Ghost Guard (18 page)

FOUR
TEEN

REV KEPT HIS EYES CLOSED and still the harsh light hurt like hell. Flat on his back, he had no clue where he was at that moment. Must have passed out somewhere between the penthouse and here. Wherever
here
was. A voice pushed him into reality.

“Should we induce dematerialization?” Morris asked.

“I-I don’t know,” Abby felt the same sense of shock and unease as Morris, maybe even more. The whole way to Gasworks from Montgomery Park, Rev was acting strange. “You’re asking me? I thought
you
were the expert at this.”

“
If I’m not mistaken, you’re a paranormal professional too,” Morris fidgeted. “Don’t you have any idea what’s wrong with him?”

Abby breathed deep
ly and forced herself to settle down.

“This is nothing. We’ve been through worse. He looks fine. He looks alive.”

“Exactly!” Morris examined the diagnostic data. “Alive. All my instrumentation is telling me he
is
alive.”

“We’ve seen him materialize many times, even so well as to fool your machines, remember?”

“I do, but—” Morris squinted over the monitors again, checking the connections, making sure all his probes were in place. Rev, for his part, ascended further into consciousness.

“He’s waking up,” Abby felt calmer.
A little. Now, certainly, they’d figure out what was wrong with Rev. Morris would work his magic and nurse him back to health. It would be as easy as that. It had to be that easy. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about actually losing him.

“Rev!
Can you hear me!”

“Stop yelling,”
Rev’s throat burned. “I hear you fine.”

“You scared the shit out of us!” she ignored his command. “What the hell were you doing, getting so close to that evil bitch, anyway?”

“Hey, don’t call her a bitch. She’s not a bitch. She’s just…misunderstood.”

Abby couldn’t speak. Morris was at a loss for words as well. Neither could
register what they’d just heard. Emerging from the shock, they eyed each other, then Rev.

“What?” Rev asked. He felt like saying more, but the look in Abby’s eyes told him he’d better
dry up. Her nose for the paranormal was second to none, and Abby didn’t like what she smelled. Neither did Morris. Abby didn’t need scientific equipment to tell her. She had her own, highly-honed and meticulously-trained intuition. Her feelings weren’t mere speculation. She’d spent a lifetime dealing with spirit realm scum like Elyxa.

“What did you say?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” he shook his head.

That infuriated Abby even more. She bit her lip.

“You’re not getting away with
nothing
this time. You’re gonna tell me what the hell happened, and you’re gonna tell me right now.”

“You’re going to tell
us
,” Morris demanded.

“
And
us,” Brutus materialized, and then Ruby, both to their full physical forms, something they seldom did. It was a way of showing Rev they were serious.

Before
he said a word, the sensors Morris had placed on Rev began buzzing excitedly. Piercing alarms and pulsing lights. Rev felt the weakest he’d ever felt, in life or in death. Morris got up close to each monitor one at a time, studying carefully, looking for any sort of anomaly. Then, after he’d gone through every readout and saw all the numbers, he came to a conclusion that confused the hell out of him.

“But-but how?” was all he could say.
“How?”

“How what?”
Abby did her best to control the creeping panic. She had to remain calm and in control for the sake of the team. But the way Rev looked, strangely-colored and oddly clammy, not at all normal for a ghost. It scared the shit out of her.

Ruby meandered thoughtfully in the air near the monitors. She squeaked and jabbered to Morris, asking if there wasn’t something wrong with the electronics, suggesting maybe she should slip in and take a look.

“No, Ruby,” Morris couldn’t stop shaking as he typed a search command in diagnostics. “There’s nothing wrong with my system. It’s…it’s something else.”

“But what?”
Abby repeated. Her helplessness was getting on her own nerves.

Morris uncovered the data he was searching for
, and it only confirmed his worst fears.

“No,” he muttered. “There’s no way this can be possible,” his mind swirled. He must have been dreaming, yet it all seemed so real.

“What is it, Morris! Talk to me!” Abby forgot all about being calm at this point. The way Morris was muttering really gave her a bad feeling.

“I’ve gone over all the data twice and it’s undeniable. All statistics indicate the same thing. I mean, this equipment isn’t calibrated for the living, so these data points might be way off, but I would have no way to know since I’ve never tried testing it before on an actual, animate person—”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” Abby shook him by his lapels. “Just what the hell are you saying here, Morris? What do you mean
animate
?”

“I just-I,” he stammered.

Ruby hovered near Rev and blinked in his face. He breathed a laugh, sat up slightly, and banged heads with the friendly little ghost. She was surprised at his touch and flew backward, eyes wide. She scarcely believed it, but her senses were never wrong, and blurted in her own, made-up language that Rev was alive.

“ALIVE!” Abby’s composure evaporated into complete terror. “How could he be
alive! Morris, this has to be a mistake!”

“I know, I know,” he shook his head, then typed some more, bringing the vital statistics on the big screen. “But he has a pulse, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, even brain activity.”

“Okay, that’s it,” Abby said. “If there’s brain activity, that means it
has
to be a mistake.”

“Not funny,” Rev winced. What had started as a mild annoyance was turning into a major pain in the ass. He was indeed burning up, and now his guts were tying into knots. He couldn’t tell if he wanted to puke or eat a horse.

“Rev, what happened to you?” Abby demanded. “What did that bitch do to you?”

“I told you, stop calling her that!”

“Why? Why do you care? What went on between you two?”

“Nothing.
She just—”

“What?
She what?”

“She
…she got into my head. Made me feel all these emotions for her.”

“Emotions?
What? So now you’re in love with her?”

“No, it’s not like that. She made me
think
I was in love with her!”

“Guy
s, please!” Morris mediated. “This is doing nothing to alleviate the situation!” 

“Morris,
help me understand,” Abby begged. “How can this be happening? How can Rev be alive all of a sudden?”

“I-I don’t know,” Morris blinked and blinked, hoping that would force away the fog of confusion. After a deep breath, he went back to his safe ground, where he knew he could always take refuge—his computer. “All I can tell you is what the system is telling me. By every indication, Rev’s a living human being.”

“Are you one hundred percent positive?” she begged for sanity. “Are you sure he hasn’t just been forced by Elyxa into some sort of advanced state of materialization? I mean, this looks like it’s killing him.”

Morris made a series of gestures to convey his extreme and confounded frustration.

“There’s nothing I can do. This system is one-of-a-kind. It’s a lifesaving system for ghosts, not people. That’s why the data’s going haywire, and why some of the measurements are off the charts.”

Abby ran her fingers through her long, dark hair over and over, getting aggressive with her own scalp.

“This isn’t real. This can’t be real? How can he be alive?”

“He can’t be,” he agreed. “But he is. And, like you said, it’s killing him, look!”

Morris pointed at the body temperature meter. One hundred and seven.

Rev saw it for himself, and nearly passed out again. He dipped and swayed and rolled like an ocean swell.

“Whoa!” he put out his hands to ride the wave. “You guys feel the room spinning too?”

Abby
reached for Rev’s arm and felt that it was scorching. She recoiled, staring at her palm, then at Rev. He just looked at her.

“Rev, you’re burning up! Morris, he’s on fire! What the hell’s going
on!”

“That does it!” Brutus passed through Abby and Morris, soaring next to the
makeshift bed. He materialized, took Rev into his arms, and swept him away.

“Where are you going?” Abby followed Brutus into the hall, past the conference room
, and into Abby’s private domain.

“Hey!” Abby’s voice cracked she shouted so loud. “Are you deaf, Brutus? Where are you
going!”

Brutus said nothing. No time to explain. Abby would have to understand. But she didn’t.

“You’re not taking him where I think you’re taking him, are you?”

Brutus rushed into Abby’s office, a cozy corner unit on the second floor with a rosewood leather executive desk, a posh sitting area featuring a gorgeous view of the St. John’s Bridge
straddling a glassy Willamette River, and, best of all, her pride and joy, a custom bathroom with oversized Jacuzzi tub. The place was her haven, and she loved it better than her own in her apartment. In fact, it didn’t even come close.

“You’re invading my private quarters, Brutus! Goddammit…STOP!”

“He’s dying!” Brutus roared. It made Abby halt in her tracks.

“But he’s already dead!”

Ruby passed through her, and she felt a tickle in her stomach. She only stood there, mouth agape, pondering the implications and the possibilities and the sheer chances of something like this happening. Morris hurried by, almost shoving her off her feet. He stopped and caught her.

“Sorry about that, Abby,” he was breathless. Not every day did he get to see a real-life case of
reanimation. “We’ve got a pretty serious situation on our hands, here.”

“But how, Morris?
I mean—how?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” he made sure she was balanced, then rushed to the tub and cranked on the cold water.

Rev had never seen Abby look so astonished, and he’d seen her surprised dozens of times. He’d made it his mission in death to keep her on her toes by playing little mental pranks. She called it harassment. He called it good fun. He also called it training. She needed to be prepared for anything and everything a ghost—or any other supernatural entity for that matter—could send at her when it came to psychic attacks. He was proud to say he’d developed in her a pretty thick psychological skin. Now, though, she seemed on the verge of a breakdown.

“Don’t worry, Abby,” he chuckled, though the searing in his gut hated every word he said. “Frown lines can be permanent, you know.”

She squinted at him, cursing holes into his head with her eyes.

“Ouch
! If looks could kill.”

“All right, buddy,” she knelt next to the tub and grabbed the collars on his overpriced silk shirt. It was strange to see real clothes on him. Usually, when she got that close, he made himself naked, just to piss her off. “You need to start giving me some answers. Just what the hell’s going on? And start from the beginning.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Abby,” he refused to look at her.

“Try me,” she squeezed his cheeks and forced him to face her. “That’s an order.”

He took a deep, quick breath. She winced at the stench.

“You see that? You smelled my breath, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, and it stinks too,” she backed away. For the first time, she actually considered the idea, no matter how farfetched, that Rev might be really, truly alive. She put her hand over his shoulder, feeling the warmth. Even in the cold water, he was still scorching. “What the hell, Rev?”

“I can’t believe it either,” he examined his own hands, arms,
chest. “I still can’t understand it. Somehow, Elyxa found my body in the grave and restored it to the way it was when I died,” he punched his chest, and winced at a burning sensation in his sternum. “This is all me.”

Abby bent closer. She didn’t know what to feel, what to think.

“How could this be done? What kind of power does Elyxa have? Rev, you have to tell me…what’s happening to you?”

“Am I detecting a hint of…what’s it called, oh yeah, affection?”

She allowed herself to laugh.

“This is no time for juvenile innuendos. We have to find out what happened to you so we can fix this. And I mean right now.”

“I told you what happened. Elyxa turned me back into a human being. Don’t ask me how. She just did it.”

“But why?” she puzzled. “
If we figure that one out, maybe we can figure out how to reverse it, or at least how we can get you back to being a—”