But her terror was gone. The lingering whispers of horrified anticipation wreathing her thoughts were gone, too.
She doesn’t remember. Whatever had happened during her time as a captive, Robin didn’t have a clue. Lucia looked down at the limp cat in her arms. “What have you done, gatito?” she asked him, a mere murmur. “At what price?”
The intruder stood in the doorway, taking up space — legs braced, arms away from his side in the fashion of a beefy man. His nasty grin accompanied a surge of...
Ewww.
Lust and greed and a hint of swamp gas.
Robin gasped, already vulnerable and used; Caryn, whatever she’d had in mind, now only reeled against the wall. Nausea swept through Lucia. “Quinnie.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said, utterly unaffected if plenty grim. He took out his cell phone, took a photo of the man, and returned the phone to his pocket. “Let’s go.”
“Always gotta be one,” the man grumbled. He opened his arms, made a beckoning motion — a challenge, and an extra leer at Robin in case it just wasn’t clear enough.
Slowly, Quinn stood; he retrieved the tire iron on the way up, his jaw set. Lucia held Sklayne a little more closely, her own expression just as eloquent. Just because you can take this guy doesn’t mean you should. We have to GO.
Quinn glanced at her, his hands tightening on the tire iron — knuckles going white, and then easing again. “Just get her to the car, Lu. He won’t bother you.”
Right. As simple as all that.
But what was she going to do, just sit here and wait? She shifted Sklayne into the crook of one arm and took Robin’s elbow with the other, planting her feet. Her tote slipped as Robin stood on shaky legs. “Petirrojo,” Lucia murmured. “Walk for me, yes?” She glared at Caryn. “Some help?”
Caryn had a clear shot at escape — but she made no move to take it, nor to help Lucia; her attention remained riveted on the man. She offered no reaction to the brand new trickle of emotion around them all — pure anger, pure resentment. Purely spiritual. Ghosts.
Oh, they most certainly had to get out of this place.
Lucia ducked beneath Robin’s arm. She snagged fingers onto the sturdy jean belt loops, jostled Sklayne back into place, and went for the door. Pretending they might even make it.
But the moment they passed behind Quinn, the man charged, carrying the confidence of his size and the obvious intent to simply mow them down. Quinn took a football blocking stance, shoving the tire iron out as a block while Lucia tried to spurt away with Robin.
It almost worked, too. But Quinn gave an inexplicable shout, stiffened, and jerked back into Lucia and Robin, taking them down with the man on top of them. Lucia curled protectively around Sklayne, trying and failing to crawl out from under it all.
The man heaved up, wrested the tire iron away and flung it into the corner, and hit Quinn again with his suddenly evident boxy device. Only as Quinn convulsed again did Lucia understand. Aiee, caray! Stun gun! What was it with this town!
She popped free, shoving Sklayne into the protective corner and grabbing under Robin’s shoulders, tugging her free from Quinn’s weight and hardly pausing to glare at Caryn. “Help now, chueca!”
“I can fix this,” Caryn said, an alarming echo of her earlier words.
Lucia’s hackles raised; she hesitated in her attempts to free Robin even as the man hit Quinn again. Her temper, a mild thing, flared hot —
And then, hit by an unfamiliar twitch of clumsy energy, abruptly died. “Caryn — is that you?” The tug only intensified. “Chueca! What are you doing?”
The man laughed. “You stupid crystal-loving woo-woo hounds. It is so kind of you to feed me.”
Feed him — !
“Chueca! Caryn! No! Stop!” Lucia left Robin, left Quinn — poor Quinn, a jerking, spastic and uncoordinated heap of human — and scrambled to grab Caryn’s shoulders, shaking her. Shaking her hard. “Don’t you ever think? You can’t fix him! You can only make him—”
“Stronger,” the man said, so smugly. “Strong enough to take you all. Goody little crystal gazers with no sense of the real power this world holds.”
“I know exactly what power this world holds,” Lucia said, pulling herself up to full princess posture — never mind the dirt or the sweat or the disarray. “You will never see the things I have seen, you arrogant, despicable, donkey-balled troll.”
Troll. Maybe not the smartest thing to say.
“Fine,” he snarled. “Die, then. But suffer a whole lot first.”
Robin cried out first, twisting away but still trapped beneath Quinn — and Quinn could do little more than shove a limp hand in Robin’s direction, fingers twitching. Nausea rolled over Lucia; her strength drained away and she stumbled back against the wall, caught in the man’s ugly energies.
Caryn gasped and Lucia said through her teeth, “You see? You see?”
And then the man looked at Sklayne. “Oh-ho. Oh- ho. What have we here?”
“Leave him alo—” Lucia snapped, or tried to. The words turned into a gag as her senses dipped and rolled anew; she felt herself sliding into a faint.
That’s when she understood. Huntington’s man did more than throw ugliness at them. He stood ready to scoop up their reactions to it, fueling that ugliness — building it in a steady spiral, just as Huntington had done with his group at the arch.
And when this man had harnessed enough of their energy, he would kill them with it.
Lucia fumbled in her tote. Surely her little pepper spray was in here. Surely her nail file was within reach, or her PDA stylus, or something with which she could gouge his eyes out. Surely —
“What the fuck?” the man said
Lucia looked up, hand in her tote and guilt on her face, so battered by escalating energies — new energies — that she could barely think. He stood braced in the middle of the room, stout and hearty and despicable and utterly baffled. “What the...”
New energies.
Ghostly ones, growing in strength to stand out clearly from what the man was doing. The swell of emotion, the roaring anger... it all came from a wellspring of offended ghosts. They were the ones who had covered the arch with effluvia and the ones who had swirled around Lucia in the town shop, plucking and snatching.
They were the ones who knew more than anyone how much wrong Huntington’s people had done.
And they were so very angry.
“What the — !” the man repeated, face reddening.
“Ghosts,” she said faintly, wishing herself to be anywhere but here.
“Dumb-ass things don’t know when to stay dead,” the man grunted. But he frowned as Lucia’s hair stirred and Caryn slapped a hand to her cheek and Quinn, with a great groan, rolled over, tried to get up, and fell on his face.
“Protect yourself,” Lucia told Caryn, trying to convey urgency without feeding emotion into the already whirling spirits. “Quiet yourself. They are so very, very—”
Angry.
The anger stormed against her; it raised the hair on her arms. It snaked thin threads of panic through her mind and sent her heart rocketing, shallow and insubstantial in her chest.
The man lost his cocky sneer, slapping at his body as if mice ran under his clothes. Caryn gasped, shrinking down the wall to her heels, covering first her head and then her shoulders and then any part of her she could reach, trying to protect every inch from a stinging sandstorm of ethereal energy.
No hysteria. No. For Lucia was the only one who truly understood their circumstances. She. Lucia. Reckoner. And her hand was still in her tote, and in her tote she also kept the secret containment herbs and spices. And if the secret recipe kept the ghosts in their containment bags, then surely...
She dug frantically through the tote, strewing the contents on the floor until she found the ever present baggie of secret recipe, and then fumbling with that until it abruptly gave way, jerking open to spill precious contents. There wasn’t enough here, not really. She’d have to be careful,
so careful with her hands shaking and her mind and body reeling —
She dipped long fingers into the bag, removed a pinch, and sprinkled it over herself, moving directly on to Quinn and Robin and finally, Caryn.
And by then she knew.
Not perfect, no. But she could think. She could breathe.
She could see. Even if she didn’t want to.
The man now slapped at himself, caught in an immense feedback loop of his own making. He’d stolen from the ghosts and used that energy to batter them cruelly, not realizing he only fed them — then stole from them and then fed them and then stole it again, each round of energy growing even more putrid.
Lucia reached for Sklayne, holding him gently but close — buffering him. Was the man getting bigger? Expanding? Wavering around the edges? Hastily, she scattered more of the pungent secret recipe. It settled in her hair and over Robin’s skin, across Quinn’s lashes and onto Sklayne’s fur.
Sklayne writhed beneath it; she muttered a curse and brushed the crumbs away, never taking her eyes from the man’s maelstrom, the energies pulsing around him so quickly, so strongly, she could all but see it with her plain old Lucia vision. She swallowed hard against nausea. “Chueca... when they finish with him...”
They’re going to come for us.
The man gargled. He’d stopped trying to fight — he was trying to scream. It came out a spew of black goo — caught in his beard, splatting down his chest — bubbling up endlessly from inside. He shrank down on himself, everything that had been contained within now escaping without.
“Caryn,” Lucia said suddenly, low and urgent and holding fast under Caryn’s huge-eyed response, her astonished hurt. “When they finish with him, they’re going to come for us — the secret recipe isn’t going to hold against them, do you understand? You started this, so now you do something about it!”
“But—”
“Yes!” Lucia said. “For once! You broke it, you fix it!”
“I don’t—” Caryn started, flinching at a particularly loud gargle as the man slowly went to his knees, goo splashing against the floor — “I don’t do ghosts!”
“No? Well, I don’t do people but I had to, didn’t I? Because of you!” She steeled herself — against pity, against the empathetic understanding that came so naturally. “We’re here, aren’t we, because of you? Do you think I care if it frightens you to try? Do it anyway! You cleanse them like you tried to do to Trevarr and you do it now!”
Or we will all die, and then the ghosts will be loose in this world.
Chapter 25
Kehar: Come with Me
“Come with me.”
Strong, slender fingers closed around Nevahn’s arm, yanking him from his private thoughts and to his feet. One moment he sat in dawn meditation beside his tiny new dwelling. The next, he was frozen in the stark black grip of oskhila travel, terror hammering in his heartbeat.
The device released him into sharded rainbow colors and he staggered forward, landing on his knees with a grunt.
He didn’t dare look up. He didn’t dare look around. He looked at his feet, the hard worn stone stained with —
He didn’t look at the floor, either.
Anjhela — of course, it was Anjhela — yanked him back up, and then he couldn’t help but see. He stood in the center of a small enclosed chamber, the ceiling arching overhead and lit by scattered lumes, the walls circled with deeply carven glyphs and the door —
There was no door.
Anjhela smiled as he realized it. For the first time, he saw that her teeth were just a little bit pointed.
“What—” he started.
She put a finger to his lips, then used that same finger to push him back a step. “Hush,” she said. “You’re not here to ask questions.”
He couldn’t help but glance down at her hand, but there was no gleam of metal, no hint of curving claw. She smiled again.
A deep belling tone reverberated through the room. “Nevahn of Solchran.”
Nevahn cleared his throat of the shudder that blocked his voice. “I hear you.”
“We seek.”
So simple. We seek.
Nevahn knew better than to think he could keep secrets from Ghehera — from this, the voice of its tribunal. The gathering of elites from whom even Anjhela quailed, if her current silence gave any indication.
Nevahn told the voice, “I understand.”
I understand, but I can’t help you. I understand, but you can flay my mind to shreds and I still can’t help you.
“Sometimes,” Anjhela murmured, offhandedly at that, “we don’t know what we know.”
Nevahn had the feeling he was about to find out.
He hoped only to survive the conversation. Because once Ghehera truly understood they would find no answers within Nevahn, they would return to release their wrath on Solchran.
The best he could do now was warn them.
Chapter 26
Dissolution
“Many things should be. Few things are.”
— Rhonda Rose
“If this was a bad movie, that would have worked!”
— Lisa McGarrity
The lerkhet charged, leaping with unexpected agility — snout raised, tentacles stiffened, mouth open and hidden pincers extruding. Blinded and yet perfectly oriented, coming straight for Garrie. Coming fast.
She ducked behind her attacker, and the lerkhet latched onto the back of the man’s neck with an audible, gristly crunch.
The man didn’t even scream. He just went down.
The second man startled aside, giving Garrie just enough freedom to jam her freakishly sharp knife into his torso. Shock loosened his grip further; she tore away, hauling her pants together as she bolted to Trevarr, passing Huntington and Feather on the way.
Huntington stood lost in rapture, the red rock bluff spitting dust and pebbles beyond him. Feather lay crumbled off to the side, looking suddenly older.
But Garrie had eyes only for Trevarr, who lay face down, one hand caught in his belt, the other pushing ineffectively at the ground — still trying to get up, his breathing so harsh and his entire body trembling with shock and effort.
“Where’s the ekhevia?” she said as she reached him, pretending her voice didn’t quiver and her mouth didn’t quiver and emotion didn’t strangle her. She patted down his pockets, full of both care and haste. “We have to try again!”
He caught her gaze with eyes gone to dull grey stone, dust and blood smeared on his face — until they flickered a sudden hard desperation, and Garrie knew better than to stay in his way. She spun aside on one knee as he levered up, already in possession of a knife slipped from the brace harness. He flipped it into a throwing grip and flung it with smooth release, wrenching himself as he fell to land on his back, gulping for air.
Garrie whirled and found Huntington staggering away, bat in hand — and not the least cowed. Not even with a knife jutting out of his thigh and the ground cracking open behind him.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, but his voice didn’t sound sane and his face didn’t look it. “I have what I wanted — what I’ve earned!”
“Not yet you don’t,” Garrie muttered. She set aside her own knife, hoping beyond hope that she could find the ekhevia without actually delving into Trevarr’s bottomless duster pockets. She tugged the coat around, jostling him — and froze at his short, raw cry. Long enough to see that his leg stretched out in a wash of black-red blood against gritty ground.
“You aren’t even going to tell me that lerkhet is venomous,” she said, desperate warning in her voice. From up the bluff, Bobbie Ghost howled — loud and anguished, with stone raining down.
Brief, dark humor showed on his face, and at the bloody corners of a mouth she’d been kissing just that morning.
She took it for the answer it was. “Fark,” she said, with feeling. Blood from her split forehead splattered down on him as she rested one hand lightly on his stomach, tugging more carefully to free the
coat with the other. When he fumbled for a pocket, she guided his hand there — and startled as her hand hit a cool wash of air and unconfined freedom.
One of those pockets.
He opened his hand wide, still nestled in hers — an expectant gesture.
And the ekhevia came to him.
It hit his hand solidly, slipping into place. Garrie swallowed hard and withdrew their hands, and the ekhevia with them. “Now?” she asked. “Now can we kill this thing?”
She felt rather than heard his short laugh. Yes.
But when she reclaimed the knife and moved to put Huntington in view, he caught her eye, his face tight, breathing still shallow and harsh. “It needs both of us,” he said. “It is too — Klysar’s farking Blood!”
His hand clamped down on the ekhevia until Garrie thought the metal would buckle; his body arched in pain. But he somehow found his voice again. “It is too changed. We both do this.”
And meanwhile the lerkhet was done with its first victim and moving more slowly to the second. Either it was getting full, or it wanted something tastier.
Like us.
That second man wouldn’t last long. His shirt was already utterly soaked with blood, his body slumped up against the constantly flaking rock and not reacting to the rain of rock shards building up around him.
Trevarr put the ekhevia on his stomach, flipping it into position — all bright hard metal set with pulsing sections of pure color, too intense to be of this world, delineated by thin lines of metal into exotic mosaics. A snick, a rasp of smooth metal, and the device opened. Half weapon, half tool, all fitting into the curve of his hand.
The lerkhet lifted its head, tentacles whirling briskly. Healing. No longer leaking ethereal matter, unconcerned by its battered face or blindness. Garrie shifted uneasily. “Trevarr—”
Trevarr fumbled the ekhevia and she moved to prop him up, turning the whole of her world into the brush of leather, the emphatic effort of his breathing, the shudder of his frame. Huntington’s interference pressed in on her, making the trees sway and dip. The fallen rock cracked sharply, spitting off shrapnel — Garrie jerked as it peppered her arm. “Trevarr.”
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