There was more blood that there should have been.
That was… wrong. It couldn’t all be Katie’s blood could it? Surely, if it was all coming from the deep stab wound in her side, it would hurt more than a faint but gnawing itch under the skin. Wasn’t pain the body’s way of letting a person know something was wrong? Well, all this blood was profoundly wrong, and why can’t I feel it?
Katie opened her eyes and saw her brother standing over her, his shadowed face starkly contrasted in white and red where her slap had connected. Blood had beaded along his cheekbone and was dripping onto her face. It was some dark form of water torture but it wasn’t the source of the ruby liquid she was wading through every time she closed her eyes. She scrambled to her feet and shoved a fisted hand into the ragged hole made by the penknife. She could get tetanus or something. Whether or not a Shade could contract diseases like that was the least of her concerns. Even ghosts can die by mortal means. When her side twinged, Katie took her hand away and wiped blood down the legs of her jeans. The pulling was getting stronger. Blood was pouring out of her like it was being sucked out but these things always looked worse than they really were. Right? And that little niggling pain was bearable, ignorable even, but there was the pulling… Something was grasping at her insides, every nerve and sensor, insisting that she go with it and let it take her where it wanted. All Katie knew was that she wasn’t going anywhere without her friends.
Once up and once the swaying from side to side had stopped, Katie pushed a stunned Samael out of her path and started to half-run, half-limp further down the tunnel. The air before was starting to swim but Katie shook her head and filled her head instead with thoughts that she might have hurt Daniel when she shoved him into the wall. Samael wouldn’t care. Samael would send him after his own sister until his body simply stopped moving. Which is what She was doing. Angry footsteps pounded the earth behind her. Far away. Closer. Almost within grabbing distance. So close she could feel the disturbance of air at her back. Katie thumped her left foot down hard and dug deep for an extra burst of speed – she was no sprinter but panic was a great motivator.
It wasn’t quite good enough though because Samael was right behind her when she saw Leo holding Jaye’s hand a little further down. “MOVE!” Katie yelled and bolted straight past them. It was good that this tunnel was straight with no more forks or turnings because she doubted her brain was functioning well enough to make decisions… but it also meant there was no chance Samael would go in the wrong direction either. If She wasn’t left a handy trail of breadcrumbs still dripping under her t-shirt. Katie didn’t even look behind her to see if her friends were following. They were. They just were. If they weren’t… would Samael even bother incapacitating them? God, she could be leaving her friends to die, just like she had left people on the road near Worth to die. Like she was leaving people all around the world to suffer at the hands of other angry ghosts.
And, through the sudden guilt crashing over her and making her gasp for breath, Katie never slowed her stride. The sounds of a brief scuffle broke out somewhere way back but that either stopped or faded into nothing as the tunnel finally opened into a large space. This was nothing like the dark, cold room they had all run from. This was a cave – a real one with rivers of water seeping up through the ground and stalagmites and stalactites piercing the air. Katie backed onto one shard of rock, put her scarred left hand down on it and let it take her weight.
“Please Jack,” she asked of the cool darkness. Not even her new and improved Shade sight could affect a natural dark like this. “I know you guys are waiting for me but I’m not going to make it. If you can hear me…” the plea went out with every last fibre of her soul. “Something’s wrong. Somebody has a hold of me. Inside. And I don’t know how long I can fight it off.” When she pushed herself away from the stalagmite, a deep red handprint smeared itself on the limestone. An eternal reminder of her rebuttal of the angel of death here in this nightmare world. A tall figure raced into the cave and almost slammed into Katie as it screeched to a halt.
“Sheesh! Not big on running for my life, Katie, get a new hobby.”
“Leo! Oh my God, I thought Samael…” the rest of the sentence – if there was one – got lost as she reached up and threw her arms around his neck. “Thank God you’re alright. If I’d got you hurt…. Where’s Jaye?”
Jaye had crawled over to the wall when Leo had let go of her hand and was sitting with her knees clutched to her chest. Somehow, she was still holding Katie’s backpack. It was safe over by the wall, away from anything that might be used as a weapon and shadowed by the uneven walls. Almost invisible. Plus there were tiny trickles of water to swish this way and that.
A thin sheen of sweat covered Katie. The strain of the night was telling and if this dark thing inside her tugged one more time… maybe, maybe she should let it take her away from this place and plant her somewhere else. Somewhere she did not have to choose between saving thousands of innocent people from perpetuity of hurting others, and saving her brother only to damn them all to that existence. A place where the decision was more than just her family or her survival instinct. Somewhere none of this would ever have happened and the memory would be a black hole.
“You’re hurt.”
“Are you ready to fight?”
Leo glanced up at the entry he and Jaye had just barrelled through. “I should tell you. I think I broke his arm.”
A flare of anger, bright and hot and everything she needed. “If Samael wants to mess with our family, Her toys will get broken. Now, ready soldier?”
“Always.” The pair of them joined hands and held them out in front of them. Just as a shadow raced down the tunnel towards them, Katie felt her legs, suddenly and without warning, start turning to jelly. A third hand slapped itself over both of theirs. Small, pale, Jaye. Katie just had time to see her face smiling defiantly up before Samael burst into their little trio and sliced the stained – blood, my blood – knife down Jaye’s pretty visage.
Maybe more blood spilled.
Maybe Jaye turned to spit in his face.
Maybe there was fighting.
Maybe the jagged ground rushed up to meet Katie’s face. The cave dissolved into purple-black and silver sparkles before she knew what was happening.
“Can you feel anything?” Jack sat on one of the high barstools, watching Dina as she sat atop the bar peering at an old book. “You’re best placed among us to know.”
“I can feel something.”
“I’ll rephrase. What specifically can you feel?”
He looked across at Shimma who just shrugged. “It means exactly.”
“Oh. I guess it’s like when I pull on her energy. You’ve done that, right? Only… it’s harder.” Dina frowned. “I think it’s just slippy – you know? Because she’s diff’rent. But the link’s still there, still strong.”
Leo screamed like a girl. He wasn’t ashamed to admit it either. Flying through a vacuum of silver and black sparks with one friend who was exhausted, bleeding out and… well, dead - was a damn scary thing to be spending your Thursday night doing. When you added another girl who seemed to have no memory but that of how to be scared of people and a face sliced open like a gruesome clown with exposed flesh instead of rouge, and one of the angels of death he had spent years believing were safely entombed in the pages of his Bible, then it became the journey his entire faith was going to be tested on. Luckily, the vertical descent lasted only a handful of heartbeats.
Four figures slammed down to earth in a heady rush of light, dark, silence, screams, pain and a blissful numbness that lasted a disappointingly short time.
Samael, Katie, Jaye and Leo were thrown apart on impact – each sliding towards a different corner. Leo was the first of the group to scrabble along the ground until he touched the wall and heaved himself up. Looking around, he saw some dirty drinks glasses engraved wi
th SHIMMA by the rim. They were at Shimma’s club. He turned just in time to see Dina leap off the bar and power slide along the varnished floor to coo over Jaye. Jack jumped upon hearing the crash of bodies but he was just frozen in his seat, staring into the dancefloor as though he couldn’t process what he was seeing. Shaking his head, Leo raced over to Katie and pushed her hair away from her face. She was conscious and awake – that was always a good start. But her shoulders were shaking, her entire body was trembling. For one horrible second he thought she might be crying in that rending, raw way she had just a couple of months before, keeping him awake and wondering if she would ever stop. But no. Impossibly, it seemed, Katie was laughing. She could not get enough air in this position to make the explosion of sound that accompanied this strange amusement but oh it was hilarious!
“Hey!”
Katie rolled over onto her back, careful to mind the hole in her side. “Crap. You’re still here.”
“Love you too. Bitch.”
It was half snarky but there was that tiny part of Leo that had fancied this girl from the first day he had seen her, and she had given him some of the best moments of his young life. He had fought for her, he had kissed her, he had caught her when she fell over. Maybe it wasn’t quite love, not yet. Maybe it was a soul-deep gratitude for making him finally feel like a person and not the scared kid who was always making mistakes; a profound thankfulness that might twist itself into something else if they let it.
“What’s so funny?”
The fact that he had to ask just made it funnier. Everything was worth laughing over. The sheer absurdity of their situation… the series of bizarre events that had led them all here… take your pick.
Then Jack was walking over to them. It seemed that the world had slowed down. Or Leo was just reacting to everything at triple speed because, before he completely knew he was moving, Katie was balancing on her knees and Leo had rucked her top up to expose her toned and tanned stomach. He grabbed for her necklace, untied the knot and slid the beads off, handing them back to Katie. It was a double loop of cord, long enough for him to tie in a tight belt over a few tissues he had found and packed the oozing wound with. “Feel okay?”
“Ready to rock,” replied Katie and rose with a grace that didn’t even hint at her injured state. If her light shirt hadn’t been half dark with blood, nobody else might have been any the wiser. She walked over to a teenage boy on the floor – not Samael in control now, not until he regained consciousness – passing Jack on the way and giving him a look full of heat and passion and promises never to be broken. In just the couple of hours since they had seen each other, lifetimes might have passed. But the sparks between them were more intense than before. “What? You thought I would not make it? You know me better than to think I’d miss – how did we all get back here anyway?”
“Blood magic.”
“Means nothing.”
“Dina found this thing in her calligraphy book about how blood was used to return people to a particular place. She used the blood here to get you back to us.”
“Oh. That makes… no sense at all.” However, it did sort of explain why she had been feeling that strange pulling sensation: her blood had been straining on the leash to get back to the rest of it. “And there’s a but. I can smell it.”
“No, not really. It’s just… we’re cuttin’ it close is all.”
“I can feel me regretting this already but – what are we cutting close.”
“You know how me and Shimma get stripped of everything supernatural at midnight? Well, this spell… it means blood and spirit and power feeds into you. And from you, it sorta ripples through the world and everyone he,” Jack nodded at her unconscious brother, “is influencing will go back to normal.”
“Normal. They will be alive?”
Shimma appeared from nowhere and wrapped both teenagers into a hug. That’s how it started anyway. Within seconds, Shimma realised he was no longer giving the much-put-upon youngsters what comfort he could, but was losing himself in their life and vitality – knowing that if he had to lose his powers as a Keeper agent, it was for a good reason. He had made a good choice in risking everything on Katie. “If they died naturally, they’ll stay dead. But they’ll be ghosts of who they were. Go to the End Place.”
“And if Samael killed them?” At the confused looks, Katie jerked her head over at the body lying partly in the aqua wash of fairy lights. “My brother – the angel of death. He got possessed. By a girl.”
“Samael’s a chick!” Daniel, who had never even been born and had no place in the world, had been soul-stolen by a death dealer and this was the bit Shimma had a problem with. It was better than him freaking out.
“They’ll stay dead and evil as long as they’re linked to him.” Katie shrugged her way out of the awkward group hug and twisted around until she was facing the bar. The book Dina must have been using was lying open by the till. Katie couldn’t make the words out in their fancy writing. But that wasn’t the important bit, was it? These were just words. The bit that mattered was in the middle of the floor, still glittering and wet, showing floor where she, Jaye and Leo had tracked through it. Blood. Everything was blood. It had brought them all back here when she had thought they might die in the cave. It bound them all together. Blood… spirit… power. The mortal… the eternal… the infinite. And if it could hold them all together, maybe it could break them apart too…
“Katie, don’t get too close!” Dina warned from her crouch next to Jaye. “You saw what happened before.”
It was okay. Katie felt it. It would be okay.
Dina was sitting next to Jaye and using bar napkins to wipe the blood off Jaye’s face, hardly even noticing the cut she had re-opened on her own right arm. “Sweetheart,” she crooned and dabbed at a mix of blood and tears. Jaye was crying because this face, this face was so familiar somehow but she couldn’t remember. “Jaye, I know it hurts but you can stop it hurting. Just… just turn it off.”
“She can’t. Samael took away her memories so there was room for Her. She doesn’t remember how much things hurt and that… that’s scary.”
“How do we get her memory back?”
“It’s still in there,” Shimma answered, glancing at Katie for a nod. “They’ve been pushed to the side. As soon as the link to Samael is broken, it’ll all be okay.”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God.” Dina hugged her knees to her chest, letting the tissue fall from her hand for Leo to pick up and take over attending to Jaye, repeating the words over and over.
The lights over the seating area dimmed, making them all jump.
“What the hell?”
“That’s never a good thing.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“Speaking from every horror film I’ve ever seen. Lights flicker – bad shit happens.”
“Or some-one dies.”
Shimma twisted, his silvery hair glinting like it was streaked with turquoise-brushed steel. “That comes under the bad shit header.”
“Positive thinking. I like it.”
Katie stood over her brother. Daniel was just a kid, an innocent boy who never was, commandeered body and soul by Samael to seek the cruellest revenge on Katie for not giving in and providing her vessel after guiltless vessel. People she knew, people she saw in the halls at college, even complete strangers. And Samael had known from the beginning that Katie wouldn’t be able to do it so She had returned inside her dead brother, figuring (correctly) that if she would not sacrifice an unknown person then she wouldn’t even consider hurting her family. Which left her with two choices.
Stand idly by and let this happen. No-one would die by Katie’s own hand but… she could have stopped it, controlled it, so it was her fault really.
Or she could run to the fire exit, plead with the other spirits to open the dimensional doorway and spend the rest of forever in the Dead World. Which was wher
e she belonged.
“Jaye. Bitch, I’m tryin’ a help you! Co-operate.”
Katie grinned. Her friends. Her family. Arguing, suffering, hurt, but here. Tears sprang from nowhere and began coursing down her face. “You stabbed me, Daniel. You stabbed me and I couldn’t even fade out because I don’t know how to. And you didn’t even care if it killed me or not.”
“That wasn’t him, Lady Katie.”
She held up her hand to silence Jack. “All of this was because I wouldn’t be your flunky and get you new bodies every time you burn another one out.. I can’t believe you’d turn half the world so evil for something so petty. Actually, you know, I can believe it. I just didn’t think you would take it this far. And I have to ask myself… why me? Why am I so important to your plan for world domination? And why would you suddenly want to hurt me, little brother?”
Daniel groaned and flipped on to his back. For now, he was a pale and tired boy, trying to smile up at the sister he had longed to meet for so very long. “Remember me.” The words were croaky but they were there. And they sounded like goodbye.
Her phone skidded across the floor. When it bounced off her foot, Katie picked it up and stared blankly at it. “Time.” The screen had been scrolled across to show a full-screen digital clock. 11:53. Nearly midnight.
She dropped it on the floor, vaguely hearing it clatter to the floor, not even caring if it broke. If there were only five minutes until midnight, she wanted to spend every second of them with her boyfriend. When he became human, he might not be Jack any more. He would be different. He might not love her any more.
“Why would I hurt you? Now, that’s a really good question. Well, partly it’s because I could and… oh, you didn’t want the truth?”
“I sever the link to you – I sever the link to everyone you hurt.”
Samael let the fresh shadows drop and the sleeping child was the last thing anyone saw before the lights went out. There was a moment of buzzing confusion during which Shimma shouted “CATCH!” and something silver tracked a bright spiral through the darkness. Katie grabbed the front of the black top Daniel was wearing – no cut or fabric she knew but something that seemed to be moulded into his skin. Maybe I am holding a shadow… And dragged him over to the pool of her blood a few feet away. It called to Katie so strongly that she knew exactly where to go. She snatched the object Shimma had thrown out of the air as it neared her without even looking. Running on instinct. She didn’t miss a beat. She dropped Samael/Daniel to the ground, crouched down and felt the object she had in her hand. As she had thought, it was a weapon. A dagger of sorts. It had some pattern of ridges on the handle and a slightly curved thin blade. And it was silver. From the tingle it gave off it had been bespelled by the Keepers. The noise of shock in the room quieted and all Katie could hear was the thundering of her own heart. Not even thoughts had any coherency. Before she could allow her predicted regret to change her mind, Katie put the blade to skin and dragged it to the side.
No more angel of death to haunt her dreams.
No more would die because Katie was too weak to act.
No more connection to Samael.
She felt that connection snap. It was something like the snapping of a pencil, sudden and sharp, and it wasn’t like it at all. How could that be? Don’t know. Don’t care. It was just gone in a moment and that, along with having another Keeper fuelled vision of souls all over the world either disappearing or fading back into muddy silver and then dulling into the swirl of earth tones of the world, was the only important thing. Katie couldn’t feel anything. Nothing else but this little bubble of her and her brother existed. Daniel found her fingers, slick with sweat and blood, Then even that vanished. There was numbness. The night was dark and still and silent for just a few hours more. Tomorrow, life would begin again; life without pain or pleasure. Life without Samael. Life without danger.
The light came back on, blinding everyone for a moment. There was no more blood. There were no more tears.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?”
Going to her own funeral was the best decision she had made in a long time.
Katie leaned across and kissed Jack on the cheek. “I love you.” She felt his smile against her skin and longed to stay in the comfortable body heat he now radiated. The shock of being merely human – mortal – would start pressing down on him eventually. It was so strange to be able to hold him and feel him warm and solid beside her instead of the cool, hollow feeling of the previous few months. He didn’t smell like dirt and death anymore; just of leather and…Jack. Jack had a scent all his own. For two nights, Katie had gone to bed knowing he was at her side (well, one night squashed into her tiny bed and the other on the settee, at Lainy’s insistence) and woken up when he brought her hot chocolate to fight the morning chill. But his strong arms around her did more to warm Katie than any hot drink. And then nightclothes started flying in all directions. He seemed to be adjusting quite well for the time being.
“No changin’ the subject, girlie.”
“Girlie?”
“Off the list. But I will find a pet name you like.”
“Don’t doubt it.”
“The question?”
“Yes, I’m glad I came. I needed to. This chapter of my life is finished. My family are here but… it’s not home any more.” They were sitting on a bench by one of the raised flower beds outside the funeral home. Her parents had opted for a dignified ceremony to leave from here. Her white coffin had been slid into a hearse done up to look like a stretch limo, and it and everyone else were now at some church Katie hadn’t got the guts to follow them to. Yet. “Do you regret it?”
Jack frowned.
“I mean everything you gave up for me?”
Whatever answer was going to spill forth was silenced when Katie’s phone buzzed. An answer phone message. Funny – it hadn’t rung or anything. She pressed a few buttons and listened to the start of the message whilst her boyfriend thought about his answer. It was not as cut and dried as he had first thought. Being a Shade who was rooted in the Dead World, who had to literally suck a little slice of like out somebody to take form in this dimension… Whilst it might have been a crappy existence, it was the only one he really knew. He had survived it for almost ten times as long as his first shot at mortal life. No more avoiding trivial things like getting wet, aging, erasing wounds with a thought. Absently, he touched the bullet scar dead centre of his forehead.
“I miss what I was. I’m not gonna lie,” he told Katie when she took the phone away from her ear. “But it was worth it to do this whenever we want.” He bent his necked and kissed her properly, stroking calloused fingers down her cheek and then down her coat sleeve until he was holding her hand – the left one, the one covered in burns and scars, and that was perfect. They were battle scars. She’d been to hell and come back. “And no-one gets hurt. Not again.”
“My family. Daniel.”
“What do you want to do? We can’t make them forget.”
“I’ll think about it when we get home. We need to go to church. I want you to meet my sister. She’s the only one outside Northwood who knows I’m still here.”
“If she’s like you, I’ll love her like my own.”
“Did you have one? Any siblings at all?”
“Not that I knew of.” He glanced down at their clasped hands and then back up at her. Before now, this would have been one of those moments when shadows flitted behind his eyes as questions about his history plagued him, but they were clear now. Those green pools held nothing more than honesty. No secrets between them. “I guess, at least, I never had any family to lose.”
“Lucky you.”
“What happened in the dark?”
Katie had her own shadows now. I slit my kid brother’s throat. It sounded bad in her head and could only imagine that it would sound worse aloud. She was a murderer. She
had killed Henry Lawson. This was not the same – it wasn’t killing an evil, hateful, supernatural man who had no place in this world. It was a cold-blooded slaughter and no matter how often she told herself that Samael had been irreparably damaged in the process it never justified committing fratricide. “He – She – was there one minute and then the lights came up and… wasn’t. But I don’t think either of them are coming back. Ever.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Jack hadn’t quite got the knack of complex emotions yet so he didn’t know why he felt like he had to apologise – he didn’t know a lot of things he used to – but he just knew it was the right thing to say. “I know it must hurt to know you’ll never see him again.”
“Daniel wasn’t really my family. I mean, I never knew him. Never thought about him until I died. And then he always had Her in him. Where-ever he is now, it’s better than that.”
By the time the couple got home to the old Newton Street, preparations for the Halloween party were in full swing. No-one had the time or the energy to bother with too many decorations or costumes the way Adam said they usually did. Jack kissed Katie one last time and vanished into kitchen to help Adam wrestle food and drink out of the bottom cupboard while she went into the living room to help Lainy throw a few orange, purple and black streamers around. Dina was already in there lending a hand.
“I’m back.”
“Oh, hey Katie.”
Lainy jumped and nearly fell off the chair she was standing on.
“Whoa. No falling over.” Dina put a hand on Lainy’s lower back to steady her. “It’s totes against the rules.”
“There are rules? A fall won’t hurt her.”
“She can’t get hurt but-“ Lainy shot Dina her most withering shut the hell up look. She held up her hands in mock defence. “Hey, I do not want to invoke the wrath of Adam.”
“It’s okay sweetie,” Lainy said finally, stepping down and handing Katie some coloured strips of crepe paper to braid. “I just haven’t got used to having you back around the house.”
“I never said I was easy to get rid of.”
“Glad of it too. We need you around here.”
“To cook?”
“You got it. The best we can manage is ordering a takeaway or nuking a pizza.”
“How’s your side?”
“Better,” Katie lied. It was healing the old fashioned way – slow and painful. However hard she concentrated, she couldn’t make it go away like Jaye had healed her face. It hadn’t required medical attention, deep as it was, and the bleeding had stopped by the time midnight had struck. “Stab wounds must take a while to work out.”
“No more than anything else. You probably just need practise,” Lainy assured her. “We can work on it.”
“D. Any drawing pins? I’ll hang this above the door.”
She fished a couple out of the box. “I’ll go get the step ladder.”
Dina left and, a moment later, was deep in conversation with the boys. Katie slid the pins into place, staring up at the door frame where she wanted it to go. She closed her eyes, visualising facing the flaking door frame and pushing the sharp fasteners into the wood so hard they left little imprints in her thumbs. There was a tiny jarring sensation in her knees and, when she opened her eyes to ask if Lainy had felt it too, she found the woman looking at her like she was sprouting a tail.
“Guys! Get in here!”
Adam and Dina ran in. “You okay, baby?” Lainy just pointed up at the door frame. He then yelled for the rest of the household to come in. While they were waiting, Katie traced the line up to the door frame. The crepe plait was hanging from end to end.
“She’s still glowing,” Lainy told Jack when he entered.
“What?” Katie stepped back and flopped down on the settee. “How did that get up there?”
“You… you put it there. I watched you just start glowing then rise through the air and stick it up.”
“And you let me? I can fucking fly! And you didn’t think that was wrong?”
“Be fair, Katie.” Adam slid an arm around his fiancée, but he didn’t take his eyes off the magically pinned decoration. “This is hardly normal behaviour.”
Jack edged around and sat himself next to her. “Don’t worry, Lady Katie. We’ll figure this out. Now, go get your party clothes on. I wan’ you prettier than ever. No more tears.”
About the author
Wendy Maddocks lives in Birmingham, England, with her slightly crazy family. She blames them for her twisted imagination. Sanity is not her friend. She enjoys reading and studying, working out and eating cake, which makes her fat and in need of yet another gym session. (Yes, I’m a masochist!) She also has a fear thing about sheep. After graduating from university, Wendy began publishing her own work online and is always working on new writing projects. What will happen when she runs out of ideas?
No, let’s not wonder that.
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