Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

“Is he all right? Both of them?”

“I don’t know,” Wales said. “Wouldn’t it be better if his possessor was gone?”

“No,” Sylvie said. She slid along the wall a little, got closer to Wright, wrapped her hand about his wrist. There was a pulse. “So, you said lich ghost . That wasn’t on your list of types. What is it?”

“A myth,” he said. His voice shook. “A lich is half spirit, half flesh. A spirit bound and forced to animate something dead. A rotting corpse with a spirit trapped within. The grisliest form of immortality. They’re flesh, and they feed on flesh. A zombie with a brain. But they’re easy enough to banish, a handful of salt will sever the unnatural bond.”

“You said lich ghost ,” Sylvie said. “That’s different?” Wright’s hand twitched; she folded it in her own, rubbed his long fingers, trying to push warmth back into them.

“Obviously,” Wales said. “Or it would have fallen apart the moment you spilled salt on it. Look, we are far past my comfort level. Anything I tell you is, at best, a guess.”

Sylvie patted Wright’s hand, slowly rolled herself up to a crouch, the better to catch his flighty gaze with her own. “I need your guesses. They’re better than what I’ve got. So. Lich ghost.”

“A lich ghost, according to rumor, is an accident. A spirit anchored to a scrap of flesh, disincarnate. No body of its own. Doomed to madness and endless hunger. To keep their souls whole, they have to feed.”

“They don’t eat flesh,” Sylvie said. She started to pace the room, her anxiety level too high to let her sit still. Her body protested, sore and shaky with fading adrenaline, but her brain pushed it on.

“They can’t,” Wales said. “Not equipped. Most of them starve and howl and kill people in the attempt. It’s like some bastard mix of Glory and lich, and I don’t know how it happened. Don’t even know how you could screw the spells up badly enough to create the monster . . . It’s a nightmare. I mean, the Hands of Glory are static tools. They expend and devour energy in the same proportion. A lich ghost is all hunger, all the time, and they eat souls. Legend says the only people who can survive lich ghosts are immortals and gods.”

Sylvie said, “Legends are nothing more than old gossip given weight. C’mon, Wales. A human created them out of human flesh and spirit. A human should be able to destroy them.”

Wright jerked, woke all at once, and crawled toward Sylvie, cursing the entire time, moving through English, Spanish, Latin, and something Sylvie thought might be cat for all the guttural hissing that went with it. It finally resolved into a single complaint as he collapsed against her side. “Fucking Wales and his fucking safe enough.” Demalion shot Wales a poisonous glance, and said, “You okay, Shadows?”

“You?”

“I asked first,” he said.

She considered it. She felt like crap. Her body ached. Her temper was foul. Wright had nearly died, and Wales was utterly freaked-out. But the lich-ghost Hand was quiet and contained, and that could only be a win. No more snacking on Zoe’s soul.

“Not too bad,” she said.

“Lich ghost,” Wales murmured on autopilot.

“Can we go home, then?” Demalion asked. “I want a shower. I’ve been playing with corpses, and I’m covered with milk. I’m never going to be clean again.”

“Finicky as a cat,” she said, but stroked his arm in soothing motions. He linked his fingers with hers, ran his gaze over the marks on her arms. They were fading slowly, frost white going to burn pink and back to tan. They ached.

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Yeah. Let’s go home. Wales, you’ll dispose of the Hands for us, right?”

“What?” Wales said. “No!” His shoulders spiked; his drawl disappeared for clipped fury. “You fuck up my evening, drag me into this, nearly get us all killed, and now I’m supposed to take out your trash?”

“It’s not like there’s not enough shit on my plate. I don’t have time to mess around with disposal when I still have to find out who made them. And if they’ve made more. Unless you want to take that task on.”

Wales paced a quick, tight circle. “Fine. I’ll do it. You don’t have a clue anyway.”

“You said the one’s dead, and the other’s got a hole blown through it,” Sylvie said. “How hard can it be?”

“You don’t listen. I told you. To destroy the flesh is simple. But if you just fuck up the flesh, the ghost gets loose. I’ve got a method for the regular Hands. I bind the souls tight, squeeze them down into the bone, then I dissect them. It’s a spiritual vivisection. It’s not gentle. And it’s not pleasant for any of us.”

Sylvie thought of Zoe, hiding the Hand in her wall, that lich ghost in her house with her parents. She had no reservations. “They’re murderers.”

“So are you,” Wales said. “Marco knows one when he sees one. That’s what he whispered to me the whole time I was trying to shield you. ‘Let her go. She’s a killer. She’ll kill you. . . .’ ”

“Nice,” Sylvie said. “Glad a dead murderer sees fit to make judgment. I know what I am, Wales. But I don’t kill toddlers and little old men. I kill monsters.”

“You’re protecting one,” Wales said. He gestured at her huddle with Demalion, their shoulders pressed tight together, their fingers still twined.

“He’s not anything like the ghosts we’ve just removed,” Sylvie said. “He’s a benign and temporary possession—”

“There’s no such animal,” Wales said. “I’m sorry.”

Demalion jerked. His mouth twisted, so much more mobile in Wright’s flesh, and crossed his arms over his chest. Sylvie shivered as his warmth left her side.

“Some things aren’t meant to be shared,” Wales continued, each word one she had already known. Already told herself. “And mixing living and the dead . . . it confuses everything.” He leaned closer to Demalion, reached out. Demalion slapped his hand away—so instinctive he might not even know why. But Sylvie knew. She remembered the god of Love reshaping his human flesh to be something other.

Wales didn’t try to get any closer, only studied him. “There’s a touch of death on both of you.”

“It’s Wright’s body,” Sylvie said. “Look, we didn’t come here for this, but is there any way to give Wright his body back and keep Demalion’s soul in the land of the living?”

“Oh yeah,” Wales said. “Your friend already knows how to do it. Done it once already. Wait for someone to die, and move in when the soul vacates. Of course, that usually means lingering in terminal wards of the hospital, and those bodies are wrecked or rotting, so hey, just enough time to say good-bye. Or maybe he’ll be lucky and find a coma victim whose brain matter isn’t too scrambled. Most likely, though, he’ll find a body he likes, debase and destroy the soul in it, and move on in. See, no problem at all.”

Sylvie’s lips parted. “Bastard.”

“I’m honest,” Wales said. “I’ve heard you prefer that to pretty words.”

Demalion tightened his lips, said nothing at all, only headed for the door, his stride tightly controlled.

Sylvie gritted her teeth; the door slammed behind him. “There’s got to be another option.”

Wales picked up Marco’s Hand again, just holding it in his own. It seemed to give him an extra jolt of courage. “People always want what they can’t have,” he said.

“Most of the time, they’re not trying hard enough,” Sylvie said, and left him alone with his ghosts.

AFTER THE STUFFY, MILDEW-DRENCHED HALLWAYS, AFTER THE MEATY scent of Wales’s apartment, the nighttime air felt fresh and sharp, like a winter morning, and never mind that it was a sultry, humid eighty-five degrees on a grungy city street. She found Demalion—definitely Demalion by the elegant way he used Wright’s wiry frame—leaning against her truck, staring up at the dark windows. He looked sick and exhausted; he jammed his hands in his pockets but not before she saw the tremor.