AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The outer reaches of our backyard were overgrown and wild. We let it go, for the most part, because we found the energy revitalizing, and the overgrowth encouraged strangers to stay away.
As we looked around the part of the lawn we actually kept mowed and clear for the vegetable garden, I motioned for Shade to take the front. I couldn’t sense ghosts until they made themselves known to me. Some minor Demonkin I could suss out, but the spirits of the Netherworld? Not so much.
Shade held out his arms, palms forward, and closed his eyes. He began to slowly turn in a circle, one step at a time. A faint cloud of shadow began to emanate from his body as he moved, tendrils of smoke, wisps coiling out from him. The shadows began to form into winged creatures, no bigger than a canary, that went flying out from him. There was still so much about the half dragon, half Stradolan—shadow walker—that we didn’t understand. And like all dragons, he wasn’t about to give up his secrets easily.
Delilah crossed to stand beside me, crossing her arms. “This scares the hell out of me,” she said, as quietly as she could. “I don’t want to think about ghosts again.”
“Me either.” Our last encounter with ghosts had left Morio almost dead and all of us shaken to the core. An entire area of Seattle had been inundated by hungry ghosts, and though we hadn’t licked them, I’d thought we had the problem somewhat under control. But with the appearance of Gulakah, the Lord of Ghosts, I wasn’t so sure. Then, he’d vanished, and I’d hoped that—with the spirit seal in his possession—he’d gone back to the Sub-Realms and stayed there.
“Do you think Gulakah’s in town?” Delilah shifted to her right foot. She was tall—six one—and athletic as hell. Compared to her, and to Camille’s five seven of voluptuousness, I might as well be a shrimp. Barely five one, I was small-framed and small-breasted, and when I’d died, I’d been slender, so I always would be. But tiny or not, I could tear through the toughest of enemies. Well, most of them. My size belied my vampiric strength.
I glanced to the side. Shade was so focused he didn’t appear to hear us at all. “Ten to one he’s back,” I said, reluctant to admit it. “I’d hoped that stealing that spirit seal from us might buy us some time, but now…I don’t think it did. Shadow Wing is on a high. He’s hyped up from claiming another of the seals. He sent Telazhar to Otherworld. Chances are Gulakah’s back. And if so…”
“If so, the ghostly activity around Seattle is going to soar.” Delilah winced. “I hate that.”
“Me, too.”
A rustle of wings, and the shadow creatures came rushing back to Shade. He held out his arms and they made a beeline for his chest and vanished into him. The moment they’d reentered his body, Shade turned abruptly.
“They’re near the rogue portal. And they’re headed our way.”
“Any idea of what they are?”
He paled. “I don’t know, but I can tell you they’re nasty. And they’re on the move.”
“How the hell can we fight them if we don’t know what they are?”
He shook his head. “Delilah, you and Vanzir head back to the house and send Camille and Morio out here in your place. We need their magic to go up against these things because I haven’t the faintest clue if physical attacks will work on them.”
Delilah gave him a swift nod as she and Vanzir turned tail and raced back to the house. Meanwhile, Shade started toward the patch of woods where the rogue portal had opened onto our land. We had guards watching over it but none of our efforts—or those of Queen Asteria’s mages—had been able to close it. As for where it went—the destination changed every so often, and there was never any guarantee where it would lead. Which was why we tended to avoid it.
Roz and I fell in beside Shade. We’d gone only a few yards when the energy thickened and I could hear Roz’s sharp intake of breath. The beating of his pulse beckoned me, and my fangs descended, but I pushed the urge out of my mind. I didn’t feed on friends, not even when they invited me to. More than one person had offered their services, but I had never taken a bloodwhore and I wasn’t about to start.
We slowly approached the sparkling light that filtered from between the trees, and Shade parted a tangle of vines that thrived in the area. Even in the early spring, they coiled, tendrils burgeoning forth to cover the walkway.
I debated whether to call ahead to the guards, but hesitated. I’d alert the spirits if I yelled. But if I didn’t, the guards would be in danger—
“Crap.” Roz’s voice cut through the night. “Look.”
And then I saw them. Bodies, prone on the ground. Two elven guards, and they looked terribly, horribly dead. There was no blood, not even a whiff, but they were pale as snow, pale as a clean sheet on a cold morning. I glanced around but couldn’t see anything else out of the ordinary. As I knelt by the corpses, Shade, Smoky, and Rozurial kept watch.
There didn’t seem to be any wounds—no marks, nothing to indicate why they died, except the extreme pallor of their skin. That might indicate a vampire, but there were no fang marks that I could see, and something else felt off, but I couldn’t pinpoint just what.
“I want a Corpse Talker.” I glanced up at Rozurial. “We need to know how these men died. They’re Queen Asteria’s guards, and something killed them—either coming through the portal or…”
“Trying to go through it to Otherworld?” Shade asked.
I shrugged. “Six of one, half dozen of the other. Or we could be off base. Keep on your guard while I call Yugi down at headquarters and see if he can get me a Corpse Talker out here.”
“We could help, if you think one would travel through the Ionyc Seas?” Smoky took up guard directly in front of the portal. I pitied anybody trying to make it through him. Dragons were notorious for being cruel to their enemies, and Smoky was no exception.
“A Corpse Talker? You’re kidding, right?” Corpse Talkers were reclusive and dangerous. But the more I thought it over, the more sense it made. “I have no idea. I really don’t even know what they are. Nobody really does.”
Corpse Talkers could give voice to the dead. They would ask questions, and the souls of the recently departed channeled through their lips. Nobody ever saw their bodies or faces—just the luminous steel-gray eyes that gleamed from within the dark hood. Only the women of their race could become Corpse Talkers; the males were sequestered below ground in their villages hidden beneath the forests of Otherworld.
“If they will allow, I will bring them.” Smoky looked rather disgusted, and I knew that he didn’t like to have much to do with the dead.
I put in a call to Yugi and gave him our request. “I think Chase is on his way to the station, by the way. He took off the minute we got back to the house.”
