“Get out! Get out! Get out!” Gill was practically screaming when no one moved at first and then didn’t move fast enough to suit her.
Now she was digging for something in the big side pockets of her cargo pants while hollering at the assembled string of her charges to move it. Helmut stopped trying to insert sanity into the situation, took Jenna’s arm and guided her past him, beyond Pavel’s position. Gamely, he moved up to stand with Gillian, who glared at him as she dug a tissue, a vial of willow oil, a cigarette and a lighter out of her pants.
“Goddammit, get out of here now!” she bellowed in her best command voice.
There was an edge of panic in her voice that sent the graduate students scurrying back down the stairs and toward the door. The Pseudo-Spiritualists weren’t cooperating. One or two were backing down the stairs, tripping over Brant and Claire as they held on to the railing to avoid being mowed down by Helmut’s class. The rest of them were looking among themselves for the missing Richard and Nutmeg, and muttering louder and louder.
Gillian couldn’t yell at them for that. Hell, she’d just screamed loud enough to wake the dead in several blocks. She lit the cigarette, shook willow oil onto the wadded Kleenex, lit that, drew in a lungful of smoke, then flicked the burning tissue into the hallway behind Helmut as she blew the tobacco smoke to mingle with the oil’s scent while murmuring a flimsy prayer of protection.
“Bad idea, Helmut, bad!” Opening her arms and her empathy, she stepped past him to the edge of the hallway.
“Piccola, are you all right?” Aleksei’s baritone voice rumbled through her psyche. He sounded worried with an edge of anger when she didn’t answer immediately. “What have you gotten yourself into, cara mia?”
“Not now, Aleksei. Busy.” She cut him off, slamming her shields down on what was about to be his further protests.
On cue, there was a bloodcurdling shriek from the floor below, followed by a scream of such raw agony that everyone below the first landing bolted for the door. So much for the protection. All she’d done was aggravate it.
“Where are Richard and Nutmeg?” one of the Spiritualists wailed.
“Down that hallway,” Pavel informed them, keeping Jenna behind him, just in case, much to her annoyance.
“Move it, Furboy.” She tried to push past him, but he was a lot taller and a lot bulkier than she was.
“Stay back,” he growled at her, his voice going to an inhuman gravelly range that bespoke imminent shifting.
“Gill!” Jenna roared up at her friend as she kicked Pavel in the back of the knee.
“No, Jenna! Get out,” Gill ordered her.
“Bite me,” her friend spat back, nimbly leaping over the Werewolf, who had crumpled on one side after her reprehensible attack on his leg.
Pavel’s arm shot out and clipped her leg as she jumped over him, flipping her forward. He caught her before she planted her face on the ancient, dusty carpet runner.
“Gillian said, ‘Get out,’” he told her, pressing her down with his bulk as more screams could be heard.
Abruptly the front door slammed shut hard enough to crack it down the middle. Human muscles weren’t enough to open it and only about a third of them had made it outside. Panicked, the remainder of the group began banging on the door and screaming.
“No,” Gillian whispered, concentrating above the din two floors down.
Helmut took her hand gently, trying to lend her his own power and shields. He felt her answering squeeze. Whether or not he could help her, she was glad he was there. Someone took his hand on the other side: Jenna. He knew without looking. Pavel took her hand, then someone took Pavel’s. They were forming a circle but it needed to be closed. That meant moving farther into the hallway past where Gill was and no one was terribly keen on that idea. All shrieking, screaming, pounding and praying unexpectedly stopped as though an invisible switch had been thrown.
“Squirrel shit,” Gill muttered to no one in particular, her eyes darting around, trying to visually pinpoint the source of her fear.
They all felt it then. The very air became heavy, dark and putrid, almost like liquid that has filled a grave for too long. No one needed to be gifted to know there was something nasty on the stairwell with them. Everyone looked and immediately wished they hadn’t. The screams would have started again except everyone was simply too terrified to do anything but stare wide-eyed and dry mouthed at the amorphous horror coalescing over their heads.
It was a cloud yet it wasn’t. A swelling, swirling morass combining with the very air around them. Ectoplasmic tendrils snaked out, ruffling hair, touching faces, while the main segment of it boiled darkness and nothingness together in an otherworldly broth. The pitch matte black of the Abyss warred with vacuous dead-fish-belly gray as it roiled and bucked.
Here and there the hint of a face, an arm, a torso—all rotting, all putrefying, not reaching but pushing. Pushing as if held within a barrier inside the thing that was, at the moment, haunting everyone in the house.
Terror. Ghost fear went from a trickle to a T3 pipe and dumped over all of them with a revolting, dizzying gloop. Eau de Corpse was next. The odor of decomposing, diseased Human flesh rolled through the already thick air.
“Where the hell did that come from?” Helmut gasped, instinctively crouching lower, away from the thing.
Alarm bells were clanging in Gillian’s mind. This was not normal Ghost activity, if any Ghost activity could be considered normal. Experimentally, she put her hands out flat, breaking the chain with the others as she fought to keep her empathy open, shove down her fear and ignore the rest of them, who were starting to shriek and gag.
Where is it? She had an idea about what was happening but needed to tap into the energy fields of the Earth itself. Not easy with the emotional barrage of fifty or so panicked and screaming people clamoring at her shielding. Gillian’s thoughts were compartmentalizing, keeping the part of her that she needed right now available, putting other parts on automatic and closing off external stimuli in others.
The interference from the mass’s power was torquing her sensitivity into a realm she’d never felt before. It was as if thousands of souls were trapped in anguish rather than agony, but it was disturbing and painful. She felt vaguely nauseous but kept up her searching.
This was a plague pit, bodies were dumped in here. Some might have been alive. Fear, death, blood . . . like a massive sacrifice . . . They might have prayed . . . cursed . . . Her mind was working frantically, trying to put the pieces together so that what she instinctively felt would make sense to her consciousness.
A sudden surge of elemental energy arched against her splayed palms, staggering her as she fought to track it. The power angled both up and down away from her, into the forbidden upper room, down again through the lower hallway. It originated from the ground beneath the house, front and behind . . . to the sides too . . . The power was three-dimensional, up, down, sideways, like a cross-sectioned corridor . . .
Uh. Oh. Cold horror spiked down her spine.
“Goddammit, I hate being right all the time,” she groused, reflexively wiping her hands on her pants and turning back to Helmut.
“What?” Helmut grabbed her hand again, pulling her back beside him as she grasped for the person nearest her on the other side. It happened to be Claire.
“How did you get up here?” Gillian ignored him and stared at the slender policewoman whose icy hand found her own. Brant was next to her, taking her hand and one of the Spiritualists’, staring open mouthed up at the malevolent cloud.
“We thought you might need us,” Claire whispered, her eyes wide with horror.
“Jesus,” Brant breathed.
“Jesus saves; the rest of the party takes half damage,” Gill said distractedly, looking back up into the dark cloud.
Brant glared at her. She overlooked him and spoke to Helmut. “I know what it is but you’re not going to like it.”
“For Crissakes, what?!” Helmut barked at her. This w
as out of his league and out of her league, he was sure of that. Whatever she was about to tell him, he already knew he wasn’t going to like it.
“This house is directly over the exact conjunction of two ley lines.” There was no way to tell him gently.
“Bloody hell, like the Michael and Mary lines in Glastonbury.”
Since Helmut rarely swore, Gillian looked at him sharply, then continued, “Exactly. Only there, it’s a dimensional energy Doorway on the top of a hill. When whoever it was dug this plague pit, they inadvertently dug in exactly the right place. With the amount of blood, the sheer number of deaths, the dying, the fear, probably a multitude of prayers and curses being flung around—”
“Gott im Himmel!” Helmut reverted to German, then caught himself. “It was like a huge ongoing sacrifice! They opened a Gate!”
“Yup.” Gillian nodded. “Sucks to be us right now.”
CHAPTER 7
"A Gate? To what?” Brant wanted to know. He leaned in front of Claire trying to look into Gill’s eyes.
“Beats me,” she admitted, “but I bet it’s not anywhere you’d want to spend your vacation.”
“Gate? Did you say this house is over an open Gate?” A male Spiritualist was halfway onto the landing and tugging at Helmut’s jacket.
“I believe so,” Gillian informed him.
“Oh shit, we’ve got to get out of here,” he squeaked.
“Hold it.” Gill’s voice crackled with command. “What’s your name?”
“Hemlock.”
“Hemlock? What is it with your group and herbology names?” She frowned at him, then continued, “Okay, Hemlock, let me share some information with you before the fog eats your friends. If you run in panic, you will only antagonize it. Look at it.”
She pointed upward, releasing Claire’s hand. He looked and turned an odd shade of green. The cloud was still roiling and shifting but much more leisurely.
“See how it’s slowed down because everyone’s staring at it and not running around shrieking like cracked-out field mice? It’s waiting.”
“Waiting?” Hemlock’s squeak appeared to be a permanent vocal inflection.
“Waiting for us to cut and run. It feeds on fear, Hemlock. Tell your people not to move or provoke it. We need a Circle. I need your best, most sensitive, most gifted people up here on this landing right now.”
Hemlock turned and whispered loudly to the string of terrified people to do as he asked. Several of them started up the stairs, eyes glued to the amorphous mass. It was a tight fit but they had fourteen, counting Gill, Helmut, Claire and Brant. Jenna and Pavel were trying to push past everyone and join them.
“No, stay there,” Gill snapped.
Jenna froze and Pavel nearly ran into her. “Gill?” Jenna asked.
“Pavel is overly sensitive about Ghosts and spirits. Just stay there. If we fuck this up, there won’t be anything left to save anyway. Stay there. Get out when you know it’s time to get out.”
“How will we know?” Pavel asked. He was rather glad they didn’t have to go up closer to the thing but felt embarrassed that he was on the skittish side around Ghosts, especially after the experience with Dante.
“You’ll know,” Gill reaffirmed.
“Fuck, I knew you’d say that,” Jenna grumbled, leaning back against Pavel’s warmth reflexively.
Hands clasped together both on the stairs and in their Circle. Some were sweaty, some icy cold, more than a few trembled. Gillian waited, until almost everyone’s hands were joined, then she took Claire’s hand, then Helmut’s. She could feel the nearly audible slam as the Circle closed like a spiritual vault.
“Follow my lead,” she whispered to all of them. “Reach out with your feelings toward me. Let me bring us together.”
“I will assist you as well as I am able, piccola.” Aleksei’s deep-timbered voice caressed the inside of her head.
Shit, she’d forgotten he was even there. Focusing on everything else that was happening had relaxed her shielding against the Vampire. It wasn’t a question of keeping him out, it was her attempt at preventing his worry and anger. Since he was offering, he obviously was aware of their predicament. If he was becoming as powerful as he believed, he just might be able to help them. Right now, she was up for any allies they could get.
Wordlessly, she gave her consent for Aleksei’s assistance and immediately felt the Vampire’s strength added to hers. He didn’t take control, earning her immediate gratitude and respect, but waited for her to use what he could offer her. She swirled his power with her own and Helmut’s. The Spiritualists seemed to be strong enough, but she’d rather gamble with their lives on known variables first, such as herself, Aleksei and Helmut.
Rather than waste energy on direct protection by shielding every person in the house, she reached out and gathered the Circle to her, making herself into a conduit for their combined energies. A bright beam of power flashed upward from the center of the Circle, encompassing the entity from the bottom, up and around its fluctuating mass. The cloud boiled. Darker colors making their way to the surface, more body parts, faces, streaks of substances showing clearer.
“Hold on.” Her voice was barely audible but they all heard her through the links.
The thing wasn’t verbal. It couldn’t speak directly but the entire house and probably half the block felt the adamant assertion of “No” as the Circle focused and pressed it away from the living beings in the room. The whole house vibrated to its foundations as the cloud shook in wrath. Negative energy metamorphosed as ghostly fear washed over everything in the foyer, stronger and worse than before.
Everyone quailed and shrank back instinctively. No one wanted it to touch them as the form expanded, filling the upper half of the space with its sickly gray-black-rust-bodies-parts-faces-slimy-chunky, pulsating accumulation spread out toward the huddled group. The air was thick, pungent with the smells of death, disease, decay. Gillian was shaking in her combat boots right along with them, wondering how in hell they were going to get out of this alive. It fed on fear and had an out-and-out smorgasbord of dread at its disposal, giving it incredible levels of preeminence over all of them.
Her focal point was the hub of the cloud, dead center. She kept up the light, pushing the thing away from them, her anger building by the moment. Dammit, she hated being afraid of anything. The stinky cloud and the stinky situation were pissing her off.
She could feel it, creeping over them and into them like a miasma. A veritable orchestra of feeling was pulsing through her. The victims of the plague, the victims of the house and the amorphous creature. It was from the Gate, she was sure of it. It was nasty, it wasn’t really intelligent, just determined. Determined to have the psychic equivalent of a dinner buffet.
Later, she wouldn’t remember what she’d done, what specific article actually motivated her retaliation—whether it was the screams of the long unmourned plague victims, the stark terror of those in the house with her, or the memory of the empty image of the dead little girl decoy that torqued Gillian’s anger into overdrive. Maybe it was just that the fucking thing was behaving like a bully, throwing its considerable psychic weight around and scaring the little people to death.
Bullying was a huge trigger for Gillian, especially when people she cared about were on the receiving end. Right now, Helmut, Jenna, Pavel, Claire and, all right, Brant too, were in mortal danger and mortal terror. Absolute rage washed through her. It was an emotional state she hadn’t been in for years, never allowing herself the indulgence of freeing her temper completely. To do so was simply too irresponsible and dangerous for anyone around, particularly herself. Giving in to unadulterated rage was not the hallmark of a good soldier or a good Human being.
Being an empath, Gillian was all too aware of the effect of volatile emotions on others and tended to shield automatically. Most of who Gillian was and what Gillian felt was locked securely away for the benefit of herself and others.
Not this time. This one time, she g
ave in to her fury and let it swell, feeding off the creature’s hatred and malevolence, knitting the fear and despair of the thing’s victims, the horror of the Spiritualists and the terror of her friends into the mix.
“Let me help, piccola,” Aleksei intoned in her mind. “It is too much power, you cannot control—”
Deliberately, Gillian shoved him back, broke their fragile connection. She didn’t want him to feel her like this, know her this way. It was too intimate, too intrusive; she was too ashamed of her lack of control and the level of overwhelming wrath that was burning like an aeon flux in her soul. Helmut was there instead, using his talent to support the living while Gillian warred with death. He shielded the others in the Circle from what she was about to do, helpless to do anything but watch, unable to extend that safeguard over himself, the rest of the people in the house or her.
Gill’s rage spiked. Collecting all the available power to her when her fury reached its zenith, she drove the lot of it up into the entity in a tidal wave of pure force. Her aim was to hit it, push it back into the Gate and hold it there— hopefully damaging it enough in the process so it would stay put. There was no way at that particular moment for her to individually close an interdimensional Gate that had been open for the past six hundred years. Their only hope was hurting the thing badly enough so it would think twice before venturing out of whatever abyss had spawned it in the first place.
Too late she realized the shielding she’d held the thing back with was in the way. A slight miscalculation that came from being blinded by her own anger. The power surge she had gathered hit the existing shielding with alarming force and punched through. Like a metaphysical, ectoplasmic javelin, it tore apart the almost equally strong shield, widened at the apex like a mushroom; then swamped the engorged cloud, effectively causing the original shield to implode in on itself. The supernatural backblast from Gillian’s mistake literally flattened every telekinetically gifted Human and non-Human in the house and on the grounds outside but the cloud was suddenly, amazingly gone.
Key to Conspiracy Page 8
