Ghost Guard (16 page)

RILEY MADE A SYSTEMATIC SWEEP of the fifth floor in a desperate search for survivors. Someone had to be still alive. Someone. With every step he felt a little closer to his doom. And the more lifeless, dehydrated corpses he came upon, the more he sensed his number was coming up next. Not that it mattered. He would have given his own life in a heartbeat.
How could that asshole just throw Delta X into this situation without a proper briefing? What was that madman thinking?

These were his furious thoughts as he stomped down the non-functioning escalator
to the lobby of a long-defunct department store. The radios were out, and he was bound and determined to give that asshole a piece of his mind. He mumbled to himself as he crossed the street, shedding his elbow pads and helmet and shin protectors. The command center was located in a parking garage next door, and Riley descended to the first sublevel, growing angrier with every step.

He marched through the small tent with several operators at their posts. He didn’t care about any of the wide-eyed faces in the triage, gasping and murmuring to each other as he
strode past. The one and only person he wanted to talk to right then was Mahoney. The man who’d sent him into this mess.

“What kind of shit is this!” he screamed before
even stepping foot inside the monstrous black motor home. “What kind of deathtrap did you send us into!” he stared at the operators, but they only shrugged innocently and gestured to the monitors, where Mahoney’s chubby image looked on with his usual lofty contempt. “Mahoney! You son of a bitch! You sent us into a fight against an immortal!”

“Calm down, Riley,”
Mahoney, as usual, retained his staid demeanor in the face of Riley’s lack of decorum.

“Don’t tell me to calm down! I lost a lot of
people today, Mahoney! Don’t you get it? Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“It means plenty to me, Riley,”
Mahoney snarled. “And I intend on making sure their deaths aren’t in vain. That’s why I need you to shut the hell up and listen.”

“
Mahoney, I’ve had it up to here with your—”

“LISTEN, dammit!”
Mahoney’s voice crackled over the custom sound system. He cleared his throat to regain at least a semblance of serenity. “I made…a mistake.”

“A mistake?”
Riley was incredulous. “Is that what you call it?”

“Yes, a mistake. I should have gone with someone else from the beginning, and now I’m putting them in charge. It’s a special team, with a
n extraordinary group of agents. From now on you’ll answer to them.”

“
Extraordinary, huh?” Riley shook his head in disbelief. “They’d better be pretty damn—” his words failed him when he noticed who exactly had been standing behind him this whole time. That exquisite beauty. So familiar. So breathtaking. “Abby?” he said without thinking. “Abby Rhoads? Is that you?”

“Riley,” Abby nodded. She was flattered at the way Riley was looking at her, but she wouldn’t let that
disrupt her professionalism. “It’s been a long time. How’ve you been?”

“Not so good, Abby,” he stopped himself from staring at her
, scowling at Mahoney’s bloated image instead. “Because of this son of a bitch!”

“Now wait a minute, Riley. I sent you in there because I thought you and your men would be able to handle it.”

“What does that mean you son of a—”

“Riley!” Abby broke him from his train of thought. She
’d always had a way of doing that to him. “Listen, Riley. I know you’ve just taken some pretty heavy losses up there, and I want to help you get back at those monsters.”

“You can do that?” he locked eyes with her
s. He peered at Mahoney, then back at Abby. “How?”

“We have to use unconventional means, Riley,” Abby said.

“Unconventional? I don’t think you can get any more unconventional than what’s going on up there right now,” Riley laughed halfheartedly. “Can you believe there’s a ghost up there? Says he’s part of some Ghost Guard. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous?”

The second
Riley finished speaking, he caught the coldest breeze against his cheek. Then he saw something that made him retreat a step by instinct. A billowing tower of smoke. Dark gray. Smoldering and twisting angrily. It had the rough shape of a man. A huge man with red embers for eyes. Brutus didn’t like it when people belittled ghosts, and it showed. Next to Brutus, Ruby allowed her globular form to be seen by Riley, and he backed off even more.

“Ghosts!” he blurted, then caught Abby’s stare.
“You? You’re Ghost Guard?”

TWELVE

REV WILLED HIS ENERGY UP
, through a glass atrium, and then outside. Despite his lack of physical form, at that moment, he felt the breeze. Higher and higher he floated, until he came to the giant electrified
MONTGOMERY PARK
sign on the roof. Behind the trademark lettering was the penthouse, a luxury suite.

He pushed his energy inside, passing through the entryway, and standing in the foyer. Though he was entering without permission, he didn’t want to be so rude as to just barge right in. He
did
have manners—sort of.

He’d chosen his best attire for the occasion, a silk shirt and tailored tuxedo with a single white rose boutonniere. His hair slid back on its own
accord and unseen hands smoothed out the wrinkles in his jacket as he stepped confidently through the antechamber. The benefits of being able to conjure your own look.

He peeked into the bedroom.
Elyxa was alone, breathing heavily and gazing at herself in the mirror. Nervously, Rev willed himself invisible, drifting behind her so he could see what she was seeing. She looked like a poem written in perfect verse, a steady cadence of beauty and fragility. It would have taken his breath away had he actually needed to breathe. Instead, his energy field sparkled with static at her azure eyes, the summer breeze flirting with her soft, golden hair. To say she was a goddess would have been redundant. He could picture her in the days of the Romans, Caligula falling at her feet, promising his empire for just one night of passion.

He envisioned thousands of people adoring her,
dancing to the beat of a hundred savage drummers, pounding their chests and tearing their scant clothes. Begging. Praying. Beseeching their mother for her blessings. She stood high and proud and reached out slowly, feeling the power in the sheer numbers before her. Rev felt that power. He realized he was seeing one of her memories, watching it like a movie.

He tore himself away from the vision, and
Elyxa seemed different, almost as if she realized he was near. She paused as she was applying lipstick and faced the opposite direction, eyes scanning. She looked across the sitting area in the master bedroom, then allowed her sight to drift up to the ceiling. Rev was sure he was caught. Instead of saying anything, she turned her attention to the bed, where Rev saw someone on top of the sheets.

So she wasn’t alone.

The face of this other person wasn’t quite visible. Before he could get a better look, Elyxa cast her glare straight at him. Her hand flung toward the ceiling and he felt a sudden and unyielding gravitational pull, so fast, so strong, he was dizzy. At that moment he turned physical. Not that he wanted to. He’d been forced quite against his will, and quite violently too. The whole ordeal made him feel lost, powerless, without any resolve of his own. Standing over him, she smiled, glancing up and down at his face, noticing things, pleasing things, then grinning even wider.

Rev
forgot she was an immortal killer, a fierce beast of a woman, not even a woman, really, but a thing. There was no other way to describe it. She wasn’t dead, but not actually alive either. She was both. He’d refused until that moment to recognize Elyxa was indeed a woman. Until that moment, he wanted only to dehumanize, to make her less than worthy of his pity. She was an enemy, pure and simple. A destroyer of souls. Everything she touched rotted and decayed with the stench of death. The reverse of King Midas. Instead of the golden touch, she had the touch of death. And he was feeling it now.

He was used to pain in his physical form. Not like this. Usually, whenever
confronted by a surprise attack, he could retreat. Transforming to his ethereal form, he could become smaller than the atoms in the air and gravitate away from danger. Not this time. Elyxa had some kind of mystical hold on him, a psychic grip threatening to rip him apart if he wasn’t careful. Elyxa was used to respect, and respect she demanded.

“Get up,” she said, and at that moment he realized
he
was the one lying in bed. “That’s right, my love. Stand.”

My love?
His thoughts raced.

She giggled just like a schoolgirl. Her smile grew larger and larger as he fought against her power. Struggled with all he had. Nothing worked, so he
gave up, realizing he might need his energy. He’d have some kind of chance to get out of there, to get away from her. Now, though, she had him like a beetle in a Venus flytrap.

That’s exactly what he felt like.
A bug. An insignificant pest. Rev despised the powerlessness, and it made him distrust Elyxa even more. Her dominance seemed incalculable. Maybe it was unlimited, an entirely distasteful thought. He knew absolute power corrupted absolutely, and to possess so much potency must have been temptation beyond belief.

She reached out and curled her fingers in a come-hither way, further driving his metamorphosis into the physical. His own hand formed out of the dust molecules, becoming real flesh and bone and muscle. She took his palm in hers, and he felt a shot of energy through his
developing veins, speeding from his fingertips, up his arm to his shoulder, then across his chest. He stared at his upper body in wonder. He felt more whole, more real than he’d ever felt under his own energy.

Elyxa
closed her eyes and puffed a forceful breath upon him. His skin grew bumps and he shivered—a sensation he hadn’t had in a long, long time. His body was complete. All the way down to his toes. He turned to the mirror to see even his hair had been restyled, longer in the back and flowing over his shoulders. He felt like a reject from a Fabio lookalike contest. Was this what she wanted?

Yes
, her eyes lowered a bit, the pupils enlarging into twin caverns of blankness. He could see her mouth, but it wasn’t moving. She was connected to his mind. And her connection was strong.
You
are what I want.

Rev didn’t want to answer. He didn’t want her in his mind.

Don’t attempt to hide from me. You don’t know how long I’ve been alive. There is nothing I cannot see, nothing I cannot find out if I want to. Concealing your thoughts from me is useless.

He smiled, hoping that would mask his terror. She could have eradicated him on the spot, eviscerated his spirit energy. It would have meant a
fate far worse than death. Death was simply a transition between phases of existence. Death was a graduation of the soul. What Elyxa did resulted in complete nothingness. Expiration, as Morris called it.

Eyes wide, he stared at his own
physique as Elyxa felt the contours of his pectorals over the silk shirt that had mysteriously replaced his tuxedo. Tingles gave way to a flood of heat when she pressed her lips against the skin in his neck. He shuddered. Never had he felt this way in all his time as a ghost. Temporary pleasure, as well as temporary pain. That was the best it got. Ever. He could only manifest his physical self enough to sustain a sexual encounter for a short time, and even then it went by fast. He was amazed at the sensations he got from Elyxa. Intense. Without care or reservation or any sign of limit. Ecstasy like this was only a memory for him, something he could recall barely from his short time as a living being so long ago.

She stopped kissing and gazed into his eyes.
An eternal, soulless creature with a glacial stare, and at the same time, a red-hot and passionate smile.

“You haven’t
felt this in a long time?” she said aloud. “And love is such an elusive sensation for me. I’ve
never
felt this. Can you imagine? No. You couldn’t imagine. You’ve only been around for, what, a century at most? Try countless centuries. Living in the same body, with the same memories, the same life day after day, year after year, millennia after millennia.”

Rev only
offered a stupefied expression. He felt his feet touching the ground. Felt other things too. Strange how all this was happening. He wished he knew.

“I’ve given you some of my power,” she wrapped him in a sultry embrace, her eyes low, her lips pursed. “Like it?”

“I can’t say I’m hating it,” he let a grin spread across his lips. It was true. Despite his fear, he had no cause to deny her beauty. And her sensuality. “I’ve always been a sucker for blondes.”

She
chuckled seductively.

“This is my natural color, but I was thinking about changing.”

“No, no,” he ran his fingers through her golden locks. “Don’t even think about it.”

“So you
do
think I’m beautiful?”

He met her intimidating gaze and answered solemnly, “Are you kidding? You’re a doll.”

“Then why are you so scared of me?” she turned away. He could see her face reflected myriad times in the triple vanity mirrors.

“Well,” he lifted his palms and tried not to be sarcastic, but just couldn’t resist. “Let me guess. I’d think the whole bumping off souls thing is a little, shall I say, terrifying.”

She spun to face him.

“
Don’t concern yourself with that,” she moved closer. “Relax. Just forget about it. We don’t need to think about anything. Nothing else exists in this world, nothing in this universe besides you and me.”

She kissed him again, and the room began to spin, so fast he
almost lost his balance. She held him as firm as a stone, yet as supple as a peach. She was a contradiction, a living paradox. His head kept spinning, the world moving at the speed of light. All the feeling and senses and emotions he hadn’t had in so long. A tidal wave. Too much for even his expansive mind to handle. Finally, she pulled away from his touch.

“Why don’t you off me like you do
the other spirits?” he asked, “Why are you playing me like a sap?”

She refused to answer, at least not with her vocal chords. With a flick of her eyelashes, she sent him through hundreds of millions of years of existence, to the
time when she was first born. But not to parents the way other living beings were born. She was a child of the cosmos. Like a star, the elements that made up her physical composition gathered and solidified and advanced over the course of millions of years. A drifting nebulous cloud taking energy from the ambience of space and forming into a living entity, one with all the needs and wants and desires of a female, yet never with a true connection to anything, or anyone.

Somehow, Rev grasped the concept of eternity.
The vastness of infinity. He felt Elyxa’s omnipotence. She could destroy a city with a mere thought, raze mountains at a whim, dry oceans with her fiery stare. She was a goddess. A deadly goddess. Deadly in so many different ways.
Yet her immortality was a curse. To live forever. The tediousness is maddening. And for that she hunted spirits. For the pleasure. Yet now she felt a pleasure unlike anything brought on by the hunt. The electricity. The spark. Her allure drew him in like a snake charmer, making it impossible for him to refuse her.

Her
terrifyingly sensual embrace could have entranced him for millions of years. The concept slipped in and out of his mind, but the very idea of existing that long seemed impossible.

She stared at him.

“You
do
realize we were all born the same way? All of our souls were produced in the cosmic womb. Only the lucky spirits get to enter and experience life as a mortal.”

“Lucky?” Rev skewed his head. “Most people would say to be immortal is lucky. Do you realize how much money is spent by people trying to keep themselves young? That’s been one of mankind’s biggest goals—to live forever.”

“Yet you’ve died, and look where you are.”

“I didn’t say it was a wise endeavor. I’m just saying. The
living want to keep living. It’s instinctual. People would kill to become immortal.”

She laughed out loud. Glass rattled in the windowpanes
. A cool wind flustered the curtains which ran from the floor to the twenty-foot ceiling.

“Such
foolhardiness. I should expect so much from the mortal mind. Even after all this time, it still hasn’t evolved, hasn’t learned.”

“What haven’t we learned?”

“This,” she pointed to nothing in particular, the room, a white on white marvel of marble and crystal. “This whole world, the universe and all you see in it. It’s all an illusion. An impermanent state, at least it’s supposed to be. The soul is sent on a journey of discovery and learning and can only do so by being placed into many different bodies, experience many different lives—and deaths. Millions of years of existence, and the interminably unwise mortals still can’t figure that one out. Well, maybe the Buddhists. They’ve got it down. Almost.”

Rev was fascinated as well as afraid. Was she truly interested in him, or was she toying with him like a cat with a mouse? Tossing him into the air, flipping him with sharp claws and preparing for the bite to the throat?

She shed her jovial attitude at what she was reading from him.

“I’m not playing with you, Rev. You have something I want. Something only you can give me.”

“But I thought you said you couldn’t love.”

“I said it was
elusive, not impossible,” she smiled only briefly. “We immortals can love. Though it can be very, very difficult.”