Ossified State (Chronicles of the Wraith Book 2)

by S. C. Green

  “That’s a lovely memory. But it was so long ago. I understand if you don’t know if you can trust her.”

  May nodded. “And Dad does. He never even questioned her story. For all that he’s been through, he trusts easily. He can’t help but believe the best of her. His anger is already fading.”

  “I know.” I remembered how he’d caught her, that look that passed between them, the look of two people finding each other again.

  “Is that why you don’t want to help the Reapers? Because you don’t trust her? You don’t believe her?”

  “I didn’t say that...” A pins-and-needles feeling tingled my feet, so I swung my legs back and forth over the void again. “But yes.”

  May squeezed my hand. “I think she is telling the truth. It would be a stupid lie to tell. We’d quickly figure it out once we got outside the dome.”

  “By then she’d have the immortium,” I said. “Maybe that’s what she wanted all along. The ghost said inside the dome is truth. Maybe what he was talking about had something to do with this plant and that chemical.”

  “That still doesn’t explain Harriet,” May said, a frown creasing her forehead. “And why that wraith ran off with her and the immortium.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Unless Harriet has figured out Raine’s plan.” The pieces started to fit together in my head, click by slow click because I needed a nap. “It makes perfect sense. She knows Raine intends to take the immortium outside and that she had that wraith with her to help. So she’s taken the chemical and the wraith and hidden them away so Raine can’t get them.”

  “It just doesn’t ring true,” May said. “I do believe Harriet is trying to do something good, but she isn’t a hider, she’s a shooter and a stabber. Besides, I don’t think my mother … Raine … would be on the side of the people who did this to us. I just can’t see it.”

  “That may be true, but I still don’t trust her.”

  “Oh, I understand that,” May said, nodding. “But don’t worry so much. I don’t think he’ll go back to her. It’s been too long, and they were always wrong for each other. You’re what he needs now. But he’ll forgive her, he’ll trust her, because he remembers what they had in the past as though it were only last week. I don’t know if I can, or if I should.”

  “I understand.” I thought of my mother, who’d appeared to me when I’d been inside the Mimir. She’d told me everything I’d longed to hear from her when she was alive. Her voice dripped with pain and regret, much like Raine’s had, as she told me how she had come to be the person who tried to force me to follow in her footsteps. I think she thought it gave me closure, but in actual fact, it tore my childhood like an open sore, bleeding out all those old memories, fresh and raw. And now that I knew I was going to be a mother, too, the weight of all that messed up history weighed on me. I didn’t want that to be my child’s legacy.

  I shook my head, trying to force back the memories. We had more important things to worry about. “If you don’t think Raine is the issue here, do you have any idea what Harriet is doing?”

  May shook her head. “Did I tell you how Harriet and I met?”

  I shook my head, smiling at the new direction of our conversation. “There hasn’t exactly been time, between all the wraith-slaying and the Reaper-purging and the return of your mother and the tiger and such.”

  May grinned. “I was out on one of my first missions with Dad and Dorien. A man had been killed in the crossfire between two gangs. Dad and Dorien went to make sure the gangs weren’t nearby and left me to reap the body. I was standing over him, my wings unfurled, connecting myself with the Mimir so I could bring him with me through the portal, when this girl darted out from behind a nearby building, pushed me off the man’s chest, and started rifling through his pockets.”

  I snorted. I could picture it with absolute clarity.

  “I was so startled, I lost my concentration and fell out of my raven form. Harriet was so surprised when I toppled on top of the corpse, my coat flapping everywhere, she dropped her booty. In his pockets, this guy had a 3 Musketeers.” May chuckled. “I hadn’t seen one of those around in years. They were my favourites as a kid. Suddenly, my mouth was watering. I never wanted anything as much as I wanted that candy bar.”

  Oh, sweet chocolate. My stomach rumbled. “I can relate.”

  “I grabbed for it, but a shadow darted behind me, shoving me aside. “‘That’s mine,’” Harriet growled. She reached for the chocolate, but I was faster. I lunged and closed my hand around it. I could practically taste the chocolate on my tongue. I might even have licked my lips. Harriet grabbed my wrist, leaned forward, and kissed me.”

  “And you didn’t want that 3 Musketeers anymore?” I asked.

  May laughed. “Some things are much sweeter than chocolate. The point is, Harriet is unpredictable. That’s what I love about her. Everything in the Compound was so structured, so set in stone.” She puffed out her chest in an imitation of Malcolm, the Reapers’ previous leader. “‘This is how we do things around here, young lady. Not because it’s the best way, but because that’s the way they’ve always been done. And five hundred years of Reaper inbreeding can’t be wrong.’”

  I howled with laughter at her epic description. “Nice one.”

  “But Harriet …” May continued as if she hadn’t just heard me snort a few times. “She doesn’t give a fuck about rules or tradition. She has her own set of rules she lives by, her own moral code.”

  I exhaled the rest of my laughter out. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

  May shook her head. “She won’t go anywhere near her girls with that wraith in tow, even if they’re working together. If she’s trying to prevent the chemical getting into Raine’s hands, or someone else’s hands, then she would be searching for a place to hide it. But why take the wraith? That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “Maybe the wraith is following her, or he’s threatening her, and she’s going to try to get rid of him?”

  “That’s the only thing that makes sense. In that case, she’ll go to the Compound,” May said. “She’ll try and find another Reaper to destroy him or one of our old weapons. Even if she just knocks him into the underworld for an hour or so, she’ll be able to dispose of the immortium.”

  I pushed myself to my feet. “That’s it. That has to be it. Let’s go.”

  “What about Dad and Raine?”

  “Leave them.” The words pained me to say, but Alain could look after himself. He’d look after Raine, too, and I needed to accept that this was okay. Getting to Harriet was more important than exes, reunions, and all these damned doubts that pregnancy seemed to magnify. “We have to go after that wraith.”

  12

  Raine

  “Don’t worry about May,” Alain said. “She’s a teenager. I’m told that’s what they’re like, though I don’t remember being like that.”

  He held his arm out, and I took it – the gesture so natural, so familiar. Immediately, I was transported back to another memory. We’d taken May, then a toddler, to the park down the road from the Compound. I was pushing her on the swings. She kept pumping her little legs and shouting gleefully, “Higher, Mummy, higher! I want to touch the sky!” I pushed her so hard I tripped over my feet and sprawled across the ground, scraping my knee across the asphalt. Alain had picked me up, wrapping me in his arms, his chin resting on top of my head. My heart swelled with warmth and love. In Alain’s embrace, even my grazed knee didn’t seem to hurt.

  But that was then, a whole world away from now.

  With the memories came the guilt. When I’d got into the car that day, I’d walked away from all this, from my family. Never mind that I hadn’t known what the government was doing. Each decision I’d made in my career had led me to that moment. My perfect invisible family had lived on in my memories, and Alain and May had lived on in a horror story.

  I laughed woodenly. “I read so many books about parenting when we had her, remember? I had stack
s of the things inside our room. But for all the preparation I did, I didn’t get to live all of it. I know nothing about being a parent to anyone other than a little girl. And May doesn’t want me to parent her. How could she? I’m a stranger to her, and she’s a stranger to me.”

  “That’s not true. I’m sure if you guys get a second to sit and talk—”

  “She’s gay, Alain.”

  “I know. I only just found that out myself.” He gave me a weak smile. “Trust me, you’re not the only one who feels May is a complete mystery. She grew up so fast. One minute she was playing with her dolls, and the next she was this strong, independent teenager. Ever since I met Sydney, it’s come to my attention that I didn’t really know May at all.”

  “Well, she adores you. I’m not needed here.” A knot of emotion welled in my throat at the truth of it. I wasn’t sorry I’d come to find them--quite the opposite--but they had moved on so completely without me, I felt irrelevant. Snuffed out, in a way. Not that I blamed them. I blamed myself, and it weighed heavily on my soul.

  Alain sighed. “Look, we’ll figure this thing out – you and May and me. We’re still family, and nothing will change that. But right now, we have more important things to worry about.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry about that, too.” My voice cracked. How had everything become so messed up so quickly?

  “I know you are. I just need you to hold yourself together until we can sort this out, the three of us. Okay?” Alain dropped my arm when we reached the stairs, tearing me away from the skin-to-skin contact and associated memories I craved.

  “I will.” And look how well I was doing already? Stifling a sigh, I grabbed the stair railing and climbed down after Alain. “How well do you know this Harriet person?”

  “Not at all. Not really. She saved my life. That usually paints a person in a favourable light.”

  “I don’t trust her. She’s been acting very odd ever since Red introduced the idea about the immortium. Somehow, I think she’s convinced Red to go with her, to help her. He’s probably acting as her bodyguard.”

  “For a wraith, he’s been pretty loyal if he came all this way and stuck by us just to help you. What would make him suddenly change his allegiance?”

  I remembered the desperation in Red’s voice when he spoke with me earlier, pleading with me to spare some of the immortium. “He detests being a wraith, so I can’t imagine him wanting to make more of himself. The only thing he cares about is his wife, Annabelle,” I explained. “She died a couple of years before he became a wraith. She was laid to rest in Brookwood Hill. He went to see her grave as soon as we came into the dome. According to him, she was cremated, and it looks as though her grave was on the north side of the cemetery, far enough from the explosion. He had hoped she might be a wraith, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.”

  “Can a cremated person come back as a wraith?”

  “I’ve never seen it. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. My guess is that it would take a much higher dose of the chemical in order to extract the life energy from a disembodied pile of ash. I don’t know what form the wraith would take once it was created. Oh, shit.” I sank my eyes closed and pressed my mouth into a frustrated line. “I gave Harriet the perfect bargain to control him. He begged me earlier to use the immortium to try to turn Annabelle into a wraith, and I refused. I told him that wasn’t right. I bet Harriet thought it was the best idea ever.”

  “We’d better find them.” Alain cupped his hands together. “Sydney!”

  No answer.

  “Sydney, where are you? Did you find May?” He gazed around the empty factory. The only reply was the steady shuddering of the pipes.

  My chest tightened. First the girl and Red disappeared, and now May and Sydney.

  “I hope she’s found May, and they’re already heading back to the apartment,” he said.

  “Aren’t you worried about them? Sydney is carrying your baby, after all.” I worked hard to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but I wasn’t sure how successful I was.

  “Ah, so you know about that.” He nodded slowly and kicked at the metal flooring.

  “She told me.” She took great delight in telling me.

  “Don’t be upset,” he said, his eyes boring into mine. “You had to realise I would move on. You moved on, too, even if you don’t realise it. As for your question, of course I’m worried. But one thing I’ve learned about Sydney these last few weeks is that she’s extremely resourceful. She’s probably in less danger than we are.”

  “So you’re just going to let them walk around an abandoned factory with a rogue wraith and a crazy Harriet on the loose?”

  “Of course not. Once they’re back at the apartment, with no run-ins with the Dimitri gang or any other unwanted surprises, we’ll go after Harriet and the wraith.”

  “His name is Red.”

  He slid me an irritated glance. “I’m not in the habit of referring to wraith by names as though they’re people.”

  “They were people once.”

  “The key word being were, Raine. If you’d had to live with what I’ve seen these last ten years ...” He shook his head.

  “All right, I get it,” I answered, a bit frostily.

  It was starting to eat me up the way everyone was talking, as though they were the only ones who had suffered. As though my pain, my experiences, were invalid because I’d ended up on the outside. And then, Alain just let our daughter go off into those dangerous streets, all to satisfy her need for a teenage tantrum? It was just like Alain, thinking he knew best for everyone.

  A shadow passed over his face like a warning cloud. “Don’t argue, Raine. This isn’t the time.”

  As quickly as it came, the fight in me died. Ten years ago, I would’ve fought Alain for hours, just to avoid admitting I was wrong. But things had changed, and I’d changed, too. I couldn’t argue with him, because he was right and I was responsible.

  “I wasn’t going to argue.” I sighed “We should see if we can find them. They can’t have gotten far.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Alain was already transforming. I forced my change, too, spreading my arms wide as the feathers pushed through my skin. My bones creaked as they shifted, and a few moments later, I felt the pull of a warm pocket of air lifting me up. I turned to Alain as he swooped through the hole in the roof, admiring the crest of his wings as he dived toward the streets.

  I stayed inside to check the factory. I dipped and dived around the machinery, peering into every adjoining room and under every conveyer belt. I couldn’t see any sign of them. My keen eyes noticed a couple of long, dark hairs on the carpet in an upstairs hallway. There was a glass sliding door open in the office. May’s distinctive scent wafted from the balcony. She’d been sitting here.

  But not now. No Sydney. No May.

  Alain fluttered down beside me and turned back to his human form. “I’ve been around the whole perimeter, and I can’t see them anywhere,” he said. “I even checked the streets on the way to her apartment, but nothing. Do you think that ghost—”

  I changed back too and shook my head. “ Alain, I don’t want to say it, but—”

  “Now is the time to say exactly what you’re thinking,” he growled. “My daughter and lover are missing.”

  “Harriet knew exactly where the immortium was located, but Red couldn’t have told her, because he didn’t know himself. He told me so.”

  “So?”

  “I think Harriet already knew the immortium was here, but she didn’t know what it was or what it could do. Now she knows, and she’s missing, and so are a Reaper, a wraith, and Sydney, whatever she is.” I hadn’t meant to say it with disgust, but there it was out in the open, too late to take back.

  “A valeda,” Alain said, his eyes narrowing.

  That gave me a start. I hadn’t heard that word in a long time, not since I used to read May bedtime stories about the ancient Reaper myths. “A valeda? But...that’s not possible.”r />
  “I assure you it is. She has the power to control the underworld. She can see through objects just by touching them.”

  “Did Harriet know this?”

  “Yes.” Alain’s eyes flared, first with realization then with rage. “We have to find her. Sydney doesn’t know how to control her power, how to focus it. If Harriet has her and that chemical, the whole world is in danger.”

  “They could have gone anywhere,” I said. “Red is the only one of them who knows the way out of the dome. That’s why Harriet still needs him. But he wouldn’t take her there unless she kept up her end of the bargain.”

  Alain’s face went pale, and a tremor shook through his arms. “Do you know where this Annabelle’s grave is?”

  A stab of jealousy plunged into my stomach at his obvious panic, but I shoved it aside. There’s no time for those feelings. Think, Raine, think.

  I cast my mind back to the day I’d first heard of Annabelle. I’d been working down in the basement for ten hours straight, conducting an experiment that reminded me too much of the film A Clockwork Orange. We were trying to learn more about memory patterns in wraith. A wraith shouldn’t have any memory, given that they didn’t actually have a brain to speak of--at least, not one that exists in our dimension. Yet, certain sights, places, and sounds seemed to trigger memories of their previous lives. Our research team had dug up images and other ephemera from the subjects’ lives, and we were projecting those images in 360 degree horror on the internal walls of their prisons.