“Maggie—no! You were a bad girl. No playtime tonight for you. You can just take a time out and think about what you did.” Iris caught sight of us and let out a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad you’re home. Tonight has been one disaster after another. But Menolly, you don’t have long before sunrise. You’re cutting things close—” She stopped, looking at our faces. “What happened? I can see something happened while you were over there.”
I was about to tell her to gather everyone in the kitchen when a loud whistle sounded. Smoky immediately set Camille down and she raced for the kitchen, with Trillian on her heels.
“The wards! They’ve gone off.” Her voice echoed from the kitchen, and, giving Iris a helpless shrug, I took off after Delilah and the guys. Iris let out an exasperated sigh in the background.
“I swear, can’t we have one evening in this house where we’re left in peace?” The talon-haltija muttered loudly, and then I heard her say, “Maggie! You stop that—I do not need a bright blue nose, thank you very much!”
As we gathered around the table where the grid of quartz crystals sat, forming the alarm for when our land’s wards were breached, Camille and Morio examined the pattern, sorting through the energy coming off the grid.
“Not Demonkin.” She glanced up at Shade. “Can you tell me if it’s what I think it is?”
He held his hands out to the crystals. A crackle charged the kitchen as a faint bolt of purple lightning jolted from his skin to the smooth crystals. Jerking his head up, he nodded.
“Ghosts. But why would ghosts set off the wards? Spirits walk the world all the time.” He bit one side of his lip.
“These aren’t Casper’s kin. Ghosts won’t set off the wards unless they’re baleful. These aren’t run-of-the-mill spirits—they’re out to hurt us.” She paled. “How are we going to find them? I can ferret out Demonkin energy, but…”
“I’ll be the bird dog.” Shade turned to the door. “Assign posts. Morio, you’d better stay here. You can deal with Netherworld creatures better than anybody except me. Who else is coming outside?”
“Me.” I stepped forward. “Camille, you stay with Morio. Trillian, you stay with Camille and Morio to protect the household. Iris, I know you’re pregnant, but get your spells prepared, just in case. Hanna, I want you to take Marion, Douglas, and Bruce in the parlor and stay there. Keep the door to the living room open, and take Maggie with you. Delilah, you come with us…Smoky, Vanzir, Roz, you’re also with us.”
And so we split off.
Delilah had Lysanthra, her dagger. Roz had his arsenal, and Vanzir was armed as well. Shade, Smoky, and I all were weapons in our own right. We headed out the kitchen door to the backyard.
The rain had started—a light drizzle, and mist drifted along the ground. Wind ruffled through the tops of the trees, setting up a ghostly susurration that whispered through the yard.
Our three-story Victorian, with basement, was on five acres in the outskirts of the Belles-Faire district that lies north of Seattle. We weren’t exactly out in the country—there isn’t really an “out in the country” in this area for miles—but we were as rural as we could get for being in Seattle. Our five acres buttressed up against Birchwater Pond, and beyond that lay a patch of wetlands no one could develop. We’d talked about buying up the wetlands to ensure they wouldn’t come to risk, but we hadn’t quite reached a decision.
The outer reaches of our backyard were overgrown and wild. We let it go, for the most part, because we found the energy revitalizing, and the overgrowth encouraged strangers to stay away.
As we looked around the part of the lawn we actually kept mowed and clear for the vegetable garden, I motioned for Shade to take the front. I couldn’t sense ghosts until they made themselves known to me. Some minor Demonkin I could suss out, but the spirits of the Netherworld? Not so much.
Shade held out his arms, palms forward, and closed his eyes. He began to slowly turn in a circle, one step at a time. A faint cloud of shadow began to emanate from his body as he moved, tendrils of smoke, wisps coiling out from him. The shadows began to form into winged creatures, no bigger than a canary, that went flying out from him. There was still so much about the half dragon, half Stradolan—shadow walker—that we didn’t understand. And like all dragons, he wasn’t about to give up his secrets easily.
Delilah crossed to stand beside me, crossing her arms. “This scares the hell out of me,” she said, as quietly as she could. “I don’t want to think about ghosts again.”
“Me either.” Our last encounter with ghosts had left Morio almost dead and all of us shaken to the core. An entire area of Seattle had been inundated by hungry ghosts, and though we hadn’t licked them, I’d thought we had the problem somewhat under control. But with the appearance of Gulakah, the Lord of Ghosts, I wasn’t so sure. Then, he’d vanished, and I’d hoped that—with the spirit seal in his possession—he’d gone back to the Sub-Realms and stayed there.
“Do you think Gulakah’s in town?” Delilah shifted to her right foot. She was tall—six one—and athletic as hell. Compared to her, and to Camille’s five seven of voluptuousness, I might as well be a shrimp. Barely five one, I was small-framed and small-breasted, and when I’d died, I’d been slender, so I always would be. But tiny or not, I could tear through the toughest of enemies. Well, most of them. My size belied my vampiric strength.
I glanced to the side. Shade was so focused he didn’t appear to hear us at all. “Ten to one he’s back,” I said, reluctant to admit it. “I’d hoped that stealing that spirit seal from us might buy us some time, but now…I don’t think it did. Shadow Wing is on a high. He’s hyped up from claiming another of the seals. He sent Telazhar to Otherworld. Chances are Gulakah’s back. And if so…”
“If so, the ghostly activity around Seattle is going to soar.” Delilah winced. “I hate that.”
“Me, too.”
A rustle of wings, and the shadow creatures came rushing back to Shade. He held out his arms and they made a beeline for his chest and vanished into him. The moment they’d reentered his body, Shade turned abruptly.
“They’re near the rogue portal. And they’re headed our way.”
“Any idea of what they are?”
He paled. “I don’t know, but I can tell you they’re nasty. And they’re on the move.”
“How the hell can we fight them if we don’t know what they are?”
He shook his head. “Delilah, you and Vanzir head back to the house and send Camille and Morio out here in your place. We need their magic to go up against these things because I haven’t the faintest clue if physical attacks will work on them.”
Delilah gave him a swift nod as she and Vanzir turned tail and raced back to the house. Meanwhile, Shade started toward the patch of woods where the rogue portal had opened onto our land. We had guards watching over it but none of our efforts—or those of Queen Asteria’s mages—had been able to close it. As for where it went—the destination changed every so often, and there was never any guarantee where it would lead. Which was why we tended to avoid it.
Roz and I fell in beside Shade. We’d gone only a few yards when the energy thickened and I could hear Roz’s sharp intake of breath. The beating of his pulse beckoned me, and my fangs descended, but I pushed the urge out of my mind. I didn’t feed on friends, not even when they invited me to. More than one person had offered their services, but I had never taken a bloodwhore and I wasn’t about to start.
We slowly approached the sparkling light that filtered from between the trees, and Shade parted a tangle of vines that thrived in the area. Even in the early spring, they coiled, tendrils burgeoning forth to cover the walkway.
I debated whether to call ahead to the guards, but hesitated. I’d alert the spirits if I yelled. But if I didn’t, the guards would be in danger—
“Crap.” Roz’s voice cut through the night. “Look.”
And then I saw them. Bodies, prone on the ground. Two elven guards, and they looked terribly, horribly dead. There was no blood, not even a whiff, but they were pale as snow, pale as a clean sheet on a cold morning. I glanced around but couldn’t see anything else out of the ordinary. As I knelt by the corpses, Shade, Smoky, and Rozurial kept watch.
There didn’t seem to be any wounds—no marks, nothing to indicate why they died, except the extreme pallor of their skin. That might indicate a vampire, but there were no fang marks that I could see, and something else felt off, but I couldn’t pinpoint just what.
“I want a Corpse Talker.” I glanced up at Rozurial. “We need to know how these men died. They’re Queen Asteria’s guards, and something killed them—either coming through the portal or…”
“Trying to go through it to Otherworld?” Shade asked.
I shrugged. “Six of one, half dozen of the other. Or we could be off base. Keep on your guard while I call Yugi down at headquarters and see if he can get me a Corpse Talker out here.”
“We could help, if you think one would travel through the Ionyc Seas?” Smoky took up guard directly in front of the portal. I pitied anybody trying to make it through him. Dragons were notorious for being cruel to their enemies, and Smoky was no exception.
“A Corpse Talker? You’re kidding, right?” Corpse Talkers were reclusive and dangerous. But the more I thought it over, the more sense it made. “I have no idea. I really don’t even know what they are. Nobody really does.”
Corpse Talkers could give voice to the dead. They would ask questions, and the souls of the recently departed channeled through their lips. Nobody ever saw their bodies or faces—just the luminous steel-gray eyes that gleamed from within the dark hood. Only the women of their race could become Corpse Talkers; the males were sequestered below ground in their villages hidden beneath the forests of Otherworld.
“If they will allow, I will bring them.” Smoky looked rather disgusted, and I knew that he didn’t like to have much to do with the dead.
I put in a call to Yugi and gave him our request. “I think Chase is on his way to the station, by the way. He took off the minute we got back to the house.”
“I’ll see what I can find out and call you right back.” Yugi was a Swedish empath who was Chase’s right-hand man. He was a good man, and while I wasn’t sure just how Chase used his abilities, Yugi was trustworthy.
I knelt by the bodies again. “Shade, can you check on the ghosts again? Are they near us now?”
Shade nodded, stepping back, once again holding out his hands. The shadow creatures emerged from his fingertips and zoomed off into the night.
The next moment, a force slammed into me, knocking me forward to sprawl on the ground. I rolled, coming up on my heels in a crouch, looking around for whoever had shoved me. But there was no one in sight.
Roz shouted as he went flying across the field to land at the base of the portal. He’d been picked up and tossed like a child might toss a pebble across a pond. “Crap! What the fuck?” He was on his feet the next second and was reaching into his duster.
Next, Shade took a hit, but he stayed on his feet. His shadow creatures came swooping back to him and rushed into his body. With a grunt, he shook off the impact and turned to me.
“They’re all around us. I can see them—but I doubt if you can.”
I shook my head. So did Roz.
But Smoky let out a hiss. “I can see their forms.” He let out a long guttural sigh and turned, his nails lengthening into talons as he reached out to swipe at something. A horrid scream cut through the night, and a brilliant flash of light appeared at the area where Smoky had struck.
Roz lit a round, golf ball–sized bomb and threw it on the ground. As it exploded, the glowing sparks outlined our attackers, giving them form. I counted eleven of them.
“What are they? What can I do to them?” Frantic, I stepped back as two of the spirits began to crowd in on me. Three were after Shade, four after Smoky, and two more after Roz.
Smoky bellowed and sliced at the air again. “I don’t know—I have never seen these beings.” Another shriek and the spirit vanished. “I don’t know if I killed it or just made it go away.”
Shade caught his breath and let out a low sound that sounded almost like a howl on the wind. A chill ran down my spine as I watched him. He began to transform, right there, in the middle of the tree-crowded wood. Smoky let out a low growl but backed away as Shade’s form rippled. He began to grow, but unlike Smoky, instead of a majestic white dragon, what appeared was a terrifying, haunting form of a skeletal dragon surrounded by shadow and a violet smoke. He looked almost fossilized.
We’d never seen Shade in his natural form before. I wondered if Delilah even knew what his dragon form was. We’d all assumed he’d look like Smoky, but with black skin instead. Nobody had expected this.
I backed up and ran straight into Rozurial, who steadied me with one hand. “Helluva way to find out what he looks like,” he whispered. “Ten bucks say Delilah’s going to freak.”
As I watched the coiling, serpentine dragon whose wings were as skeletal as his body, I couldn’t help but think otherwise. “She’s never seen him like this, but don’t forget, Kitten’s a Death Maiden. She’s not the gentle tabby she began this journey as. I actually think my sister likes playing in the dark more than she’s willing to admit.”
“Maybe, but I’m not hedging my bets until she’s actually—holy crap. Look at that.” Roz broke off. I’d never seen him so unnerved.