Forever and Beyond

by Jayde Scott

  Julie shrugged. “I don’t know, but Morganefaire’s guards never abandon their positions, no matter what. They took an oath to protect the city.”

  Foul play? “We should go back and inform the others.”

  I turned on my heel when Julie stopped me, whispering, “Listen. Do you hear that?”

  I nodded, only now noticing the scratching sound coming from outside the city walls directly beneath me. It was faint, barely audible, and yet unmistakably there. Probably some animal or small rodent sharpening its claws. “What is that?”

  “The hands I told you about,” Julie whispered. “If you lean over the wall far enough you can see them.”

  A shiver ran down my spine. Crawling hands were so not my thing. Even though I didn’t really believe in them, I felt compelled to look. Kneeling down, I tilted my head over the edge, but not far enough to topple over.

  “Do you see them?” Julie whispered in my ear.

  I craned my neck to get a better glimpse at the darkness below. “Not a single finger.” My lips curled into a smile. The people here were so superstitious they’d make every fanatic cult rich beyond their wildest dreams.

  “A vampire with a bad sense of humor,” she muttered. “You’re just in denial.”

  “Seriously?”

  She raised her chin defiantly. “They’re there. Everyone knows that.”

  I nodded slowly. Another grin tugged at my lips. “Yeah. Without a doubt.”

  Something flickered in Julie’s gaze. Hot waves of anger wafted from her. Yet another ghostly mood swing coming my way. I figured I’d better take cover before it hit me. “Let’s go,” I said, standing.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Julie hissed. Before I even realized what was happening, her hands moved through me, grabbing and shoving with such force I stumbled backward. It was just a tiny step but enough to trip over my own feet. Flapping my hands about to grab onto something, I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet.

  And then I fell.

  Chapter 17

  No matter what movies tell you, vampires can’t turn into bats and they certainly don’t possess the ability to fly. What they can, however, is hold on for dear life. I was the living proof. Okay, dead proof, but you get the point.

  As Julie pushed me off the wall and the solid ground disappeared from under my feet, my arms flailing around me, my fingers miraculously managed to grab the edge. My legs bounced in mid-air, trying to find something to hold onto and heave myself up, but my attempts remained futile. This side of the wall was as smooth as ice.

  “Get someone,” I said.

  “You act like you’re in trouble. As if. Embrace your immortal DNA. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

  My hand strained to hold my weight, but I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on. “Be quiet for a change and help me.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’m calling a light worker, or priest—whatever gets rid off you,” I yelled at her.

  “What’s a light worker?” Julie asked, unimpressed.

  “A case worker for ghosts.”

  “Oh.” She giggled, obviously not taking me very seriously. “Just climb over.”

  My boots glided across the wall ungracefully. I probably looked like someone having their first ice skating lesson, only on a vertical surface. It was beyond weird, not to mention embarrassing. “I can’t. There’s nothing to hold onto.”

  “Morganefaire magic’s a bitch, huh?” Julie kept staring at me, not moving from the spot.

  I peered below. It seemed like the impenetrable darkness stretched out for hundreds of feet. I might physically survive a fall into that bottomless pit, but my ego wouldn’t. With my crappy luck, the Night Guard might just find me flat on my butt. And that wouldn’t be good because half the paranormal world was already laughing at me. The other half might just join in soon if I couldn’t even patrol a wall without taking a tumble. Of course it wasn’t even my mistake, but who’d believe me a whacky ghost pushed me?

  “Julie, stop just floating around and get Aidan,” I hissed.

  “He can’t see me.” She sighed. “This is all your fault. What sort of vampire are you if you can’t even keep your balance?”

  Grimacing, I forced myself to keep quiet because arguing with a ghost was useless, not to mention a waste of time. Instead of calling the priest I kept threatening her with, I merely smiled in a beatific sort of way, thinking how soon all these things would be inconsequential to me, basically part of a distant memory, alongside saving humanity from Rebecca’s gathering vampire hordes. I had to focus on coming up with a plan to climb back up before a guard found me. My second hand moved up but my fingers couldn’t grab onto the wall. It was as though the stone turned to ice beneath my grip, and it felt just as cold. I had never seen or heard of this kind of magic before, but it certainly scared the hell out of me.

  Julie sat down and bounced her legs over the edge as though she had no care in the world. “Do you see them now?”

  “See what?” I tried to keep my annoyance out of my tone, but it was hard.

  “The hands.”

  “Oh, the hands!” I smirked. “That’s why I’m risking a few broken bones, to see some freaking hands that don’t even exist!” Her eyes glimmered with anger again. I had to tread carefully, or she might just decide to do something even more stupid than shoving me.

  A scratching sound carried over from below. I peered into the darkness, but saw nothing. And then the noise started again, only this time it seemed to come from several spots and didn’t stop.

  It had to be mice, my brain argued. Nothing else made sense. When Rebecca haunted me inside Aidan’s house, she had made similar sounds. But I doubted I had another poltergeist activity on my hands since poltergeists don’t bother you outside of buildings. Rodents was the only reasonable explanation I could come up with.

  My gaze was glued to the black pit beneath my feet. Something pale shimmered in the moonlight, then disappeared, only to appear again a second later. I swallowed hard and tried to avert my eyes, but for some reason my curiosity kept me both petrified and fascinated at the same time. I squinted and focused until I could make out the shape of a hand with long fingers, distorted in places so it didn’t even look human any more. It stretched up, fingers coiling and recoiling, as though reaching to grab me. Thank goodness the ground was a long way down.

  A second hand appeared, then a third, and so on, until the ground below was covered in limbs that shimmered in the night, swaying softly as they clenched and unclenched, reminding me of a macabre dance. Whatever those were, no way was I falling in there and letting them touch me or drag me to hell, buried alive beside them. The thought sent a cold shudder down my spine.

  I swallowed hard and held onto the edge tighter. “Julie, get someone now,” I said. “There’s something down there.”

  “Told you,” Julie said, triumphantly.

  “Just shut up and help me. If those things touch me you’ll have a very pissed necromancer on your hands.” I huffed as I tried to grab hold of the edge with my dangling hand, and failed…for the umpteenth time. “Do you know what’ll happen to your sorry ass? I’ll channel your ghost into one of those things below and leave you trapped in there for a month. How about that?”

  “That’s not fair,” she screeched, giving me a headache. “What am I supposed to do?” She stood from her sitting position and peered around her. The ghost was as useless as she was annoying. In the end, she just reached out, as though to clutch my arm. “Give me your hand and I’ll try to pull you up.”

  “What?” I snorted. “No way. You’ve been a ghost for a whole two days and might’ve figured out how to blow out a few candles and open a door, but I’m not trusting you with my life.”

  “I can do it.”

  Not only was she annoying, she was also delusional. But what other choice did I have? “Fine.”

  I raised my dangling arm to hers. She hesitated, which wasn’t a good sign. As she leaned forward, he
r face scrunched up in concentration. Her fingers touched mine…and ran right through me, sending a jolt through my arm that was so strong I almost lost my grip.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “Just do it again,” I said through gritted teeth.

  She nodded and tried again. The jolt was stronger than before, but this time I felt something else: a tremor followed by a hard push. My heart almost skipped a beat. In that fragment of a second I thought my body was gone and I was floating in a giant void surrounded by nothingness. I no longer felt the wind caressing the physical sheath of my mortal body and the stars above were gone, just like the wall. Even my own heart was gone.

  “Julie!” I hissed. “Stop it.”

  Returning from that sense of nonexistence, I blinked and shook my head slightly to make sure it was still there. The thought of floating around in that abyss had me paralyzed with fear. It was even enough to make me forget the wobbling hands beneath my feet.

  “Sorry. Didn’t work,” Julie said. “One more time, okay?” The stupid ghost was about to possess me and didn’t even notice.

  “No!” I yelled. “You almost possessed me!”

  Her face dropped and her eyes widened. “Oh.” A glimmer appeared in her gaze, followed by…pride? I groaned. She couldn’t be serious. “I really did?” she asked.

  “Hey, focus on getting me back up there,” I snapped. Countless ideas as to what I’d do with her once I got my hands on her entered my head.

  “Take it down a notch because it’s not like you’re human or anything. I mean if you were you’d be splattered across the rocks like a smashed watermelon...that is, if you even survived the ‘hands’.” She glanced down into my eyes. “You’re an immortal being, Amber. Use your immortal tricks.”

  I was still a newbie, for crying out loud. Why didn’t people get that part? “I might have immortal strength to hang on but Morganefaire magic’s making the wall slick like ice.” As though the wall heard me, it turned a tiny bit smoother. Filled with horror, I watched my fingers slowly starting to lose their grip. Sweat poured down my back. For one minute, I considered shouting for help but what would the others think? I couldn’t tamper with Aidan’s reputation.

  She hovered a few inches above the edge and tapped her fingers against the thigh. “Why don’t you just do that disappearing act Kieran keeps doing?”

  “What disappearing act?”

  “I’ve been watching him. He dissolves into thin air at night,” Julie said. “He returns in the morning before your boyfriend wakes up.”

  My mind put two and two together. Kieran was teleporting somewhere, but I had no time to ponder his whereabouts because Julie was spot-on. I could just imagine myself standing on top of the wall and, thanks to my vampiric abilities, I’d be transported through time and space to the desired spot. Why didn’t I think of trying that before?

  I focused on the few images etched into my mind: the old worn out stone weathered by snow and rain and Julie’s open-toe, five-inch boots with tiny diamanté straps running across her ankles in a black cloud swirling underneath her. Trying to remember every single detail I could so I wouldn’t end up a frozen iceberg in Alaska, I added tiny flecks of limestone granite to the wall. That would be my focal point so I could tune into my immortal power locked away deep inside. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I forced my mind to conjure the image. The air began to shift around me, making my stomach coil. My grip around the stone loosened. The next thing I knew I felt solid ground beneath my feet.

  “It worked,” Julie squealed, almost sending me back over the edge again.

  “It did.” I laughed with her. “Thank you. I thought I was going to break a few bones down there.”

  “Or worse.” She pointed in the distance at a shadow, darker than the night, moving toward us at a fast speed. The sky above it looked like a giant hole; air seemed to whirl like a tornado that bathed everything in its wake in pitch black.

  “It’s just a bit of wind, right?” In spite of my words, I moved a step back.

  “Not quite.” A pause. Then, “You know, maybe we should get down from here.” She didn’t even wait for my reply. With a last glance over her shoulder, she floated down the wall and onto the paved street below.

  My gaze drifted to the sea of hands that almost gobbled me up. They were there, scratching away at the wall in their fruitless attempt to get inside the city. I couldn’t believe I didn’t see them before.

  “Are you coming or what?” Julie whispered. Jumping, I landed on my feet right next to her. I opened my mouth to speak when she raised her finger to her lips to shush me. “Listen.”

  I followed her command. For a minute I heard nothing, and then the wailing began, growing louder and louder as it inched closer. I say ‘wailing’ because it faintly reminded me of hundreds of voices calling and bawling their eyes out, but in truth I had never heard anything like it before. Cold shudders ran up and down my spine and the hairs on my neck prickled.

  “What is that?” I whispered.

  “The real reason why people barricade themselves inside their homes at night,” Julie explained. “We’re not safe here and no one will open their door to let us in.”

  “Like this thing couldn’t get inside if it wanted!” I said.

  “We need to seek shelter now,” she said, starting down the street. “Every building...house, shop, church...whatever...is protected by magic. The thing is forbidden to enter, but if it manages to catch you outside then it’s a completely different story and all bets are off. Either you kill yourself or it kills you. Usually, it prefers the latter, slow and painful. It doesn’t come out every night, but when it does, then it’s every guard for himself.”

  My boots clanked on the stone as I hurried to keep up with her. “I don’t get why you’re so scared. You’re a ghost.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It can suck me up, too, trap me in there for eternity. As long as I’m inside a building the magic protects me whether I’m dead or not.” She pointed at a wooden structure that looked like an oversized container, about a foot tall, with a latch. “Let’s take cover in there.”

  I nodded and hurried over, then pried the latch open and jumped inside, closing it behind us.

  The confined space was bathed in darkness and reeked of rotten apples and what else not but, according to Julie, it would do.

  “Now, zip it,” she commanded. “It will be here soon.”

  I tried to take shallow, silent breaths as I peered through a tiny split in the wall. The night torch on the other side of the road barely broke the darkness. Nothing stirred on the narrow street. And then I felt the first shudder in the air, a slow wave of despair and hunger that washed over me and left a strong feeling of hopelessness behind. A creepy urge to start crying ran through me and moisture gathered in my eyes.

  “Don’t listen to it. If you do, you’ll die,” Julie whispered. I wasn’t going to and yet—

  The black column of air appeared in my line of vision, twisting and twirling like a tornado as it made its way through the narrow street, reaching almost as high as the buildings. A violent wind tilted the trees, ready to pull them out by their roots. The buildings around us began to shake from the debris and rocks flying against the walls and the hailstones pelting against the windows. For a minute, I covered my ears to tune out the noise reminding me of hundreds of freight trains rumbling on top of me. It was the most interesting yet frightening thing I’d ever seen in my life. The wailing intensified and grew into a crescendo. Even our container started to vibrate and shake. I could only hope we were safe.

  Peeking out, I stared at the black column moving closer. Leading it was a naked man sitting on a stallion with bloody gashes covering his entire body. His long brown hair tied in a ponytail barely swayed in the strong breeze, as though the wind didn’t have any effect on him. Sensing I was watching him, his head snapped in my direction and his hollow skeleton eyes turned on me. Blood began to drip from his mouth in tiny rivulets
. Ever so slowly, his jaw opened to reveal shark-like teeth. My heart lurched when I realized that was no man. It was evil personified. I scooted up against the wall, my body trembling, and yet I couldn’t stop staring.

  More faces popped up in the dark spiral. Their ashen faces shimmered in the darkness as they marched along the paved street, the wind barely covering their naked bodies. They multiplied before my eyes, until the whole street was lined up with the undead army, mouths agape with despair, crying, calling, searching for something the hollow pits that once were their eyes couldn’t see.

  When the first skeleton face appeared only inches away from our hiding place, I thought I’d jump out of my skin. I pressed my palm against my mouth to keep me from yelping and bit hard on my tongue to stay focused.

  I don’t know how long Julie and I hid inside the wooden box, too petrified to move or even breathe but, after what felt like an eternity, the creepy wind passed and silence ensued. Eventually, Julie signaled that we could leave. I opened the lid and climbed out, too shaken to utter a word. Hundreds of questions raced through my mind, but none made it past my trembling lips.

  “It won’t come back,” Julie whispered. “Not tonight.” I nodded when movement on the other side of the road caught my eye. Turning my head sharply, I dived back down behind the wooden box and scanned the area.

  A tall figure with a black cape disappeared around the corner, leaving a bundle behind. Realizing it was a human shape I jumped to my feet and hurried over to help. But I could tell from the darkening aura around the body that the person was already dead.

  “Her name’s Samantha,” Julie said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “She’s a witch. You can tell by the star and moon tattoo on her left wrist.”

  Chapter 18

  Another body in Morganefaire. Only this time, I had the luck to find it. My breath came in ragged heaps as I turned the bundle on the ground around to search for a pulse…and found none. The last time I held a body in my arms, it was my brother’s, right after Rebecca attacked him in Hell because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. His soul was reunited with his body eventually, but the experience left me marked for life because I had never felt so powerless. Seeing the motionless girl at my feet, I felt similar—only this time I knew no voodoo priestess would be here to raise her from the dead.