Grave Measures (The Grave Report, Book 2)

by R. R. Virdi

  I laughed harder, maniacally so. My voice sunk to a deep bellow and I roared. “You shall not pass!”

  The hooded shadow being stepped toward the fire. Its sickle-like arm nearly touched the flames. With a quick motion it blew away a section of the fire, allowing the group to pass through as long as they formed a narrow rank.

  Figures. The Balrog did get one up on Gandalf, sort of. So I pulled something else out of the Tolkien handbook.

  Scooping up Ortiz, I tensed the muscles in my legs, praying they’d be able to handle the run. “Fly you fools!” I shouted. “Lizzie, run!” I added in case the reference went over the girl’s head. Ortiz’s body was riddled with sweat, most of it conveniently drying itself on my clothing. She was burning up and if I didn’t haul my spirity keister faster, we both would be.

  It’s not smart to turn your head back when you’re running forward. I did it anyway. The shadow people stepped through the slender gap in the flames, huddled rather close to each other. They may not have had distinct facial features, but the way they were gingerly moving made me wonder if they were afraid.

  A pair of shadows experienced a bout of bad luck. They were moving back to chest when a rogue flame licked at the leg of one of the creatures. It ignited instantly, setting a nearby shadow ablaze as well. The lead shadow person didn’t care. It passed through the fire while the remaining shadows hesitated. Guess they didn’t want to end up briquette like their buddies. Good call.

  A rapid and rhythmic sound forced me to turn back to Ortiz. Her breath was shallow and fast. I spat a curse, hoping she would pull through. I chanced a look at the little person running beside me. Lizzie was keeping pace, hardly straining at all.

  Energy is wasted on the young.

  Fire moves fast. It can keep up with a person and even pull out ahead. Not a wonderful thing if you’re the person trying to outrun it. A stream of fire snaked its way ahead, cutting us off. Behind us, the procession of Ring Wraith costumers drew closer. At least they couldn’t move with their usual freakish speed. A raging inferno sort of makes it hard to dart around. An all-too-familiar wail made my head snap toward the fire. Fear tickled the back of my throat. It tasted like bitter, stale coffee.

  Strands of flames coalesced into a pillar that shot up to the ceiling before collapsing on itself. It stood about the average height of a woman, filling out to the form of one as well. The elemental was one fired up bitch. She didn’t know when to stop chasing a guy. Except she wasn’t chasing me. The creature stood there, unmoving.

  Fear clouded my judgment. It took me a moment to remember the elemental wasn’t real. Well, technically it wasn’t. It may have been several yards in front of me, fully tangible and possessing the ability to roast my ass. It still wasn’t a real elemental. More importantly, it wasn’t the one Ortiz and I had faced six months ago.

  Who says illusions are cheap? If this played out right, we’d have a serious win. If Ortiz gave in and allowed herself to be consumed by fear, we’d be boned. The elemental would probably come after us. Not ideal considering we already had problems to deal with.

  “Hey, Ortiz, dunno if you can hear me, but hang in there.” I gave her a gentle shake.

  The saliva in my mouth turned to ash. I hated doing this to her. I felt hollow and stretched thin. Hot weights fell into my stomach. We needed this though. It was our only shot. And none of that made me feel a damn bit better about it.

  The elemental was rooted in place, blocking our path. But it didn’t show any signs of hostility. That was a blessing of sorts. The place was still on fire, but I try to take my silver linings when and where I can. Whatever happened next would depend entirely on Camilla Ortiz and her ability to work through whatever haunted her mind. Whatever monsters she was facing inside her head, I resolved to make sure she didn’t go though it alone.

  It’s been said that positive messages get through to comatose patients. Words of strength and encouragement help. That’s all I had to offer. I crossed my fingers that it’d be enough.

  “Ortiz,” I began, “whatever’s going on inside you, remember that’s all it is—inside you. I know it’s not easy to deal with, but you’ve dealt with it in the real world. In there, inside yourself, you’re the boss. Those things can’t hurt you when you’ve already survived them on the outside,” I lied. Sometimes it’s what’s inside you that hurts the most. It clings and lingers like a meat hook, refusing to let go. You try to pull at it, tear it away, but you end up tearing bits of yourself along with it.

  No one ever said getting over fears was easy.

  Between the heat, fear, and Ortiz’s body pressed against mine, my body was riddled with sweat. I may have been a soul inside someone else’s body, but there were still rules I had to play by. Some of them had to do with dehydration and heat stroke. Just because I could heal from wounds didn’t mean I could ignore the fact I was sweating precious fluids. I’m as susceptible to harm and danger as anybody else…unfortunately.

  Instinct told me to risk rushing the elemental and getting the group out of there. It was my faith in Ortiz that kept me planted to the spot. She was going to work through it, and I was going to be right here with her as she did.

  “Ortiz, you’re bigger than this, better than it. I know you. I’ve seen you fight things that were well out of any vanilla mortal’s league. Trust me. I still have nightmares about this sort of thing. They suck. But that’s all they are—nightmares. Sometimes we’ll beat ‘em. Sometimes we won’t. Even then, it doesn’t matter. In the end, even if they knock you down, even if they win, you can still keep moving. So long as it doesn’t kill you—you’re still in the fight. Last time I checked, you’re still here.”

  A small hand, containing a hint of pudginess, reached up and placed itself on Ortiz’s body. Lizzie joined in on the Tony Robbins seminar. “You can do it,” she said in her oh-so-soft voice. It may not have been the most rousing of speeches, but sometimes the simple things are the best.

  The elemental moved. My eyes abandoned Ortiz’s curled body and focused on the being of fire. It took a single measured step forward. Behind us, the group of shadows inched closer. Another step. Every muscle in my body coiled with industrial spring tension. If things got dicey, I was planning on hauling it past the elemental and taking my chances.

  The elemental moved forward. I gritted my teeth as its hellishly hot body approached mine. I could feel my skin redden. There was no look on its face to say it had seen or even acknowledged our presence. It stepped up to and past us.

  Exhaling, I urged Lizzie to start moving. I cast a wary glance at the living hibachi. The cynic in me said to check if the elemental was going to pop us from behind. It never broke its stride. Nor did it turn to face us. Its arms spread wide as it approached the oncoming gaggle of shadow beings. Upon seeing the woman of fire, they stopped. Even their leader ceased moving.

  Things were getting interesting. If the shadows didn’t move, the fire would consume them. If they did, they could possibly push the elemental into a hostile reaction and end up deep fried anyhow. I couldn’t help but grin.

  “It’ll be okay.” Lizzie patted someone I couldn’t see.

  My grin slipped. Fire was a purifying force in the supernatural world. It could hurt a plethora and kill just as many. The shadow beings weren’t the only creatures lurking in that spot of the Neravene. There were the asylum’s ghosts, too. In everything I had encountered about the lore of ghosts, nothing suggested they could be harmed by fire. But this wasn’t an ordinary fire. It was a unique mixture of the Neravene bringing Ortiz’s fears to fruition. That was a recipe for all manner of unknown things to happen. Here, in a place where everything was out of whack and broken, I had no idea what could happen.

  “Lizzie, are the ghosts okay?” I gestured with a thrust of my chin to the fire.

  She didn’t respond immediately. “Yes.” She paused for a moment. “And no.”

  “The fire?” I already knew the answer.

  “Yes.”

  Damn
. There are many ways to harm ghosts. Salt, iron and a handful of other things can do the job. There’s a particularly special way to hurt a ghost too.

  Make it personal.

  Find out what killed them, what they’re afraid of. Ghosts often fear the thing that killed them. That fear can be used as a weapon. The fire here could kill a ghost.

  It was a bit of a stretch to assume that many of the asylum’s ghosts had pyrophobia, but it was likely that there was at least one. From Lizzie’s answer, I assumed one of them had met their end in this blaze.

  It’s odd feeling sorry about the loss of a ghost. It’s a distant lack of sensation. You didn’t know them. Hell, they weren’t even human. That’s when the realization washes over you that they were human at one point. They didn’t ask to die, to become the lost things they ended up as. In many ways, ghosts are larger victims of the paranormal than myself. I may have been murdered and left without a clue about my original identity, but I was still myself. I was still complete.

  They weren’t. Not entirely so.

  The elemental’s keen was on the edge of human hearing. It was just audible enough to cause my eardrums to consider bleeding. The shadow figures bristled in place, wary of taking any rash actions. The elemental’s body flickered in every imaginable hue of fire. Blues gave ways to whites then oranges, yellows and reds. Leaning forward, she exhaled. A cone of fire shot from her mouth.

  Ortiz’s body bucked, and I almost dropped her. I shuffled awkwardly to keep her in my arms. The length of fire that had blocked our path was gone. I looked over my shoulder. My view of the standoff between the elemental and shadow beings was clouded by steam and smoke.

  A cool swell of air made its way across the nape of my neck. My body spasmed in response. You don’t feel cool breezes in the midst of a fire. It made more sense when I realized that there wasn’t a fire.

  “Hmm,” Lizzie pondered.

  “Uh, yeah.” I blinked as I tried to make sense of the scene before me. The hall behind us was no longer covered in steam, smoke or flames. There was no woman wreathed in fire. No mass of shadow beings ready to kill us. They only thing that kept me from doubting it had happened at all were the remains. Ash and a series of dark stains pooled across a small section of the floor where the shadow monsters had been.

  Ortiz coughed. I looked down to see her body shake. Her eyes didn’t flutter open like I expected. They opened slowly, as if something were pulling back on her eyelashes. Another cough wracked her body before she muttered in a sleepy soft tone, “Hey.”

  I smiled. “Hey.”

  “We win?”

  “Something like that.” My lips quirked at the edge, becoming lopsided.

  “Mind letting me down now? I’m a big girl. I can stand on my own.”

  My inner caveman released a grunt. “Me like holding woman; no want to put her down.”

  Ortiz snorted and eased herself out of my arms. I helped her fall to her feet, supporting her as she wobbled a tad. She blinked several times as she surveyed the asylum. “What happened?”

  “Your fear of the elemental happened. Good job by the way, setting the place on fire. It spread, nixed some of the shadow beings. Elemental appeared, ignored Lizzie and I, and nuked the shadow beings. Then poof—all gone. Dunno why. Here we are,” I prattled.

  “I…did that?” Her eyes grew in size as she worked through the unbelievable chain of events.

  “Look at you.” I let out a light laugh. “You little fire starter, you!”

  Ortiz then asked the question I’d been asking myself. “Why didn’t the elemental come after you two?”

  My lips and nose twitched as I thought it over. I had nothing.

  Young Lizzie supplied the answer, sort of. “You weren’t afraid of it anymore?” It sounded more like a question than a statement.

  I raised an eyebrow and stared at Ortiz, wondering if that was true.

  “I wouldn’t say that.” She shifted uncomfortably in place. “I’m still afraid of that thing. It just wasn’t important anymore.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not so sure myself.” She made a mild shrug. “It’s like putting something aside. It’s still there, just not in view. Not repressing it,” she added upon seeing my expression. “I don’t think this is the sort of thing you can just get over all at once. It was my first experience with the supernatural and it was a bad one. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it. I know I’ll never forget it. But…I can put it in its place, which isn’t at the front of my mind. There are more important things, you know?”

  That was the Camilla Ortiz I knew and expected. “I know.” I bowed my head in acknowledgement. What she’d done was impressive. It’s never easy to conquer your fears. Instead, she buried them. They could come back to haunt her later. And she knew it. Doing that takes another kind of strength.

  “But none of that explains why you and Lizzie weren’t roasted by the elemental.”

  “Yes, it does.” Once Ortiz removed the elemental from the forefront of her mind, it no longer carried any weight in her thoughts. The Neravene couldn’t do much with a fear that a person willed away. So, the elemental ignored Ortiz and company, just as she learned to ignore it. That left only one thing for the eldritch creature of fire to do: take its anger out on the shadow beings’ asses. I shared this with Ortiz and Lizzie, leaving out the part about asses for the younger member of our group.

  “Oh,” Ortiz breathed.

  “Yeah.”

  “What now?”

  “Dunno.” I rolled my shoulders, working through the tightness. “Now that the Shadowvores are done, we can focus on whatever nasty is killing the patients.”

  “Shadowvores?” Ortiz arched a questioning eyebrow.

  “What?” I held up my hands in defense. “Throughout every trace of lore they’ve been referred to as shadow people, shadow beings, shadow things. You think someone would’ve given them a proper name by now.”

  “Shadowvores?” she repeated.

  I sniffed. “I like it.”

  Ortiz didn’t reply.

  I turned to Lizzie, and ignored Ortiz’s ignoring of me. “Can you convince the resident ghosts to open us a Way back?”

  “She can do it.” Lizzie bobbed in place.

  A hauntingly beautiful twenty-year-old came into view. With a motion of her hand, the air before us parted. A powder blue line shone. It was as finely crafted as Lyshae’s opening, not mirroring the earlier ghost’s Way in the slightest. Lizzie’s sister may have been a ghost, but her Way made it abundantly clear—she was not broken in the slightest.

  We stepped through.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Needles jabbed mercilessly at my forearm. My skin felt raw. I glanced at the affected area. The news wasn’t good. My timeline updated. I had lost seven whole hours.

  Twenty left.

  Our foray into the Neravene couldn’t have been more than an hour’s trip at most, but that didn’t matter. I had played by its rules there and was paying for them here.

  “Why are we back here?” Ortiz surveyed the room. “We didn’t leave from the same point we entered.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Ways can take you anywhere if the opener has enough skill. Apparently”—I nodded towards Lizzie’s sister—“she does.”

  Lizzie’s sister didn’t say anything, but a smile appeared on her lips.

  “Now we deal with other things.” Ortiz’s jaw clenched in determination.

  I pointed to Lizzie. “Now you can get some rest.” I glanced at Ortiz. “And you can watch over her for a bit.”

  “And you?” Ortiz eyed me.

  Time was dwindling away. My body was torn between being stiff and Jell-O-like. I slipped my fingers over my eyes and rubbed them. A yawn escaped my throat. “I need a drink. Then I’ll scrounge around, see what I can dig up.”

  “I’ll join you in a while,” said Ortiz.

  “Maybe you should rest too.” I stopped myself short of adding, “You could use some.” I didn’t
think she’d appreciate that. As tough as Ortiz was, she was still human. There’s only so much a person can go through. I may well have been pushing her to the brink. God knows I didn’t want to.

  “I’ll join you in a while,” she repeated, her tone settling the argument.

  “Sure. I’d love the company.” I tried to keep the sour notes out of my voice. I failed.

  She smiled.

  I left Ortiz with Lizzie and her sister and stepped out of the room. Faint rays of golden light filtered through the halls. Groggy and starving, I stumbled past the morning nurses. My timeline was pressing, but I couldn’t solve the case on an empty stomach. The last time I ignored my gastronomical urges I ended up being attacked by a tiger.

  Shambling into the cafeteria, I maneuvered toward a counter with metal bins. A dazzling array of colors greeted me as I stared at the sugary grains. Grabbing a bowl, I eyed the first container of cereal. Yellow, crouton-shaped pieces amidst red and blue artificial berries. I had no desire to shred the interior of my mouth to a bloody mess.

  The rest of the breakfast foods were equally unappetizing until I came to the last one. Simple grains mixed with colorful marshmallows. Deciding my luck could use a boost, I heaped the Lucky Charms into my bowl. I narrowed my eyes and cast a glance around me. I palmed a second bowl, filling it as well.

  I was hungry. Sue me.

  I navigated my way to a table in the far back. I didn’t need or want company. What I needed was my stomach filled and time to think. My eyes were closed as the first spoonful made its way into my mouth. The cereal hadn’t absorbed enough milk to become soggy. There was a satisfying crunch mixed with soft marshmallows.

  “Breakfast of champions,” I muttered as I chewed.

  It may have tasted good, but it did little to abate my hunger. I tore into the second bowl without thought, eating mechanically. I swallowed the remaining cereal and milk. My stomach grumbled in protest at the lack of filling food.