I touched his hand, pushing my sight into him.
“It’s the dead human,” Henri said softly.
“Dead?” the human said. “Murdered more like. Bastards.”
I glared at him. “What the heck do you expect if you go up against the Prime pack?”
Candy pulled herself up. She could see the ghost but not hear him. “You’re talking to him?”
I ignored her. I’d fill her in later.
The ghost stepped forward and stared at his dead body. “Look what they did. They told me it was an initiation. They told me I could be one of them, that they’d make me like them.”
“The pack?” Henri asked.
“What?” He looked up, dazed. “No. Not the fucking pack, the Custodians. They promised me power, and then they set their fucking pet wolf on me.”
It was all falling into place. Monty had been a trap and this … This scene had been staged to be a diversion. And the jump spot? Was it even real?
I clicked my fingers to get the ghost’s attention. “How many of these Custodians are there?”
The dark-haired man continued to stare at his body, his mouth turned down. Anger was making way for despair as he realized the implications of his death.
“Hey, how many Custodians?” There was a snap to my tone, enough to jolt him out of his reverie.
“Huh, three. They work in trios. They always have.”
“There are three here in Scorchwood?”
“Yeah.”
“But how many are there in the Custodian group?” Henri asked. “In total?”
The man shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care. They promised me power and look at me. Look at me!”
We were losing him. “Do you know where they went?”
He canted his head and fell onto his knees.
Shit. New ghosts were a mixed bag, especially ones that had died unexpectedly and violently. This one was doing a lot better than expected, considering. But then his indignation was a good tether.
I could use that. “Hey, come on, you can’t let them get away with this. Do you want them to win after what they did to you?”
He raised his head. “They can’t win.”
“No. So, you need to get up, and you need to show me where they took the moonkissed.”
He blinked and nodded. “Yes. It was a plan. The jump was a fake. Anyone who tracked them was supposed to be taken to the ravine. They’d end up materializing above the ravine and fall right in.” He sniggered. “That was my idea. They praised me for that one.”
“So, they didn’t jump?”
He shook his head. “They took the pack that way.” He pointed to the left, to a spot between the trees. “You can’t see because your eyes are lying to you.”
Glamour? I strode in the direction he’d pointed and stepped out of the clearing. A ripple stung my skin, and when I turned back to the clearing, the world shifted to reveal a whole new set of tracks. Dirt bike tracks?
“Henri, Candy, over here.”
They both joined me, and together, we studied the real scene.
“They have a powerful weaver,” Candy said.
They’d set a scene to divert our attention, to throw us into a ravine, and give themselves time to make a getaway.
“They’ll be leaving camp now,” the ghost said. “Before the drugs wear off and the Primes wake up.” He stood straighter. “Trucks parked outside of Scorchwood. They’ll want to get to the trucks and leave. Leave me dead and behind. Like fuck. Why do they get to live?”
Oh, shit. There was no time to wait for Lark and Mai. “Show us where the camp is. Please.”
His lip curled. “With pleasure.”
“Stay here,” Henri told Candy.
She didn’t argue, and then Henri and I were chasing the angry, swift ghost.
“Some are hurt, some are drugged, some might die,” he said as he ran. “I wanted to be like the Custodians. I wanted to feel power, but I feel the balance in this place now, and taking power isn’t the way to claim it.”
He was mumbling to himself as he weaved through the trees. Did he not realize he could go straight through them if he wanted? Not yet, no. He was too new to the condition of being dead.
My breath plumed before my face and landed warm and misty on my cheek as I ran through it. Henri matched my stride, and then the moon was shining brightly on us as the canopy overhead thinned.
Voices drifted on the wind. The ghost stopped and ducked behind a tree. Yeah, he really needed to get with the program when it came to ghost abilities.
Henri and I slowed and found cover.
“There they are. Bastards,” the ghost whispered.
I caught the sound of idling motors and the rough rumble of voices. The air was a cocktail of scents—wolf, human, and something unidentified. These tainted were hunting on my ground, on my watch. I peered around the huge tree trunk, scanning the camp. Three dirt bikes and two carts. The carts were loaded with bodies. The pack, all unconscious and roped onto the vehicles.
A cloaked figure smoked a cigarette to the far left. The burning end of the stick made patterns in the night every time it moved. A shadowy lump lay on the ground by the cloaked figure’s feet. Chains with a silvery glow winked around its neck. The wolf? Two hulking males stood by one of the motors, deep in conversation. They wore black, so they blended into the night. Even their hair was covered in black beanie hats. Where was the third one? Shit?
I looked for the ghost to ask him about the third Custodian, but he was nowhere to be found. Crap. He’d probably been pulled back to his body. It happened with new deaths. The ghosts couldn’t stray far from their bodies, not until they’d emotionally let go.
“There are only two,” Henri whispered.
I gripped the bat tighter in my hands and shifted closer to him, speaking in a whisper. “Maybe the ghost was confused. It happens. We need to act now. They’ll have used the drugs to take down the pack. They think their diversion will work because they didn’t factor a ghost into their plan. And even if they did consider a ghost, they wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to communicate with it.”
“You want to play little girl lost,” Henri asked with a gleam in his eye.
I nodded. “You know I love that game.”
He sighed. “I’ll take out the weaver. He can’t hurt me.”
A golem was a fucking tank, and only the weaver who knew the deactivation word could harm one. It was one of the main reasons why Nightbloods used them and why they took especially good care of their weavers.
I unbuttoned my jacket, pulled the tie out of my hair, and shook it out. Time to play. I broke cover and stepped out of the shadows. The voices stopped talking abruptly as the two men dressed in black combat gear turned to stare at me.
“Hey.” I gave them a finger wave. “I’m kinda lost, you mind helping me out?”
Their gazes dropped to the bat clutched in my hand.
I looked down at it as if seeing it for the first time. “My mother always told me to carry protection.”
Confusion flitted across the guys’ faces, and then their features hardened. “Nightblood,” the one on the right said. “What do you say, Harry? We add a Nightblood to the haul?”
Harry grinned. “Such a pretty little thing. You wouldn’t think she could be dangerous, would you, Jenson?”
“But the most beautiful things tend to be the deadliest,” Jenson said with a hard glint in his narrow eyes. “Put the bat down and come here.”
He said it with so much command in his voice it was almost comical, like I would actually put down my bat and … The bat hit the ground, and my feet began to move toward him. What the fuck? Part of my brain was yelling at me to stop, and the other was singing tra-la-la, happy as could be as it took control and walked me into the arms of death.
Harry chuckled. “It never gets old.”
“What never gets old?” A tall dusky-skinned male with blond hair walked into the clearing. Sharp blue eyes took in the scene. It wa
s the man from the vision Celeste had shown me. This was the one who’d killed Monty. The leader of the trio, no doubt.
Unlike the others, his arms were bare and inked with strange symbols. He looked me over. “Kill it, and let’s go.”
“Oh, come on, Lex, it’s a Nightblood.”
“Nightbloods are a dime a dozen. We don’t have time for this shit. Let’s go.”
Jenson sighed and pulled out a gun and pointed it at me.
Um, Henri, where are you?
A yelp cut through the air, and then Henri appeared, his arm around the weaver’s throat.
“Put the gun down, or I’ll snap your weaver’s neck.”
Lex arched a brow. “Snap it then. There are more where that one came from.”
The weaver made an indignant sound, and Jenson flicked off the safety on his gun.
Henri shoved the weaver and dove for Jenson. The gun went off, and I blurred and smashed Harry in the ribs with my bat. He grunted but didn’t go down. I hit him again and blurred out of the way when he lunged. Yeah, fuckers, not so hot now when you don’t have drugs on your side.
In the periphery of my vision, I caught Henri uppercut Lex and then snap Jenson’s neck. The tainted went down, and my bat was swinging at Harry’s head, but then I was being yanked back by the hair. I hit the ground, and the weaver was on top of me. Henri’s bellow was cut off by the sound of fist meeting golem. Crap, I was on my own, he had both Lex and Harry to deal with, and the weaver’s hands were on my throat. His hood fell back, and shit, he was a she.
Emerald eyes bore into mine. “Time to die, Nightblood.” Her power was heat and pain as it flooded me, sinking into my veins like a thousand needles, and then my blood was simmering toward a boil.
“Cooked Nightblood.” She grinned, showcasing small, even white teeth.
My eyes burned. My throat burned. My body was on fire, and there was no doubt in my mind that at any moment, the fire in my blood would be a real flame.
I was going to die.
No.
Icy heat flooded my body, eating away at the fire, and then light stole my vision and the world was gray.
The weaver stumbled off me, her eyes wide. “What … what did you do?”
I sat up, hand at my aching throat. Oh, fuck. I was back. Back in the Shade. I’d pulled the fucking weaver into the fucking Shade with me.
Eerie sounds rode the wind, growing louder and louder.
The creatures of this world had sensed us. They were hungry, and they were coming. I pulled myself to my feet. “Come on, we have to run.”
She stumbled away from me. “What did you do?”
“I’ll explain it all over tea and crumpets once we get back, but for now, we have to run. If we don’t run, we will die.” I reached for her hand, and understanding crossed her features. The resolution to live.
She took my hand, and we ran.
They came at us from beneath the sand and from over the dune—the same twisted, dark forms as before. The faster we ran, the brighter my body glowed and the louder they screamed. But the force was building inside me, the same force that had pulled me out of there last time.
Almost there.
“It’s you!” the weaver puffed. “They want you. Your light.”
She loosened her grip, but I held on. “No, you don’t understand. I can get us out. I just need to—”
She yanked her hand away just as the gray splintered and the moon stole my vision.
Growls and yips assaulted my ears and light streaked across the sky, and then I was hauled to my feet and squashed against a taut, unyielding chest. Henri’s cologne filled my head, and then his fingers were in my hair, and he was tipping my head back, his gaze raking over me as if checking for the slightest injury.
“You did it again.” His expression was torn. “You vanished.”
“But I came back.” I smiled weakly.
“They’re coming around,” Lark called out. “The herbs are working.”
Groans filled the clearing. Henri’s hands tightened in my hair for a second as if reluctant to let go, but then he released me.
Jenson lay twisted and broken, Harry lay silent and unbreathing, and Lex was bound by Mai’s enchanted whip. His eyes blazed with rage as he glared right at me.
“You have no idea who you’re messing with,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Yeah?” My smile was cold. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to enlighten us from your cell for one.”
“No,” Rich said. “This one is ours.”
The wolves surrounded us, growling menacingly.
Oh, shit.
Chapter Nine
Rich stood with his legs shoulder-width apart, uncaring that he was naked, as he glared down at Lex. “Give him to us.”
“Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.”
His lips curled, and his chest rumbled in warning.
My stomach quivered with fear. We were surrounded by the Prime pack, an angry, post-drugged pack that wanted vengeance, and having the law on my side wasn’t much comfort right now. Still, this was my job.
I crossed my arms and met his gaze levelly. “You know how it works. If you didn’t, you would have taken him already.”
The pack’s dissension filled the air in rumbling, menacing growls. The beta nursed his arm where the Custodians had sliced off his hand before thoughtfully cauterizing the wound.
“They killed Monty,” the beta reminded me. “They encroached on our territory, shot at us with drugged darts, and then took my fucking hand.” He held up his stump.
“We were lucky to avoid the bear traps,” Rich said. “They reeked of wolfsbane.”
“I thought that was only detectable once it hit the bloodstream.”
He snorted. “Not to a Prime’s senses.”
“They came here to capture us,” the beta said. “They broke territory law. The penalty is death.”
“The forest isn’t officially your territory,” Mai said gently. “This is Nightwatch business now. Two of them are dead, and we need to question this one. We need to find out who the fuck these Custodians are.”
“Prime pack law dictates we’re within our rights to demand a blood debt,” Rich said.
For fucksake. “Fine, you’ll get your blood debt. Once we have our information, they’ll probably execute him anyway.”
Rich’s eyes lit up. “Your word you will end his life once you have what you need?”
“Yes, whatever. Now can we please move on?”
“And the weaver?” Rich asked. “They had a weaver.”
“She’s gone.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Trust me, you won’t be seeing her again.”
Rich’s eyes narrowed as he counted heads. He was looking for Kris. I was sure of it, but to ask after him would tell the pack that he still cared for the man who’d lied to them.
I held up a hand. “We all had casualties today. Kris almost died of wolfsbane poisoning.”
Rich’s shoulders tensed.
“Thank God we got him back to the mansion in time for treatment.” I smiled. “He’s stable.”
A low whine drifted across the clearing. The beta growled low in his throat, and then a whimpering wolf in chains limped toward us. He was big and black and shaggy. He approached slowly, his silver chains dragging behind him.
Rich had frozen in place, his gaze locked with the wolf’s silver eyes.
“Enchanted chains,” Lark said. “The poor creature has been forced to remain in wolf form by the chains.” He stepped forward, his hands raised placatingly. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to remove the chains.”
The wolf broke eye contact with Rich and turned its attention to Lark. Its lips peeled back in warning.
Lark froze. “Hey, chill. I want to help you. I can take the chains away.”
“Let him help you.” Rich’s voice was a soothing rumble.
The wolf’s lips dropped back over its teeth and then it lay down, but its gaze tracked Lark’s every
move as he walked over.
“I’m going to remove the chains, but you might feel a tingle as I unweave the enchantment.”
The wolf didn’t move.
Lark glanced up at Rich.
“Do it,” Rich instructed.
Lark reached out and gripped the chains. They glowed brighter, and the wolf whined and closed its eyes. And then the silvery glow dulled, and the chains snapped and fell to the ground with a chink.
The wolf began to shimmer, and Lark stumbled back. It was changing back into its human form.
The haze cleared to reveal a naked form. Long dark hair, smooth dusky skin decorated in cruel welts, and silver eyes like twin stars.
“Oh, shit.” I shrugged off my jacket and draped it over the female moonkissed.
Rich cursed and then scooped her up into his arms. “You’re safe now.”
The female didn’t even flinch at being cradled by a huge, naked Prime moonkissed. Instead, she tucked herself into his body and buried her face in his shoulder.
The other moonkissed radiated rage, and there was no mistaking why. Female moonkissed that could shift were rare. Rare and prized. These bastards had been using her to do their dirty work, beating her, and mistreating her. The female moonkissed were generally treated with the utmost respect in the community. They bore the pups and continued the bloodlines. Males prized their females, and from the look of disgust on these Primes’ faces, they would happily have torn the Custodian in our custody to shreds, the Watch law be damned.
But Rich made an inhuman sound, low and commanding in his throat, and the moonkissed backed off.
“Let’s get her back to the den where she’ll be safe,” the beta rumbled.
Rich nodded. “I’ll be checking in about the Custodian.”
And Kris, no doubt.
I nodded, and then they were melting into the shadows.
I looked down at Lex and then at the mess in the clearing. “We so fucking need a clean-up crew.”
* * *
The Custodian glared at us through the impregnable glass of his cell. He sat on his narrow cot, legs splayed, arms crossed, sneering at us.
“He’s definitely tainted,” Lark said. “But there are anomalies in his bloodstream. I’m not sure what they are, and I don’t have the equipment here to analyze the samples properly.”
Give Up the Ghost: The Nightwatch Series Book 2 Page 7
