Spirit

by Charmaine Ross

  “If I can’t remember, or can’t find anything, there’s no wonder why Black John wants me. It looks like whatever he wants is securely locked somewhere neither of us can find.”

  I absently picked up the ruby I’d set aside and held it to the light. I glowed, seemingly drawing the light inside it. “I found this in Marie’s jewellery box. It’s so unusual. It sounds a bit silly, but I felt as though it called out to me.”

  Elliot cupped the ruby in the palm of his hand as I held it dangling on the length of the chain. The familiar frown appeared between his brows, “I know this!”

  “You remember?” I gasped.

  “I don’t remember any details as such, but…a feeling. Good…and bad.”

  He frowned, eyes focussing on the light inside the stone. I held my breath, realising he’d gone somewhere inside his head. “I had it with me when… when I…”

  “When you were killed,” I whispered.

  He glanced at me and I felt the weight in his eyes and he nodded, “I don’t remember the details. But I know it was important to me. Very important. It’s the stone…ancient forces. I felt like I have to hide it at all costs and that taking it with me was a very big risk, but one I had to take.”

  “You would never have given it to Black John. Not if it means so much.”

  “Then why would I have taken it that night? For what purpose would I have needed to do that?”

  “Whatever it was, they killed you for it,” I said.

  Elliot stared at the stone for a moment. “Where did you find it?”

  “It was with Marie’s jewellery. I didn’t mean to pry, but I just had to look. It was so compelling.”

  “She knew…” Elliot grew quiet, “It was there on purpose. Marie protected it. She wouldn’t have minded you looking there. She wasn’t that type of woman. Just like you.” Elliot tipped his head to the side, regarding me. My cheeks flamed at his scrutiny and he came over and cupped my cheeks. I reached and folded my hands over his. “I’m not saying you’re like Marie, or a replacement for her. You are a person in your own right, Cassie. I’m saying that you are selfless and brave and independent. Traits you both share. But you, Cassie.” The pad of his thumb stroked my cheek, “You are beyond mere words. I can’t describe how I feel about you properly. I can only show you.” He pressed his lips to mine, lingering there for a long moment. Then he cracked his mouth, drew my lower lip between his teeth and suckled with a hot, sensual pull. “Like this.” His tongue delved into my mouth and swept across my tongue. I responded readily, quickly, without pause. His tongue thrust with commanding strokes, his lips manipulating, suckling, hot and wet. “And this…” His hand twisted in my hair as his other hand fell to my lower back as he deepened the kiss. He pressed me against his lean, muscled body and I was left in no doubt of his passion for me.

  We broke apart, me breathless and panting, “Well, if that’s the way you really think, I have to tell you I like the way you put it.”

  Elliot grinned and I returned it. “I’m glad.” He put the chain over my head. “It’s up to us to protect the ruby now. Keep it around your neck, safe, until we can find out what exactly it is.”

  I wound my fingers around the ruby. Heat warmed the inside of my palm, pumping energy into my veins. “It almost feels alive.” I placed it beneath my dress, feeling the heat of the gem against my skin between my breasts.

  There was a loud bang. Wood splintered as the front door slammed against the wall. Elliot shoved me behind him and I staggered with the momentum. Large men barrelled into Elliot’s lounge room, fists holding long steel pipes and wooden bats, the air sparked with aggression and tension. My mind tried to grapple with what was happening, the contentment of our recent lovemaking shattered in a horror-filled instant.

  “Grab ‘em!”

  I recognised Sam and Grey-Suit. Their faces were scrunched and mean. Elliot’s steel grip was on my upper arm propelling me into the sunroom and through the back door. He shoved me along the outside wall, grabbed a solid branch from the nearby woodpile and waited by the back door, his back pressed against the wall of the house next to us.

  I hardly had time to process what was happening before Grey-Suit burst through the door. Elliot bludgeoned the wood through the air. It slammed against Grey-Suits face. The branch snapped. Blood exploded from his nose and a second later he hit the ground, solidly unconscious.

  There was a shovel next to me. I curled my fingers around the handle, slinging it over my shoulder, ready to swing. Another thug leapt over the prone body of Grey-Suit. Elliot was without a weapon. I stepped around Elliot, slung the shovel as hard as I could and belted the man on his forehead. His head snapped back and he sprawled unconscious next to his friend.

  Elliot glanced at me, his look of admiration instantly warming me. I put the shovel aside for a moment and handed an axe to Elliot. “This will be a bit stronger for you.”

  His brows rose, but the admiration grew, “I’ve unleashed the unknown,” he muttered, returning to his pose with his back against the wall, this time holding the axe on his shoulder. I caught the smile that quirked his mouth.

  “Why don’t you come out here and talk to me yourself, Sam?” Elliot shouted.

  A low chuckle sounded from within the sunroom, “I’m a bit more cautious than my friends. You should know that, Elliot. You worked with me long enough.”

  “Not long enough to know everything about you, it seems,” Elliot said.

  “I’m very good at keeping secrets.”

  “What do you want, Sam?” Elliot’s tone turned grim. I almost didn’t recognise his voice.

  “I’ve come for you, Elliot. I’ll even allow you to bring along the girl for the ride. You need to re-think who your friends are here.”

  “I thought you were my friend once. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.”

  “The mistake you made was not committing to us while you lived. You can change all that. Join us and everything will be water under the bridge.”

  “The water is too high to go under any bridge,” Elliot said. “I don’t remember what you want. I don’t have anything you want.”

  There was a pause. “I told him not to leave you in the Grey-Mists for so long. It’s nothing but a wasteland and its obviously made a void of your mind.”

  “Just as well I did stay out there if being here is anything to go by,” Elliot said.

  There was a muffled curse, a pause, then, “Does the Light-Stream mean anything to you?”

  Elliot turned a puzzled expression to me. His fingers flexed and re-gripped the handle of the axe, fingers rippling along the handle as his mind worked, “Should it?”

  “You practically invented the term.”

  “That’s what you want me for? Something I can’t remember and have no idea what you’re talking about. What does it do? Why do you want it so badly?”

  “I’m going to need a little bit of commitment from you before I do something like tell you everything,” Sam said.

  “No explanation. No commitment.”

  “You can’t win here, Elliot. You’ll give. Eventually. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “You know me better than to say that.”

  “We’ve already taken someone you care about.”

  I made a strangled sound. “Laura!” An invisible fist sunk into my gut at the mention of her name. It had already been one night and that was far longer than I thought we’d need. Not to mention Mum and Dad didn’t have a clue what was happening. All they knew was that they were looking over the bodies of their two daughters wondering what the hell was going on. I didn’t have the choice to tell them what we’d fallen in the middle of to relieve their worry.

  “We’ll take more from the other side. You’ve made a few friends while you’ve been there. I hear your grandson is going well, living it up with another descendant. Doing some good work together, I hear.”

  Elliot bared his teeth, “You wouldn’t dare take him!”

  “All you h
ave to do is come with us. Disaster averted.”

  There was a crunch of a footstep. I whirled around to see the end of a rifle aimed at my head. I didn’t think. I reacted. Swinging the shovel, I slammed the end into the gun. The shot went wide, striking the house somewhere above my head.

  I kept the momentum of the swing going, bringing the end over my head in a tight circle and slamming it down onto the head of the thug. He collapsed onto the ground. I stooped to pick up the rifle when there was the bang of another shot and wood splintered over my head.

  I looked up to see a hole blasted through the side of the house right where I’d been standing. If I hadn’t bent down, it would have gotten me. There was no telling what might have happen if I’d died. Maybe I’d be thrown back out into the Grey-Mists. But then again, maybe I’d become nothing. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Elliot grabbed my wrist, driving me to the side fence. He leveraged me onto the middle rung. “Over here, quick!”

  I dropped the shovel, threw the rifle over the fence and swung my legs over the top. I fell to the ground, falling in a heap. Elliot clasped my hand after he landed behind me, “You okay?”

  I nodded and we took off to the end of the neighbour’s backyard. There was an explosion as the fence shattered into a million pieces behind us. We instinctively hunched over, but didn’t dare stop running. We scrambled over the rear fence as another bullet took a chunk from the fence next to me.

  Anger took a hold of me. “Wait!” I called to Elliot. I stepped onto the middle railing and leveraged myself up. A thug was following us. I aimed the rifle at him, “Stop or I’ll shoot.”

  His answer was a smile. He raised his rifle right at me, cushioning it onto his shoulder. Without thinking I pulled the trigger. The butt of the rifle smashed into my shoulder, sending me hurtling to the ground. I landed flat on my back, my breath slamming out of my lungs.

  “Cassie, are you all right?”

  I struggled to sit as Elliot helped, “That’ll show them for shooting at us!” I wheezed.

  “That was the most stupid…brave…dumb thing I’ve seen you do!”

  I smiled. Elliot kissed me quickly on my mouth and hoisted me to my feet. “Don’t do anything like that ever again!”

  “Did I get him?”

  “You got his leg. Let’s get going before they do that and more to us.”

  We scrambled over numerous streets and fences, losing ourselves in the labyrinth of houses that was Fitzroy. We found ourselves in a back alley where finally we rested against a back wall, panting and heaving.

  “That was the work-out of a lifetime,” I finally was able to say.

  Elliot nodded. “They found us at my house. Somehow, I don’t know how. It looks like we can’t stay anywhere for long without Black John knowing where we are. He created this world. It makes sense he knows everything in it.”

  “Luckily we don’t intend to stay here for long. But they still have Laura. We have to try to find her. She can’t stay here forever. There’s no telling what Black John will do.”

  Elliot nodded. “Agreed. We need ammunition and I know exactly where we can find it.”

  “Where?”

  “HO334. The Station. We’re just around the corner.”

  I nodded my affirmation. I was sick of being on the running end of the stick. It was time to turn the tables, let them know we were the last people they should have imprisoned here. “Let’s go there now and see what we can find.”

  Elliot clasped my hand. I took a step and pain ripped through my belly. I gasped, doubling up as white-hot agony gripped me. My breath left my lungs starving for oxygen and my knees buckled beneath me, out of sync with what I wanted them to do.

  “Cassie! What’s wrong?”

  Elliot gripped me, keeping me steady on my feet. All I could do was sag against him as he fought to keep me upright. I breathed in through my nostrils, keeping my breath steady and even as I rode the pain. Eventually it subsided enough for me to stand on my own two feet.

  I put a hand against the wall, wiping perspiration from my forehead as I recovered. “I don’t know. It felt like something stabbing me from the inside out. Just came out of nowhere, all of a sudden.”

  Elliot patted his hands over my stomach and sides, carefully feeling his way over my body, “No wounds. I thought you might have caught some shrapnel back there.”

  I shook my head, “It’s not that sort of pain. I’m not up on my astral body knowledge, but it seemed to originate from right inside me.”

  Elliot stilled, staring somewhere behind my back, “Oh my God, Cassie. Your silver cord. It’s…disappearing!”

  The ethereal silver cord that kept my astral self connected to my physical body, had halved in width, now more of a string than a cord. It was now semi-transparent. Earlier, when it had been sparkling and floating lazily around my body, it was now slack and lethargic, dull. Gone was the silver brilliance, like metal that was beginning to rust. I looked wordlessly to Elliot, fighting off the insidious panic that had gripped me.

  Elliot clutched my shoulders, stark fear on his face, “Cassie. You’re dying. If you don’t get to your body now, I think there’s a good chance you’ll never get back.”

  Chapter Eight

  Breathe. Just breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Keep it steady and deep. Eventually I brought my heart rate under control enough to start thinking.

  Elliot wound his arm around my waist, “Do you think you can walk? I don’t like being out here in the open. We just need to get around the corner. We'll be safer out of sight.”

  I nodded. Elliot leaned me into him so that he took most of my weight. I slung my arm over his shoulders, grateful for the support he gave to me. He was so gentle, so tender in the caring way he held me, as though I’d break into a million pieces if he didn’t hold me just right. My energy had taken a steep nose-dive and I was frustrated that I was so zapped.

  We couldn’t afford for me to be this way. He couldn’t protect both me and find Laura on his own. Not against Black Johns thugs that were more like soldiers for his cause. It was as though he’d hand-picked the worst to be here with him. It was a wonderland delight for the criminally minded. They could do whatever they pleased here with no repercussions.

  I stumbled to the corner of the building. Elliot studied me, his jaw clenching. With a swift movement, he swept his arm beneath my knees and lifted me against his chest.

  “Keep still. You’re in no condition to walk,” he said when I started to object.

  He looked one way, then the other and jogged across the road and into a small, red-bricked side alley between an imposing building and a wall of a shop, clutching me close to his chest. I was surrounded by the protective circle of warm, solid muscle and I’d never felt safer. We came to a wooden side door I wouldn’t know was there if Elliot hadn’t walked right up to it.

  “Can you stand?” I nodded and he carefully positioned me on my feet. I leant against the wall feeling totally deflated. A solid thump with his shoulder had the door swinging on damaged hinges. Despite my protests, he picked me up again and took me inside.

  We entered into a corridor with offices sectioned to one side. Mid-brown coloured wood was topped with glass to separate each office. Dust particles filtered through the sunlight dancing almost lighter than the air itself. The interior smelt of dust, a faint aroma of bees-flax, and tough efficiency.

  Elliot paced into an office and deposited me on a chair. I looked around me with intense interest. This was his office where he’d worked during his lifetime. A large, dark wooden desk took up a lot of the space in the middle of the room. The top was neat, set with two paper-filled trays and a cup filled with pencils of various lengths. There was a large dull black telephone tucked into a corner and a large open note-pad in the middle of the desk. It also looked empty to me. No computer, mouse, screen, and all the other mod-cons that I was used to.

  Behind the desk was a dark-green leather chair and a filing cabinet. On
the wall was a map of Melbourne where various red pins were placed in strategic locations.

  It was all efficiency, determination, and action. Very much like the man kneeling in front of me. I still wanted to be in his arms, tucked against his chest, but now was not the time. Time, it seemed, was fast running out. “How do you feel?”

  I sent him a wan smile, “I’m a little tired, but better than before. I’ll be okay if I can just sit here and rest.”

  He closed his eyes and looked as though he were in pain, “God, Cassie. You’re clearly not okay. This is taking its toll on you. You’ve been out of your body for too long. If only I would have known, I would never…”

  I grabbed his hand and held it to my lips, “I wanted to make love to you, Elliot. All the angels in Heaven wouldn’t have kept me away from you.”

  He ducked his head and when he looked back at me, his expression had softened, “When you put it that way, I can’t blame myself for what we did.”

  “Why blame yourself when it’s been the only thing I’ve thought about for weeks? I wanted to make love to you. Don’t take that away from me.”

  “I wanted it too, desperately, but that doesn’t help things now.”

  “I guess the only thing we can do is to work out where Laura is and get the hell out of here and back to our bodies as quickly as we can. Where did you say that ammunition was?” I said.

  Elliot rose, nodding, “If it’s ammunition you want, then ammunition I can get.” He went to the floor to ceiling cabinets that lined a wall of his office and opened a door of the longest panel. He took out two rifles and laid them out on the desk. Following that were two pistols and boxes of bullets.

  I cocked a brow, “Is that all you’ve got?”

  “I have knives.” He reached into the cabinet and lifted a wooden box from a shelf. As he slipped a box out, a leather-bound notebook landed on the floor. Puzzled, he picked it up, turning it over in his hand, “That’s strange. This is a strange thing to have in an ammunition cabinet.”