“I don’t like this,” the librarian puffed behind me, despite being a ghost and not needing to breathe.
It wasn’t her only sign of distress. Her once sleek brown bun was positively frazzled, her prim and proper dress had acquired some wrinkles, and the odd sort of spectacles she wore were no longer perched on the end of her nose, but swinging from a fine silver chain around her neck. I wasn’t sure what all of that meant, although it seemed to indicate a troubled mind.
Or a need for constant conversation.
“I’m not an operative, you understand?” she added fervently. “I don’t go on missions. I’m just supposed to help you—”
“You are helping me.”
“Yes, but not like this. I didn’t agree to this!”
“I can go alone,” I offered, not for the first time.
“Don’t be ridiculous! You’d die alone!”
“Pretty sure that is a given, in any case.”
It was why I was out here. I supposed it was due to my profession, but I had always assumed that I would go out in the midst of a fight, scratching and clawing—and biting, if need be—to the end. The idea of allowing Morgan to steal my body, and then to just . . . fade away . . . was more than unappealing.
It was obscene.
Particularly when I didn’t think that my body was going to be found. If it had simply been dumped on the street, a master vampire should have discovered it almost immediately. The house where I’d been attacked had a huge hole in the roof from the first blow that the witch had flung at me; it would not be hard to spot. And then it would be a matter of a few minutes to check the road and surrounding streets, and salvage whatever Mistress Morgan had left.
But Louis-Cesare and Hilde had not returned, which meant that they were still searching—and that there was likely nothing for them to find. I didn’t think Morgan knew that I was dhampir, but she knew I was something, and wasn’t certain of my abilities. Shifting my spirit away avoided the problem, and left my body lying limp and defenseless on the road.
A quick immolation spell had probably taken care of the rest.
So, I didn’t have long. When the power the ghost had given me ran out, I would die, or finish dying, I wasn’t sure what the term was for someone in my position. But I did know the term for what I wanted before I departed this world.
I knew that damned well.
And so did the ghost, who was eyeing me unhappily. “It won’t help, you know,” she said quietly. “I have seen many of my kind be caught in a trap of vengeance, and never once did I know anyone to prosper from it. Even those few who achieved their goal found it hollow in the end.”
“This is not merely about revenge.”
“Isn’t it?” she seemed skeptical. “Then why risk yourself? I have told you, there are things that stalk battlefields looking for ghosts—and for disembodied spirits, too.”
“And am I at less risk on top of a house? Do spirits not like to climb?”
“You jest, but the more active you are, the easier you are to spot. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“Killing Morgan will be satisfying,” I said. “I will not dissemble. But thwarting her plans will be even more so. I have seen the future. It is . . . strange . . . but also better, I think. More prosperous, more broad-minded, more . . . kind. Would you not agree?”
“In some ways,” she frowned. “Children are educated, even poor, female ones, and do not often starve in their beds at night. Nor do the old, who have no one to care for them. There is more of a hedge against disease and thus less suffering. And people who offend receive a fair trial, with cruel and unusual punishments being banned—”
I looked at her curiously. “Such as?”
“Such as most of those used these days,” she admitted. “But it is not perfect—”
“Any society made up of people will never be so. But it sounds like something worth fighting for, does it not?”
I saw her blink. “But . . . Rhea will be back soon—”
“In time?”
“She is mistress of time,” the ghost said, but she sounded unsure.
Perhaps because she’d sized up Mistress Rhea the same way I had: incredibly talented, but young and inexperienced. Brave, but unsure of herself; determined, but also aware of the great responsibility she bore. Rhea would try her best, but would it be good enough?
I didn’t think even she knew.
“She has her hands full, seems to me,” I pointed out. “And while she takes care of one danger, Morgan could slip away and cause another somewhere else. Unless we stop her.”
“And if this isn’t enough?” The ghost held up the potion bomb she was carrying, because I’d kept dropping it.
It was a sickly green, and designed to freeze a body in place, judging by what had happened to the Corpsman the bombers had hit with a similar one. It might even be the same spell the mages had used against Morgan on the bridge. The locals had seemed to enjoy looting the Corps’ weapons to add to their own.
In any case, our plan was to recreate that scene: freeze Morgan in place, thus making her current body useless, and prompting her to emerge to find another. And when she did, the ghost could show me some of those tricks she knew. There was no certainty of victory, as we were both in a weakened state, but two against one was the best chance we had.
I said as much, expecting an argument from someone who had informed me that her primary job was tending to the Pythian library. She spent her time reading tales of derring-do, not participating in them. And this was as dangerous for her as it was for me, perhaps even more so.
I didn’t have much left to lose. But she had a nice afterlife, work she loved, and her precious books with which to while away the centuries. She probably should have refused.
But instead, for the first time I saw her jaw set and an odd sort of gleam come into her eyes. “Yes, in fact,” she said. “Yes, it does.”
“Does what?” I asked, confused.
“Feel like something worth fighting for.”
I smiled slightly. “Then let us go find this bitch.”
That proved more difficult than I had expected. I’d assumed the worst to be behind us, with most of the fighting taking place at the other end of the street, back around the bend. When I’d looked in this direction from the vantage point of the roofline, that had certainly seemed to be the case.
Now, I wasn’t so sure.
The reason it had seemed so quiet here was that a pall had descended over this part of the road that darkened everything, even more than the night. From above, it acted like a black fog, deepening the gloom between buildings and disguising what lay below. From inside, it made it impossible to see the full length of the street, or even much above twenty paces in front of us.
That necessitated slow going, but that would have been true in any case. The fight we had left behind was more or less a standard magical battle, except that the mages were hampered by not wanting to kill the locals, even if they had been conspiring with witches. That sort of thing tended to annoy their royal benefactress, and the Corps preferred to avoid the queen’s temper.
But other than that, it was pretty much as I had expected.
This one . . . was not.
It did have some similarities with the other. There were smoldering buildings, where spell impacts had caused a hundred little fires and a few large ones. They burned through the strange, black fog dimly, but did not help to brighten our path, for the darkness appeared to eat their light almost as soon as it radiated outward.
There was also rain, which continued to bucket down but did not disperse the fog. And curses flying about here and there, lighting up the night in flashes for an instant, before being swallowed up, too. And thunder booming overhead, a distant, angry rumble.
But no people, except for the Corpsmen, who appeared to be battling a foe I could not see.
Their opponents held no torches or magical lights, causing them to be almost invisible in the darkness. I could only see them when they moved, and even then, it was more as a suggestion of a body than anything solid. And one not entirely . . . right.
They were too tall, too thin, too . . . extended. And their shapes changed at times, with an already long-fingered hand suddenly becoming something monstrous, with digits growing to half the length of my body. Before suddenly wrapping around a Corpsman and jerked him into the dark, his startled cry cut off almost immediately by the muffling fog.
The sight made me stumble back and hug a wall, not certain what I was seeing or if it was a threat to us as well. My vaunted experience stopped just short. And so, it seemed, did the librarian’s, who had just grabbed hold of my arm.
But not, I thought after a glance at her frightened face, as a substitute for Rhea’s tether. I was managing not to drift away on my own, although it was starting to seem like more and more of a good idea. But my prey was here.
If this is your last hunt, make it a good one, I thought savagely, and pressed on.
The dark creatures were all around us now, but still almost impossible to see, merely weird flutterings at the edge of my vision which were gone when I looked again. And what I did glimpse often didn’t make sense. They were like the distortions found in shadows when the light shifted, ephemeral and constantly changing.
Except for the one standing in front of a house across the street, not ten yards away.
I had almost failed to see it, despite the building being engulfed in brilliant green flames, because it wasn’t in constant motion like the others. But it was there, with the fire staining the cobbles except where its body blocked the light. I strained to see it more clearly, which should have been easy surrounded by such brilliance, but it did not seem to help.
Until a woman suddenly separated from it, the darkness falling away from her like a dropped cloak.
The librarian made some sort of sound at my side, but I was too busy wondering what I was seeing to pay attention. The woman was tall and slender, with long black hair and a dress that appeared to be made out of fluttering pieces of pale, rose-colored silk. It was scandalous enough to have had her arrested on a normal street, for it revealed more than it concealed.
But this was not a normal street, if it ever had been. And I did not think that she had to worry about the human authorities in any case. Not with the amount of power she was giving off.
It was a whisper on the air, a cool stream cutting through all the heat and biting energy like a river across a parched land. Unthinkingly, I reached out to touch it, it was that tangible, and to draw it closer. And when I did, she turned around and looked at me, as if sensing my admiration.
Which quickly turned into something else entirely.
The skin of her face and body was mostly transparent, but not like mine or the ghost’s. We looked like a tapestry bleached by the sun, with our forms unchanged, merely faded. Whereas I could see every bone in her lifted arm, and beneath the pale blush on her cheeks, a skull grinned at me slyly.
As if to say, ‘you’ll be next.’
I reared back, causing the ghost to curse and tighten her grip on my arm, but I did not apologize. I didn’t know which of the fell creatures she had described to me this was, and didn’t care to know. I just wanted out of here!
But she wasn’t having it. “It’s alright,” the librarian said breathlessly.
“Alright?” I asked, my voice high. “I do not know what that word means in your time, mistress, but here—”
I broke off, but not because the skull creature had moved.
But because something strange was happening on the street in between us.
A war mage came into view, seemingly out of nowhere thanks to the surrounding darkness, although that wasn’t the strange thing. No, that would be the fact that he was being blown backwards, facing one way but being pushed in the other. I felt nothing, not even a mild breeze, with no cross streets here to carry it through the closely packed buildings.
Yet he appeared to be battling a tempest.
His arms were working uselessly, with the few spells he managed to throw being blown right back at him; his cape was barely clinging to his shoulders and then was ripped away entirely; and when he finally stumbled, he was tossed down the street after it, like a stray leaf caught in a gale.
And he wasn’t the only one.
Further down the road, I dimly spotted another mage being lifted off his feet by swirling winds and carried away. A second was struck by lightning, a terrific bolt that lit him up even through the gloom and shattered his shields, leaving his coat—their last line of defense—smoking. And a third was finding that the rain particularly loved him, following him as he staggered into view, with what amounted to a gushing waterfall directly on top of his head.
He was in no danger of drowning; he had a shield, too. But once he went down, he stayed that way, the pressure being too much to bear. And every time he tried to get up, the torrent increased, leaving him unable to do anything except to peer desperately out of his watery cage, much as the local residents had done from theirs.
And I began to realize that the weather . . . had a sense of humor.
It also appeared to be on our side, like the skull creature. Instead of attacking, she had merely gone back to her work, using magic to quieten the flames and save the house. When I turned to look at my ghostly companion, I found her watching her, too, with a relieved grin on her face.
“Fey,” she told me happily.
“Fey?”
She nodded. “Ancient ones, who slipped into this world long ago, and refused to go home when commanded.”
“Why do they look . . . like that?” I asked, because that was neither a ghost nor a body; I didn’t know what it was.
“A terrible punishment,” she said, lowering her voice. “Fey souls are supposed to be fused to their bodies, and cannot part from them. But their defiance so angered the gods that they stripped them of their corporeal forms, leaving them greatly diminished, for losing half of their beings denied them much of their power. They were afterward banished from Faerie, doomed forever to wander a world not their own.”
“That’s . . . horrible.”
She nodded. “It is said that the ancient covens discovered them and took pity. They found animal bodies in need of healing for them to share. Merging with the creatures gave the lost fey a home again, and cured the animals of their afflictions. Afterwards, the witches kept them as companions and friends.”
“Familiars,” I said, as the woman finished her work and the flames went out.
And she shrank into a cat, as black as the night, and ran away.
“Yes, as some call them,” the librarian said, smiling after her. “Although they are not nearly what they were, they still have power. Enough to cause the mages trouble—and to protect us.”
“Protect us?” I echoed, because I didn’t see how they could do much for a couple of wandering spirits not that much different from themselves.
But it seemed I was wrong.
“They don’t like demons,” the ghost told me. “Or the mages who consort with them. And they are fiercely loyal to their people. No hunters will dare to stalk us this night.”
She sounded certain, and while I didn’t see any spectral monsters being chased off, I did see plenty of other examples of what they could do. Everywhere I looked, tiny, furry bodies scarpered, almost impossible to see against gloom. Until they reformed into full size and hexed one of the increasingly alarmed looking mages.
Their spells were often stopped by the men’s shields, but the fey had provided for that. Their favorite trick seemed to be to pop up behind a Corpsman, spell him with something nasty enough to invite retaliation, then shrink down and scamper off while he spun. And cursed a fellow war mage behind him in his confusion.
In some cases, the war mage on the receiving end hexed him back, resulting in mini duels between people on the same side, while the fey laughed.
But neither their tricks nor whatever they were doing to the weather was enough to stop the Corps, and I had yet to see a witch in this area. Until the ghost suddenly stiffened beside me. And clutched my spirit form so tightly that it hurt.
I didn’t mind.
Because the thunder . . . had acquired a voice.