Phantoms of the Otherworld (In Spiritu Et Veritate)

by Reed, Zoe

  There was one thing Abby really hated about vampires, especially in situations like this, and it was that she couldn’t hear their thoughts. For some reason, maybe it was their undead-ness, their thoughts just didn’t exist outside themselves. Which made it impossible to mentally predict this vampire’s next move as he stood there, carefully watching Abby and the sword she was holding. He feigned to the left to see how closely she was paying attention, and when that put him just close enough to strike she nicked him in the arm with the weapon. Even though she’d taken out a vampire already, she was still shocked at how humanly delicate their flesh was, albeit the wound closed and disappeared almost instantly. But they weren’t invincible, and that gave her confidence.

  Again the vampire faked left, and once again Abby nicked him, in almost the exact same spot as the last time. Before the second wound disappeared he feigned right, and she smirked as she got him in the other arm. The smirk instantly disappeared though as she wondered why he hadn’t attacked yet. Was he judging her speed? Gauging her skill? They both knew that without the sword she didn’t stand a chance. He was faster, stronger, fiercer. As she watched, her body tense for action, he rushed her head on, pushing the sword out of the way with his palm so it wouldn’t pierce straight through his torso.

  His hands were so busy keeping the sword away that when he finally made a reach for Abby’s head with his arms she ducked out of the way, swinging the blade as he continued past her. She heard a crunch as the weapon caught the back of his neck, severing the spinal chord as he fell to the ground with a thud. She’d seen how quickly they healed. So for good measure she strode to where he’d fallen and sent the sword clean through with a single swing. It still shocked her that they bled. Before this she’d never fought with a vampire, and she hadn’t quite expected them to bleed. It almost made them seem too human for her comfort.

  Abby made her way back to Kyla, picking up the large wolf’s head and then setting it gently back down as she examined it for injuries. She carefully opened the wolf’s eyes with her fingers, and the normally bright green iris was nearly invisible around the severely dilated pupil. She was still breathing, which was always a good sign, except that it was more like panting, every breath fast and shallow. Abby ran her fingers sadly through the golden fur. She didn’t really understand why Kyla, who was usually a brunette, had blonde fur, but somehow it suited her.

  A shrill, deafening metallic grating pulled Abby out of her thoughts, and her attention was torn to the cages. Two of the wolves, the black one and a smaller copper colored one, had ripped the solid steel doors clean off with just their teeth, and they now stood outside the cages, watching everything before them. Their stares were eerily blank and lifeless, glazed over in a stale white film. Tearing through the cages must have caused some kind of damage, because blood was dripping down each of their bared fangs. Not only were their blood stained teeth and menacing snarls enough to freeze Abby to the core, but every bit of long fur from the back of their massive heads to the tip of their tails was sticking straight up. Now Abby realized what this was, and why Rook had told them not to let the vampires finish the spell. It was possession.

  Abby’s eyes were forced off the wolves when she was grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground. A second later a female vampire was sitting on top of her, hands locked around her throat. She tried desperately to buck and throw the woman off, and then tried to pry the cold hands from her throat. When that didn’t work she frantically searched the ground around her, eyeing the sword that lay too far for her to reach. She stretched for it anyway, and the vampire took a single hand off her throat just long enough to hit her in the face. The closed fist caught her in the nose, and she wasted precious air choking on the blood that flowed back into her throat. She desperately threw her fists now any way she could in an attempt to free herself, but her lungs were starting to burn too much to bear.

  Then, as the tunnel vision started closing in on her, she felt herself freed. An enormous multicolored wolf grabbed hold of the vampire with its teeth, its jaw so massive that it covered the girl’s entire neck and the lower part of her jaw. Then he ripped her off of Abby, violently tossing the lifeless body aside.

  Abby bolted up into a sitting position. “Thanks,” she choked to the wolf as she struggled to spit up blood and gasp for air at the same time.

  In her stupor she glanced back toward the cages, but the wolves were gone, and there were two large holes in the side of the warehouse where she could see out into the dark night. She looked all around her, noticing the world had suddenly grown quiet. It appeared most of the vampires had bolted instead of fighting, which left the ones who’d remained terribly outnumbered by everyone who’d barged into the warehouse. They were lucky in that respect, because as Abby took everything in, it didn’t appear they’d suffered any fatalities. Just like that and as quickly as it had begun, this part was over. But they weren’t done yet. The two wolves had gotten away, and whatever they’d been possessed by did not look friendly. Then there was Kyla, and the dark brown wolf had to be Camille, both still unconscious, and for some reason the energy hadn’t yet claimed her.

  Abby scrambled up and rapidly made her way to the unopened cage. Her and Camille had never been on the best terms, but seeing her trapped, inanimate, it was too much. So she wrenched back the heavy bar that held it closed, and when she got the door open she grabbed the motionless wolf’s front paws, struggling against its weight to pull it out.

  “Abby, close that damn door! She could still wake up,” her father shouted angrily, storming over when he noticed she was trying to pull Camille out.

  She scoffed at him bitterly and continued to throw her weight back, gradually tugging the wolf out of the cage. She blamed him for this. When he finally came over and grabbed her shirt collar to pull her away she turned on him, fuming. “You think that cage is going to hold if she does wake up?” she yelled, pointing at the dented, tossed aside doors from the other two. “We have to save her before that thing possesses her.”

  She was about to continue pulling Camille out of the cage, but stopped when she realized everyone was watching her, even the five other werewolves. All except for Kyla, of course, who was still unconscious, just like Camille.

  “No,” her father said, picking up the sword she’d dropped on the ground not far away. “We have to kill her before it has the chance.”

  “Like hell you are!” Abby put her hands on his chest and shoved him back away from the wolf, and her protests were backed by five menacing snarls.

  Her father turned on the werewolves, fury creasing his intimidating brow. “Would you rather we have to hunt her down like an animal?”

  Each of the wolves inched forward, deepening their growls, their position on the matter perfectly clear. It made Abby start to panic. She had no doubt the Pack wouldn’t hesitate to attack if it meant saving one of their own, and as much as she knew her dad was an asshole, she didn’t want him to die.

  “Lahni!” she shouted desperately at the psychic, who had been kneeling over Kyla for the last few minutes.

  With a deep sigh, Lahni stood and made her way over, all eyes watching her. She then knelt over Camille, running her hands along the side of the wolf’s face and through its thick brown fur. “It’s the connection,” she said softly, and then turning to Abby’s father she spoke loud enough for him and the wolves to hear. “There may still be hope.”

  I was plummeting through a black abyss. I tried to scream, but I was falling too fast to get it out. Falling too fast to even breathe. There was a swirl of gold about me as I dropped through the incredible darkness, and I reached for it desperately. Then we landed, the gold thing and I. We hit the ground.

  I awoke with a gasp, struggling for air as if I’d been under water for too long. But it felt like I was breathing in fire. This strange, foreign air stuck to the insides of my nose and throat and it burned, searing away at my lungs. I coughed, trying to rid it from inside of me, but every time I took in a breath to
cough again it filled me even more.

  “It’ll fade,” a familiar voice echoed to me through the darkness. I opened my eyes, finding that it was actually blindingly bright. “Doesn’t get any easier to breathe, but it won’t hurt so bad in a minute.”

  “Camille?” I squinted toward her and sat up. The blonde was about six feet away on the ground, knees pulled up to her chest as she watched me. “Where are we?” I heard my question quietly repeated to me through the continuing echo.

  I looked around, it was painfully bright and white, but not the kind of white that produces colors. It was just blank light. I looked for the sun, or a moon, to tell me if it was night or day. Only there wasn’t either one. The entire sky seemed illuminated by an invisible source, if I could even call it a sky. It was more of a vacant nothingness that surrounded everything, that was everything, except the ground we sat on. Everything else, the icy, dusty ground, the expanse of rocks and boulders that formed barren hills and immediately surrounded us on three sides, even Camille and I, everything else was shades of gray. Camille’s blonde hair and her normally brilliant brown eyes were depressingly lacking in color.

  There truly was nothing but rock, which must have been why our voices seemed to reverberate off of everything around us. Though there was no wind, and even the lack of any sign of weather, it was cold. It was like it was the nothingness that caused the temperature. I imagined just as it would be in space, where the only thing that made it freezing was the absence of heat. I shivered and pulled my own knees up to my chest. As I moved it caused a flurry around me, drawing my attention to the tiny particles that floated up from the ground – like dust, but more the shape of short, microscopic threads – and hung in the air. I took in a breath and watched some of the particles rush into me. They had to be the source of the incredible burning in my throat and lungs, which was finally starting to subside.

  “I don’t know,” Camille answered softly. “The last thing I remember the vampires shot me with something, and I passed out as they were trying to drag me out the window. Then I woke up here.”

  “When did you wake up?” I asked, lazily scooting across the ground and closer to Camille. The second I started toward her she flinched and began backing away. “Why are you backing away from me?”

  She looked me up and down, suspicion and worry in her now gray eyes. “Are you real?”

  I furrowed my eyebrows, shocked at the question. I feel real… “What are you talking about? Of course I am.” I began crawling forward again, and while Camille was stiff with tension, she remained in place. Now I began to worry. “What’s wrong?”

  “I woke up, and I was coughing from the burn,” she told me, and I followed the girl’s eyes to the small rocky hills across from us. “I heard a yell, and then a man came sprinting from over there. He was so thin, and dirty, and all he had on were these faded shorts, and even those were so thin I’m surprised they didn’t fall apart. It was like he’d been here for so long he’d just gone crazy. He was furious, mad, and he attacked me. I think he was going to kill me. Then I heard a thud from somewhere. And you, I mean, the wolf you, it started tearing into him, and then he just… kind of… evaporated into the air. And you, the wolf, saved me, then it looked at me and it just ran off.”

  I simply stared at her, entirely unsure of what to make of anything she said. It sounded crazy. “What the hell,” I mumbled to myself, and then glanced back up at Camille. “Do you think we’re dreaming or something?” It sure felt like some kind of a nightmare to me.

  She shrugged, and her body relaxed when she was sure I was real, or maybe that I wasn’t going to attack her. After another moment of thought she shook her head. “It feels too real. When that guy attacked me, he hit me in the mouth, and I could taste the blood.” She pulled down her bottom lip to show me where he’d hit her, and sure enough there was a small cut on the inside. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  I had to try hard to think of what happened before I woke up here, it all seemed so distant now. “Rook brought us to the warehouse to try and save you. I was trying to get to this guy, he was holding some kind of spell book – Rook said we couldn’t let him finish it. I was almost there but I didn’t make it, and these three things, like lights, they just blasted into you guys, they went inside-”

  “You guys?” Camille interrupted. “What do you mean you guys? Who else got taken?”

  “You, and Nathan, and,” I hesitated, knowing she wouldn’t like what I had to say.

  “Who else, Kyla?” she pressed, almost forcefully.

  I looked at the ground and whispered quietly, “Lacey.”

  “Fuck!” Camille shouted, though I couldn’t quite tell if she was angry, or scared, or worried. “Are they okay?” she demanded instantly.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged instantly and honestly. “The second that thing went into you I must have passed out or something, and then I woke up here with you.”

  She was quiet for a minute as she took everything in, her arms still wrapped around her knees. “You think the lights brought us here?”

  I gave a combination of a nod and a shrug. “I guess, but I don’t know why I’m here. It only went into you, I wasn’t even close to you.” We both thought about it for another minute as we stared at the particles in the air, and then my head shot up. “You don’t think…”

  Camille’s gaze wandered up and into my eyes, staring as if she could read my mind. “The blood connection?” I nodded, and she thought about it quietly. “I guess it’s possible.”

  “Possible?” I asked, and then scooted closer to her excitedly. “Think about it. If we can feel each other from twenty feet away, if you can feel my emotions like they’re your own, who’s to say when that thing dragged you here it didn’t somehow bring me with you?”

  Camille rubbed her temples harshly, giving a haggard sigh. “Then where do you think we are?”

  At that I looked around. The sky, or lack thereof, the floating particles, the eerie echo, the lack of any other form of life, the complete lack of any kind of sign of Camille’s attacker, if there was one, all of it was weird. “In your head? Maybe another planet? Or dimension? I don’t know,” I guessed, and Camille instantly chuckled at the absurdity of those ideas, but her laugh immediately subsided and her face grew grimly serious, like she was really considering it. “Right? Look around. This sure as hell isn’t like any other place I’ve ever seen, and it’s definitely not… Earth. It feels like the twilight zone out here. And it’s not every day I can be a wolf and a human at the same time.”

  Before Camille could answer there was a loud yowl that cut through the cold air in a deafening screech, and echoed at us for a while after it ended. My eyes grew wide with fear, and Camille mirrored my look as she glanced around, body tensing again. “What the hell was that?” she asked. Whatever made the noise wailed again, and this time it sounded closer. “Should we hide?”

  “Don’t have to tell me twice,” I said, and at the same time Camille and I both scrambled up, sprinting for the outcropping of rocks ahead of us.

  The collection of large and poorly fitted together boulders formed extensive and inconsistent hills with big crevices in between each rock. As we reached it we dove into the least obvious space that was big enough to fit both of us, and slunk down as far as we could into the darkness. From starting up so quickly my heart was pounding and I was out of breath, but as much as it hurt to keep myself from getting the oxygen I needed, I slowed my breathing so I wasn’t panting too loudly.

  The screeching howl echoed again, and at the sound of it both of us crammed closer against the stone at our backs. The opening of the crevice we’d dove into had been just large enough for us to get through, and it dropped off inside like a pocket so that we had to stand in order to see out of our hiding place. I began to stand now, hesitantly at first, keeping to the shadows so that whatever light shone through the opening didn’t give me away. Then I felt a tapping on my arm, and turned to face Camille, who was poin
ting at a hole in the top of the rocks behind us. Before I could give a silent protest she wormed her way through, gone a moment later in the shadow above.

  I was about to risk calling out for her, afraid of being alone here for even a second, when her arms appeared from the darkness, waving me in. As I followed her through another wail sounded in the air. It was more muffled this time, now that we were deeper in the rocks, but it was definitely close. I explored the darkness around our new hiding place, finding it was a little bigger than our last, though not quite as deep since the most I could lift myself was into a crouching position. There was a small strip of light seeping through on the bottom of the rocks on the far right side of our cave, so I crawled to it and lay down on my stomach so I could see out.

  Camille slunk over and lay by my side, peering out into the light as well. The strip appeared to cut through a thick boulder, because the light seeped in from an opening about four feet away. Through it we could see the ground on which we’d first awoken, and a small area around it almost to the hole we’d first entered the rocks through. The screeching sounded again, cut off by an exploding thud as something hit the ground like a meteor, causing a flurry of particles and chunks of dirt to go flying into the air.

  I watched the fresh crater carefully, and almost scrambled back as the creature that made it came crawling out. The first thing I saw was the head. Its skin was pitch black and smoother than glass, like fine polished obsidian. Every accentuated line of that massive feline-like head looked razor sharp – from the steep edges and furious creases on the bridge of its nose, and the foot-long, flattened out ears that ended in a needlepoint, to the four perfectly white, hand-length fangs that protruded forward out of its mouth because they were just too long. Even though this monster of a thing had the structure for a nose, the bridge ended in a small horn as sharp looking as those fangs and that pointed straight up.