“I’m not touching any of you,” said Mackie.
“Quiet,” hissed Ilsa.
A quiet whining noise came from somewhere among the gravestones. The small hairs on my arms stood up, and I looked around for the source, one hand gripping the candle in my pocket.
“There it is,” muttered Ilsa. “There—there.”
She turned on the spot and pointed at a spot between two huge headstones. I squinted, seeing nothing more than a flicker in the spirit realm. I trod closer, and Ilsa caught my arm. Her forehead had ignited with a blue glow, and a similar glow came from her pocket.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“That’s no ghost.”
Lloyd let out a low curse. The shadows at the edges of the cemetery walls moved. Then several pairs of eyes blinked from within, paws treading towards us. The ground trembled. Not ghosts.
“Hellhounds!” yelped Morgan.
With a howl, one of the hellhounds jumped at us. I dove to the ground, throwing myself behind a headstone. The beast collided with the stone, knocking into it hard enough to crack the surface. I rolled over on the ground, digging in my pocket. Candles wouldn’t do much use against hellhounds. They couldn’t be tapped in a summoning circle. But I’d bet they weren’t immune to witch magic.
“Don’t look directly into their eyes,” Ilsa warned, a knife in her hand. “And don’t get bitten!”
I grabbed my own knife, looking around for Lloyd. He’d pulled Mackie behind a headstone, out of the hellhounds’ path—but Morgan, Ilsa and I were right in their way. And there were at least half a dozen of them, solid shadows more the size of wild boars or cows than regular dogs. Fear trickled down my spine as a pair of black eyes scanned us, caught my gaze.
The hellhound roared, leaping at me. Evelyn’s magic surged to the surface, and a whipcord of magic appeared in my hands, shimmering silver. I slashed outwards at the beast’s neck. Its head came free in a spray of blood, splattering the headstones with blue-red droplets.
“Way to go, Jas,” Lloyd said, kicking the hellhound’s body and causing its buddy to stumble. He threw a knife between the second hellhound’s eyes, but the beast moved its head so the blade sank into its cheek instead. “Ah, crap.”
Morgan, having flung himself out of the hellhound’s path, stabbed wildly with a knife at its side before it could jump at Lloyd, while Ilsa attacked it from behind. Her hands glowed with blue light, her face pale and scared. Her Gatekeeper talent was mostly helpful against ghosts, not solid monsters. To be honest, the same could be said for the rest of us, too. But between the three of them, the hellhound was trapped, leaking blood from a dozen wounds.
At the sight of the blood, the other hellhounds moved in, growling louder than the eerie whining noise still audible in the background. Then two of them collapsed on the spot with pained growls. Before I could see who’d managed to get a hit in, a heavy body crashed into me from behind, flattening me to the ground. I swore and kicked out, trying to roll onto my front. The hellhound’s teeth snapped inches from my skull, and panic roared through me, Evelyn’s magic riding the wave. The whip reappeared in my hands, rippling with magical energy, and sliced over my head, causing the hellhound’s dead weight to sink onto me.
I groaned and kicked out, blue-red blood splattering the ground beside me. Hellhound blood wasn’t deadly, but their drool contained a poison that caused death within a few hours if it got into an open wound. I kicked again. Drool hit the floor inches away, sizzling and deadly. I rolled to avoid it, managing to push the hellhound’s weight to the side. Death by hellhound drool would be an undignified end, and one near-death by poison was enough for a lifetime, thanks.
The hellhound’s weight lifted a little as Lloyd gave it a firm shove, a blood-slick knife in his hand. “You okay, Jas?”
“Sure.” I kicked at the hellhound’s body until I could wriggle free. “A little bloody, but I’ll live.”
“Hey!” Morgan shouted. “Get over here, Jas—it’s Mackie.”
My heart lurched. I sidestepped the hellhound’s body and ran to where Morgan and Ilsa crouched between two graves. At their feet was Mackie, who lay limp, covered in blood. No.
“She used her psychic attack on two of them,” said Morgan, his face pale. “But another got in behind her. Have you got a healing spell?”
“Psychic attack?” I echoed. Oh—that’s why they collapsed. She must have found a way to attack them without jolting the whole spirit line and knocking out any nearby necromancers. “Yeah, I have—somewhere—”
I frantically searched among the spells on my wrist, but the darkness made it near-impossible, and the fog appeared to have reached ground level. Movement stirred within, and a pair of huge eyes blinked. The two remaining hellhounds were twice the size they’d been before. How’s that possible?
“They feed on death energy,” Ilsa said. “Hang on. Morgan, don’t—”
A sword flashed, bright blue light igniting the gloom. Ivy Lane dived over the graveyard wall, her blade slicing upwards into the nearest hellhound’s flank. As she did so, I drew on Evelyn’s magic again, forming a whipcord that caught the last hellhound around the neck. Despite its size, its head came free with ease, and its heavy body slumped to the ground.
Ivy jumped to land next to the fallen bodies.
“Thanks,” I said. “None of us were armed enough to deal with so many.”
“No kidding.” Ivy shook her blade, which gleamed with luminescence beneath the blood. “Please tell me one of you has a spell to get rid of those monsters. I don’t know the number for the local clean-up crew and I reckon they’d have a few questions.”
“I have a spell, but—Mackie’s hurt.” I grabbed a candle from my pocket to shine the light over my wrists, found a healing spell, and tossed it to Morgan.
Ilsa watched him activate the spell, biting her lip. “We have to destroy those bodies before they attract more Unseelie.”
“Gotcha.” Ilsa knew all about Faerie and its assorted monsters. Grabbing a dissolution spell, I threw it at the nearest hellhound’s corpse, which immediately dissolved into ashes. I’d caused a few accidents trying to get that particular spell right, but now I was glad of the hours I’d invested.
When I’d destroyed the last hellhound’s corpse, I ran back to the others. “Mackie?”
Her eyes half-opened. “Bastard,” she said.
“She’s fine,” said Morgan, a note of relief in his voice. They might bicker a lot, but in the last month, he and Mackie had made a lot of progress.
I sagged against the nearest headstone in relief. “Thank god. I should have known it was a setup.” I’d have thought the boss would have, too, but the five of us could have handled almost any other threat. Even Lady Montgomery wouldn’t have expected hellhounds.
“What were you doing out here to begin with?” Ivy wanted to know. “I know you’re necromancers, but this place isn’t exactly hospitable.”
“We kept getting complaints about a howling ghost who appears here every night at midnight,” I explained. “Evidently, someone mistook a hellhound for a ghost.” Not that we ever did find the source of the weird eerie wailing noise.
Ivy’s mouth thinned. “Did you see the ghost? Hellhounds aren’t intelligent enough to prank humans. Someone brought them here.”
“Nope. I looked in the spirit realm, too.”
“Same here,” Ilsa said. “Nothing was there.”
“Where did those bastards come from?” Lloyd asked, frowning at Ivy. I’d not had the chance to introduce the two of them yet, and Ivy looked downright scary with her huge bloodstained sword.
“Hellhounds are independent,” Ivy said. “They used to belong to Faerie’s Wild Hunt, but now they roam between this realm and the liminal spaces working for anyone who’ll feed them fresh corpses. They make good attack dogs.”
“And can grow to the size of a tank,” Lloyd added.
“We’re on a spirit line, so they must have come from a liminal space,” Ilsa said
decisively. “We should go in and check, Jas.”
“Sure.” I turned on my spirit sight, and Ilsa joined me. Considering her unusual magic, I’d wondered if Ivy might be able to see the spirit line herself, but then again, she wasn’t a necromancer.
After thoroughly scanning the cemetery, I blinked back into my body. “Nothing. Dead, undead or otherwise.”
Ivy swore. “Right, I’m going to make sure there aren’t any more of those nasties roaming around. You guys should probably head back.” She jerked her head at Mackie, who’d managed to sit up against a headstone.
Ilsa said, “Morgan, help Mackie back to the guild. I want to have another look around. Just a quick one.”
Morgan turned to her. “You think I’m leaving you alone out here?”
“I’ll stay with her,” I said. “Just one minute. Lloyd—”
“I’ll go back with them,” Lloyd said, to my surprise. “But only if you promise you’ll be back in ten minutes, no more.”
“Promise,” I said.
The others left the cemetery via the gates—or in Ivy’s case, by jumping over the wall.
“See anything?” I asked Ilsa.
“Nope, but I don’t think it’s in the spirit realm.” Ilsa dropped her voice. “It’s actually possible to summon hellhounds, accidentally or deliberately, through blood magic.”
My stomach turned over. “Blood magic. You said you used it before?”
“In an emergency,” she said. “I think using blood in a summoning is like a kind of signal that attracts anything that happens to be hanging around between the worlds. Those hellhounds appeared directly in the middle of a city without being seen or trampling on any humans. I’d say it’s likely they were summoned here.”
“And if that’s the case, there’s got to be a place the person did the ritual,” I said, nodding. “The howling ghost—if it exists—can’t have done it, though. Must be someone living.”
“It’s got to be close.” She moved around the graves, and I followed, my skin prickling.
Blood magic. The last fury attack hadn’t been due to someone summoning them with blood magic. Instead, they’d come through the spirit line of their own free will when the Soul Collector had torn it open.
I almost hoped it was blood magic, rather than the alternative.
There was a church at the end of the graveyard which seemed an obvious site for foul play, but the door was locked, and hellhounds couldn’t walk through walls. Figuring it’d be easier to search as a ghost, I tapped into the spirit realm and found myself face to face with Evelyn Hemlock.
I nearly jumped out of my body. She floated beside me, her dark brown hair streaming behind her ears, her eyes glowing blue-grey, entirely too alert for someone who was supposed to be in hibernation. How long had she been hovering next to me, listening to every word I spoke?
“There’s no ritual here,” she said to me.
I frowned at her. “And you’d know?”
“Our magic would.” She spoke matter-of-factly. “Always.”
“So… they came out of a liminal space. The hellhounds.”
It wasn’t Leila Hemlock. Her soul was gone. But only a witch could have conducted a ritual, right?
“The walls are coming down,” she said in that same calm tone. “Especially here.”
“What does that mean? Did the Soul Collector cause permanent damage?”
Her body was already fading, leaving nothing behind but grey smoke. I sighed, blinking back into my body.
Ilsa stood close to me, her shoulders tense. “That was her? Your… your other soul?”
“You saw her?”
“I did.” She gave me a brief glance. “I thought you weren’t speaking to one another, considering she… you know. Tried to possess you.”
“She didn’t summon the hellhounds,” I said. “No, I think they came from a liminal space if anywhere at all. She mentioned the walls being thin here.”
“Because of the Soul Collector,” she said. “Have you travelled on this line before?”
“Not this one,” I said. “Just—”
“The Hemlocks’ one,” she finished. “I think that’s the one I used when I first travelled on a spirit line. So… does having two souls give you a boost? My Gatekeeper’s power stops me from being separated from my body, so I’m guessing it’s like that for you, too.”
Ilsa made no secret of her academic interest in my second soul. She’d probably been saving up questions to ask me over the holidays, but the last thing I wanted was to chat about shades while standing on a spirit line beside the ashes of a half-dozen dead hellhounds. “Yeah, being bound to Evelyn makes us both stronger. I think my magic lets me cross between realms, too. But I don’t know how to check if there’s a liminal space here.”
“Not worth the risk if there’s more hellhounds over there,” Ilsa said. “We’re better off reporting to the guild so they know not to send patrols this way without backup.”
“Good idea.” Liminal spaces were invisible to sight, but for all I knew, maybe my magic could find them.
Since Evelyn wasn’t in a chatty mood, there was one person to ask: Cordelia Hemlock.
6
The following morning dawned as dull and grey as the previous day. I hadn’t slept all night, too shaken by the experience with the hellhounds and Mackie’s close call to relax, and ended up leaving at the crack of dawn for the Hemlocks’ forest just to get it over with.
Evelyn remained as taciturn as ever, making it difficult to tell if she approved of my plan or not. I wasn’t sure I believed her claim that hellhounds had jumped out of the spirit line of their own accord, but Ilsa and I had found no signs of any ritual activity. Maybe something else had drawn them to the cemetery. Either way, I needed to consult the Hemlocks to know whether it was possible for me to track down liminal spaces with or without my body.
Reaching Waverley Bridge, I turned on my Hemlock magic and felt my way through to the forest beyond this realm. A moment later, the chill air disappeared, replaced with relative warmth. I’d worn my necromancer coat so nobody would question why I was wandering near an abandoned train station early in the morning, but climbing over tree roots in a long coat was a disaster waiting to happen.
“Hey,” I called into the trees. “Come on, Cordelia, you must know I’m here to see you. You can’t stay mad at me forever.”
Silence filled the space between the thick oak trees. I lifted my cloak off the ground, and trod forward a few steps. “Evelyn and I wanted to ask you something important about my magic.”
“We did not,” Evelyn muttered in my ear, but I’d said the magic word. The trees disappeared, to be replaced with a huge cave. The back wall was covered in shimmering green glyphs, holding a hole in the universe together. All around, faces stared from the rock, and from the stone sculpture in the centre, Cordelia Hemlock’s craggy face and pit-like eyes appeared.
“Evelyn,” she said.
“Yes?” Evelyn responded, through my mouth. Oh, great.
“I’m glad you decided to return to us,” Cordelia said.
Unbelievable. Even if I believed that Evelyn hadn’t been out to destroy the world as we knew it, Cordelia knew perfectly well that she’d forced me out of my body on more than one occasion, assaulted my fellow guild members, and pretended to help Leila Hemlock in a scheme that might easily have backfired on both of us. Yet for all that, in Cordelia’s eyes, Evelyn was the true Hemlock heir.
“It was my idea,” I said, elbowing her aside. “We’d like to know if it’s possible to use the Hemlock magic to cross into liminal spaces and other realms, and how to do it.”
Cordelia blinked her pitch-dark eyes. “That’s far beyond your level. You have no training.”
“Tossing the Soul Collector into a rift between worlds is way beyond my level too, but I still did it,” I said. “A bunch of hellhounds attacked us at the cemetery last night. They appeared from nowhere. No evidence of a ritual, so I assume they’re hanging out in a limi
nal space somewhere. Thing is, it’s the same spirit line the Soul Collector tried to break.”
“That line?” she said, in surprisingly dismissive tones. “Hellhounds have been roaming the liminal spaces since the invasion, if not longer.”
“It was a calculated attack. Also, are hellhounds related to furies?”
“Not in the slightest,” Cordelia responded. “They’re from Faerie. Furies are not.”
“They can both scare people half to death by looking into their eyes,” I said. “They can also be summoned using blood magic.”
“Who told you that?”
Ah, crap. Ivy and Isabel might have met the Hemlocks before, but Ilsa definitely hadn’t. Her Gatekeeper family had their own repository of knowledge, though, straight from the Council of Twelve.
“Everyone knows about blood magic,” I said. “The guild might not allow it, but rumours get started for a reason. It’s also how the first fury attacks happened last year. You know that.”
“Yes, but I assumed you’d have the sense not to involve yourself with people who practise illegal magic.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Do you hear yourself? You can’t paint yourselves as the exceptions to every rule. You know perfectly well what’ll happen to me if I’m caught red-handed with an extra soul. Frankly, I think a little blood magic is tame by comparison.”
“Jacinda,” Cordelia said warningly.
“I’m not actually doing blood magic,” I said. “For the record. But either someone else is, or those hellhounds came from a liminal space. Our magic allows me to cross realms, with or without my body. Right?”
“Anyone can enter a liminal space if they know where it is,” she growled. “I would advise you to keep your head down until the aftermath of the Soul Collector’s attack has faded.”
“It won’t fade,” I said. “You know that, right? You might live in a bubble, but the rest of the world doesn’t. Things change, they have side effects. The mages think the Ancients will strike again and are trying to rewrite the laws because of it. Sane, rational people are panicking and thinking there’ll be a war. Lady Harper did, too.”
Witch's Spirit (The Hemlock Chronicles Book 3) Page 6