The Ravaging in Between (The Reanimation Files Book 3)

by A. J. Locke

  Sorting my dirty clothes was pretty much like sorting through the harrowing adventures I’d been through since waking up from my coma. No one’s clothes should ever be in this bad a condition.

  As I neared the bottom of my laundry basket, I pulled out a sweater.

  “Ugh, bloodstains.” It was the sweater I’d been wearing when I was attacked in the Underground. The bloodstains on the front were a jarring reminder of Larry’s first attack. I’m not sure what caused me to throw this in my laundry basket instead of the garbage. There was no saving this sweater.

  I was about to go toss it when I turned it over and saw a splatter of blood on the back of the shirt.

  How’d that get there? I’d only been stabbed in the chest.

  As I continued to stare at it, something began to dawn on me. That had been a very physical fight, where I’d drawn blood on my opponent. That’s what gave me pause.

  The person who attacked me had not been a ghost wearing energy runes. It had been a warm-bodied, very much alive person. Plus, when Larry had shown up, he’d said “third time’s the charm,” which implied he had only tried to use others to attack me twice before: Jack Grom at the memorial ceremony, and the trio of idiots at the park. And he had only used crossover ghosts. Somehow I doubted he could have sought out a living thug for hire to do his bidding. All the consequences for attacking me would fall to them, and not the man who was already dead and couldn’t be persecuted. No one would take that risk.

  So who had attacked me in the Underground and why? It was all so distant and blurry now that I couldn’t really think of anything helpful in pinpointing who that was. Was it a random attack, which wasn’t uncommon in the Underground, or had someone targeted me, which seemed like the more plausible scenario given my track record.

  There was a good chance the blood belonged to my attacker. It had likely gotten there after I’d slashed her and she put me in that full Nelson.

  Maybe I could get a DNA match and find the bitch.

  And I knew exactly where to go to try and get help.

  Looked like I’d be heading to Affairs of the Dead a day early.

  * * *

  I was hoping I could get into the elevator and up to the morgue without encountering anyone, and by anyone I meant Jacob, but that hope was dashed as soon as I stepped inside the lobby and saw him standing by the elevators.

  I took a step back, intending to wait outside until he had taken an elevator up, but he turned and saw me. Damn it. A chilling smile curled his lips as I walked over.

  “Selene, so good to see you again,” Jacob said. The false sincerity behind his words was not lost on me. The elevator doors slid open, and I had no choice but to get on. Jacob pressed the button for the twelfth floor and I hit six for the morgue.

  “Are you here to hurl more murderous accusations at me?” The bemused tone to his voice made me want to slap him.

  “What I’m here for is none of your business.”

  “No? So it has nothing to do with the paranormal bigwigs who requested that I allow them to use this building?”

  So Tielle had already called. And of course he’d said no. Tielle really might have to bring PTF officers and official paperwork to shove in Jacob’s face.

  “It seems you have a bit of world-saving to do again,” he continued.

  “Not the world, just some people,” I muttered.

  Since when did it take so long to go up six floors?

  Jacob chuckled. “I told Ms. Chen the building was at her disposal. And to be sure to pay for any damages.”

  The doors finally slid opened, but I stopped halfway out and turned to Jacob. “You said yes?”

  “Of course,” Jacob said, as though that should be obvious. “Once the problem was explained I had to offer my assistance. It’s unfortunate that I will be leaving town for a short trip tonight, but the building is open to assist you however you need.”

  I just stared at him, eyes slightly narrowed. To say I was suspicious about how readily he allowed us to use the building was an understatement. But I couldn’t figure out what sinister angle I could conclude from this.

  “Well…thanks.” It was awkward, but I didn’t know what else to say. I really hadn’t expected him to comply so easily. At least he wouldn’t be around to watch it all go down tomorrow. That was a small blessing.

  “Of course.” His smile never wavered. I turned around to leave but he stepped up to keep the doors from closing and called me back. His smile vanished.

  “I am not heartless to the plight of others, Ms. Vanream,” Jacob said. There was a dark undertone to his voice that unsettled me. “But when it comes to you, it is a different story. You made accusations against me that were false, but you would be remiss in thinking that I will not have my revenge for the grievances you incurred upon my family. I just so happen to think that death would be too quick a punishment. You deserve to suffer. So make no mistake, Selene.” He spat my name like it was poison on his lips. “You will not see me coming, you will not know when I will strike, but trust me, I will absolutely and completely destroy your life.”

  Then he stepped back and the elevator doors slid closed.

  I released a breath. His words had sent a chill through me; there were goose bumps all over my body. I had felt the weight of that threat. They were not empty words and I had no doubt that Jacob would do whatever he could to exact revenge on me. It was a deeply troubling issue to add to my list, but right now I had to ignore it. I had immediate problems. Jacob and the hammer he sought to bring down on my life was a future problem. One I’d deal with after this ordeal was over. And hopefully survive.

  I took a deep breath to calm myself, gripped the bag with the sweater tighter, and headed to the morgue to find Dr. Lane.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  An hour and a half later I was back home, feeling a lot more weary than I thought I would from just dropping off a blood-stained sweater. My encounter with Jacob had rattled me and I had yet to fully recover from it. It was never a good thing when someone was out to destroy you. Why couldn’t I damn well be done with the McNabb family once and for all? They were like a plague on my life.

  I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I hadn’t been paying much attention to my surroundings, so when I saw something in the kitchen from the corner of my eye. I immediately reached for a gun that wasn’t on me because I’d left it here. My tension eased though when I saw Kyo float out of the kitchen with Luna at his heels.

  “Kyo!”

  He stopped and put his hands up. “I didn’t know if it was safe to return yet, but I took a chance. Are you OK? Is that freaky power thing going to rear its head and suck me in?”

  “No,” I said. “I was able to gain control over it, you should be fine. Do you want an energy rune?”

  He nodded, so I found an energy rune and activated it. As I slipped it over his head, the dead magic could feel Kyo’s proximity and buzzed with excitement as it tried to reach for him, but I squashed it down and kept my shields locked tight around it. The charm Magda gave me greatly helped. Especially since I was tired and distracted and thus likely to have a slip up and drag Kyo back to the…

  “In Between.” I stared at Kyo with wide eyes. “You’re from the In Between too.”

  “Uh, yeah, I thought we covered that. Selene, are you losing your mind?”

  I had flopped down onto the sofa and Kyo came and sat next to me. Luna tried to leap up but hadn’t realized yet that she was too small, so I scooped her up. She abandoned my lap for Kyo’s though.

  What was with this dog and handsome men? Eh, couldn’t blame her.

  Kyo looked at me expectantly as he scratched behind Luna’s ear.

  “Ah, fuck,” I said. “I had forgotten about you. Damn.”

  “Ouch, and here I thought we were getting to be so close,” Kyo said with mock hurt in his voice.

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that, let me explain.” I told him everything that had happened while I was with Micah and Tiel
le and the conclusion we had come to about how to fix things.

  “So that means that you too are going to have to go back.” I liked Kyo; I was beginning to think of him as a friend, even though there was still a lot that I didn’t know him. I didn’t relish the thought of him going back to eternity in that bleak hellhole corralling ghost monsters and trying to stay away from Absorbers like the one I’d gotten tangled up with.

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm? That’s all you have to say? Do you actually want to go back to the In Between?”

  “Not at all,” Kyo replied, giving me a sly smile. “But I think there is a good chance I can avoid your pull, no matter how irresistible it might be.”

  “How so? From what I’ve experienced of this dead magic so far, it’s extremely powerful and it will draw in any and every ghost it can. And once Tielle hooks me up to the runes on Affairs of the Dead, I can’t even imagine how much stronger it will become. How do you hope to avoid that? Gonna skip town?”

  “Gonna tell you a story.” Kyo’s expression sobered. “Because you see, I didn’t end up in the In Between under the typical circumstances. I told a little lie before when you were asking me about my past. I was imprisoned there.”

  My eyes widened. “Imprisoned?”

  “Indeed,” Kyo replied. “And I was but one of many. I need to stay here because I would like your help.”

  “With what?” I asked cautiously.

  “Getting my body back from the people who have been using it for the past three hundred years. The dead witches.”

  I stared at Kyo, frowning. “You’re not making much sense. Dead witches have been using your body? In what way?”

  “Let me explain. I am…well, I was…a dead witch, or should I say, dead warlock…”

  “Dead witch?” I repeated.

  “Warlock,” he corrected. “It has irked me that we all prevail under the term ‘witch’ these days, though it does not surprise me.”

  “Dead warlock.” The phrase felt weird to say. Wrong, almost. “Interesting. Male dead…warlocks…are rare.” Dr. Perlysse was the most recent one I knew of, but other than him I couldn’t think of any others. I’m sure they were out there, they probably just weren’t prominent figures like Perlysse had become.

  “Rare, yes, that is what I realized during my explorations of your modern world,” Kyo said. “But we weren’t always so rare a breed. During my time we were plentiful, but the dead witches are the direct reason why that is not the case anymore.”

  “How so?”

  “You could say there was tension with our female counterparts,” Kyo said. “We were of one magic, yet there was a divide. The witches and warlocks each wanted to follow their own path when it came to working with dead magic. They had their own leaders, and those leaders were not interested in working together to make us one faction, even though combining our strength would have been to the benefit of us all. Of course there were those who fought against the divide, witches and warlocks working together to bridge the gap, but their numbers were not large enough to make a difference. And there was dissent from necromancers as well as the non-paranormal community, who felt we were not doing enough to stop necromancers from dying of the Rot. But the biggest source of conflict came around the time reanimators were being razed from the earth. The human government, as well as whatever version of the Paranormal Sector existed in those days, wanted us to help sniff out reanimators and kill them, but of course on this topic we were divided.”

  “Let me guess, one half wanted to help and the other half did not?”

  “Can you guess which?” Kyo asked bemusedly.

  “The warlocks weren’t on board with the razing.”

  “Right. Our leaders were aware of the problems reanimators could pose, but did not think killing them off was the solution.”

  “What did they think was a better course of action?”

  “Educate them, teach them to become a community and not abuse their power. Reanimators in those days were isolated; they had no guidance or support and mainly used their power against each other. They were a wild, erratic bunch and it’s probable that even if the government hadn’t come after them they would have eventually wiped themselves out.”

  “From what I know of history, you’re probably right.”

  “So the warlocks were the dissenting voice, and of course if you were against the majority you became the enemy and had to be taken care of.”

  “So the dead witches started to kill you off?”

  “No, what they did was much worse. They stole our power and shoved our souls into that lovely place we know as the In Between.”

  “Stole your power?”

  “It didn’t happen overnight. It took many, many years, and once we realized what was happening, we were too few in number and they had grown too strong off our magic to effectively strike back. They targeted us everywhere, all across the world. They made it look like war. Conflict between the dead mages where the stronger side won. We were already the smaller group; there had always been more witches than warlocks, so their numbers helped. We were kidnapped from our homes or off the streets. Entire groups were taken when we gathered to do rune work. Then the witches used reanimators they had forced to work for them to draw our souls out of our bodies. Once they did that, they had those reanimators open a necromancer circle and force us into the Afterlife.”

  “Shit.” I was reeling from all the information I was taking in. It was mind-blowing how much of paranormal history was unknown.

  “But of course we were sent over without our magic, which you know must be transferred to a dead mage’s ghost before they enter the Afterlife, or the magic remains trapped in the body and can be used by others.”

  “Which is exactly what happened to all of you warlocks,” I said.

  Kyo nodded. “Before my ghost was banished I knew enough of the witches’ plan to know that they were going to siphon our power for as long as they could. Which could be a very long time because as long as the soul exists, whether in this plane of existence or another, our bodies wouldn’t rot, and our magic would never cease. Our magic is dead magic; it transcends the barriers between the worlds.”

  Made sense to me seeing as I was carrying dead magic due to a connection to a ghost in the In Between.

  “So it became an endless well of power for them to draw from,” I said.

  “Exactly. And if I had to guess, there are warlock bodies hidden all over the world being used by this generation’s dead witches to make their magic stronger. I’ve learned enough after coming back to this side to see just how far they’ve come and how valued they are by your society. Not only could they boost their strength, but they could heal from sickness and injury quicker, and even lengthen their lifespan. Not to the point of immortality, but I’ve seen that nowadays there are many centurion dead witches.”

  He was right. The dead witch community had the most elders of any of the paranormal communities and definitely trumped the non-paras. But something else he just said caught my attention more.

  “Heal from injuries?” I thought about Tielle and how quickly she’d recovered from that brutal attack by Isabelle’s beastie. She was healed and back to work in less than a month. After seeing what happened to her on the bridge I had thought she died for sure. Was it possible that Tielle’s quick recovery was due to using the magic from a dead warlock’s soul-less body?

  “Something the matter?”

  “A lot,” I said, shaking my head. “But go on, what else were you saying?”

  “Just that I became aware of a severe lack of dead warlocks in existence today. If I had to guess, the reason is probably that as time went on if a dead witch gave birth to a male…” He trailed off, but I knew where he was heading.

  “You’re suggesting male infants are killed at birth?” I couldn’t begin to describe how awful that notion made me feel.

  “Well, on one hand, gender lines with dead mages are strongly determined by whether or not one of the par
ents is a witch or warlock. A dead witch with a non-para or necromancer partner is more likely to give birth to a female with dead magic instead of necromancy, and a dead warlock’s partner is more likely to conceive a male in the same vein. A witch and warlock together have a fifty/fifty chance of either gender. Yet even so, there are significantly less dead warlocks around these days than there should be. So if it’s not infanticide, then I don’t know what the explanation is. I don’t think they just keep getting lucky with only birthing females.”

  I didn’t know what to say so I said nothing. This completely shattered the image I’d previously had of the dead witches. Had Ilyse known about this? Did she siphon magic from some warlock’s corpse? Did she know if dead witches killed male babies? Ilyse never had children and now I wondered if it was because she didn’t want to chance having a boy and being forced to kill him due to the choices her ancestors made.

  “This must not be easy for you to hear,” Kyo said softly. His dark eyes watched me carefully.

  “That’s putting it lightly.” I blew out a breath and ran my hands through my hair. “And if all of this is true, then the paranormal community has been sitting on top of secrets darker and more sinister than I could have ever imagined.”

  “It has,” Kyo said.

  “But if there are a bunch of you in the In Between, does that mean that a bunch also crossed back over?”

  “So far I have not come across anyone else,” Kyo replied. “But part of the reason is because many of them have fallen victim to Absorbers over the years. Some…some even gave themselves over to the ghost monster pits. They couldn’t handle an eternity in the In Between.” His voice held a sad edge. “Thousands of us were sent over but only a few hundred remain. If even that.”

  “So does that mean that the magic in their bodies dissipated once their ghost was absorbed or…eaten?”