by Jody Wallace
Adi was hurting Zeke.
Without a second thought, Maggie launched herself at the vigil. In her haste, she burst out of her protective bubble, but she didn’t care. Wraiths swarmed her, hissing and clawing. Furious, she punched and kicked right through their bodies.
She knew she could—she already knew. It was practically effortless.
She killed ten or twelve before they realized what a threat she was. En masse, they oozed out of arm’s length. She cleared a path to Adi and tackled the small woman, shield and all.
Adi’s head hit the cloudy ground. After a moment, the vigil-block between them and the terra firma faded.
Maggie didn’t wait around to face the consequences of assaulting her boss after busting out her special brand of wraith karate. She hurled herself into the terra firma as if monsters were on her heels.
Because they were.
She had about ten seconds to lie in a daze on her cot, blinking her eyes and wondering what that horrible noise was, before a passel of zombies phased into her room in a shower of red sparks.
The noise? A code one alert.
Maggie screamed and grabbed for her knife.
Who had caused this? Not her—she hadn’t felt the wraiths use her as a conduit, and she knew that sensation all too well. Thank God the manifestation was zombies, not vampires. Vampires would have been impossible to evade. As wraiths went, zombies were easy to kill—though that didn’t help neos seeing them for the first time. Not to mention, fast zombies had started cropping up more since that damned movie had come out.
The zombies—slow ones—noticed her and moaned. She knocked the cot on its side, intending to keep it between them. Then it was attack, retreat, parry—attack. She had to separate them from their heads.
It wasn’t easy.
Especially when she realized a bunch of wraith corpses had followed her from the dreamsphere. She wasn’t sure if the living ones had, but the corpses—definitely. That was going to be fun to explain.
Then, when she made a break for the door, she realized it was locked—from the outside.
Maggie beat on the metal briefly before she had to skitter away, dodging a shuffling zombie. Why the hell had Adi ordered her locked in? She hadn’t treated Maggie like a criminal before this adventure. More like a screw up. Since Maggie herself didn’t know how much of the first code one she’d caused, she couldn’t blame anyone for caution.
But locking her in like a prisoner?
And then—if what Maggie assumed was true—attacking Zeke in the dreamsphere? Everyone, including Lill, had been furious with Adi in the sphere.
Something was going on with Adi, and Maggie would never be able to discuss it with anyone if she got eaten by zombies. And—what the hell—a slime blob?
Goddammit, it didn’t even have a head to chop off.
More due to luck than skill, Maggie managed to dust the wraith population in the room down to one. But it was a persistent one, a very tall zombie—hence her inability to reach its gray-green throat with her dagger. She’d cut one of its arms mostly off, but to hack through the neck, she was going to have to whittle it closer to the ground.
Relying on training she hadn’t realized she’d absorbed, she ducked its outstretched arms and plunged her dagger into its gut. The blade slid in and out like the monster was made of air.
Alas, it did nothing to slow the zombie’s progress. A rope of intestine plopped through the gash, and the zombie shambled on.
“Somebody let me out of here!” she shouted, not for the first time.
She darted past the wraith—dodged the corpses on the floor too—and whaled on the door. Yelled some more. The purple illumination that slowed wraith functionality hadn’t been installed in the outbunker, but the code one alarm blared like a jackhammer in her head.
She gripped the door lever and pushed with all her might. Useless. So much for throwing her weight around. She could make out muffled shouts and sounds of battle through the door yet nobody seemed able to hear her.
The zombie wheezed behind her right before it slammed a floppy hand on her shoulder.
She spat some of Zeke’s favorite curses and smashed herself into the lumbering form. Small blessing—the manifestations in here had been limited to four. A hard-to-handle wraith like a T-Rex, a giant spider or a Whedon, and she’d already be dead.
The only Whedons in here were the corpses she’d killed in the dreamsphere after she’d stopped Adi from hurting Zeke.
The zombie stumbled, tripping over the splintered cot. Maggie managed to keep her balance. She avoided the zombie’s floundering limbs and leaped on its chest. Her blade cut into its throat.
Ick. Ick. Green goo covered her fingers. Grimly, she sawed, but her proximity had a few downsides. The smell was awful, the goo was repellent, and its fingers could reach her neck.
It caught her in a strong grip. Its greenish lips wheezed putrid breath as it tried to tug her down for a bite.
She bore down on the dagger the way she had the door handle. Luckily, her weight was more effective here. The blade cut through larynx, rotted flesh and bones with a sickening lurch. She gagged and pushed. The zombie’s jaw worked as it dragged her close enough to chomp.
She curled her head toward her chest. Crooked teeth sliced fire into her scalp. Jesus, it was going for her brains. With a boost of adrenaline, she drove the knife that last inch through the monster’s neck.
Its death keen was more satisfying than frightening. It crumbled into sand, and she whomped to the floor.
Alone except for sand and corpses. The slime creature—she’d ended up sawing it in half while the zombies limped after her. Happily, any ick from the creatures turned to sand when the owners did, and she was no longer coated in vomitus goo.
Maggie allowed herself thirty seconds to hate life before returning to her feet, her back against the wall beside the door, her posture as defensive as she could make it. More manifestations could occur at any moment.
At last she was willing to admit Zeke was right—to his face, no less—and she should pay more attention to combat training.
What she wouldn’t give for a gun. She preferred to keep her distance from the monsters, though to dispatch them, you really did have to lop off their heads. A large enough gun should be able to manage that.
As she stood, alert, Maggie whapped the dagger handle against the metal door in a steady rhythm. Somebody outside was bound to notice. If anybody was left. She hadn’t heard any noise besides the zombie and the code one alarm in several minutes.
Her stomach lurched. She clapped her non-dagger hand over her mouth. Blood trickled down her temple from the painful bite on her head. What if everyone was dead? What if that was why nobody had unlocked her door?
She distracted herself wondering who might have created the code one this time. The distraction didn’t last long, since it took twenty seconds to decide, conclusively, it was Karen.
The klaxons ceased. Surely someone would check on her soon? They couldn’t all be dead. Someone had to have switched off the alarm.
Maggie tentatively probed her scalp wound and hissed when her fingers encountered more than she’d bargained for. Was that a flap of skin? Jesus. Fresh pain zinged through her, followed by fresh nausea.
With the room trashed after her struggle with the zombies, it seemed awfully finicky to seek out the garbage can to barf in, but that was exactly what she did.
When she was finished, she rubbed her mouth on her shoulder, grimacing when the sand in her clothes gritted against her face. So much for that PB&J. She returned to the door.
Before she started banging again, she heard noises. Ah, hell, was it another monster?
No.
On the other side of the door, she heard the voice she most longed to hear. “Maggie? You alive in there?”
Her heart leaped with relief. “I�
��m here! Let me out.”
“You alone?”
“What do you mean, am I alone?” She rattled the door lever. “Yes, I’m alone. Except for a bunch of dead wraiths. I may need stitches.”
The handle snicked, and the door swung open. Zeke, splattered with wraith dirt and blood, stood outside. Weapons bristled all over him, but Maggie wrapped herself around his neck anyway.
He was okay.
“Hey now.” He uncoiled her arms and set her away from him, glancing at the soldiers milling in the short corridor. Between their large, Kevlar’d bodies, she caught a glimpse of Adi’s blue scrubs. The petite woman leaned against the wall, sagging after the vigil-block but still orchestrating the chaos like a maestro. “It’s all right. You’re safe. I came as soon as I could.”
She could hardly ask him about Adi, or about anything, if Adi was watching them.
“I was in the sphere again,” she said in as quiet a voice as she could manage. She kind of nodded her head backward, so he’d notice the corpses. She’d counted them—nine this time, all as solid as she was. “I saw what was done to you.”
“You’re bleeding.” Zeke frowned. His gaze darted over the trashed room, pausing on the cot that had been bashed to pieces, the nightstand, the chair.
“Yeah, and?”
He plucked at her shirt. His frown deepened when sand scattered to the floor. “Is that wraith dust?”
She held up four fingers. “Three zombies, one slime thing.”
“God, Maggie. I’m… You were locked in, weren’t you? With wraiths.” His hands shook. He raked fingers through his hair and stepped away like he needed to put some distance between them—hopefully so he wouldn’t clutch her to his chest and reveal to everyone how intimate their student-teacher relationship had grown.
Maggie eased the door mostly shut behind her. “I don’t know if we should ask the person you mentioned about the scroll we discussed,” she said carefully. “After what she did.”
If Adi identified Maggie as her assailant from the sphere, there could be serious consequences. Maggie could kill wraiths in the sphere. She and Zeke couldn’t hide that anymore, not with nine bodies stinking up the room behind her. It wasn’t a huge leap to wonder whether Maggie could kill alucinators in the sphere as well as wraiths.
“Scroll?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What scroll?”
“Antipodes,” she whispered.
“Sorry, I don’t remember that,” he said in a normal voice.
Maggie gaped at him. But…
Oh.
They weren’t alone.
Lillian stalked up behind Zeke, her expression troubled. A cut on her cheek and a huge rip in her leather jacket sleeve lent her a more dangerous air than normal. Her dark braids clung tightly to her head in a neat ponytail. “Did I hear you tell Zeke you killed four wraiths?”
Maggie nodded. She wondered why Zeke didn’t want to talk to Lill about Adi, the scroll and Maggie’s ability—he’d said he trusted Lill—but went with his obfuscation. “They materialized inside my room. I’m guessing those weren’t the only ones?”
“Most showed up in the hallway, up top, and in larger areas.” Lill fingered her raggedy jacket sleeve. “Makes sense, I guess. They’re drawn to the person who created them, so of course some appeared in your room.”
“I didn’t do this.” Maggie’s stomach bottomed out. Again. Luckily, it was empty and the nausea didn’t amount to anything. “Karen was in the dreamsphere like before. Why are you blaming me?”
“They made a beeline for this room,” Zeke told her.
“That’s not indicative, considering my history,” Maggie argued. Wraiths had been drawn to her since day one, but only in the past few days had Zeke and the others decided that must mean she was responsible for them.
“I realize that, but…” He cleared his throat. “We lost six people.”
“Including Constance and Roberts,” Lill said, face drawn. “We can’t even find their fucking DNA, much less their bodies. They’re just gone. Guess they got eaten.”
“T-Rexes and were-creatures will eat anything until you dust ’em, but vamps and zombies?” Zeke ran a hand through his hair, uneasy. “That’s not how they behave. This shit is unreal.”
“God. I’m so sorry.” Helplessly, Maggie gripped the hilt of her dagger as if she could slash the truth away. “I honestly don’t think I left my conduit unlocked. I was so careful. And, ah, since I’ve slipped up before, I know what it feels like to have wraiths exploit you.”
When she’d been attacked by wraiths in the sphere, she’d killed any that had touched her. She hadn’t allowed them to use her for her conduit. Never again. Any who’d tried had died for it, another elephant in the room that had to be discussed.
“After you exit the sphere, they can use a malingering conduit without you sensing it,” Zeke said. “Dammit, I didn’t train you well enough to tell up from down. I’ve been preoccupied with fighting the effects of the tangible.”
Was he remembering what had happened between them this morning? His inability to resist her, her inability to resist him. Their desire. Their emotions.
Tonight, he’d be with Karen. Maggie scowled.
Lillian sighed. “You two, I swear to God. I should kick both your asses.”
“Zeke said I had some skills that were graduate level,” she reminded them hastily—more for Lill’s benefit than his. “I’m not a complete neonati. I’ve got enough of a handle on the dreamsphere to recognize when a wraith uses me to land in the terra firma. I can lock conduits, and I think I’m ready to orate.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Look, it’s my fault, not yours. I’m a crap mentor. I can’t do this. I can’t seem to…” He tore his gaze from her like he couldn’t bear to see the evidence of his failure.
“It wasn’t me,” Maggie insisted. “I would have felt it.”
Lill shook her head. “Had to be you, Mags. Adi had us locked down, including Karen, and nobody else was around. We couldn’t conduit ourselves out, much less a wraith.”
Speaking of Adi, why weren’t Lill and Zeke angry at the vigil? Lillian had been furious when Adi had sealed them in the sphere and given Zeke a nosebleed.
“I was close enough to you guys to be affected by the vigil-block too. Therefore, I couldn’t have manifested wraiths.” Maggie didn’t add that she’d trounced Adi, and that was why the block had vanished. Since nobody had acknowledged her presence in the sphere again, it was possible they didn’t realize she’d assaulted the vigil. Hell, she could have lied and said she hadn’t made it to sphere at all tonight.
Let them blame the manifestations on her then.
Trouble was, she wasn’t a liar.
“I was tranced in,” Maggie explained, “but invisible again. I saw when Adi—”
“You tranced instead of natural sleep?” Adi joined their small group and studied Maggie like she was a poisonous snake. Her beautiful face was drawn with fatigue, the result of placing the vigil-block, and she leaned against Lillian for support. “You weren’t asked to trance, Margaret. You were told to protect yourself in the sleep sphere. It’s not permitted for phase two disciples to trance alone.”
“I couldn’t fall asleep. I got worried.”
Adi had never been a person Maggie distrusted. From the very first, she’d exuded sincerity and kindness like no one Maggie had ever met. But now, Maggie found herself wanting to be anywhere the vigil was not. She leaned against the cold metal door, forgetting it wasn’t completely latched. It swung open behind her.
Adi gasped.
Lill didn’t gasp. “What the hell? Are those more monster corpses?” She practically dragged Adi past Maggie to inspect the Whedons on the floor. “Are you sure you killed these all the way dead?”
Zeke and Maggie followed the women into the room. The wraith stench, in the poorly ventilate
d chamber, was almost more than anyone could bear. Lill grimaced. Zeke coughed. Adi clapped a hand over her mouth and nose. Hopefully she wouldn’t need the trash can, because it was already contaminated.
Maggie exchanged a glance with Zeke—or tried to. He was staring at the corpses as if he’d never seen a dead wraith before. Technically, he hadn’t, but he knew what she’d done, what she was capable of. She’d told him this morning before they’d made love.
“I didn’t kill these. All I had was a knife.” Maggie rubbed her tennis shoe in a skein of wraith dust in the floor. “The bodies were already here when I snapped out of the trance.”
Sort of. They’d come through with her. When she’d opened her eyes, there they’d been. Dragging corpses into the terra firma didn’t affect her the same as dragging living wraiths into the terra firma—no surge of invasion, no sensation of wrongness pouring through her body. If she had to theorize, the corpses tumbled through the gap she created when she shoved herself free of the sphere.
For all she knew, she might have left corpses behind on the gray, swirling dreamsphere ground. Would they be moldering there when she or anyone went back? She wished she could mull it over with Lill and Zeke, but not Adi. Adi’s behavior in the sphere, what with hurting Zeke and locking everyone down, worried her.
She really, really needed to get Zeke alone. Why were he and Lill not angry with Adi? Zeke held grudges, and it didn’t take much for him to be ill-tempered. Had Maggie missed further developments after she’d jetted out of the sphere as fast as her brain could carry her?
Had Adi done something, told them something, that explained her odd behavior?
Adi’s voice, through her hand, was muffled yet distressed. “I simply don’t understand why we have lifeless manifestations in the terra firma again.” She peered at the bodies, nudging the caved-in skull of a Whedon vamp with her plastic clog. Gray matter oozed out of the monster’s head. Dark red blood, though not much of it, decorated the floor. “It appears they were dispatched by—well, I can’t tell. These do not appear to be typical wounds. I see no blade marks or punctures.”
Since everyone else was staring, Maggie allowed herself a moment to study the vamps too. A couple had bashed in skulls, and others were missing limbs or parts of torsos. There wasn’t a whole corpse among them. Internally they appeared to be animal, with blood and guts and organs and bones and such.
