16

BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

There was only so much mindless terror Dru’s brain could take before her cerebral side took control and analyzed the situation. Realistically, from where she hid behind the cash register, things looked pretty darn bleak.

The shop was essentially destroyed. Large pieces of the front of the building were entirely missing. Her protective crystal grid was drained. The whole block was blacked out. Most worrisome of all, she and Greyson were trapped inside with any number of soul-sucking wraiths.

The only thing keeping her from running away screaming, besides the mortal fear of imminent death by wraith-touch, was the fact that she had to protect the apocalypse scroll at all costs. Right this moment, some of the wraiths were swarming just outside the remnants of the front windows, engaged in a fierce battle with Rane and Salem. But she wasn’t sure exactly where the other creatures were, or even exactly how many there were.

If even one of those wraiths headed into the back room and got its ghostly clutches on the most powerful object in existence, it would be her fault.

She coughed on the toxic combination of chemical mist and roiling dust that coated the inside of her throat. Even though Salem’s spell had swept through the air, she felt like her lungs were being scrubbed out with sandpaper.

She raised the brilliant sunstone above her head and risked a glance up over the cash register counter. Despite the all-encompassing destruction, there were no signs of movement. From outside came the sizzling and crashing of magic spells as Salem and Rane fought the wraiths. Buying her time.

“We have to make a run for it,” she managed.

Greyson nodded. “Ready?”

She took a deep breath. “Go!” Before she could talk herself out of it, she darted around the counter and headed for the back room. Her heartbeat pounded. A cold sweat broke out on her skin. At any moment, she expected cold ghostly fingers to close around her throat and squeeze out her soul.

It was only a few yards to the doorway that led to the back room, but it felt like a mile of night-darkened battlefield. By the light of her crystal, she ran into the back room, with Greyson right behind her.

Back here, even by the eerily beautiful crystal light, everything looked remarkably normal: tall shelves of brown leather-bound books, ratty old plaid armchairs, an empty Yummy’s Donuts box sticking out of the trash can. Everything looked peaceful and familiar.

Except for the hideous wraith floating in the center of the room.

It was taller and bonier then the others, with a thicket of shimmering white hair that swirled around its skull-like head. Its entire body rippled in a way that reminded Dru of diving deep underwater and looking up toward the sun. It made her feel like she was drowning.

Pinpoints of white light flared to life in the deep black pits of its eyes when it spotted Dru, and its hungry mouth opened wide. With a bone-chilling moan, it lunged at her, ghostly arms outstretched. Its clawed fingers snatched at her throat. She stumbled back.

“Look out!” With strong arms, Greyson swept her back off her feet and out of the thing’s reach—but only barely. She felt the cold radiating from its ghostly fingers as they scraped past her, inches from her skin.

The wraith flailed its long skeletal arm in their direction, but it couldn’t leave the circle they’d painted around the workbench. It was trapped inside.

Seeing that, Dru felt a tiny thrill of triumph. It worked! That was the only thing so far tonight that had gone according to plan.

But that sunshiny, satisfied feeling was immediately snuffed out when she saw what the wraith gripped in its other hand, cradling it tight against its ghostly body like a baby.

The brittle-looking scroll’s spiked silver tips gleamed in the bright light of her sunstone crystal. Six of the crimson wax seals had been previously broken, leaving ragged red edges along the length of the roll of time-stained parchment. The final wax seal, no bigger than her thumbprint, glistened like blood.

Dru froze. “Greyson—”

“I see it.”

“I don’t know how long that moon dust will keep it corporeal. We have to move fast.” She looked around for something to help her fight the wraith. Anything. But aside from a ton of books and maybe some stale donuts, all she had was the sunstone.

Greyson nodded grimly, reading the frustration on her face. “We’ll have to do this the hard way.” He raised the crowbar in both hands and flexed his fingers to tighten his grip. “You play a lot of baseball in school?”

“Um, no. Softball, one time. Broke my glasses, got a bloody nose, accidentally dumped my Gatorade all over the coach. So after that I switched to mahjong. And I’m not afraid to tell you, I was a mahjong champion. Why?”

He hefted the crowbar. “How about you circle around on the other side of this thing? Catch the scroll when I knock it out of there.”

“Hmm.” She eyed the scroll’s spiky silver tips and delicate-looking ancient parchment, and pictured that thing flying at her face at ninety miles an hour. With a grimace, she pushed her glasses back up her nose. “Not really loving that plan.”

“I’m open to suggestions.” He circled a couple of steps to the side, and the wraith’s burning gaze hungrily followed him.

Dru held the sunstone high, eliciting a soulless screech from the wraith and sending it cringing back against the narrow confines of the circle trap. With her free hand, she riffled through a pile of invoices, assorted notebooks, and a six-pack of clear packing tape she’d forgotten to put away. Underneath it all, she found a shimmering golden disk of iron pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, which could be energized to create a protective shield.

As she debated whether that would protect her against the wraith’s touch, it lifted its free hand and clamped its fingers together in a way that only sorcerers did. It was about to cast a spell.

As Dru lifted the pyrite disk, the air prickled and warped around her, as if reality itself was being pierced by countless needles. They jabbed at Dru’s outstretched arm.

She held up the pyrite like a miniature shield and poured all of her power into it. At once, her magic radiated out through the golden disk, making the air around her waver. With a flash of light and a shattering crash, the wraith’s spell blasted off the invisible shield and spread in all directions, scorching the floor and ceiling until they started to smoke and burn.

Her arm trembled under the onslaught of the wraith’s spell. Struggling to catch her breath, Dru leaned against Greyson and gained strength from his touch. She pushed that extra power into the pyrite, making it shine even brighter in her hand.

But it wasn’t enough.

* * *

For a long, delectable moment, Salem had thought they were winning. Then everything went horribly wrong.

Fast-approaching sirens wailed in the distance, the inevitable result of a public brawl with the supernatural. It didn’t concern Salem much, but it distracted Rane for just a moment too long. Maybe it was the strange way the sound reflected in the near-total darkness. Maybe she was trying to gauge how far away the police cruisers and fire trucks were. But whatever the reason, it caused her to turn her steel head and look back over her shoulder at exactly the wrong moment.

The same wraith she had destroyed just a minute before now materialized through the brick wall on the other side of her. The purple-tinged outlines of its fingers spread wide, reaching for her throat. Its jaws stretched wide open with an unholy hunger.

“Behind you!” Salem shouted, but his warning came too late.

Rane’s face showed more anger than fear as she realized her mistake. She sidestepped, instantly turning to face the wraith, and fired one powerful steel fist into its body. It should have destroyed the thing.

But her fist passed straight through it without effect, cratering the brick wall behind it with a deep boom of fracturing stone. Too late, Salem realized that their advantage was gone. Whatever kind of dust Dru had flung at these wraiths, apparently it had been knocked off when Rane had smashed the wraith to pieces a minute before. Now, it was non-corporeal again, like a ghost.

And that made it invulnerable.

Salem spread his fingers wide and fired a quick, invisible burst of force. The wraith was quicker. Salem’s force wave rippled through the air and punched a head-sized hole through the weakened brick wall. But the wraith wasn’t there anymore. It was already on Rane.

She tried to dodge back, but the thing’s ghostly fingers latched around her throat. She froze. Her mouth convulsed, but no sound came out.

The wraith’s own mouth gaped even wider, as if mocking her. The pitch-black pit grew bigger than any human mouth could. The thing’s warped face elongated to accommodate it, stretching out its hungry maw the way a snake dislocates its jaw to swallow its prey whole.

Instantly, Salem forgot about the other wraiths swirling around him. Forgot about the apocalypse scroll. Forgot everything that wasn’t Rane.

His entire world shrank down to the square of stained pavement where she stood choking, her empty hands trying in vain to grasp at the ghostly being that was devouring her soul.

Faint vapors swirled off her body and up into the thing’s gaping mouth. The metal sheen on her body flickered and faded, revealing goose-pimpled skin growing sickly and pale.

A wordless roar of rage ripped loose from Salem. He lost all sense of reason. He no longer cared about anything except destroying this unholy thing, utterly and completely. To save her.

Unbidden, a rare spell popped into Salem’s mind, crystalline in its clarity, terrifying in its power. It was the darkest and most powerful spell he had ever learned, one he had carefully lifted from the bloodstained pages of a book that he never should have opened. He had cast the spell only once, long before, in a moment of desperation, to save Rane’s life from a bloodthirsty horde of specters aboard a ghost ship.

She had lived then, but the spell had broken something inside him that never quite healed. The aftereffects had driven a wedge deeply between them. She’d told him he had changed. He thought he had lost her forever.

Now, it was his only hope. His usual magic, as powerful as it was, wasn’t enough against these things. If he didn’t cast that spell again, now, the wraith would almost certainly devour her soul. If it hadn’t already. She could already be dead, and her body just hadn’t hit the ground yet.

He cast the spell.

It took no time at all, once the decision was made. He had the awful sensation that something dark and irredeemable cracked open inside him. There was a terrifying jolt to the constant hum of magic that coursed through his body. He felt like every bit of his body had been set on fire. Every nerve burned and sang.

Salem wasn’t conscious of crossing the distance between him and Rane. But the next moment he was at her side, one arm curling around her waist as his other hand came up in a fist wrapped in white-hot brilliance.

He thrust that radiant fist right into the wraith’s gaping mouth. A shock of cold froze his skin, as if he had plunged his hand into a pool of liquid nitrogen, perhaps, or the deepest recesses of the netherworld. Pins and needles ran up his arm. The only thing that kept it from going numb was the hideous torrent of magic now pounding through his veins.

The thing’s shimmering round eyes showed no fear. No surprise. Only insatiable hunger.

Salem opened his fist and released his magic.

The blast was bright enough to turn the night into day. For a moment, the wraith was lit from the inside out. The outlines of dark bones flickered inside its ghostly body, along with hundreds of jagged black shapes. They were sorcio signs, cryptic magic glyphs that floated inside the thing, as if they had been tattooed onto the skin of its original body and were then absorbed deep within.

All of this flickered past too quickly to take in. As the spell went off, a shuddering blast of cold knocked Salem back off his feet. The deafening roar rolled across the city like a thunderclap. He landed hard enough that it should have sent jagged spears of pain through his injured ribs, but he could feel nothing. His breath steamed in the suddenly frosty air.

Rane collapsed next to him. She was completely human now, all trace of metal gone. Her tanned skin had gone bloodless and pale. Her blonde hair was flung limply across her face.

With an effort, he rolled her onto her back. “Buttercup?”

She didn’t stir. He wanted to say more, but the words caught in his throat. His heart felt like it stopped. His lungs couldn’t catch the air. Every part of him had gone numb.

The wraith he had blasted was nowhere to be seen. Nothing remained of it, not even vapor. But the rest of the wraiths swirled around, screeching, their own fiery spells sizzling through the night toward him.

Salem rose to his feet and faced them. They streaked closer, wide eyes gleaming, dark mouths ravenous. With a wordless roar, he raised his still-burning fist and unleashed its searing power.