I rushed toward the Grey to chase Limos as the colors of the circle struggled to close again, gathering around the three bright shapes that remained behind as the goddess of famine dashed away with the rest of the ghosts—her tribute—in her drooling jaws. Hazzard, trapped in the circle, dwindled to a thin spark, screaming for rescue.
I dove deeper in the Grey, clutching the shrine to my chest. It felt unusually solid, whereas most normal-world things became as hard to hold as smoke. The Limos wolf rushed toward the waterfront and the hot energy clouds of thousands of revelers, pushing her vanguard of ghosts in front of her now.
The wedge of spirits tore through the mist and light of Grey Seattle, shoving the brightness of living things aside like chaff before wind. The bright shapes fell and rolled and I could not pause to help them or even to confirm that they were people, bowled over by the ravenous force bearing down on the brilliant wheel of dangling soul fire over the blackness of cold water. I was falling behind, relying on my human speed in the Grey while she had no such limits. She was Hunger and moved like a prairie fire.
I concentrated on the Guardian Beast’s distant rattle of spines and shouted to it, “Now would be the time, you useless collection of bones! Come and help me catch this bitch or I’ll wash my hands of you and your stinking job forever.” Not that I could but I’d certainly want to after this. Ugly as it was, I had to rely on the friends and family that I had and the Guardian Beast qualified as much as anything.
It had never answered me before, never come when I wanted or needed it, but this time it let out a roar like a train wreck and swept through the silver mist world toward me, a wave of force and power that pushed me forward faster than I could run.
We raced toward the Great Wheel, tumbling everything aside before us. . . .
A fireworks shell boomed and a rain of red and blue stars spread over the night sky. Another boom and pink planets ringed in green bands appeared in the air, followed by whistling that erupted into showers of gold. Music poured from distant speakers, eerie and thrilling.
I drew even with Limos, barely keeping upright in the eldritch wind, and snatched at the thin coil of silver that bound the ghosts to her. She growled and snapped at me, cutting a gouge in my left forearm.
I gasped in shock, unprepared to be bitten by a spectral wolf.
She laughed, tipping her head upward and howling. Then she spit the ghosts out, propelling them toward the Wheel on the breath of her fury, and turned back to me, snarling.
I needed to break the thread that bound the ghosts to her as tribute. It would do no good to simply imprison them with her in the shrine, since she could use their energy to escape. She had to be severed from them. I feinted right, but still moving too fast from the Guardian Beast’s push, I tumbled into the wolf instead.
She rolled from my impact, and spun to snap at me again.
I ducked and dodged toward the line of energy between her and the ghosts that bowled toward the Ferris wheel, screaming and gibbering. I threw myself after them, tucking and somersaulting with my arms around the shrine.
The smell of salt water, old wood, and creosote wafted into my nose both on the cold of the Grey and through the normal world. We were at Waterfront Park, only yards from the Great Wheel. I heard shouts as people were thrown aside by the passage of air and ghosts, but I paid them no attention, rushing down a short flight of steps onto the dock itself. I could see the thread between the ghosts and Limos taut and bright a few feet in front of me and I strove to reach it.
The wolf growled behind me. I turned my head just in time to see her leap for me. I rolled sideways, then scrambled back to my feet, putting the shrine down in the shadow of the strange abstract statue of Christopher Columbus that left a dark shape in the Grey as well as in the normal world.
I spun back to face Limos, moving away from the shrine and into the light, nearing the normal world enough to be thinner in the Grey—something wraithlike and weak in both planes—hoping to tempt her to bite at me and ignore the shrine.
The tangle of spirits struck the Great Wheel, making it sway as a storm of fireworks erupted overhead.
Limos lunged at me and I dove sideways, down into the Grey, reaching for the coil of light between her and the ghosts that swarmed over the Wheel, shaking it and raising a howl of unearthly wind. Water blasted up from the bay as if responding to the cry of the starving souls.
I clutched the thread of energy and it burned into my hands with the fire of Limos’s fury and hunger. I wrenched at it with all my might, driving myself down, deeper, into the Grey, toward the grid, stressing the gleaming energy until it blazed too bright to look at and ripped apart.
The broken power recoiled and snapped me away from the grid with the sound of thunder and an explosion of colored fire. I tumbled through the air, in and out of the Grey, back into the normal world, and landed hard on my shoulder against rough wooden dock planks.
The clouds lurking immediately over me tore open above the drifting smoke of the launch mortars and the sparkle of burning phosphor and washed down rain that blazed with reflected color from the distant starbursts of the fireworks.
The Limos wolf pounced from the Grey, dragging me back into the mist world with a snarl and a shake of the head, but the ghosts were no longer hers. They shouted and then rushed outward in a sparkling cloud, vanishing in a sigh and curls of mist. The gust of the Guardian Beast’s roar died away with them.
The dock was breathless in the rain, which looked like streams of light in the Grey. Colored tangles of energy—the Grey shapes of humans—lay everywhere, stunned or struggling to rise from where they’d been thrown by the eldritch wind. I could hear and see the Great Wheel’s operators as bright, shouting shapes scampering around, securing their giant mechanism and checking to see if it was safe and still functioning or if they should shut it down and try to remove people from the glass gondolas with a crane, their mutterings like distant birdcalls.
I at least knew the passengers were all alive and the threat to the Wheel was past. I was half done. But I needed to get back to the shrine and catch Limos in it before I could call this a victory. And I had to do it before she tore me to shreds and devoured me.
I wasn’t used to dealing with gods and I was never sure how much power they could bring to bear on me. This one was well and recently fed, which was a bad thing for me, even without the tribute souls at her beck and call. She was hungry for more and was going to be royally pissed off when she realized her loss.
Startled by the escape of her soul tribute, Limos jerked her head toward the Great Wheel, which stood as a dark shape in the Grey, dangling clustered lights of living human beings from its cold steel arc. I wrenched my leg free of her jaws, feeling those unnatural teeth tearing my flesh, and staggered to my feet. She turned back, glaring at me, her shape fluctuating toward skeletal human, then back toward wolf, the spectral skin melting away and flowing back in streams of quicksilver and spirit fire.
Finally she chose the human form, horrible as it was, and turned back toward me.
“You’ve robbed me,” she said, advancing as I backpedaled unevenly on my injured leg.
“They weren’t yours to take,” I replied, crabbing sideways and stumbling down a misty step toward the weird statue of Columbus, the silver-light rain ringing dull music off its bronze surface.
She streamed forward, clattering bones and chattering teeth as she reached for me, her burning, uncanny gaze on my face as her own melted continually, her bones in hard relief. She wasn’t interested in witty debate. She only wanted to kill me, so great was her fury and disappointment. The Grey didn’t hinder her, but it no longer helped her, either.
I threw myself backward, toward the statue, landing short of the writhing darkness that was the shrine.
Limos fell on me, picking me up and throwing me viciously toward the unyielding shape of the statue.
I twisted in the air, riffling my fingers over the temporaclines and pushing on the first one that predate
d the statue. I fell through it, passing harmlessly where I should have been smashed into the inert bronze shape . . .
. . . And fell out the other side, into the mist and churn of the Grey again, Limos screaming as she grabbed for me. But the statue I had avoided still blocked her and she had to sweep around it, her bones rattling—if the sound was from her at all. I had not seen or heard the Guardian since I’d fallen over Limos at the dock’s edge. I was certain it was still watching but I couldn’t expect any more help from that quarter. I didn’t need it, though. As Limos circled the statue, I scrambled in the shadow and grabbed the shrine. I pulled it to my chest, doors facing outward. I flicked the latch aside and flung the three sections open. The shrine gaped like a maw and I thrust it toward her as she reached down for me.
She screamed as she touched it and I braced the box between Columbus and my hip as I grabbed onto her bony arms, yanking her forward and into the shrine. The box swallowed her and I slammed the doors shut and latched them, sealing off her shrieks of betrayal. It wasn’t much of a prison, but she’d be stuck in it until someone opened the doors again. Sweeping it into my arms, I held it tight to my body, then I pushed toward the normal and found myself sitting under Columbus, panting, filthy, and bloodied, with the curiously heavy box on my lap.
It was still raining, but the isolated storm was dying out as the fireworks continued in the distance. A man in a reflective yellow coat ran past, heading toward the Great Wheel. I could see other men in various uniforms approaching—firemen, cops, public safety officers, EMTs. I struggled to my feet and limped away from them into the darkness.
“I could use another lift,” I muttered, thinking of the Guardian Beast, but the only response was a chiming of bone spines and what sounded like laughter.
TWENTY-FOUR
I managed to find a pedicab nearby and persuade the owner to take me back to Pioneer Square. He said he’d have to charge me extra for bleeding on his seat, but I didn’t fuss.
Carlos and Quinton stood in a shadow near the door to my office building, waiting for me. Quinton stepped forward and held his hands out to help me from the pedicab’s seat. I flinched with every movement, but I was thrilled to fall into his arms. “What’s a handsome guy like you doing here?” I asked.
“I’d say saving damsels is distress, but it looks like I missed. You’re hurt.”
“I don’t care,” I said and kissed him with all the aching passion and relief I contained.
“I can’t stay,” he said against my mouth. “Will you be OK? I have to get back to Northlake to take care of a few things, but I had to come and see that you were all right. I could feel”—he traced a bruise on my jaw where I’d hit the dock and stroked down to my aching shoulder—“all of this. I wish I’d been here sooner.”
“You didn’t miss anything good. And I’ll be fine.”
“But you know how I love a good fight scene. . . .”
“I suspect we’ll have plenty more in Europe.”
We kissed long and hard enough to garner some whistles from passersby and a shouted “Get a room!” before Quinton let me go to pay the pedicab driver.
“I’ll be back. Very soon,” he said, looking unhappy to be leaving.
“I know,” I said.
He nodded and walked down the street, casting a longing look back before he vanished into the crowd that was beginning to fill the streets again now that the fireworks—real and paranormal—were over.
Carlos was waiting for me by the building’s door. “I took the liberty of disposing of Hazzard,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, turning to pick up the shrine from the sidewalk. Even that little task hurt. “I didn’t think I’d be gone so long, or that I’d end up quite so bloodied and banged up.”
He shrugged, making the world roll and shake. I almost fell over and he had to catch me, sending a spike of ice and pain through me that wasn’t any better than the pain and discomfort I was already feeling from much more corporeal sources. Without the glow of being in Quinton’s presence I was uncomfortably aware of my injuries. My shoulder was badly bruised—though I counted myself lucky it wasn’t dislocated—and I had cuts, abrasions, bites, and more bruises all over. My leg was still bleeding, although my arm had stopped. I could be worse off, I thought. I could be blind again.
Carlos chuckled. Had I said that aloud?
“Come upstairs. Stymak is busy with your guests and you may need some new furniture. . . .”
This time I knew I’d sworn out loud even without witnessing Carlos’s amusement.
I took the elevator instead of the stairs and entrusted the shrine—filled with Limos—to Carlos outside my office door. I knew he wasn’t going to let her out, considering his outrage the night before over what Purlis had started by releasing her to begin with, but I was surprised to see him take a cloth bundle from his pocket and produce a long silver chain from it. The chain smoked and burned when it touched his hands as he wrapped it around the shrine and sealed the wretched thing closed.
“You didn’t have to—” I started.
“I do. And the burns will heal eventually. Better to be sure she cannot escape than to be delicate over a few fleeting injuries.”
I knew how much they hurt him, but he didn’t wince as he closed his hands over the blackened marks on his palms and fingers. That hadn’t been ordinary silver, but I didn’t ask what it was. I just pushed open my office door and went to see what had happened in there. Carlos didn’t follow me.
Stymak was standing, but the other three were seated. Olivia was perched on the edge of my desk with Levi Westman and both looked shaken. Lily, still in her chair, though it was up against the wall now, looked calm, even though she appeared to have lost an eyebrow somehow and a bit of hair at the front of her head. A tower of white light loomed in the farthest corner, the shadows somehow darker by proximity. I started a little at the sight, but no one else seemed to notice it.
I looked them all over as they stared at me. I almost said something about the white light, but somehow it didn’t seem the right time. I felt odd in its presence—like I weighed less and the earth barely touched me.
“I’m sorry for leaving you alone,” I said and I wasn’t sure if I meant the humans or the light. “What happened while I was gone?”
The light didn’t reply, but the people all blinked at me for a moment, mute, and then Stymak said, “The candle . . . kind of erupted. I’m afraid it . . . ate your table.”
I laughed more than was called for, relieved that it was such a small thing, just relieved in general. “I’ll get another. How are all of you? And what happened aside from the candle thing?”
“We held on to Linda Hazzard as long as we could, but we lost the other spirits.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I saw them released. They’re gone and free, wherever they went.”
Lily Goss sighed. “I thought they were.”
“How did you know?” Olivia asked, her eyes huge with an expression of awe and excitement.
“I guess God told me.” She smiled. The white light seemed to expand and brush her shoulder, sending a hint of warm summer breeze through my stuffy office. “I think everything will be all right now.”
I took a deep breath and felt lighter with it. “Will it?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’m sure of it. Your friend made that terrible ghost leave. Forever, I think.”
I glanced at Stymak for confirmation and he nodded vigorously, his eyes bright. “Oh, yeah. Banished like a bad dream. I still don’t like him, but he can really pull a ghost’s cork when it needs to be done. I gotta tell you, that was the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen in a lifetime of freakiness.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
He shook his head. “No. I don’t think you can. Unless you’ve seen it, it’s not even in the imaginarium of most people.”
“Trust me. I’ve seen it.”
If his eyes had widened any farther, they’d have fallen right out of his head. I gave hi
m a sheepish smile. “I should have warned you about that. I am truly sorry.”
“No, no . . . It was . . . Well. It scared the crap out of me, but the experience was worth it. And I will never see something like that again—I hope.” He seemed more awed than upset or freaked out.
Olivia and Levi nodded agreement, seeming a little dazzled. Goss sat still and looked beatific.
“What about . . . the others?” I asked. “Jordan, and Kevin, and Julianne . . . ?”
The light brightened just enough to notice. “They’re fine,” Goss said, her calm unruffled. “They stayed until we were done with that terrible woman. Then they went away. But they’re fine, now.”
I could only stare at her, agape, a touch awed myself at the calm certainty she exuded.
The whiteness in the corner gleamed and something shot outward from it that was too brilliant to look at. A sound like a clap of wings and thunder shook the office and the radiance erupting from the corner was too dazzling to bear. I closed my eyes, but the searing light could not be blocked. When the flash had died away and I could see again, I glanced at where it had been. The corner was dim and empty and the room was just as it had been before and somehow nothing like it, neither better nor worse yet changed completely. I felt shaken and transparent, but I didn’t want to sit down or go to sleep. No one seemed to want to move at all for a minute or so and the expressions on their faces were beautifully stunned.
Eventually the strange feeling that held us captive faded and we went our separate ways. Stymak went with Lily Goss and Westman said he’d get a cab to the care home. Carlos had already taken the shrine away and I knew there was nothing to worry about on that score. I drove Olivia home and we didn’t talk on the way.
This time I pulled into the driveway to let her out. The house was lit up as if to banish every shadow that had ever lingered in the world. As Olivia ran up the walk, her brother Peter came out and hugged her and swung her around like a child.
“He woke up! Dad woke up!” he shouted.
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