Ghost Guard (17 page)

He snickered.

“If you think love’s easy for mortals, you haven’t been paying attention.”

“It’s a messy emotion, unquestionably. But it feels so good, doesn’t it? That and
…other things,” she slid into his arms, snuggling and breathing her hot aroma onto his neck. With his newfound senses, he couldn’t help but shiver at her touch. She kissed his Adam’s apple and he recoiled a step, able to control his own body for a moment. Only for a moment.

Her eyes narrowed and he strained against her invisible grasp. She was a seductive and sinister siren luring him
into a sensual experience, followed by absolute expiration. Would she feed on his soul? Would she collect him for her sick and twisted hunger? Either way, he knew the path. Though intriguing and filled with carnal delights the likes of which he’d never get to experience in even his rarest of dreams, it would lead to only one inevitable conclusion—his eternal demise.

She shook her head silently, wearing a distressed, almost desperate look.

“You must believe me. I don’t wish you any harm. I only want to know. I only want to feel,” she slithered up to him even more intimately, curling into the folds of his arms and sliding her mouth to his chest. The things she wanted to do to him. The look in her eyes gave him just a little bit of a reason to believe her.

“What do you want from me, then?” he flushed with pins and needles as her soft skin slid across his.

“You know what I want,” she slipped her hand into his shirt, sending the buttons, one at a time, ricocheting in different directions. She giggled at the giddy feeling she got from that, and rubbed the hair on his chest playfully.

Everything inside told him to flee for his very soul’s survival, vanish into the mist and pass through the ceiling, never to return anywhere near this loathsome being’s presence. But, when he looked her in the eyes and saw that profound hurting,
a sadness forged over countless millennia of emotional isolation, he melted. He couldn’t stop from reaching behind her head and tugging her hair. Passionately, forcefully, drawing her closer, closer. He stopped when they were but millimeters apart. An electrostatic charge enveloped him, surging up and down his strangely realistic spinal cord.

She stopped breathing. Her heart was strong against his chest. Then he felt the oddest sensation—his own heart.
A warm gush of surprise surged through his veins. Then he realized he
had
veins, and it started the process of amazement all over again. The discovery of his newly-formed, fully-fledged bodily functions had an exhilarating effect on him. Everything felt one thousand times better than he could achieve alone.

She exhaled sharply.

“You are mine now. We both know it. For all of eternity, you are mine. You see, you are the key to my salvation. It is with you that I will finally find my true self. How do they say it in these times? I hear the love songs, the poems, the romantic novels and films. Your culture is awash with notions of affection and turmoil in the heart. These matters are foreign to me. As you see, I have somewhat of a cursed existence. My very presence is defined by wretchedness, and it’s quite hard for me to suppress that, to get used to being close to someone else. But with you it’s different,” she pressed her palm against his naked chest. “I can love you.”

I
n a blink, champagne was chilling. A soft, languid ballad hung in the lukewarm wisp of an early summer breeze. The physical sensations were unlike anything he could muster. It wasn’t only in his head. This was real.

“How are you doing this? How are you making me so
lifelike? I can’t do anything like this myself. Sure, I can manifest to a point. But only to a point. And it takes a lot of energy. I try to hide it from the guys, but it really does take a lot out of me. But this-this is way out of my league.”

“I always get what I want,” she replied, and in that second, he witnessed something horrifying
ly beyond belief. His body. From his own grave. She showed him an image of his corpse being lifted from the ground by some unseen hands, dirt and grime and grass falling from the rotten thing, barely a shell of what he used to be. He’d died young, in his late twenties, and his corpse was damn handsome in the casket. Yet today, many decades later, it was but a withered, decayed husk.

He wasn’t ready for what came next. His decomposed carcass
—bones separating from crumbling ligaments, dusty and weathered by the strata of the earth—began to humidify. Liquids of life streamed over the sunken eye sockets, filling them with murkiness, forming gelatinous orbs, coagulating, changing color and texture. The water dripped into decayed cavities, saturating cells and reinvigorating everything into animation. He couldn’t help but marvel at the vision. The thing that used to be his dead body, the dried husk his soul inhabited for twenty-eight years was coming back to life. Muscle tissue filled with fluid as if inflating with air. Internal organs sprang from the dust, changing from gray and withered and sagging to bright and shining and firm. What once was old and gritty became new and vibrant. What had the pallor of decay took on the healthy glow of youth and life.

He was so entranced by the spectacle that he forgot the most terrifying part. It wasn’t just a vision. It had really happened.
Elyxa had actually exhumed his dead body, rebuilt it with her unlimited preternatural power, and replanted his soul back into it.

“What the hell!” he reeled backward, hitting a lamp and spinning, then banging against a satin Chippendale sofa, pushing it several feet. The sensation of actually running into things shocked him. “What’s going
on! I can’t be—”

“Alive?” she smiled.
“Why not?”

“But-but why?”

“It’s perfect. You’re mine now. Like I said.”

“Like you said?” he felt the back of his throat become scratchy.
Tender tissue that hadn’t been used in decades. “What are you talking about! This-this can’t be!”

“You’ll learn.
In time.”

Rev fought for breath. It felt like someone had punched him in the gut. His new heart slammed against his ribcage, and he still couldn’t get any air—another feeling he simply wasn’t used to. Ghosts didn’t breathe, they didn’t have racing pulses, and they didn’t
have stomachs.

“You’re not a ghost,”
Elyxa exuded calmness. “Not anymore.”

“But how?” he barely managed to say.

“Easy,” her eyes captured the moonlight and nearly blinded him. He was still having trouble adjusting to his new body, or his old body, it was all too confusing. The one thing that made sense was the look she gave him. Absolute terror coursed through his newly-formed veins. His stomach quivered, ready to turn against him, though he was certain he had nothing in there to regurgitate.

“Easy, my young love,” she rubbed his abdomen.
The queasiness vanished. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she stopped massaging and caught his glance. “Unless you hurt me.”

“Why would I ever want to hurt you?” he forced a smile.

“Don’t play games with me. Don’t pretend. That is the biggest, most egregious form of insult. Not an insult to my intelligence, but one to my heart.”

“
Elyxa, in all your infinite wisdom, you must not forget. I have no way of hiding anything from you. Nobody does. Search my feelings, look deep into me, you will find that I have no malicious bone in my body, literally, for you. But you’ve got to put my body back,” he stared at his arms, overturning his hands and wiggling his fingers. “I can’t do this. This is-this is unnatural.”

“And lingering as a ghost in the world of the living is?”

“Well…yes,” he shrugged.

“Ha! You think
what you’re doing with your little friends is a good thing for the spirit world? You’re wrong! Your existence is an abomination!”

He swallowed a dry lump. It scratched down his virgin throat. Suddenly he was weak.
Weak with fatigue. Weak with frayed nerves.

“
You need to rest,” she detected his feebleness. “Rest and let your body recuperate. It’s been in the ground a long time. By your standards, at least. But you’ll see. Spend the rest of eternity with me, and you’ll understand just how little forty or fifty, even a hundred years really is. And you’ll also come to understand why your attachment to that silly Ghost Guard is nothing but a fools endeavor.”

THIRTEEN

“WHO IS
THIS!
” Aros marched into the bedchamber, drawing a golden blade from his waistcoat. His favorite weapon against mortals. With unnatural speed he moved, and had one, single-minded purpose—to slice Rev’s throat.

“
Aros!” Elyxa’s booming voice forced him to freeze, though his focus was still planted on Rev firmly.

“
Elyxa!” he hissed. “I thought we were going to be together again. Just the two of us, hunting souls like old times. What are you doing with…
him?
”

With his glare,
Aros snatched something from Rev. A little bit of his will. Rev stood back. His knees turned to rubber. Then he fell to the floor.

Elyxa
stepped between them, extending her hand.

“I told you,
Aros. Things can never be the same between us. Not after what you did.”

“
Come now, Elyxa. You’re still fixated on that? What’s a little infidelity between immortals?” he nodded his head with the slightest hint of sarcasm.

“You’re forgetting something,
Aros.”

“Oh, yeah,” he chuckled nervously. “That.”

“What, Aros? Say it.”

Aros
grimaced at the sudden tightness in his sinuses, traveling into his cranial cavity, pressuring his brain. His head was on the verge of exploding, and Elyxa was the reason.

“To save myself I turned on you…”

“And?”

“And you
were caught by the Eternals and banished for three hundred years.”

The pressure subsided, and, with another deep breath, he was able to break from the
supernatural grip.

“You definitely
are
stronger now, Elyxa,” he smiled. “This I can admit. But are you strong enough? What happened to you, Elyxa? Where is the might of the immortal I once knew? I don’t see it in you. I see weakness,” he pointed at Rev. “Weakness for a human.”

“
Be silent, fool!” Elyxa stared at the ceiling just as the electricity went out. “What
is
this?”

Everything
faded to near blackness. Rev, now with only his mortal sight to rely on, saw Elyxa’s face by a single candle on her vanity. She lowered her stare to him.

“One of your friends?”

He went numb. For the first time, he realized his predicament. Truly, honestly, he was a breather again. And, as such, he was back to a state of total psychic unawareness. The stream of consciousness, the channels of thought and energy that allowed spirits to communicate, was inaccessible to his mortal mind. He held his temples. Then, above his head, he heard a high-pitched chirp, a whistle, and a giggle. It was Ruby. His friends were trying to save him.

Elyxa
, in a sudden skirmish with the feisty poltergeist, clamped her fingers as if trying to catch a gnat, eyes darting, breathing short and staggered.

“Pesky little beast,” she
growled. “I’ll get you
and
your friends,” she nodded at a vase, and in the same instant it exploded, shards of crystal erupting in stinging disharmony. Rev was too late in covering his face. A splinter hit his cheek and he saw blood. Another new experience.

“Where are you, you little DEVIL!”
Elyxa probed with her thoughts here, there—here, there. Hot on the trail like a snake after a mouse in the tall grass. She had her attention on a luminescent haze encompassing the entertainment system. Ruby infected the electronics with a fizzle of sparks and a whiff of ozone. Music blared. The big screen TV flickered on, playing a black and white Western. Then everything fell dark and silent again as Ruby scampered off to parts unknown.

With
Elyxa preoccupied, Aros jumped at his chance and grasped Rev by the throat.

“You might be alive again. But
not for long,” Aros whispered into Rev’s ear. He chuckled at Rev’s meager attempts at self-defense, serving up an ironic smile, and with his mind telling Rev this was the end. Rev was desperate for Elyxa. How could she not know what Aros was up to?

“
E-E-Elyxa…” he forced out of his lungs. No use. His voice was nearly nonexistent.

Aros
snickered again. Elyxa could crush him in an instant, and would have if she’d seen what he was doing, but Ruby’s antics had her engrossed.

Rev felt the life draining from him. How could such an omnipotent being be
duped so easily? Was it the thrill of the hunt? The excitement of the chase? She was focused like a laser, peering into the substructure of the ceiling, then the wall, then the floor, tracking Ruby as she raced through the electrical circuitry.

“Interminable terror!” she raised her fists in disgust. “You can’t run from me for long! I
will
catch you, and when I do, I
will
eliminate you!”

At that very moment, she
clasped her fingers together, and had the self-congratulatory grin of a matador after a long and spirited fight.

“Ha! Got you!” her voice lowered to a sultry purr. “And this time I’m not letting you go.”

Aros turned his attention again to Rev.

“It’s now or never.”

Aros wielded his ornately-sculpted blade. Rev’s new life flashed before his eyes, all ten minutes of it. He still hadn’t gained full control over his body, newly restructured as it was, and now he would never get the chance. Aros slashed with his dagger, razor sharp and intricately golden, his features contorted in unnatural angles of nonhuman malice. He possessed great power, that was certain, and focused it all on one point—Rev’s jugular.

From a sudden tempest of dust and light and sound, a strong, dark fist
seized Aros by the shoulders and hoisted him up, depositing him on his backside halfway across the room. Rev had no doubt who’d just saved him. The maneuver was straight out of Brutus’s handbook, and quite effective, even against such a powerful immortal.

Free
from danger, Rev fell to his knees. That’s when Elyxa took notice of the brawl. Her rage exploded at what she saw.

“
AROS! What are you DOING!”

Aros
, quivering with fear, stood and made a hasty exit before Elyxa could punish him for his misdeed. At that moment of distraction, Ruby slipped free from Elyxa’s grip, shot across the room, through the wall, and out of sight, leaving behind only a trail of twinkling dust and a cacophony of strident screams.

Elyxa
focused her mind on finding the irksome little ghost. But, suddenly, she found it impossible to get a read. Impossible to think at all. Noise. An infernal commotion invading her every thought. She covered her ears but it did no good. Nothing would stop the terrible noise. She staggered a number of steps, trying to get away from its nauseating influence.

The
boudoir doors burst open, and a disorienting eruption of light and sound forced Rev to kiss the floor. A barrage of automatic weaponry from the front, behind, the skylights in the ceiling. A figure in tactical dress burst through a large mosaic glass window, shattering the already fragmented pieces, his powerful weapon flashing with burst after burst of violence. After him, through another window, came a second tactical invader, smashing into the penthouse with the same sudden ferocity under the same blizzard of bullets.

Rev
got to his hands and knees, willing himself to crawl to Elyxa. The crossfire pushed him back on his belly. In his dead days, he would have simply faded into the atmosphere and glided anywhere he wanted safely. As it was, he had no clue what the hell was happening. He only knew Elyxa had been shot, and was still being shot—over and over.

The force of the weaponry tossed her
several feet backward, though she was still able to stand. The number of assailants swelled to at least two dozen, and the firepower they packed overwhelmed even the fleet of foot, all-knowing Elyxa. Despite her omniscience, her abilities to tap into other people’s minds, she was unable to foresee the assault team, outfitted in flat black armor and helmets, firing laser-guided projectiles with sniper precision, repelling on ropes from above where a monstrous black helicopter commanded the sky.

Brutus rushed
in a smoldering cloud over Rev to give him assistance.

“Time to go,” he motioned with his massive yet semitransparent arm. It fluttered like
heat vapors made of dark steam. “Come on.”

He took Rev by the elbow and moved silently and swiftly in the way only a ghost can move. He passed through the wall, dragging Rev behind him, and then Rev slammed into the hard surface, his face hitting the wood. He couldn’t go through the solid object
. That confused Brutus, who doubled back, letting go of Rev in order to better examine him, touching his shoulder, pressing a finger into his chest. When Brutus felt the pressure, he stood up, towering over Rev.

“You’re in solid form? Why?”

“I have to be, Brutus,” Rev couldn’t look him in the eye. All he saw was Elyxa, her body quivering from the attack. The assault team kept shooting sporadically, taking no chances with the immortal woman. Rev begun to rethink his prior preconception. Maybe guns
could
bring Elyxa down. Though he got the feeling it was more than just the guns that did it.

“We have to go, Rev,” Brutus couldn’t understand why his friend wouldn’t abandon the physical plane. And the nature of his corporeal manifestation, the way it felt—something wasn’t right. He looked and seemed more physical, more whole and complete than ever. Brutus had seen Rev manifest
completely many times before, when he was trying to make a favorable impression on someone—usually a woman. However, ghosts could experience energy drain from bullet wounds when in the physical plane. If there ever was a time when Rev shouldn’t have been fully formed, it would be now, with the lead flying. Yet he remained corporeal, and that both puzzled and alarmed Brutus.

In the center of the chaos, several people sprinted through the entrance. Abby was in the lead, dressed in black from head to toe.
Skin tight and sexy, with more than a hint of attitude in her step, in her stare, in her steely demeanor. Now Rev knew how the sneak attack had been accomplished. Using her intuitive defense against Elyxa’s ESP, Abby had filled the mental frequencies with heavy metal. Effectively, she jammed Elyxa’s radar. With no link to the ocean of consciousness, the ancient being, who otherwise enjoyed complete dominion over her surroundings, had been rendered deaf and blind. She’d had no way to foresee, let alone stop, what went down.

Abby shouted a command and the assault team
quit firing. The atmosphere hung thick with a shroud of gun smoke. The lights were still off, but a few candles were lit, further adding to the dense and turbid mood.

Rev let loose with all his rage and pain and tumult,
sprinting to Elyxa’s lifeless, shredded, and bloodied corpse.

“What have you
done!”

With no regard to the red smear
s on his hands, his clothes, his arms and face, he collapsed to his knees, cradling the mangled body in his lap.

Silence.
Deafening silence. Abby was beside herself.

“Rev?
REV!”

He flinched, but didn’t look.
Couldn’t look. Shame. Remorse. Grief. All the normal emotions flooded his mind. Then a pain in his abdomen reminded him of a terrifying and unspeakable truth. He was no longer a ghost. Another sharp, piercing jolt in his gut made it clear, and following that, more aches, weakness, and a steady descent into what he could only describe as agony.

He tried to rise and look Abby in the eye. Stand and confront her on an even level. His own frailty ruined his chances before he could get started. A deep, flaccid breath was all he manage
d, and then he slumped to the floor, on the bullet-riddled remains of what was once Elyxa. He rejected the very idea that such an omnipotent being could be reduced to such a state.

“Rev?”
Abby repeated, this time less abrasively, even with a hint of tenderness. “Rev, what’s the matter with you?”