by A. J. Locke
I rolled until I hit the tunnel wall, then lay there stunned and out of breath. I had lost hold of my phone, but the flashlight was still on so I could see that the person was a few feet in front of me. I couldn’t make out much more than a dark silhouette. I got up as quickly as I could, ignoring the ache in my body from being slammed, and tried to inch over to my phone. The dark figure gave me no chance. My phone was kicked away, and then they slammed me again. Before I knew it, I had a slim, yet strong forearm pressed against my throat and I was backed up against the wall. I gasped as the pressure against my windpipe made it hard to breathe.
I brought my legs up and kicked hard. My attacker grunted and stumbled back, and once I was free, I punched them in the face, then grabbed them by the shirt and slammed them into the wall. The scream sounded feminine, as did the body I had grabbed. She turned to me, and it was still too dark to make out any features. She lunged at me, and the bare light glinted off a blade in her hand. Shit.
I sidestepped her attack and swept her legs out from under her. She dropped the knife and I picked it up and swiped at her chest. She moved back, then dropped low and threw herself at me. We fell, and she managed to wrench the knife from my grasp. A punch to the side of her head got her off me and I scrambled to my feet and tried to run. She grabbed at my coat and tried to use it to pull me back, but I had unzipped it so she ended up pulling it off me. However, I still had my scarf on and she used that to yank me back. I lost my footing and fell, and she dragged me up and proceeded to lock me into a full Nelson. Nothing I did made her let me go.
I wasn’t sure what my next move was going to be to try and get out of this, but my attacker sure knew hers. Something slammed into my chest—hard and very, very painful—and for a split second I thought it was her fist. Then I realized it was something much worse.
A knife.
She must have had another knife on her. An attacker always came prepared.
She pulled it out and I slumped to the ground, gasping as searing pain burned through my body. I heard footsteps walk away, and I lay there convulsing, hardly able to believe what had just happened.
Then it all faded to black.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I opened my eyes to darkness, blinked rapidly for a few moments, and tried to let my vision adjust enough so I could see where I was.
Tunnel. In the Underground.
I was lying on the ground in a musty tunnel. I slowly dragged myself to a sitting position. What the hell had happened to me? My body ached, especially my chest. Then I gasped and scrambled to my feet, even though that aggravated the pain. I had been stabbed by some asshole.
I put my hand to my chest and it came away damp. Blood. But that was all I felt, no wound. I slipped my hand under my sweater and gently touched my skin, but it was smooth and unbroken.
What the fuck?
I hadn’t dreamed it—the blood was indication of that—but why wasn’t I dead? Not that I was complaining. I’d had enough of flirting with death to last a lifetime but this was bizarre. Plus, it was the second attempt on my life in a short span of time. Surely that was no coincidence.
I would puzzle over it and freak out once I got out of here. I found my coat, put it on, and zipped it all the way up to hide the blood, then retrieved my phone and got out of the Underground as quickly as I could. It was not the easiest task, since I felt like shit and had several stations and tunnels to get through, but I finally made it back to the entrance I had come down.
I was much happier once I was topside again and breathing fresh air. But I was still confused as hell. How had I survived being stabbed in the chest? And who the hell had just attacked me? Was it connected to the attack from the memorial ceremony? Why were people suddenly gunning for my life?
I made my way back to my car and sat there for a few moments, gulping down the large bottle of water I had bought as I walked back. There had to be an explanation for this.
Hurray, I was alive after a brutal stabbing…but why? This was going to drive me nuts, I couldn’t just go home, have a shower, watch television, and accept that I could take a stab to the chest and bounce back. I could call Micah and talk about it, but all he’d do is freak out and unleash a wave of overprotectiveness that I did not really want to deal with.
The most troubling part of this whole attack wasn’t necessarily who did it, but the fact that a knife to the chest had not killed me. I needed some answers on that front. Immediately. Normally I would go to Ilyse, but since she was no longer my go-to dead witch for answers on troubling things, I’d need to go to someone else.
I called Tielle.
* * *
“Hi.”
I stood in the doorway of Tielle’s office, which was on the twenty-fifth floor of a swanky office building in midtown. This building was where the new Paranormal Control Center and Rune Development Department had set up shop. I wondered how many businesses they had thrown money at so they could evict them to acquire the half-dozen floors they had. There was no way all this space had been sitting around empty, waiting for them to move in.
I think Tielle had been about to smile, then her face realized what was going on and tried to put an end to it, so what she ended up giving me looked like some sort of weird grimace. She looked ultra-professional in her tailored blazer and slacks, and her hair was up in a tight bun. I don’t recall ever seeing her with makeup on before, but I noticed some eyeliner and maybe a hint of blush. Guess when you moved up to a corner office, you upped your look too.
“Selene. Hi…Hello. You look…” She looked me up and down. “Well.”
No, I didn’t, I looked like I’d been in a fight, then passed out in the Underground. Which was why I was here. But it did feel awkward, as I suspected it would. Tielle and I had been on opposing sides right until the end on that bridge when she’d dove in front of the ghost monster to distract it for me. It was strange to face a person who’d been hell bent on stripping my reanimation power only to end up helping me bring Renton down in the end.
Now here we were, and it was clear neither of us really knew how to act. Looking at her, I would never have guessed she’d recently been ravaged by a ghost monster’s claws. Her recovery was truly amazing.
“Please, come in.”
I realized I’d just been standing in the doorway and took a few steps into her large office. Hmmm, should I go for a hug, handshake, or neither? With anyone else, this situation would have definitely called for a heartwarming, emotional hug, but with Tielle…
“I’m glad to see you.” She did better at smiling this time and came forward to offer me her hand. Handshake it was.
I shook it. She gestured to the chair in front of her desk before taking her seat behind it. “I was aware when you came out of the coma, of course, but I’ve been so busy settling in and handling a number of projects that I have been unable to give you a phone call, far less come see you. And I am sorry I missed you at the ceremony, and even sorrier for how horrific things turned out.”
“I’m just glad there were no fatalities, and hopefully that ghost will be captured soon. And Micah told me you visited while I was in the hospital. Thanks. I have to say I was surprised, but glad, when I heard that you were alive. I’d thought the ghost monster killed you.”
“And I thought you had killed yourself. I was amazed when I heard that the paramedics were able to revive you. It has been nothing short of a miracle that you survived and Renton did not.”
“I was prepared to die,” I said softly. “I knew the only way to end it would be to take my reanimation power out of play, and the only way to do that was to take Renton down.”
“I know. It takes more courage than I can fathom to make such a choice. We have had our differences, Selene, and the recovery from the ordeal with Renton is far from over, but to me you are a hero.”
“Well, you told me to go be one.”
“You saved more lives than were lost, that’s what’s important.”
“Do you have any theory on wh
y I’m still alive? I know there’s a lot of speculation, but what do you think?”
“Honestly, I have given it a lot of thought, and the only logical explanation I can think of is that not all of your reanimation power died with Renton.”
“But how could that be possible? He took all of my reanimation power from me.”
“That’s what we’re aware of. But truly, the only way for you to have survived is if he, in fact, did not take all of it. If any amount of your reanimation power still existed—even a very small amount—it would explain why you were able to be revived. And it being only a small amount would account for why you spent a month in a coma. You’d have your own strength to thank for being able to wake up at all.”
“OK, let’s say that’s the reason I’m still alive. If there was some of my reanimation power elsewhere that Renton wasn’t able to absorb, where is it and how did it get there? Because there is none inside me. I can feel it. Well, I mean I can’t feel it.”
“That part of the question I have no answer for,” Tielle said. “But my explanation is the strongest theory out there. If that’s not it, then to me it’s a complete fluke that you’re still alive. A very welcomed fluke, of course.”
I sat back in the chair and chewed my lip as I thought about the possibility that a bit of my reanimation power could still exist somewhere.
“If this is true, and I was able to find it, would I be able to take it back?”
“Yes, you would be able to reabsorb your power, and it would grow back to its full capacity. You would once again be a reanimator.” She gave me a calculating look. “Is that what you would want? What you would do?”
“I…don’t know. On the one hand, I feel off without my reanimation power and it’s a feeling I know will never go away. On the other hand, my reanimation power has caused so many horrible things to happen.”
“Your evolved reanimation power did,” Tielle said. “It would be different this time, as long as you didn’t go bind yourself to another ghost.”
“You sound like you’d be OK if I took my power back. Last I checked, I was supposed to be on the reanimator chopping block.”
“I think we are past that at this point,” Tielle said. “I’m willing to bet that the Paranormal Sector would give you a pass.”
“Wow, all a girl has to do to keep her so-called illegal power is sacrifice herself to save everyone else? Why didn’t all those other reanimators think to do that?”
Tielle gave me a tight smile. “I see your death and month in a coma did nothing to change your sense of humor.”
“I don’t think anything could. You’ve come to love my witty banter, admit it.”
“I will do no such thing.”
It had been awkward at first but the vibe between us felt better now. We weren’t on bestie level by any means, but it was better than any of our encounters had been before.
“Well, if some of my reanimation power is still out there, how the hell do I find it so I know for sure? Can I use a rune to track myself?”
“No, that won’t quite work. I’m not sure how you’d track it down if it’s not something you remember storing away.”
“Great, one more thing for me to go on a search for.”
Tielle raised an eyebrow.
“Ethan is missing.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I keep hoping he will hear that I’m awake and come home.”
“If I can be of assistance in the search, let me know.”
“Sure, give me a top-notch task force to hunt him down. That’d be great.”
Tielle just gave me a look.
“Yeah, I know you can’t do that. But there is something you can help me with. Hopefully. Which is why I’m here in the first place.”
“What is it?”
I told her what had just happened in the Underground. Shock overcame Tielle’s expression and her eyes dropped to my chest. I stood up, took my coat off, and showed her that even though my sweater was stained, my skin was unmarred.
“I swear that knife was almost hilt deep in my chest,” I said. “That was a killing blow.”
Tielle was silent for a short time and I could practically see her thinking. She was a logical, intelligent dead witch, and I hoped she would have a logical answer for this. She’d come up with a plausible theory for why I was still alive, so I was optimistic she would keep the ball rolling.
“Unbelievable,” she finally said. She shook her head, sat back in her chair, and shrugged. “I have no idea what to say. I have never heard of such a thing before.”
My heart sank a little, I had to admit. I really wanted her to give me some kind of explanation, because walking around with no way to understand this was going to make me absolutely insane.
“You don’t have even the smallest suggestion as to why that knife did not kill me?”
“I hate to say it, but no,” Tielle said. “I’m going through every piece of knowledge I have on paranormal changes in a person’s body and how it affects them, like you being bound to a ghost and having an evolution of power, but nothing fits the bill. I can’t think of anything that would result in you being…un-killable. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that you were dead for two minutes.”
“Would being temporarily dead really do that to me?”
“No, something further would have had to happen, but since you were dead, I can’t imagine what.”
“Well, that’s encouraging.”
“Have any other strange things been happening?”
“Sometimes I get this odd feeling. I can’t really describe it, but it feels like something is pulling at me…something from inside me. I know that sounds crazy, but like I said, I can’t really explain it.”
Tielle put on her thinking face again and was quiet for a while. “I think maybe something happened to you those two minutes you were dead. None of these things happened before you died, so your death seems to be the common denominator.”
“But I’ve heard about people dying, then being revived. It’s not really that uncommon, yet I’ve never heard about anyone who then gained the ability to resist being killed.”
“First time for everything,” Tielle offered.
I gave her a look. “That’s real helpful.”
“I know it isn’t, but I will need more time with this information. Actually, now that I think about it, there may be something I can do. I’m not sure it will yield any answers, but it might.” As she spoke, she opened a drawer in her desk and brought out a rectangular box. When she opened it, I saw several runes.
“Fancy li’l case for your runes there,” I commented. “I usually throw mine into my handbag. In a pouch, of course.”
“These aren’t runes I have cause to use very often, but they are on the rare side so I keep them close.”
“And how are they going to help me? I don’t have a great track record with people using runes on me. Yourself included.”
Tielle shifted uncomfortably at my comment, but I wasn’t going to act like the path behind us was rosy. I wasn’t bitching her out; it just was what it was.
Tielle cleared her throat as she rifled through her runes. “I’m going to scan you to see if there is anything different.”
“You’re going to use a scanning rune on me? Those aren’t rare and I don’t think you’re going to detect ghost energy on me.”
“It’s a different sort of scanning rune.” She picked up a rune that was irregular shaped and completely clear, as though it was made of glass. It was streaked with blue and gray.
I wasn’t familiar with that rune. I’d been coming across a lot of new runes lately. It was eye-opening to realize that I didn’t know as much as I thought I knew about the paranormal world.
“The rune will scan your entire metaphysical being, and I will be able to sense if something is off. As I said before, whatever is happening to you is very likely due to something that happened when you died, when for two minutes your ghost was on the other side.”
“So you’re going to scan my ghost to see if there’s anything different about it?”
“Yes, exactly.”
I let out a breath. “All right, sounds simple enough.”
“That is, if you trust me to do it.” Tielle gave me a level gaze as she held the rune in her hand.
“I trust you,” I said. “I’d like to think we’re past the point where you would do something that could potentially kill me. Especially since I recently had a self-inflicted brush with death. Even you have to have a heart in there somewhere.”
Her lips twitched in the barest of smiles as she stood up. “Very well. You’ll need to lie down.”
I lay on the floor and Tielle came and knelt by my side. “Just relax. It won’t hurt.”
I was tempted to say “like the last time?” but remained quiet. I took a deep breath and relaxed as Tielle held the rune an inch or so over my midsection. I could tell when she activated the rune because it started to glow and I could feel its magic creep over me.
It was cool, like the wind at the beginning of fall, and covered my entire body before seeping inside as though my pores just sucked it in. A small gasp escaped me but it wasn’t out of pain. The rune’s power was an unusual sensation. It felt like it was brushing all my organs and sinking even deeper to a place that was beyond what physically made up the inside of my body.
Tielle was very still and quiet. Her eyes were closed, but her lips moved rapidly although I could not decipher what she was saying. Dead witches had their own language when it came to their rune work. It felt like a long time passed and I was starting to get antsy. Was it good or bad that Tielle’s exploration took so long?
Suddenly Tielle’s eyes flew wide open, she gasped, and drew her hand back. She looked shocked, more so than when I had told her I’d gotten stabbed in the chest and didn’t die.
She stared at me with her mouth slightly open. I rose up on my elbows. It was disconcerting to see this amount of emotion from Tielle. It did not bode well.
