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That wasn’t nearly as bad asthisthough. Calling forth a spirit required focus. It was becoming a conduit for the spirit, a way for them to interact with the world. It felt as though something had slipped inside me and left behind a sticky residue once gone.
However, since Colter wouldn’t let me off the hook, I didn’t have other options. One quick chat with the spirit and I could take myself home to wash up.
Kase staring at me made me uneasy, but I pushed that from my mind. Instead, I closed my eyes. My stomach rolled at the way flesh gave beneath my fingertips, at the clammy chill of it.Don’t think about it.
I breathed through my mouth to avoid the scent, nice and slow, and tried to focus as I reached through whatever it was that connected me to the afterworld. When I did, it rushed over me, through me, and even breathing became challenging. It felt like sucking whipped cream into my lungs, made me want to cough it up.
Instead, I sank into it, accepted it, reached further into that abyss that always welcomed me, always felt as though it pulled me in.
The body created an anchor in those weeks until a spirit left this realm entirely. By connecting to that other realm, that power, along with the body, I could drag the spirit back, no matter where it had ventured.
It wasn’t something I did often—grave digging never led anywhere good—but I’d done it before in rare cases.
I grasped in that abyss, calling forth the spirit. The prickling sensation I was used to didn’t come. That filling as the spirit took up space inside me, as it spoke through me, none of that happened.
The trail the spirit had left was long and narrow, but at the end? When I expected to find the spirit…
Blackness. Emptiness. A void that made me open my mouth and let out a bottomless scream that tore at my throat. My chest wouldn’t rise, frozen as if that mist had turned to ice around me.
The burning, choking sensation swamped over me just before I passed out.
* * * *
Coughing woke me, the sort that made me worry I’d throw up. It felt like the time I’d overestimated my swimming ability at the beach and inhaled a few mouthfuls of sea water.
Even with the frantic hacking, nothing came up. Worse, a chill inside me remained, something dark and ugly and void, as if it had hollowed out a spot inside me that would forever be empty.
“Breathe slowly.” Kase’s voice brought me back to the present, to the realization I’d been passed out with a vampire around.
My hand flew to my neck to check for wounds.
A dark sigh. “I didn’t bite you.”
“Can never be too careful. You might have gotten peckish.” My words came out rough, as though covered in gravel and shoved through a too-tight throat. Still, I pushed myself up to sitting, finding myself back in my own home. The curtains were drawn, the room dim, but it was my bed.
The comforter of which was now covered in the same mud I’d had on me.Just wonderful.
Being back didn’t reassure me nearly as much as it should have. Somehow having Kase in my room was far too personal. He didn’t sit on my bed—thankfully—but watched from the foot. The still way he stood unnerved me, the way all old vampires did.
And there was no mistaking him for being anything other than exceedingly old.
“What happened?” I croaked out the question, a pounding in my head as I tried to recall past that horrible sinking feeling I’d encountered.
“I was hoping you would be able to tell me. You touched the corpse, then your mouth opened and a sound came out.”
“It’s called screaming. With how many humans you’ve killed, I’d think you’d recognize it.”
He lifted his dark eyebrow, as though not surprised I’d think that, but rather that I’d say it out loud.
So maybe insulting him isn’t smart.
He shook his head. “You didn’t scream, Ava. The sound that came out was nothing I’ve ever heard. It was like the wind over the ocean. Your eyes turned white, as well.”
The memory of the darkness pulling me in swamped me again, a sinking void that wanted to devour me. I leaned forward, trying to slow my breath. “How did it stop?”
“I ripped you away from the corpse. When the connection was broken, you fell unconscious.”
“Wonderful. Thanks for that.”
