Phantoms of the Otherworld (In Spiritu Et Veritate)

by Reed, Zoe

  The creature’s lack of a nose caused me to inhale quietly through my own, for the first time realizing why having one wasn’t necessary. There were no smells. Not the musty aroma I expected in this frigidly dank place between the rocks. Not the stale dusty smell I’d have expected from the particles outside. Even Camille’s scent, which was normally so fragrant and intoxicating, was nonexistent. At least that could work to our advantage, I thought as I continued to watch the thing, my heart pounding in terror.

  It had a disproportionately long body, like some kind of weasel, though the shape of it was entirely feline, just like its frightening head. If it had any resemblance of a fur, it was that its glassy black skin grew out in long, porcupine-like spikes that at this moment laid flat against it, and like a mane stemmed all the way down the top of its back and down the backs of its legs. Near the bottom of every one of its four limbs, on the back above its half-claw, half-paw feet, it had a sort of dewclaw. Only, these were three inches long, and looked about as deadly as everything else on its body. The last thing to emerge was its tail. A thin, glassy whip the same length as its entire body, with those same narrow spikes along the underside of it, spread out into a lethal fan.

  As soon as it was done climbing out of the crater it created the thing stretched its legs, and then crouched so low to the ground its belly nearly dragged. Despite the position, however, it moved at lightning speed. I watched as in less than a second it had dashed nearly ten feet. Then it moved again, and stopped. Like a lizard, its gestures were executed in a sporadic flash, and every time it stopped it looked around intensely, its eyes nothing but empty black pits in its massive skull. It made its way to the boulders, checking the crevices it could fit its head into, and peering into the ones it couldn’t. The fourth cave it looked into had been the one Camille and I dove in, and I silently sighed with relief that Camille had found the opening to hide deeper, because if not we’d probably be dead.

  As it searched, I noticed something happening not far away, near where we’d woken up. The tiny particles stirred, zipping through the air to a common spot. Soon, enough of the particles had collected there to make a solid wall that glowed at the presence of the monstrous thing. It had to be some kind of a gateway, and possibly the only way out of this place. Regardless, the creature continued on, gliding up the boulders and checking a couple more crevices before it slithered down and toward the door.

  Its tail whipped through the air with a curious flick as it neared the portal in a cautiously crouched stalk. It studied the glow for a minute, looking hesitant at the sight of it, and then extended its muzzle toward it, gradually until it came into contact. The very moment the tip of the monster’s snout met the portal there was a thunderous crack, and the thing’s entire body lit up with an electric spark. It must have been painful, because the creature stumbled back in frantic convulsions. Once the electricity faded it faced the glow, digging its claws into the solid ground so furiously its long nails disappeared into the dirt, and then it let out a demented and violently deafening roar.

  The wretched sound came to an abrupt stop as the creature suddenly looked off into the barren distance. It turned, slithered to the end of our dead-end gorge of boulders and stopped again, still staring off toward whatever it had heard or seen that we couldn’t. Then, as quickly as it moved it rolled into a ball and exploded into the air, transformed into that same energetic light that I’d seen enter Camille, and disappeared into the luminescence of this strange world.

  I lay there silently, too scared to even move, and Camille seemed to be feeling the same way. There was something more menacing in this world than the man who’d attacked Camille, and I’d never dreamed of anything more heinous looking in my most horrifying nightmares. Even though the creature was gone, I could still see the portal glowing bright, and it didn’t look like it was going to fade. It also didn’t look like we were going to be able to get through it, seeing as the creature couldn’t either. What appeared to be our only way out might electrocute us if we even touched it.

  We must have stayed quiet and still for another ten minutes before Camille whispered in a quivering voice, “Was that the thing that went inside me?”

  “I don’t know. I think.” I got off my stomach now and sat against the wall beside us. “I never saw that thing though. When I saw it, it was just the light.” I shuddered at picturing that beast crawling about, looking for us. It was evil, and it was terrifying.

  Camille sat up without saying anything in return, and scooted back to sit at my side. When she backed up out of the tiny light that seeped through the rocks she disappeared into the darkness, and even though I could feel the girl next to me, I couldn’t see her. After another minute I started to panic. “Can we get out of here? It’s too freaky in the dark.”

  I heard her shift in the gloom, and got the feeling like she was watching me. “Can you not see anything?”

  I felt something brush my nose, as she must have been waving a hand in front of my face. The way she asked the question made me feel like something was wrong. “No, can you?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was strangely thoughtful, and a second later she shifted again. “Arm wrestle with me.”

  “What?” I asked in shocked protest.

  She pulled on my arm, trying to get me to lie down. “Come on, just real quick.”

  With a sigh I lay down where she was directing me and stuck out my hand just to humor her. As she grabbed it and said ‘go’ I pushed, trying to pin her arm down.

  “Are you really trying?” she asked, though her curiosity sounded mildly accusing.

  “Yes,” I grunted as I tried to throw some of my weight into it. “I’m really trying.”

  With that she easily shoved my hand down and let go. “I think it’s because your other half ran off.”

  “The wolf?” I asked, sitting back up and leaning against the rock.

  Camille moved, and a second later I felt the girl’s shoulder as she sat next to me. “Yeah. When I was growing up we learned a little bit about different theories on being a werewolf. For a bitten werewolf like you the theory was that Changing caused a sort of split, like in your soul or something, whereas for born werewolves like me, the split doesn’t exist.”

  “You think wherever we are it split up normal me and werewolf me?” I asked, and in the dinge I heard Camille ‘mhm.’ “Then I’m just a human again.” Since being Changed, I’d never considered the ‘what ifs’ of if I could be human again or had never been Changed, but now that it was happening, I didn’t like it. Then a thought hit me, and I started to panic. “Camille, I’m still out there.” It was strange referring to the wolf as myself, but I didn’t know what else to call it. “What if that thing kills me? What’s going to happen to human me, if the wolf me dies?”

  “Shit, I don’t know.” Camille sounded just as worried as I felt, and I heard her shifting toward the exit. “Come on, let’s see if we can find you.”

  I followed her down into the first cave we’d been in, and then back up to the outside world. The monster that had clearly been searching for us earlier was nowhere in sight, and as we strode to the entrance of our inlet and scanned the flatlands around us, neither was the wolf. I looked back over my shoulder to the boulders, and then began climbing up to the very top. When I finally reached it I could see forever away, and I squinted into the brightness of everything around me, doing a three-sixty as I searched for myself.

  “See anything?” Camille called from the ground below.

  I could see everything, but none of what I was looking for. It was like looking over an ocean of barren nothingness, with scattered boulder formations like the one I was standing on now. Except, unlike peering out over the ocean, where the horizon cuts off how far you can see before your actual eyesight does, there was no horizon here. The world I could see was limitless, never-ending. It went so far that what I assumed were more hills of rocks looked like tiny specks, like shady stars in this vast, bright galaxy.

  I starte
d climbing back down as I answered, “No.”

  “I can’t decide if that’s good news or bad news.” Camille offered a hand as I hopped to the ground from the last big boulder.

  “Me either.” I plopped down dejectedly and rested my back against the rocks. “But from up there you can see for thousands of miles, and I didn’t see that beast anywhere. I think it’s long gone.” I’d been staring up at Camille as I spoke, and now, thinking of an idea, I stood up to meet her eye to eye. “I wonder if you can Phase.” She just shrugged, not really getting that I was suggesting she do it. “Well, try it,” I told her more obviously. She just stared at me unwillingly for a few seconds, and I figured she was being shy since it was just the two of us. “I won’t look.”

  “It’s not you,” she told me, putting her hands on her hips and looking around suspiciously. “I don’t want to be caught naked if that thing comes back.”

  “That thing’s gone,” I tried to reassure her, but she squinted at me disapprovingly. “What if there are other madmen out here, and we get attacked again? I’m just a human now. We need to know if you can protect us.” She scowled at me for a minute, but it succeeded in getting her to cooperate.

  “Fine,” she whined, and then made a swirling motion with her finger. “Turn around.”

  I did as I was told and spun around so I had my back to her, waiting patiently for her to Phase, or not. A second after I turned, Camille’s jacket draped over my shoulder, and I looked back at her with a raised eyebrow.

  “Can you hold my stuff?” she asked with an innocent smile. “If we need to run I don’t want my clothes left behind.”

  I nodded and pulled the jacket off my shoulder so I could drape it over my arms. A second later her socks fell over my shoulder and onto the jacket. Then another moment later her jeans, followed by her shirt. I’d just been holding everything absentmindedly until her bra dropped onto the pile of clothes in my arms. That’s when my heart jumped, and when I was holding her underwear a second later the blood rushed to my cheeks at the varied feelings I was getting, particularly in between my legs.

  Sure, I’d seen Camille naked plenty of times when we ran together, and I’d even admit to myself that I’d sneaked a not-so-innocent peek or two. Or three. But there was something about the way each article of clothing had successively fallen over my shoulder that was tantalizing. It caused me to scold myself for getting distracted. I didn’t mind the inappropriate thoughts. In fact I rather liked them, even though I couldn’t blame the lustful stirring on the animal, but now was the worst possible time to be thinking about anything other than getting out of this place.

  A nudging on my elbow pulled me from my daydreaming, and I grinned when I turned and saw a dark wolf. “This is good news.”

  The wolf nodded, and then nudged me back around so that I had my back turned once again. “Thanks,” Camille said a second later, reaching around me to grab her first item of clothing.

  Christ, Kyla, hold it together, I cursed to myself as Camille reaching over my shoulder caused me to rouse again. I could only imagine how close to me her bare body had to be in order for her to be able to reach her clothes, and I got the sudden urge to hold them farther away, in hopes she’d brush against me. I couldn’t do it though, and all too soon I was turning around to give back the jacket.

  “What now?” she asked, and after she’d pulled her jacket back on she sat with her back against the rocks. I was about to answer when, as if somebody flipped a switch, the world around us went dark. The white sky turned black, and now the ground and the boulders glowed a pale gray – the only source of a small amount of light. Was this supposed to be night? “What, no sunset?” Camille asked sarcastically, as if in response to my thoughts.

  “It’s so weird,” I whispered as I sat down beside her.

  “Yeah,” she nodded in agreement. “It would be pretty cool if it wasn’t so fucking creepy here. What should we do now?”

  With a shiver at the chill, I shrugged and pulled my knees up. “All we can do is wait.”

  Abby and the others had managed to pull both the blonde and brown wolves onto two of the cots they’d found lying around the warehouse. Now she stood there silently, glancing from the wolves to her father, and then back to the wolves.

  “Can you get that thing out of her?” Abby asked her dad and pointed to Camille. He was the best warlock she knew. If anyone could save them, it was him.

  He nodded, though it was clear on his face and by the way he was ranting profanities in his head that he didn’t like it. “Maybe, but I need to know exactly what I’m dealing with.” He cast a furious eye at the one and only prisoner they’d managed to keep alive, the vampire with the spell book. Before he began to question him though, he turned to Abby’s mom. “Joann, take everyone back with you and start a search for the other two. Call me when you’ve found them. I’ll stay here with Lahni and the wolves.”

  Abby glanced at her father curiously when she noticed she’d been left out of the instructions, and from his mind she gathered he knew he couldn’t force her to leave. She watched as her mother simply nodded, and every one of the Council members followed her out in grave silence. As they left, Abby’s eyes flicked over to Rook and the werewolves. Three of the wolves had remained that way, and now lay on the hard floor with their heads resting on their paws, watching with eyes full of worry. The other two, one Abby knew was Lacey’s father, and a man with black hair, blue eyes, and a fierce looking scar on his face, had Changed back, and now sat nearby on the edge of another cot waiting, for something to happen.

  The vampire had been placed in the metal cage out of which Abby had pulled Camille, and knowing trying to escape would be a death wish, he sat in it shivering and clinging to his book. Now Abby’s father turned on him, glaring as he growled through his teeth, “Tell me everything. What did you summon?”

  The vampire flinched under the warlock’s hard stare. “Phantoms,” he confessed instantly, and when he received a still cold, unsatisfied stare back he continued. “Soul-eating phantoms called Shadow Savages. They couldn’t survive on our plane so we needed the werewolves for possession.”

  “Why hasn’t this one woken up?” Abby’s father asked sharply, pointing to Camille.

  “I-I don’t know,” he admitted, and his voice quavered with fear. “When they entered the wolves they were supposed to take their souls somewhere – th-th-they have their own plane of existence – to kill them, that way the wolf’s body would be empty. They could just take over. It must not have killed her yet.”

  Abby’s heart sank at this information. What did that mean for the other two?

  “And this other one?” Her father pointed to Kyla.

  The vampire shrugged his still shaking shoulders. “I don’t know, I swear. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “The other two, they’re out there now, feeding?” Abby’s father asked, and sighed angrily when the vampire nodded. “This shouldn’t be the Council’s priority,” he mumbled to himself, thinking about all the humans the Phantoms could feed off of as he glanced down at the two wolves.

  The comment was met with a deep growl from one of the Pack members, but he ignored it. Instead, he held his hand out to the vampire. “Give me the book, we’re done with you.” As the vampire handed the book through the bars of the cage there was the scraping sound of metal, and the dark-haired man with Lacey’s father picked up a sword off the ground. “You’re not killing him,” Abby’s father told him as he took a step toward the cage. “The Council is not an executioner.”

  “We’re not a part of the Council,” the man muttered with an angry stare.

  “Sit down, wolf,” Abby’s father warned, his voice sharp and his tone purposeful, and she heard him mentally prepare an incantation in case he needed to counter an attack.

  With a sad, dim look in his eyes, Eli reached up from his seat and grabbed the man’s arm. “For Nathan,” the man protested quietly. “And Lacey.”

  “Sit down, David,”
Eli whispered.

  It was clear David didn’t want to obey as his mouth set into an angry scowl, but he dropped the sword, which fell to the ground with a metallic clatter, and sat back down.

  When Abby’s father was certain David wasn’t going to get up again he turned back to the vampire. “If the council hears about you ever going near a spell book again, you won’t be this lucky.” Then he turned toward the warehouse entrance to get things he needed from the car, calling back to Abby over his shoulder. “Abby, set him free.”

  She waited until he disappeared out the door, and then made her way over to the sword that David had dropped. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her as she picked it up. They thought she was going to kill the vampire herself.

  As she made her way over to the cage she reassured them, at the same time casting a warning to their prisoner, “It’s just in case he tries anything.” She undid the bar that kept the cage door shut, and followed the vampire with the tip of the blade as he began to crawl out. “The other wolves, they’re gone?”

  The vampire stood before her, and it was clear by the look on his face that he knew what she meant. They were gone. Dead. His nod filled Abby with a biting fury. Lacey, the fun, playful girl she’d known since Lacey first got into high school was gone, and this asshole killed her. Abby took a deep breath, clenching the fist of her free hand, and then hit him as hard as she could in the face. The vampire barely even flinched, though he was clearly surprised. It still made her feel a little better, and she would have hit him again if it hadn’t felt like she’d punched a brick wall.

  “You’re lucky he’s got rules. Now leave.” She glared at him, and as he instantly took off toward one of the holes the Phantoms had made in the wall she shook out her hand. “Goddammit that hurt so good.”