Page 32 of Possessed

The sound of it hit him first. Voices drifting up to him were an awful mixture of sobs and screams and pleadings. He tried to make out single words, but it was difficult. It was like he had landed in the middle of an amphitheater that was hosting a chaotic symphony of hopelessness. He stared, trying to find the source of the voices. It was tough to get a good look at what was below him because a thick fog drifted over everything. Raef made himself drop closer to the land, and pockets of fog parted to reveal a landscape of utter desolation. It was like the Mojave mixed with the Arctic mixed with a nuclear wasteland. Almost totally devoid of color, the land lacked anything that was growing or sheltering, and all over the place was littered with what Raef at first thought were bizarrely shaped stones, jutting up from the bleak, drought-cracked ground. It wasn’t until one of the stones moved that he realized they weren’t rocks at all—they were bodies that had become grotesquely fused to the land. A shoulder jutted, an eyeless head was frozen, faceup, an arm protruded.

And even more awful, Raef watched as one of the fused bodies opened its mouth and shrieked.

Raef shuddered with revulsion. The bodies still had life in them, even though they lacked color or animation or expression, and they had actually become part of the land.

Aubrey? Oh, God, is one of them Aubrey? And Lauren? Is that how Braggs has them trapped—not by his own force, but by the force of this terrible place?

Almost in a panic, Raef reached out again for her slim beam of light, but he found nothing—felt nothing. He couldn’t Track her at all.

Then he remembered—the book had said when he reached the Land of the Dead his Gift wouldn’t work, that he’d have to use his brains and his wits.So think!he ordered himself. He’d Tracked Aubrey here—it was just when he actually arrived that his Gift had gone.

He stared around him, trying to clear his thoughts. Okay, maybe he should just start going from body to body and calling her name.

No. That felt wrong, and he didn’t have time to waste searching aimlessly.Think! Use some of that fucking wisdom both girls believe you have!He stared around him. What a colorless, hopeless place. There was not one green thing—not one bit of sunlight or blue sky or even the familiar brown of a winter-nude tree.

Wait,he thought.I might have something. Aubrey has color! Her spirit, even though it’s trapped here and being drained, has enough color left in it to leave a trail for me.

He didn’t need to search the pathetic, colorless people who had utterly given up and had no more light about them at all. He just needed to search for light—any light.

Raef shifted his attention from the horrible, fused figures and began drifting. As he did he searched, sweeping his gaze back and forth, peering through fog and darkness, until off to his right a slight flicker of something like a candle caught in a great wind pulled at the edge of his sight. Raef redirected himself until he was hovering over the spot he was sure he’d seen the glimmer of color.

The damned fog was everywhere and he made himself drop down, closer to the ground itself. When he got lower the fog parted and the land beneath him fell away, leaving Raef staring down at a huge pit that was filled with a sewerlike, vitreous liquid that roiled and churned. With a shudder of disgust, Raef saw that people were bobbing around in the liquid, frantically trying to stay afloat. The people appeared to be as colorless as the bodies fused to the land, but as he watched, light fluttered across the face of one of the swimmers—right before she was engulfed in a wave and her head went under—only to reappear with a gasp and a terrible scream of agony a moment later.

It was the voice he recognized before he recognized her pale, terrified face.

“Lauren!”he shouted, commanding himself to go even lower—to go down to her.

“Raef! He’s here! He—”Lauren’s head went under again.

“Hang on! I’m coming!”Raef reached into the oil-slick water, feeling through the cold, dark liquid for her, but his search was suddenly stopped as something hard caught him in his gut and hurled him into the air and away from the pit.

He gasped with shock as pain lashed through him, blurring his vision. Raef blinked hard. When his focus finally came back he was looking down at a creature that was circling the top lip of the pit. Lizardlike, its body stretched all the way around the circumference of the pit. It had multiple tails that whipped in agitation at Raef. It opened its fang-lined maw to hiss at him—a sound that made the fluid in the pit churn even more crazily and had the swimmers, whose lights were now barely visible, crying out and struggling even harder to stay afloat.

“Stop!”Raef shouted at the creature.“You’ll drown them all!”

The lizard thing opened its horrible mouth again and familiar laughter drifted across the liquid pit and up to Raef.“Yessss,”it hissed.“I will drown them, but slowly, after I have bled everything I can from them. Are you here to join them? Your scarlet light will make a nice addition to my collection.”

Raef met the creature’s dark eyes—eyes Raef recognized as easily as he had the laughter and the voice.

Raef looked from the Braggs creature to the pit, and saw Lauren’s head go under again. The sight worked like a goad on him and his answer rang clear and strong through the sounds of misery around him.“I didn’t come to join them, but I’ll take their place. You can have me and my light, just let the twins go.”

“No, Raef!”Lauren shouted. The Braggs creature reached into the pit and swirled the liquid with a claw, and Lauren’s head was engulfed in another oily wave.

“Look!”Raef felt foolish, but he waved his arms like he was trying to flag the attention of a charging bull.“You don’t want her. She’s almost used up. I’m not.”

The Braggs creature paused, drawing his claw from the liquid. His dark eyes met Raef’s gaze.Hatred,Raef thought.I don’t need my Gift to know that Braggs is hatred become tangible.

Braggs’s soulless laughter drifted around him again.“No,”he said.“I will not trade with you. Between us there is that little matter of the fact that you killed my body. That will be inconvenient for me until I can find another to take its place.”

I need my fucking Glock right now,Raef thought.

“And if I remember correctly, back in the mortal realm your body is very busy dying. Soon you will be just another lost soul here. Who knows, you might accidentally stumble into my pit.”

“Hey, it doesn’t have to be like this. Maybe we can make a deal.”Even though he felt like he was grasping at straws, Raef spoke quickly. At least while he talked Braggs was more focused on him than on pushing under the heads in the pit and slowly, slowly, while he spoke, Raef drifted closer and closer to Lauren.“You say you need a new body. Take mine. I’ll trade it for the twins.”

Braggs’s laughter was a hiss.“No, your body is dying.”

“I’m tougher than you think. Afghanistan couldn’t kill me. I’ll bet you didn’t, either. That Glock makes one hell of a roar. Paramedics are probably on their way to TU right now.”