“No regrets.” He dove into the light.
~ ~ ~
An eerie cry filled the air as Kayla phased through the thick door. Even muffled by the wood, the sound sent a chill creeping up her spine.
The locking mechanism consisted of a heavy wooden plank slid through two brass rings. Archaic. Anachronistic? Where had this building come from, and why was it here?
Solidifying, she tugged on the plank, sliding it out of the rings. She released it and it thumped to the flagstone flooring.
The doors swung opened and Chris led the others in. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”
Kayla nodded. “What was that high-pitched cry I heard?”
Sniffing the ground, Wanda issued a low whimper.
Wylde crouched, his nose almost to the floor beside her. “Death on black wings.”
Scowling at Wylde, Jason Pike shook his head. “Some kind of bat-winged demon looking thing broke out of an upper story window and flew off into the distance shrieking.”
“Like I said. Bad feeling.” Chris none the less took the lead as they moved down the central hallway.
Voices echoed off the stark stone walls of the dank hallway. So did their tromping footsteps. Pike’s Rangers fanned out in pairs to search as dark rooms and hallways branched off the central corridor. It only took scant minutes to discover the dead.
In a vast upper chamber, they found the butchered bodies of the Ghaim ruling council. And against the far wall . . .
“Joel.” Kayla’s heart fisted in her chest. Tears streamed from her eyes.
They were too late. No breath. No pulse. He was gone.
Chris pushed past her. “No. This isn’t over yet.”
He raised his head and shouted toward the ceiling. “Joel, don’t you dare move on. We can fix this.”
“What?” Kayla’s mind whirled.
Chris released Joel’s shackles, cradling his body as it fell. “His Wi-Fi is still open. I can link and shift his analytic nanobots to repair mode. He hasn’t been dead that long. We’ll still need the cryo tank on the Xi-1, and we’ll need to get him back to Heather ASAP, but if his soul hasn’t moved on, we might be able to save him.”
She’d read the reports on zombiebot creation and rebirth. The soul, or whatever it was, drifted near the body on death. Both Joel and Chris died but their essence found a way back into their bodies. Could it be done again?
If anyone could do it, Heather could.
Provided Joel’s essence was still here.
~ ~ ~
The Xi-1 landed just outside the fortress and Pike’s Rangers pulled the coffin-like cryo unit from storage. Chris laid Joel’s body inside and activated the freezing controls. As frost clouded the window over Joel’s face, Kayla pushed back her tears and fears. She needed to stay strong.
The plane ride back to Xi Force Headquarters had Kayla’s stomach in knots. Was Joel really gone? Was this all just false hope?
She could have used another distracting conversation with Wylde, but he sat brooding in the back of the plane all the way back to the Xi Force Headquarters. Not even the wolves could pull him from his funk. It was like he’d lost his best friend. Maybe he had. Did Wylde have any other human friends?
Wanda simply laid her head in his lap as Natasha paced the aisle.
“I’m between telling you not to get your hopes up, and don’t lose hope.” Jason Pike took the seat next to Kayla. “I’d have had to be blind not to see how much you care for Joel. We all care for him, but not like you.”
Jason was a handsome, fit, former Army Ranger in his mid-fifties. Her friend, mentor, and yes, father figure. Her real father never really forgave her for giving up medicine. Jason accepted her as she was.
Pike’s Rangers had become as much a part of Xi Force as the superheroes, but received little to no press or accolades. Still, Jason lost men. Men he’d trained and cared about.
Salty, with a thick crust but a melty center, if anyone cared to delve deep enough, Jason Pike had been selected to lead an elite force to back up the birth of the Xi Force unit. He wasn’t married, and claimed no family except his men.
He’d handpicked his rangers from all branches of service and then personally trained them. At some point it was expected his service would no longer be needed, that Xi Force would have enough super powered humans to handle any threat without any backup. What would Jason do then?
Well, they had a ways to go before that happened. He was here now, and that was what counted.
Kayla pulled in a deep breath. “I don’t even know what to think. What to feel.”
As hard as Kayla tried to step back and view Joel’s situation dispassionately, her heart still ached. She found it hard to breathe. In just minutes they’d be landing. Heather would pull Joel’s body from cryo, examine him, and find . . . what?
An empty husk? A robot?
Jason reached over and took her hand, squeezing gently.
His support helped her pull back the tears that threatened.
~ ~ ~
Deep reverberating voices, argued in a language Joel didn’t understand. But they were definitely arguing.
“Where am I?” The light shown so brightly, Joel couldn’t see. Everything was a blur.
A guttural growl. A rebuke?
Then a strong wind, or force sent Joel tumbling back. Spinning, falling.
“Sucks to be you.” The voice held a child-like quality.
Joel shook his head to clear the cobwebs.
A young girl stood in front of him. Raven-haired, dark brown eyes, the child couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old. Hispanic or Mediterranean heritage, if he had to guess.
Joel willed his body to float up. At least he didn’t have to learn how to do that all over again. “Who are you?”
He glanced around.
The ball of light pulsed behind him, but he no longer felt the pull. He was back in the Ghaim Island chamber where Amber killed him. The bodies still littered the floor, but his no longer hung on the wall.
“Just another lost soul, like you.” The girl cocked her head and crossed her arms. “Welcome to purgatory. My name is Olivia Diego.”
Straight black hair fell to the middle of her back. Her eyes widened as she looked him up and down. The girl’s body appeared translucent. He could see forms in the room behind her.
“Purgatory?” That didn’t sound good.
Olivia shrugged. “That’s what I call it. I have no idea what it really is. Undeath maybe. In any case, you’ve just been thrown out of heaven, or whatever the upper dimensions are.”
This was so surreal. “But I am dead, right?”
Somehow he didn’t feel quite dead. He’d gone into the light yet ended up right back here.
“Yeah. Well . . . maybe. I mean you’ve been here before.”
He had, but how did she know? “You’re very well informed, young lady.”
“I try. It’s not like there’s lots to do here.” She shrugged, then pointed at him. “And you’re kind of a legend here in the ghost world.”
“Me?” This got more interesting by the minute.
“The longest anyone has ever come here for a visit and gone back to the living side. You didn’t see them, but quite a few ghosts saw you drift back to that hospital the first time you died.”
When Amber killed him the first time, it was in a dark, back alleyway. He’d floated back to the hospital where they took his body. He’d searched for hours to find his body that time. Joel glanced back at the wall where he’d been hanging. “What happened to my corpse?”
“Some of your friends showed up and took it while you were in the light.” Olivia drifted away from him, and motioned him to follow. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. A Palentre li
ke this is not a good place for a ghost to be, especially with all these bad spirits hanging around waiting to get sucked down to the lower dimensions.”
“A Palentre?” He’d never heard the word before.
“This castle is a Palentre, a place where the dimensional walls are thinner. Your girlfriend brought this one here from somewhere in Central America using an ancient ritual.”
Joel shook his head. “Amber is so not my girlfriend.”
Olivia’s eyes brightened. “Well, let’s just agree to call her that red-headed, wacko, bitch then. Because she is that.”
“No argument here.” He began to warm to the quirky ghost girl.
“Anyway, in a Palentre it’s easier to summon creatures from other dimensions, like that demon Red brought across into her body. An extremely foolish thing to do, but you know . . . humans.”
Olivia seemed a fount of information and knowledge. “So do you think Amber can control the demon?”
“Pfft, I doubt it. But she did seem to know what she was doing. She wanted Necromance to cross into her. That was no mistake.”
Amber was power crazed. Of course she would convince herself she could control a demon, if it fit her twisted plans.
“She brought this castle here for that specific purpose.”
“I’m not even sure where here is.” How long had he been unconscious?
Olivia motioned him toward one of the high windows. “Some island in the middle of the Mediterranean. I floated over from Greece. Took over a day. Not that time means anything when you’re dead, but it was pretty boring.”
Joel was intrigued. “So why did you come?”
“The moving of a Palentre causes ripples through Purgatory that us ghosts can feel. I got curious, so I came to find out what was going on. Lots of others did too.”
“There are other ghosts here?” Joel looked around, but didn’t see any others.
“You’ll see ‘em in time. Takes a few weeks to acclimate. I’m kind of special. Everyone can see me. Everyone dead anyway. Eventually you’ll be like that kid in the movie who sees dead people too.” She chuckled. “No, I guess you’ll be more like Bruce Willis.”
Okay, that was a bit grim. “Aren’t you a bit young to be seeing that movie?”
“Saw it after I died. One of the few perks of being dead, free movies. Who’s gonna stop me? I can go anywhere. And I have seen some shit . . .” She led him down a hallway toward a swirling circle of energy. “I do miss popcorn though.”
Chapter 18
“I am functional,” was so not the way Joel would have responded.
A tear welled in Kayla’s eye.
He was gone. She’d have to accept that. The zombiebot computer in his head controlled the hollow shell of the man she loved.
Heather must have seen her pain. She hugged Kayla. “Don’t give up yet. It took a while the last time. I don’t know how the metaphysical elements of this work. There’s no real way to research it.”
The nanobots had repaired the physical damage to Joel’s body. The computer inside his head controlled him now. Joel had become everything a zombiebot was supposed to be at the beginning of the project.
A soulless servant.
“There’s a video.” Kirk Peter’s spoke through clenched teeth. “Joel must have been recording.”
Placing a comforting hand on Kayla’s shoulder, Heather caught her gaze. “Are you sure you’re up to this.”
Kayla nodded. She needed to be. She needed to know what happened, and why it happened. If she couldn’t save Joel, she could at least work to avenge him.
~ ~ ~
Colors pulsed from red, through purple, to blue, like glitter swirling in the air around Joel. Reflecting light from no source he could detect. What had the girl led him into?
When his vision cleared he was again in cut stone caverns, but a damp chill permeated the air here unlike the tropical feel of the castle he’d just left. The tang of mold and decay tickled his nose, and he was thankful he didn’t have to draw in a breath.
Funny how he could still hear, and smell, even though he was dead. He could feel but not touch. Was this what Kayla felt when she phased?
The vast circular chamber featured a high domed ceiling. Dozens of doorways lined the wall all around, one right next to the other. “Where are we?”
Olivia stood beside him. “I’m not sure it has a name. I call it the Nexus. A place between places. My brother, Carlos, helped me find it. I can always come back here. And because I created a new portal from that island, I won’t have to float over from Greece again, if I ever want to go back there. From here, I can go just about anywhere.”
Anywhere? Obviously he had a lot to learn about being dead. Thank goodness this little ghost took him under her wing. “Is your brother dead too?”
“Nope, lucky little bastard. Well, not so little any more. He got to grow up.”
“How long have you been dead?” If that wasn’t the oddest question he’d ever asked, it came close.
She cocked her head, eyes glazing as if deep in thought. “I think about twenty years. Maybe a bit more. So easy to lose track.”
So this little girl was over thirty years old?
“You will be thirty-two next October twelfth.” This new voice resonated with a deeper masculine tone.
“Carlos.” Olivia’s eyes widened, and a big smile spread across her face.
Another ghost drifted into the chamber. This one, an adult male. Dark, longish hair framed a stern face sporting a perfectly manicured goatee. “And how is my favorite hermanita today?”
Arms akimbo, Olivia confronted the newcomer. “Stuff it, bro, I’m your only sister. And it’s about time you got here. What kept you?”
“The usual stuff. Drugs, human trafficking, the dregs of humanity.”
Joel eyed the newcomer skeptically. “I thought you said your brother was still alive.”
Olivia nodded. “He is. This is just his astral projection.”
Carlos’s gaze swept the room. “You’ve added a few doors since I was last here.”
She shrugged. “Thunder from Down Under went on tour again. Even a dead girl has got to live it up a bit every now and then.”
He rolled his eyes, then swept his gaze to Joel. “Who’s your friend?”
Joel held out his hand. “Joel Weisberg. Pleased to meet you.”
Chuckling, Carlos swiped his hand through Joel’s. “And newly dead, I see. Well, you are in the best of company for your situation. How did you manage to get stuck here? Was there no light? Or are you waiting for the darkness to drag you down?”
Olivia huffed. “Carlos, you know me better than that. I don’t associate with those destined for the lower dimensions. He actually got spit out of the light. Never saw that happen before. That’s one of the reasons I called for you.”
Raising an eyebrow, Carlos shifted his gaze to her. “One of the reasons?”
“Ever heard of a demon called Necromance?”
He pursed his lips. “Can’t say that I have.”
“Well, whatever it is, some idiot summoned a Palentre, sacrificed a ton of people to it, and let the damn demon into her body. And I think she was using a Muramasa sword.”
“Hmm. Let’s go to my library and see what we can find.”
~ ~ ~
Seated in front of her computer screen, Kayla forced herself to watch the video a second time. The whole bloody massacre of Ghiam officials, Amber’s transformation . . . Joel’s death. It had been hard enough to watch that thing murder Joel the first time, but she steeled her emotions. She didn’t want to miss anything that might help her extract vengeance.
I’m so going to kill Kayla for stealing you from me. Amber’s words echoed in her mind, but the threat only hardened her resolve.
So you’re coming for me now? That didn’t scare her. Bring it, bitch.
Vengeance was all she had left. The soul-crushing ache in her chest diminished to a cold, emptiness. As Jason Pike taught her, she used her sorrow to fuel her vengeance. One way or another, Amber, or whatever she’d become, was going to pay for killing Joel.
A hand, softly placed on her shoulder, brought Kayla out of her reverie.
“Tell me what you’re thinking. Don’t internalize this.” Heather captured her gaze.
Kayla drew in a deep, cleansing breath. Tried to grasp anything that resembled a feeling. “When this is all over, I’m going to need a couple cases of wine and a good shrink, but right now, I just want to kill her.”
Heather’s brow furrowed. “So, you’ve given up on Joel?”
No. Never.
Crap. Maybe.
She sighed. “It’s been over a day now. He’s still a robot.”
“Chris thinks we need to bring him back to the island. That Joel’s spirit can’t find his way back. It’s too far away.”
It was something. A sliver of hope to cling to, or a real possibility? No one understood how this thing worked.
“Are we going to?”
Nodding, Heather drew Kayla out of her seat. “Come on. We both need some coffee. The international coalition has the island under lockdown as they investigate. Aaron’s cutting through the red tape. That might take another day or two. But yes, we are going back.”
On their way to the cafeteria they encountered John Wylde, pacing the floor by the back doorway. Natasha and Wanda followed in his footsteps. The scowl on his face was enough to cause Heather to stop and take a step back.
The man did have a rather frightening manner until you got to know him.
“What’s wrong?” So wrapped up in her own grief, she’d barely taken the time to check in on him. He’d lost . . . loved ones? Family? How close had he been to the wolves of his pack?
Phaze Page 13
