by Sarah Wynde
***
Every step up the stairs took an effort. It was like walking through a red-tinged blizzard only instead of heavy snowflakes pelting across her skin, tiny shocks of static were penetrating deeper and deeper as she got closer to the door. She felt as if she were being flayed, but knew no sign of it would show.
This was such a bad idea. What was she doing, braving a malevolent ghost? This wasn’t her—she was a coward! She couldn’t even tell Zane she loved him, but she thought she could face this?
Walking through the doorway and into Dillon’s room felt like moving from a snowstorm to an ice storm. She had time for a quick glimpse at a pleasant boy’s room: wide windows, blue walls, overstuffed bookshelves, a world map with pins in it above a neat desk. And a woman standing at the end of the bed, streaked blonde hair in a perfect chin-length bob, fair skin, laugh lines, a trim figure—she looked enough like Grace that Akira would have known her instantly anywhere—but her face was bereft with grief and the red energy surging around her lashed out at Akira like lightning striking.
Akira’s scream strangled in her throat. She felt herself falling, crashing, burning. The sharp physical pain of hitting her face almost broke through the agony of passing through the woman’s ghostly energy.
For a moment, the shock was almost relaxing. The stunning pain left her brain fuzzy. But then as Zane turned her over, she began resisting the energy, trying to absorb some of it while holding the rest at bay.
The convulsions started immediately.
Her back arched, her jaw clenched, her muscles spasmed.
She was drowning in spirit energy. It was pouring in on her, drenching her in power.
Akira was fighting for control of her body, but so was the ghost.
The pain was intense. But she could also feel Zane’s strong arms holding her, and a dull throbbing from her face and a warmth trickling down her chin. What was that?
She could hear Zane’s voice. He was swearing steadily as he shifted her. What was he doing?
But she could also hear the ghost. She was screaming in pain, despair, an agony of her own. “I can’t find you! Max? Dillon? Help me, help me!”
Akira tried to answer her, tried to open her mouth and form words, but a taste, a warm metallic flavor, distracted her. Shit. That was blood.
She opened her eyes, trying desperately to see even as Zane put something up to her face and her contracting muscles tried to pull her in three directions at once.
He was trying to stop the bleeding, she realized dimly. With something cotton. It smelled of him.
She could see his frantic face, hear the worry as he cursed, but most of her sight was taken up with the tornado of red energy surrounding his mother’s ghost. She was getting stronger, Akira realized. Oh, that was bad.
And now she could hear another voice, too.
Dillon.
Screaming her name.
And then he popped through the bedroom wall next to the window and Akira, desperately struggling to take in only the energy she could handle, realized he was caught in the vortex.
Oh, hell.
Akira stopped fighting. She let the energy pour through her, filling her body, enveloping her in spirit power.
But it still wasn’t enough.
So she let go.
