Shadow Rising (20 page)

“You’re okay now, honey.” Chase knelt and opened his arms.

A smile broke out on her face. The closet opened and out stepped the little boy. The girl ran over to him and caught him by the hand, bringing him back to stand in front of Chase.

Chase waited, his arms wide, looking so sad and weary that I wanted to take him in hand, put him in his jammies, and tuck him into bed with a cup of hot cocoa. He continued to kneel as the girl and boy slowly walked into his embrace.

Tears were falling down his face now, as he slowly closed his arms around them, murmuring something I couldn’t hear. And then, as they leaned against his shoulders, they slowly began to fade. In another moment, they had vanished
in a shimmer of cleansing light, and we were alone in the house.

Camille and Morio dropped to the sofa, mute and spent. Roz was hurt. Chase looked weary beyond belief. And I…I was confused and had a horrendous headache.

After a moment, I slid to the floor. “What the fuck just happened here?”

Chase lifted his head. “Abby and Fritz—are they okay?”

“They took off for the FH-CSI in my car. They should be there by now. There were…there was a vortex on the front porch that almost caught Fritz. Arms reaching through to pull him down.” I looked around at the destruction and mayhem. “Was it all just that one spirit causing problems?”

Camille shook her head. “No. We cleared him out, but there are more things here. Evil things, lurking. I can feel them. They’re just biding their time, and we really should get the fuck out of here before they come after us. Because I don’t know how much magic I have left in me tonight. That freaking perv was hell on wheels to get rid of. Thank you, Chase—you distracted him long enough for Morio and me to build our spell.”

Chase stared at his hands. “He hurt them. When they were all alive. He hurt both of them and I think he killed them, too. He bound the girl to him and was chasing after the boy all of these years.”

“How do you know?” I cocked my head. Chase’s abilities were opening out. After he’d been injected with the Nectar of Life to save his life, abilities had been coming to the surface. We’d known Chase had psychic potential, and the nectar had thrown down the gauntlet.

He shrugged. “She told me. What can I say? I could hear her in my head—not so much in words, but I could…I know what he did to them.” It was all he said, and it was all he needed to say. The tone of his voice told us the rest.

We struggled toward the back door. I didn’t want to take another chance on meeting whatever was haunting the front porch. Somebody was tunneling up from a nasty-assed place, and right now the last thing we needed was another battle.

We came around the front and I looked back at the house. “Shit. Forgot to lock the doors.” I grimaced.

“Hell, okay, I’ll go back.” Morio started back, but I shook my head.

“You guys stay right here. I can get across the porch without putting a foot on it.” I hated levitating—I was by no means an expert, and more often than not, I ended up running into a wall. But it was better than trying to turn into a bat. My bat-girl abilities had a better chance of flubbing than Camille’s Moon magic.
A lot better.

As I floated up and over the porch, I glanced down. All I could see was floorboards, but they wavered and rippled. The vortex hadn’t sealed itself. I slowly levitated through the front door and touched down, turning to slam it behind me and lock it.

The house creaked and moaned. I had the uneasy feeling the sounds weren’t just from the floorboards settling. The pseudo-blood was still streaming down the walls, and while no knives hurtled through the air at the moment, as I walked through the living room, muffled moans and cries assaulted my ears.

“I should just get Ivana Krask down here,” I mumbled to myself.

It would be a gamble—forming deals with the Elder Fae was risky business—but she did eat up ghosts. Sucked them right up in that bizarre vacuum cleaner of a staff she carried, and then took them home to plant in her spirit garden for torturing.

Frankly, as long as she didn’t take innocent spirits, like the little girl and boy, I no longer cared what she did with the freak shows of the Netherworld. This was getting old. We’d been fighting spirits for too long, and I was getting really tired of playing ghostbuster to the demonic world.

As I neared the kitchen, the sound of a door slamming stopped me. I didn’t want to turn around. I really didn’t. But the door was right behind me. Either the front door, or a side door to what had been the parlor. Slowly, I peeked over my shoulder.

Mother pus-bucket
…Instead of a closed door, I was staring at a demon. It had to be a demon, because it had coiling horns and dark blistery skin, and a feral grin on its face. And it was leaning against the doorway, watching me. This was no ghost.

I paused a half beat, trying to recover my senses, and then bolted for the door. The demon came after me, and he was
fast
. He was as fast as I was.

I screamed as I crossed the kitchen in two leaps and tripped out onto the back porch. I scrambled up, grabbing for the knob to pull it shut, but he was right there. His hand covered my wrist and he yanked me inside again.

I let out another scream and kicked him in the balls, landing a solid hit. He groaned and bent over but kept hold of my wrist. Good, he was corporeal. I could at least attack
this
freak.

He snarled, closing his grip on my wrist again, but seemed confused when I didn’t scream. Instead, I tensed my arm and whirled around, dragging him with me to smash him against the wall. He let go as his horns pierced the drywall, entangling him. I laughed and pulled my arm away, spinning to kick him again, this time shoving my stiletto heel into his ass. I yanked it back, satisfied when blood began to pour out of his butt cheek.

“Home run!” But I knew when to back away. He was as strong as I was, and I had no clue what kind of powers he had or what kind of demon he was. I dashed out the door, slamming it behind me. As I jumped over the steps, landing in a crouch, I turned, sure he’d be hot on my heels, But he was standing there, staring at me through the window, making no move to follow me.

It occurred to me that maybe he
couldn’t
follow me. Maybe he was somehow trapped within the house. If so, score one for us. If not, we’d find out sooner or later. I dashed around the front, back to the others.

“There’s a freaking demon in there. I have no clue what kind but he’s big and horny—literally—and I left him with a nice hole in his ass thanks to my heel. He’s mean, though. Tough sucker.”

As I leaned against Camille’s car, we turned back to watch the house. The lights were running wild inside, strobing on and off in a dizzying cycle.

“I’d hate to have the electricity bill for that,” Camille whispered. But as we moved to leave, there was another sound—a popping, or hissing, or something of that sort, and we slowly looked back.

The house was on fire, burning with a brilliant flame.

“Shit.” Chase pulled out his phone and began to dial 911.

“Wait.” I looked at him. “We can’t let the firefighters go in there—the ghosts are in there, and the demon. Best thing is to just let it burn to the ground. Hopefully, the insurance will pay off and Fritz and Abby can find another house. Because they’re never going to reclaim that one. It’s too far gone.”

Chase gave me a long look, then glanced at the house again. “You know that I can’t…” He stopped. “Yeah…and if anybody asks, we weren’t here to see it start, so we couldn’t report it.”

We waited, watching the house, for another ten minutes and then Roz edged across the street and, taking out one of his little specials, tossed it into the flames, then ran back to us.

“Duck!”

We turned to cover, just in time to miss the explosion. As the house roared to life with an increase in heat and flame, I knew there would be nothing left. Whatever Roz had used had magnified the flames. And there would be nothing to prove that the ghosts had been there, or anything else.

The fire marshal wouldn’t find any concrete reason—so faulty wiring would most likely be blamed. So many of the old houses needed rewiring, and that had been a project on Fritz and Abby’s list. Insurance would chalk it up to accident. And they would get their money and be able to move on.

After another five minutes, Chase called Yugi. By the time the fire trucks got there, the house had imploded and there was nothing left but gutted timbers and a burned-out shell. The basement was open to the rain, the main floor vanished among the flames. Chase talked to the fire marshal, and I’m not sure what he told them, but within a few minutes, we were ready to head out.

“Go home,” I told Camille and Morio. “I have to get my car from headquarters anyway. I’ll meet you later. I may stop in at the Wayfarer to see what’s shaking there.”

They nodded and wearily drove off, taking Roz with them. As I climbed into the prowl car with Chase, I glanced over at him.

“Okay, truth. What the hell were you doing with that little girl’s ghost? I know you were trying to free her from the spirit, but how did you know what to do? And
what
were you doing?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, really. I don’t know much of what I’m doing lately, especially when it comes to…magic? Psychic stuff? I really have no clue. I just feel this prompting inside and I can’t ignore it till I do what it wants. I knew that I could untangle her from him, if I only had enough time. But it turned into a tug-of-war match. And then, after he vanished, I knew that I could help those kids over to the other side. All I had to do was hug them, pull them in, and they’d be free.”

“And it happened.” I leaned my head against the seat and closed my eyes. “Chase, you’re all right. You know that, I hope.”

He laughed. “Menolly, anytime you pay me a compliment, I pay attention. I know you don’t bullshit, so I listen.”

And with that, he fell silent and so did I. All the way to the FH-CSI building, the only sounds that passed were those of his breath, his still-beating heart, and the whir of the wheels eating up the road.

After I made sure Abby and Fritz were okay, I glanced at the clock. I couldn’t believe it, but it was still only around ten
P.M.
, so I decided to pay a visit to Carter. He’d confirmed that Gulakah—the Lord of Ghosts—was definitely back in Seattle, but I wanted to know more about the Greenbelt Park District. And Carter would know its history.

I sped through the streets, worrying over the evening. By now, I was used to having to multitask battles as we connected the dots along the way. Even though Abby and Fritz’s house of horrors seemed most likely related to the Greenbelt Park District activity, since the house was in that neighborhood, I couldn’t help but wonder if somehow Gulakah had a hand in it.

As I waited for a stoplight to turn green, I glanced over at Galaxy—one of the newer clubs in town. It was on the corner of Broadmore and Wales, and Camille had told me it was frequented by mages and witches. At first I’d feared another Energy Exchange, but she and Morio had checked it out and, apparently, it was more of an FBH hangout for Earthside pagans to learn about Otherworld magic.

As the car idled, I watched a group of people loitering around the door. They didn’t look particularly troublesome, but something seemed amiss. I rolled down my window and listened. Most clubs played loud music, and even from this distance, with my hearing, I could catch the throbbing beat. But the FBHs and the Fae hanging around the entrance seemed lethargic. Most were either leaning against the building or looking like they’d already reached the hangover stage.

The light changed and I crossed into the intersection, turning left. Carter’s basement apartment was up ahead and I eased into a parking spot and hopped out into the misting night. As I pressed the key lock and pocketed my keys, I glanced around. Nobody was prowling the streets. Carter had a foolproof magical grid set up by local witches. It cost him a pretty penny but kept the area around his apartment, including the parking spaces, protected.

I clattered down the stairs and knocked at the door, once, then again. After a pause, I heard the sound of locks clicking and the door swung wide. For once, it was Carter himself who answered. He had great coiling horns and a brilliant shock of red hair that was tousled by the best hairstylist. When he saw it was me, he smiled and motioned for me to come in. He walked with a brace on his leg but was incredibly charming and charismatic.

Carter was part demon, part Titan. His father had been Hyperion, one of the ancient Titans, and his mother had been a demoness. He was one of a litter, and his father had taken over the parenting duties when Carter’s mother abandoned her young. He was also one of the agents of the Demonica Vacana Society. They watched over demonic activity Earthside and recorded it. Whatever else they did, I hadn’t a clue. Carter was a relatively tight-lipped demon, as pleasant as he was.

“Menolly, come in, come in. What can I do for you?” He gestured me to the overstuffed, Old World upholstered sofa. Carter had a penchant for all things opulent and ancient.