Adrenaline coursed through my veins. My senses were sharper than ever, thank the stars. Survival instinct could be a powerful weapon if used properly.
“Damn it, I wish we could cast death magic like the Reapers.” Richard scoffed, equally displeased with how this entire operation was unfolding. “I mean, what’s the point of these scythes if we can’t use them to their full potential?”
“The point is for us to be able to subdue a ghoul, or in this case…” I paused to slash at my misty opponent. “Poltergeists! Plus, we’re not destined to be Reapers, or we’d be able to work a trick or two. I think the point is for us to make do with what we’ve got.”
“Why aren’t they calling for reinforcements, then?” Richard growled as he fought back against the spidery red specter.
A bright white light cut through his attacker. It spread through its form until it burst into a shower of golden flakes. The wind blew through the Lubbock Cemetery, scattering the flakes away. In the darkness of night, they resembled fireflies. I exhaled sharply, glancing briefly to our left.
Seeley stood about fifty yards away, his scythe still glimmering from the magic it had just cast. He gave us both a disapproving frown. “A little less yapping and a little more smiting, please,” he said, his tone clipped.
“Unbelievable,” Richard whispered, annoyed.
“You’re not here to complain about the lack of reinforcements. You’re here to figure out a way to survive when you can’t rely on any kind of assistance,” Seeley replied. “That’s the whole point of—” He was cut off by a ghoul that tackled him from behind.
“Crap,” I mumbled.
“Seeley, look alive, baby!” Nethissis shouted, currently facing four ghouls on her own. Rudolph kept a couple more at bay, snarling and snapping his jaws at them, warning the creatures to keep their distance. He wasn’t allowed to eat souls, as per Death’s law, so he couldn’t help much with our remaining poltergeist problem. The temptation would be too great. Both Seeley and Nethissis had made a habit of not putting Rudolph in positions where he’d have to choose between their wellbeing and his survival.
“I’m trying!” Seeley managed as he wrestled with the ghoul.
I wanted to go over and help, but the dark poltergeist was now twice as determined to take us down. Richard pointed his scythe at the entity, giving me a quick but visibly nervous glance. “This is not what they told us it would be like when we signed up,” he breathed.
“Are you scared?” I shot back with a grin, not wanting the fear to gnaw at my morale.
“Hell no. Let’s get this thing!”
We both charged toward the poltergeist but were brought to a sudden halt as it grew in size before our very eyes. From the slim smoky figure, it swelled into a monstrous ball of black fumes, big and tall enough to swallow us all. A low moan persisted at its core, where I could still see the humanoid form. It had to be some kind of projection.
“Whoa…” Richard gasped, looking up at the giant ball.
“Honey, I need some help here!” I heard Nethissis call out as she engaged the four ghouls in battle. She was fast and determined to take them down—they must’ve rejected the Reapers’ offer to join them or at least move to Herbert’s sanctuary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be fighting them.
Seeley was forced to destroy the ghoul who’d tackled him. Dusting himself off, he gave Richard and me an apologetic half-smile. “Be with you in a minute, boys. Hang in there.” His faint humor vanished completely when he saw how the poltergeist had changed. “Oh no. Okay, give me a second!” he shouted and rushed to Nethissis’s aid.
“Damn it,” I cursed under my breath.
Richard offered a shrug. “I guess there are worse ways to die, right?”
“Speak for yourself,” I replied, gripping my scythe with both hands as I looked at the poltergeist taking up most of the view ahead. “I’m a vampire, remember? This thing can’t kill me as easily as it can kill you.”
“You’re going to regret saying that,” Richard said with a devilish grin. “I’ll take the left; you take the right. We cut through it as deep as we can. We don’t stop, no matter what, until we force it back into its original form. Okay?”
I nodded. “We can’t make fools of ourselves. They prepared us for this in class.”
“Exactamundo!”
There was one thing I liked most about Richard. He could be a big kid sometimes, and I’d go along for the fun ride, but when it came down to fighting and surviving, he was beyond serious and reliable. He was the best partner I could hope for. Richard bolted and ran along the left side of the poltergeist, while I dashed right. We both moved fast, driving our arched blades into the smoky mass. I heard its scream as it pierced my very brain, but we couldn’t back down. Not when we were so close to nailing our part of the assignment. Fortunately, my mom wasn’t around to see how dangerous this mission had turned out to be.
I’d spent half of breakfast time this morning reassuring her it would be okay.
Chapter 3
Thayen
“It’s a good thing we didn’t give our parents the mission details,” Richard said with a laugh. We’d completed about twenty laps around the poltergeist, forcing it to shrink into a smaller smoke ball. Each cut caused it to scream and wail, but we didn’t let that slow us down.
On the contrary, we were getting faster with every minute that passed. Meanwhile, Seeley and Nethissis were still working on taking down the remaining ghouls. I’d lost sight of Rudolph and the two fiends he’d been dealing with, but I was too busy working with Richard against this poltergeist to worry much about everything else.
In this line of work, even a moment’s distraction could get you killed or at least seriously maimed. Sure, we had magic solutions to grow back limbs and whatnot, but nothing could take away the excruciating pain that came with such bloody outcomes.
“Come on, keep at it!” I told Richard as we passed one another during our laps around the shrinking ball of black smoke. I couldn’t see inside anymore. Every cut we delivered caused the smoke to thicken as the poltergeist closed in on itself. It had attempted to intimidate us with its sheer size, but we’d refused to be cowed.
I cut at it again, watching the smoke part over my scythe’s blade. The entity wailed once more, and I grinned, satisfied with the results of our operation so far.
“If we keep this up, it’ll subside!” Richard replied.
I was just about to agree with him when three shapes veered toward me from somewhere to my right. It happened so fast, I didn’t even realize what was going on until a brutish force rammed into me, and I was thrown clear across the cemetery like a rag doll.
“Thayen!” I heard Richard shout. Nethissis’s and Seeley’s voices followed, but they sounded so far away. My whole body ached when I tried to move. The wet grass stuck to my face, making my skin feel cold. A cricket chirped nearby, followed by the thumping sounds of a creature trudging toward me. I managed to look up and froze on the spot. A ghoul had been responsible for my brutal relocation across the cemetery.
“Uh-oh,” I murmured, my muscles tightening as I tried to get up. The blood curdled in my veins, and I nearly ran out of breath as the creature opened its horrible mouth, displaying its many crooked but ridiculously sharp fangs. A string of drool hung from its lower jaw, and the moonlight shimmered over its translucent skin.
There was no sign of Rudolph anywhere, and the others were too busy to help me. Worst of all, I couldn’t find my scythe. I must’ve dropped it during my unexpected flight or lost it during my violent landing. Pain shot through my left shoulder. I’d dislocated the damn thing, and it would take a few minutes for it to set itself. Meanwhile, the ghoul was determined to eat me alive.
“No, no, no!” I cried out and scrambled back as the creature started running at me.
I shot up the narrow path between the old marble headstones, pebbles crunching under my boots. Glancing around, I didn’t see anything that might help. I needed an edge over this mass
ive monster that was chasing me—a better environment in which to tackle it. This was a basic ghoul hunting tactic. If I was left without a weapon, I’d have to turn the location to my advantage. It was a hard thing to do in the middle of an old cemetery where all I had were gravestones and a few mausoleums.
Ahead, one such structure rose proudly between two maple trees. Made of black stone, it boasted two gnarly gargoyle sculptures mounted on its roof. Most importantly, it was big enough for me to hide in, and its doors were slightly ajar, held closed only by what looked like a very old chain.
Another ghoul screamed in the distance, its sharp voice fading into a pained echo. Seeley and Nethissis must’ve taken him down. That didn’t help me right now. I looked over my shoulder and saw the beast drawing closer, hot on my trail.
“I’m not getting my ass handed to me by a damn ghoul!” I snapped, then whizzed past the doors, breaking the rusty chain on the way in. The darkness engulfed me, and for the briefest of moments I had crystal clarity.
There were numerous stone tombs, all elevated on sturdy platforms, forming four lines ahead. I had room to hide and take the ghoul by surprise once it entered the structure. First, however, I needed to move to the opposite end of the space and get out of sight. I ran as fast as my legs could hold me, barely a shadow fluttering through the night.
Settling behind one of the tombs, I waited, holding my ragged breath as my claws extended. I listened but couldn’t hear a thing. It was too quiet, and I loathed this type of silence. There was a deadly fiend lurking nearby, and its stealth abilities were notorious—I wasn’t going to hear it coming.
I slowly turned and peeked out around the tomb’s corner. Nothing moved inside the mausoleum. Not even a draft. All I could see were the stone coffins of some rich nineteenth century Texans in four neat rows reaching toward the double doors. My ears pricked, trying to pick something up, but still… silence. Heavy, wretched silence.
Something tickled the back of my neck, and frost spread down my back as I realized I wasn’t alone anymore. And I wasn’t the one doing the hunting. I only had a second to turn my head and see the ghoul perched on the tomb I’d been hiding behind before it jumped me, and I struggled with it for what felt like forever.
Its claws sliced through my uniform, cutting the fabric and leaving deep scratches over my arms and legs. It growled as it tried to literally bite my head off, but I refused to yield. This was a fight for survival now, and I was the only one who could do something about this creature. It squirmed whenever I tried to claw my way out of this mess, the slippery devil.
It pinned me, its bulky legs pressing down on my chest and cutting off my air supply. I couldn’t move. My hands were immobilized, and its jaw unhinged as it prepared for the final blow.
I had no idea how to get myself out of this. I could smell death on its putrid tongue. My heart stopped, and a sharp pain cut through it, much like a hot knife chopping a stick of butter. I cried out as I stared the ghoul in its big, beady black eyes, and something snapped. Something came loose inside me. A desire to live. A refusal to die.
The ghoul stilled, suddenly looking quite pained.
My head hurt as I willed the creature away from me. “Leave me alone!” I shouted.
To my astonishment, it moved back. Its head twitched—its agony was almost palpable—but I also felt the force beaming from inside me. Somehow, I was controlling the fiend…
“Get back!” I said, gritting my teeth. Whatever this was, I had to ride it out until I was safe. I had to push until there was nowhere left for me to push. I saw the air trembling as the strange energy left my fingers. Whatever this was, I had to let it loose. Pressure built up in the back of my head, demanding that I release it all. “Get back!” I cried out again, and the force was so powerful that it brought the ghoul up on its hind legs.
He stumbled backward, unable to resist my command.
Seeley appeared behind him and cut him down with his scythe. The ghoul vanished into a cloud of silvery ashes, and Seeley passed right through him. Nethissis soon joined us, looking alarmed and breathless as she ran down the aisle between the middle rows of tombs.
“Thayen! Are you okay?” she asked, putting her weapon away.
I nodded slowly, my head suddenly empty. I could breathe again, but the ache in my heart persisted. It felt weird, as if the muscle itself had been cut or scratched from the inside. It only took me a few moments to remember the shard that had been left inside my heart. The Spirit Bender had been destroyed a little over twenty years ago, but Death had decided to leave the last of his soul shards inside me, since the heart muscle tissue had incorporated the crystal into it. Removal of any kind would’ve killed me, and no one had thought leaving it would have any side effects.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I murmured.
“What, the fact that you manipulated a ghoul into doing your bidding?” Seeley asked, his brow furrowed as he reached me.
Richard appeared in the doorway, disheveled and covered in dirt and grass. His eyes widened when he saw me. “You’re okay!” he blurted.
“What the hell happened to you?” I asked. “You look like you lost a fight with a lawnmower.”
“We helped him with the poltergeist.” Nethissis chuckled. “He was in over his head.”
“Hey, you said we’d only have ghouls to deal with!” Richard retorted as he trotted down the aisle, dirt falling from his shredded uniform. There were scratches all over his body, but nothing that a little bit of Kailani’s healing potions wouldn’t fix.
“Well, surprise, surprise, Richard. A field mission turned out to be more than you’d anticipated,” Seeley said, unaffected by the wolf-incubus’s irritation. Truth be told, I knew the Reapers would come to our aid. A pack of ghouls wasn’t going to take them down. They had two decades of experience together in this specialization. Lubbock was child’s play for Seeley and Nethissis, even if they had seemed slightly overwhelmed at one point or another.
Rudolph stayed by the door, crouching in order to look inside. “By the stars, he’s gotten huge,” I murmured. “Every time I look at him, I’m like… wow.”
“What went down in here?” Richard asked the million-dollar question as he reached us. He offered me a hand, and I took it, pulling myself up.
“I think our boy just spirit-bent a ghoul,” Seeley said matter-of-factly.
“Don’t even joke about it!” I snapped, fear and anger flashing through me. The rush and the power I’d experienced earlier had dissipated, leaving me a bumbling mess.
Seeley shrugged. “We all kind of saw it coming.”
“Wait, what?!” Richard croaked, taking the words right out of my mouth.
Nethissis sighed deeply, her shoulders dropping. The black-and-white fabric of her long silk dress captured some of the moonbeams sneaking through the lateral windows of the mausoleum, temporarily snagging my attention. I still remembered the day I’d first met her, back when she was alive. A copper-haired Lamia dressed in rust-colored silk—a style similar to the way her Reaper uniform had designed itself upon her appointment. Not much had changed about her since, apart from the fact that she belonged to the realm of the undead. “I’m sorry, Thayen. We kept this to ourselves because we didn’t want you or your parents or anyone else in your life to worry about it,” she said.
“Death left the shard inside your heart because—”
“It would’ve killed me to remove it. Yeah, I know that part,” I said, cutting Seeley off.
“What you don’t know is that she suspected—and we all agreed—that the shard would eventually manifest some kind of Spirit Bender ability,” he replied. “Think about it. That’s a piece of his soul you’ve been carrying inside you. Your heart grew around it, so naturally the crystal and all its spiritual energy became a part of you.”
“So the Spirit Bender isn’t really gone?” Richard asked, suddenly horrified.
“Nah, he’s gone, all right. Gone forever, no longer in existence. It’s just that this
little piece inside Thayen remained,” Seeley said, pointing a finger at my chest. “We assumed the power contained within would manifest sooner or later. We just weren’t sure when.”
“Or whether it ever would,” Nethissis added. “It’s why we didn’t tell you. We didn’t see the point of worrying you if nothing happened.”
I crossed my arms, not sure what to think of all this. “Gee, thanks for that.”
“I wonder why it manifested now, though,” Seeley muttered, eyeing me carefully. I felt like an animal at the zoo, watched and studied by various biologists. It was a weird feeling to have, and I wanted it to stop.
“The last time Thayen was in a real life-threatening situation was during our standoff with the Spirit Bender. We agreed back then that he was too young for the shard to manifest its powers; otherwise, he would’ve reacted against Spirit or Corbin. Right?” Nethissis asked Seeley, and he nodded in return.
“Yeah. That was the general consensus.”
Nethissis smiled at me. “You’re all grown up now, and I’m thinking the shard finally had room to manifest, but it needed a bit of a jumpstart. Like a real scare. A life-threatening situation, which you haven’t really experienced since you were eight. See where I’m going with this?”
“You think a ghoul trying to bite my head off kickstarted the Spirit Bender’s shard in my heart?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around the whole concept.
“Yes. Consider it your legacy, I suppose. You can bend spirits of any kind, though I am not sure of the extent of this power, given that you’re a living creature in possession of merely a fraction of what Spirit had,” Seeley said.
A Shade of Vampire 86: A Break of Seals Page 29