As she swung the sword at me I lifted my right hand to block—and found I was clutching a sword.
Not just any sword, but a flaming sword.
Sweet!
I’ve never had a sword lesson in my life, so I was also thinking the opposite me hadn’t either, so that meant she was just as unbalanced as I was. So we were evenly uneducated in how to use one. Which meant she would revert to the same techniques that I’d use.
Meaning hack and slash, baby.
White Zoë came at me, hacking from left to right, and I blocked each blow. It was like fighting a mirror reflection. If I advanced, she retreated in a predictable way. And the opposite was true. I shot up in the air. So did she. I did a roundhouse kick as I dove at her, and she performed one as well, but in the opposite direction.
Neither attack found its target.
“This is nuts.” I moved away again, and she followed me. I pointed the sword at her, and it shot flame. Her sword spewed ice, and the two canceled each other out.
What good was it to fight oneself? If the opponents were evenly matched? But along this thinking I moved back to the garden, where Rhonda stood where I’d left her, and the Phantasm hadn’t moved from the arbor. I landed and banished the sword.
White Zoë did the same, standing next to old Phanty.
“You see the futility,” he said.
I felt my wings fold, but they didn’t disappear this time. I also realized I was a little larger than Rhonda, by a good two feet in height. Was this the actual size of my Ethereal self? An Irin? Might be. I was still figuring out the rules. Hell, it could have been my ego.
Mom always did say I had one hell of an inflated one.
Yes, you do.
I jerked around, looking. There was her voice, again. Where the was hell was she?
The Phantasm was gliding forward, not really walking. Just sort of moving. He still wore Dags’s face. He stopped in front of us. “The only way to win is to defeat yourself—which of course cannot be done. Sacrifice is the only way.”
I closed my fists into balls. “Sacrifice. Like you did with Daniel? Was that the Horror’s contribution to this stupidity?”
“I don’t have that kind of power, Zoë.” He frowned at me. “There is nothing I can sacrifice because I have nothing that means enough to me to give up my existence.”
Something moved inside of me.
I bent forward just a bit. So did the White Zoë.
The Phantasm laughed. “Ah . . . so it’s happening. In just a few minutes others will sacrifice what they have to try to prevent your father from killing you. But their lives will be in vain.”
I stepped forward. “Mastiff!”
He frowned. The Phantasm reached up and tapped his chin. “Mastiff? No. That’s not the name I’m seeing. No, no. I’m afraid he failed. No, there are two others there, fighting so hard to prevent the monster from killing Zoë’s frail body—”
Two others.
Shit! That could only mean Joe and Dags!
“No . . .” Rhonda said. “Please . . . don’t kill him.”
“Oh?” The Phantasm smiled at her. “Would you like to make a sacrifice for him? Perhaps something of value to me?”
Value? I looked at Rhonda, then back to the Phantasm. “Stop it. Rhonda, don’t listen to him. He can’t do anything for you.”
“Yes . . . I can. I’ve granted millions of favors, wishes, restored lives, and extended lives throughout my reign, Zoë. But it is my wish that is my fondest desire. My wish that is most important.”
Wish? The Phantasm has a wish?
“Please . . .” Rhonda said.
But before the Phantasm could react, I felt a slight pulse in my chest. This wasn’t the echo of distant pain, not like the other experiences. No, this was something more—something warm and fuzzy. Well, at least to me. The Phantasm didn’t look so happy. In fact, what he did with Dags’s face was just . . . yuck.
“That bastard! That bastard!” he screamed.
Hooboy. I hate to think who the bastard is—’cause he just made the Phantasm really mad.
My bets are on Joe.
“I’ll destroy him and those bitches once and for all—”
And then he was gone. Just like that. A tear opened behind him, and he stepped backward.
But the White Zoë remained.
“Destroy him and those bitches—”
“Oh shit.”
Rhonda took a step forward. “He’s gone to kill Dags.” She looked at me. “You’ve got to stop him.”
I had a good idea of where Phanty had gone—to the hospital room at Grady—but I wasn’t sure if I opened up a gate here, I’d end up there. And if I did step through—would I still have the ability of flight?
Can I get there in time to stop him?
“Not fucking likely,” the White Zoë said.
I took a second look at her. Her expression appeared to be animated now, where before she’d looked like stone. Her movements were no longer exact imitations of mine, and she was different. Not so much like a puppet.
She stood in front of me, her sword drawn, her wings unfurled. “Now I can fight my way.”
“What happened?” I thought of my own sword, and it was in my hand, its heat a comfort in my palm. “You’re different.”
“That’s because that bastard was using me, as he always had. In here I’m his to command. But in your world . . .” She smiled, and I didn’t particularly like it.
Mental note: do not smile like that unless you want to frighten small children and animals.
“In my world, he can’t control you,” I finished for her.
She smiled. “Exactly. So there I was free to do his bidding—but on my own time.”
“So it wasn’t his idea to possess Daniel. That was your idea?”
“Yes. To get to you the fastest. And it worked. I isolated your heart, broke it, and made it pliable. You lowered your defenses, but I had hoped that in the end it would be the other cop that would take you. I hadn’t counted on the Guardian. And that complicated matters.”
“Complicated them?” I asked. Am I missing something else here? It wouldn’t be the first time.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Rhonda said.
I glanced over at her. “Will you please build a bridge? It was just sex.”
“It’s never ‘just sex,’ Zoë!” Rhonda screamed at me. “Now, damnit—you save him!”
Save him? I pointed at the Horror. “You see that? How am I supposed to get through that to save Dags?”
But to my surprise the Horror shook her head. “I don’t plan on stopping you if you wish to build a gate back to your world. And I’ll not stand in your way—on one condition.”
I pursed my lips. “Okay—lemme hear the condition.”
“Once the next stage is set, you and I fight to settle the deal on who gets the body.”
“Come again?”
“Your body, Zoë. I want it all. I want the sensations, the feelings, the tastes and smells that a living body can give me. I felt them all with Daniel—but the connection was distant. Useless. I am a part of your essence, your soul. And to have control of your body—”
Okay, okay. I get it. “And if I win?”
“That’s up to you. Life as an Irin, or a Wraith.” She glanced to her right. “And one other thing.”
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “What?”
“I want him as well.” She pointed to a clump of potted trees.
A figure I hadn’t noticed or sensed stepped out of the shadows. It was Archer, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. He moved to stand by the White Zoë and smiled. “Well, well. So you actually want me?”
“When I have her body and can control the Abysmal, then there is nothing stopping me from imprisoning the Phantasm.” She reached out with a long, white finger and ran it across his chin.
Archer smiled.
“With you by my side, Archer?”
He pursed his lips. “Well, no
w how can I refuse an offer like that?”
Uh-oh. “So what does that mean?”
“Easy,” he said as he tossed a small black box to Rhonda. She caught it in midair. “If you lose, that’s your new home.”
Rhonda looked inside of the box and gasped. “What is it?”
“It’s the Eidolon,” Archer said.
I stepped forward, my immediate rage directed at Archer. “How did you get that? Dags had that in his possession.”
“Yes, he did.” Archer smiled.
Rhonda said, “We have to go now, Zoë.”
I dismissed the sword and unfurled my wings. Rhonda stepped close to me, and I took her in my arms. With a glance toward White Zoë, I could see that she too had prepared for flight and held the Archer in her arms. I flew straight up, opened a gate between the worlds, and dove inside—
And into death.
32
NOTHING had gone as we’d planned. Well, except for getting Rhonda out of the Abysmal. And once we were through the gate and into the physical world, she started screaming her fool head off.
It was night in the skies of good old Atlanta. No moon, which was good, because I’m sure my happy ass flying in the sky would have attracted attention in the daylight—especially from the Westin Peachtree, which is where we came out. I soared higher to move above the building and caught sight of the gold birdcage on top of the Bank of America Plaza.
So it was still intact in the physical world. That was good to know.
Rhonda was squeezing the shit out of me and screaming, “Put me down! Put me down! Put me the fuck down!”
WTF? “Why are you screaming so damned loud? You didn’t seem to have this much trouble before.”
“That’s because it didn’t seem so real to me—I’m afraid of heights!”
Oh. Well. Now you tell me. “You could have warned me.”
“It wasn’t my idea before!”
Sheesh. “Stop yelling. Are you in pain anywhere?”
“Other than the millions of pins and needles stabbing into my nerves, I’m just fine.”
I looked down at her. She wasn’t gray anymore, but she was about as white as the Horror had been. She also looked very tiny in my arms, still dressed in her tee shirt and jeans, and no shoes. And she was shaking.
Maneuvering around the buildings, I focused in on Grady Hospital, southeast of the Westin. With a final push, I thought of my body and felt the familiar tug of my cord and let it be my guide to find my body. Rhonda started to yell out as we picked up speed, and I aimed directly for the window where I knew my body was.
Crashing through the window hadn’t been my intention—and we didn’t. Somehow I’d managed to open a gate, slip through with Rhonda—and then open another one directly in the room. And what I found stopped me in my tracks as Rhonda half jumped, half collapsed out of my arms.
The room was large and looked as if it had originally been a semiprivate room, but the second bed had been removed. The only bed that remained was shoved against the farthest wall, where the sink and bathroom door were, and I didn’t have time to take a look to see if that was me.
I didn’t want to. Seen that movie before. I’d deal with the aftermath later.
What we stumbled into was Captain Cooper lying motionless on the floor by the door, his head bloody and his heart weak. There were two other uniformed officers lying still, one on the near side of Cooper and the other in the hallway, blocking the door.
In the center of the room, where the brightest light came from, were Dags, Joe, Mastiff, Maureen, and Alice. The serpent the Phantasm had conjured lay to the side of the room, discarded, with its head—uhm—missing. Just a carcass. I assumed that was the reason the Phantasm had abruptly left the Abysmal plane and come here.
Dags had killed its pet.
And I say pet because I refused to believe that thing was my dad.
Dags hung in the middle of the room, suspended by something invisible. Mastiff, Joe, Maureen, and Alice tried desperately to get close to him as he slowly turned purple, but they were getting shocked backward.
And watching it all was the Phantasm, still looking like a nightmare image of Dags and apparently the one holding the real Dags up by his neck.
I’d originally thought ole Phanty couldn’t affect things directly but manipulated other things to do his bidding. As he had manipulated Hirokumi, the Archer, Rollins, Symbionts, Daimons, Horrors. But he couldn’t act on anything with his own hands.
And here he is—somehow choking the life out of a living man.
The Phantasm looked at me. “He’s technically not a living man, Zoë. Same as you are technically not a living woman.”
Huh?
“Zoë,” Rhonda screamed at me. “He’s killing Darren!”
I felt the Horror in the room before I saw it. She stood by the window, Archer beside her. “It would make my life and Archer’s life easier if you killed it.”
She’d followed me through the gate, just as she’d said she would. Just as we’d planned. But having any form of final battle in a hospital was bad for business—period. We needed to get out of there, and the only way to do that was to stop the tug-of-war in the room’s center.
“Please! Stop!” Rhonda screamed out. “I’ll do anything if you don’t kill him!”
I hissed. That was not the thing to say to a Phantasm. Even my limited brain knew that.
The Phantasm did a real neat transport from across the room to where Rhonda knelt, and smiled at her with his borrowed face. “You would do anything?”
She looked at him with wide eyes and nodded.
Oh God, Rhonda, you can’t be that gullible. “Stop—” I had my sword in my hand again and pointed it at him. “Don’t touch her.”
“You should know the rules, Irin-Wraith. Once a request for a deal has been initiated, there isn’t a damned thing you can do.”
I looked at Maureen and Alice. Alice nodded at me but kept her jaw tight. “He’s right—if Rhonda declares a deal, then she and he have to go through with it.”
“And you asked for the Guardian’s life?” The Phantasm smiled. I really hated that smile on Dags’s visage. “I name a price, and you agree.”
“No!” I started forward.
But to my surprise Archer was there, his hand out to me, the center of it glowing bright red. “Don’t move,” he said in a low voice.
Rhonda was looking from me to Dags to the Phantasm. She struggled to stand up, and I realized then that her stay in the Abysmal had taken a lot out of her. Though I was still amazed at how well she’d survived it as opposed to Dags’s less-than-stellar trip through.
In her hand she had the box, clutching it as if her life depended on it.
Dags was blinking rapidly. The phantasm was choking him even as Rhonda hesitated.
“I want the Eidolon.”
Like we didn’t see that coming. Of course the Phantasm wanted the Eidolon that had destroyed him. With it he could banish and summon at will. And he could possibly break down the barrier my dad had sacrificed so much to put in place—that which kept the Phantasm on his side of things.
Which made me start thinking—if he was limited to the Abysmal plane—then how was he here? If I believed the whole barrier nonsense, then he wasn’t here but maybe throwing a projection of himself here. Manipulating something else that was here in the physical plane.
So—that meant it was like a radio and speakers. The radio had an antenna that caught the airwave of the music, and the tuner interpreted it and sent it out through speakers that made an echo of the music fill the room.
The only antennas that I knew of were the strange pieces of one I’d seen all over the rooftops of the Abysmal plane. So say if he was broadcasting himself over those “radio waves” then maybe there was some sort of receiver here in the physical plane.
So . . . what was his receiver? And if I could somehow destroy that, would it like—pop him back into the Abysmal plane and cut off his power here?
Well, it was a good theory—but it wasn’t doing Dags any good, as he’d now slumped forward, his arms dangling at his sides.
“Don’t kill him!” Rhonda shouted.
Now—I’m not an uncaring bitch. Hardly. And it wasn’t that I didn’t care about Dags. I did. But I’d known Rhonda a hell of a lot longer than Dags, and watching her totally wig out like this—little Miss Tough Bitch—was very disconcerting.
And so melodramatically out of character.
Phanty had his arm out, his palm open. “Give me the Eidolon, and I will give you your heart’s desire.”
Heart’s desire? What—has everyone taken a melodrama pill today?
I started to move toward Dags—but this time Archer reached out and grabbed my arm. The touch shocked both of us—Abysmal touching Ethereal—polar opposites in the universe. Careful, we might explode.
I glared at him, and he looked at me over his shades, à la Risky Business. Then he wiggled his eyebrows. Huh?
Rhonda threw the box at the Phantasm. He caught it easily. Abruptly, Dags collapsed in a heap. Joe rushed in and grabbed him, dragging him away from the center of the mix as Maureen and Alice pounced on him in seconds. Then Rhonda did this really bad fake-screaming thing, ran to where Dags lay on the ground, and threw herself over his body in the worst display of crying and misery I’d ever seen.
What the—
Has everyone gone loopy?
The Phantasm was laughing as he opened the box.
An eerie red light exploded from the small white square and bathed the Phantasm in a crimson bath of oil. He screamed, and the image of Dags’s face melted away. I thought I caught the glimpse of a hard jawline, strong chin, and bright red hair, just before his flesh melted, and any scream he could have given was cut short.
“Shit!” Joe yelled, and piled on top of Rhonda and Dags.
“You might want to disappear,” Archer said, then vanished.
I stood in my spot, my mouth open, just watching as the air around where the Phantasm was standing began to implode, sucking everything in toward itself. In layman’s terms, it looked like he was becoming a black hole.
And then—
Pop.
It sounded like a kid pulling his finger out of his mouth. And everything was still.
Phantasm Page 27
