Ghost Dance

by Rebecca Levene

  Alex let the same man lead her by the arm as they fought onward, deeper into the trap. She knew she'd be safer in the spirit world, where bullets couldn't touch her. But she remembered the endless spiral and thought about walking it eternally and kept herself in the mundane world, where the worst that could happen to her was death.

  There were fewer Croatoans to face them now. Alex looked down at their young faces as she walked over their corpses and wondered that they'd been happy to sacrifice themselves just to bait a trap. They hardly needed to die anymore; she and her allies could only go forward. But they kept on fighting, as if they didn't realise that they'd served their purpose.

  A bullet tore past her ear, clipping the lower lobe. The blood dripped to the floor and the wound stung and then throbbed. Another room, another gunfight, and now Morgan was with them. He quivered with tension, his face hardened by the blood smeared across his cheek and brow. She saw other splatters of blood on his T-shirt and soaking one leg of his jeans, but from the easy way he moved she guessed that none of it was his.

  And then the seemingly endless corridor ended and there were no more young men and women to throw their lives away against the militia's guns. There was just one person in the room: a curly-haired man. Though she'd never seen his face, she knew that he was the same figure who'd haunted her for seven years - the aura of danger he carried was unmistakable. His spirit self didn't surprise her, a grinning fox with blood around its muzzle, but his human face was more ordinary than she'd expected, the only unusual thing about him the pale hazel of his eyes.

  He looked at them in shock, as if bringing them here hadn't been part of his plan. But in his hand he was holding a curling ram's horn with a gilded tip.

  "Coby," Morgan said. "You work fast."

  "I had friends."

  "So do I - and they're here and armed. Give me the shofar."

  "Or I could just use it," Coby said. "Drive all your spirits from all your bodies. Leave you empty."

  "I already am," Morgan said. "The shofar doesn't work against me, so hand it over before someone gets trigger happy. I don't need to kill you, but I really don't have a big problem with it."

  Coby's eyes flickered around the room, but there was no help for any of them there. It was a white box: no furniture, no windows. One of Jimmy's men tried the door through which they'd entered. He pushed then kicked and it remained stubbornly closed.

  "You're trapped too," Morgan said to Coby.

  Alex thought he'd deny it, but he remained silent, and after a second he passed the shofar to Morgan. Morgan's hands shook as he took it, and she wondered what the artefact meant to him. It seemed to shiver the air around it, as if it burned with some unknown heat. But the Croatoans wouldn't simply have left it here for them to find, it made no sense.

  At first she didn't notice it, a spreading yellow-green stain against the white. But when she felt the harsh taste against the back of her throat, she knew what she was seeing. A mist was settling over the room and the people in it. She coughed as she inhaled it.

  "Gas," she gasped. "They're gassing us."

  The men took a moment too long to react, gazes still locked on the shofar. By the time they turned, their hands were already clutched to their chests as they were shaken with racking coughs.

  Jimmy's eyes locked on hers, small and bright and desperate. "Lady, it's now or never. Get us out of here."

  She drew a breath and choked on it. Her head felt light and her eyesight was greying. The runes mocked her, a knot she couldn't untangle. But they were at the centre of the pattern now and finally she saw it - the end of the thread that bound this place together and trapped her inside it.

  Her lungs burned with the poison gas and her eyes were blurry with tears. She forced herself to keep them open, on the spirit world and the mundane, as she reached out her hand towards the runes and the loose thread in the spirit trap. Her fingers passed through the physical wall and tried to close around something that wasn't quite real. She resisted the urge to tighten them and tightened her mind instead, squeezing it hard around the idea of a knot, and the way everything would just unravel once it was loosened.

  Her head ached, her flesh felt bloated and her heart was beating hard and erratic, an unhealthy beat. She ignored it all and just pulled. The pattern of the runes tightened, and tightened - and then it all just fell apart. The runes frayed and fragmented and the building vanished from the spirit world, where it was never meant to be.

  But it was still there in the real world, along with the poison gas that was killing everyone inside it. She tried to gasp in a breath and it burned down her throat and into her lungs, toxic and unnourishing. She needed to escape to the spirit world now. She could survive only a few more seconds here before her body starved of oxygen and died. She reached out with her mind as she turned to take a last look at Morgan and the men around him, ready to leave them behind.

  A memory jabbed at her conscience: PD's face as she'd shut the door on him and left him for their enemies. There'd been no betrayal in his eyes. He hadn't known what she was doing. But she would see it in Morgan's face now if she left him.

  She'd see it in all their eyes. There was no time, no finesse and barely any energy left in her. She summoned everything she could and cast the net of her mind over the room and everyone in it. And then she reached out to the spirit world and pulled herself towards it, dragging everyone behind her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Morgan felt a dislocation that tumbled him to his knees. One second his throat was burning and his heart straining against the poison he'd inhaled, and the next it was all gone. The building had just... disappeared. He was kneeling on rocks and sand. The sharp edges of flints pressed into him through his jeans, as real as anything he'd ever felt.

  The men of the militia were still there. His eyes were half-blinded by the sudden noonday sun and their expressions were hidden from him. They'd all wanted Alex to save them, but he doubted any of them believed she really could. And they had the shofar. He looked down at it in his hand, the horn a slightly paler brown than his skin. Holding it was odd. The thing felt like it was vibrating, but he could see that it wasn't. He didn't doubt how powerful it was.

  Jimmy stood with his back to Morgan. His tall body was hunched over, giving him the profile of a great bear, bestial and on the point of violence. "Where are we?" he growled.

  Morgan shrugged. "Away from the poison gas. Back near the town, maybe?"

  "We're exactly where we were before," Alex said. "But we're in the spirit world."

  She turned towards him, bringing her face into sunlight. He scrambled to his feet so he could back away from her. Her eyes were pure black, round like a bird's. Her face, pretty before, had become a caricature of itself, the cheekbones too prominent, the nose sharp and beak-like.

  She frowned at him. "What's the matter? I saved you, didn't I?"

  "You look..." He shook his head. "What are you?"

  Her frown deepened as she brought her hands up to her face, groping it. "What do I look like?"

  "Your face is... sharper. And your eyes are black, like-"

  "-a raven's." She looked resigned rather than shocked. "Of course. We're in the spirit world. What you're seeing is my spirit self."

  Jimmy turned and it was only because he was prepared this time that Morgan managed not to take another step back. The militia leader's face was barely human at all. His jaw had elongated and his nose flattened and darkened. His fair hair was now light fur extending from his hairline to his back and down his massively muscled shoulders.

  Around him, his men were staring at each other in horror. Some of them had pointed, fox-like ears, others had tails. None of them were unchanged.

  "So what do I look like?" Morgan asked Alex.

  Her bright black eyes blinked at him. "You look exactly the way you did before. What are you, Morgan?"

  His gut clenched, but it only confirmed what he'd already known. "I'm a man without a spirit. I've got no soul."


  Alex was still staring at him when Jimmy picked her up by the collar of her blouse, lifting her until she was nose-to-nose with him. "What have you done to us?" he shouted. His mouth was too full of teeth.

  "It's not me," she gasped. "It's this place. Look at me. It's me too."

  He snarled but lowered her until she was able to support herself on the tips of her toes. The nine other men who'd made it through the compound clustered around her, hostile and scared.

  Morgan put a hand on Jimmy's unnaturally broad shoulder. "Let her go, man. She saved our lives. She's right. It's this place that's fucking you up, not her."

  Jimmy's grip loosened a little. "How do I know you're not working with her?"

  "Because Lahav told you I was all right. Come on - you know I'm not the bad guy.

  They turned to look at Coby. He stood at the edge of the group, fox muzzle dripping blood onto the sand. Morgan suddenly became very aware of the shofar in his hand and the other man's covetous eyes on it. "Don't even think about it," he said. "This is going to Lahav and you're going to prison."

  "If any of us ever get out of here," Coby said. He looked at Alex. "I know about spirit travelling - I've studied it. The effort it took to bring us here must have pretty much burned you out. There's no way you're taking us back right now."

  Jimmy's massive, hairy body was quivering with rage as he turned to her. "Lady, is that true? Have you trapped us in this godforsaken place?"

  Her strange black eyes were bright as she looked at Jimmy. When he'd first met Alex, Morgan felt he could trust her. She'd seemed a little out of her depth, not like the other players who jockeyed for position in the occluded world. Now her bird eyes and sharp nose gave her face an entirely different cast. Not evil exactly, but certainly not trustworthy.

  "This is the spirit world," she said. "The place shamans and wise men visit in their dreams. But I can travel here in the waking world and I can take you back, just... not right now. I need time to recharge."

  Jimmy growled and Morgan grabbed him, holding him back from her.

  "You're saying this is... the afterlife? Heaven?" Morgan said.

  Alex shook her head. "It's not heaven or hell. I don't know, it just is."

  "There's nothing but heaven and hell," Jimmy snarled. "Anything else is an illusion sent by Satan to tempt us."

  Alex raised an eyebrow. "Have it your way. Then let's just say we're in an antechamber to hell. I've been here before and I know the rules."

  "I don't like you, Miss CIA," Jimmy said. "Seems to me you feel right at home in this hell-hole."

  She shook her head, standing her ground. "I'm just a traveller. Try to remember, though. I brought you here - and I'm the only one who can bring you back."

  "Is that a threat?" Jimmy bared his sharp teeth.

  "Of course it was a threat," Morgan snapped. "And it's a good one, because she's right. We need her to get out of here. Unless you want to be stuck in whatever the fuck this place is forever, looking like - well, like that."

  Jimmy frowned and Morgan realised the other man hadn't even considered what the place might have done to him. "Big teeth," Morgan told him, "and a hairy back - like a bear."

  Jimmy looked to his men and paled when they nodded.

  "I don't think we can take being in this place for long," Morgan said to Alex. "It's freaking out a bunch of big armed men with guns and I'm not too keen on it either. When are you gonna be strong enough to get us out?"

  Her sharp-planed face suddenly looked a lot less sure of itself.

  She opened her mouth to reply, then shut it again as he grasped her shoulder and shook his head.

  When they stopped speaking, other sounds became much clearer. Morgan could hear the wind as it combed through the scrubby bushes of this nowhere land. The other men's breathing was harsher, punctuated by brief trills and chirps of birdsong.

  And beneath all that was another noise, unpatterned and hard to identify. It sounded like speech, but there were no words in it, just a faint, high chittering.

  The others had heard it too. They peered into the desert, but Morgan already knew there was nothing there. Then he saw one of the men look down at his own arm. It was bare, the muscles knotted beneath unevenly tanned skin. Something was moving on it, just a flicker of light, and the man screamed.

  It was his tattoo which was moving. The black swastika on his arm was slowly revolving, tearing the skin as it moved. In five seconds it had turned a complete circuit and the man's forearm was a bloody mess, yellow fat glistening above the corded tendons.

  There were more screams and Morgan didn't need to look around to guess the rest of the militia were suffering the same agony. They were all covered in tattoos. He spun to face Alex to find her staring at a tall, dark-haired man in horrified fascination. The tattoo of a snake on his arm was writhing - and rising. The head tore away from the skin, leaving a ragged hole in the flesh beneath. The snake's tongue flicked out to lick the blood from the smooth whiteness of his ulna.

  "What the fuck is happening?" Morgan yelled to Alex above the man's terrified whimpers.

  "It's this place," she said. "Symbols here mean something. And the symbols in those tattoos... They mean pain and hate and death."

  She trailed off. The snake had torn itself free of the militiaman's arm. Its scales were slick with his blood as it crawled over the body of the man who'd birthed it. He'd passed out from the pain, or maybe the blood loss. A chunk had been torn out of his arm exactly the size of the snake slithering towards Alex.

  The serpent reared up, black tongue flickering, and Morgan realised almost too late that it meant to strike. His knife flashed and the snake lunged right onto the blade. Its head bounced against Alex's leg before falling onto the rocks.

  She gasped in a shuddering breath. "Jesus. Thank you."

  Morgan looked down at the shofar in his hand, stroking its rough surface. It could banish spirits, but he couldn't be sure he'd drive away the right ones. Jimmy and his men had souls - would they want to risk them to escape death?

  He was still looking at the horn when a body barrelled into him, pushing him to the ground as the gun was knocked from his hand. He stared up into Coby's wide hazel eyes as the other man's fingers scrabbled for the shofar. Morgan held on grimly and Coby gave up on that and put his hands around Morgan's neck instead, squeezing so hard he knew he only had seconds of consciousness left.

  It was fading already when he heard Alex shout, "Let him go!" Her hands pulled at Coby's where they were clawing into Morgan's throat. He knew it was useless. She didn't have the strength.

  "Fuck!" she said. And then she did something Morgan sensed but couldn't see, and Coby was just... gone.

  Morgan blinked up at the blue sky above him, sucking in relieved breaths, until Alex reached out and pulled him to his feet.

  "What the hell did you do to him?" he said.

  She shrugged. "I don't know. I just threw him away."

  "Back into the real world?"

  "I don't think so. It was too easy - almost like the spirit world itself was pulling him somewhere else."

  There was a flicker of movement behind her and for a moment Morgan thought it was another attack. Then he heard the scream and remembered why Coby had thought this was a good moment to attack. Jimmy's men were dying. One had his arms spread out from his sides, motionless, as he watched the tattoos on his body glow. As they brightened from a dull red to a bright orange, Morgan saw a horned circle, a spiderweb, a five-pointed star and many different variations on the swastika.

  "I tried to get the fucking things taken off," the man said suddenly, looking into Morgan's eyes. "The laser treatment costs thousands. I didn't have any money." His expression tightened as the tattoos on his arms burned brighter still. There were more on his stomach and legs, glowing through the fabric that covered them.

  "I'm dying, aren't I?" he whispered as his skin began to blacken around the tattoos. The scent of burning flesh filled the air and he whimpered.

 
"I'm sorry," Morgan said helplessly, but he didn't think the man heard. He'd started screaming as his tattoos burned white hot. They were sinking into his skin now, like living brands. A ring of wire around his bicep flared and ate away at him as the hand beneath twitched and then stilled when the nerves which governed it were severed. When the arm fell to the ground a few seconds later, Morgan had to look away.

  He found himself facing Jimmy. The big man's eyes were frantic, scanning his fallen men, the wreckage of his militia. "Dead," he said. "I killed 'em all."

  "You couldn't have known," Morgan said. "And we'd have died anyway if we stayed there."

  Jimmy's pale skin was waxy, flecked with droplets of sweat. "We were doing God's work, weren't we?"

  "Yes," Morgan said with all the certainty he could manage.

  Jimmy nodded, his head dropping at the end of the motion to hang against his chest, as if he no longer had the strength to lift it. For a moment, Morgan thought he was flexing his shoulder muscles in preparation for some final burst of action. Then, as the T-shirt on the other man's back rippled and tore, he remembered the demon tattoo which lay beneath it.

  Jimmy looked up again, throat stretched tight in a yell of agony. The T-shirt fell to the ground as two bat wings spread from his shoulders to flap behind him. The copper smell of his blood wafted from them and droplets of it scattered across the dun sand beneath him.

  Jimmy's hand reached out, and after a moment's hesitation, Morgan took it. The fingers tightened painfully around his as Jimmy yelled his agony again and the figure that was ripping itself from his back twisted and pulled more of his essence out of him. "Why?" he whispered.

  "I don't know," Morgan said. "People don't always get what they deserve."

  "But I repented," Jimmy gasped, falling to his knees. His small blue eyes glared into Morgan's for one final moment of rage and pain. Then the life went out of them as his head dropped and another rose behind it, dripping with gore. Its ears twitched and a forked tongue snaked out of its mouth to wet its black lips.