Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

Cold.

Shock.

Cold.

Breathless.

Pressing.

Not breathing.

Something pressing on her face, through her mouth, through her nose, smothering her, and though she tried to drag it off with her free hand, all she did was claw her own skin bloody. The ghost was untouchable.

Implacable.

Sylvie, vision swirling, got a strange overlay. A hospital ceiling. White perforated tiles, stiff-bleached sheets, needles in her arms, and a smiling woman putting a pillow over her face. She kicked and struggled, and her voice said, It’s not your death you’re remembering.

She sucked in a thread of air, rank with dead flesh, but sweet in her lungs. Sucked in another, cold as the clay as she fought it through the ghost’s efforts to smother her. That hungry tongue, so like a succubus’s, lashed and stung and struck, but . . . couldn’t penetrate deeper than her skin. Couldn’t plug itself in. Couldn’t devour her soul. Holding the Hand gave her at least that much protection.

“You killed him,” she said. An old man in a hospital bed, his arms knobby and white-furred. Not her. Him. Like Bella’s dreams, it was a vision of the past. The ghost’s memory. Not hers.

“Of course I did,” the ghost said, a cold kiss in her veins. “A life’s such a little thing when it’s not your own. Where is my vessel?”

“Get off me, and I’ll tell you.” Like she could. She didn’t even know what the hell the ghost was talking about. But she’d say anything to get that cold invasion out of her bones. Was it like this for Wright? Did Demalion feel like this to him? How had he held on for so long?

The ghost withdrew to the very edge of the spell circle. Beyond her, Wales fumbled his spray bottle, Marco’s flaming Hand, and Wright’s slack form. The Hand of Glory that Wright was supposed to be mastering was slipping from his lax grip. On my own, Sylvie thought, gritting her teeth. Just like always.

She scraped up a little salt and tried to put out the flames with it. Shortsighted. She should have brought the milk carton in with her.

The ghost shrieked and attacked again, not slowed at all by the salt; the rat teeth chittered near her ear. Cold lanced through her arm; Sylvie’s fingers spasmed; she dropped the flaming Hand, and that snake-tongue lashed around and sank through her ribs.

It was a bright burst of pain, frigid and sharp, and she had the distinct and unpleasant sensation of feeling her heart miss a beat. Her vision was gone, just like that, that vertigo from before coming back, stronger than ever. She’d thought she was immune to this?

On her knees, and when had that happened, and her ears ringing, her lungs aching—was she still breathing?—and something being drawn out of her. No, she thought, no. Not like this.

Then human hands clamped down, hard and hot on her shoulders, the circle broken, the ghost whipping away from her, freed and exultant for a shared heartbeat as the tongue withdrew from its attack on Sylvie’s soul.

A moment later, the raging shriek started up again—thin, high, wavering. Nails against the chalkboard of her bones.

When Sylvie’s vision cleared, the shakiness faded; she found herself in Wales’s arms, Marco encircling him, in some horrifying parody of a three-way embrace. Wright slumped against the wall, the Hand in his lap alight, and a looming ghost sheltering him, a dead ex-con so large he almost had to be called Tiny.

The woman’s ghost battered at the walls, bounced back, wailed, hit the door with no better result. In Sylvie’s ear, Wales said, “Paranoia comes in handy. As does concern for the neighbors. My home’s a ghost trap.”

“We’re inside the trap,” Sylvie muttered back. “We’re here and we’re tasty and I’m out of ideas. You got anything?”

“She’s a lich ghost,” Wales said.

“A what?” Sylvie shook her head, regretted it when the dizziness swung back around. “No. Never mind. Lesson later. Fix the problem now.”

“Which one?” He shivered against her back; his hands trembled, bare against her flesh.

Bare.

Marco’s ghostly arms were wrapped tight around Wales. But Wales—

She wasn’t the only one who’d dropped the Hand of Glory. In the center of the room, a fallen Hand burned, slow and sullen. It wasn’t the lich ghost’s, streaming fire toward the stucco ceiling. It was Marco’s.

“Wales,” she breathed. “Is that—”

“Don’t,” he said, shivering kicking up a notch. “Don’t question it. I’m not.”

If Marco was loose, why wasn’t Wales dead? Why wasn’t she? Had Marco just not noticed? Or was he honestly trying to protect Wales?

Either way, it was a situation that felt too fragile to linger. Near Wright, the spray bottle lay tipped on its side, the nozzle broken, a puddle of milk seeping slowly into the carpet.

They had to be rid of the lich ghost before she got tired of clawing at the walls and came back for them. Had to get that Hand extinguished. She touched Wales’s arms gently, two pats, getting his attention, asking for release, gesturing toward the cooler, a whole ten feet away. It looked like a huge distance when she took into account the hungry ghosts in the room.

Wales eased himself away from her, and out of his arms, out of Marco’s—it felt like a spotlight was shining on her flesh, marking her as a target. She thought about saying, “No, on second thought, you do it. . . .” But she was stronger than Wales, less scared, more angry, and Wright was looking at her from across the room with eyes full of hope and fear. He’d trusted her instincts, and she’d been wrong.

The risk was hers to take.

She’d crossed only a few feet of the floor when the ghosts attacked. The lich ghost swooped in, fury and frustration distorting her face, and Wright’s ex-con, lumbering even in death, snapping at her with his teeth. Cold and vertigo chased themselves across her body, and she fumbled forward, catching the cooler by sheer determination and momentum. It tipped in her grip, spilling a carton toward her—nearly empty—and something much more precious.

Her gun.

She underhanded the milk carton in Wales’s direction, trusting him to use it to best effect, and grabbed her gun. Wales splashed milk over the lich ghost’s Hand, but it wasn’t working, wasn’t slowing the flames or the ghostly woman that emanated from it. The lich ghost and Tiny were duking it out. The lich ghost’s barbed tongue pierced the yardbird’s chest, seeking the soul.

“Too bad he’s dead already,” Sylvie said, but apparently there were levels and levels of dead she had yet to learn. Lich ghosts could apparently feed on anything. Tiny swirled away, diminished from within, sucked up in bizarre silence.

The room was quiet for a moment, then there was the quiet sizzle of Wright’s protecting Hand going out, of Wright slumping into the deadly lethargy. Unprotected. And the lich ghost still moved.

Sylvie spun around, gun in hand, and fired four shots into the lich ghost’s Hand, blowing it out of the remnant of the salt circle and against the wall. Gobbets of flesh spattered, bone cracked, and the lich ghost went out like a light.

Wales slid forward and poured milk over Marco’s slow-burning Hand.

“Is that it?” Sylvie asked. “Is it dead now? Did bullets do it?”

“No,” Wales said. “She’s only retreated. I can feel it still buzzing.” He stood shakily, a better man than her—she didn’t have any intention of getting off the floor anytime soon. Her wrists, her forearm, her pant leg were stippled in white where the barbed tongue had touched and burned with cold.

Wales dipped his fingers in the salt, wet them with the last of the milk, and made his way over to Wright, sketching shapes across his face.