“No, not like you would think,” he said, then shook his head as he shoved one hand through an unruly crop of brown curls. “Actually, can we talk more later? I’ve got another tour to start in a few minutes.”
“We’re actually on this tour. Already cleared it with Emmy. Can we talk at Sorrel-Weed?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Who’s with you?”
To my surprise, Mira actually blushed, though it was almost impossible to make out in the faint lamplight. She reached over and pulled me back to her side. “Danaus, this is a friend of mine, Nathaniel Mercer. No relation to Johnny Mercer. He’s a grad student over at SCAD, specializing in historical preservation. By night, he’s a gravedigger tour guide for Ghosts and Gravestones.”
“Good to meet you,” Nate said, shaking my hand.
“Likewise. What’s SCAD?” I asked as I released his hand and took a step backward.
“Savannah College of Art and Design. A place Mira has been a big supporter of. We wouldn’t be able to accomplish half the things we have without her assistance,” Nate said.
“You’re helping to preserve and restore a city I love. How could I not?” Mira said with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
Nate just shook his head as he bent down and picked up his lantern again. “Go ahead and get on the trolley. We’ve got to get this tour rolling before we get behind schedule.”
Mira stepped onto the black trolley and I followed behind her, trying to keep from frowning. I was going on a ghost tour through Savannah. Not exactly how I anticipated my evening would go. But then again, nothing had gone how I might have expected since our brief appearance at the Dark Room. Mira was just full of surprises this evening.
At the back of the trolley, Mira paused and allowed me to sit next to the window while she sat as close as possible to me. The trolley soon filled up with somewhat hushed tourists as they took in the pseudo-creepy décor of fake cobwebs, skeletons, and tattered antique lace. After a brief introduction by Nate warning that the trolley was going to be traveling into the dark, grim past of Savannah and that passengers should be forewarned that the dead were eager to reach out and make new friends, we pulled away from the sidewalk and rumbled down the uneven stone street.
As we traveled down River Street, Nate wove tales of despair and woe. Once-prosperous shops from ages ago were filled with tales of suicide and fires, murder and disease. When we turned off River Street, I looked over at Mira to find that she was watching Nate with rapt attention.
How can you buy into this stuff? I asked, touching her mind so that I wouldn’t disturb the other passengers who were listening to Nate with a mixture of mild interest and vague boredom.
It’s not the ghosts, she mentally scoffed. It’s about the history of Savannah. Some of these stories I was actually here to witness firsthand. I remember reading about some in the paper. For me, it’s about reminiscing about events that I lived through. Don’t you ever like to look back at your past? Take another look at what you survived?
In truth, I tried to never look back. I had survived more than a millennium of world events. Wars, famine, natural disasters, the rise and fall of entire civilizations, the discovery of new worlds, the deaths of people I viewed as friends. My memories were colored by a bleak landscape of death, blood, and struggles against an evil that I was now seated cozily against in a black trolley. But most of all, my past was covered in a seemingly vast emptiness that could never be filled up.
No.
To my surprise, Mira wrapped her arm around mine again and laid her head against my shoulder. I could feel her relax against me as if some secret weight had slipped from her shoulders. I tried not to think about her soft body pressed against mine, nor listen to Nate’s monologue of death and despair, but I wasn’t having much luck. Tonight, Mira had gone out of her way to touch me and remain close. When I was surrounded by nightwalkers, I had taken it as a way of signaling to them that I belonged to her and that I was not to be molested. However, seated in the dark trolley, surrounded by human tourists as we wove our way through the old city, there was no reason that I could think of for her to be touching me. And yet, I could not bring myself to disentangle her from my frame. In fact, I sat back against the seat and felt some of the tension ease from my own shoulders. For a moment in time, we weren’t running, hiding, or fighting. We were just two people on a ghost tour of Savannah. I had forgotten what it was like to do something normal and mundane.
It had been more than seven decades since I had last touched a woman like this. I had been hunting vampires in Paris for more than a week, and had finally succeeded in eliminating the strongest of them. The remaining few had left the city, from what I could tell, and I was prepared to do the same. Yet, I lingered one last night in the City of Light, wandering through the winding streets and past the crowded restaurants and cafes. Pausing briefly in the doorway of one bar, I looked up to find a woman smiling at me, a cigarette between her pursed lips. Her name was Cherise and she had green eyes.
We talked of nothing and laughed and kissed over a bottle of cheap wine. We walked down the rain-slicked streets, arm in arm. And then we were attacked by four nightwalkers. I had been distracted by Cherise, wasn’t watching my back. They killed her in an instant, leaving the blood on my hands as they escaped before the sun could rise.
Time had left a gaping void of loneliness within my chest, haunted by a pair of green eyes and an enigmatic smile. There had been no other women since Cherise and too few before her. I couldn’t protect them. Just fragile flowers waiting to be crushed under the heel of the world I lived in. Too many years of fighting had piled up to leave me with nothing more than a memory of green eyes.
Mira shifted in her seat beside me, leaning forward to look around my chest and out the window as we passed by an old hotel. She squeezed my arm as she looked up at me, flashing me another excited smile. The woman that sat beside me now wasn’t fragile or weak. She was strong, a powerful force within our world. And while I was under orders to protect her, Mira had been protecting me along the way as well.
After passing a couple of old hotels and some locally famous houses, we pulled up to a two-story burnt-orange house with palm trees surrounded by a brick wall. It was the infamous Sorrel-Weed House; supposedly one of the most haunted homes in all of Savannah. The occupants of the trolley quickly pushed to their feet and exited the trolley for what Nate said would be a brief tour of some of the rooms of the Sorrel-Weed House. We held back until everyone had gotten off the trolley before we exited.
Nate laid down the shovel he had been holding in the trolley and leaned against a tree, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“So, what do you think of the tour?” Nate asked as I stepped to the sidewalk. “Cheesy, right?”
“It’s interesting,” I said slowly, bringing a smile to his lips.
“It’s one of the most popular in Savannah because we’re the only ones that get you into Sorrel-Weed,” he said proudly.
“It’s fun, too. You know, just to pretend that some of it might be real.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts?” I asked while Mira snorted behind me.
“No, I believe,” Nate said with a wry grin.
“Nate can see them and talk to them,” Mira volunteered. I turned to look at her, confusion undoubtedly filling my face. I had never heard of a human being able to do such a thing.
“Talk to them? Necromancer?”
“Dear God, no!” he cried, pushing off of the tree that he had been leaning against. “Who would want to look at a decaying corpse? Besides, from what I hear, they don’t come back all that intelligent. I just talk to the spirits.”
“Speaking of which…” Mira said, trailing off as she finally got around to the actual topic at hand.
“Yeah,” Nate sighed, leaning up against the tree again. “Things haven’t been too good lately. Well, actually that’s not exactly right.” He hesitated, running one hand through his curls, sending them into disarray. “Things have be
en oddly quiet. A number of the locals that I’m used to seeing have disappeared and the few that have remained rarely come out. I’ve talked to a number of the hotel owners along the route and they say that activity has dropped to almost nothing. Mira, this isn’t good. We’re a city known for being haunted. If things go quiet, the tourists might stop coming.”
“The tourists aren’t going to stop coming,” Mira said, waving off his genuine concern. “What about Sorrel-Weed?”
Nate made a noise in the back of his throat like a laugh, while one corner of his mouth pulled into a frown as he looked up on the looming structure. “The ghosts in that house are too angry to ever go completely silent. However, Scott, the owner, says things have recently been limited to the carriage house.”
“Should you try talking to them, considering they’re still active?” I suggested.
“Nah,” he replied, turning his gaze back to me. “It’s like I said. Too angry. You go up there, you’re just going to get something thrown at your head.”
“What about over at Colonial Park?” Mira asked. Nate hesitated, looking down at the ground as a frown deepened on his young face. “It’s still on the tour and it would only take a few seconds,” Mira continued. “We just want to see if anyone will tell you what’s got them so upset.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Nate replied in a low voice, his gaze drifting back over toward Sorrel-Weed at the sound of approaching footsteps. “Why are you so interested anyway?”
“A girl was recently murdered and we’re looking into it,” I said, causing Nate’s gaze to snap back to me.
“And you think a ghost did it?” he demanded in hushed tones.
“No, but they may know who did,” Mira said, grabbing my arm and pulling me back onto the trolley. We resumed our seats as the rest of the tourists jumped onto the trolley.
Watch what you say! Mira said in my brain as soon as we were settled. He doesn’t know what I am, doesn’t know my place within Savannah. You may find this hard to believe, but there are some people who still think I’m a normal human being.
You’re right. I snickered. I do find it hard to believe. A human that believes another human can see and talk to ghosts?
Okay, so maybe he thinks I’m a slightly eccentric human, but still human.
I laughed softly as the trolley pulled away from the curb and Nate resumed his dark monologue about the city. Mira settled against me. Her hunger was still evident as it beat against me, but underlying that red haze was a feeling of contentment.
We trundled along for another few blocks before the trolley driver stopped next to the Colonial Park Cemetery. We got off the trolley and followed the rest of the tourist herd down the ornate brick sidewalk to the side of the cemetery so that everyone could stare through the iron bars at the thick blackness that blanketed the graves. Out of habit, I completed a quick scan of the region, sending my powers out from my body to sweep over the tombstones until they reached the opposite wall.
“Anything?” Mira whispered, undoubtedly feeling the wave of energy wash from me.
“Nothing.” And that’s what had me concerned. While it made perfect sense for the naturi to be trying to sabotage the nightwalkers through the murder of Abigail Bradford, it didn’t make any sense for the ghosts of Savannah to be upset by their presence.
We waited until Nate finished with his tale of duels and Civil War soldiers bunking down with the dead in the middle of winter before we approached him. Most of the tourists had begun to head back to the trolley while Nate stood at the fence, one hand gripping a black cast-iron bar.
“Nate?” Mira asked, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“There’s a couple out there. Slowly coming over to me. They’re…scared. Something has been hanging around the cemetery. Ghosts have disappeared.”
“Can they tell you what it is?”
“What’s happening?” Nate asked the darkness. “Who’s with you?”
We all waited in silence for nearly a minute before Nate finally frowned and shook his head as he turned away from the bars. “They don’t know. Something they’ve never seen before. It’s killing them, which doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know how you can kill a ghost, but they’re upset and keeping low.”
“Were they upset like this back in September?” I asked as we followed him back to the trolley.
“Nope,” he said, looking over his shoulder at me. “This only started in the past week or so.”
I turned to find Mira standing a few feet away from me, staring through the bars into the cemetery. Her voice was low, just above a whisper. I stared at her a moment, straining to hear what she was saying, when I realized she was singing. Walking over, I discovered that she was singing what sounded like a lullaby in Greek. Her right hand was continuously moving through the empty air as if she were petting something.
“Mira,” I said, trying to grab her attention.
The nightwalker looked down at the swath of air that her hand was moving through and she smiled before starting the lullaby over again, oblivious to the world around her.
“Mira!” I said a little louder as I grabbed her left arm. She jumped, her head snapping up as she stopped singing. She blinked and looked around as if she was seeing the cemetery for the first time. She then looked down at the open air where her right hand hovered, a look of confusion crossing her face.
“Where did she go?” she asked, looking around her.
“Who?”
“I—” Mira started, and then shook her head. I released her arm and took a step backward, giving her some room as I could once again feel a wave of cold energy washing off of her. She was using her powers as she possibly searched for something or worked some other kind of nightwalker magic. Pressing the fingers of her right hand to her forehead, Mira clenched her eyes shut and drew in a sharp intake of air through her nose. “It’s nothing. It was nothing.”
Mira turned and started to board the trolley, but I grabbed her arm, stopping her. “Do we need to talk to Nate anymore?”
“No,” she replied, arching one brow at me.
“Then let’s walk back to the car. I need to think,” I suggested. Mira simply nodded and took her foot off the first step of the trolley. She gave Nate a brief hug and then turned back toward the cemetery while I shook the ghost talker’s hand. He hadn’t provided us with much information, but it was enough to confirm a dark idea already implanted in my head.
Mira waited until the trolley had rumbled away and we had walked more than a block in silence before she finally spoke up. “You don’t think it’s the naturi, do you?” she ventured.
“If it was the naturi, the ghosts would have been upset back in September when the city was crawling with them. There are fewer naturi in the city now and yet the ghosts are upset. Something else has moved into the region.” I zipped my jacket up a little higher and shoved my hands into my pockets as we walked along the dark street back toward the riverfront.
“Do you also have a theory as to what?” Mira inquired.
I stared down at my companion in silence, knowing she wasn’t going to like what I had to say. I wasn’t particularly pleased with it myself. “Ghosts are nothing more than bodiless spirits. Souls,” I said slowly, but it was more than enough. Mira came to an abrupt halt just as we were about to cross an empty street and jerked her head up to look at me with wide, horror-filled eyes.
“You can’t possibly think…?” she gasped. “It’s impossible. How could a…a…a bori escape?” she said, whispering the last two words as if the mention of the creature would summon it to our side. A bori was the only creature dependent upon soul energy. It was using the ghosts in the city somehow.
“I don’t know. The naturi escaped,” I replied, taking a step to cross the street, which helped to jolt Mira from her own paralysis.
“But some naturi were already out, working to free the others. There are no other bori here. They were all caged centuries ago.”
I frowned at that bit of logic. “Yo
u can’t be sure of that,” I grumbled. “My mother found a way to make a deal with one of them after they had already been exiled.”
Mira plopped down on one of the benches near the center of Oglethorpe Square and put her head in her hands as she rested her elbows on her knees. “I can’t keep doing this, Danaus,” she moaned. “First it was you, then Jabari with the coven, and then it was Rowe and the rest of the naturi. Now, a bori? I can’t do this. I came to Savannah to escape the insanity that seemed to follow me throughout Europe. Now it seems to have followed me here.”
I stopped and knelt in front of Mira, wishing I could tell her that I thought I was wrong and that it was something less frightening. The bori were called the guardians of the soul, while the naturi were the guardians of the earth. The two races had been born to create a balance on the Earth, but from what I understood, the two seemed to be locked in a permanent power struggle over who truly ruled the Earth. Centuries ago, long before I was even born, the bori and the naturi were imprisoned in separate, alternate realities. For the most part, the naturi had succeeded in escaping from their cage this past fall and their now-queen Aurora was free. Though at least she had her own problems in the form of a younger sister who was attempting to wrest the crown from her.
A bori running loose in the world was an entirely darker matter that neither Mira nor I truly wanted to face. The bori were the creators of the nightwalker race, from what I understood, and had the same ability to control the nightwalkers the way the naturi could control the lycanthropes. Mira already had had to suffer the indignity of being controlled like a puppet by Jabari and me. She didn’t need to have a bori free in her domain as well.
Putting one hand on her knee, I placed my other hand under her chin and forced her to look up at me. “We’ll get through this,” I said firmly. “We’ve survived the naturi. We can survive a rogue bori.”
“You say rogue bori, but you don’t know,” Mira said grimly. “How do we fight a creature that can control us both?”
I flinched—the bori that had a hold on my soul had managed to take control of me when we were in Peru. Mira and another nightwalker named Stefan had cast a spell that killed a horde of naturi and captured their souls. The bori that held me reacted to the souls and appeared to feed off the energy, controlling me and forcing me to attack Mira.
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