Ghost Guard 2: Agents of Injustice (17 page)

“We hope you enjoy your stay,” Tamara’s syrupy tone set the mood in an ironic way. A fake friendliness which belied a terrible surprise. To Ruby it wasn’t a surprise at all when she saw the man in the black robe stride from the hallway. Then a second one came from the side of the wardrobe, and the third from behind the vanity just to the left of the entrance foyer, all approaching her with those insidious contraptions in their hands. Morris appreciated the technology, primeval as it was, but Ruby had no such respect. She loathed everything about these people and their repugnantly devious machines, destructive to the spirit world in ways she couldn’t begin to understand.

Ruby disembarked from physical form immediately, shedding her flesh in a puff of dust and becoming undetectable to anyone other than a person wearing heatspec goggles or who had mediumistic abilities like Abby. That didn’t matter. The men had dark glasses on, but they weren’t ordinary dark glasses. Little did either Ruby or Morris know, the glasses worked on much the same principal as Morris’s heatspec goggles, enabling the wearer a full spectrum, multi frequency view of the nonliving.

Using these glasses, the men had the upper hand. Despite Ruby dematerializing and taking flight, they kept a keen eye on her, chased her down, encircled her, and trapped her in a matter of seconds. They got her even though Morris tried to intervene. For his troubles, he was shoved to the floor, kicked in the gut, and stepped on.

“I guess you were right, Ruby,” Morris tried to find some humor in a humorless moment. “The Duke never would have done something this foolish.”

Chapter 21

Abby never had a Versace gown fit so well. She’d tried this very same one on at Nordstrom and it never, ever accented her delicate curves or hugged her exotic hipline the way this particular one did. And the sheer strapless bra. It felt like she had nothing on. Sexy and sublimely naughty. Fit like a glove.

Of course it helped that she had a team of attendants on hand for a quick alteration, the addition or subtraction of an accessory (of which there were countless), a new pump or stiletto to try on, a new scent or different shawl or a full manicure, pedicure, wax, and massage.

She hardly remembered how she’d gotten here. She knew she was accosted in that dark and desolate dungeon of souls. She must have passed out again, and when she woke up she was here, being served hand and foot.

“What is this?” her head was on a swivel keeping up with the bustling and buzzing. “I don’t remember ordering the luxury package. And I don’t remember where I left my purse, so you guys might not get a tip.”

There was giggling. Abby felt dizzy, and her vision was blurred. She didn’t see much other than shapes of female faces. Beautiful women attending to her every need. Treating her like a queen, as a matter of fact, and she was getting a little disturbed by it all.

“Hey,” she shook her head and took inventory of the situation. Fingernails freshly painted. Hair done up. Pits clean and flowery. And she never looked better in the thousand dollar dress. She was a knockout, but confused as hell, and more than a little perturbed. “What the hell is this? I asked a question, and I expect an answer.”

Giggles all around. Not the furtive, innocent giggles of girls. They had the taint of something more sinister, as if their niceties were a mere colorful and attractive sheen, a thin film of amiability soon to be shed in favor of a violent and callously cruel nature. She’d seen these types of personalities before. The type that would give you the shirt off their backs, then, when you turned around, stab you there. Passive-aggressives always scared her the most. They were shifty, sneaky, truly unpredictable. Like sociopaths, only they didn’t have the convenient label of clinical psychosis for an excuse. This was all the singular influence of their strange and esoteric set of beliefs.

The women kept right on primping and prodding and perfecting, like artists doting over a sculpture. They loved their work and it showed. Abby, under any other circumstances, at any other time in her life, would have relished this moment. That made it all the more difficult to admit this was fool’s gold. It wasn’t real. Yet another diabolical scheme.

She wasn’t going to go quietly.

“That does it!” she stood and took a confident Abby Rhodes stride toward the door. She had firm and resolute plans for regrouping and retaking her squad—as soon as she got herself in a position of power, and that meant getting the hell out of that fitting room.

Her legs had a different plan.

Spinning colors, shapes, and shadows mixed with light in warped, irrepressible vortices. Distorted sounds of laughter as her ankle doubled over and her knee buckled and she found herself on the floor. She knew it should have hurt. It didn’t hurt a bit. Numb. So perfectly numb. She took pains in trying to get up. Her muscles were so relaxed they wanted no part in it. She had enough control over her body to shake her head, and enough control over her thoughts to understand that this was all the effects of whatever nefarious nectar had been injected into her veins.

Now she was on the floor, giggling at the way the women were giggling at her. She wanted to ask them what was so funny, but her tongue had swollen to three times its normal size. At least that’s what it felt like. When she actually touched it with her fingers, the woman roared with hysterics.

“Feeling strange?” the most beautiful of the bunch, a curvy brunette, saw to it she was back on her feet with a stout yank. Abby wobbled, her knees buckled again, but the lady had her, along with some help from two others. She felt like they were walking her back to the chair where they had been performing their spa treatments. The walk, though, took a little longer than expected. Soon she was growing weary, her legs like rubber again.

She stayed on her feet somehow. There were people alongside of her, propping her up, keeping her head straight and her legs moving, always moving. Soon she came to believe their destination wasn’t the chair. It was somewhere else. Light hit her eyes. Then darkness. A place of shadows and illumination, contrasts of extremes that triggered a substantial reaction from her senses.

As her hazy sight came back into focus and she was able to sense the real impact of her surroundings, she truthfully wished she had gone blind again. A large stone platform, surrounded by columns of white marble arraigned in a semicircle facing a darkened gallery where strange shapes shifted curiously in the shadows. She spotted a red ember bursting into existence and then a dark puff of smoke. It was a cigarette, and those shadows shifting in the darkness were people.

She saw the path she was to take, evident by the torches, two by two, in a straight line toward steps that looked like they were made of pure gold. In fact the entire altar seemed bathed in the precious metal, from the great carved arabesque-laden walls to the giant slab in the center to the ungodly immense obelisk that formed the great half dome over the entire scene like a grotesque acoustic orchestra shell.

As she was led toward the center of the shell, she got a glimpse at what exactly was waiting for her.

A bed.

Her insides churned with the terrible possibilities.

“What is this,
Rosemary’s Baby
?” Maybe if she joked it all away it would become just that, a joke, and then the house lights would come on and there would be a thousand cheery faces teasing her for being so gullible.

However, there was no grand reveal. No big moment where everyone, in a fit of good humor and mercy, ended the charade. She rattled the spongy material inside her cranium that passed for a brain and the boozy fantasy vaporized into a puff of smoke. It was pure delusion to think these people were anything but pure evil.

She dug in her heels, pushing against the men with all her might. It was no use. She was flung onto the oversized mattress with classic white on white sheets and large pillows. At least it was soft. Incredibly soft, as if the down and the satin were meant just for her. She wanted nothing to do with it. Not one second would she spend on that damned thing, and immediately fought like hell to get off.

Then something happened that made her think that staying on the bed was the best idea after all. It came in a sudden rush of ungodly heat, the kind of sweaty and sultry heat that hits you like a ton of bricks. Abby felt it in her chest, and she broke out in a perspiration-induced shiver at the next grand spectacle.

The Singulate’s dark leader.

All it took was an instant. No chants, no spells, no cryptic symbols. What happened was much more modest, and much more terrifying, for without any sort of cajoling or signal or sign, all shadow and darkness seemed to coalesce into a central mass, in the air, just above the now stunned audience.

The shadow took on a man’s shape as it glided to a stance near the bottom of the steps leading to the platform. Abby watched breathlessly the transformation from a dark and monochrome figure of velvet to flesh and bone. It was a man. That much was for sure. About six feet tall, medium build, impeccably dressed in an overcoat unbuttoned to reveal a satin shirt and black tie. The most distinguishing and disturbing feature was a hat on top of his head, creating a shadow which concealed all facial features except for the base of a sturdy chin.

Abby experienced a certain and undeniable sense of dread so intense she felt like throwing up. Fear wasn’t something she liked admitting. She was mad at herself for being so afraid. Her only recourse was to fight back. Only one problem. She was paralyzed by the narcotic, and all she could do was watch helplessly as Hatman strode ever closer.

One thing among many that piqued her interest was a terrible truth about the man’s appearance. She noticed, no matter how close he came, no matter how the light hit the hat on his head, the shadow always remained the same. Consequently she never got a good look at his face.

At the top of the stairs, his eyes glowing with sickening anticipation, Hatman stopped and tipped his stylish hat gallantly.

“Abby, I’ve been waiting a long, long time for this.”

Chapter 22

A riddle wrapped inside a mystery surrounded by an enigma. An infinite maze of impermeable walls. Stalemate at every turn. Every possible outlet obstructed. No chance of escape like a normal ghost. No path of least resistance.

Rev always thought there was no such thing as endless or bottomless or measureless. That was hyperbole. However, the longer he crisscrossed the halls of his prison, the more he came to believe those words actually had meaning. He’d finally come face to face with something truly endless.

It was driving him mad.

“Dead end! Again!” the physical projection of his voice reverberated against the walls. He thought of his friends. Where was Brutus? How could this thing possibly hold him? How could it hold me?

He was talking to himself, and what he had to say in response he didn’t like. Rev didn’t want to think of things in terms of hopeless.

“No,” he said to himself aloud. “Never admit defeat.” His search continued. Something had to give. There had to be a way out and he was going to find it. “Remember Targa?” his mind sought inspiration. “You were dead last, remember? Nobody thought you could pull that one out. Targa was your bugaboo, remember that?
Christian Werner
was your main rival that year. Won every damned race in the circuit, and he thought he was going to win that one. Only seven kilometers to go and you were dead last, just like it looks now. But did you quit? Did you admit defeat? Never!”

As he spoke he came upon a series of rights and lefts. He was sure the exit was at the next turn. When he got there he was confronted by yet another dead end.

“DAMN IT TO HELL!”

If he was in the physical world, he would have cracked glass and rumbled floors. As it was, these walls only reflected the sound back at him even louder.

Then, a miracle.

“Rev? Rev, is that you?”

The voice was faint, as if tuned in on a crackly AM radio.

“Brutus?” Rev stared down the passageway of his prison and found nothing but nothingness in the cruel twists and turns spiraling into infinity. “Brutus? Where the hell are you?”

Brutus was too proud to admit he’d been captured by the likes of The Singulate. He considered them insane peripheral actors, and thought even less of their idol, Hatman.

“I’m here.”

“I don’t get it,” Rev said. “If our voices can project through to each other, then why can’t we get out?”

“It’s a flaw in their system,” another voice, with a slight East European accent, broke through like an operator on the line. “Yet another imperfection in their woeful attempt at mimicry.”

A third voice interrupted. It was Alexandra Petrovic. “Emile, don’t try to deny it. They’ve built a machine good enough to keep you confined for over seventy years.”

“I admit nothing of the sort! They’re terrible imitators and nothing more!”

Rev detested interrupting, but he had something to say that couldn’t wait. “Emile? Doctor Emile Petrovic? My name is Rever Ott, and this is my associate Brutus. Doctor Petrovic, we’re from Ghost Guard, and we’re here to get you out of this place.”

“Ghost Guard?” the accent became thicker with anger. “You’ve done a bang up job so far! Do you realize the danger you’ve put my wife into?”

“Emile!” Alexandra rebuked her uncompromising husband. “These souls are only trying to help.”

“I don’t their incompetent help! Their so-called help has given The Singulate even more power for their demented plans. The ineptitude!”

“Emile Petrovic! You listen to me. If you continue to behave this way toward these good people then so help me I’ll leave you, I swear. Remember our vows? Until death do we part?”

The silence was a deafening bugle call of defeat, or victory, whichever way one looked at it. Rev couldn’t let it end this way.

“I can assure you both we
will
get you out of here. This is a temporary setback, I promise. I just have to find a way—” he searched the walls for a permeation point once again, some fine membrane he could squeeze through. Nothing. His desperation mounted. He contemplated navigating the maze for a different egress point, and that thought numbed his mind again. It was like an endless circuit board. Then he remembered who loved circuit boards…Ruby.

He heard tinny squeaking. He knew that sound. It was Ruby in the midst of some grand game, a frantic and animated gymnastic chess match she was bound and determined to win.

He was right. Ruby was with them in that death row of souls. She was listening to everything the others were saying. She just didn’t have the time or the desire for conversation. This place, this limitless labyrinth with its constant, zigzagging repetition, was nothing more than a computer. She loved navigating computers.

She went about the business of her business, and forgot about her fear of what exactly had created such abominations of nature. Those thoughts were exorcised like demons, and now her one and only goal was complete knowledge of the inner workings of these apparatuses called soul snares.

These things weren’t inherently evil. It was merely how they were being used, and who was using them. Simple wires and semiconductors. Of course there were the magical components. Haitian vodou, African JuJu, Egyptian Heka,
Ars magica, Shamiram occultism, Hebrew Kabbalah—she sensed influences from all of those and more
.
She’d heard of them before, and she’d dealt with them before. Just not in conjunction with this type of technology. But up close, when she shed her fear, figuring out the riddle and navigating the labyrinth became quite easy.

Before anyone knew it, Ruby was free.

“Ruby?” Rev sensed her presence somewhere near. “Ruby, that’s you, right?” He had to ask just to be sure.

Ruby, still shaken from the experience, squawked instructions at Rev, urging him to escape his snare like she had. Rev understood what she was telling him, but no matter what he tried it still didn’t work. He begged her to enter his snare and lead him out. That only made her even more anxious, but she told him she was willing to give it a shot.

Before Ruby got the chance, the sound of footsteps on the loamy ground put a halt to everything. Rev and Ruby fell silent, uneasy about their new visitor. Who was it? Hatman? They had to be careful if it was him.

A voice called into the darkness, a voice which set Rev at ease the second he heard it. His usual ability to probe into the ether and read this person’s mind was jammed by the spirit snare. He was blind in there, but not deaf. And the voice he heard was like a beacon in the night.

“Rev? Rev, are you okay?”

“Katherine,” Rev responded, though it took quite a bit of energy to do so. “What are you doing here?”

“I can’t—” she sounded miserable. “I just can’t let them do this do you.”

“Then you know what your dear leader Hatman is doing, don’t you?” Rev couldn’t contain his anger. “You know he’s planning to use all these souls as his energy source so he can gain control of the forces of darkness. You know he plans on using those forces to destroy life on this planet as we know it. You know all these things and yet you’re still going along with it all?”

“Yes,” Katherine said. “I know about everything. But I’m not going along with it.”

“What?” Rev wasn’t sure if he believed his spectral ears. “You mean you didn’t come down here to taunt me? To rub it in?”

“No!” Katherine was in tears. “No, I never wanted any of this. When Ron and I joined The Singulate we were young and idealistic. We thought we could change the world. But then we learned the truth. The real truth about using the energy from spirits to power Hatman’s terrible machine.”

Katherine’s words were muffled by her sobbing. She couldn’t control her emotions, and Rev was the reason why.

“I thought I was going to be able to handle this. I thought I was going to be strong. But I can’t do it. After meeting you, I just can’t.”

Before Rev had the chance to talk some sense into this woman, before she threw away every bit of her own security for a ghost she barely knew, he felt something strangely liberating. He couldn’t quite describe it. He could only liken it to the particular experience of being alive and plucking a sliver from his skin. That’s what it felt like, a painful sensation followed quickly by one of relief.

The initial shock was one of rapid terror, as an explosion of sorts turned out to be his liberation. An explosion of the wires and circuits and strange magical talismans and other black magic ritualistic charms. Rev didn’t know it until he was out of it all, until he was free from the purgatory that was the soul snare. He felt whole again, like he was his old self and not shackled down by an oppressive force that seemed to grow stronger the more he fought against it. He was gratified to be free, but he was also uncertain as to what exactly had happened.

He was uncertain until he saw, before him, among the confusion of wires and roots that was once his prison, Katherine’s delicate and mournful face.

“Katherine,” he whispered, as if it would do any good after she had caused such a clamor breaking apart the soul snare. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

“I did what I had to do.”

“But you’ve just put yourself in danger, Katherine. What happens when your husband finds out? What happens when Hatman finds out?”

“I don’t care,” she threw herself into his arms, which had materialized solely to catch her from falling. His was a reluctant chivalry, performed with only the woman’s wellbeing in mind. But she was so affectionate, so willing to show him her true emotions that he couldn’t help being moved. He held her and she gazed lovingly into his eyes. “You don’t deserve what Ron and that power hungry sorcerer have in mind for you. I can’t let them do it. I-I can’t.”

Rev knew Abby would be hurt if she found out, but Katherine needed him at that moment. She needed his strength, his masculine embrace. He threw out all inhibitions, forgot all about everything and everyone else for that brief moment. He was grateful, above all of his reticence and fear of reprisals, and chose to express that gratitude by kissing Katherine’s lips.

It was about to happen. The moment had almost arrived. Their lips were inches apart and closing the distance rapidly when Ruby appeared precisely in front of Rev’s face.

“Ruby!” He actually jumped with a start. If he had a heart it would have shot out of his chest. “Dammit! You scared the hell out of me!”

She giggled throatily in a high pitch discernible only by dogs and dolphins.

“What is that?” Katherine asked breathlessly, her eyes still dreamy.

“It’s just Ruby,” Rev said, coming to his senses. What was he thinking? Kissing another woman? He had sworn to Abby those days were over, and he meant it. Old habits, he guessed. “Ruby, let’s get Brutus. We’ve got a mission to complete.”