Stolen Souls

by Debra Dunbar

  Tadax answered that question by removing a bottle with a narrow tip at the end and turning it upside down. Chalk flowed from it in a thin line as he began to draw the runes. By the time he finished, there was barely enough light to see by.

  “Everyone in the circle,” Tadax instructed. “Be very careful to step over the chalk. Don’t smudge it or the circle will have a weak spot.”

  “Eric isn’t here yet,” Nyalla said, looking around and hoping to see his headlights coming up the road. All she saw was dark.

  “I have to charge the circle now. It’s dark, and the ghoul could be here any minute. He’ll just have to be on the outside.”

  “I’m not getting in that circle without Eric.”

  Tadax looked at the others. Tamika shook her head. “If Nyalla isn’t going in, neither am I.”

  Boomer sat, leaning against Nyalla for support. Ben looked at the two girls, then at the necromancer. “I’ll stay too.”

  Tadax began to chant and Nyalla squeezed Tamika’s hand. “Thank you for staying with us.”

  “Self–preservation. I trust you guys with your guns and chainsaw more than I do that lousy excuse of a magic–user.”

  With a final word, the chalk runes and circles began to glow. From the corner of her eye, Nyalla saw lights coming up the road. Finally, Eric was here.

  The necromancer took a handful of loose dirt from around the grave and walked clockwise around the circle, flicking a pinch of dirt into each candle flame. The dirt sizzled as it ignited into sparks that rose and improbably hovered about two feet in the air above the candle. Nyalla heard a car door, and the rush of feet, then felt two arms around her, holding her tight.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Eric murmured in her ear. “Hope I didn’t screw anything up.”

  He had. They were all vulnerable to attack outside the circle now, but that wasn’t his fault. Nyalla covered his hands with the one of hers that wasn’t holding a gun. “No, he’s just getting started. You’ll want to have your gun out, or welder, or whatever weapon you want. I’m thinking we’ll soon be seeing the ghoul.”

  The air dropped in temperature. Nyalla felt the sweat on her back chill, and she shivered. Insect song died in sections all around them, and the five of them shifted, each facing a different direction to watch for the ghoul’s approach. Icy mist rose from the ground, gaining in height until it obscured the trees at the edges of the cemetery. It thickened, surrounding them in gray until they couldn’t even see the gravestones next to them. The only thing visible to Nyalla beyond the outlines of her companions was the faint glow of the circle, and sparks of the ignited grave dirt. Boomer howled a long mournful note. It trailed off until only an unnatural silence remained. It was quiet as the grave, quiet as death.

  Tadax chanted, and Nyalla strained to make out the words. They weren’t either Elvish or Demon, but some strange language she’d never heard before.

  “Latin,” Tamika scoffed. “I hope he’s better at ancient languages than he is at resurrecting the dead.”

  The air around them began to fluctuate wildly in temperature, like tiny gusts of hot and cold swirling about. A flash of light illuminated the gray mist, and they heard an ear–piercing scream. Tadax’s Latin faltered, but he continued.

  “You think to control me? To send me back?”

  The mists abruptly cleared in an area around the circle, and Nyalla saw the ghoul, stalking the perimeter as he tested the boundary with a bare foot. He hardly looked human at this point. The skin was beginning to blacken and hang from the corpse’s body, and the hands and feet had elongated even further. He walked with a bobbing movement; one moment hunched low as if scenting the chalk outline with his caved–in nose, and the next upright and tall as his yellow eyes glowed at Tadax.

  “You’ve got a bit of a problem, Mister Necromancer,” the ghoul chuckled. “My grave is on the inside of the circle with you. How do you expect to put me in the ground?”

  Tadax stumbled, hesitating over the words of his chant.

  “I see you left me a tasty snack outside the circle. How generous of you. But as hungry as I am, I think I’ll wait on their deaths and make my first meal of the night you.”

  “This isn’t working. We should probably shoot him,” Nyalla muttered.

  Eric held out a hand to restrain her. “Give him a few more moments. I’d rather have the necromancer deal with this thing than worry over whether or not we managed to completely kill it or not.”

  Tadax’s voice grew louder, and the light from the runes and the candles increased as he raised his hands. The ghoul paced back and forth at the edge of the circle, poking a finger at a rune before yanking it back with a scream of pain.

  “Revertimini, et somno corporis!” The runes flared, and the ghoul jumped into the air as if he’d touched a live wire. With a crash, he fell to the grass and convulsed. His howls seemed to be coming from all around them, and Nyalla resisted the urge to cover her ears. Slowly, the runes dimmed, then vanished, plunging them into darkness. Nyalla’s heart tried to beat its way out of her chest. She pointed her gun toward where she’d last seen the thrashing ghoul. Was he gone? Had it worked?

  “Help me get him into the grave and cover him up,” Tadax shouted. “He’s gone, but I want to make sure he doesn’t come back again somehow.”

  Nyalla’s vision was adjusting to the change in light. She saw Eric hesitate and turn toward her. Tamika’s arm brushed hers, and she heard the woman’s short frightened breaths. Ahead, Tadax’s shadowy form bent over a shape on the ground, tugging it forward and across the extinguished runes toward the open grave. Nyalla flicked the safety on her gun and went to tuck it into her waistband, but halted. There was something wrong. She just couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was.

  “Should we go?” Eric asked.

  “Not me. I ain’t getting anywhere near that thing, dead or not,” Tamika replied.

  A low growl rent the air, and Nyalla jumped, letting out a relieved sigh when she realized it was just Boomer. She hadn’t seen him at first with the mist still hovering above the ground.

  The mist.

  “No!” She shouted at Tadax. “He’s not gone. Get back in your circle.”

  The mist billowed up, closing in. Tadax grunted, inches from pulling the corpse over the chalk circles and runes. “No,” she screamed and ran towards the necromancer.

  “Nyalla, don’t!” Eric grabbed at her arm, but Nyalla twisted away. The mist rose, and she could barely see the necromancer before her.

  “Drop him, drop him,” she shouted. Thick gray had obscured everything more than a few inches in front of her face. Nyalla stumbled, and spun about, disoriented. She heard Eric calling her, a growling and snarling noise that she hoped was Boomer, and another noise. Inching forward, with her hands in front in case she tripped, Nyalla strained her ears. It sounded like something snapping and crunching. Was it digging? Had Tadax managed to get the ghoul into the grave? If the mist was what she thought it was, why wasn’t the necromancer screaming?

  “Tadax?

  Her foot hit something that gave and moved. It wasn’t a grave marker. Nyalla nudged it with her foot and she bent down to better see. The lines of chalk, blurred and smeared in the grass were next to her foot. One of the votives was tilted onto its side, the flame extinguished. She reached down to pick it up, and jerked her hand away from the heat, knocking her palm into something soft. She turned her head and looked down into Tadax’s lifeless eyes in his detached head.

  “Eric, run, run! Get out of here!” she screamed, falling backwards into the dirt as she tried to back away.

  Gunshots rang out, and Nyalla wasn’t sure where they were coming from. The mist was thick around them, muffling sound and making it impossible to sense direction. Nyalla crawled, realizing that she had no idea which direction the SUV was, but needing to do something. She kept low to the ground, fully aware that with this visibility, she could be mistaken for the ghoul and be shot.

  More gunfire. A long, drawn�
��out scream. Ferocious barking followed by yelping. Sounds rent the air, and Nyalla kept moving forward, her hands bruised and cut from where she hit them against the granite markers. A shape loomed ahead of her, tall and menacing, and in a panic she opened fire, realizing a second later that she was shooting at a tree.

  At least the tree line before her let her know she had crawled in the wrong direction. She reluctantly turned about and headed back the way she came, her heart racing at the thought of going near the circle again with its open grave and Tadax’s body parts strewn about. One by one, the sounds abruptly stopped — gunfire, screaming, and even yelping. Nyalla crawled, trying in vain to hold back the sobs wracking her body. Were they gone? Dead? Boomer and Eric? Tamika? Ben? Would she stumble across their heads in the grass, too?

  “Crawl faster, little girl. You’ll never make it at that speed.” The voice taunted her from all around, the silken tone sending bile into her throat.

  “Did you kill them?” she choked out. She’d been trying to bring up anger, fury, but all she felt was sick terror.

  The throaty chuckle stirred the hair around her ear, and she jumped sideways, landing painfully against the corner of a tall marker. “I’m saving that for when you can watch. Nice and slow, one at a time, so their screams fill your mind, drowning out even your own. You can even watch me eat them.”

  Nyalla scooted upright, her back against the flat granite, and pointed her gun at the mist. The ghoul was nowhere, and yet everywhere at once. It would be pointless to just start shooting into the gray, and she was worried she might hit one of her friends.

  Her body shook with fear and cold, as sweat trickled down her back. The gun was all she had. Their back–up plan of shooting the ghoul and burying it before it regenerated had fallen apart. Even if she did managed to hit it, she could hardly run away and leave her friends here. Her gun was her only weapon, and it wouldn’t do her much good.

  Cold damp caressed her skin, and she saw a gray finger reach out to cup her chin, a face emerging from the mist to hover above her own. Yellow eyes were hungry as they stared into hers. She was only vaguely aware of the rubbery feel of his skin against hers, the cloying odor of decay. All that penetrated her mind was the evil in those glowing eyes. Unbidden, her gift reached forward and searched behind the eyes in a last effort to understand what drove such a creature as this. As her mind touched his, she recoiled, his hand tightening on her chin to hold her in place.

  “You wish to see me, little girl? Well, go ahead and look. I may not be able to take your soul, but I will kill you. I’ll allow you this as a final wish.”

  Nyalla closed her eyes and sunk herself into the monster. It was strange to want such torture to be part of her final hours, but after a lifetime of misery and confusion at the hands of the elves, she just wanted to feel, to know the horror that existed side–by–side with such beauty. The ghoul didn’t disappoint. He fed on pain, grew strong through fear, and he was very, very old. She saw the slow trickle that kept him alive as he slept, and the carnage he’d wrought when he’d awoken before. She saw the souls he’d destroyed, the lives he’d ended. Still, she burrowed deeper, achingly conscious of the hand at her jaw.

  I wish I could have found the courage to see the beach before I died.

  The thought floated to the surface, above the rotted memories of the ghoul, and crashed through her with the tang of salt water. She tasted the brine on her tongue, and felt the spray against her face, blowing short hair from her forehead as she watched a dark–haired woman spin on the sand, her arms outstretched as she whirled. The woman’s shorts had ridden high, revealing the curve of tanned rear, and her eyes snagged on the vision, wishing to see more.

  These were not her memories, Nyalla realized in shock.

  “John, come with me into the water.”

  He watched that tantalizing rear as she bounced to the surf’s edge, only to squeal when a wave crashed high above her knee. He’d marry this girl. No other looked at him in such a way. In her eyes, he had the strength to move mountains. When she looked at him, there was nothing he couldn’t do.

  “Come on, John!”

  Shelly whirled to face him, her arms outstretched. The wind blew her hair forward, like sable ribbons around her face.

  “John,” Nyalla whispered. She had no idea if he could actually hear her or not, hadn’t the faintest knowledge of how this kind of connection worked. “John, you’re dead. You’re dead, but you need to do one last thing to protect Shelly and Jack. You need to leave, to let go of your body.”

  The ghoul screamed and slammed her head against the granite behind her. Nyalla felt blood trickle down the back of her head, felt a sharp pain lance from back to front. But she still held fast to her connection.

  “John, can you hear me?”

  Jack. A baby cried, the sound tapering off to a mew as it latched on. He placed a hand on the tiny back, touching both his child and Shelly’s fingers that held the baby against her breast. His eyes stung, and he struggled to breathe. His. A part of him; his legacy to the world. His gaze traveled up to meet her tired blue eyes in a pale face. She was beautiful, even in the hideous, paisley hospital gown.

  Pain stabbed Nyalla again. “John! If you love her, if you love your baby, you need to leave. You’re dead, and the longer you stay, the more you put them in danger.”

  He was so tired, but it was a happy tired. Shelly had just been up with the baby, and he wanted her to get a little sleep before he left for work. It wasn’t really such a selfless act. Alone with his son in the dark of the morning, rocking as Jack dropped back to sleep, milk dribbling from the corner of the baby’s mouth. He’d gently kissed the boy as he placed him into the crib then rushed out, knowing he’d be late for work.

  The pain in her head was breaking her concentration. “John! John!”

  Headlights around a corner. Adrenaline as he yanked the wheel, but there was nowhere to go. His car slammed against the embankment, and the truck still came forward. It was like slow motion; the grind of metal on metal, the folding of the windshield as it buckled, the steering wheel crushing into his hips as his nose filled with the powdery scent of the airbag.

  “Shelly, I love you. I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”

  Guilt. Guilt for leaving his wife alone with a tiny baby. Regret that he’d never see the man Jack would become, never hold his wife’s hand as they watched grandkids play in the yard. “Shelly, I’m so sorry.”

  White. Then nothing.

  Sharp nails dug into Nyalla’s skin and she felt the connection slip away. A hideous scream penetrated her consciousness, and she opened her eyes to see the yellow ones before her flicker and fade as they became blue, the feral glee replaced with confusion.

  “John?”

  But there was nothing there. The intelligence vanished as quickly as it came, and the eyes filmed into milky white. The corpse collapsed, its head falling into her lap along with the hand that had gripped her jaw. Nyalla’s gasp caught in her throat, and she stared down at the body, knowing the ghoul was gone. She was more sure of that than she had ever been about anything in her entire life. Still, it took a few breaths before she could muster the strength to push the corpse from her lap and rise shakily to her feet.

  A hand to the back of her head came away wet and sticky. The granite behind her was streaked with what was surely her blood. Dazed, she looked around. The mist had vanished, but it was still a dark night, the moon illuminating the cemetery barely enough to make out the grave markers and trees at the perimeter. Still, she managed to recognize some lumps off to her left as something other than monuments marking the plots. As she weaved her way towards them, one stirred, lurching to four feet and shaking two massive heads.

  “Boomer,” she whispered in relief. The hound half crawled towards her, whining as she reached out to run her hands over his body. Legs jutted at unnatural angles, and his fur was as wet and sticky as her hair. As bad as his injuries were, Nyalla knew he’d be able to heal them given enough time
. It was the other three she was most worried about.

  She reached Tamika first. The girl was sitting upright, her belt cinched tight around the upper part of her leg. Ben was beside her, his face swollen practically beyond recognition, blood stains in lines from his mouth down the front of his shirt.

  “We’re okay,” Tamika told Nyalla, pushing the other girl’s hands away. “I thought it was worse than it was. I’ll need stitches and have a nice conversation–piece scar, but I’ll live. Ben too. Go find Eric.”

  Eric. Nyalla’s heart leapt in panic. “Where is he? Do you know where he was last?”

  Ben shook his head and pointed toward the trees.

  “He chased the ghoul that way,” Tamika explained. “We heard a lot of gunshots, but nothing after that. I wasn’t sure if it was you shooting or Eric.”

  It could have been either, Nyalla thought, looking with dread towards the small stand of trees. She was pretty sure that was the general area she’d been when she’d unloaded her gun on an innocent maple. Still, she made her way over there. Boomer crawled after her, dragging his legs and whining as she quickly outpaced him.

  “Stay, Boomer. Stay.” The hellhound’s keen nose would be helpful in finding Eric, but Nyalla just couldn’t push the dog on — not when he was clearly in so much pain. He needed to repair his wounds before she could ask him to assist.

  “Eric! Eric, can you hear me?” she called out, crashing through the deadwood and briars that had grown up around the small thicket of trees.

  Relief flooded her as she heard a groan, deep in the small woods. Ignoring the thorns tearing through her hands and legs, she pressed on, fighting her way through dense brush.

  “Nyalla?” The word held such pain, and she wasn’t sure if he was desperately wounded, or if his agony was worry over her.