Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) (9 page)

The ugly devil hit the weave as it sprang at me.

I briefly considered leaping over the pack, but the hounds were skilled jumpers. With such a large pack, one of them was bound to score.

There were a lot of monsters In Between, but the primal scream that burst through the gray from the living side was so horrendous, shards of the weave froze in place. The howl commanded fear and enough threat to change the ever-present mist of In Between to icicles.

Freezing or not, it didn’t stop me from launching myself over the hellhounds, all of which had turned to the threat, ready to rend whatever offered that challenge.

Luckily for the cat, he was dirt-side. Lynx’s human head was ghosted around that of the cat this time instead of the other way around. The weave, despite freezing in that one spot, was thickening and undulating dangerously. The fabric didn’t shut out the bobcat’s next feral scream or the slice of his claws. The hound closest to the edge howled as some part of the magic did him injury. The claws may not have breached the weave, but the edge bent away from the feline form, slicing into the devil dog.

I puffed and twirled, bouncing off the back of another four-legged beast and landing on the other side of the pack. My essence burned where it had touched the monster.

One of my displaced and swiveling eyeballs searched out Martin.

I needn’t have worried. He was already ahead of me, but instead of his usual genie head, he had grown legs, a streaker from the bleachers, jumping and dodging around the snarling hounds.

The weave was thin enough that the two lead dogs wasted time tearing at the fabric as if they might capture the howling cat. The challenging snarls provided us with precious time as Lynx paced the edge, slashing with lethal intent.

We ran. That cat had tremendous life energy to freeze the gray of the weave.

One of my eyes swiveled behind me, tracking the canine hunters while the other searched for a protective batch of rocks.

The beasts from hell bayed hungrily, eager to devour the energy we had just harvested from the other side. If only I could throw energy like the cat, maybe we could escape.

Then again, if Lynx could somehow throw it from across the barrier, why couldn’t I? And what could I throw? I had nothing but bits of my own gray and the braid. I’d rather die than sacrifice the talisman the cat had given me. It was my hope.

Everything I owned was long dead. Supposedly so was I.

I screamed, pain burning across my foot. The fangs of the nearest hellhound snapped at what would have been an ankle had it not been formless essence that hadn’t quite kept up with the rest of me.

Martin turned one wild eye back, but there was nothing he could do to save me.

I forced the part of my essence that was ankle to thin and flow through the grasping teeth, depriving the dog of his prize.

Once freed, I called the pieces of myself back to me while still flitting away in sheer terror.

If energy was a weapon, maybe a small piece would do. I twisted off a blob of gray cloth from the bottom of my shirt. Martin said he dressed with bits of this and that, but apparently he hadn’t bothered to find any bits today.

I pulled the injured piece of me close and dabbed at the leak with the shirttail, still dodging and flying with ghost maneuvers born of desperation. A growing blotch of ectoplasm from my wound clung to the bit of shirt.

I took a huge breath, intending to snap the strip of cloth like a towel, but sulfuric hound breath convinced me to shove it down the throat of the nearest threat instead.

Hell’s creature gagged on a shrill bark and flung his head left and right. The energy was stuck there like a bone lodged in his throat.

The beast’s second head snapped down on the wisps of my fingers before I could snatch them far enough away.

“Aaaa!” I half swallowed a wail and let my fingers disintegrate away from the jaws before drawing them close again. Panicked now, I somersaulted low, using the time to squeeze off another piece of gray cloth with my uninjured hand. There were at least eight of the beasts still slobbering after us, and I was already leaking parts of me all over the terrain.

Martin was no dummy. As soon as he figured out what I was up to, he harvested some of the pieces he claimed dressed him. He might be dead, but his energy was no dead weight. He threw what looked like a handful of dehydrated juniper berries, possibly from Troy’s tree. The dried gray balls hit a hellhound and exploded.

The dogs were eager to devour our energy, but they didn’t appreciate it wielded as a weapon.

Martin tripped, or maybe teeth biting into him caused him to stumble. I threw my ball of cloth at the nearest dog, ripped off a jacket sleeve and swung it at the hellhound about to feast on Martin. I wished heartily for a stick to stab it in the eye, but at least had the space to snap the sleeve, letting the energy spark off the end. If the cat could use screaming as a weapon, anything was worth a try.

Martin jabbed the hound with the quill end of a ghost bird feather.

The beast leaped away in a panicked frenzy. Dangerous saliva spattered in every direction, causing two nearby dogs to yelp. It wasn’t clear whether the hound was trying to eat the feather or dislodge it.

Neither of us waited to find out.

Martin grabbed at a wisp of me and yanked me towards a small clump of rocks. The two boulders weren’t large enough to hide one person, never mind two, but it was either the rocks or keep attempting to flay full grown beasts from hell with my sleeve.

Martin made a ten-point dive with a burst of released air. Unless I was mistaken, the man had just farted his way underground.

Oddly enough, that was a technique that I’d never thought to try.

Instinct would have had me dodging the resulting breeze, but Martin didn’t release my arm.

I let out my last breath, and we both sank into a very small air pocket beneath the rocks.

Chapter 10

Our hideout was larger than it appeared from the surface, but not by much. There was barely room to breathe; good thing we didn’t need to. My essence was pushed up against rocks and dirt in all directions except the side where Martin rested. Both of us trailed pieces into crevices until we were more worm than human ghost.

“Did you know there was an air pocket under here?” I asked.

“The earth is different this side, but I have learned to read it. I can sense the pockets if I try hard enough.”

“You were kind of busy.”

“Heh-heh. Desperate too.” He leaked more essence deeper underground.

Eventually, I located a few more cracks and spaces. We’d have to wait out the dogs, but they’d wander elsewhere as soon as they realized the futility of trying to overturn the larger stone.

Martin was so thin, I could discern a few bits and pieces of his collection. The one that drew my immediate attention was the bloodstone. He apparently stored it inside his ear.

He noticed me staring at it. A ghostly set of fingers retrieved the bloodstone and pushed it my way. “I figured I’d gift this to you after I showed you how to manipulate the edge. I needed it for a time because I couldn’t reach those on the other side easily anymore. I think my time here might be ending. The bloodstone helped.”

My heart, wherever the wisps were floating, sank. I didn’t have many friends and now one of them might be moving on. On top of that, Troy was in trouble of fading or worse. “You keep it, then. For as long as you need it.”

Thinking of Troy had me blurting out the original reason I’d been hunting for Martin. “What besides a demon leaves a mark on a ghost? And what does it mean?”

Martin was little more than an ear, a mouth and two eyeballs. Both of his eyes blinked. “Demon mark?”

In a tangled rush of details, I told him about Cinderspark and what she had said about Troy. “And he’s tired all the time, fading.”

“Did you see any mark on Troy?” he finally asked.

I shook my head. “I looked very carefully. He seems fine, but admitted that he has to replenish all the time now.”

“My energy’s been drying up quicker’n a beer buzz, too,” Martin mused. “That was why I couldn’t visit dirt-side easily anymore and the reason I needed the bloodstone. It links quickly to earth. Now it’s yours. I give it to you freely.”

The bloodstone floated against me. I stared at it and then back at his guileless, almost childlike eyes. “Don’t you still need it?”

“I’m stronger now. And maybe the problem isn’t that my time is up. If Troy is marked by a demon or something powerful from that realm, that changes everything. That means a demon-like creature is stuck here, and it’s throwing the balance off, including mine.”

He was right about his balance being off, but I doubted a demon was wholly responsible. “You keep the bloodstone for now. I’ve got my own.” It took some effort to shift the braid to where he could see it.

Martin chuckled gleefully. The bloodstone disappeared. “If you need it, it’s yours.”

“Let’s hope I don’t.”

Martin hummed a bit. “The demon wants a way to the other side to feed on souls and wallow in the pain of others. The most likely cause of a demon being stuck here is that it escaped the control of whoever summoned it, but for some reason, it was unable to take over the summoner and stay dirt-side.”

I told him about the young demon I had seen digging into the laundry room. “There was no one calling it. It was repelled and blasted back. I don’t think it stayed here.”

He nodded. “That’s what normally happens. They steal enough energy from each other or the creatures like the hounds to make it to In Between. When they try to break all the way across, most fail. To reach and stay dirt-side they have to have a vessel to live in.”

“Then why would a demon or something like one mark Troy?”

He swirled a finger. “A demon might use us as a temporary food source. With enough energy, it could stay here while it gathered power to cross. But raw power isn’t enough. It would still need a body to inhabit dirt-side.”

“Is that what the mark is for? To draw power?”

He nodded. “Mother Earth marked me long ago. Not the same as a demon mark, because it’s a sharing with her. Something could have marked Troy and be harvesting his energy.”

I could close my eyes, but not my ears. The good news was that his musing kept him from humming at least part of the time.

We waited until dusk before squeezing back out into the half light. My sleeve didn’t reattach itself, but it was easy to just wear it along my arm. I’d use the silly thing again if necessary, assuming I had enough life force to wield it as a weapon.

I wasn’t ready to handle demon marks, sleeve weapons and cats who could scream right through the weave. I didn’t know how to help Troy, either. But in order to survive, I had to figure out what was happening or die trying.

Then again, I didn’t even
have
a life, so what I was saving?

Chapter 11

Séances and mediums were of no interest to me before I died. Turns out, no ghost is obligated to attend a séance. Of course, most of the time being dead can be damned boring. When a live human has a talent to be heard in the gray area In Between, some spirits will rush to attend. They aren’t necessarily relatives, friends, or even from the same century as those still alive. They’re just groupies. They’ll answer questions too if the medium is strong enough to hear, but most of the time the attending shades can’t do more than rattle china cups or offer up a ghostly moan.

I drifted into a séance one time when an actual ghost of one of the attendees showed up. These situations are to be avoided. The ghost just hung there in misery, unable or unwilling to answer any questions or derive any kind of comfort from the contact. The older séance ghosts, the groupies, either left or tried in vain to console the ghost who was nothing more than a shell-shocked, numb presence.

Funny thing is, the mediums always seem to assume the ghosts are compelled to answer. Instead, we spirits come and go like open night at a bar, mingling with each other and watching the live humans. The only time there’s any compulsion is when there’s blood—and that’s not a séance, that’s a calling that threatens to drain any remaining life force. Enough blood and it will summon something else from one of the other realms. Nothing kills a party faster than bloodshed.

If I hadn’t been practicing reaching the other side, I might have ignored the séance, but a séance meant someone was attempting to open a portal. That meant the two of us were after the same goal, and one of us had energy to spare on the task.

For the most part, the weave attempted to keep bits from crossing in either direction. When wisps of life entered, the weave often shattered them into tiny pieces. In the case of a séance, the medium sent across little bursts of life energy that were like beacons flashing bright before sparking out.

It didn’t take me long to hone in on the sparks. The edge thinned near a hospital room where the aunt and the little girl, Espy, waited. They had been able to easily see and talk to me before, so it wasn’t a total surprise to discover the aunt had the knowledge to pull off a séance. The room was stark compared to my first visit. The pink bedspread was still there, but there were no shelves with stuffed animals and the stillness of the little girl belied life.

Instead of pushing closer, I sat patiently as Martin had taught me. I called the drifting bits of energy to me. Slowly, the bursts formed an open tunnel now that the two of us were focusing.

I drifted closer.

The aunt was perceptive. “Espy?”

During a séance the medium always calls someone specific. Espy had been sitting up and talking during my previous visit, but now she was hooked up to a ventilator, IV bags and beeping monitors.

“Espy?” My voice hit the weave and splattered sideways. The sounds that leaked through were nothing more than distorted moans. Martin swore the barrier could be bent to my advantage, but one wrong twitch would have me sliced by shards of the weave.

“Is Esperanza there? Has she crossed?”

I pointed at the bed, and this time when I spoke, I leaned into a sheer spot in the fabric. “Essspy?”