David Dalglish - A Dance of Ghosts

Their fear at the sight of him was overwhelming, and to his otherworldly senses, it smelled like a fine perfume.

“Fall back!” the foremost man shouted before Ghost took off his head. The other two impressed him with their bravery, ignoring the command and instead slashing out at Ghost with their swords. Ghost blocked them both, pushing aside their strokes as if they were children. Another step, closing the distance, and they were his, their weapons positioned awkwardly, given his new proximity. One stab through the throat killed the first; a looping slash cut the other across the belly just beneath his breastplate. As he fell, innards tumbling, Ghost showed him mercy and opened his throat as well.

More would be coming, he knew, which meant Deborah needed to end her fight soon. Running back to the garden, he watched the women battle in midair, smashing into one another. As they fell, Ghost felt himself cheering for Zusa. Had he not promised to kill her last? But no, his opinion was now irrelevant. He felt the curse pulsing in the veins of his face and neck, boring deep into his muscles, or whatever it was his body now had. When Zusa slammed hard to the ground, seeing it filled him with a sensation almost sexual in its pleasure.

Yet deep down in his chest, Ghost felt only rage and sickness.

Swords still drawn, he flew across the grass of the garden, doing his best not to think. Not to breathe. He embraced that rage, clung to it like a shelter in a thunderstorm. It pushed aside his doubt, denied the curse pounding angrily in his veins. Focus only on the act, on the betrayal they’d committed.

I am not yours, thought Ghost as he came barreling in toward Deborah, who knelt triumphantly over Zusa. Not your puppet. Not your slave.

He leaped, legs extended, and slammed straight into her chest with his feet. The woman let out a startled cry, rolling along the ground several times before she could skid to a halt. The faceless woman glared at him from behind the white cloth of her face, her legs crooked beneath her like a spider, much of her weight supported on one hand still clutching the grass from halting her roll.

“I should have known as much,” Deborah said, and she coughed. Dark blood spread across the wrappings of her face around her mouth.

“Indeed, you should have,” Ghost said, fighting to concentrate. Zusa lay beside him, and it felt like every part of his mind was screaming at him to finish her, to drive a blade through her eye and out the back of her skull. Instead, he grinned at Deborah and remembered the hours he’d lain on a cold floor while above him roared the phantom image of the Lion.

The woman’s eyes narrowed, and when she attacked, Ghost was ready. Instead of meeting her head on, he leaped backward, arms crossed over his chest. His body passed through the tree Zusa leaned against, and he felt a chill spike up his right leg as it brushed Zusa’s body. Pushing it out of mind, he jumped as high as his legs would let him … which was much, much higher than it had ever been prior to becoming whatever Daverik had made him. He soared through the branches, felt the moisture of the leaves as they slid through his face, and then was falling. Deborah had hesitated upon his disappearance, and when she looked up, he realized she had deciphered his maneuver.

“ Karak! ” she shrieked, waves of power rolling across him, knifing into his exposed skin. For a moment, he hovered there in the air, his fall countered by the shriek, and then he landed, his blood splashing all across the grass. Deborah was on him in a heartbeat, slicing and stabbing with her daggers. Ghost blocked the first two, the third sneaking through as he struggled to regain his sense of balance and vision. As he felt pain from her blade cutting into his forearm and saw the blood spill, he confirmed that blades could still hurt him, at least when he was in the open instead of shifting through walls or the rocky ground.

Good to know, he thought, though that knowledge would benefit him for only moments more. Deborah pressed the attack, and it took all his skill to keep her at bay. At least the ache from the curse had subsided. Battle was a wonderful medicine, and he much preferred the pain from the cuts of blades over the insidious pulse deep in the center of his being.

Into the dirt Ghost dropped, and when he reemerged behind Deborah, she had already turned, blocking his slashes. She lunged toward him, her daggers a flurry of steel, and he blocked them with growing confidence. Her skill was great, but damn it, prior to fighting the Watcher, he’d never even considered someone could be greater than he, and it was time he remembered that.

Parrying aside one thrust, he stole the offensive, his feet a blur beneath him as he shifted closer and closer, giving her no break. Her defenses grew desperate, they both could tell, and then she inhaled deep.

“ Karak! ” came the cry, only this time Ghost denied it with every piece of his soul.

“No!” he screamed, swords crossed before him as the power rolled forth. “Not … this … time!”

His swords opened, and he pushed aside the attack as if it were just another blade. He saw the fear in Deborah’s eyes, that flash of doubt, and he knew the end had come. Into her chest his swords sank deep, and as the blood flowed, she looked up at him with a mixture of fury and confusion.

“No one…” she said as he pinned her to the dirt. “No one can … can resist…”

Ghost knelt down close, and he ripped off the wrappings that hid her face.

“I just did,” he said, kissing her forehead. “And I will again. My life is my own, precious. A shame you never felt the same about yours.”

To that she could say nothing, for her eyes had rolled back into her head, her movements merely the final twitchings of a dying body. Ghost pulled free his swords and looked about. All around him was a scene so bizarre he could only laugh. Dozens of soldiers had come in from outside the mansion, and they’d formed a circle around him and Deborah. How long had they been there, he wondered, watching their fight? He could only guess. It’d taken a knife-edged focus to defeat Deborah as well as keep all thoughts of Zusa from his mind.

“I mean no harm,” Ghost said to the soldiers about him. “I killed the invader, or have you not noticed?”

To the front pushed a man in fine silver armor, a yellow circle with wings upon the front of his tunic.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asked, his own sword drawn.

“This has nothing to do with you,” Ghost said. He saw where Zusa lay against the tree, Alyssa huddled over her, and then he pointed.

“Only her,” he said.

A shadow crossed over the man’s face.

“Get out,” he said.

“With pleasure.”

Ghost dropped into the dirt, the last sound he heard before the earth swallowed him that of the guards’ gasps. Like some strange worm, Ghost swam through the ground, focusing on exiting the compound. As he did, he felt a sensation building in his stomach, and with each passing second, it grew stronger. His speed slowed, and his otherworldly vision dimmed. For a panicked moment, he thought he’d be lost underground, forever entombed as the powers Karak had given him diminished.

And then the pain hit.

It was like a lightning bolt through his mind, a crystal-tipped spear ramming into his gut. He felt like he needed to breathe, yet couldn’t. Over and over, he saw Zusa in his mind, lying there, her life ready to be taken by the faceless woman, yet he’d stopped it. He’d saved her, and now he heard a deep voice chanting as if from some great distance.

Betrayed.

“No!” Ghost screamed, but it was only the whisper of a man long buried in a grave.