Ghost Guard (8 page)

As
Elyxa watched the panic she’d just created, Morris fed her image into the Ghost Guard face recognition system.

“Come on! Come on!” he shouted at the computer.

“Morris, what’s going on!” Abby demanded under her breath. “Who the hell is she!”

“Hold on! I’m working on it!”

Elyxa faced Abby with a threatening glare. Abby trembled as if a sudden earthquake had originated under her feet. She felt her consciousness slip away, replaced by an instantaneous and searing agony deep in her brainstem. Brutus couldn’t wait for a computer to tell him what he already knew. This woman was dangerous.

Brutus formed into a solid object and towered over
Elyxa, breathing smoke from his nose. If Abby hadn’t seen this a thousand times before, she would have sworn he was a demon. Blackened flesh, peeling and crusted. Fiery eyes. Overgrown, muscular frame. Thank God he was on their side. Consequently, it was a complete shock to everyone on the team when the mystery woman hit him with a fierce jab, snapping his neck back at such an extreme angle that he looked upside down at Abby.

Abby
fell backward, and immediately her lungs demanded air. Brutus straightened and twisted and rushed for her, his immense, powerful arms locking her in a snug embrace. For a moment, Abby was confused, not prepared for the instant bear hug. She especially wasn’t prepared for Elyxa’s bolt of psychic energy, slamming into Brutus, throwing them both clear of the stage and toward the hard pavement below.

It all went so fast, Abby only caught a quick glimpse of
Brutus. But the powerful spirit dashed beneath her, catching her inches off the ground. He no sooner put Abby down when Elyxa spotted him and prepared to deliver another pulse of psychic malevolence. However, Elyxa felt a sudden, blunt force from behind and fell forward, issuing a fierce scream. Rev stood above her, staring. He tilted his head. She gazed with wide, helpless eyes.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he gave her a slight bow and extended a hand. She smiled and took it. Immediately, Rev felt his very essence under assault.
Tingling sensations, crawling nearer and nearer to the core of his energy. Strong. Magnetic. Almost undeniable. Dragging him in. It seemed bottomless, her soul, or whatever it was. Perhaps a lack of a soul. He had no clue. It frightened and at the same time intrigued him. Despite all the desolate feelings he got from her, he also felt something else. Loneliness? Fear? He couldn’t pin it down, though the thoughts wouldn’t settle in his mind. Weak. He felt so weak.

Aaaaaiiiieeeee
!

M
aterializing from thin air, Ruby clamped onto Elyxa’s hands, forcing Rev loose. He floated free over downtown Portland. He couldn’t move much, so he let the wind take him, allowing his strength to come back as the others dealt with the newfound threat, whatever she was.

Elyxa set her sights on Ruby, sending a psychic rip current that caught Ruby in its wake, flinging her, squealing and chirping, and out over First Avenue, through the exterior wall of the Marriot, straight into the dining area, past the lounge, into the kitchen between two surprised chefs, where she crashed into a tepid pot of bouillabaisse. 

Back at the park, Elyxa raised both hands and the lights along the causeway exploded, one by one, quickly in sequence. People ducked, hugged their knees, fell flat on their chests, but were still hit with shards of glass from the shattering lamps overhead.

Then
, as if in response to Elyxa’s commanding gesture, a pale glow punctured the darkness, growing brighter, increasing in size and splitting in two. As the beams got closer, the fear in the throng became palpable. People climbed on top of other people, desperate to get out of the path of the oncoming vehicle. Late Sixties model. American made. A Cadillac.

“Ah, the woman of the hour,” Rev’s strength was already coming back.

“It’s her!” Abby shouted. “It’s Sheila Coulson! She’s here!”

“What’s
she
doing?” Morris knew the answer. He was just begging to be wrong.

“She’s gonna drive right through the crowd!”

“This can’t be good,” Rev said.

Shrieks.
People tried to flag the driver down, but nothing would stop her momentum as she rolled across the grass, skipping over a concrete sidewalk. She gained even more speed before launching into the river below.

At that moment, no one had any malice or thoughts of retaliation. No one, that was, except
Elyxa. She waved her hands and several crackling bolts of lightning sprang from her fingertips, rocketing toward the river, penetrating the dark depths with an ethereal shine. Abby saw Elyxa’s conniving grin as Sheila Coulson ascended from the water, looking quite surprised.

Elyxa
, with a come hither gesture of her wrist, drew the spirit closer, closer, closer. Sheila was terrified. Her spectral stare wide. Her mouth gaping. Brutus flashed out of existence and then came back, putting himself in the line of fire. He let out an ear-shattering moan when Elyxa’s energy hit him, knocking him back several feet, spinning out of control. The ground exploded where he landed, leaving a crater and a ribbon of steam rising from the hole.

Once she reeled her
plunder into her clutches, Elyxa lifted her head skyward and another series of lightning bolts flared from above, dancing and coalescing until a small, unearthly explosion signaled an ominous end to Sheila Coulson’s soul. The excitement lit a fire in Elyxa’s otherwise dead eyes. With a sudden start, she sped on foot, nothing but a dark blur streaking up Jefferson Street into the heart of Westside Portland.

“Abby! Did you see that?”
Morris relayed over the radio. Abby, sprinting to the Phantom, tossed her hat and tore off her flannel shirt.

“I’m on it!” she kept her sights on the vicious vixen
alternating between the sidewalk and the street, laughing and jubilant, hopping up and over moving cars. Horns. Screeching rubber. Jefferson became a chaotic mess as Elyxa made her way west.

Abby whipped the Phantom in a quick one-eighty and hit the pedal to the floor, burning rubber and racing in the same direction as her target.

“What’s she doing?” Morris demanded.

“She’s having a party…I don’t know
!” Abby honked and circumnavigated a group of stalled cars, doors open, drivers and passengers standing and watching the supernatural spectacle unfold. Elyxa was ecstatic, shattering windows with her thunderous laughter, exploding power transformers with tremendous pops and sparkles, creating a blackout in her wake.

When
Abby got a good line of fire, she hit the brakes and leaned out the open window, pointing her Stat-Mag Emitter, making sure it was in power extraction mode. One good burst, and Elyxa felt a sudden and surprising sensation. Like her energy was being drained. She shrieked and dug in her heels, stopping hard on her feet. She lifted her stare, leering at Abby from three blocks away. Just like that, Elyxa stood an inch from Abby’s face, breathing a stale, ancient stench on her cheek.

Abby held her breath, motionless, the emitter beeping in her hand, telling her it was ready to fire again.
Elyxa tilted her head, her dead eyes digging deep into Abby, probing her mind the way Rev loved to do. Only worse.

Abby’s
hand went limp, dropping the emitter to the floorboard with a
Clunk!
Elyxa stared at her features, her body, even her breasts, and compared them to her own. She held both sides of Abby’s cheeks and leered with evil intent, piercing deep into her, learning all there was to learn about her and Rev and…Ghost Guard.

What in Hades is Ghost Guard?
Elyxa glared fire, using her mind to speak to Abby.

WE are Ghost Guard!

Elyxa laughed. Not outwardly, but inside, her fiendish cackle reverberating off the walls of Abby’s skull.

I am
not concerned about Ghost Guard. You, just like all living, and the dead for that matter, are no match for me.

Sirens.
A blinding display of flashing reds and blues. Several squad cars swarmed the street. Elyxa glanced dismissively, waved her hand, and the vehicles went silent and dark, screeching to a halt, wheels locked tight to the road. Three officers jumped out of three separate cruisers at once, guns pointed at the woman. She flung her fingers once more and they all slumped against their cars, then to the ground.

Abby breathed hard. She knew she needed to launch her mental defenses against this…thing. It was her only hope of getting out of this alive. She conjured the hardest rock music she could
imagine, and her mind buzzed with the first notes of AC/DC’s
You Shook Me All Night Long.
Angus Young’s Gibson exhaled a crunching riff, setting the tone for a monster of a tune. Then Brian Johnson’s gritty voice wailed:

She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean

She was the best damn woman that I ever seen…

Instantly,
Elyxa’s mind throbbed with a terrible irritation. She hit her ear with her flat palm. Then she did the same to the other ear. No relief. Finally, as the guitar, bass, and drums came together in heavy metal synergy, it felt like her head would split in two.

You—shook me all night long!

Yeah you—shook me all night long!

“What is that infernal
racket!” Elyxa screamed aloud. “Stop it! Stop!”

Abby responded by cranking the volume inside her head. It all became too much. Above the classic rock, jamming away at an ungodly decibel,
Elyxa issued one last warning.

This isn’t over!

She sprinted up the street, moving so fast she became a stripe of darkness, shattering streetlamps and cutting the power along the way. Traffic signals went out. Several cars collided. Abby couldn’t see in the gloom ahead, yet she could hear Elyxa’s chilling laughter fading into the night.

Abby continued the song in her head until the very end, even adding
an impromptu solo of her own for good measure. She wanted to make sure she was in the clear before letting her guard down again.

“Abby! Abby! Talk to me!”
Morris came in over the radio.
“What happened? Somebody! Anybody!”

Abby felt frozen.
A catatonic state.

“She’s fine,” Rev materialized in the street right next to her. As Abby regain
ed the feeling in her hands, she noticed the seatbelt was wrapped around her wrists. Somehow, mysteriously, Elyxa must have done it with Abby completely unaware.

“She’s just a little tied up right now,” he laughed.

“Tied up? What do you mean?”

“I’m okay, Morris,” she squeezed from her voice box. “Now untie me, dammit!”

“Not just yet. I kind of like seeing you like this.”

“Rev!”

“Okay,” he reached inside, then pulled his hands away. “Just hold on a sec. It occurs to me this might be the perfect time for me to do a little, uh, well, negotiating.”

“Negotiating? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he looked at her like the cat that swallowed the canary. “How about this? Admit you’re stuck on me.”

“I admit nothing.”

He crossed his arms.

“Fine.
Then you can just stay tied up.”

“Dammit, Rev! Get me out of this!” she struggled with the seatbelt. It only seemed to make the knot tighter.

“Easy there.”

“Rev
, if you don’t get me outta this right this second I’ll—”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but you’re in no position to make threats.”

“All right. All right,” she lowered her chin to her chest. “I admit it, okay?”

“What? Say it?”

She cleared her throat, staring at him sideways.

“Oh, all right.
I l-l-like you.”

“You
only like me? That’s all?”

“Fine
! I’m head over heels insanely in love with you, Rev! I want to die so I can be with you in the spirit world…I want us to have little ghost babies and dwell in purgatory happily ever after!”

As she
gasped for air, the police and bystanders, still dazed from the supernatural experience, gazed at her, though not one of them would later remember what she’d said.

“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Rev gloated.
She clenched her teeth.

“Just. Untie. Me
.”

“Okay, okay,” he worked the straps free and whispered. “Remember…you said you love me.”

“I lied!” she aimed the Stat-Mag Emitter, still in extraction mode, pointblank at his groin, and squeezed the trigger. Never had she felt such a feeling of accomplishment and pride as when his face soured and his corporal image flickered in and out. He yelped, disappearing from view, though she could still hear him scream.

SIX