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“I haven’t understated anything. The joint feedings are dangerous. I told you that.” He peered into the room. “I can’t see any ghosts.”
“If you’re not psychic, you wouldn’t.” I somewhat reluctantly pulled away from the comfort of Azriel’s support. “Did any of our victims use this room?”
His gaze met mine. “Yes.”
“All of them?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
Which meant this room—and these ghosts—was the connection. But why the depth of anger? I frowned at the swirling, ethereal mass. If I wanted answers, I really had no other option but to go in there and try to talk to them.
Whether they’d be willing to talk to me was another matter entirely. I wasn’t my mother, and talking to the souls of those who’d refused—or been unable—to move on from this world wasn’t something I’d ever tried before. My strength lay in talking to the souls of those who still lived but were close to the next world—the sick, the dying, the comatose.
Although Tao’s soul had remained elusive to even me.
I flexed my fingers, suddenly aware of Amaya’s hissing again. Her energy swarmed down my spine, pinpricks of power that tickled and burned. She wanted in that room. Maybe demons weren’t the only thing she liked to eat.
I shivered, though I wasn’t sure whether the cause was my sword’s apparently insatiable hunger or the waves of emotion continuing to roll out of the feeding room. I glanced Marshall’s way again. “I want a list of everyone who died in here.”
“That is not—”
“Do it for me, or do it for Hunter. Your choice.” And we both knew Hunter wouldn’t take no for an answer, so there really wasn’t any choice in the matter. “I don’t know if the dead in here are the connection, but it’s a possibility we need to follow.”
He nodded, though his expression suggested he was far from happy. Not that I really gave a damn about that. I took a deep, steadying breath, then stepped into the room. The energy of the ghosts crawled across my skin and the air felt like molasses with the intensity of their anger. Amaya’s hissing intensified, and the sound met the fury of the ghosts head-on and countered it. Enough that I could breathe a little more easily, anyway.
I studied the vaporous forms flitting around me. I could see them, feel them, and if I concentrated hard enough, I could hear them. But it was a very distant thunder, unclear but nevertheless threatening.
“Are you seeking revenge?” I asked them.
The rhythm of their murmuring neither increased nor decreased. Either they couldn’t hear me or they were simply ignoring me.
I frowned, but tried again. “Are you responsible for the deaths of five addicted vampires?”
Still nothing in the way of any discernible response. Frustrated, I glanced at Azriel, but he merely shrugged. “As I have said before, I am neither able nor allowed to communicate with the lost ones.”
Which left us with little more than we’d already had. I glanced around the metal emptiness of the room, trying not to visualize how they’d all died, then spun on my heel and walked out. To say Amaya was unhappy with this was another one of those understatements. And her pissed-off hissing was giving me a damn headache.
As the door slammed shut behind me and the sound echoed down the long hall, I said to Marshall, “I suggest you stop using that room. It wouldn’t be wise to introduce any more anger into it.”
“It’s not like I planned such deaths,” he said. My instinct said it was another lie. “But even if I had, what the hell do any of us have to fear from ghosts? They’re not likely to be the cause of our current troubles, given that they have no flesh, let alone teeth.”
“They may not be responsible,” Azriel said, before I could reply, “but the depth of their anger and grief is certainly enough to attract other entities.”
As Marshall’s gaze swept Azriel, it narrowed a little. Trying to read him, I thought, and knew he’d have more luck trying to read the metal walls around us. After a moment, he must have realized this himself, for he said, “What other sorts of entities might we be talking about? Demons?”
“That is always possible, given what is going on elsewhere,” Azriel replied. “But we should not limit our search to just demons. There are spirits more than capable of this type of kill. Wendigos and Rakshasa would be two of them.”
“Rakshasa? I’ve never heard of them,” Marshall said.
Neither had I, but I wasn’t about to mention that.
Azriel glanced at me, amusement briefly creasing the corners of his eyes. “Rakshasa are unrighteous spirits—always female—able to take on various physical forms. Like Wendigos, they are malevolent and cannibalistic, and their fingernails are venomous.”
“Well, both of those certainly fit what’s happened to our victims.” I crossed my arms and tried to ignore the rising sense of dread. I really, really didn’t want to face a spirit that could take on human form and eat me, but I had a growing suspicion that such a confrontation lay in my future. “How do we go about catching and killing this thing, whatever it is?”
“It has found the perfect hunting ground in this place,” Azriel said. “It will be back.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not exactly a place I can hang around very easily.”
