“Sounds like you’re a man with a plan,” I said.
“Larry, please, you’ve done enough killing. I don’t want any more blood on my hands,” Trevor interjected, stepping forward.
“What the hell are you saying?” Larry snapped. “You spent the last few years living in a flea-infested hole two stories below the ground, putting squirrel souls into dead dogs for jackass people. You had to give up your entire life just to keep yourself from being caught, from having your power destroyed. Don’t you know you’re stronger than everyone else? They should fear you! Look what you’ve done; you gave me a body again!”
“It’s not yours though!” That, of course, was from Ethan, whom I couldn’t expect to be quiet amidst all this, not when his body was so close.
“Vanquish the ghost, Trevor,” Larry urged. “Seal me inside this body and join me as I make the streets run red with the blood of our enemies. We can start here!” He fired off two shots, and people, including myself, screamed as two people dropped to the floor.
Larry laughed, and Trevor gave me a pained look, then looked at Ethan, and my blood ran cold. I knew what he was thinking. I had told him not to mention what destroying Ethan’s ghost would actually mean, but now that Trevor wanted to stop his brother, it seemed he was willing to do anything to make that happen, and that meant blasting Ethan’s ghost. If he tried to do that, I’d have to move quickly.
The entire time I’d been talking to Larry or listening to him talk, I had been slowly circling him, trying to get close to people so I could mouth the word “circle” to them. Everyone I’d relayed the message to understood.
When a ghost was inside a necromancer circle, they were within a barrier. Powerful shields were thrown up to stop the ghost from running, stop anything from the outside from interfering, and try to keep the ghost trapped should it manifest into a beastie. If I could trap Larry inside a necromancer circle, I could use the binding rune to shove him out of Ethan’s body and into the afterlife. The circle would keep the power of the binding rune from bulldozing the entire suite and everyone in it. Then Ethan could reclaim his body, and we could all go for drinks because I sure as hell needed a dozen or so right now.
But I still had to get Amy away from Larry. As I passed the fallen bodies, I tried to keep my anger in check at these senseless deaths. I had a very short amount of time to make sure Larry didn’t kill anyone else.
“Will you help me, brother?” Larry said.
I had made a full circle and the eight people who were necromancers were on board with my plan. I now stood near Micah and Ethan again. Larry seemed too preoccupied with talking to his brother to notice that I had just circumnavigated him. Usually, it look a lot of preparation to activate a necromancer circle, but the one plus side to Larry’s hostile takeover of the suite was that we were prepared for such a thing.
There were runes drawn all over the walls, floor, and ceiling, and the dead witches had made them invisible so they couldn’t be seen by our ghost clients. The runes were the kind needed for a necromancer circle, and were there in case a beastie crashed in or manifested in our office. That way, all we’d need was our energy, and we’d have a circle activated on our target. You had to love that kind of foresight; it had been Andrew’s idea.
“I will do whatever I have to do to help you,” Trevor said.
The desperation in his voice wasn’t leaving me with a good feeling. Shit.
Trevor whipped out a rune, and damn me for not checking to see if he had any runes on him. He then leaped at Ethan and released a blast of power. Micah shoved Ethan behind him and fired at Trevor. I lunged at Larry, tackling him.
Larry, Amy, and I fell roughly to the ground. I pushed at Amy, screaming for her to get away, which she readily did, while I grappled with Larry. I knocked the gun out of his hand.
Larry was all snarls and wild punches, and we soon found ourselves literally rolling as first he landed on top, then I did. I threw out a punch to his face, and he rewarded me by bringing his knee up and slamming it into my stomach, throwing me off him. He grabbed me around the neck and started a choke out. I returned the favor of the kneeing, but instead of his stomach, I aimed for between the legs and mentally apologized to Ethan for having to crush him so badly. Larry grunted in pain, and I used his distraction to throw my body weight forward, getting him off me, after which I grabbed him around the neck and slammed his head into the ground. Three times. Then I got up and looked around.
The necromancers had used the moment of fighting to prepare themselves. I was now surrounded by a circle of necromancers who were holding hands. The dead witches hung back because this was something only necromancers could do, and I quickly ran outside the circle. I couldn’t be a part of it because I had another job to do once it was active.
When I looked behind me, I saw Trevor on the ground with blood pooling beneath his body, but a few feet away, Micah lay motionless as well, covered in blood. My heart felt like it had frozen and shattered. Ethan was kneeling near him and looked up at me with an uncertain expression.
I forced myself to turn away. First things first, get rid of the murderous ghost, then check on Micah. I would not fear the worst until this was over. Larry was still on the floor in the middle of the circle, moving sluggishly since he wouldn’t recover from being kicked in the nuts and having his head slammed into the ground quite so fast. Now was our chance.
“Activate the circle!” I yelled.
Immediately, a rush of power filled the room as everyone opened their power and channeled it out to seek the runes that lay all over the suite. When the necromancers’ power touched the runes, they became active and started glowing. Before long, I could see runes of all colors everywhere. It would have been beautiful had this not been such a dire situation. In a matter of seconds, the circle was active. Light shot up around Larry, and he screamed. He tried to get up and run, but the strength of the barrier kept him immobile.
“This should have been done five years ago,” I said to Larry, who thrashed and cursed as he tried to get out of the circle. I pulled out the binding rune. The necromancer circle acting as a barrier to protect those beyond it from the power of the binding rune was only a theory, so I hoped with everything I had that it would work and we wouldn’t all end up flattened, or worse.
I stretched out my hand, and once the stone was in line with Larry’s screaming form, my power awakened and shot through me and into the stone, after which there was that eruption of light and power I had seen when I’d blasted the purple beastie. It slammed into the necromancer circle, tore through it, then hit Larry, and now he truly screamed. The light that had encircled Larry blazed to an intense white and went from the floor to the ceiling. His entire body was lifted off the floor. His back arched, his hands scrabbled at the air, and his mouth was open in an agonized scream. I watched with wide eyes as the stone’s power tore at his body. It looked like Ethan’s body would suffer some damage after all. I just hoped it wouldn’t be too much.
The stone’s power pushed through Ethan’s body, and I saw Larry’s ghost being pushed out of it. Once he was completely out, Ethan’s body fell limply to the ground, and Larry’s ghost remained suspended in the air. The pillar of light and power then started to eat up Larry’s ghost. Pieces of him disappeared bit by bit. It was like watching a swarm of piranhas savage a fish, picking at it until there was nothing left but bones, except when this was over, nothing would remain of Larry.
I felt deeply vindicated and relieved; it was finally going to be over. Larry screamed until the part of himself that he could scream with was torn away, and a few moments later, he was gone completely. The pillar didn’t disappear though, and I ran toward it, now afraid for the body that lay caught within it. It looked like a tornado was whipping around inside the light pillar, and in horror, I realized that all of the power that would have run wild and knocked down the office walls and everyone inside it was now trapped inside the necromancer circle, where Ethan’s body lay. His body would take all the damage.
“Deactivate the circle!” I yelled frantically. The power was eating away at Ethan’s body, and my joy at defeating Larry had quickly been replaced by gut-clenching fear.
It would take a couple of minutes for everyone to recall their power and safely deactivate the circle, and I pranced around anxiously as I waited for it to be done. When the necromancer circle was inactive, whatever remained of the binding rune’s power flashed out, knocked everyone down, and shook the office violently, but having felt its power before, I knew we’d only caught the tail end. Ethan’s body had taken the brunt. When I struggled to my knees, I stared unbelieving at what lay in front of me.
Ethan’s body had become a mangled, twisted, charred, unrecognizable thing. The only reason you could tell it was a body was because of its shape. Otherwise, it bore no human resemblance. His skin was pitch-black and flaky. Smoke rose off him, and his hair and clothes had been burned into nonexistence. I stared, dumbfounded. I hadn’t anticipated this, hadn’t thought that this could happen. How could I fix this? The very painful answer was that I couldn’t.
Someone fell heavily to their knees next to me, and I turned to see Ethan there. I felt worse than the lowest, most worthless piece of shit. I had done this to his body, and it was clear that there’d be no getting back into it. Ethan turned to me with a wild, desperate look on his face.
“You can fix this, right Selene?” he said. He took me by the shoulders and started shaking me. “You knew this would happen, and you can fix it, right? Tell me you can fix it, Selene, tell me you can fix my body!”
His voice had been rising in hysteria, and he yelled in my face as he shook me like a rag doll. I let him do it for a moment because I deserved it, then I wrenched myself from him, and he collapsed, bending his head to the floor and sobbing.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he kept saying, over and over. “You have to fix it, have to fix it, have to put me back…”
I didn’t know what to say, couldn’t find any words that would make Ethan feel better. He knew as well as I did that no one could put him back into that twisted lump of a body, but it would take some time for him to accept that. If he ever did.
“Selene, Micah!” Amy’s voice made me remember that Micah hadn’t been standing the last time I saw him.
I scrambled away from the grieving Ethan and pushed through the crowd that had surrounded Micah. Amy was hovering near him, holding her cell phone.
“I called nine-one-one,” she said, looking down at Micah worriedly.
I knelt next to him and looked him over. There was a nasty wound on his chest, but he hadn’t been blasted through. There was a lot of blood though, and when I felt for his pulse, it was there, but very weak. His skin was growing cold. I felt a new kind of horror take hold of me. Micah couldn’t die; he absolutely couldn’t die. Team Selene was supposed to come out of this with everyone standing.
I stayed at Micah’s side until the paramedics showed up. When they left with him on a stretcher, I wanted to go with them, but I knew all I’d do at the hospital was hover and worry while he was in surgery, and I had a mess to handle here anyway. That would at least keep me distracted even though the mess included Ethan, who was still kneeling in front of his body, which I realized in horror had collapsed into a pile of black ash.
Ethan’s wailing was creating quite a spectacle. People gave him sympathetic looks but a wide berth as they tried to gather themselves past what had just happened. Of the eight people Larry had shot, six up here and the two guards downstairs, three were dead and the others were critically wounded. All of them had been taken to the hospital.
“Are you okay?” I heard behind me. I turned around to see Ilyse and gave her a hug.
“As okay as I can be, considering what just took place,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“Same as you,” she said. “You came not too long after he showed up, so we’re lucky the death toll was low, though it’s unfortunate that anyone had to die at all.”
“Well, he’s been taken care of now,” I said. “Trevor too. He’s to blame for all of this, but I can understand why he did it.”
“Yes,” Ilyse said. “But you still have a problem on your hands.” She indicated Ethan. I sighed and briefly hung my head.
“I know,” I said. “Trevor said when he put Larry into Ethan’s body, it broke his bond to Larry.” Ilyse looked surprised at that information. “I was hoping that would be the outcome after Larry was taken care of—that I could put Ethan back into his body, break the bond, and not have to worry about the Rot getting worse, but clearly we have to change course.”
“I’m so sorry, Selene,” she said, shaking her head.
“Not as sorry as I am,” I muttered. I looked over my shoulder at Ethan.
He seemed to have exhausted his wailing. Now he was sitting there staring at the pile of ash that had been his body. I would have to pull him away so he wouldn’t see it being cleaned up. Who’d be able to stand watching their body get swept into a garbage bag?
“I feel like I failed him,” I said. “All along, I promised him I would do whatever it took to help him, and I failed him.”
“You kept him safe,” Ilyse said.
“But what he wants more than anything is to be in a human body again, his human body, and I can’t give him that.”
“But what you can give him isn’t so bad,” Ilyse said. “He has constant tangibility now, without needing to use rune stones. He’s not the same as a regular ghost.”
“Yeah, but the cost of keeping him like that is a bond to me that’s going to eventually kill me,” I said. “So I’m going to have to say we’re not working with the best-case scenario here.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Ilyse said.
“Ah, ‘we’ll figure it out,’ words people say when they know the exact opposite is true.”
“Selene…”
Just then I caught movement from the corner of my eye and turned to see several dead witches and armored police officers walking into the suite. They were from the government; some of them had been here with Athena the day of the reanimator search.