ you’d get ’im away from the old devil-witch, seein’ as you’ve got that spell-fing on your hip for the ovver vamp, Rosa’s ’er name. Daryl says the devil-witch were on the blower to sumone an’ they tole ’er you’d be ’ere tonite.’ Her grin widened and she waved the knife again. ‘So ’ere I am, all wrapped up an’ ready.’

  It sort of made sense. Darius had been there in my flat, listening and watching whilst Hannah had been talking to me about Rosa and the Disguise spell. He must’ve decided that having a sorcerer for a master wasn’t for him - not that I blamed him - and as Hannah and Neil were in it together, Neil was probably the one who’d told her I was at HOPE. Darius, no doubt doing his impression of Big Ears, had overheard, so he’d followed vamp tradition and tied a ribbon around Moth-girl’s neck and sent her to me/Rosa with his ‘request’.

  But once Moth-girl had got to HOPE, not only could she not find me - because I’d been wearing the blonde-bimbo Glamour - but it looked like she’d died even before we tried to save her and Bobby. And sad as I was that Moth-girl hadn’t made it, I needed someone who could communicate with the living world, not with the dead. Right now another ghost was about as much use to me as—

  ‘Oy!’ She jabbed the knife at me. ‘You needs to pay attention ’ere.’

  ... well, the ghostly knife Moth-girl was jabbing at me. Not that it didn’t stop me jumping out of its way. Someone points a knife at you, even a ghost one, and instinct takes over.

  ‘Okay, you’ve got my attention,’ I said, indicating the knife.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said unrepentantly, ‘but you gotta listen. Don’t fink I got much time, the stupid twit pumped me up wiv too much vamp-juice again, fink he might of nearly killed me this time, so I ain’t wantin’ to be out too long.’ She looked at Grace administering to her body and gave a disdainful sniff. ‘’Ope that doc knows what ’er’s doin’.’

  I frowned, surprised. ‘You’re not dead?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Her Pierrot-whitened face glared down at her prone body. ‘Not s’long as the doc does ’er stuff right.’

  An idea started to form in my mind. ‘So you’ll be able to wake up again and talk to people?’ I looked down as the sharp pull of the thread across my knuckles caused an anxious flutter inside me.

  ‘Hope so! It’s what we Mofs do all the time; gettin’ necked on ’urts like a blinder if yer don’t make yerself step away from the pain.’

  I blinked. ‘You mean you leave your body like this all the time?’

  ‘’Course - ain’t that wot I just said?’ She jabbed the knife at me again and it nicked my palm.

  ‘Ouch!’ I jerked my hand back and peered at the bead of blood. I was a ghost, and so was the knife. Why was I bleeding? I shook my head. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I want you to do something for me—’

  ‘No, you look, sidhe.’ She pointed to my hand where she’d nicked it with the knife. ‘See, I can still ’urt you as a ghost, and if you don’t listen, I’m gonna come an’ haunt you an’ make your life a bleedin’ hell. So, you gonna help my Daryl or not?’

  ‘Depends if I can ...’ I paused as an idea struck me. ‘Do you know where the devil-witch lives?’

  She nodded. ‘Yeah, Lunnon Bridge way, underneef it, I fink.’

  The arched-roof tunnels of the bridge’s foundations! Of course - where I’d done the ghost survey with Finn; no wonder the place looked familiar.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘if you want me to help Darius, then you have to help me.’ I turned her round and pointed at Malik. ‘See that vamp?’ I said. ‘His name’s Malik al-Khan. When you wake up, or whatever it is you do, you get Darius to tell him what you’ve told me, and tell him he’s got to come to the devil-witch’s place before midnight tomorrow night, Hallowe’en, and he’s got to kill me.’ I squeezed her arm; her bone felt as thin as a bird’s beneath my hand.

  I decided that I needed more than one basket if I was going to have a chance at saving the souls destined for the egg and the demon. I pointed at Bobby. ‘Tell him the same thing; tell him if he does this, Rosa will be his master.’ Then I pointed at Grace. ‘And tell the doctor everything too - then tell her to go to the police. Got it?’

  ‘Yeah, gottit: you wants ’em all to come an’ kill yer tomorrow - but ain’t you already dead?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so, but my body isn’t,’ I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. ‘The devil-witch is in it.’

  ‘Ah, now I got you.’ She nodded sagely.

  The red thread yanked my hand high into the air.

  I pulled it down, then turned back to the blonde-me again. I could see ghosts - but the blue eyes of my Glamoured self were still staring fixedly at Grace kneeling next to Moth-girl’s body; I didn’t appear to notice the ghostly me at all. I tried tugging the blonde ponytail, then pinching my cheek, but my fingers touched nothing, felt nothing. Could I take over my body, as I’d done when I’d picked up t
he Autarch’s sword?

  ‘You’ll give ’er nightmares like that,’ Moth-girl sniffed. ‘’Er spirit’ll know sumfing’s wrong, even if it don’t know what.’

  I pursed my lips, then walked round the back of the blonde me and stepped forward, merging myself with ... myself. Still nothing. I stood and looked out of my eyes and tried to lift my hand; my ghostly hand moved, but the blonde-me hand didn’t.

  ‘How do you know about the nightmares?’ I asked, sticking my head out of blonde-me’s face to talk to her.

  ‘I ’ad it done it to meself once.’ She gave a little shiver. ‘Couldn’t sleep for a week, an’ I know it was me pal as done it, seeing as I asked ’er to. Awful it was.’

  ‘Were they like picture nightmares, as if someone was telling you a scary story?’

  ‘Nah,’ she shook her head. ‘I just kept fallin’ into this big black ’ole all the time.’

  Disappointment settled like an iron ball in my stomach. So much for getting inside the blonde-me and trying to communicate, by dreams or otherwise.

  The thread jerked me out of blonde-me and slammed me back into the cold, invisible barrier, and back to staring into Necro Neil’s blank, mind-locked face.

  Damn. He was getting impatient.

  ‘Oy!’ Moth-girl ran over to me. ‘Yer gonna save my Daryl, ain’t yer?’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said, not wanting to promise something that might be impossible.

  ‘Okay,’ she chewed her lip, then held out the knife. ‘’Ere, take it. You ain’t gonna ’urt no one livin’ wiv it, but it can hurt the dead all right.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I grasped the knife - for a ghost blade it felt warm and heavy and very real in my palm.

  She sauntered back to where her body was lying. ‘Watch out for my Daryl, won’t yer?’

  ‘Yeah, I will. Oh—’ I realised I didn’t know Moth-girl’s name, but the thread jerked again, and the next second I was airborne. ‘Don’t speak to him’ - I pointed down at Necro Neil - ‘or let him see you out of your body. He’s a necromancer, and he’s in league with the devil-witch.’

  Her lip curled with disdain as she looked at Neil. ‘Gotcha: ’e’s a fuckin’ ghost-grabber.’ And with that she fell apart into hundreds of tiny moths that disappeared into the patchwork of lace and satin and velvet her body was wearing.

  I looked anxiously up at the tiled ceiling; it was only a foot away. I slashed the knife against the thread - maybe I could break his bond - but the knife slipped through it as if it didn’t exist. Then the thread yanked again and the wind rushed past me as I streamed through the red-blackness of wherever.

  Chapter Thirty

  The stench of putrefying flesh invaded my nose as skeletal fingers squeezed my throat, choking me, and a heaviness compressed my chest. Pain and blackness were eating at the light in my mind. A brief thought flickered in the encroaching darkness: being dead wasn’t much different to being alive; there were still some who could hurt you if they wanted to badly enough.

  ‘Have you managed to get her into the locket yet?’ A woman’s voice, far away.

  ‘I told you I’d let you know, Hannah.’ Anger and frustration, and something fervent in the male’s voice.

  ‘Hurry it up,’ the woman said, ‘there’s less than an hour to midnight.’

  A tug on my hand. ‘Into the locket, Ms Taylor. Now!’ The command came again.

  ‘No—’ I whispered, the same answer I’d given him before. The fingers squeezed my throat tighter, squeezing out the light.

  ‘We wouldn’t be having this problem if you’d waited for me in the first place, Hannah,’ the voice said curtly.

  ‘Why don’t you put her in the Fabergé egg with all the others?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Because if I open the egg to put her in, I’ll let the rest of them out again.’ The voice was scathing this time. ‘You stick to your spells, Hannah, and leave me to worry about the shades and souls.’

  ‘I would do, if you could handle your side of things efficiently.’ She was closer, sounding suspicious. ‘You’ve been trying to persuade her for so long that I’m beginning to wonder if you’re not enjoying this a little too much.’

  The light narrowed to a pinhole and panic fluttered in my mind like a terrified flock of garden fairies. The skeletal hands weren’t going to—

  ‘Stop.’ I heard the command and the pressure on my throat eased up.

  Relief flooded through me, pushing back the darkness, letting the light in, and though the weight on my chest still pressed me down, I drifted like a feather, the voices rising and falling around me, indistinct and unimportant.

  Gradually I settled back into myself.

  I kept my eyes closed. There was no point opening them, not when it would only encourage fucking Necro Neil to get his tame ghost torturer to have another go - and if I didn’t open my eyes, I didn’t have to look at my torturer’s plague-eaten face - its missing nose and rotten black stumps of teeth were still freaking me out. I lay there, trying to ignore Scarface the ghost sitting on my chest, pretending to be more dead than I was, thankful that at least the ghost’s pain-inflicting skills were limited to strangling and suffocating me; he hadn’t enough personality left to implement Necro Neil’s more inventive - and considerably less wholesome - ideas.

  Never mind giving myself nightmares from trying to posses my own body, as Moth-girl had predicted: if I got out of this I would have more than enough of them to last until I hit my third century.

  Of course, that was if I got to see another dawn.

  And that was looking less likely every time Scarface’s bony fingers closed round my throat.

  ‘Well, Ms Taylor,’ Necro Neil’s eager voice was accompanied with a tug on my hand, ‘you look like you’ve recovered enough for me to ask you again: will you go into the locket?’

  ‘No,’ I croaked in a whisper, not entirely sure why he couldn’t force me.

  The ghost shifted his position on top of me and I braced myself ready for the next attack.

  ‘That’s our guest,’ Hannah said, excitement colouring her voice. ‘Come on, leave her for now. She can’t escape again, not with the added Containment spell I’ve put on the place.’

  ‘I thought you said you could handle him on your own.’ Necro Neil’s words carried a sullen edge.

  ‘I can - but better to be safe than sorry. We don’t want anything going wrong at this late stage, do we?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and their voices faded into nothing.

  I felt carefully around for the ghost knife. It had still been in my hand when Scarface and half a dozen other ghosts had jumped me when the red thread deposited me back at Necro Neil’s shiny black shoes. No one had tried to take it away from me - but then, no one had needed to, not when there were ghosts enough to sit on every limb ... but now only Scarface was left, perching on my chest like some malevolent spirit.

  A bony finger poked me in the cheek and I flinched, but kept my eyes closed. The reek of rot made my stomach give a dry heave. A voice rasped next to my ear, ‘Grab ... go.’

  Grab go. The words didn’t make sense.

  ‘Wake,’ the voice rasped again. ‘Ghos ... grab ... go.’

  Ghost-grabber? Was he saying Necro Neil was gone? Why? Warily, I opened one eye and squinted up at Scarface. ‘What?’ I whispered.

  His lipless mouth opened wide, the scar on his cheek splitting like a second pair of lips to reveal the glistening bone.

  ‘Up.’

  Was he telling me to get up? ‘Can’t,’ I croaked, ‘you’re sitting on me.’

  One dried eyeball rolled in its socket. ‘Sor ... ry,’ he rasped, and shuffled off me.

  Relieved, I lifted my arm and rubbed my throat; being strangled had hurt at the time, but it didn’t appear to have left any lasting injuries to my ghostly form.

  ‘Up ... help.’ Scarface was crouched beside me now. A bony finger poked urgently at my shoulder. ‘Grab ... back ... soon.’

  Mystified at being let go, but not enou
gh to question it, I rolled over and pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. The knife was still there. I picked it up. The handle felt warm and solid, almost comforting, even if it only worked against other ghosts. I scrambled to my feet and looked around. Scarface was shuffling away into the distance, just the same way he had when I’d watched him during the ghost survey ...

  And it was in the same arched tunnel - the same tunnel where all the ghosts had been gathered ... Only the place was brightly lit now, and the ghosts were gone; all that remained was the Fabergé egg, which sat in solitary splendour in the middle of a large circle marked out in red sand. Curled up next to the egg was the florist’s lad, still tied hand and foot, a fresh black eye decorating his tear-stained face.