Dark Horse

by E. A. Copen

  Chapter Seven

  There were times I missed just being a necromancer. The Pale Horseman mantle had complicated everything to where I didn’t get to just enjoy the magic for magic’s sake. Sure, back when I made my living doing tarot and seances rather than saving the world, I hated it. Hindsight, as they say, is twenty-twenty. I had it made.

  Talking to the dead was second nature and being Death only made it easier. I still wouldn’t attempt it outside a circle. I probably could, but performing the magic inside a circle gave me greater control if something went wrong. Stranded on the tiny island, however, I didn’t have access to any chalk or a marker. It took a while to find a stone that’d leave a visible mark on the floor, but once I had it, I returned to the main room.

  The fire had burned down to flickering embers, for which I was thankful. It was plenty warm, and now that I was dry, the last thing I wanted was more heat. I paced to the center of the room, close to the flame and marked out my circle on the floor.

  Behind me, Fenrir pricked his ears and tilted his head to the side curiously. HOW WILL THE DEAD HELP YOU RETURN TO THE MAINLAND?

  “They won’t,” I said, digging the rock harder into the stone, “at least not directly. While we’re bound by the laws of gravity, ghosts aren’t necessarily. Some are, but not all. It depends on how aware of their situation they are.”

  What I didn’t tell them was that summoning ghosts was dangerous, even with the circle. Unlike shades, ghosts had their own will and sentience. Over time, their sanity tended to fade, leaving them angry and dangerous. Considering how old the fort was, the chances that I’d have to deal with a couple of crazy ghosts was higher than normal. It wasn’t something I was unprepared for. Like everything else, I had a control spell that’d help me keep them in line, though I didn’t like overriding any sentient being’s free will, ghosts included. When it was the difference between us staying there and getting back to the mainland to save the city, those reservations had to take a back seat.

  “Ghosts can fly,” Beth clarified.

  I nodded and finished marking out my circle. “They also can’t normally affect the physical plane, which means I’m going to have to give them a little extra juice. While they’re doing their thing, I’ll be virtually useless except for keeping control of them. Once they start attacking the harpies, they might get agitated enough to break in here and try to take us out. You three will have to be my backup.”

  AM I ALLOWED TO EAT THE HARPIES? OR WOULD THAT GO AGAINST MY PREVIOUS OATH, HORSEMAN?

  I stepped back to the edge of my circle, shrugging. “Harpies aren’t human. I’ve got no problem with you chowing down on them. Have at it.”

  Fenrir stood, stretched and yawned. Beth grabbed her black staff and stood in front of me to the right. Emma took up a position opposite Beth with her spear and they waited.

  “Mind if I borrow that for a second?” I asked and pointed to Emma’s spear.

  She held it out to me.

  I slid one of the sharpened edges over the inside of my thumb, wincing when it cut a little deeper than I meant it to. After handing the spear back to Emma, I knelt and pressed my bloody thumb to the outer edge of the circle. The magic barrier snapped closed, sealing me inside.

  I closed my eyes and dropped the shields that normally separated my psyche from the land of the dead. When I opened my eyes again, the fort had changed. The previously smooth stone had decayed, weathered away completely in some places to let the sea in to reclaim it. Ivy had crawled through the cracks and died there, trying to pry apart the structure. The bone chilling wind of the After tore through the small space, howling and shredding at my body heat. I let it, sinking further into the After. My breath escaped in a death rattle and I reached out, both physically and across the land of the dead, in search of wandering spirits.

  Dozens of boots stomped against stone, the sound of disembodied spirits marching carrying through the halls. It was loud enough that Beth and Emma turned, searching for the source. Whoever was marching, they didn’t come close. The sound didn’t feel attached to a group of ghosts, which meant it was just a memory impressed on the place itself. I kept looking.

  Something tugged on the edge of my awareness, a ghost. Male, mid-forties. Something about it seemed different than most of the ghosts I’d interacted with, but it didn’t seem angry or aggressive. Just distant, watching. Almost disconnected from the place as if it didn’t belong there any more than we did.

  I turned in the circle and called out to the ghost, first asking it to step forward. Asking was always better when it came to ghosts. If I could get them to work with me, I wouldn’t have to resort to throwing them in chains and treating them as slaves.

  The ghost floated out of the After and hovered in the circle. He was shorter than me by a head with thin features and hungry, sunken eyes. The rags he wore told me he wasn’t a soldier who’d been stationed here. They hung off him, three sizes too large. He spoke a few syllables, the language sharp and distinctly lacking in vowels.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as calmly as I could. “I don’t understand you.”

  “I said you don’t belong to this place.” The ghost wandered closer. “What are you?”

  “My name is Lazarus Kerrigan. I’m a necromancer. My friends and I need your help.”

  He turned, empty eyes scanning the space outside the circle. “These are not your friends. I can sense the lie in your words.”

  Great. Figures I’d draw the attention of the one nitpicky ghost. “Doesn’t change my purpose. Do you see the harpies outside? The winged monsters?”

  The ghost nodded.

  “I need to fight them. To destroy them so we can pass back to the mainland.”

  He floated to the edge of my circle and moved along it, considering. “You’re on a quest. I heard you speaking earlier about monsters, magic, and great storms. When I was alive, my people called you devils. You were the monsters. So many of us died here in chains.”

  “What’s wrong?” Beth asked, turning. She couldn’t see the ghost, or hear him.

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure what he means, but he’s pretty averse to the idea of helping. Something about dying in chains and his people calling us devils.”

  “In chains...” Beth muttered under her breath. She turned suddenly. “Fort Pike was where they held prisoners of war during the Seminole Wars. The government wanted to relocate the Seminole Indians out of Florida and they resisted. Violently. We responded with force. Any who were captured were brought here, but conditions were deplorable. There was a yellow fever outbreak. Hundreds died.”

  “I prayed for death,” said the ghost. “But my god abandoned me. Only the white god was real, and he had no words for my kind. I died here. My bones left to be picked clean. I will not help you.” He turned his back to me.

  “What’s happening?” Emma insisted, glancing behind her.

  I lowered my hands. “He won’t help us.”

  THEN MAKE HIM. ARE YOU DEATH OR AREN’T YOU?

  The ghost must’ve heard Fenrir because he halted his retreat, turning to regard me with a worried expression.

  I shook my head. “He died a prisoner. I won’t bind him in the afterlife too.”

  He nodded once and faded into nothing.

  I closed my eyes and went back to searching the fort. There had to be other ghosts there. No battles had been fought at Fort Pike, but that didn’t mean no one had died there. People died all the time of all sorts of causes from sickness to old age. Maybe someone had fallen from the ramparts into the water and drowned. Either way, I passed over the native ghosts I came across, of which there were dozens.

  My psyche plunged deeper into the After, to a place where the circle didn’t matter and I could walk freely through the dead halls. The marching grew louder. If I returned to the half-sunken courtyard where I’d sparred with Emma, I was sure I’d see the soldiers there going through marching exercises. I could’ve gone that far, but the further I ventured away from the safety o
f the circle, the more dangerous the expedition became.

  “Hello.” The voice was so small and hollow, I wasn’t sure I’d heard it at first.

  I turned around to see a tall, thin black man. He wore the uniform of a Union soldier from the Civil War, the bright blue jacket and cap faded and torn. The ghost barely seemed to notice, as he was grinning ear to ear.

  He removed his cap and placed it against his chest. “Hello, sir. You can hear me, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Thank the Lord. Been so long wandering these halls, talking to myself. But I can see the magic around you. That glow like my ma used to get when she was cooking up spells. I know power when I see it. Or maybe I’ve finally gone crazy like all these others.”

  “I’m a necromancer,” I explained. “And you’re...”

  “I’m dead.” He chuckled. “Back in my day, they didn’t teach us colored folk how to swim. Got swept out to sea during a storm. But I came back, sure enough. Just without my body. I don’t mind. Least I got to keep the uniform.” He put his hat back on. “Say, there’s something I’ve been dying to ask and none of the others seem to know the answer.”

  I didn’t know if I would either, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try, especially if the answer might get him on my side. “Sure, pal. Ask anything.”

  “Did we win?”

  I blinked. “Huh?”

  “People were still fighting when I fell,” the ghost explained, his attention shifting nervously around us. “People saying if the north won, we’d be free. Things’d get better for us. All of us. So I need to know. Did we win?”

  “The North won,” I confirmed.

  His grin widened. “We did? Oh, Hallelujah. And tell me, did things get better for us?”

  I considered the question. In a lot of ways, maybe they had. The South especially had progressed a lot in recent years, but there was still a lot of progress for us to make. After this soldier fell, it’d still be a hundred years before skin color alone didn’t decide whether or not kids had access to an education, even longer before the Civil Rights Act was a thing. None of that stopped the violence and hate. Black kids still got gunned down by white cops for little more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Segregation still held a stranglehold on the South, though nobody talked about it.

  Were things better? Maybe, but they could also stand to get a whole lot better too.

  “Things are still getting better,” I answered.

  His smile faded. “Oh.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Williams. Private Samuel Williams.”

  “Well, Private, I could use your help.” I gestured out to the harpies. “They’re blocking our escape from this fort. I need to get back to the mainland so I can protect New Orleans from a monster that wants to destroy it. Do you think you could gather a few others and help me take them out?”

  Samuel glanced up as if the ceiling wasn’t there, peering through the rotten holes made by the After. “I’d be honored, but I’m a ghost. What’s a ghost going to do to a living thing? I can’t even push a pebble.”

  I extended my hand. “Take my hand. I’ll give you some of my power. You just have to pass it to the others. As long as I’m here, and the spell is active, you’ll be able to affect my reality.”

  Samuel stared at my hand. I wondered if he thought I was trying to trick him. Why should he trust me? I was just some random necromancer who’d happened on him a hundred and seventy years or so after his untimely death, and I was asking for a lot.

  After a long moment, Samuel’s icy hand slid into mine. I closed my fingers around his and sent a buzz of magic pouring out of me and into him. All around us, the After vibrated with the transfer of power, lines rippling through the air in vibrant electric greens and blues.

  Samuel’s form solidified and he turned his head, extending his hand into a part of the After I couldn’t see on my own. Another hand shot out of the darkness and joined to his, the ghostly body of another Union soldier solidifying just moments later. Then the other soldier extended his hand, grasping the hand of another and another...until there were twenty ghosts in all, joined in a circle around me. Some were Union soldiers like Samuel, but not all. Among the volunteers, I spied at least two Seminole Indians, though the one I’d first approached was nowhere to be found.

  “Go,” I urged and let go of Samuel’s hand. Though I broke contact, his form remained semi-solid.

  He nodded, shouldered a gun, and waved for the others to follow him.

  And now for the hard part. I clenched my teeth and tried to climb a little out of the After, straddling the line between life and death. Too much time on the death side and I might get stuck there, circle or no circle. Just being there as long as I had been was risky. The After sucked out my body heat and would leave me shivering once this was all over, my temperature dangerously low. If I let it dip too much, my magic might kick in on its own and suck life and warmth out of everything around me, just to keep me alive. I had to be careful not to go too far.

  “Is it working?” Beth’s head jerked from side to side, scanning for signs of a threat.

  As if in answer, a harpy screeched.

  Fenrir finally stood, shaking his snowy white fur and baring his teeth in a growl that shook the loose stones on the floor.

  Another screech and several bricks fell from the ceiling, crashing to the floor and shattering into pieces. Soon enough, the air was filled with the cries of angry harpies and the echoing bark of old rifles. To anyone not initiated in the supernatural, it must’ve sounded like someone was re-enacting a battle out on the waterfront.

  The first harpy clawed its way through one of the narrow window slits, tearing out bricks with her talons. She stuck her head in, baring sharpened, vampire-like teeth, and was promptly met by Fenrir’s claws. He scratched at her, pulling her inside where Beth smashed her head into the floor with the end of her staff.

  The next one pulled itself in through one of the holes in the ceiling, her face already bloody. Emma jabbed at the harpy with her spear, piercing it in the chest. That somehow didn’t stop it from clawing its way through the narrow opening. It landed in the circle with me, just inches in front of my face. Unfortunately, I had to keep all my attention on the spell or else we’d lose the assist from the ghosts. I was a sitting duck.

  Fenrir’s howl blasted the harpy out of the circle as if it were a physical thing. She plastered against the opposite wall, a mess of feathers and blood.

  I realized I’d been clenching my teeth and stopped. “Thanks, Balto.”

  IT’S FENRIR, the Titan growled. CALL ME ANYTHING ELSE AND I’LL ALLOW THE NEXT ONE TO DEVOUR YOU.

  Sheesh, Titans had no sense of humor.

  I sank just a little further into the After so I could peer through the stone ceiling and peek at how the battle was going above. Samuel and his cohort of ghosts moved in a wedge formation, flying across the sky with spectral rifles shouldered. They fired in succession, with Samuel firing first and the others following in timed bursts. Most shots missed, but the few that found their marks sent the harpies spiraling out of the sky. Some crashed into the fort, their wings too full of holes to keep the sky. Others plunged into the water only to climb back out, clinging to the rocks. Very few of the injuries inflicted by our ghost army were fatal, but that was just fine. Fenrir, Beth, and Emma made short work of any harpies who made it into the hall.

  After just a few minutes of fighting, the five or six harpies who remained airborne let out a chittering cry, turned and flew back out to sea.

  “They’re retreating,” I reported as Emma stabbed another harpy through the chest.

  She shook its limp form off the edge of her spear. “Good.”

  No kidding, I thought and slowly released my hold on the spell that let the ghosts enjoy their solid form. Layers of the After peeled back into place, lifting my psyche out of the grave. I rebuilt the shields around my mind as quick as I could, but it was still slow going. As soon as
I pulled the last of my power out of the After, I staggered and fell, breath escaping my shivering body in small, white clouds, despite the hot, humid air.

  “He needs warmth,” Emma shouted, though her voice still sounded distant.

  I raised a hand and tried to tell her to stay back. I’d been too long in the After and whatever I touched, I’d drain to replenish my own resources. If it was her... But what else was there? The fort was all stone and mud with a little tangled seaweed or misguided grass here or there. There wasn’t much life to be had.

  I tried to tell her to stop, don’t cross the circle, don’t come closer, but it all just came out as a grunt through chattering teeth. Emma crossed the circle and the magic broke, snapping like a plastic band and striking hard against my psyche. I reeled from the blow and hit the ground, curling into a ball. Soft hands brushed against my shoulders. Warmth and life called to me. Magic surged to the surface, buzzing against my skin and reaching for her. When she touched the back of her hand against my cheek, the power seized her fingers.

  Emma’s eyes widened, her mouth opened, forming a silent O as my magic sucked the life out of her and dumped it in me.

  I forced myself to suck in a breath through clenched teeth and used the last of my strength to push her away, breaking the connection before I could take away too much.

  My cheek hit the cool of the floor and I suppressed a whole-body shiver before I blacked out completely.

  Chapter Eight

  Once upon a time, Emma didn’t believe in the supernatural. She had her silver cross pendant and her faith in God and that was it. Sure, she’d seen weird things, unexplainable things. But what cop didn’t? It was New Orleans. Just because there were books and television shows about vampires and monsters living there didn’t mean it was true.

  And then I walked into her life. I showed her a world underneath the one she thought she knew, a world full of gods, monsters, and a literal hell where she’d spent time as the Devil’s prisoner. I sucked her into my nightmare existence.