Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) (5 page)

Kyle’s face was streaked with very real tears. If I touched them, because they were of life, they would probably provide energy, but I wasn’t that desperate. Thankfully Troy had brought the juniper needles.

“
My wife needs me.
I need to get home! I told them to take me home, but they didn’t want to drive all that way!”

“So go home.”

It was not instantaneous, but his sobs choked back. “How?”

“It won’t be the same,” I warned. “You’re In Between. You’re stuck in this realm, but you can visit.” I waved my hand at the dead body, his dead body across the curtain. “You can’t cross again. You can’t cross anywhere until...” I hung my head. “There are other curtains. Eventually you will cross through one of them. But not that one.”

It took a long time for him to speak. He finally released the neck of the guitar case and held it by the handle. “Show me how to go to them.”

It was good that he had decided to make the journey. The hounds were howling off in the distance, but of course they had already smelled his emotion. Grief like Kyle’s would attract all kinds of monsters if he stood here long enough. Even without a plan, we’d have had to get him moving.

“It’s a little like surfing,” I said. “You float along, but you do have to paddle.”

Luckily, learning wasn’t that difficult. Pushing against the gray was something you wanted to do instinctively the minute you arrived.

I gave a nod to Martin, silently agreeing I would help this time.

Martin drifted off, still muttering in half song.

As Kyle and I floated, I urged him to listen, describing the hounds and how they would chew him up if they ever caught him. He didn’t care now, but if he saw them later, he’d change his mind.

I surveyed our surroundings constantly, waiting to glimpse the drip from a twisted fang or the glow of red from unfriendly eyes. The hellish dogs were still far off, but the fog always had shapes, and I was very worried about what those shapes might turn out to be. We weren’t running, but the memory of the heat and stink of monster breath kept me firing questions at Kyle. I had to figure out as quickly as possible how to follow his memories to the place he wanted to go.

When he told me about his unborn child, I knew we were in deep trouble. That kind of grief brought us right up against water. The second he spoke of the child, we hit the bank.

“Oh shit, Kyle.”

The mermaids stretched across the rocks just offshore weren’t there to see us safely across either. We needed to burrow underground and quickly.

Chapter 5

Water was a random appearance In Between. As far as I knew, no one here actually drank the stuff. Bodies of water seemed to be some sort of portal, but if anyone understood how they worked, no one had bothered to explain it to me. I wasn’t about to cross this sudden lake with mermaids sitting there beckoning. This was the closest I’d ever been to the fish ladies. It was more than close enough.

“She looks like Paula, my wife,” Kyle murmured.

Instead of searching for shelter, he was staring at the nearest mermaid. “They probably
all
do, Kyle. We need to get out of here.” The hounds were quiet behind us. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. If we were really lucky, they had stopped or even stayed near the other death. But silence from the hounds wasn’t a guarantee that they weren’t stalking us. Even if they weren’t, as the mermaids proved, there were other things out there that were hungry for grief.

“Is Paula on this side too?”

Impatiently, I shot back, “That mermaid doesn’t look pregnant to me. I’m guessing that means it’s a charade to draw you closer. And then guess what will happen?”

He finally shifted his attention to me.

“Gobble, gobble, time for mermaid dinner.” There were rocks a ways off on our right. We could probably shelter there. If the hounds found us holed up, eventually they’d tire of waiting, or if they were hungry enough, they could battle it out with the mermaids.

“You’re right, she doesn’t look pregnant,” Kyle said.

“You’re dead, Kyle. Your wife isn’t. If you want to see her again, I’d suggest you stay away from creatures that look anything like her, especially if that shape is gray.” The mermaids did have flashes of green to them, but it was monster green—a blackish dank algae green. Even from here, the stuff had a smothering quality to it.

Seeing someone who resembled his wife had calmed him. Had I seen someone I knew...but initially, I only had one memory, and it was of the guy who killed me. Later, memories of people had leaked into my consciousness. I was pretty sure one of them was my sister, but oddly, my emotions remained distant as though I was accustomed to keeping her a secret. That made no sense to me, and no matter who she might be, there was no name or face to complete the memory.

“It’s not my wife,” Kyle said slowly. “How strange.”

“Come on, Kyle, we have to hide.” I hated to do it, but I reached out to tug at his arm. Neither of us was solid, but contact was contact, and it had a force. I pulled gently, grinding my non-teeth against the rage and pain that radiated from him. That sort of thing could echo back through me, and if we accidentally created a loop it would magnify our emotions. We could attract every monster In Between in a hurry.

Kyle yanked his arm away. “Don’t do that. It hurts.”

“I know. But not as bad as it will if she takes a bite out of you.”

The slimy mermaid glided forward and draped herself over another rock, one that was much closer to us. She smiled.

I don’t know what Kyle saw, but her saber-toothed fangs were more than enough for me. I pedaled my ghost feet as fast as they could take me, barely caring if Kyle followed this time. As soon as I reached the rocky alcove, I thinned my head and inspected the largest crevice.

Kyle was waiting behind me when I oozed back out of the cairn. “It’s empty.” I opened my mouth to describe how he needed to squish himself through, when laser spots of red blurred behind him. “I hope you feel skinny,” I squeaked. “You’re gonna have to compress and blow yourself in faster than a tornado.”

He glanced back to where my eyes were focused.

“Go,” I said, not waiting to see if he listened. I rolled sideways, dodging away from him. There were other crevices. It was best if we didn’t stand together, and I was more experienced than he at gathering, thinning and dodging.

Unfortunately for him, the two-headed hound didn’t even spare me a sniff. It knew grief when it smelled it. Like a distorted smile, it peeled black lips back and loosed two howls of triumph.

In desperation, I threw the rock I had hidden in my hand, propelling it through the fog. Emotion had power here.

The missile hit the hound square in one open mouth.

Already thin, except for the rock-throwing hand, I slithered through the boulders, nothing but smoke. I focused on working my way through crevices back to where I had left Kyle. If I arrived in time, maybe I could help yank him through.

It took a while to pull myself back together. There wasn’t enough open space in the rocks for me to keep all the parts where they belonged, but close enough.

My eyes swiveled, but there was no Kyle.

“Kyle?” The hounds were still baying, but the sounds had retreated a ways. No way could they have devoured him that quickly, not all of him!

I squeezed my eye through a crack, slowly letting it swivel and check before squishing the rest of my head through the crevice.

The two-headed hellhounds had gathered in force. There had to be fifty of them, slathering, drooling, and yelping. Those in the rear were growling, threatening their own.

Kyle was in the water. Correction. He was on the water. I had never attempted to float on water or walk on it either. Things In Between were solid enough in their own way, although the rules were often different and dangerous.

I sucked myself back inside the shelter and slid over to a spot with a better angle.

Once I squeezed through, I could see that Kyle was actually balancing on his guitar case. The hounds were not pleased. Two or three of them ventured haunch deep into the waves.

A mermaid was not far off.

“Kyle!” Damn fool. I had no idea what to do. If only I had Troy’s animals to create a distraction. I could ooze through the rocks all day, but there were hounds between Kyle and me. The mermaid’s ravenous smile hadn’t gotten any less toothy. She flicked her tail, slapping against the water hard enough that the splash resonated over the noise of the hounds.

Waves from her lashing tail radiated out and then bunched in a rather alarming cascade directed at Kyle. He kept his eyes trained on the water rather than the hounds or the mermaid.

Damned impressive for a first-day ghost. With arms out, he balanced precariously on the guitar case as it rocked back and forth.

A larger wave erupted, and I clutched my ghost hands together, wishing for a fishing rod, a spear, anything to help out. My arm drew back automatically, fixated on throwing a weapon I didn’t hold.

Kyle managed the wave, if barely. Before relief had a chance to set in, the sudden lack of motion after the swell knocked him right off.

“Oh, Kyle, no!” He was done for.

His head didn’t stay under for more than a second. With an impressive heave, he launched himself back onto the case like a professional surfer. Neither the mermaid nor the hounds had time to make a decisive maneuver in his direction.

The mermaids were probably the more dangerous, but they weren’t anxious to venture any closer to the canines. And the hounds didn’t like the water.

Kyle crouched on his perch, waiting, watching and dripping.

I shivered. A sense of helplessness settled across my shoulders, drawing the double noses of a hellhound or two. I clamped down. Kyle had inadvertently done himself the biggest favor of all by allowing himself to be distracted by the mermaid and beastly dogs. The pain he had been radiating was compressed as he concentrated on survival.

The canines at the back of the pack sniffed the air expectantly again, but my emotions were now tightly cloaked.

Another mermaid drifted to the opposite side of Kyle.

“Uh-oh.” Those babes could swim. It didn’t take me long to figure out their plan. They started bobbing about, using their tails to create a new series of waves. Gentle, unrelenting ripples, not ones large enough to capsize him, but undulations that drew him out toward open water, away from the hounds.

Kyle dropped and paddled. He didn’t have much substance, and he lost ground, but not quickly.

The hounds recognized a losing battle when they saw one. They shuffled out of the water and offered Kyle plenty of room, a clear invitation for him to come ashore.

Annihilation by mermaid monster or disintegration by dripping canine fangs. Some great options there.

A larger wave rocked Kyle. It hadn’t come from the mermaids, either.

“Paddle!” The disturbance under the water was nothing more than a large shadow to me, but it had to be something that frightened the mermaids because one minute the bathing beauties were there, the next, nothing but a ripple and empty rocks.

Their sudden disappearance did nothing to soothe my nerves. My eyes shifted from the hounds to the waves.

In the far-off distance, a violin sounded a discordant shriek, but it cut off so suddenly I wondered if I had imagined it.

Kyle paddled furiously, closing in on the shore again before standing on his case.

One of the devil dogs stepped my way, his red eyes honing in on me. The orbs were rimmed with a black so deep, it promised to unravel me.

I ducked back inside the rock. The hound edged closer, but we both knew I was safe.

Ripples of water threatened to send Kyle into the jaws of the hounds, but he adeptly controlled where he wanted to be while keeping an eye on the open water.

The lead canine put a paw in the water, lifted and sniffed at it with both heads. He backed out of the lake with a yelp. Whatever he smelled had him turning tail and loping off into the gray.

Few of the devil dogs followed their leader. They were too hungry.

Kyle didn’t know that the hellhounds’ patience was limited, but since he had nowhere else to go, he stayed put. If I had been out there with him, I could have told him how to draw his grief inside, how to be small, invisible and nonexistent.

He must have figured it out, or he was so scared he went numb. Maybe sharks similar to those in the real world were out there in the water. Whatever the reason, Kyle barely moved on his board. He stayed down where he could paddle if he needed to, but he held very, very still.

* * *

The gray had taken on what passed for darkness before the last of the hounds faded into the nighttime ether. I poked my head further outside the boulders and then oozed the rest of me out slowly, making sure I didn’t draw any attention.

Kyle’s grief was still a powerful beacon. In the distance, a square dance fiddle frantically played out of tune. The music was an ominous warning, each bar ending in sour notes.

The mermaids hadn’t returned, possibly because whatever lurked under the water still waited. It was as safe as it was ever going to get. I called out, “Swim in. Stay cold. Don’t think too much and don’t feel. We don’t need anything else sensing us.”

The freezing burn of what we are is painful, but it was possible to keep the grief locked inside where it wouldn’t attract the monsters.

Kyle stared at me, not paddling. I knew what he was thinking.

“You can come back here and dive in any time. You probably ought to at least say goodbye to your wife first.”

He jolted half upright as though I had smacked him.

“Keep the pain contained,” I reminded him. Sound traveled across the water and so did our emotions. “Come in as quickly as you can.”

He stepped off the board and swished through the water. It was good to know that if I ever needed to, swimming was a possibility.

The grating music of the fiddle intensified. The pounding of hooves, a sound that should have been impossible with the muted fog of In Between, danced a horrific offbeat to the notes shrieking across rusty metal strings. Sparks of flame cut through the gray here and there, promising we were out of time. The only entity here that controlled fire was a demon.