Splinter (Whisper Walker Series) (18 page)

Once inside, I pushed the door shut, having to wedge it to get it to stay closed. I looked around and saw that the streets were empty. Thankfully.

I snuck to the left, going from object to object to remain hidden. It took a while, but I finally got to where I was supposed to meet Kelsie. I hissed a few times before I saw her slide up. We didn’t say much as she led off into the dark.

I TOLD DRAKE TO FOLLOW me in dashes so as to never get too close to each other to draw attention. One person dashing through the night was a lot less likely to be caught than two. It was kind of a rule to live by. If someone happened to catch a shadow out of the corner of their eye, when they looked, the single shadow would be gone. If we were close together, the person that spotted me would then see Drake when they turned to look.

I led us through the streets, a feeling of nostalgia starting to fill me as I recognized the city I had grown up in. We passed their Development building where I had hoped to work, then their Supply. In all, their layout was similar to the Sven, but differed enough for it to be confusing for someone who hadn’t been there before like Drake, especially at night.

I headed for the fanciest house around. It wasn’t much larger than the other houses around it. It was simply nicer. Houses rarely were very large in the Guilds. There was a lack of space, and it took that much more clean air to fill a large building than a small one.

There it was, my old house. The very house I had been born in. My chest now felt like it would implode, it was so tight.

We met under a small window on the side. Crouching, we discussed our plan.

“This is the Magistrate’s house,” I said. I almost slipped up and said it was
my
house but caught myself in time. “Let’s see if they’re in here. If not here, maybe his Second-in-Command’s house down the street.”

He nodded. “You take this side of the house. I’ll get the other.”

We agreed and split.

Drake went left, I went right. While the shrubbery in front of the house was still somewhat maintained, the house itself was in disrepair. Whitewash was peeling and missing in chunks, boards were cracked and missing. I felt irritation at my father for letting it go downhill like this. It
had
been a nice house.

I got around to a side window that looked in on what had been my bedroom. The curtains were pulled, not affording me a view of the room. It was just as well, I figured. Wouldn’t want it to hurt any more than it already did.

I slipped over to the next window. The curtains were pulled here, too, looking in the living room. There was a small gap of a couple centimeters between them, though. I edged up close and closed one eye to look through the gap. I pressed my face tightly to the pane of glass, like my body thought it could climb through the glass and resume my old life. Inside, I could see a messy room.

The furniture was covered in dust, and there was junk everywhere. Completely the opposite of how my father used to keep it. He’d been a neat-freak like Drake.

Then a shadow passed over the floor in a doorway across the room. With it came an empty cold. It cut through the air like the oxygen itself was scared. In came my father.

I felt a gasp escape my mouth, unrestrained, a puff of moisture appearing for a moment on the glass in front of me. I jerked my head back, but continued looking through the crack.

My father had stopped at the precise moment of my outburst. I hoped it had been coincidence. He turned and glided out of the room. I felt myself sigh in relief as the coldness slipped away with him.

I turned and slid my back down the side of the house, sitting on the ground, my head leaned back against the wall. I waited for my heart to slow down. I realized I had been holding my breath, evidenced by the light-headed feeling I was now dealing with.

“Hello, Kelsie,” a cold, long-unheard but not forgotten, voice said. It was familiar, but very different at the same time.

My heart actually skipped a beat. Then stopped altogether. I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t even think.

My father was standing directly beside me, looking down at me with dead, coal-black eyes sunk into a pallid and emotionless face.

For the first time in nearly five years, I was looking at him.

I still couldn’t say anything. The cold I had felt earlier had returned, almost unbearable. But I couldn’t shiver. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know how to react, whether to be scared or excited. How does one act when they see someone for the first time in years? The last time being when the person had tried to kill them.

He reached down and grabbed my arm, squeezing with a vise-like grip far in contrast to his sickly-looking frame.

I heard a faint squeak, deciding it must’ve been from me. Though, I hadn’t felt myself make it.

He picked me up, lifting me off the ground and throwing me over his shoulder. I tried to fight him, but I felt weak and uncoordinated. I beat on his bony back, sure that I was hitting him hard but for his lack of reaction I might’ve been tapping him with a twig.

I tried to call out for Drake. Some distant part of my brain clicked that I couldn’t cry out loudly, since I was in hostile territory. I put all of my diminished muscle control into letting out a quiet cry. I hoped to see Drake running around the corner of the house.

I didn’t.

My father was carrying me down the deserted street, heading for a house that sat alone and across the street from the rest of the houses.

He carried me up the stairs and in the door. The hall was mostly dark, lit only by a faint, flickering light coming from a door at the end.

A smell of decay and rot and general disuse filled the hallway we were in. Down the hall he carried me, showing no discomfort at my weight on his shoulder.

We turned through the doorway at the end, entering a small living room lit only by candles. It was darkly painted, weird symbols on the walls and the bare-wood floor.

By now, my voice seemed to be working again. But I still didn’t know what to say.

To the side of the room was the Sven Magistrate, sitting on a chair much too small for his ample body. He was staring straight ahead, like he didn’t even notice the skeleton pacing in the center of the room.

Wait, skeleton?

My father slung me down roughly to the floor. My head slammed into it like a rock, lights flickering in my vision. My right arm landed under me with a pop, and a sharp pain in my shoulder told me it was dislocated.

My yelp caused the walking skeleton to turn and glare at the interruption. After my vision cleared, I realized it wasn’t a skeleton, just a man that was far skinnier than was possible. He had no whites to his eyes, just black orbs. He aimed a grin at me, so sick and disgusting that my skin woke enough through the mind-numbing cold to try crawling off of my bones.

“Kelsie, Kelsie. Returned home. This is unexpected. Here I was, thinking I was going to have to wait a few more weeks to watch your father rip you apart. Instead, you show up on your own,” he said; his voice was no surprise when it came out as a hiss. It was the same voice I had heard Jonathan use in the woods the other day, slightly different since it was coming out of a different body, but it still had the same intonation.

“Who-who are you?” My voice was shaky as it recovered.

The skeleton walked over to me before responding. “I’m hurt. I’m Matthew. I’m your father’s Second-in-Command. I knew you well.”

I could see it now. There was a faint resemblance in his face. I wondered how long he had been the Dybbuk, or possessed by it, or whatever the term was.

He tossed me into a chair like the one the Sven Magistrate was sitting in, jostling my dislocated shoulder and causing me to bite through my lip to keep from screaming. The burning pain was worse than I remembered. It wasn’t the first time I had dislocated my shoulder. I still had the resetting to look forward to. That was always ten times more painful than just leaving it dislocated.

He didn’t say anything more as he focused on tying my hands behind me, around the chair. I tried to fight back, but he was unnaturally strong. I jerked and whipped and kicked, but still, he held me down.

Finished, he stepped back, his black eyes crawling over me and leaving behind a dirty feeling. He pulled a nasty-looking knife out of his belt, holding it up in my face for a second. Still, I wasn’t too worried since he said I was going to live long enough to see everything.

“It is unfortunate that you should show up now. Well, unfortunate for you, anyway. If you hadn’t shown up now, in a few weeks you would have been killed quickly. Maybe even accidentally. But now, now you will be kept alive. You’ll get to see your new Guild be torn apart, person by person. Some of them, I will possess and send out into the rest of the area to prepare more Guilds for destruction. But the rest will die a most painful death.” His grin grew, revealing yellowed and chipped teeth.

Great, so he planned on keeping me alive to witness his sordid plan. Where was Drake? If they’d found him, they would have mentioned it by now.

“Why are the souls of those you possess just hanging out in a pit in some cave?” I asked him.

His grin dissolved. “You found them? You can see them? That’s interesting and rather unusual.” He resumed his pacing of the room. “I needed somewhere for the souls to be contained until this was over. Can’t have them just wandering around, now, can I?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve done for centuries. Normally there isn’t really a plan. But this time, I want someone in particular. I can’t wait to get him. I believe his name is Drake.” He paused and looked at the Sven Magistrate.

The Magistrate nodded confirmation, but continued simply staring ahead.

“He will be my greatest achievement.” The evil grin returned to his face. The tip of his tongue ran across the front of his teeth as if he were savoring the final word. “I will turn him into the killer he is meant to be. I will make us unstoppable. We will become the most powerful beings to ever walk this plane.”

I was worried now. Drake, evil? No way. The ghost had said he would kill spirits. Not join them in an evil plan to conquer everyone.

He started mumbling to himself as he paced. “The question remains. Why can you see souls? Most curious.”

If this Dybbuk was as old as he said he was, maybe he could answer my question. Maybe he knew. I decided to say what I was and ask him what it meant.

“I’m a Whisper Walker.”

He stopped mid-step, one foot hovering off the floor. After a second he put it down and turned to face me.

“You? You’re the Whisper Walker? You’re too young!”

“I’ll be seventeen in a few hours. Some of the signs have already shown up.”

He turned and looked at my father, who had since taken a chair with his back to the doorway. “Your daughter is the Whisper Walker, and you never knew? How is that possible? Who…
what
was her mother?” he demanded.

I listened intently. I didn’t know anything about my mother, either. My father had refused to talk about her.

Staring blankly ahead, my father responded, “She was a faery.”

A faery? What is a faery? I’d never heard of a faery before.

“Well, that could explain it. I’ll deal with you later. I’ll make you pay for your behavior,” he said to my father.

I felt a fire ignite deep within me. Hidden feelings flared at the mention of my father being hurt by this evil creature.

I gritted my teeth against it, somewhat surprised by my own feelings for the man that had tried to kill me.

The Dybbuk looked back at me. “This changes everything. It’s
not
this Drake I wanted, after all. It’s you. The things you are going to be capable of, the skills at your command. I’m giddy at the thought. This is so much better than I could ever have hoped. In fact, I think I will possess you now. I believe I will have full control of you soon. I’ll keep you here until then.”

He walked over to a footlocker, flipping the top back. He started pulling out more candles and various knives and objects.

He set the candles in a circle around me. He started by lighting one, then crossing the circle to light the one opposite it.

“Ow!” I cried out as he took a knife and sliced into my forearm. He didn’t acknowledge my discomfort, but tilted my arm to direct the blood into a crystal cup.

He marked my forehead with a dab of the blood, then licked his finger clean. Taking the rest of the blood, he painted rough triangular shapes on the floor around my chair in between the candles.

Finished with that, he started muttering phrases under his breath.

“Hold up, Matthew. I thought Dybbuks could possess the old-fashioned way.”

He paused, taking a moment to glare at me. “Yes. Unless they are controlling multiple bodies. That is the purpose of this ritual. It extends my powers.” He continued with the muttering.

“Hey. Wait up. Tell me more,” I said, trying to slow the process.

He just ignored me.

I tried every other thing I could think of to stop him. He just kept going. Soon the flames of the candles started dancing like there was a wind in the room. Suddenly the icy emptiness of the room, of the creature in front of me, seemed to climax. It ended abruptly. The candles went out, and I felt like I was looking
in
at me, instead of out
from
me. I was fighting for occupancy, it seemed, of my own body.

The original candles at the edges of the room were relit. Once he finished that, he started pacing again.

“Don’t fight it, Kelsie. The faster you accept the inevitable, the easier it is for the both of us. Once the fae inside you wakes, we will be unstoppable.”

I SLIPPED AROUND THE house to the first window on the other side, using bushes for cover. I reached a large window on the side. I turned and looked all around behind me, seeing no one. I stood and peered in the window. There was a thin curtain pulled across the whole window. I was able to make out silhouettes when I focused intently. It was like I could feel the Briln Magistrate in there more than I could actually see him. I saw a shadow, very faint, standing by a light rectangle that must be a door. The shadow stepped towards the window I was peeking through, and the closer he got, the stronger I could feel him. A feeling of frigid emptiness filled me and intensified with every step.