Spirit Ascendancy

by E. E. Holmes

  “She has… outlived her usefulness,” Neil said with a casual shrug. “I did not think she could be trusted to cooperate if it seemed your sister would be harmed. As it turns out she harbored an inconvenient spark of affection for her little protégé.”

  “She’s had a funny way of showing it,” I said. Behind me, I could hear Finn grunting as he struggled against his captors. I turned just in time to see one of them deal Finn a savage blow across the face. He crumpled to the ground, stirring only feebly.

  “It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen each other. Outside of David Pierce’s office in the spring, if I’m not mistaken, wasn’t it?”

  I saw red. It obliterated all fear from my body. “Don’t you dare say his name,” I growled. “Don’t you dare.”

  “I regret what happened to him,” Neil said, with a theatrical sigh. “He needn’t have died. I gave him countless opportunities to tell me what I wanted to know, but he was a very obstinate man.”

  I swiped angrily at the tears that had sprung into my eyes. “Fuck you,” I spat.

  “Tut, tut, Miss Ballard. Language,” Neil said, clicking his tongue disapprovingly. “As I was saying, I thought we would have found you sooner, but you’ve been rather more adept than I expected at keeping yourself hidden. I applaud you, truly. Your protector was obviously well-chosen, though,” he laughed delicately, gesturing toward Finn, “he doesn’t look like he’ll be much use to you now.”

  What I would have given to have the power to protect Finn the way he always protected me, to possess the skills to tear the men holding him limb from limb. But I didn’t. He was trapped. Milo was unconscious. I was alone. The soul catcher suddenly seemed to weigh a hundred pounds on my wrist. As if she might assuage my sense of utter despair, I called to my sister.

  “Hannah?”

  “She cannot hear you. She’s far beyond where you can reach her now,” Neil said.

  “Stop this,” I said to him.

  “I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Neil said. His long black robe made no sound as it trailed through the grass behind him. “You’re too late. The reversal has begun.”

  Even as he said it, I could feel the energy from the Geatgrima shifting and morphing. Soon the pull would become a push, and unknown horrors would come bursting out of it.

  I tore my eyes from it, afraid it might lure me forward somehow, and as I did, my gaze fell on a shape crumpled at the bottom of the stone dais.

  “Finvarra!”

  She was lying slumped against the bottommost step, her shining silver hair spread like a death shroud, obscuring her face. “What have you done to her?”

  “We needed her to unlock the Geatgrima,” Neil said, in the slow and condescending tone of one speaking to a child. “There are only a handful of places on the earth where the fabric between the worlds has worn thin enough to make the reversal possible, and so it was always inevitable that we would need to find a way in. If the Northern Clans had been willing, even for a moment, to entertain the possibility that we would return, they would surely have fortified this place against us. But their hubris was their fatal flaw, like in every great tragedy. Only the High Priestess of a given clan has the ability to activate a Geatgrima. And, most conveniently, her own Council had already locked her up for us. It was rather like finding her gift-wrapped, bow and all.”

  I glanced down at Finvarra again. I could not tell if she was breathing or not. I realized, with a jolt of horror, that Carrick had most likely left her alone to come after me, determined to protect me as we unleashed the Elemental on the grounds. And while he was gone, perhaps only minutes after we had left her down in the dungeons, the Necromancers had come for her. I piled it onto the teetering stack of things that were surely my fault, a stack that threatened to topple and crush me at any moment.

  “I searched for you for so long,” Neil said, and in the moments I had shifted my gaze to the Finvarra, he had edged closer, his head cocked to one side as he examined me. “I knew you must be out there; all of the signs pointed to it. The Durupinen themselves were on high alert from the moment your mother disappeared. You can’t imagine how carefully we hunted, how patiently we waited in the shadows for the right moment to make our move.”

  I did not answer. My throat had gone dry as my panic began to rise again.

  “Naturally, I had to know for sure what you were. I arranged to meet you, through our mutual friend Dr. Pierce. I corresponded with him for months, waiting for the chance to see for myself what you could do. I was the one who appealed to the college board to allow the investigation of the library. I found them to be highly persuadable, once I had donated enough money to their institution. I was also the one who planted the spirit there that would prove what you were.”

  My mind flew immediately to Evan, for whom I had not been able to spare a thought in weeks. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. How could Evan and Neil be connected? But then my eyes fell on Neil’s long black robe, and it clicked.

  “William—the ghost who tried to cross through me in the bathroom—he wasn’t really from the Swords Brotherhood, was he?”

  “Very astute, Miss Ballard. You’ve seen by now how we can control them. A simple casting in a quiet corner of the library, and William provided me with all the proof I needed. It was much easier to test your abilities than your sister’s, since she was locked away. When I had ascertained you were indeed the pair we had been waiting so long for, I contacted Lucida. And of course, she dropped in on you that very night.”

  I could feel the anger splashing itself across my cheeks. To know that he had been pulling the strings for so long caused a wave of hatred so intense that it sickened me.

  “We had to bide our time, though,” he went on, sighing. “We had to give you both the chance to test and grow your abilities. We needed to determine which of you was the Caller, and therefore which of you we required. We were lucky that your sister’s powers were so very well developed, so impressive in scope, for it made our decision easy. She was the one we needed to capture; you were the one we needed to destroy.

  “This day is our destiny. You know that, don’t you?” he asked, rubbing his hands together like a black-mustachioed villain in a melodrama. The gesture was so stereotyped that I very nearly let out a hysterical laugh. “The Necromancers have never really been vanquished. When we were first torn down, at the height of our power, we rebuilt again almost at once. But this time we chose to rise again slowly, cautiously. We learn from our mistakes, unlike your precious sisterhood. We knew that to gain the power that must surely be ours, we could not seize it outright. We waited. We lingered. We steadied our hand and bided our time, knowing that this day would come, for it was foretold that it would. And here we are.”

  “Yes,” I said, and felt my hand twitch beneath the soul catcher. “I’m just sorry that it’s not going to work out for you like you had planned.”

  Neil laughed, and the sound was slightly mad. “Is that so? I admit, you’ve come much further than I ever would have thought possible. Your use of the Elemental to enter the castle was inspired. We were thoroughly unprepared for an attack of that sort, and there is no doubt it was highly effective. Truly, I applaud you. I thought you out of my way, but the fact remains that you are too late. The moments in which you could have stopped her, could have convinced her to turn back, have come and gone. She will emerge from this trance only when the reversal is complete. I must thank you for your stunt. Your supposed death was a highly motivating factor in convincing her to go through with this.”

  He stepped off the dais and reached around the far side of it, pulling a burning torch into view and holding it high above his head. “We’ve been up to our own tricks too, though, haven’t we? What do you think of my temporary Wraith army?”

  “They’re an abomination, and you are a sick twisted lunatic,” I said.

  Neil laughed as though I’d told a hilarious joke. “You don’t mince words, do you? You must broaden your mind, Miss Ballard. Your sister
did. With a little persuasion, she came to see the possibilities in our experiments. It was she who Called the spirits you saw on the grounds tonight. It was she who trapped them here,” and he waved the torch back and forth, feeding the flame so that it sparked up into the night. “We won’t need them soon, of course. When the reversal is complete, we will have countless Wraiths at our command.”

  He tossed the torch aside, and it landed on the stones in a shower of golden sparks. I started toward it, crying out, but the flame continued to burn. Even as I watched it lying there, faint voices seemed to float up with the embers, crying out for help.

  I turned away from him and his maddeningly amused expression. “Hannah? It’s me. It’s Jess. I’m here. I’m here on this side of the Gateway with you. You need to stop this now.”

  Neil was laughing in apparent amusement at my attempts to speak to her. I did not care.

  I reached down for her hand. A force, so strong that it felt like a solid wall, deflected my outstretched fingers, which buzzed and tingled with the energy. I tried again, but there might as well have been a pane of glass between us. I couldn’t touch her.

  “Hannah, I’m here. Milo’s here. Everything Neil and Lucida told you is a lie,” I said. She gave not the slightest sign that she could hear me, but continued to concentrate, transfixed, on the Geatgrima. Her arms, I realized, were smooth and unblemished; the many scars that had once adorned her wrists and arms had vanished. Those reminders of horrors past were gone, swallowed up by the rising tide of spirit energy emanating from the Geatgrima. In fact, everything about Hannah’s appearance had altered dramatically. Beneath the unearthly glow of the trance she was in, her complexion was flawless, her hair shining. She had already taken back some of what the spirit world had stolen from her, and she was barely recognizable.

  Neil’s voice cut through my shock. “Let’s be fair Miss Ballard, it wasn’t all a lie. I may have manipulated a few facts in my favor, but I think I was more than generous with the truth. Your sister has been badly used by the Durupinen. She deserves her revenge upon them, and we are only too happy to help her achieve that. The Durupinen have been powerful, but they are limited. Painfully limited. They are weak. They never dared to explore their power, never dared to ask what could be. They accepted their mortality and their drudgery to the spirit world. They lack the vision that ought to accompany such power. But we saw beyond that. We saw infinite possibility, and we were not afraid to reach out and take it for ourselves. When the Gateway has reversed, we will at last have the ability to learn about what lies beyond. We will unlock the great mysteries that have confounded philosophers and spawned religions. We will no longer have to answer to unnamed forces that determine whether we live or die. We will be gods, Miss Ballard. Gods on earth.”

  “We’re not weak,” I said. I felt the weight, the significance of the “we.” I was a Durupinen, and it was time to live up to everything that title should be, even if others before me had not. “We have a calling and we have risen to it. You are the weak ones. You can’t resist the temptation. That’s why the Gateways have never been entrusted to you, and that is why you are going to fail.”

  The energy shifted. Above us, the ghosts that had been swirling like clouds around the eye of a storm suddenly slowed to a stop, hovering motionless in a great canopy of the dead over our heads. And then, slowly at first, then faster and faster, they began to spin in the other direction, breaking the heavy silence as they did so with a deafening cacophony of screams. They reached, with desperate outstretched arms, down toward the Geatgrima which was now forcing them back in great pulsing waves. The glow around it intensified, seeping into cracks and crevices between the rocks, illuminating every tiny gap between the worlds.

  “It begins!” Neil shouted, and his expression was sheer maniacal glee as the light from the Geatgrima illuminated his features. “Fail, shall we? You will see now what the Necromancers are capable of!”

  I opened my mouth to retort, but was blasted off of my feet as a tidal wave of energy exploded out of the Geatgrima. I sailed through the air and slammed into the castle wall behind me. My vision went white, and then black, and then red, as I put a hand to the back of my head and held it up before my eyes, soaked in my own warm, scarlet blood. I rolled over and stared into another pair of wide, petrified eyes.

  “Jess! What are you… I don’t understand!”

  Hannah lay beside me, having been thrown to the ground by the force of her own power. She stared at me through features so altered by the energy coursing through her that she was barely recognizable. The only thing more striking than her beauty in that moment was the haunted, terrified look in her eyes.

  “You’re here! You’re alive! But…”

  “Yes, I’m here.” I crawled across the ground and grabbed for her hand. She clutched at me, and as she did so, a wild pulse of something shot through me, and I felt the pain in the back of my head recede. She had healed me.

  “But you were dead! They told me you were dead!”

  “They lied to you. It was all a lie.”

  I watched the truth sink in, and the realization—the absolute unadulterated horror of the realization—come alive in her eyes.

  “What have I done?” she whispered.

  We turned as one to the chaos she had unleashed. Wraiths poured from the gaping mouth of the Geatgrima, awash in a flood of purple light that struck like lightening and swelled like fire. It roiled, the ultimate force of nature, across the courtyard and up the walls; a sea of empty eyes and distorted faces and clawing limbs.

  The force of it had thrown Finvarra and Milo’s prone figures rolling across the ground like ragdolls. It had sent Finn’s captors crashing through a stained glass window, and now he was army crawling across the ground toward us as though through a hurricane, mouthing words I could not hear over the howling. Only Neil remained on his feet, clinging to the stones of the Geatgrima which shook beneath his scrabbling hands.

  I had a moment, no more than a heartbeat to decide what to do.

  I looked at Finn, and whatever he saw on my face froze him.

  “No.” His mouth formed the word, and it couldn’t have struck me more deeply if he had screamed it in my ear.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I turned to Hannah. “Call me back.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You can do it. I have faith in you. Call me back.”

  And before she could respond, before Finn could do more than reach a hand out toward me, I jumped to my feet and pelted toward the source of our destruction.

  They may have been shouting for me. They may have been running after me. I would never know for sure. The Geatgrima gaped wide before me, seeming to open wider as I approached, like it was waiting for me.

  Like it had always been waiting for me.

  As I ran, I reached down and snatched up the torch, alive with the essence of a thousand trapped souls. I clutched it in my hand, and its solidness in my hand gave me courage, something real to hold on to. I skidded to a halt at the base of the steps and with an almighty heave, I threw the torch deep into the heart of the blinding, violet light.

  I sprinted up the steps of the dais, for if I slowed down, if I hesitated for even a moment, how would I have the courage to do what I knew I must?

  I raised my arm, the soul catcher glinting in the glow. A single swipe, and I would fly free and through the portal. But then a hand closed violently around my wrist, and I was face to face with Neil Caddigan, his blazing eyes mere inches from my own, struggling violently to shove me back off of the dais.

  But Hannah had not just healed me. Hannah had given me strength beyond my own physical abilities. She had given me a power nearly as fierce as her own. And I called upon it now, as I gripped Neil by the arm, as I wrenched his fingers from my wrist, as I shoved him with every particle of strength I possessed through the Geatgrima itself.

  I watched as the vortex opened to receive him, in spite of the outward flux of spirits
. It seemed that, even as it disgorged its hordes into the living world, the Gateway could not resist taking another into its depths.

  And another.

  I clenched the soul catcher between my teeth, ripped it apart, and soared upward. Then I envisioned myself, with a thrill of terror, on the other side of the Gateway. I plunged headlong through it and, with every particle of strength I possessed, willed it shut behind me. Everything went still.

  §

  I opened my eyes and saw the stars. Thousands upon thousands of them.

  They were just as I remembered them, stretched across the sky in a scattering at once random and perfectly ordered.

  I looked at them for what felt like a long time, gleaning comfort from the familiarity of the constellations and awe from the sprawling vastness of it all. Then I turned my head and looked to my right.

  The broad barren reaches of the Arizona landscape stretched out around me. A dusty, abandoned stretch of highway snaked off into the distance between geometric plateaus of rock, basking in the starlight. The hood and windshield of the Green Monster curved beneath me, cool and firm against my back.

  I knew who I would see if I turned my head the other way. My heartbeat rose to a violent gallop as I did it.

  My mother was gazing up at the same stars, her expression childlike in its wonder. Her eyes, always bright, seemed a hundred times brighter with the light of countless stars reflected within them. Her hair fanned out around her head, giving temporary order to her usually untamable mass of curls. A single freckle darkened the hollow of her cheek. I reached out to touch it with one tremulous finger.

  “Don’t rub it too hard or it might come off,” she said, an old but never tired joke. It never stopped me from stroking her cheek, not even once. I did it now, and felt a long-tightened knot loosen in my chest.

  “You’re here,” I said.

  “Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A shooting star flitted across the great expanse, and we both watched its progress.