by T. G. Ayer
Wind buffeted my body and tugged at my clothes with grim ferocity as I reached the topmost landing of the fire escape. A quick jimmy opened the window, which yawned into the living room. The top floor of the old building, loft-like in size and stature, provided the space and freedom I adored.
It was kind on Grandma’s bank balance too, though I didn’t ask too many questions about that. Before I left home, accounts and money were the last things on my mind. My father and brother dealt with mundane things like bills. My father’s voice simmered in my ear now. Reminders of choices and decisions and living with the bed I made.
Independence had many prices. Not that I complained. I preferred my current bed, thanks. Although I had a part-time job, my work at the center paid well enough for my needs. What I earned, I happily spread evenly over clothing, my bow and the ammunition for my jobs. I was a Wraith-hunter, not a mercenary, and when one of my marks ate it, no money ever changed hands. The release of their victims was sufficient payment for me. Grandma, in her intermittent visits, took care of groceries and rent payments.
One day soon she’d have to tell me where in Ailuros’ name it was she disappeared to so often. She never stayed gone for very long, maybe a couple weeks at a time, and she always came back satisfied and happy, if a little drained. She never poked her nose into my business, but made sure I attended college and kept my grades up. She knew my studies were important to me because she knew I loved my job at the center.
But despite her support, I never worked up the nerve to tell her about my Wraith-hunting. I was terrified she’d demand I stop because of the danger I put myself in. I’d been hunting for so long that danger no longer bothered me, but I knew my family would kick up a fuss about it. Good thing they never knew Wraith-hunting had been all about on-the-job-training and a few near-death experiences before I got the hang of it.
Still, sometimes I envied the Human kids at the local college. Such simple, painless lives. I made headway with many of my patients, but I could never take away the reasons they sought refuge in drugs. I saw so much agony and suffering that sometimes, just sometimes, I longed for release. And the power of the Hunt was such a release. A way to make a solid, tangible difference instead of talk, talk, talk.
But lately, something was really wrong. The frequency of Wraith possessions had increased. In the last month, I’d eliminated twice as many as the previous three months combined. Something made them bolder. Stronger. More violent. And the Veil between the Earth-World and the Wraith-world had seemed strange too. Flimsy, tattered in places. And there was no-one I could go to about it.
With one leg inside the loft, I paused astride the sill, cocked my Panther ears, and flared my nostrils. I listened. Scented the room for intruders. Somewhere, a trucker gunned his engine. It spluttered and spat before roaring into life.
All was safe and I swung the other leg into the room and forced the protesting window shut. Having lost its protection against the elements decades ago, the wooden frame stuck, now swollen from the rain. Still, I preferred it that way—harder for intruders to get in and out fast.
I tugged the band from my loosened braid and ran my fingers through the thick mess, rubbing the sore spots on my scalp. When I was younger, I found it hard to understand why my hair differed from the rest of my singularly blond family. Greer’s hair was white-blonde to pure white, and Iain’s was a warmer shade of my sister’s pale. Guess my mother bequeathed only one child with her lustrous locks. For a long time, it had been just one more thing setting me apart from my family. Too late to avoid the chip from settling securely on my shoulder.
Cat, our cat, entwined herself between my feet, almost tripping me up. She purred her welcome, then stalked off to find a dust bunny to play with. Well, at least she’d cared enough to say hi. Grandma Ivy’s precious pet was a bit of a diva, but she was the only company I had. A glance at Grandma’s bedroom door confirmed it was ajar. A sure sign Grams was not home. I hadn’t expected her this week, anyway. But it was okay with me. For now, with my head still pounding, I desperately needed a bed.
Later that afternoon, after a couple of hours of fitful dozing that miraculously relieved my headache, I sat staring off into space. My fingers filled more of the tiny cartridges with serum, while my mind remained on Todd and the Wraith I had to eliminate to save the boy. It never hurt to have extra ammo. And it never hurt to be prepared for the kill.
I kept myself busy.
Busy cursing myself.
Stupid.
At last, I had half a dozen extra vials filled, ready to be loaded into my bow’s special housing. I packed and prepared to leave. Recon topped my to-do list. Since I’d had no knowledge of it until today, I had a bit of work to do. Work that needed to be done in spite of the danger it always posed to my identity. I had to risk it though.
As the only Wraith-Hunter around I owed it to Todd and to his undead father to do my job.
Skin Deep Ch4
I stood in the shadows of a huge elm on the corner of a nondescript street in a very suburban part of town. In the daylight, I would expect to see little girls skipping and little boys riding around on bright red trikes. But the night hid the niceness, making everything look the same, gray and dark and haunted. I watched from the time Todd came home until the Wraith returned as well.
Tonight was for observation. Wraiths were strongest at night. Weakest at dusk and dawn, not to say they became helpless during the day. I just preferred to fight them when they were less strong. Why make things harder for myself?
I relaxed and borrowed night sight from my feline self.
A sharper, more focused vision.
I’d poached my Panther’s ears long before I arrived. And now I listened to the sounds the two occupants of the house made as they prepared for dinner. One, young, innocent and troubled. The other, ancient, evil and filled with glee.
It still amazed me how blind I’d been to the torment of Todd. I stared now at the front porch virtually glowing with peachy tendrils. I’d seen enough. They were settling down for the night. Maybe the Wraith felt satisfied with his efforts of being a good father for the evening.
As I turned to leave, a sound within the house caught my feline ear. Something crashed. Could the Wraith have decided the charade had stretched on long enough? I crossed the road, ducking behind a bush of rhododendrons, their heavy scent no longer sweet. I crawled to the nearest window, staying low.
Inside, an angry, raised voice filtered through the curtained window. I peered through a slit in the drapes, where the two halves had failed to meet.
Mayhem greeted me.
A side table lay overturned, an old lamp shattered, the solid base crushed to dust. An armchair sat on its side. Then I saw the Wraith and his captive. It held Todd by the throat, suspended in midair by only the power of the undead. Todd’s eyes bulged—pain, fear and shock warring. At his temples, blood vessels enlarged slowly as he grappled with the hand at his throat. He kicked as he struggled desperately for air.
Todd’s arms flopped limply as he began to lose consciousness. It was now or never. I sprinted around the house, readying my bow. Made a mental check on the two vials already in the chamber as I ran. At the back door, I gripped the handle and paused when it opened smoothly. The Wraith feared no one and his arrogance allowed me to slip in for the kill.
I followed the sound down the hall to the front room where Todd was now a frightening shade of blue. He no longer gasped for breath, no longer kicked helplessly.
Almost no time left.
The Wraith, his back to me, still had no knowledge of my presence. In their true form, Wraiths have no substance, but yet possess strong Magyk. When contained within the body of a mortal Human, they have limited access to their powers, although they still remained powerful enough. I preferred my kills at a distance, usually eliminated them in sniper mode. I’d tried hand to hand combat a long time ago but the creatures were unpredictable and sometimes too strong. But this Wraith didn’t afford me the luxury of d
istance.
And though the Wraith lacked super hearing power, he did possess an acceptable level of hearing. When I stepped into the room, he turned. His lack of attention to Todd changed nothing of the boy’s circumstance. Todd remained midair, dying a slow and painful death.
Had I been wrong about the limitations of their power when in Human bodies? Had something changed? They’d increased in numbers, and increased in strength. Plus the Veil was more fragile than ever. What was going on?
The Wraith speared me with a venomous glare. I was so focused on the foul creature that I barely heard the sound of Todd’s body as it landed on the ground in a crumpled heap.
In that brief moment, my arrogance betrayed me. He sneered, his eyes a smoky black. I lifted my bow and aimed at the creature’s chest. It mattered where I hit him, because it was the mortal shell which had to be killed a second time. I’d thought I had enough time…
He covered the distance between us with lightning speed and hit me—a full body slam. I went down, still holding the bow across my chest, stunned and confused by this new and unusual show of speed. My weapon, about a foot in length, could double as a club if needed. Unfortunately, the Wraith’s body crushed it against mine.
His foul breath enveloped me; coral wisps encircled my head. His thrall – with which he would’ve ensnared his human host before he’d taken possession – failed to work on me, but I gave him points for trying. All I wanted was him off me. Desperation and hysteria fueled my strength, and I shoved hard. I managed to move him enough to tilt the head of my arrow toward his head.
He smiled through crooked, yellow teeth. The smell of death rolled off his body in waves, and my stomach churned bitter bile. Most people couldn’t smell these vile creatures. My ability to sniff them out helped a great deal. Not so much when I was stuck nose to nose with one. I struggled in his putrid embrace, and he laughed again. He was so sure of himself. And while I stared into the black, swirling depths of his eyes, I fiddled for the trigger on the bow, my finger bent awkwardly against the soft flesh of his chest.
His fingers crept to my neck as he began to close the distance between his mouth and mine. My time was very limited. The Wraith’s kiss—the worst possible death. My heart thundered as he inched closer. Once his mouth locked onto mine, he would suck the breath and life out of my body. Before long, he would absorb every bit of moisture from my flesh until I became a dried-out husk. The process was excruciatingly slow and agonizing. I’d rather dispense with French-kissing soul-sucking monsters. I had better things to do with my time.
At last, I felt the lever click and counted the milliseconds as the cylinder retracted and the spring coiled tight. In the next moment the barbed arrow exploded from the chamber and smashed into the wall behind the Wraith. A shower of tiny splinters spewed onto the floor.
Damn it. Slick. Real slick.
There went my only option. My weapon was crushed against my ribcage, pressed uselessly between our bodies, and I lay cheek to cheek with death, helpless.
No. Not if I can help it.
I still had my feline strength. I wriggled my hands upward from where they’d grasped the bow and its trigger. The black metal dug deeper into my ribs. Good. Pain proved I still lived. I snaked my hands around the Wraith’s neck and squeezed. I tried to concentrate and pull some latent feline power from within me, but nothing feline came to my aid.
It was something stranger than all the anomalies of my life so far. My hands glowed as I squeezed the demon’s neck. Glimmered the palest gold. The elegance of the color looked misplaced on the body of the Wraith. What other powers did these creatures possess that I was not aware of? My hands still glowed, growing warmer. Warm and bearable. Was it the Wraith emanating this golden glow or was it me?
The Wraith struggled within my choke hold, gasping. Bent on freeing himself, he let go with one hand and I could’ve tossed him off me and ran. But I stayed. Had to finish it.
I watched the swirling blackness as it began to fade from the creature’s human eyes. The Wraith screamed and my skin crawled with the sound as it rippled across the fine hair on my body. I still held him in my golden death grip.
The Wraith exerted all his final energy in digging his thumb in my throat. The lights dimmed and as the Wraith died I slipped into a gray unconsciousness.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, but a rapid, semi-violent shaking brought me swiftly back. Todd, in his desperation to awaken me, entirely missed the fact he’d succeeded. He continued to shake my arm, saying my name over and over again, a desperate mantra. My turn to shake him. He stopped speaking and stared at me, the dark eyeliner smudged in streaks on his eyelids and cheeks, his hair mussed and no longer neatly spiked.
“Thought you were a goner for sure,” he whispered, as if he were afraid someone bad would hear his words and seek him out.
“Are you okay?” My eyes raked his skinny frame, checking for obvious injuries. He could have undetectable internal injuries. “What did he do to you?”
“Tried to throttle me.” As he spoke, bitterness flooded his eyes. “Bastard.”
How to proceed? I’d never had to discuss the business of Wraiths with a victim before. Never had my fights with those soul-sucking leeches been witnessed before. My worried gaze flicked to the remains of the Wraith, but it seemed Todd, in spite of his youth, understood my dilemma.
“Don’t stress. He wasn’t my Dad. Not for a very long time, anyway.”
“When did you realize?” Taken aback at his calm, I was curious.
“When Sam told me you didn’t unmake the gayness inside you. That’s when I knew something was way wrong with my dad. He’d been acting funny this last couple of months. Weird and mean and real nasty. Knocked me out a couple of times too.”
I waited for him to continue. These were the most words the boy had strung together since we met.
“He...he became something else.” Todd looked at the remains of the Wraith and shook his head. “That is not my father.”
“So what do you figure he became?” I tread carefully.
“Dunno. Maybe he went a little crazy? Multiple personalities or something like that?” He didn’t believe those words. Not for a minute. Mere psychological justifications for what he knew to be something far stranger. His face darkened. “To be honest it was more like he was possessed by something. Something evil. And strong.”
He brushed his hair away from his face. I caught sight of a huge purple bruise on his forearm. Grabbing his arm in a light hold, I looked straight at him, eye to eye. “Did he do this to you?”
“Yeah. He hurt me all the time. Broke my hands and legs all the time.” He stopped talking and sat there, watching me, mulling over something. His arms were streaked a violent purple with yellow highlights. He’d admitted to having had his limbs broken recently. But no physical signs indicated he was hurt apart from the shocking bruise.
“You heal?” My matter-of-fact acceptance of the ability to heal gave the poor fellow some confidence to own up.
He nodded and the look of relief flooding his eyes brought tears to my own. I understood what he felt. “What’s wrong with me?”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Todd. You’re just a special kid.” I ruffled his hair and he didn’t resist.
“But why am I this way?” I understood his need to know. At least I came from a family of Walkers. No matter how dysfunctional, I’d at least known what made me different from the start.
“I don’t know.” I kept an eye on the body. On the door. We had to get moving.
“You can see them, can’t you?” Todd seemed to accept the possibility that something evil had possessed his father’s body.
I struggled with a response to his question.
“It’s a little more complicated than that. I can see their residue. They leave it on whatever they touch. I saw it on you.”
Todd rose to his feet and approached the corpse that was once his father.
“What happens when
they take you, like they took my dad?”
“They’re a parasitic entity. They kill their host, slowly enough for them to fill the place left by the soul of the mortal. You father would’ve died a few days after being possessed by the Wraith. And it’s why we can’t detect them on their host. I can only track them through the people they hurt along the way.”
Todd nodded in silent understanding. “This thing was walking around in my father’s dead flesh. Nobody would ever have been able to give my dad the peace he deserved. Thank you.” He looked at me, an earnest honesty on his face. “My father was a good man. Not a great man. But a good man—in his heart.” The boy tapped his chest.
“Do you have somewhere to go? Somewhere safe?”
“I can stay here.” He refused to meet my eyes, clearly not wanting me to see his need.
“It’s better you don’t. In case his friends come looking for him.”
“Do they have like...social networks or something?” Todd scrunched up his forehead in distaste, obviously disliking the thought the soul-sucking killers who had taken his father from him would dare to be social creatures with friends and families like normal people.
“I don’t really know. I’ve only ever seen one of them at a time. And I never stopped to chat about the sociology of Wraiths.” I failed to educate him on the fact my association with Wraiths was wholly based on the method of dispatch. “I think it would be safer for you to be far away from this place for a while.”
“Wraiths?” Todd let the word tumble over his tongue, testing it as he would the taste of a chocolate. “What are they?”
“They are the darker branch of the Ethereals.” My response was automatic, as if it was expected he’d know what an Ethereal was. In a split second, I realized how vastly different our worlds were. But at this moment, those two worlds collided and now, however indirectly, I had the blood of his father on my hands. And I had to be the one to break it to him that the world he lived in was a second reality, and he’d just had about the worst introduction into this world.
