Geist (4 page)

ACK!

I turned—didn't know I could do that—and faced darkness behind me. Whoa—it was like that time I'd been inside of Joe. A dark room with a huge wide-screen so I could see outside.

A light came toward me and I held up my hands—I had no idea who spoke or what it was inside of here but I was gonna—

"Zoë?"

Wait. I knew that voice, and that light. "Alice?"

The light coalesced into Alice Bonville, one of Dags' Familiars. She was tall, like me, thin and elegant, not so like me. As a Familiar she still looked like she had when she was alive, only her hair was white, as were the clothes that formed over her. A shock of that hair hung over one eye like Veronica Lake. 

I'd always thought Alice was beautiful. 

I waved. "Hi."

I wasn't prepared for her to run at me and catch me in a bear hug. Not classy—but definitely welcome. 

I teared up when I realized that this was the first time I'd felt someone's body next to mine in over four months. But was it real? 

"How...oh my god how are you
here
?" she said over and over while I was still holding on to her. 

When she finally stepped back I reached into my shirt and pulled the page of the
Grimiore
free from my bra. "I used this." 

Alice's eyes widened. "The missing page!" 

"You know about it?" 

"Zoë—" Alice put her hands to her face. "There's only
one
page missing. One left to make him whole." She pointed to it. "And that's it. We've got to get it back in the book as soon as possible." 

I wasn't sure why she seemed upset and happy at the same time. I started to ask her what the hurry was when I saw her look behind me up at the screen. 

"Dags? Dags!" Rhonda was screaming.

I turned to see the screen dimming. Dags was losing consciousness. 

A circle of people looked down at me. 

"What's wrong?" Daniel asked. 

"He said..." Rhonda's voice was the last thing Dags heard before the lights went out. "He said he heard Zoë." 

And...cue the dark.

I turned to Alice, whose light was the only illumination around. "What the hell just happened?"

"He was wounded. I helped him shut down to conserve energy. Things are a little different for the time being, Zoë," she put her hand on my wrist, the one holding the page. "That page has to go back in the book." 

"But—" I looked back at the darkness around us. "I don't get it. What's going on?" Geist had said the pages had been rearranged in the right order. 

Except for this one. 

"He is—everything's where it should be. Except this page," she looked at me with wide, blue eyes. "This page is the key, Zoë. This is the link to the
Grimoire
—without it—he can't access the spells on the pages." 

"Without the spells, he can't manifest the magic needed to heal himself. The only power we possess is the basic Guardian abilities he had before the book was fused. He's defenseless, Zoë. Without this page, he's just a normal human. Without this page—it's only a matter of time before his body rejects the book because it can't get to the magic that makes his existence possible." She took in a deep breath. "And when that happens... both he and the book will disappear."

"Forever." 

-5-

The Great Ghost

Why was I always learning about things in the most dire of ways? It was almost like my life hung on the chapters of a novel—and each scene ended in a cliffhanger. 

-.-

I looked down at the page, still letting what Alice had said sink in. "Alice—what the hell's been happening? You've got to tell me." 

"I—I don't even know how much you already know, Zoë?"

"I know..." and I stopped. What exactly did I know? 

Too much to really go into. And more to share with everyone. I had to tell them about the Ethereals' plans with Dags, and with me. So that meant I needed to prioritize myself. 

Right. Like I'm good with that? 

I glanced back up at the blank spot where the screen had been. "I'm inside of Dags, right?" 

Alice nodded. 

"Where's Maureen?"

She frowned and her eyes took on one of those glassy looks. MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over), but not really. Her frown intensified. "She was here...but now I can't find her." 

"What do you mean you can't find her?"

Alice refocused on me. "She and I are a part of Darren's being, but not his soul. His body houses three entities—himself, myself, and Maureen. As a Guardian—with Maureen and I residing inside the gateways on his palms—we are very limited as to our influence within his physical body. But when Rhonda fused the
Grimoire
inside of him, it took over as the reservoir." 

I know I must've looked confused. Because I was. 

She patted my arm. "Just think of the
Grimoire
as the cup that holds us, and Darren's soul is the water that flows from that cup. Darren is the weave that holds the spells. When he was changed, we were all changed. Maureen and I have equal representation now, but not total power." 

I arched an eyebrow. "I'm not sure that cleared anything up." 

She actually laughed. Wow, I liked it when Alice laughed. "To simplify—we can sense each other. Like we're all in the same house together. But..." she looked behind her. "She's not here." 

"How can Maureen
not
be here?" 

"I don't know. She's been absent before. And when that happened—" she sighed. "It usually meant we were in for serious trouble." 

"You mean Dags' life is in danger?"

"Pretty much." 

"Must be Tuesday." 

"Pardon?" 

"Nothing. Old series reference." 

Great. I looked at the page again and remembered Dags' palm. "Alice, what just happened? What were those tattooed guys?"  

"Those were Powers—they fall beneath the Virtues and the Arcs." 

I was just gonna pretend I knew what that meant. 

"Your dad is a Virtue." 

"Yeah, I know that. But I'm a little fuzzy about the rest of it." 

"Powers are in essence—" Alice pushed her hair back from her face. "Humans that have Ethereal created symbionts in them. Not a Revenant, but more like a—"

"Kinda like what happened with Reverend Rollins? The one that Hirokumi wanted so he could prolong his life?" 

"Yes!" she brightened. "The symbionts used for the Posers are more of a hybrid though. If I remember correctly, the Symbiont in Rollins' instance had pretty much taken a back seat and allowed the Reverend power. Meaning he allowed the man's baser needs to manifest." 

"Yeah, I guess so. He was a nicer man when that thing left him. So these are worse?" 

"Much worse. These things take over the entire body—there's nothing left of the human's soul inside of them. They're slowly devoured;it's what feeds the Symbiont. And they're allowed free reign for service to the Virtue that created it." 

"And the tattoos?" 

"Seems to be some sort of calling card the Symbionts leave on the flesh when they enter. It's a boon for them because it makes them easily identifiable. If you noticed, these Powers all had the same markings—but in different locations. That particular mark belongs to the Virtue Raziel." 

"So you guys got a book on whose is what?"

"We don't know them all." She paused. "But we do know which belong to your dad." 

That stopped me in my tracks. "What?" 

"I'm sorry Zoë, but we've been attacked by your dad's Powers as well. And we barely made it out alive. He's a very strong Virtue." 

"Sonofa—" I shoved the page back into my bra and put my hands on my hips. "This has got to fucking stop." 

"I agree. But they seem pretty hell-bent on getting complete control of the Abysmal Plane." 

"Hell—" I was getting tired, and not from some expenditure of energy, but just—I wanted some peace! "Why don't they just take it? Just send in troops and spend millions of dollars and just—" I really didn't know how to finish that. 

"Because that's not the way the universe works." Alice reached up and put a hand on my shoulder. "A creature with Abysmic spirit must occupy the Throne. And from that Throne comes the control and power needed to manifest the Ethereal's counterpart. You know everything works on opposites; of action and reaction. Yin and yang. And yin can't just take over yang. The two Thrones have to be in agreement with one another." 

"So this Seraphim is starting its own little war to do something that can't really happen." 

"Yes...and up until a few months ago, it seemed they always knew what we were doing. They were always one step ahead of Joe and the others. It's like there's this eye in the sky following things." 

Eye in the sky? "You mean like a world ghost?" Or a universal one? 

"Oh not that old myth, Zoë." She laughed at me. "Did someone on that side tell you about it?" 

"About what?" I felt we were moving away from what was  important—like Dags and the Seraphim and where Maureen went—but geez my mind could skip to the shiny so fast. "What're you talking about?"

"The myth of the Great Ghost. You know, the universal mind?" 

Uh... 

"Well, maybe not. You know how some religions in this realm don't subscribe to Heaven or Hell, but to a being that simply is? That the universe is manifest of intelligence all on its own, and it gains that intelligence from all minds being connected as one."

Yeah...I had that confused face on again. 

"Zoë—the theory is the Physical Plane exists because millions of minds in the Physical Plane are connected in the Mental Plane, Walk the astral, and manifest the Outer Planes. IE—the Abysmal and Ethereal." 

I scratched my head. "Besides what you just said—are you on about that whole 'we make our own reality' crap?"

"Yes!"

"Oh bullshit," I pulled away from her. "You think I
want
this reality?" And with that I shifted my visual being to become the Wraith, the thing I was before I was trapped in the throne/egg. 

Ashen, black-veined skin, dark hair that moved in the air as if underwater, shadows that clung to my body like clothing, my clawed bunny-slippers with fangs, and the wings I now felt and missed so very much. It was an illusion. I knew this. 

Because I wasn't really here. 

"I want
this
?" 

"Yes. On some level you do. You may not know it. But you are beautiful, Zoë. And powerful. And the universal mind, the Great Ghost—" 

"The Geist?" 

She blinked, and then smiled wider. "Yes...yes that is a good term for it. The Geist wants you where you are." 

"So the Geist controls the universe?" 

"No, the universe
is
the Geist. A Geist is what you call a culmination of something. It's the sum of the many." 

I held up my hands. "Okay. Brain fried. Not getting all of this and I'm thinking about Dags again. But I did come into some information about what they want to do with the
Grimoire
—" 

"We know," Alice nodded. "They intend on plucking it out of Dags and using it to gain control so they can keep the borders closed."

"They want to put him in the hot-seat, Alice." 

She frowned at me. "What?" 

"Yeah..." and I looked back up at the blank, black wall. "They want Dags in the Throne, and they don't just want them closed, Alice. They want them sealed." 

-6-

He's Mine Bitch

Alice led me to the most amazing thing inside of Dags' subconscious. 

A beach. 

How long had it been since I'd seen a beach?

It was dark though. 

I could see the moon, full above me. It sparkled over the water and illuminated the cliffs behind me on the other side of the sand. She'd arranged driftwood in a semi-circle a few feet from the shore, and a fire sparked and crackled there. I saw lights in the distance, almost as if we were on the edge of civilization. 

"I set this up for Darren back when Rodriguez had him." Alice said as she sat down and stoked the fire. I had my back to her, looking out over the water at the dim horizon. "It was a place he could go to escape the pain of torture." 

"Rodriguez really did torture him?" 

"He nearly killed Darren, Zoë," Alice said in a small voice. "If Rhonda hadn't pushed the book into his soul—" 

"Stop it," I hissed. I didn't want to hear this. I'd had no idea what Dags had gone through before he'd shown up in mom's house and saved my ass from the Coyote Flame. He'd been there for me, laughed with me, and cared. With no explanation about himself and the changes I'd physically seen. 

Selfless. 

I'd heard part of the story from Dags, and from Rhonda. And my heart cracked a little more inside every time I thought of him hurting or in pain. My touch had sent him on the same road as Azrael's touch had done to me. 

I had changed Dags' life, but Rhonda had changed him physically. 

"Do you see it?" 

I half turned to my left to look at her, illuminated by the fire. "See what?" 

She nodded to a place to my right. I turned and looked into the shadows. At first I thought it was just a dark mountain—but then as I stared harder I noticed the shape of it wasn't irregular enough. I started walking closer to it. 

I stopped when I realized it was a book. 

A big. Fucking. Book. 

Right here, half buried, three stories in height and half as wide. 

Alice was beside me, her light illuminating the book's face. It looked like a circular symbol had been tooled into the leather. "That's the same mark on Dags' palms." 

"Yes. I've had this book since I was in my thirties—passed down to me by my grandmother. She was the leader of the Cruorem then, and some of the spells inside are hers as well. But I have no idea what the history of it was before then." 

I took another step closer to it as she spoke. 

"The cover was always blank before—just an old, worn leather casing. Made it look like any other old book. But that symbol appeared when Rhonda did her spell. It ties Darren to it." 

I was close enough to touch it. But I was scared out of my freak'n mind to do that. "And Rhonda put the pages in order?" I moved around to the right of the book, where normally it would open.