“Schiller was scum,” Benson hissed under his breath. ”Just like the rest of you.”
Benson’s words reverberated in the cavernous plaza, adding to the impression that he was standing at the center of an ancient temple. And I’m about to be the sacrifice, he thought.
“You think you won that day, but Schiller never left you, did he? He stayed with you, haunting your every moment. Cursing you.”
It was as if the bastard could read his mind. Knew all his secrets. Who the fuck was this guy?
The cult leader took another step toward him.
Come on, just a little closer…
“Not everything that dies disappears from our world. Sometimes the dead linger, unwilling to pass into the light because their life’s work remains undone.”
What the hell was this asshole jabbering about?
“Can’t you feel it? Our master is here with you right now. Schiller’s flesh succumbed to your bullets, but his spirit remains right here. Watching. Waiting to punish you for what you did that day.” The cult leader paused dramatically and added, “Death is only the beginning.”
The crowd of hoodies echoed his words, the chorus of their voices bouncing off the walls like an unholy prayer. “Death is only the beginning.”
“Master, take his life the way he took yours,” the leader said.
Terror gripped Benson. He could feel the atmosphere change, a chill falling over the plaza. The burst of frigid air made him want to wrap his arms around his torso, but he couldn’t allow himself to show any weakness. For a crazed beat he wondered if Schiller’s spirit could truly linger. Benson’s rational mind tried to discard the notion, but the superstitious part of his soul knew the cult leader was telling the truth. The realization made his body turn rigid with atavistic fear.
The Reaper is here.
Shaking off his growing terror, Benson willed his thoughts to focus on his predicament. Three hoodies were closing in, sickles out. The wheels of their skateboards crunched over the trash-covered plaza. Perhaps Schiller’s spirit still lingered, but these knife-wielding gutter rats were flesh and blood. And that meant he could fight back.
Willing himself to remain patient, Benson waited until they were almost upon him. The first hoodie rolled forward on his skateboard, moonlight dancing over the knife in one hand, and the canister of spray paint in the other.
Benson pretended to be paralyzed with fear—which wasn’t all that far from the truth.
He waited…and waited.
The knife slid into his field of his vision, and that’s when he made his move. Without warning, his right leg swept out, catching the incoming hoodie off guard. He’d clearly expected the middle-aged cop to offer little resistance. An instant later, the punk was on the ground with Benson pinning him down. The knife clattered to the floor, and was lost in the encroaching shadows.
Benson experienced an undeniable rush as his fist shot out and whipped the punk’s head back. Before the hoodie or his friends quite knew what was happening, Benson snatched the can of spraypaint the skater had dropped when he hit the floor. Lightning fast, he unloaded it at a second skater's face. There was a hiss of aerosol as a stream of blinding paint engulfed the cultist’s face.
Stunned by the counter-attack, the skater reeled backward, giving Benson a chance to stagger to his feet. The skater let out a howl of rage and charged, his face streaked red—a demon from hell.
Benson sidestepped the punk and brought up the hoodie’s skateboard. Tapping into all his strength, he drove the deck down on the cultist’s scarlet face. The head and board connected with a sickening crunch that was followed by the thump of the punk hitting the ground.
Reacting on pure instinct, Benson ran down the dark concourse, unsteady legs barely able to support his two-hundred pound frame, leaving the circle of hooded wraiths in his wake.
He wasn’t going down without a fight, that much was for certain. He stole a glance back and saw more members of the psycho skater gang separate from the crowd and shoot after him in dark formation. Shadows pinballed through the mall at breakneck speed, phantom figures who sported steel that was all too real.
Benson’s legs kept pumping away as the boarded-up, gated stores rushed past him.
Behind him, the urban wraiths ripped around empty water fountains and derelict kiosks. Skating with near supernatural grace and agility, they slalomed through the mall's obstacle course, matching his pace, never letting up. Benson was doing his best to shake his pursuers, but he knew it was merely a matter of time before they would catch up with him. He was running for his life.
Breathing hard, he rounded a corner. Didn’t get far before another skater appeared in front of him, cutting off his escape. As the skaters closed in, Benson rushed toward a nearby escalator. He powered up the stairs as fast as his body allowed him to.
His plan was simple: He had to reach one of the exits inside the department stores at either end of the mall. If he could make it out of the mammoth shopping center, he might lose the cultists in the parking lot or the trees beyond.
It was a long shot, but what choice did he have?
As he reached the second level, he was confronted with more shuttered stores. The mall had transformed into one giant haunted house.
Benson exhaled, and his breath clouded before him. Once again he experienced the unnatural chill, as if he’d walked into a freezer. He took a few steps back, adrenaline pumping, as the shadows separated and a bone white figure lurched from the liquid darkness.
Time froze as his eyes locked on the apparition. Blood-shot eyes peered back from a blue-veined face straight out of Benson’s nightmares. The Reaper was back. A gaping bullet hole formed a third eye on his forehead where Benson’s bullet had felled the mass murderer.
Not everything that dies disappears from our world. Sometimes the dead linger…
Benson reeled, his blood turning to ice.
“No,” he cried. His voice was a glassy whisper as the Reaper’s spirit advanced with jerky, surreal speed.
The figure shimmered and vibrated and was suddenly upon him, inches separating them. Terror-stricken, Benson recoiled and hit the balcony. Arms wheeling desperately, he pitched over the railing. The ground rushed up as he plunged head-first toward the floor… but the deadly collision of bone and cement never came.
Seconds before impact, Benson froze in midair. An invisible force clamped around his ankle, the nerve endings of his skin lighting up with fiery pain. The air crackled with energy and then he was being pulled up, faster and faster.
The force flung him aside like a ragdoll and he landed hard on the second floor balcony. It was a brief reprieve as two hoodies lurched toward him, murder in their eyes. Benson was spent, no strength left in him. He bowed his head and awaited his fate.
Red dots found the two hoodies and then their chests erupted with a burst of gunfire. The cultists collapsed.
Weakly, Benson craned his neck toward his savior. A man garbed in black emerged from the shadows, machine pistol up and ready, night vision goggles giving him an insectile quality. One gloved hand reached for him while the other fired a burst of rounds at three more incoming skaters. The hoodies went down in the darkness.
Benson allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, and a beat later they were moving down the concourse, the cultists hot on their tails.
But the detective didn’t worry about the men rushing after them. All he could think about was the inhuman face of the Reaper. Benson sensed that despite the arrival of the armed stranger, there would be no escape from the cursed mall.
CHAPTER NINE
TALON DEPRESSED HIS finger on the trigger and fed lead into the fast-approaching cultists. Two hooded figures crumpled in a mist of red.
Talon whirled toward the downed man who’d barely escaped death mere seconds earlier. He still didn’t quite understand what he’d just witnessed. The man had gone off the balcony and should’ve fallen to his death. But some strange force had pulled him back into the air, halt
ing his deadly descent.
Fear of the unknown gave way to the immediate pressure of the situation. More cultists were zeroing in on their position. Talon’s combat-hardened instincts took over and he lifted the man to his feet. Seconds later, they were surging down the concourse, the previously sepulchral silence replaced with shouts, hissing spray canisters, and the wheels of skateboards rippling over cement. Talon kept firing into the darkness, the grunts and moans telling him that his bullets had found mortal enemies.
Up ahead, JC Penney loomed into view and they tore into the dark department store, Talon’s night vision mapping the way. A creepy landscape of junk and dust-caked mannequins awaited them. At the center of the empty store, Talon made out a group of mattresses. There were backpacks, wrappers of junk food. The walls tattooed with graffiti. The barcode skull dominated the tags—no surprise there. Talon guessed this was where the skaters dwelled when they weren’t kidnapping their victims and hunting them through the mall’s endless hallways. What power could the Lightwalker wield to control so many people? To organize these lost souls living on the edge of society into a de facto army of murderers?
A terrible stench of decay interrupted his thoughts. Judging from the expression of disgust on the other man’s face, he’d picked it up too. Death was in the air.
Talon followed the stomach-turning odor, brushed through a row of racks and empty boxes and froze. Nine rotting bodies lined the floor, empty eyes turned toward the ceiling.
The missing kidnapping victims.
The old rage boiled up inside Talon, and his heart grew cold. It took all his self-control not to dash back into the mall and take out the rest of these psychopathic bastards.
There was a sudden sound to his right, and Talon whirled, eyes focusing on three eerie mannequins.
His companion fixed him with a haunted stare. “We can’t outrun the dead,” he muttered.
“What are you talking about?”
“The Reaper’s here. I shot him but he’s still here. He’s never left this place. All these years, he’s been waiting for me. He won’t let me leave.”
Almost as if to lend credence to the panicked man’s words, Talon’s breath misted in the sudden cold. It was as if someone had cranked the AC all the way up. For a split second, he was reminded of the terrible cold he’d experienced back in Norway when he had confronted the wrath of the winter warlock.
“We’re both getting out of here… Now…”
Talon shifted his gaze toward the exit but now found a row of mannequins blocking their path. He could’ve sworn the area was clear mere seconds earlier…
Without warning, one of the mannequins moved, a lifeless arm lashing out at him. Talon fired, bullets shredding the mannequins, sending plaster limbs flying. His pulse quickened as he crouched before the bullet-riddled dummy. Did he imagine the movement after all?
“Oh my God… He’s here… The Reaper is here…”
Talon spun toward the panicked man…and that’s when he saw the apparition. It lasted for only a blink of an eye, more like an optical illusion than anything else. A white, misty silhouette stood outlined about thirty feet from them. There was a jerk, almost like a jump cut in reality, and then the same figure loomed before them. Talon brought up his machine pistol, but the barrel was pointed at thin air, the specter having vanished once more.
A hiss of a spray canister made Talon whirl. Where was it coming from?
He didn’t spot the canister but he saw the graffiti bleeding over the floor. Two Greek letters: Alpha and Omega. Beginning and End.
Death is only the beginning.
“Go! Get out of here! Save yourself before it’s too—”
The words were cut off as an invisible force twisted the man’s arm. Bone snapped, and he exhaled in pain. He slumped to his knees, gasping. There was no time to recuperate from the spectral attack as the entity pounded his face into the ground with savage force.
Again and again.
Talon shot toward the twitching, groaning man. He had crossed less than half the distance when a force lifted Talon into the air and tossed him aside. Talon slammed into a row of metal clothing racks and collapsed on the floor. He lay there, groggy, as the spectral attack intensified against the stranger. The force yanked him backward, bending his spine unnaturally before dragging his whole body along the floor at breakneck speed, up the wall and along the ceiling. For a split second, the man remained suspended on the ceiling before his lifeless body came crashing down right before Talon’s feet. Despite his training and years of combat, terror seized him. The former Delta operator had seen many a man die in front of him, but he had never experienced anything like this.
The air crackled and hissed with electricity, making Talon’s hair stand on end. Energy filled the abandoned department store. The man he had failed to save claimed the Reaper’s spirit haunted this mall, and now Talon believed him. But how to fight an enemy he couldn’t even see?
Before Talon could process the horror, the invisible force that had destroyed his companion reached out for him. A violent burst of energy shredded his combat suit, and black marks burned over his skin. The contact with the strange force took his breath away. He gasped in agony and dropped the machine pistol, which clattered ineffectively over the floor. A boneless face materialized, bloodshot eyes squirming with hatred.
The Reaper’s presence was upon him. The entity lifted Talon upward and pinned him against the wall like a puny insect. There was pressure against his diaphragm, and he couldn’t breathe. He was about to share the broken, bloodied man’s fate.
The Reaper’s skeletal features grew visible, lips dried with blood, eyes pools of pure blackness. Not flesh but made of an unstable, translucent material. Constantly reforming, exposing muscles as the thin membrane shifted and shredded.
A hand reached out for Talon’s chest, bony fingers vanishing inside his ribcage like spectral scalpels. He could almost visualize those fingers closing around his hammering heart, intent on squeezing the life right out of him.
No, it couldn’t end like this…
Talon stared into the Reaper’s inhuman eyes. The spirit had become death itself, living up to his namesake.
There was a sensation of heat and his pentacle amulet lit up, responding to the proximity of the supernatural being. Crackling energy ignited the air and the Reaper recoiled, dispersing as it unleashed a bone-rattling inhuman shriek.
Talon tilted forward, nothing holding him aloft any longer, and tumbled back to the ground. He gasped, coughing up blood.
Nearby, the spirit of the Reaper was reforming, filaments of concentrated light hanging in mid-air as the spooky wisps coalesced back into the shape of a man. Talon had no idea if the amulet would save him one more time. The Reaper wasn’t like any enemy he’d ever faced before.
Driven by his desire to live, Talon staggered to his feet and stumbled for the exit. Renewed bursts of energy erupted, still struggling to take shape and reach out for him, but he blocked it from his mind. His complete focus was on the arched exit ahead.
Unloading a clip into the lock, he ran full bore toward the door. Talon didn’t know much about spirit beings like the Reaper, but among the whispered legends and half-forgotten lore, one detail stuck out. Ghosts were often bound to the place of their death. Maybe, just maybe, the Reaper wouldn’t be able to follow him beyond the walls of his retail tomb.
A final roar of bestial, frustration accompanied his escape, and then Talon was sprinting across the parking lot. He hated to retreat. Leaving the bodies of the fallen behind wasn’t his style, either. But nothing would be gained if he faced the Reaper and allowed himself to become just another rotting corpse in the mall. He would strategize with Casca and return to face this entity.
If there was a way to defeat a ghost…
Moments later, he reached his rental car and kicked open the hinged door, still unwilling to hazard a glance behind him, praying the entity wasn’t following him.
He sucked in sharp mouthfuls
of air, fired up the ignition, and tapped the accelerator. Only once the Regional Mall had receded in his rear view mirror did his hands stop shaking.
***
A half an hour later, a battered Talon used his keycard to let himself into his hotel room. One of the reasons he avoided five-star hotels, even though Casca could afford them, was that the cheaper, more rundown places offered more privacy. People knew to keep to themselves. Not having to trudge past a reception desk to get to your room didn’t hurt either. In his current beaten-up state, he would’ve drawn plenty of raised eyebrows.
He staggered into the bathroom, flipped on the light switch, and stepped up to the mirror to assess the full extent of the damage. His skintight black sweater had been shredded by the spectral attack and the skin underneath felt bruised and sensitive. His chest burned as he pulled off the shirt. He tossed the ruined garment on the floor and inspected the twin black marks that ran down his pectoral muscles in long, fat lines. The new injuries framed the inverted pentagram scar Zagan had carved into his skin back in San Francisco. The wounds resembled electrical burns of some kind. Making matters worse, his stab wound was bleeding again too.
I’m falling apart here, Talon thought.
He shouldn’t be complaining. At least he was alive. The same couldn’t be said for the man he’d failed to save back in the mall.
I shot him but he never left this place.
Talon considered the dead man’s words and concluded he must been one of the cops who put a stop to the Reaper’s wanton massacre five years earlier.
Talon rubbed an anti-burn salve on his fresh wounds and bit his lips. The cream stung like crazy. He wrapped his chest in gauze and swallowed a few painkillers.
He’d faced demons and cults, but he’d never confronted a ghost before. His amulet had saved his ass, but he was in dire need of a different kind of weapon and a new strategy if he was to face the Lightwalker and his spectral master again.
Spirit Breaker Page 5
