by K. F. Breene
“Will you take this seriously? My kid’s life is on the line.”
“Close your eyes,” he said softly, and something in his voice changed. It reduced down to a whisper that seemed as old as time, drifting in with the breeze from the Line. “Get into the headspace to find a soul.”
I sank into a light trance, feeling the spirit around me, feeling the pulse of power.
“Deeper. You’re clinging to the living world. Clinging to your body. You need to set those things free. You need to step out.”
Fear wormed through me, but I went deeper, thinking of Daisy’s soul, bright and beautiful, full of energy and light. Full of love hidden behind sulks and sharp knives. Deeper I went, knowing she was worth the risk. She was worth me trusting this character. Whatever else his flaws, he clearly knew what he was doing.
“There you go.” This time, his voice wasn’t a whisper at all. It was wordless, moving through me. I understood without knowing how, confident it was him but unsure why. “With your soul, just like in the dream walks, rise.”
He held out his hand, less like a shadow than it had ever been. I lifted my hand to take it, and my skin fell away. My soul jiggled free of my frame, suddenly loose and free of gravity.
Fear accosted me, and I slammed back into my shell. My soul clutched on, and I could feel it docking. Reality rushed back in, and suddenly I was sitting up, gasping for breath.
25
Alexis
“Fear is such a tricky devil, isn’t it?” The Spirit Walker was smiling at me teasingly.
“What’s your name?” I asked, suddenly needing to know who I was trusting with my life.
He studied me for a moment. “Harding.”
I repeated it for Bria.
“That’s the last Spirit Walker’s birth name,” Bria said.
So not the nickname he’d created for himself when he was high on power, or the one he’d been given after being turned into a killing machine. He’d chosen the name he used when he was just a regular guy. Well, a regular guy who could pull souls out of bodies. That had to be good, right?
I didn’t actually say any of that out loud. He’d probably set me straight, and I didn’t want to hear it.
The grass was plush and welcoming. The cool breeze carrying the salty ocean flavor was relaxing. Drifting back down into a deep trance, I felt my soul swish around like it wanted to float up.
It was still downright terrifying.
“Easy does it,” came that voice, melodic and entrancing. Not real. “Don’t rush this. Just ease into it. You’ll learn to love this part, when you become weightless. When you feel what it must be like to fly.”
I focused on that description. Flying. Lifting up out of my skin.
My heart hammered. My limbs tingled. I gritted my teeth.
Then I no longer had teeth. Or limbs. Or a heart. I was walking into spirit, Harding beside me.
“It’s okay. I would sooner start a war than let anything happen to you,” he said, the voice reverberating around me, sliding against my skin and tickling fingers I no longer had. “You must train your consciousness to let go. It will reach for your body. You must not let it, or you will be jarred off course.”
He stood next to me in a world painted with grays and violets, outlined in deep blues, throbbing with peripheral color. I could no longer see my body or the house.
“If you focus, you can change the colors to something a little more normal for you.” He smiled without lips. Without a face.
How did I know he was smiling?
“You can feel me.” The answer reverberated off the inside of… Not my skull. I didn’t have one. Just a shadowy orb, like the guy next to me.
My reality wobbled with the fear of this strange place.
He held out a hand, and regardless of any lustful trickery, I reached out to take it. Thankfully, his shadow touch was nothing but comforting.
“There are different rules here,” he said. “Different everything, but once you are familiar with it, it’ll seem natural. Beyond the Line, in front of it, within it—it’ll all seem as natural as the world of the living. That’s your gift, Spirit Walker. Only a Demigod of Hades can maneuver it as well as you.”
“I don’t feel like I’m maneuvering at all.” I stuck out my leg, remembered I didn’t have a leg, just the shadowy equivalent that didn’t feel like anything at all, and wondered how I was moving without muscles. Reality wobbled again.
“Don’t think in terms of gravity and moving parts. No legs. No ground. Just feelings.”
A sudden rush of sensation, as powerful as any orgasm, stole my breath. I couldn’t even stop to remember I didn’t have breath, lost as I was in utter bliss.
When it cleared, there was only his amusement. “It’s not just your Demigod who can inspire lust without touching.”
Anger infused me. “Do that again, and I’ll…”
He laughed, giving me space, though he kept hold of my hand. “One day you’ll have something to threaten me with, yes. For now, let’s begin. Think of Daisy’s soul. Nothing else, just her soul. How it feels when she comes into the room. When she leaves. What it looks like in your mind’s eye…”
I pushed everything else away—the weird place, my mind’s attempts to stray, the oddness of not having a real body. I centered myself and did just what he said, desperate to feel her soul enter a room again. Bright and beautiful and Daisy.
“Now call it to you.”
“But it—”
“Do as I say. Call it to you.”
I closed my eyes—surprised I could still do that, given I had no eyes—and did as he’d said, focusing on her soul, pulling it near as I had with so many other spirits. As expected, nothing happened. I said as much.
“Are you sure?”
I opened my eyes, annoyed with his teasing tone. The same bruise-like colors greeted me, and out of annoyance, I swapped them. Replaced them. Hell, I didn’t even know what to call it, just that they weren’t right, it was stupid, and I wanted them to look more like the world of the living.
Like a lamp had flickered on, the darker colors lightened. The midnight blues and violets morphed into bright green grass and blue sky. The gray still hovered, permeating everything like a fog, but beyond it, within it, I could see the world where my body lived. I could see my body lying on the ground, Bria’s fingers on my vitals and a phone trapped between her ear and her shoulder. She was probably filling Kieran in. She was fine with flouting the rules when she was in her element, but not when the situation was knee-deep in crazy not of her own making. Or neck-deep, in this case.
“Very good.” The disembodied voice sounded much too close to my ear. I shrugged it away. “Even better. You are creating your own spatial parameters. That is necessary when you traverse places with souls that…haven’t gotten out in a while, shall we say. You are the natural your magic promises. Now, pull again, and feel what it is you are doing.”
Frustration overcame me, but I did as he said, trying my damnedest, envisioning Daisy’s soul and yanking with everything I had.
“There is no way. My body is keeping me grounded,” I said, exhausted from my efforts.
“Yes, it is. But you can pull free. You just have to get a fix on Daisy’s soul and grab it.”
A light bulb clicked on, and I immediately saw Daisy’s soul glittering and shining in my mind’s eye. In this realm. It was in her body, I could feel that, but…
“Look down,” he murmured.
A little string glittered in my hand, twinkling and shining just like her soul—connecting me to her, and her to me. All I had to do was pull, but this time, it wouldn’t be her coming to me, it would be me pulling my way through this place to get to her.
“Exactly,” he said, and I could hear the pride in his voice. “Now, close your eyes, focus on her soul, and pull yourself toward it. Just like when you pulled yourself through the Beyond, back to your Demigod. Pull yourself along, and bring me with you.”
I couldn’t even t
hink enough to be scared. I wouldn’t fear myself back into my body even if I tried, not when I had a line on Daisy and could potentially find out where she was being kept.
Spirit moved around me. In another setting, I would’ve been grinning. It did feel like I was flying. But now all I could think about was moving faster, getting there and getting back.
Getting to Daisy in the physical world.
I felt my soul draw closer to hers, strong and bright, just like I’d left it, closer and closer until it felt like we were in the same room. Like her soul was blaring right next to mine.
I slammed to a sudden stop and “heard” a grunt from Harding. He squeezed my hand, and I opened my eyes.
I hung suspended in the air, upside down, my shadow head nearly bumping the ground. Colors flickered around me, dark then light, pinks and oranges fading in. Reality wobbled around me in the small room, threatening to send me careening out of this plane.
“It’s okay.” His voice was silky and smooth. Comforting, like his hand holding mine. “That was a lightning-fast transition. Give yourself a moment to adjust. Maybe close your eyes again. I’ll right us. It’s a great distance to go your first time.”
I did close my eyes and take a moment. Despite the situation, and finding Daisy—I’d found Daisy!—I needed to center myself.
Harding’s tug moved us further away, and then a pull had me swinging, my feet moving through the air until they bumped against something solid. The ground.
I opened my eyes, two feet from a stucco wall covered in dirt. We were outside. He was clearly giving me a chance to get my bearings before I got down to business. I blinked, forced away the urge to rush to my ward, and took precious seconds to get my bearings. One misstep, and I’d go running back to my body without being able to help myself. I couldn’t let that happen, not when I was so close to my ward.
I brought up my hands, wiggling my fingers. Much of the shadowy fog had burned away, and my body felt like it had some weight. This wasn’t reality, but it mostly looked like it, which made it easier for me to wrap my head around the situation.
“I’m like a spirit now instead of a shadow…”
“As I said, only a Demigod of Hades can walk through spirit as well as we can. I know you’ve only seen the Demigods as shadowy forms, but that’s because they’re worried about keeping their identities secret. Otherwise, they would have manifested like this. They would’ve looked like any other spirits, and had more power to work with. Then again, you would’ve been able to grab a hold of their vitals, so…”
“But how did you do this? How did you change me?” I lifted a foot and put it back down, feeling the urgency to get to Daisy, or to look around, but knowing I didn’t have my head on straight yet. Harding wasn’t holding on to me anymore—I didn’t want to jerk myself into the never-never and get lost.
“By leaning on spirit a certain way and forcing your soul to show itself. It’s advanced. You’re not there yet. You’re barely here yet.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this when we started? Or one of those times you dragged me out of my bed and marshaled me into the Beyond, as you call it?”
I took a step back and then quickly breathed through the flip-flopping of my stomach. Gravity was still weird, like it wasn’t holding me properly. I imagined this was what astronauts felt like, except they’d trained for it. And also, they were in a whole different place. It was a trip to feel this way somewhere that looked like the real world.
“It takes a lot of energy to hold this form. I know you’re determined and powerful, but most people freak out the first few times they leave their bodies. If you’d needed a few more stops and starts, you might not have had the energy to make the trip. But your courage continually surprises me. You only balked once. So far.”
I nodded, because that made sense, ignored his teasing, and definitely ignored the glow of approval. He wasn’t the sort of guy I should let charm me. The fact that he was incredibly good at it was proof enough.
Dirt and a few rocks didn’t scrape underfoot as I pivoted, looking around the small parking lot, deserted except for one shiny red Honda. All around, buildings rose into the sky, mostly newer condos and some older office buildings. Shiny glass reflected rays of sunlight down onto this little forgotten hovel, three stories high and badly in need of an update.
The tides pulled at me from a distance, and though I could smell the ocean’s influence in the air, I could not hear it. The natural environment had all been paved or covered over with landscaping. No street signs rose in my line of sight.
I had no idea where I was.
“Okay,” I said to myself. “First things first. Make sure Daisy is okay.”
I felt her soul, strong and sure, and walked toward the corner of the building in search of a door.
“What are you doing?” Harding asked.
I paused. That’s right, I couldn’t open doors. Or, if I could, it would take an insane amount of energy.
I stared at the wall instead, and my reality wobbled. Suddenly I felt like I was in a dream, and if I thought too hard about it, I would go scurrying for reality. Except I couldn’t just wake up from this. And if I did, I’d have to find my way back here anyway. Daisy was counting on me. I had to get a grip.
“I can go through that, because I am not real,” I said to myself, stepping up to it.
“Close your eyes and walk through,” Harding said. “Or close your eyes and I’ll move you through.”
“Look, if you’d just trained me in the first place rather than hijacking my sleep, I wouldn’t freak out so much.”
“You work better when you’re under duress.”
I gritted my teeth. Bria said that all the time.
Steeling myself, I closed my eyes and walked forward. Spirit swished and moved around me—until it reached a thin line of nothingness up ahead. That had to be the wall. Spirit couldn’t penetrate the solid object.
Once we made it through the wall, I opened my eyes and immediately felt a pang in my gut. Daisy sat in the middle of a bare room, her face a mess of bruises and blood, tears streaming down her cheeks, and her grunts sounding more like whimpers.
“Oh my God,” I said, bending toward her.
Harding’s hand and clipped “no” froze me.
“You as a spirit need to learn not to suction energy. She needs all the energy she can get. Do not touch her.”
I yanked my hands away, agony throbbing in my middle. I walked around to the back of her and gasped. Her right wrist was black and blue, swollen to epic portions, very badly sprained or broken. Rope burn had made a red line right above it, and her left wrist was bleeding. She’d ripped and torn her skin trying to loosen the ropes. Despite the obvious pain she was in, she was still going, the clumsy fingers of her left hand working that badly tied knot.
“She’s close,” Harding said. “She’s almost there. She’s a fighter.”
Tears would’ve overflowed if I had a physical body capable of crying. “She’s had a mostly shitty life.”
“Thank the heavens, huh? Or else she’d just sit there, in pain, waiting to be saved. No worse pastime than that.”
I wiped my nose—force of habit when it felt like I was crying—and moved around to her front, bending so I could see her face. Her swollen face, which looked like it had been smashed against something.
“Jack would never do this,” I said, straightening again. I wasn’t helping her by staring. I had to get moving. “He said he didn’t remember, and I know he wasn’t lying. Who could have—”
Jack drifted in through the wall beside me. He looked around, his gaze coming to land on me. “What the fuck? Where am I?”
Harding started laughing. It was anything but funny.
“Crap, sorry. I must’ve pulled you here by thinking about you. I’m all screwed up in this plane.” I walked to the door and held out a hand on impulse. “If people can sense my soul as I am now, would it be better for me to return to that shadowy body to see if anyone’s i
n this room?”
“Very few magical people can feel souls the way you do, even those who possess others or use others to travel through spirit,” Harding said. “And no one in the world right now can rip a soul out of a body the way you can. Trust me, I’ve been looking. Spirit Walkers don’t come often, and they don’t seem to last long with the violence that surrounds them—as you’re learning. You’re safe for now.”
“Look what I did.” The words were like a tire leaking. Guilt lined Jack’s face. He bent down to Daisy. “I’ll never be able to say I’m sorry. I’ll never be able to explain, or beg for forgiveness. I won’t be able to let her get revenge.”
“She’ll get revenge,” I said, readying myself to walk through another wall. “I’ll make sure of it.”
I pushed into the next room, my determination stronger than the strangeness of walking through walls. This room was nearly as bare but for a desk with no chair and a couch with a mess of papers on one cushion pushed against the far wall. A closed door led out to what I suspected was a hall in a small-scale business building. Judging by the lack of cars, an unused small-scale business building.
A woman stood in the corner holding a laptop, her body bowed with fatigue and her hair a messy halo tucked into a ponytail. A white cord ran from the computer to the headphones she wore. The man on the screen was a stern-faced stranger, with red cheeks and a bulbous nose.
“Yes, sir, I know that. I do,” the woman said. “But when I came to, I was already at the rendezvous point and confused as all hell. It was too late to dump the body and reconvene.”
The man spoke in what seemed like short bursts, his head bobbing with whatever points he was making. Her shoulders tightened and she jammed her left hand onto her hip. She was clearly frustrated with whatever she was hearing.
“As I told the others, I have a black spot in my memory from the time I took down the Kraken to when I ended up here. I came to standing in the middle of the room, staring down at my phone crushed under my foot.” The man barked out some words. “Yes, sir, but as you recall from what I just said, I didn’t have a phone with which to call. It was crushed.”
