by E. A. Copen
A lump in my throat tightened, obscuring and changing my voice so that it was smaller, thinner, weaker. “I can’t do this.”
“You’ve already done it,” Chanter said, drifting closer. “You’ve already survived it.”
“I can’t watch it again.” I turned my back and tried to pull myself through the air away from the scene. No matter how hard I pushed and fought against the air, I couldn’t move.
A cool sensation passed through my shoulder, along with the flash of calm sympathy. Chanter’s ghost had brushed against mine. I understood the gesture was one of support and still I recoiled, shivering and teeth chattering.
“I can’t do this,” I repeated. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Emiko, who was still sitting in the air, tilted her head sideways and pressed her lips together.
“This is when it happens. I couldn’t stop it. It was my fault.”
Even as I spoke, the play droned on, all the actors in their places. Tires squealed at the bottom of the small hill, and headlights made a frantic turn up the drive. The engine of Alex’s truck roared and groaned as he fought to get it up the steep incline and shift gears at the same time. Something went wrong—I never knew what—and the truck stalled out halfway. The parking brake creaked as he threw it on and jumped out of the truck. He didn’t close the door.
Alex was not tall. He wore his hair short and styled it back instead of swept aside as Hunter did, and let his beard grow in dark and short. It made his boyish face look harder except for when he smiled. His face was fixed in a snarl as he darted for the trailer. Alex wore glasses. They made his cheekbones seem sharper than they were and thinned his face. He didn’t have muscles, not the kind of rippling muscles visible through his shirt, anyway. He was proud of his biceps and liked to wear shirts that showed them off. Alex was a truck driver, and that meant he spent a lot of time away from home. He wasn’t working that night and hadn’t come from work. He’d gone into town to drink with some friends.
Alex bolted up the stairs, jerked open the door, and stormed inside.
Just as I’d gone into my twelve-year-old body with the first memory, I snapped into my twenty-year-old, seven-months-pregnant self. I stood under the low ceiling of the kitchen, arms folded on top of my swollen belly, ready to give him hell. He stumbled when he first came in and I immediately thought he was drunk. This was all because of one of his buddies. They liked to rile me up and made a game of it. Well, I wasn’t having it.
“Alexander Charles Gale,” I said as he stumbled down the hall and then froze when he looked up at me. He was bleeding from his bottom lip and his eyes had an odd coloring. They looked lighter than normal. “What happened?” I asked, reaching for him.
Alex pushed past me, tore through the kitchen and down the hall. The closet door slammed open and he screamed, “Fuck!” at the top of his lungs. My baby kicked hard as I waddled down the hall to see what Alex was up to.
He’d pulled the suitcases down from the top shelf and was just throwing things into them. Clothes. Jewelry. Our photo album. You don’t take the photo albums if you’re planning on coming back. Bile crept up my throat as my baby kicked again, and I swallowed it back down. “What the hell’s going on, Alex?”
“They did it,” he snarled. “They fucking did it. I fucking told them this would happen. We should have taken off months ago when the talk first started, but I thought Felix would be smarter. The fucking vampires. This is their fault!”
“Slow down,” I said, stepping into our tiny bedroom. There wasn’t much space to stand with him in there. The full-size bed took up almost three-quarters of the room. “What about the vampires? Alex, you did not get mixed up in this vampire crap. I told you, it’s all a publicity stunt. A bunch of emo kids claiming to be vampires causing a stir for attention. It’ll blow over.”
He stopped packing and slowly looked up at me. “God, you really believe that, don’t you? I love you, but sometimes you can be so stupid.”
“Don’t take it out on me.”
He stepped around the bed, taking my chin in his hands and squeezing tight, forcing me to lock eyes with him. His eyes had lightened a shade further and almost looked yellow. “It’s all real. Every last word of it.”
I pushed his hands away. “Oh, come on. Quit playing.”
“And there’s more.”
I paused to reassess. Alex liked to joke and play around, but he always did it with a smile. The straight man didn’t suit him, and he knew it. Something was different.
“Werewolves are real. Fae are real. All kinds of fucking monsters are real.” He picked a belt up off the floor and threw it into the suitcase without looking at me. “And I’m one of them.”
The sound of breaking glass and Alex’s car alarm made me jump. His head jerked up, and his nostrils flared the way they only did when he was angry. There was no mistaking it now. His eyes weren’t just pale. They were golden.
“Shit. They must have followed me.” He grabbed me by the shoulders and made me look up at him again. “I don’t have time to explain everything to you, but I need you to come with me right now.”
I took a step back into the hallway. “Alex, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.” I caught a glimpse of movement outside the trailer. A dozen people had gathered around his truck armed with baseball bats, hammers, and saws. One even had a machete. They were screaming, yelling, and hacking the truck apart.
“We need to go now, or we’re not going to make it!” His voice was a hoarse, inhuman growl.
Something moved under his skin. I screamed and backed away. Alex came after me, trying to grab my arm, but my foot caught the edge of the sofa and I fell. He rushed to catch me but wasn’t fast enough. I fell on my butt and winced.
A brick sailed through the window right next to me. I curled up into a defensive position. Alex threw himself over me, shielding me from the rest of the rocks and debris that flew in through the shattered window. Fists pounded on the front and side doors of the trailer.
“Gale, we know you’re in there,” shouted a man’s voice. “Come out and face justice, you filthy animal.”
“Monster!” a woman screamed.
They hurled insults at him faster than they threw rocks. I devolved into a fit of sobbing. Alex tried his best to comfort me, but I panicked. “Get away from me, you freak!” I screamed and pushed him away.
Alex went limp and let me scoot away from him. I curled up against the sofa, pulling my arms and legs in as tight as I could. Fear made me flinch when he closed his eyes and rolled his head to the side. I didn’t see how bad I’d hurt him when he needed me most. I didn’t care. Terror and confusion are like that. Survival instinct had taken over, making my primary concern protecting myself and my unborn child. But I’d cut his beating heart out of his chest with my reaction. Only later would I realize what I’d done.
I flinched even harder when he reached for me, touching my face. “I love you,” he said.
I choked on a scream when he kissed his hand and then put it over my belly.
Alex swayed on his feet when he stood. He removed his glasses and folded them, placing them calmly on top of the television as he did every night. Then, with even more care than normal, he slid his shirt up over his head, folded it, and placed it on the floor next to me. On top of it, he placed his wedding ring. He turned his back and faced the door where the angry mob had gathered. “No matter what happens, you don’t come outside. No matter what, you hear?”
I couldn’t answer him.
I let the man I loved walk to his death.
“Stop it,” I screamed, sobbing against the sofa as I listened to the gunshots sound. One. Two. Two breaths and three. The bullets they brought that night weren’t silver. He survived long enough to run into the woods and draw the mob away. It was there they put a noose around his neck and hoisted him up into the trees. It was there the man with the machete hacked off his head and paraded it around with a victory cry.
I clutched my fingers in my
hair and pulled. “Stop it!”
“She knows his pain,” said Emiko, standing over me. She had her fingers folded against her chest, her lips pointed down in a deep frown. “It is the same. Your Alex did as I had to.”
Chanter materialized beside her. “It’s a difficult thing.”
“The most difficult,” Emiko acknowledged and leaned into his shoulder.
I wiped the tears from my eyes and stood. My body didn’t follow but remained frozen in time and memory. “I should have stopped him. I wasn’t strong enough.”
“I should have torn out Crux’s throat.” Emiko snuggled into Chanter. “Killed all three of them. But that would have started a war. One death was easier than asking many more to die in my place.”
“And I suppose I didn’t have to shield Hunter from those bullets.” Chanter shrugged. “But what good would it have done to let him die so I could live another month or two?” He reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Anything worth having comes at a cost, Judah. This you know. The universe is built upon laws of conservation of time and space. Nothing changes. Things may only be broken down into the sum of their parts before they are rebuilt again. It’s the basic principle of all magick.”
“I know this,” I said, shaking my head. “Why are you telling me?”
“Because you know that the spell you used against the beast did not come from nowhere.” Chanter’s hand trailed from my shoulder to the feather and the talon hanging from my neck. “It comes from here. We are standing in the heart of it. Loss and fear are darkness. They are shadows. The anger that burns in you is fierce. Shadow and fire. It’s a part of you, but you must be careful with it. The more you use it, the more hold it will have over you. It’s only a part. You mustn’t let it burn away everything else.”
“You’ll need it to fight the beast,” Emiko added, nodding. “It’s the only thing I’ve seen that can hurt her.”
“I can’t do magick here,” I said. “I need my body. I need an aura to do magick.” I thought a minute. “But… I guess I do have an aura. I am the aura.”
“Precisely.”
Chanter smacked me on the side of the head, and I reached up to rub it.
“Ow! What the hell was that for?”
“You need a body to feel pain, too, stupid girl.”
“That’s your lesson?”
He reached out to smack me again, and I floated back, out of reach. I went too far, though, and wound up floating out the back of the trailer awkwardly. I was still struggling to get upright as Chanter and Emiko floated out after me.
“Is this the part where you tell me to learn from the past?” I said as Chanter helped me upright.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, come on! The Lion King? The monkey and Simba? You were totally going to pull that with me.”
“I was going to warn you that the beast has likely learned from her mistakes and has obviously set a trap for us.” He shrugged. “But take from it what you will.”
I rubbed the side of my ghostly face. It didn’t hurt, but I needed to do something to indicate I wasn’t happy about being smacked, even if it did make me feel better. It reminded me of the last time we’d talked, sitting on the hospital bench.
The three of us turned and regarded the giant, Japanese-style castle the beast had built up in the distance.
“So, you think that’s a trap, huh?”
“Almost certainly,” Chanter agreed.
“It’s what I would do,” Emiko said with a shrug.
“So, what’s the plan?” Chanter and Emiko looked at me. I sighed and cracked my neck. “Full frontal assault it is, then.”
Emiko gave a disapproving grunt. “Leave it to a human to choose the simplest method. We have time. We should strategize.”
“It’s exactly what you’d never expect. That’s why it’s going to work.” I turned to Chanter, who was studying the growing storm clouds in the sky. “How much time do you think I have?”
“I think you had better hurry,” he announced.
I flexed my fingers. Good thing Han had given me eight minutes.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The plan was simple: charge through the doors of the castle and kill anything that moved. None of us knew for sure what the beast would be capable of, but I did know we were busting down the door of her stronghold. Since she’d set up shop inside my head, she probably knew we were coming. Chanter had said I’d drawn her attention, and I could feel it on me. It wasn’t like eyes boring into the back of my head, so much as it was like standing naked in front of a gym full of people who wanted to eat me. I felt her nibbling, tasting and testing. The thin strings braided around me frayed more with every passing second.
We floated closer to the giant, mountainside Japanese-style castle. Chanter led the way with me in the middle, and Emiko bringing up the rear.
“The beast is Hunger,” Emiko said. “She will not listen to reason. She is here only to eat.”
“Makes sense,” I said, nodding. “You were an auric vampire in life. The beast is kind of like Freud’s id. It’s got two drives.”
Emiko inclined her head and lifted an eyebrow as I counted them out on my fingers.
“First, feed. That’s the job Seamus gave it and how he designed it to function. Emiko is a summoned spirit. They don’t get to stay in the world without being given a purpose. Hers is to feed, and second, avoid pain.”
Chanter paused. “Ghosts do not feel pain, girl.”
“She sure didn’t seem to like being smacked with silver or this fire and shadow spell you say I have.” I shrugged. “Maybe there’s more to this ghost than meets the eye. I mean, if Seamus is an all-powerful necromancer, do you think he’d let that loose without exerting some level of control? My bet is that, when we see the beast, she’ll be just as connected as I am. Only her strings won’t go back to her body. They go back to the puppet master.”
I wrapped my fingers loosely around the fine thread that bound my mind, soul, and body together. When I did, the red string snapped and went fluttering off into the wind.
“Oops,” I winced. “Am I going to be able to get back?”
“I wouldn’t let all three break,” Chanter grunted.
I very cautiously unwrapped my fingers from around the last two strings.
“Emiko,” I said, looking at her. “You said you were fractured. What would happen if we put you back together? Or at least the two parts we had.”
She considered the idea with a bob of her head. “I am not as strong as the beast, but perhaps, given the chance, I might be able to weaken it from inside. Doing so would likely destroy me.”
“And what happens if you’re destroyed?”
“I am part of the magick keeping you alive, child. A construct created by the will poured into the magick. Should I be destroyed, the magick would become unstable. It would likely implode and kill you, severing all the bonds holding you to your body.”
“But would it kill the beast?”
She frowned. “It is likely you would be trapped with the beast for some time. We are inside a small fold in time and space, one that exists beyond your body. It is only a small facet of this plane, generated by the projections of your mind. Should you destroy your one and only escape, you would be trapped in here with the beast for eternity.”
I set my gaze forward. “Then I don’t want you to try it, not unless things get really bad.”
The beast’s castle was a work of wonders. Three gray triangular awnings sat atop an awning of cherry wood that curved up at the end of each side. It stacked thirty stories high with the same triangular awnings spaced evenly on each side. The trees all around the castle were naked and dead, the grass brown and curling.
We touched down on a patch of dead grass. Immediately, my shoulders felt heavier. A weight pressed down on my upper body along with a sick, churning feeling in my stomach. Did I really want to fight this thing? Hadn’t I done enough for Sal? Hell, he probably owed me, not the other way around
. This wasn’t my kid in danger. It was his. He should have been the one to die. Wouldn’t it serve Zoe right to die? As for Mia, she wasn’t my problem. What would it really change if she was alive or dead? In fact, wouldn’t my life be easier if I didn’t have to take care of some other woman’s child? Sal couldn’t do it. He’d already said he didn’t know how to be a father. I couldn’t imagine him picking out dresses, braiding hair, taking care of a child. He could barely take care of himself. How good of a father could a biker werewolf be?
He had lied to me about everything. About who he was, about how dangerous he was. He lied. Just like Alex. He would leave me just as Alex had done.
The churning in my stomach turned into grinding in my chest until all I wanted to do was march out of there, snap back into my body, and tell Sal he could go fuck himself.
Then I remembered that this wasn’t his fault. It was mine. I had lied to him, too. Mia was my responsibility. I had to protect her and get back to Sal and Hunter. I had promised them I would do everything in my power to come back. I wasn’t going to leave them alone to face Cynthia, Seamus, the Vanguard, and whatever else was coming, not by choice.
I closed my eyes and focused on that promise, the feeling of Sal’s lips on mine, on Hunter’s smile, on all the things I had to come back for.
Just like that, the weight and the fog of despair lifted. Next to me, Emiko shuddered. Chanter breathed a heavy sigh.
“Psychic assault,” I muttered. “Somebody doesn’t like to play fair.”
The massive, burnt ash-colored doors creaked open, and a grotesque figure came out to meet us. It might have been eight feet tall if it decided to stand, but it walked hunched over, its long neck close to its oversized belly. Even though the creature’s stomach was swollen to the verge of bursting, the rest of it looked starved. Ribs and vertebrae pressed against tight yellow skin, making every tendon and blue vein visible. One eye sat in the middle of the creature’s face, partially obscured by the thin and irregular tufts of matted, black hair. The lamprey mouth gave it away. This was the beast living inside of Ghost Emiko’s throat. This was Hunger.