5

FIELD GUIDE TO THE UNDEAD

Clutching the slim, cold weight of the apocalypse scroll, Dru took deep breaths, trying to force herself to calm down. Every instinct told her to flee, run for her life, find someplace to hide. But even though her body was physically moving far in excess of the speed limit, she still felt like a target as long as she sat there in the passenger seat.

She couldn’t blot the horrifying sight of the ghost from her mind. The hollow pits of its eyes would haunt her for the rest of her life, she knew. What she didn’t know was how they could stand up to that thing. How long did they have before it caught up to them? Was there any way to stop it?

She couldn’t stop looking back over her shoulder at the impenetrable blackness behind them. Along this little-used road that shot straight through the industrial part of the city, streetlights were few and far between. There was nothing but ugly factory buildings and warehouses lit only by occasional yellow security lights, surrounded by chain-link fences. Everything else was darkness.

In the back seat, Rane had turned human again. Tanned and bulging with muscle, she wore hot pink running shorts and a camouflage sports bra. At a full six feet tall, her blonde ponytail nearly brushed the car’s headliner. She cradled Salem to her chest, smoothing back his long hair. He was still unconscious, and possibly drooling a little bit.

“What the hell? I only left him alone for an hour.” Rane sounded perplexed. “I figured, how much trouble could he get into?”

Dru turned around in the seat. The low seat backs and complete lack of headrests in the old car gave her room to reach out a comforting hand. “It’s not your fault. That creature could have shown up at any time.”

“I guess so. P.S., what the hell was that, anyway?” Rane said it like it was somehow Dru’s fault. Her fierce gaze traveled up and down Dru’s body, uncomfortably intense. “Dude, you have noodles on your head.”

“Oh. Ugh. Sorry.”

“You’re making me hungry.”

Dru tried to finger-comb the gooey chicken noodles out of her hair, intending to throw them out the window. But they were too slippery to grasp.

“Here. Got it.” Rane reached up and swiftly plucked them out one by one, amassing a mashed handful that looked nauseatingly like a glistening gray brain. Before Dru could roll down the window, Rane sniffed the noodles hungrily, then stuffed them in her mouth.

Dru couldn’t hide her horrified expression. Her hand flew to her lips.

“What?” Rane demanded, her cheeks bulging as she chewed. “You saw me give that tentacle thing the smackdown, right? Now I’m in calorie debt.” She chewed and smacked her lips. “Not bad. Is that from the Chinese place we saved?”

With an effort, Dru pretended that it was perfectly normal to eat noodles off of someone else’s head. Because being friends with Rane required that sort of pretending on a daily basis. She held up the heavy and strangely cold apocalypse scroll, careful not to get any soup on its wrinkled parchment. The silver tines on each end glittered in Hellbringer’s dashboard lights. “That thing was an apparition of some kind. And it was after this.”

Rane looked like she wanted to crush the scroll in her bare hands. “Why? What for?”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say its intentions are not wholesome.”

Rane turned around and looked past Hellbringer’s towering back wing. “That thing still chasing us?”

Greyson glanced up in the rearview mirror. “I can feel it. Still back there somewhere, following us. Doesn’t seem to be fast enough to catch us. As long as we keep moving.”

“We need to figure out how to stop it,” Dru said. “Not just its squiggly shadow tentacles. The thing itself. Whatever it is.”

She had seen plenty of weirdness in her brief career as a sorceress. The one thing she had learned above all else was not to jump to conclusions about what they were up against. The slim margin between life and death often depended on the difference between being mostly right versus being exactly right.

She had to be exactly right.

“I need to get to my books, do some research, figure this thing out.” Dru peered out the window as another nondescript brick industrial building slid past in the night. She didn’t recognize it. “Where are we? How far are we from the shop?”

Greyson grunted. “We’re taking the scenic route. Are you sure you want to go back to the shop? If that thing follows you home . . .” He didn’t finish, but the menacing implication was clear. At the shop, they would be sitting ducks. But at least they would have magical defenses.

“The shop is protected by the crystal grid,” she assured him. She and Opal had painstakingly constructed a network of powerful crystals just inside the walls of the old brick building. It wasn’t one hundred percent impregnable, but it was the best she had. “That’s the safest place we can go right now. By the way, how’s Salem doing back there?”

Half-awake now, Salem stirred. One bloodshot eye fixed Dru with a murderous glare. “Salem is just as pleased to see you as he always is.” His eyebrow kinked, accentuating the sarcasm.

Rane picked flakes of rust and grime off of her shirt. “Meh, he’s fine.”

“At least he’s awake.” Dru decided to leave him alone for the moment and focus on getting more help. She set the scroll down between her feet and got out her phone. Opal answered on the second ring.

“Hello there,” Opal sang out. “You remember that fabulous new peaches-and-cream outfit I got with the fuzzy skirt and the sparkly low-cut top? With the matching cork wedge shoes? And the earrings, of course. The ones that you said looked like disco balls with comet-tail tassels?”

The unexpected question caught Dru completely off guard. It took her a moment to collect her thoughts.

Opal was a full-figured black woman blessed—or cursed, depending on your particular tastes—with an outrageous fashion sense. But her designer appetites were constrained by the meager income that came from the crystal shop’s admittedly limited cash flow. Yet somehow, Opal always managed to look marvelous enough to practically be chased across the red carpet by hordes of paparazzi.

After considerable mental digging, Dru did, in fact, remember that particular outfit. Specifically, she remembered asking: Where on earth are you going to wear that?

Dru cleared her throat. “Um, yes. Very nice. So anyway, I need you to—”

“Very nice?” Opal sounded insulted. “And by the way, I am having a lovely evening, thanks for asking. Dinner was spectacular. I’ll tell you all about it later. How are you?”

Dru took off her glasses and pinched the skin above her nose, feeling a headache coming on. “Look, Opal, I don’t have time to—”

“I’m just making you aware of the fact that I am wearing my brand-new peaches-and-cream outfit, and it is absolutely fabulous, thank you.” Opal’s voice took on a harder edge. “And I do not have any intention of doing anything crazy that’s going to ruin my clothes. Again.”

“No, I promise, I’m not—”

“Because every time you call me this late, it’s never like, ‘Oh, hey, hi, how’re you doing? How was your date with Ruiz?’ Instead, it’s like, ‘Hey, how about we go dig up some moldy old graveyard?’”

Dru felt the last shreds of her patience evaporate. She bit off what she was about to say next, knowing she would have regretted it, and squeezed her eyes shut. She wished she could block out the endless growl of Hell-bringer’s engine or the cloying smell of Chinese chicken soup drying in her hair. “How. Was. Your date. With Ruiz?”

“Terrible. I mean, dinner itself was absolutely amazing. He wanted to eat there, but I said, let’s take it to go. Because between you and me, I’ve got to work tomorrow, so I’ve got to move this thing along. So I get him back to my place, and just when things are getting all hot and heavy, guess what?” Opal paused, as if pretending to give Dru the opportunity to answer before she plowed on ahead. “Work calls Ruiz. Somebody apparently tried to stuff an entire bucket of KFC down the garbage disposal, and guess how that turned out? Nasty, that’s how. Now their sink is overflowing with puked-up week-old fried chicken and gravy, and the boss says my man needs to drop everything he’s doing and go fix their garbage disposal, right this second, because now it’s dripping down into the downstairs neighbor’s kitchen and now they’ve got two angry customers. So where does that leave me?”

This time, the pause was longer.

“Where does that leave you?” Dru asked, with great reluctance.

“Back at the shop, trying to research a good date spell. Or at least a good plumbing spell, so I don’t get interrupted again just when we get to the good part.”

“Oh, good!” Dru instantly brightened. “You’re at the shop!”

There was an awkward pause. “That’s what you got out of all that?”

Quickly, Dru related the night’s events, culminating in their current flight through the deserted back streets of the industrial district. “So I need you to do some research. We have to identify that ghost, or whatever it was, so we can figure out how to stop it. Do we still have The Libram of Lost Souls in the back room?”

“Yeah . . .” Opal’s heavy sigh was completely devoid of any enthusiasm. “Of course we still have it. Hang on.”

Rane tapped her on the shoulder. “See if she’s got any more of that fizzy orange potion. The one that smells like mouthwash.”

“Fizzy…what?” Dru struggled to think of a single potion that matched that description. “We don’t have anything like that.”

“Sure as hell do, dude. Opal gave him one last time he was like this. Fixed him right up.”

“Um, okay.” Dru raised the phone back to her ear. “Opal?”

“Yeah, I heard. It’s a top secret recipe.” Opal chuckled. “I’ll tell you when you get here. Had that boy bouncing off the walls inside of five minutes.”

Dru frowned. “Is it safe?”

“Safe?” Opal let out a low laugh that sounded like she was getting some kind of revenge. Dru didn’t dare ask why.

Very deliberately, she turned and gave Rane a thumbs-up. “Don’t worry. Opal will make him another potion.”

“Sweet.” Rane smiled.

“Oh, I will, will I?” With a dejected grunt, Opal sat down heavily, probably in one of the ugly plaid armchairs in the back of the shop. The crinkling of ancient paper carried through the phone as Opal flipped through the old book’s handwritten pages. “The Libram of Lost Souls. Would’ve been nice to have this book back when we were fighting those web-spewing slime zombies.”

Dru would never forget facing off against those horrible things, the web-wrapped undead creatures conjured up by a former friend of hers. He was a sorcerer whose powers had led him down the dark path of necromancy, and ultimately his own doom. That happened far too often to powerful sorcerers. “Technically, those weren’t zombies.”

“Oh, so you’re the expert now?” Opal said. “Just don’t forget who’s got the book. All right. Let me see here…Hmm…That thing you saw tonight, does it have a basic form?”

“What does that mean, ‘basic’ form? Like a triangle?”

“I don’t know. That’s what it says here in the book. I assume they mean like a basic human form. Arms, legs, all the right parts.”

“I would call that a humanoid form,” Dru said.

“Honey, I’m not the one who wrote this thing. If you got a problem with the technical language, you can take it up with the crazy-ass German monster catcher who wrote this thing.”

“Dutch.”

“What?”

“He was a crazy-ass Dutch monster catcher. Although he did write it in German. Der Foliant der verlorenen Seelen. But we have the English translation, The Libram of Lost Souls. By the way, did you know that ‘libram’ isn’t really a word?”

Opal sighed again. “Look. I don’t have all night. Did this ghost have a basic form or not?”

“Well, it definitely had arms, because it reached out for me.” Dru put her hand over the phone and turned to Greyson. “Did the ghost have legs?”

His glowing gaze didn’t waver from the road. He nodded once.

“Let’s say yes on the basic form.”

“Hmm.” Opal turned a few more pages. “Was any part of it invisible?”

“In direct light, it was invisible. You can only see it in the dark.” Opal made a frustrated noise. “How are you supposed to see it if it’s dark?”

“Is that one of the questions?”

“One of my questions,” Opal muttered. “Right behind: Why do I have to be a part of this conversation . . .” Her voice trailed off as she flipped more pages, humming to herself. “Huh. That’s a weird one. Does it have a definite mouth?”

Dru remembered the dark pit of the thing’s mouth growing inhumanly wide, as if it intended to swallow her soul. The idea made her skin crawl. “Definitely.”

“That’s actually a good sign,” Opal said. “Means it’s not some kind of formless apparition. Or worse, like an Elder God.”

“Yay,” Dru said, without enthusiasm.

Opal flipped another page. “Is it elephantine or larger?”

“‘Elephantine?’”

“Or larger.”

“No.”

Another page. “Does it have a head?”

“Doesn’t everything?”

Opal huffed out a breath. “Headless horseman doesn’t have a head.” “True. But this one has a head. And no horse.”

“Answers my next question. How about moldering bones, festering wounds, or putrefying flesh?” “Eww! Definitely not.”

“Well, that’s something.” Opal turned the page.

“Thanks. I feel so much better now,” Dru muttered.

“I should’ve asked this earlier. Is it harmed by sunlight?”

“Maybe. I’d have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out for sure. I lit up a sunstone crystal and that held the ghost off, but I don’t think it harmed it. And it didn’t protect us at all against the thing’s spells.”

“Spells? Hmm.” Opal went silent for a long moment, flipping pages back and forth, as if in frustration. Finally, she set down the ancient book with a heavy thump. “Honey, I don’t think this thing is a ghost at all. Sounds to me like it’s a wraith.”

Dru scratched her scalp, which was getting itchy as the chicken soup dried. “How is that different, exactly?”

“It’s like a ghost, except that the person’s body didn’t die first. The soul came from a still-living body, and now it’s outside on its own, running around causing trouble.”

“So its body is still alive?”

“Or in some kind of suspended animation.”

“So, hmm.” Dru thought about it. “If it’s the roaming soul of a sorcerer, that would explain the shadow magic. Wouldn’t be a big jump from shadow magic to astral projection.”

“No, this isn’t astral projection. This is different,” Opal said. “With astral projection, you’re planning on coming back to your body pretty soon. But with a wraith, there is no going back. It’s a one-way trip out of the body, never to return. We’re not talking about slipping into a pleasant trance or meditation. We’re talking the darkest kind of magic, probably ceremonial, definitely primordial. The kind one single sorcerer couldn’t pull off alone. Wraiths can only be created by a group of the most powerful evil sorcerers. And the whole thing is freaky as all get-out, I’ll be the first one to tell you. A wraith has their soul ripped right out of their body. They become dispossessed.”

Dispossessed. That word sounded familiar. Where had she heard it before? She had to think about it for a second. “We have a book somewhere back there, I think Tristram wrote it, about the dispossessed.”

“You’re thinking of Ursula K. LeGuin,” Opal said.

“No, it was an eldritch manuscript. Something about the kingdom and the key. Listen, does it say anything in the Libram about how to fight wraiths?”

“It basically says to run away, as fast as you can. Wraiths are seriously bad news. In order to exist, they have to keep feeding. So don’t get too close.”

Dru turned around and looked past Rane and Salem into the darkness behind them. She hesitated to ask her next question, but she had to know. “What exactly do wraiths feed on?”

“Human souls,” Opal said quietly, and the hushed tone in her voice sent a chill down Dru’s spine. “Honey, what have you gotten us into?”

Dru traded silent looks with Greyson. “Find that book by Tristram. It might be the only way to defeat this thing. If you’re correct, and this wraith was dispossessed by a group of evil sorcerers who are after the apocalypse scroll . . .” Dru thought through the possible implications. “This is only going to get worse. Either they will send more wraiths, or they will come themselves. Or both. No matter what, they’re coming after us.”

“But who are ‘they’?” Opal said.

“Like it or not, we’re going to find out. Lock the doors. Get out your protective amulets. We’re on our way back to the shop now.”

Beside her, Greyson put his foot down on the gas, and Hellbringer sped into the night, leaving behind only a rush of hot wind and the fiery red gleam of its taillights.