My power trailed over something I couldn’t see.Then it latched on, and I let it flow through me. A new scream tore through the room, followed by a second, a third.
Six vaporous women escaped from an item near Coleman’s feet. The souls. Or really, six pissed-off and insane ghosts.
Filled with my power, the ghosts solidified. Their screams of terror and hatred erupted as red flashes in the Aetheric. As one, the group turned. Like a half dozen angry cats, they tore into Coleman, ripping at him with ghostly nails.
“Stop them,” Coleman yelled.
His words tumbled through my mind as a command, but I only smiled.
“I can’t stop them. They exist in our reality now.”
And they certainly didn’t like Coleman. Their rage emerged without words as they gouged his flesh. Their screams snapped and cracked in the magic-laced air.
“Alex!”
I turned. Death stood outside the circle, the gray man and the raver at his side. His dark eyes were wide as he scanned the bubble of chaos around me, but he didn’t enter the circle. He can’t pass the barrier.
“Alex, you’re running out of time.” He pointed at the bed.
Casey lay amid the decayed cream sheets, unconscious.
Not yet dead, but close. Her soul was only a dim glow inside her body. No. I looked up. The moon hung swollen and red above us. The Blood Moon.
Coleman looked up as well. Then the magic he’d been gathering swept out of him. It bound the six ghosts in chains of darkness. “It’s time.”
No.
I looked around. Falin and Death were both stuck outside the circle. Roy still struggled with Rianna. The ghosts were bound. I was the only one left. What can I do?
In my grave-sight, Coleman was a decaying corpse now that Falin had killed Graham’s body. He obviously hadn’t had time to bind all the spells he’d cast on Roy’s body on Graham’s, but that didn’t help me. I couldn’t reach inside him the way I had Ashen. Not with the spells on his skin. What if he didn’t have skin? If what I was seeing was true, if he really was just a corpse …
“You must See under the Blood Moon. You must know what you See is true,” the gargoyle had told me.
Fred, I hope you were foreseeing this.
I rushed forward. Coleman wants me to merge realities;
I’ll merge realities.
My hand landed on his wrist, and I pushed with power. The chill burst out of me, rushed into him. Dead skin sloughed off under my fingers.
“No!” Coleman’s other hand angled toward me, his knife clenched in his fist. Pain exploded in my stomach.
My vision went red with agony, and air suddenly wasn’t there. But Coleman’s strike was too late. The decay spread up his arm, his skin withered, and his bones crumbled to dust.
“Welcome to the land of the dead,” I whispered, gasping for air I couldn’t find. I looked down at the hilt of Coleman’s ceremonial blade where it emerged from under my ribs. Seeing it made the pain worse. I stumbled back, collapsing onto the bed. Don’t pull it out. Don’t pull it out. You’ll do more damage. But I wanted it out of me.
There wasn’t time. Destroying Graham’s body wouldn’t kill Coleman. As the body dissolved, the black stain of the true Coleman, of an unguarded soul, was revealed.
With my mind, I reached out. Instead of pushing power into the soul, I drew energy out.
Coleman screamed. His essence felt like sucking sludge from the bottom of the swamp into my body, but I didn’t dare stop. Casey’s soul was almost gone. I had to stop Coleman, and I had to stop him now.
I drew harder, and Coleman’s soul thinned, fading from existence. Existence on any plane. He diminished to a shadow, his scream an echo. And then there was nothing left.
The chill he’d commanded me to draw stopped. I let go of the excess, letting it flow out of my body. I didn’t release it all—I didn’t want to lose my sight, not yet.
Coleman’s circle shattered, his spells dissipating. The six souls screamed again, freed but with no target for their desired vengeance. Rianna tore herself away from Roy. I heard her say something about being under Coleman’s control, but I was beyond following her words. I curled in a ball around the dagger in my stomach, trying to remember how to breathe. Casey was unconscious beside me, but the glow of her soul was brighter, stronger.
“Alex!” Two male voices yelled my name simultaneously.
Death reached me first. He knelt beside the bed, his face level with mine. “Alex …”
“I stopped him,” I whispered.
Death’s dark eyes creased with concern, and his hand moved to my face. His skin felt warm—which meant I’d taken way too much chill. “You did,” he said, his thumb stroking my cheekbone.
The gray man appeared behind Death. “It’s time.”
Death jumped to his feet. “No. No, leave her.”
The gray man tapped the skull on his cane against his arm. “We’ll take care of the others first. But we have to take her.” He turned away, spinning his cane as he walked toward the displaced souls. The raver followed.
They began collecting the screaming ghosts.
Death knelt in front of me again as Falin reached the bed.
Falin’s expression was ragged. He stepped around Death, scowling at the collector as he moved to the head of the bed.
“Alexis.” Falin’s hands hovered above me, as if he was afraid I might break if he touched me. He sank onto the mattress near my shoulders. “An ambulance is on the way,” he whispered.
“They won’t make it.”The world was becoming fuzzy.
I looked at Death. “Will they?”
Death shook his head and squeezed his eyes closed.
He took my hand, pressing his lips against my skin.
“There is no pain in the end,” he promised.
Good to know. I blinked and lost time in the darkness.
Falin’s hands were on my face when I opened my eyes again. “Stay awake. Stay with me.”
I tried to smile at him, but my lips cracked into a grimace I couldn’t control. Breathing was becoming too much of a chore.
“It can’t wait any longer,” the gray man said, appearing behind Death.
“No.”
Falin’s hand moved to his gun. He drew it, leveling it on the gray man and then swinging the barrel to Death.
“Stay away from her.”
“You can’t shoot them,” I whispered.
He looked as though he wanted to. Needed to. But there was no one left to fight. His arm sagged, and his fingers moved to my hair.
I closed my eyes. I was tired. So very tired and hurt.
“It’s time,” the gray man said again, placing his hand on Death’s shoulder.
“No. I love her. I won’t do it.”
My eyes snapped open. Death loved me?
The gray man’s fingers flexed on Death’s shoulder.
“Then stand aside, friend.”
“No,” a female voice said. “Get away from her.”
The two soul collectors turned. Falin stood. He drew his gun again and stood between Rianna and the bed, the gun leveled at her chest.
Rianna glanced at the gun. “Please, I can help her.”
Her eyes moved to the collectors. “Give me a chance.”
“You were working with Coleman,” Falin said, not blinking. His finger hovered over the trigger.
“Not by choice.”
“Rianna.” Her name emerged from my throat as a rasp instead of a word.
“Alex.” She swept around Falin and his gun, moving to my side next to Death. “I tried to warn you, to tell you. I’m so sorry. Coleman forbade me from telling anyone his plans, and from warning you in particular. Coming up with a verse cryptic enough to get around his command was a bitch. And don’t even ask how I talked a thorn fae into delivering it.”
“Time is an issue,” the raver said, turning from where she’d collected the last ghost.
Rianna looked up. “I’m going to need someone to pull out the knife and someone to hold her shoulders.”
“I’ll hold her,” Death said, moving around the bed.
He lifted Casey, sliding her farther to one side. Then he climbed on the mattress beside my shoulders.
Falin frowned at Rianna. “She needs a healer.”
“Well, I’m all she has. You take the knife. Be ready when I say.” Rianna motioned for him to move to her other side.
He walked around her and climbed on the bed near my hips. He grabbed my hand, squeezing it once before his fingers moved to the hilt of the knife.
Rianna looked down at me. “Sorry, Al—this is going to hurt.” The Aetheric and reality were still merged, and Rianna gathered pale blue strands of magic around her.
Then she placed her hands on my ribs.
“Now.”
Falin pulled the knife. I screamed. The knife sliding free was like a hot poker dragging through my body.
My back arched as I twisted in pain. Death held me.
He pinned me to the bed, but I thrashed in his grip. The knife pulled free. I sagged on the bed, damp with sweat.
Rianna’s cool magic pumped into me, dulled the searing pain to an ache. Blue swirls of Aetheric energy swirled around all four of us. It sank into my body along with Rianna’s will-turned-magic. She’d always been a master spell crafter—I didn’t remember her being a healer, but when she pulled back, only a memory of the pain remained.
Falin slid my shirt up my torso, his hand exploring my stomach.A smile broke over his face, melted the tension in his icy eyes. He leaned forward, and his lips moved to mine without ever losing that magnificent smile.
“You’ll be okay,” he whispered when he pulled back.
I looked at him. At the relieved smile claiming his entire face. He’s the Winter Queen’s assassin? Her lover?
Then my gaze moved to Death. He glared at Falin, his hands pressed possessively over my shoulders.
How did things get so complicated?
But we’d won. Over my head, the first sliver of pale moon appeared around the red shadow. Coleman was gone. John would live. I’d keep my soul. Casey was alive.