Something bumped my shoulder, and I realized distantly that it was Keith.
“What’s going on?”
He and Mary started talking, but I couldn’t listen anymore, because they were so close. I could move sideways, back around the corner, but then I wouldn’t be able to see the ghosts, and that was somehow scarier. My pulse was going so fast I wondered dimly if I was having a heart attack.
Think, Lex, Sam’s voice screamed in my head. You can lay ghosts!
Right. I may not have had the obsidian, but Valerya’s bloodstone pressed against my chest, solid and comforting. I crouched down, set the revolver on the tunnel floor, and squeezed the cut on my arm, too freaked out to feel the pain. The wraith was only two feet away, and there were two more behind him.
I hadn’t bled enough for a full circle, so I touched the smear of blood and drew a line across the tunnel floor as quickly as I could. Thank God the little stone offshoot was rectangular instead of circular. I pressed the tips of my tattoos on the line, and though I’d never actually done this before, my bloodstone helped me figure out what to say. Wall.
The wraith’s outstretched hand hit an invisible barrier and confusion crossed his features. But he had stopped. I hugged my knees to my chest, scooting my body into the corner.
Mary finished her conversation with Keith and squatted down next to me, resting one bare knee on the tunnel floor. “What just happened?”
I tore my eyes away from the trapped wraiths and made myself look at her. “I know why Morgan picked this place, and I know why she set the meeting for before sunrise.” I gestured toward the line of blood. “If I cross that, the wraiths—the stronger ghosts—will try to tear me apart.”
Keith had edged up along the side of the tunnel, and now he peeked around the corner, trying to figure out what I was seeing. Maybe it was my imagination, but the ghosts seemed to reach for him too.
Mary’s brow furrowed. “What if you run through real fast?”
I shook my head. “When I touch one of them—any one of them—I’ll feel the psychic imprint of their death. It’s—” I tried again to swallow, despite my dry mouth. The sight of the livid, burning wraiths pounding silently against my barrier was unnerving as hell. I forced my eyes away again. “It’s rough,” I finished. “They all burned to death. I wouldn’t make it to the cave entrance.”
She pursed her lips. “Can’t you, like, get rid of the ghosts?”
I almost laughed. “I’ve never even tried laying a wraith, and to lay any one of them, I’d need to be able to concentrate. To relax.”
“Huh.” She glanced up at the tunnel again, her face sort of admiring. “You have to admit, it’s a hell of an obstacle.”
I think I nodded, but I wasn’t really sure. “How about we go in there and drag Morgan out?” she asked.
“That could work,” I admitted. “But we have no idea what she has in there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mary said frankly. “If it’s the only way to end this, we need to go in.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” Keith said.
I was so distracted that I barely heard him speak, and by the time I registered the words and turned my head, he had pushed Mary into the tunnel wall and was raising the barrel of my gun to shoot Finn in the chest.
He moved the barrel toward the other wolves. I shoved Tobias away from me, back the way we’d come. Keith had the gun pointed at Alex. “Run!” I screamed, and then I tackled Keith, aiming sideways so I wouldn’t fall across the line of blood.
With everyone off-balance and moving, Keith’s second shot went wide. I heard either Tobias or Alex yelp, a terrible pained sound, but they both kept running.
Keith flung me away easily. It was all I could do to throw up my arms and keep my head from hitting the rock wall. My elbow smacked into it instead, sending reverberations all the way into my shoulder. The pain made me dizzy for a moment.
I could hear growls and a scuffling of feet as Mary attacked Keith, but by the time I turned around, he had the revolver jammed under her chin and she had gone very still, her eyes huge.
He pressed up with the barrel, forcing her to her tiptoes, her teeth bared in rage.
“You,” I said stupidly, clutching my elbow and leaning against the rock. I had forgotten my claustrophobia, even forgot to look at the wraiths trapped a few feet away.
“Me,” Keith said, his gaze never leaving Mary’s. I looked down at the enormous brown wolf. A pool of blood was spreading away from his body. There was a shimmer that I couldn’t quite focus on in the dim light, and then the wolf was gone, replaced by the corpse of an enormous nude man.
“No,” Mary choked. Her eyes were full of tears.
I let go of my sore elbow and slowly drew my left arm behind me, going for the pancake holster. “Stop moving, Lex,” Keith snapped.
Mary had to speak through gritted teeth. “Why?”
Keith reached up with his free hand and smoothed the hair away from her face. “I don’t know where to begin,” he said simply.
A tear rolled down Mary’s cheek. “Ryan. Matt. Cammie.”
Keith sighed. I was watching carefully, but he never let up pressure on that gun. “Matt would have made a shitty alpha. And you and Ryan were getting too close,” he said, as though that explained every single thing he’d done.
“You have a thing for me.” Mary’s voice was bitter. “You cowardly little fuckwit.”
“Enough,” rang a familiar voice. I turned my head back to the wraiths—and saw Morgan Pellar come striding through the middle of them, swinging something around her finger. It was hard to get details through all the remnants.
She stepped carefully over the line of my blood, closing in on us. I wasn’t going to get a better moment.
I pivoted on my heel, driving my left fist at her with everything I had . . . which wasn’t a whole lot, thanks to the shoulder I’d wrenched earlier. Morgan took the haymaker on her cheekbone, her head whipping sideways. She stumbled a step, leaning on the wall next to Keith. I raised my other fist and stepped closer to hit her again, but to my surprise she calmly took the gun from Keith and shot Mary through the meat of her upper arm.
Mary howled with pain, and I froze. Morgan gave me a very severe look, like I was a naughty toddler. “That was your fault. I hope that punch was worth it.”
She handed the gun back to a disgruntled-looking Keith and spun Mary around, pushing her face into the stone wall as she snapped something around her wrists. Mary screamed with pain again, and I realized that Morgan had locked her into a pair of silver handcuffs.
“Stop!” I cried, reaching for the cuffs. Keith pointed the revolver at my forehead, and I backed up again. “Take them off her.”
Mary was taking short, shallow breaths now, trying to bear up against the pain of burning silver. Two lines of blood, from the entry and exit wounds, ran down her arm, converging into a dark worm of red. She still managed to mumble, “Hit the bitch again.”
Keith pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket and began putting them on.
“What about the two that got away?” Morgan asked him.
Keith snorted. “Those two won’t be a problem.” Wearing the gloves, he grabbed the handcuffs and wrenched Mary’s manacled hands up behind her back. She sobbed with pain as he marched her deeper into the hall, right through the wall-to-wall ghosts.
I was so distracted by them walking right through my own personal nightmare that I failed to notice Morgan wrapping a zip tie around my own wrists, in front of me, until she pulled it tight enough to bite into my skin. I gave serious thought to another head-butt, which Morgan apparently read on my face. “Touch me again and Mary will pay for it,” she promised. “Silver heals human-slow. How many holes before she bleeds out?”
I dropped back, eyeing the gauntlet of wraiths over her shoulder, and Morgan coolly thrust one fist into my stomach. I hadn’t been ready for it, and I doubled over. Before I could recover, Morgan had looped another zip tie around the first, making a sort of handle. She reached out one polished leather boot and scuffed away the line of my blood.
“No!” I yelled, but of course I was too late. Morgan yanked the zip tie and dragged me right into the crowd of burning wraiths.
No, oh God, no, Jeannie, I love you so much . . .
Make it stop! Somebody just bloody shoot me!
It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts—
WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY—
It went on and on.
As I was yanked through ghost after ghost, my mind was barraged with fragments of their last moments, as though for a second, I became each person. Most of them couldn’t form a coherent thought through their terrible pain, the worst I’d ever felt. I had been cut up, shot, and broken, but none of it compared to the sensation of being burned alive. It was like being tattooed over every inch of your body simultaneously. Only worse. Many of their final thoughts were just endless screaming.
The wraiths hurt the most—they didn’t just exude pain; they were full of rage and malevolence and a hatred so powerful that it sucked the breath out of my lungs. They tore at my psyche, trying to take something from me—my life force? My magic? Blood? I didn’t know what they wanted, and I didn’t know how to fight them. After some time—a few seconds? Hours?—I sagged down, unable to control my body enough to keep my feet under me. Morgan began to drag me, but the psychic attack didn’t let up, and then I lost some time.
I know I screamed. I screamed and fought as long as I could, but eventually I couldn’t keep myself together enough for either. I might have fainted, or maybe my brain just sort of short-circuited; I don’t really know. Everything faded away into a distant blur, followed by darkness.
Chapter 42
The next thing I was aware of was an icy-cold shock, as a pail of near-frozen water was dumped over my head.
“What—what—” I sputtered, sitting up so fast I got dizzy. I’d been lying on my back in a massive underground chamber—the cave Mary had told me about. My hands were still zip-tied, and I realized that my ankles had been secured as well. Great. Someone had removed the sidearm from the holster at my back, and when I lifted my bound hands to touch my chest, Valerya’s bloodstone was gone.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” Morgan said cheerfully. She was standing over me swinging an empty five-gallon bucket.
I lifted my bound hands to push wet hair out of my face and glared up at her—but I was distracted by my surroundings. This was the cave Mary had told me about. The egg-shaped sandstone chamber was as tall as a two-story house, and about half as wide. I had pictured moisture running down the walls and active stalactites, but it was dry and pretty, lit by yellowish camp lanterns that gave it a soft, comforting glow. Natural rock formations turned the walls into wavy, eclectic works of art, and the room was even warm, thanks to a small generator and some strategically placed space heaters. I spotted two exits, at more or less opposite sides of the room, one at my nine o’clock and one at my four o’clock.