Gatekeeper (8 page)

Weaving fast through the gravestones were the shadowy figures, eyes glowing red, coming straight for her. Terror rendered her immobile. Pure malevolence emanated from the beings. Her heart beat violently against her chest. She wrenched her gaze away from the beings and searched the graveyard. Where was he? Where was the ghost? He’d told her he would help her! A swarm of soul collectors descended on her. Scratching, clawing, hissing. Something swiped her face, hard. She cried out and shielded her head with her hands. Sharp claws dug into her leg—and then as quickly as they had come, they were gone.

Jillian looked and the ghost was there, salient against the stormy sky, bathed in an eerie silvery light. His dark hair whipped against his sculpted cheekbones in the vicious wind. Something fierce shone in his narrowed eyes. He lunged at the soul collectors, dragging them off her, fighting them like a wild animal, fading in and out in the flares of wild lightning.

“Look, Jillian! Turn and look!” His voice was strained. Could they hurt him too? Part of her couldn’t tear her gaze away from him fighting the beings but she had to. She had to see what he was trying to show her. She whirled around. An obelisk rose
against the tumultuous sky, white against the blue-black clouds. A marble soldier stood sentinel at the top…

“Jillian!”

Her eyes snapped open. Theo stared open-mouthed, his brown eyes wide.

“What happened to you? Geez!” He gaped at her forehead where the shadow spirits had taken a swipe at her.

Trembling, she forced herself out of her utter state of immobility and brought her fingers to her head. It was wet with blood.
The soul collectors…
But that didn’t matter. She’d seen something. Something that could help find her sister. “Amy…she’s in a cemetery. And there’s a monument there. One with a soldier on top.” Her voice was ragged. Her mind raced furiously.
Benton. Did those things hurt Benton?

“What else?” Theo’s voice brought her back. “Jillian, what else?”

“A mausoleum.” She closed her eyes and tried to picture the cemetery. Images of the soul collectors assailed her. A shiver shook her shoulders. “The monument.” That was the important thing. “Yes. Something about the monument with a soldier on top.”

Benton…

“A Civil War soldier?”

Realization flooded her in a wave. “Yes. A Civil War soldier. It was surrounded by a circle of granite grave markers. The kind that are flush with the ground.”

Theo began typing furiously on his laptop. He spun it around. “Is this the place?”

Jillian stared at the obelisk—the same obelisk she had seen in her vision. “Yes. Yes! That’s it!”

He snatched up the phone. “Dispatch? Theo Carter. Send anyone in the area of Mt. Olivet Cemetery to the Confederate Circle. Send an ambulance and the rescue response team. And do it now.”

He looked hard at Jillian. “Girl, you better be right about this.” He started around the desk but then stopped. “Oh. I need that button back.”

Still in a state of shock, she handed it to him. “Thank you, Theo.”

“Come on. Let’s go find your sister.” He darted out the door.

Shaky, Jillian reached for her purse, dropping the original button into it alongside Boo as she did so. Stealing it had been easier than she would have thought, given the circumstances.

* * * * *

Jillian gunned the Jag, passing the Metro Nashville police cars and easily leaving them well behind her as she sped toward Mt. Olivet Cemetery. She glanced at the GPS screen just below her dash. It wasn’t far.

Her stomach clenched as she turned into the main gate. The narrow road was steep and winding. Although her windshield wipers slashed at the rain, a wet, gray sheet of water hindered her vision.

Lightning rent the air, quickly followed by a loud crash of thunder. “Oh God,” Jillian said under her breath. The rain would be flooding the breathing tube and now that dusk came earlier and earlier, it would be dark soon.

As the wipers raked away the driving rain, the obelisk came into view. Jillian’s heart raced. Her sister was here. She knew it.

She just prayed Amy was still alive.

Jillian stopped the car and snatched the button out of her purse. Boo’s black head poked up. There was something expectant in her round, dark eyes. Jillian gave the dog a reassuring rub to the head. “You have to wait here.”

She swallowed against the lump in her throat. What if Amy was dead? How would it feel to know her sister was gone? An ugly image of the interior of a funeral home with a coffin and flower arrangements rose up hard in her mind. Jillian squeezed her eyes shut and refused to think of that.

With resolve, she stepped out of her warm car and into the bone-chilling rain, but only managed a few steps.

When she saw what awaited her, her resolve was short lived.

Chapter Five

Jillian froze. Standing all around her were the ghosts she had seen in her vision. Only this time, they were far more terrifying. Her heart sank. The graveyard was enormous and everywhere there were ghosts, gray and pleading, coming toward her in their burial shrouds. Soldiers, men in suits, women in long nightgowns, some barefoot.

Jillian shrank back. Her pulse rioted. Where was the ghost? He’d promised to protect her.

Boo yapped frantically from inside the car. Jillian squeezed the button, holding it protectively to her chest. She trembled.

Her mouth went cotton dry. These ashen ghosts did not look like Benton. There was no life in them. They looked like soulless revenants. Fear surged inside her. How was she ever going to find Amy?

Her gaze darted to the left. One of the ghosts nearest her was coming closer. Dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and black tie, he would have looked like a normal man but for the fact that he was dead. His face was an eerie blue shade of pale and his clothes appeared faded, dusted with grave grime. An unearthly moan emanated from his throat as a long, thin hand reached for her.

Jillian gasped and darted out of his reach, slipping on the wet winter grass. One knee hit the ground but she managed to clamber to her feet. She was cold and wet and shaking—and afraid.

It was just as she’d feared. She had known if she opened up to her psychic ability this very thing would happen.

“I can’t help you,” she muttered, avoiding eye contact with the man. She skittered away but there were so many others, all ambling toward her, their mouths moving but without coherent sound.

“What do you want from me?” Her voice sounded hysterical and highpitched.

The words didn’t seem to register with them. They just kept steadily progressing toward her, reminding her of some awful scene from
Night of the Living Dead
.

Her heart thudded relentlessly against her rib cage. The ghosts were closing in and there was nowhere to run. They had completely surrounded the Jag, preventing her from getting back into the car. Boo howled.

Jillian felt a wave of static energy rush up her spine. One was behind her. Close.

She sucked in a breath. Did she dare look? She trembled.

Slowly, she turned her head and glanced behind her, expecting the worst.

Benton!

Relief flooded her from head to toe.

His gaze was dark, threatening. He stood ready to fight, his dark hair soaked with rain and clinging in black strands to his head. His eyes narrowed into slits, his expression daring the revenants to come any closer. In comparison to them he looked so, so
real
.

Any other time Jillian would have been terrified of him. Not now. Now she knew without a doubt this man—this spirit—was her rescuer.

Cautiously she backed toward him, her heels sinking into the wet earth with every step. She didn’t stop until her back found the hard wall of his chest. Two strong hands cupped her biceps with a vibrant energy that sent electricity rushing through her body.

His mouth brushed her ear. “Close your eyes. Find your sister. Look for the name on the gravestone.” His raspy drawl was an unmistakable command.

Jillian obeyed. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe but she couldn’t. The idea of the ghosts surrounding her, the solid spirit behind her and the threat of the soul collectors sent a wave of terror through her that made her want to retreat and run. But she had to find Amy. She had to do this.

She
could
do this.

Determined, she summoned her ability.

It was as if she were falling through a tunnel, soaring over the tops of the grave markers, over the cemetery itself. She directed her sight.
Find the place where Amy is buried.
Find it
, she told herself over and over. And then her focus was drawn, fast and furious, straight down to a stone…

February 24, 1838–December 16, 1864

Brigadier General 20th Tennessee Infantry, CSA

Thomas Benton Smith.

Jillian’s eyes flew open.

Benton’s grave?

Sirens wailed as the others arrived.

The ghosts were gone. Benton was gone. She stood alone, shivering in the rain.

As Theo sprinted toward her clad in a yellow raincoat, she managed to summon enough wherewithal to remember she had, once again, stolen evidence. She slipped the button into her pants pocket. A wiry little man dressed in jeans and a jacket ran behind him.

“This is the groundskeeper. Where is she, Jillian? Do you know?”

She nodded. “Benton Smith,” Jillian told him. “She’s in Thomas Benton Smith’s grave. He’s a soldier. A Civil War soldier.”

The man thought for seconds that seemed to Jillian like hours. “Yes, I know that grave. Come with me.”

Jillian nodded. She turned to Theo. “Hurry. Please hurry!”

The groundskeeper ducked his head and ran in the rain. The others followed past the obelisk, behind the mausoleum—to where a stubby piece of PVC pipe protruded from the ground behind the weathered marble grave marker of Thomas Benton Smith.

Breathless from running, Jillian fell to her knees, heedless of the cold, soggy ground. “Amy!” she called down the tube. “Amy, it’s Jillian! We’re going to get you out of there.”

The image of her sister trapped in a coffin under the ground, alive, made her want to wretch. She fought down the rising nausea. Tears mingled with rain and ran freely down her cheeks. Theo pulled her back as the rescue team went to work.

It seemed an eternity as the men shoveled earth out of the grave to free Amy.

Jillian tore her gaze away from them and hugged her arms to dispel her shaking. She sank to the ground and pressed her cheek against a chilly tombstone. She closed her ears to the sounds of the men and machinery and retreated to the silence within, praying, begging and bargaining with the power of the Universe to let her sister be alive when they opened that grave.

And then she heard the sound of metal hitting wood.

An awful eternity passed before the box was cleared enough to open. A raingear-covered officer lifted the top. Jillian dared to look inside but her view was impeded by a throng of paramedics.

Jillian’s heart lodged in her throat.

“She’s alive!” one yelled.

Jillian’s heart soared. She leapt to her feet. Her trembling fingers came to her lips and she bit back a sob. She’d found her! She’d found Amy! Tears of joy streamed unchecked down her cheeks. She sniffed and wiped her wet nose on the sleeve of her Chanel sweater.

One of the officers shouted to the paramedics, “Bring the stretcher. Let’s get her out of here.”

Amy was unconscious, her face covered with dirt and grime, her hair in a tangled wet mass. Somehow, she’d freed her hands from the tape and ripped the piece off her mouth. But she was alive.
Alive.

Jillian rushed across the muddy ground to the stretcher where the mask of a handheld oxygen tank was being placed over Amy’s nose and mouth. Tenderly, she brushed Amy’s matted hair off her forehead and helped the paramedics tuck a dark gray blanket around her. “Hey sis,” she said under her breath.

Amy’s eyes fluttered open and she gave Jillian’s hand a weak squeeze before she slipped into unconsciousness again.

“Think this little fella might bring her around?” Lynn Bowers moved to the other side of the stretcher. Boo was in her arms.

When Boo saw Amy, the dog squirmed and twisted until Lynn held it down to Amy’s face. Boo whimpered and licked her excitedly.

Something sparked inside Jillian she couldn’t explain—some compulsion to take Boo. After all, she was the one who had found Amy. She was the one who’d brought Boo. She reached across and took the dog from Lynn. She held her, clinging and rubbing Boo’s head and ears. Amy was safe now. She was safe.

But the would-be killer was still out there.

Jillian shuddered as her gaze scanned the cemetery.

“Hey y’all, check this out.”

Instinctively, she turned toward the sound of the voice and looked into the grave where one of the officers had opened the coffin that lay beneath the box Amy had been in—Benton Smith’s coffin.