for you.”
“I'm better looking than he is.”
She shrugged, her expression indicating a lack of concern that really was not good for my self-esteem. “That matters less to a dead woman than you would think.”
“That hurts, Lyd. See how hurt I look?”
She shrugged again, and the air in the room felt colder. “I've been thinking, and I believe I may have had a small epiphany. Several, in fact, and they have made me realize that I truly have not done all I could to move on with my life.”
“Afterlife.”
“Yes, quite so. It was depressing, to say the least. So much so I had pondered surrender to oblivion,” she said. “But something strange occurred. A madman, who simply would not stop his prattle into my ear, made the excellent point that taking action and working to correct my errors would be the more ultimately satisfying course of action. I have made many mistakes, and I think that Madeline would rest better if I atoned for them before I joined her in Heaven.”
She raised the dagger in her hands, and azure light gathered around it, intensifying the sheen of the blade so brilliantly it was hard to look at. The aura actually extended a few feet out from the physical blade, giving it the appearance of a sword. Or maybe just the idea of the appearance of a sword, an unfathomable aura of sharpness that 'knife' just did not properly encompass. I could fully realize that my nice, mortal senses really couldn't properly analyze her anymore. “And I feel that there is something to be said for the catharsis of sheer, bloody revenge,” She intoned, the voice of an executioner preparing to carry out sentence.
“You are just getting hotter, you realize,” I said. “Seriously, I am one step away from just worshiping you, here.”
“Oh, do be silent, sir.”
Then Lydia Talman, Lar and Guardian Spirit of this household appointed in selfless sacrifice and consecrated in her own blood, began to do her sacred duty for the first time.
It was all metaphysical, really. Probably some quantum involved somewhere, but the gist of it is that Lydia was not a ghost, and Stanfield, despite his power, was. Both were spiritual beings, yes, but he was a spiritual being specialized to prey on living things, whereas she was a spiritual being specialized for repelling other spiritual beings. Especially when she was doing so in protection of others, such as right now. So tell me... which do you think would have the advantage?
I admit, I was smiling so hard my face hurt. But really now, can you blame me? I have been in this business for over ten years, I have seen a lot of things that were truly awe-inspiring, a lot of things truly horrific, and a lot of things that I couldn't describe as any other way but 'utterly insane'. But I have never, never, seen a five-foot-nothing girly-girl in a pretty peach dress stand up to a seven-foot tall rotting ghostly serial killer and kick his ass.
With a lightsaber.
It. Was. Awesome.
The ghost growled, his voice thick with rage and pain, his fury so palpable it seemed to radiate from the very walls of his life-long (And I suppose, death-long) home. He charged, that bloody hook flashing down at Lydia's face with the same brutal strength he'd always shown. For her part, she simply moved her blade into position to intercept. There was no technique to it, she clearly didn't know any swordsmanship. She didn't even swing the weapon, just moved it and held it still.
The two blades connected in a brilliant flare of white light, and when I could see again, I was treated to the sight of Stanfield's hook, shattered, the point where it had snapped off leaking the same white light as the wound on his chest. The merest touch of Lydia's lightsaber (Yes, I am going to keep calling it that and no, you cannot stop me.) had taken it apart with more ease than a steel blade would cut through one made of cheese.
Hee. Hee. Hee.
The ghost shrieked once again in obvious agony... the hook hadn't really been a weapon, after all. Like the rest of the manifestation, it was a piece of his spiritual energy given physical form, and Lydia had already shown she could stab right through that to cut at the actual creature generating it. For her purposes, destroying his weapon was no different than sliding a blade in between his ribs. Anything she cut would harm the source all the same.
And my gal was in a cutting mood.
She shifted her wrist, bringing the blade down in a wide arc. There was no technique to it, no finesse. She just hacked away like any rage-fueled amateur, and had this been a real battle, she probably would have been torn apart by her much larger, more experienced enemy. But she had one major advantage in this battle: her opponent really couldn't do much of anything. This was a spiritual war, and emotion was vastly more important than skill, and as Lydia was right now, confronting the monster who had made her life Hell for over a century, for the first time holding both the ability and the resolve to fight back? She wasn't a woman any longer. She wasn't even a spirit. She was an avatar of righteous fury, and it didn't matter how clumsy her strikes were because there was absolutely nothing her enemy could do to defend against them.
Every single stroke not only cut the manifested ghost, it outright tore huge chunks of rotting flesh from his hide, as though she were taking a broadsword to him rather than a formless blade of light. The smell was repulsive, but what stuck the mind most was the light. That same brilliant white energy poured from every wound, gushing forth in torrents more forcefully than real blood possibly could have. The manifestation could barely even move at this point; Lydia had lopped off its legs, hounded it to the ground and hacking mercilessly every step of the way, her voice raised in a wordless shriek of rage even as the ghostly voice echoed through the halls in an answering scream of agony. The killer lay uselessly under her endless, frenzied strikes, a lump of unrecognizable meat that was hemorrhaging light from a hundred mortal wounds, so brilliantly I could barely look at it.
All the same, I couldn't turn away, and not just because it was the third-coolest thing I'd ever seen. Lydia's face was set in a feral snarl, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. She had spent the day going through the emotional blender, and this was the cherry on the trauma sundae. She was a walking emotional wound laid bare to the world, at this point. If she could bring herself to do this, I could bring myself to watch it.
What else were friends for?
Lydia brought her blade down one last time, one more brutal two-handed chop, slicing the thing completely in half at the waist. Once again, 'exploded' wasn't quite the right word for what happened to it... there was no force to it, not even a light breeze to go with the blinding flare of luminance. But it was the closest word I could think of.
Lydia looked down at the spot where it had been, her shoulders rising and falling. She didn't need to breathe, but again... old habits.
“It's okay,” I said, in what I hoped was a soothing voice because she still looked really, really angry and she still had a lightsaber in her hand and frankly I had gotten some mixed signals on whether or not she actually liked me. “It's all over, now.”
Her eyes narrowed, and I gulped a bit. Yeah, she was definitely still pissed.
“No,” she said. “It's not.”
Pleasedon'tkillmepleasedon'tkillmepleasedon'tkillme... I thought. Out loud, I said, “Um... it sure looks over, so...”
Without another word, Lydia slammed her fist into something I couldn't see. The air cracked, and she appeared to be reaching through something because I could not longer see her hand. I got the impression that metaphor was happening again, because my head hurt and that usually happens when I see things my five senses aren't equipped to properly interpret.
She pulled. There was a sound like every nightmare you've ever had, all at once, and an old, slightly overweight man with thick, bushy gray hair and very old, severe, but expensive-looking black clothes came tumbling out onto the floor from out of nowhere.
Well. That was new. Still, at this point, it wasn't too hard to figure out exactly what was going on.
“Hi,
Harry,” I said.
The ghost no longer had any of the rage or haughtiness that had inundated its voice up until now; just a deep aura of fear, and a great deal of confusion. Ghosts don't normally take on a physical form, they stay safely as spirits and use their powers to create physical forms they can use as puppets. But this was the real Stanfield, the man's actual ghost, and he had not chosen to come here. Lydia had, as far as I could tell, reached out, grabbed his soul, and forced him into a physical body against his will.
Well. I hadn't known that was possible, but then I've never pissed off a spirit of justice and/or vengeance. I wasn't really sure what she qualified as right now, in point of fact. Some kind of goddess, probably? Something much, much worse than any ghost, that much was very clear, based on the fact that the worst ghost I'd ever run into was crawling on his hands and knees in front of her, totally powerless and whimpering like a kicked dog.
This was gonna be awesome.
“Harcourt Stanfield. You are accused of the brutal and callous torture and murder of twenty-seven young women over the course of your life, and of thirty-nine innocent men, women, and children in the years following your death. How do you plead?”
The words came from Lydia's mouth, but it wasn't really Lydia saying it, honestly. Not anymore. What spoke now was the
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