“Then I guess we head in. Delilah, you have Frank on speed dial?”
She nodded. “All I need is five seconds. The minute he gets my text with the address, he’ll start the phone tree—and everybody on the other end is waiting for the call.”
There was no more procrastinating. “Let’s get a move on, then.” And with that, I took the lead and, with Smoky by my side, headed down the middle sidewalk, hoping like hell this was going to be easier than this morning.
The egg was no more than five minutes’ walk away, around a curve in the sidewalk behind a clump of overgrown rowan trees—also known as mountain ash in the area. The branches were covered with ghostly white berries that would turn red in a few months, and bright orange by late summer. For now, though, they were just ghosts of color against the rain-soaked sky.
Tombstones littered the field, and I do mean littered. They were scattered haphazardly, as if they’d been tumbled every which way. Some were rubble, long ago fallen into heaps of broken rock; others looked weatherworn and were covered with moss.
Mounds of earth showed that the inhabitants of the graves had dug their way up, through rotting caskets and dirt, to the surface. The grass was knee high, making it difficult to see if there were any twigs or rocks in our way.
The egg stood in the center of the boneyard, looking very much the same as the one this morning, though a lot smaller, with a group of bone-walkers clustered around it. That alone told me the age of the graveyard—the flesh had long ago rotted away, leaving only the skeletons of whoever had been buried here.
One at a time, they walked forward, vanishing into the egg, sucked in and sucked dry. A sickening thud hit my stomach.
“We have no way of knowing what’s going to happen when we crack open that egg.” I stared at it, almost afraid to try. But if we didn’t stop it now, the carnage would be worse later. At least I didn’t see any of the Fae or FBH witches hanging around. Maybe Gulakah didn’t realize we’d found this one, or maybe their energy wasn’t useful until the egg was almost ready to hatch. Whatever the case, the fact that they weren’t around meant one less worry for us.
“We need to stop the bone-walkers. Menolly, can you and Roz and Delilah go after them? Smoky, Morio, Trillian, and I will take on the egg.” I wasn’t sure just exactly how we were going to do that, but lack of a plan had never stopped us before.
Menolly nodded, and the three of them moved toward the bone-walkers. As we watched, they began trying to herd the shuffling creatures away from the egg. The skeletons, which had paid no attention to our presence before then, suddenly seemed to notice that yes, there were obstacles in their path. Rather than fight back to harm, they fought to get past my sisters and Roz. Which meant they were just as dangerous as any unbewitched bone-walker.
Meanwhile, my men and I headed over to the egg. We walked around it, staring at it. Smoky reached out to touch it, but I yelled at him, startling him enough for him to step away.
“Don’t touch the shell—that’s how it sucks you in, and I don’t know if a dragon can resist the pull.” I was pretty sure that Smoky would be okay but didn’t want to find out. After all, we were dealing with demons.
“Well, there’s no other way to do this.” Smoky pulled out his silver sword.
“Was that your grandfather’s?” I asked, as we waded into the fray.
He smiled. “You presume correctly, my love. This belonged to my mother’s father. Remind me when we have more time and I’ll tell you the story of how I came to possess this, and what my grandfather used it for.”
And with that, he swung it against the egg. The silver of the blade contacted the egg, and a shrill reverberation echoed through the rain. I winced, wanting to cover my ears, but it was too dangerous to set down my blade to do so. I sucked in a deep breath and waited for any sign that the spirit demons were going to come racing out of the shell.
The egg pulsated—that’s the only way to describe it—and then shuddered. The shell shifted, reminding me of a pregnant woman’s belly when her baby was pressing against it. Or rather, more like Kane’s chest in Alien, when the alien was writhing beneath the skin, ready to burst out into the room. Only with the egg, there were dozens of baby aliens beneath the shell, moving and twisting against the outer membrane.
My stomach lurched. Watching the movement and shifting shadows against the silvery surface of the orb made me queasy.
Smoky took another whack at the egg, and Morio and Trillian joined in. Again, the violent movement, and again the high-pitched shriek. I started to back away, a sick feeling rushing over me.
Meanwhile, Delilah, Menolly, and Rozurial were engaging the skeletons in an easier-than-usual battle, since their main goal was to get to the egg and feed it. In fact, the two shrieks seemed to have spurred the bone-walkers on, and they were frantically trying to fight their way past.
It was making for easy pickings. Menolly swung in from behind, and as long as she was carving them up as they ambled forward, and didn’t try to stop them from moving, the bone-walkers ignored her. Delilah and Roz saw what she was doing and adopted the same strategy.
I turned back to the egg. Fractures were beginning to show in the skin. Raising my dagger, I waited. Smoky landed a tremendous blow to the top of the orb—this one was only about six feet compared to the ten-foot diameter of the one we’d fought earlier—and one last shriek rang through the air as the egg shattered. Shifting shadows began rushing out, but they were malformed—looking like blobs compared to their fully gestated brethren we’d already killed.
The spirit demons swarmed over us, feelers wriggling out of the holes where their hearts should have been, but this time, the teeth weren’t fully formed. One managed to land a hit on me, but instead of latching on, it scraped against my skin. A jolt startled me, but the demon couldn’t gain full purchase and I managed to skewer it with my blade before it could try again.
We fought. There were probably about thirty in this egg, and this time we managed to wade our way through without calling for outside help. After a few minutes, Roz and Delilah joined us, leaving the rest of the skeletons to Menolly. Now, with the egg broken open, they were attempting to get to the demons themselves.
One of the spirit demons managed to land on one of the bone-walkers, and it struggled, finally making contact. The bones began to crumble as the demon drained the magical energy from it, and then the shattered remains fell to the ground, once again a mere framework of what had once been a living person. The demon looked stronger, but it still looked malformed.
As it came toward me, Roz swung in from behind and landed a firm blow to it with a long silver spike. The spirit demon turned on him. I raced forward and plunged my dagger into its back, and this time it vanished with a silent hiss.
The stillness of the creatures still bothered me. Other than their egg shrieking, they made no noise, fighting in an eerie silence, never screaming when hit, making absolutely no noise.
I ducked another attack, wading through a snarl of weeds in order to parry again. Once more, I brought down one of the shadows. I was getting pretty damned good with the dagger. As yet another spirit demon moved in, I moved to attack, but the toe of my boot caught on a rock that was hidden by the patch of dandelions and tall field grass and whatever else was tangled in the mire of undergrowth.
Losing my balance, I fell forward, landing hard on my knee. With a groan, I rolled over onto my back, just in time to see the shadow of the spirit demon come barreling for me. I dodged to the side, rolling to the right, quickly enough to avoid the feelers seeking to latch hold of me. As it came in again, I turned to the left and this time it managed to clip my arm, but again, it was too immature to do anything but graze my skin.
And then Smoky was standing there, his sword thrusting through the demon, and it vanished in the night. He leaned down and took my hand, lifting me to my feet.
I looked around. Nothing in sight. No bone-walkers, no spirit demons.
“You’re kidding. Did we get them all?”
“I believe so,” Smoky said. He draped his arm around my shoulders. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go home.”
As Delilah called Yugi to ask him to send out a team in order to clean up the remains of the egg and the scattered bones, we set off for the car. I was tired, and irritated. Enough was enough.
Tomorrow night, I was headed into the Aleksais Psychic Network, and I wasn’t coming out until I had Gulakah’s head on a stick.
Chapter 15
On the way home, we stopped to pick up some chicken. All I could think about was grabbing a bucket of KFC and diving into it as soon as we got home. It was late, but there was still one open near the Belles-Faire district.
I leaned out the window and shouted into the intercom. “We want four twelve-piece meals.”
A silence, then, “Did you say four twelve-piece meals?”
“Yes, extra crispy, with mashed potatoes and coleslaw for sides on all of them.”
Another pause, and then he gave me my total and I pulled up to the window, handed him two fifties that Smoky handed me, and passed the chicken into the backseat with Morio.
By the time we got home, I’d managed to shake off the lingering creeps that the bone-walkers and the spirit demons gave me. We hauled our treasure trove of chicken into the house. The kitchen smelled like lemon, and Iris and Bruce were busy putting the finishing touches on the swoops of meringue covering several lemon pies.
The guys set the chicken buckets and sides on the table as I peeked into the parlor. Nerissa was there, helping Hanna as they finished making the bed for Iris and Bruce. Everything looked cozy.
“You’re home safe!” Nerissa asked. “Is Menolly with you, or did my wife head down to the bar?” The blond bombshell who had married my sister was the most annoyingly happy newlywed I’d ever seen. And Menolly had become more cheerful than I ever expected her to be.
Menolly squeezed past me and threw herself into Nerissa’s arms, planting a huge kiss on her. Nerissa breathed in a contented sigh, and when she looked over at me, the glow in her eyes was almost blinding.
“Come on, dinner’s on the table and we need to talk over plans.” I motioned for them to follow me back into the kitchen.
As we entered the kitchen, I saw that everything had been laid out, along with plates and forks and knives.
Nerissa leaned over to sniff one of the buckets of chicken. She clapped her hands and licked her lips. “Chicken! So,” she added, looking up at me, “was it rough out there tonight?”
“Well, it wasn’t a picnic. It was easier than this morning, but it was still a mess. Bone-walkers everywhere, yanked out of their graves. My only hope is that the cemetery was so old that whatever raised them wasn’t able to find any spirits around the graveyard to suck up through their astral straw. And now, I’m wondering if the ghosts who were…well…ghostnapped…weren’t used in the ritual to gate the eggs over here.”
Shade returned from the bathroom off the utility room. He sat at the table and motioned for Delilah to sit next to him. “It is possible—the amount of psychic energy it took to bring those eggs over here had to be tremendous. While Gulakah’s perfectly capable of gating them over from the Netherworld, it might make it easier on him if he uses the extra energy from harvesting ghosts.”
Trillian was standing at the counter, filling a pitcher with lemonade. He motioned for me to join him, and when I did, he handed me a small pouch. I opened it and a silver medallion fell into my hand.
A round coin, the size of a quarter with a hole in it for feeding a cord through, it looked similar to the one I’d worn so many years back, but there were subtle differences. It was heavier, and stronger. I held it in one palm and closed my other hand over it, trying to read the energy signature, but—even though I was a seasoned witch—it was hard for me to detect the magic within the charm. And that was a very good thing. It meant it would be harder for others to sense that it was magical as well.
I held it up to the light. “You say this will last until I’m attacked?”
“Yes, it’s stronger than the ones we had back when we were chasing Roche. This will last longer.”
Menolly swiveled around from where she was carrying the pies over to the table. “You were chasing Roche? Are you saying you belonged to the OIA?”
Trillian stared at her for a moment, and then he looked at me. “Ask your sister.”
“I guess the time’s come to tell them,” I said.
“Tell us what?” Menolly looked confused.
At first, we’d kept it quiet that Trillian had saved my ass. Lathe, my boss, was looking for any reason to get rid of me because I refused to give him a blowjob or sleep with him. He’d done everything he could to make my life miserable. I’d met Trillian, fallen hard for him, and he’d joined forces with me to bring in Roche, a serial killer I was hunting.
I’d wanted to tell my sisters, but Trillian told me to keep it a secret. He wanted them to like him for who he was, not because he’d helped save my career. I’d felt odd about it, but agreed, and shortly after, with Menolly getting turned into a vampire, the issue faded into the background and we never had gotten around to telling them what really happened.
I turned around. “Okay, you remember the case I was on? The one that scared the fuck out of me because Roche was a demented serial killer and Lathe wouldn’t assign anybody to help me?”
They nodded. Smoky and Morio were staring at me now, too.
“That’s when I met Trillian. And he…the truth is that without Trillian, Roche would have killed me—that is, if I could have tracked him down in the first place. Trillian not only helped me catch him, but he saved my life doing so. And then, he refused to let me tell anybody because he didn’t want Lathe to use it against me.”