“And you’re the one who was wearing James Kingly’s body when he went over the edge.”
The rider stared at me through Michael Hancock’s eyes. The shock showed first, and then he threw his head back and laughed.
That scared me worse than anything else he might have done. My muscles clenched, my legs bracing to jump from the chair, to run for cover. But we were in a crowded room. He wouldn’t do anything stupid. Would he?
When he looked at me again his eyes glittered with amusement and that slick, oily darkness once again filled his irises.
“It’s almost a shame,” he said. “I wasn’t done with this body yet, but you. You are interesting, and I can’t let you spread your little theory. I’ve never experienced being a female of your kind.” He pulled a revolver, the metal dull in the bright light.
Fight or flight should have kicked in, should have made me bolt or shove the table—which I currently had a death grip on—at him. Instead I froze, unable to move, to think. Even the dagger’s urging didn’t penetrate my fear. The world slowed as he cocked the gun. Lifted it. But not at me.
He shoved the gun under his own chin.
Time finally caught up, and I jumped to my feet. “No!”
Too late. He pulled the trigger and the deafening bang of the gun boomed through the room. The thing inside Michael smiled at me before the body crumbled.
The room went utterly silent, still. Then the first scream sounded, followed by a chorus of screams and chairs screeching as people pushed to their feet. Chaos broke out as diners rushed for the exit. A chair toppled, sending one man sprawling. No one stopped to help him, they just kept running. Falin appeared at my side, grabbing my elbow as he tried to drag me away from the body with the ever-expanding pool of blood forming around it.
“No. It’s not over,” I said tugging away from him, because that thing, that awful, miasmic cloud that was both pure darkness and simultaneously every color, was pouring out of Michael’s body.
“Go,” I whispered, switching my grip on my dagger. Falin still tried to drag me away, but I jerked free. This close, I could feel the rider, feel the dark energy in it, taste the wind blowing through it. Wind I knew. The same never-ending tempest from the land of the dead. “Go, get away from here,” I said, watching the thing lifting out of Michael’s corpse growing larger, thicker.
“You think I’d leave you here alone?” Falin’s daggers appeared in his hands. I doubted they’d touch this thing, but at least he hadn’t drawn a gun.
“How are you going to fight what you can’t see?” I asked, sparing a moment to look away from the growing form.
“Then make me see it.”
I blinked. It was possible. It probably wouldn’t be any harder to manifest the rider than a ghost, its energy didn’t feel that different, just darker, so much darker. I shivered.
It was free of the body now. It had no face, but I could feel it studying me. Behind it, the gray man appeared. He glared at me, his expression a mix of anger and sorrow as he freed the stunned soul of a man who shouldn’t have died. But I didn’t have time to watch the collector. The rider was moving, fast.
I opened my shields, letting the planes of reality wash over me. The thing drew up short, the energy pulsing around it turning uncertain for a moment.
“A grave witch?” It wasn’t so much that the thing spoke as that I felt the words crawl into my head. “What a shining star you are. I’ll enjoy you.”
Then it dove for me. In my grave-sight it had a more defined form, but it wasn’t humanoid. There were no arms to grab, no blows to block. It came at me like a descending fog.
But I was a planeweaver, and like it or not, planes converged through me, making me real, solid, on every plane I touched. The rider slammed into me, no doubt intending to seep into my body, but the impact was physical, knocking me sideways.
I scrambled, trying to keep my footing. The rider drew back. I could feel the thing’s confusion, but that bled to anger before I could get my feet under me.
The rider’s rage poured over me, a psychic assault that rammed my shields and came closer to knocking me on my ass than his physical attack. My charm bracelet heated against my skin as the rider searched for cracks in my defenses. Then it found one.
The rider dove at me again, the attack both physical and psychic as it ripped into the still open wounds where a soul-sucking spell had snaked through me months ago. Disorientation and pain swept over me as it tore into my very soul.
And that was the downside of physically interacting with all planes.
I screamed, driving both the dagger and the fingers of my free hand into the center of the rider’s mass. It was like trying to hold on to sludge, but I didn’t have to grab hold, I just had to pull.
“Welcome to reality, asshole,” I muttered as my power made the creature visible.
The silver gleam of Falin’s blades flashed. He attacked with methodical precision, each movement of his body carving a runnel in the dark mass as the blades sliced through it.
The thing’s scream was more tangible than audible as it roared in fury and pain. I pulled back my own dagger and jabbed the rider again. I didn’t know if it could bleed, if it could die, but it could definitely be hurt.
It reared back, pulling away from me. I tried to hold on to it, to keep it solid, so Falin could see it too, but it slid through my grasp and zipped across the room.
“Where—?” Falin started, his blades stilling.
“There.” I pointed to where its retreating form darted toward the fleeing patrons. We couldn’t let it reach them, to ride another body. It vanished around the corner of the dining room.
I started forward, and my knees locked, my legs collapsing under me. Fuck. The struggle with the rider had lasted less than a minute, but I felt like I’d been through a triathlon followed by a boxing match.
Falin was at my side in seconds, helping me to my feet. I shook my head. “You have to go after it.” The words came out slurred. I sucked down a deep breath. He couldn’t go after it. He couldn’t even see it.
But Rianna could, and her eyes were glowing like green ghost lights. She took one backward glance at me, but she didn’t need to be told to follow it. She broke into a run, Desmond at her side.
I attempted to stumble after it, but would have collapsed again if Falin hadn’t grabbed me. “We have to follow it,” I said, the unspoken “help me” conveyed in my eyes.
He nodded, the daggers vanishing to wherever he kept them—I’d figure that out one day. Then he wrapped an arm around my waist, and we half ran, half hobbled into the hall. We didn’t make it much farther. The stairs had transformed into a jumbled, chaotic traffic jam as people shoved and pushed, trying to get the hell out of the restaurant.
“I lost it,” Rianna said, her eyes still glowing. “It was there, and then gone.”
Damn it. That meant one of two things. If we were lucky, it had retreated farther into the land of the dead to lick its wounds—but I’d never had that kind of luck. Which left option two: it had jumped into a body. Rianna couldn’t see souls while they were inside a body, so it stood to reason she wouldn’t be able to see the rider either.
I scanned the crowd as they jostled for a spot on the stairs. With all the brilliant yellow souls, spotting the one coated in darkness wasn’t hard. It was inside a woman clinging to her husband’s arm. The yellow of her soul dimmed under the tarlike presence vying for control.
“That one,” I said, pointing. “The woman with the red shirt and black hair.”
“Ma’am, we need to speak to you a moment,” Falin said, releasing me so he could hurry toward her. She didn’t turn, didn’t stop. Falin reached the couple and took hold of the woman’s shoulder. “I’m with the authorities, and I need to speak with you.” He flashed his badge too quickly for them to identify which “authority” he might be.
“We didn’t see anything,” the man said, which was a lie—they’d been in the dining room.
His wife clung tighter to her husband’s arm. “I don’t feel so good,” she mumbled, swaying.
Her husband patted her arm. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll be home soon.”
Not likely. The darkness was winning, only the thinnest shimmer of yellow human soul left.
“I can’t let you leave,” Falin said, keeping hold of the woman’s shoulder.
“Please make him let go,” she said, giving her husband a pleading look—a look coated with the oily darkness of the rider.
How had the rider taken over so quickly? Of course, we’d noticed he was gaining control quicker with every victim, but he took her in what, a minute? Two tops. This was bad, very bad.
“Can’t this wait until we’re outside?” the man asked.
I stepped forward. “No, it can’t. Sir, I’d suggest you step back. That’s not your wife.”
The ridden woman turned, a hate-filled gaze aimed directly at me. “You’re becoming a nuisance.” The words emerged from the woman’s throat, but they no longer sounded like her.
“Becky?”
The woman sneered at her husband, pulling away from him. In the same movement, she swung and landed a solid punch in Falin’s stomach.
He grunted as the air was knocked from him, but it didn’t slow him. His daggers reappeared.
“Don’t hurt her. The rider will just jump to another host,” I yelled as the woman ran, not toward the stair, but back toward the dining room we’d abandoned.
I could all but see Falin’s teeth gritting as the daggers vanished and he gave chase. I stepped in front of the door, blocking it. The woman was a good eight inches shorter than me, but she charged me with the force of a linebacker, knocking me to my ass. A fresh wave of pain burst through me as air rushed out of my body. My dagger fell from my hand, skittering across the floor.
Desmond vaulted over me and tackled the woman. The rider might grant her extra strength, but she was still a small woman and Desmond was several hundred pounds of barghest. She went down.