half-lich 02 - void weaver (20 page)

“I’ll tell you,” she said, “But you have to tell me what Raegan is doing on my bed and where Nyx is.”

“A question for a question, lil’ darlin’,” Doug said, “I’ll answer one question if you do.”

He’s stalling,
she thought,
he’s waiting for something to happen.
Maybe Nyx was on her way to Alice’s apartment, or maybe some of her Pain Children were. Whatever it was, Alice knew she had no way of stopping it, but while Doug was here, and he was talkative, she was going to try and get some answers from him.

“Alright,” she said, “You first.”

Doug’s lips spread into a grin. “As a show of good faith, seeing as I did just bust your lip up an’ all, I’ll tell you what Raegan’s doing in your bed. It’s simple, really; I put her there.”

“Why?”

“Well, originally the idea was you’d come back home an’ get a good scare. Then you’d have a body to deal with, an’ that’s a whole mess on its own isn’t it? But you didn’t come back home, so Raegan just sat there for a while. When you escaped from the apartment, the dark lady told me to come here and wait for you. Good thing you came when you did, too—I was starting to get bored, an’ your drawers aren’t as interesting as I had hoped.”

Alice’s skin crawled at the thought of his grubby hands going through her things. She could almost picture him rifling through her underwear.

“So… Nyx isn’t in that room?” Alice asked.

“Oh heck no, not for days. She jumped ship quick. Wearing human bodies is like wearing shoes made out of paper.”

“And where is she now?”

Doug’s finger went up and he wiggled it in a
no, no, no
gesture. “You’ve asked a bunch of questions there, now it’s time for you to answer mine.”

“You want to know how I escaped?”

The garbage man leaned forward as if to listen intently, and when he did he gave Alice a clear view of the knife she had dropped. It was laying on the floor just a few steps behind where Doug was sitting. If she could surprise him and topple him over she could grab the knife before he even knew what had happened. On the other hand, if she failed, he may just get mad enough to hurt her again—or worse.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted something moving. She chanced a look and saw crows had fluttered onto her windowsill. Some were pecking at their rain-slick feathers, others were looking at her, while others were shrugging water off their bodies.
Crows
, she thought,
Cameron said he would send crows to tell her he was okay.

“Well?” Doug asked.

“How about I show you?” Alice said.

“Show me?” he asked, his cheeks flushing red with warm blood. “Show me how?”

“Salt,” she said, “These spirits don’t like salt. It hurts them, keeps them at bay if you make a circle of it around yourself.”

“Salt… what kind of salt?”

“Any kind of salt. Rock salt is probably better, since it’s purer. The kind I have is blessed by a priest.”

“A priest? Really?”

Alice nodded. “Father Zachary from Saint Jude’s. Blessed it himself.”

“And you keep a stash of it in the house? You must, I guess, right? Resourceful little thang like you.”

“I do. In the kitchen.”

“There?” Doug asked, getting up. He tugged on his jumpsuit and took a step around Alice, heading toward the kitchen.

The knife winked in the dim light and Alice made a move for it, but the garbage man wasn’t stupid. He grabbed her arm and swung her around and into the counter, which she struck hard enough to have the wind knocked out of her again. Alice doubled over and the garbage man grabbed her throat and lifted her square off the floor. He looked over his shoulder to where the knife was, and then looked back at her.

That smug grin of his returned. “You must think I’m some kinda idiot,” he said, “I was born Christian and I’ve read the Bible back to front; but even if I hadn’t, I know it’s holy
water
, not holy
salt
.”

Alice groped for his hands, trying to release his hold on her throat. For the second time tonight she found herself unable to breathe. Her heart was beating so hard she feared it would explode, and darkness was creeping in at the edge of her vision. He was going to kill her right there and then. She could see it in the way his eyes widened as his grip tightened around her neck. But an opportunity presented itself, and Alice took it.

She slammed her knee into his groin and he released his grip on her throat. He groaned and cupped the space between his legs as his body filled with pain, falling to his knees and cursing her to high heaven. Alice then grabbed his head with both hands, screamed, and drove her knee into the bridge of his nose, cracking it with a satisfying crunch.

He fell to his back, clutching his nose with one hand and his testicles with the other. His hands, nose, and face were turning crimson, and he was bawling like a schoolyard bully who had just gotten what was coming to him. Without thinking about it, Alice made a dash for the knife, bounding over Doug, swinging around the couch, and clutching the plastic handle of the blade.

But when she turned around, knife at the ready, he was there, his face streaked with blood and his eyes fueled by rage. One of his hands pistoned out to jab her squarely across the jaw. Alice fell back, staggering toward her bedroom. She put her hands out to stop herself from falling into the room with Raegan’s corpse, pushed her body into the hall, but Doug booted her in the gut and sent her sprawling to the floor, clutching her abdomen and groaning.

“You bitch,” he said, his voice wheezy and angry. “You broke my fucking nose!”

Alice tried to move, but her body wasn’t responding.
Get up
, she thought, putting her own power into the thought as she may have done before using Trapper—flexing a muscle she hadn’t used in over a week.
Get up, get up, get up,
she said in her own mind, but she could barely breathe, let alone stand. It was like trying to start a car without any fuel in it—all choke and no ignition.

He approached and Alice used her hands to try and drag her body down the hall, toward the bathroom door. Her body was tingling now, almost vibrating. When she looked at her hands she noticed her fingertips were starting to glow from the inside, and for a moment all she could do was look at them, mesmerized by the sudden manifestation of her own power.

She saw something else now, too.

Elvira
.

The cat’s eyes glowed from within the bathroom. She hissed, then came barreling out of the room and went skidding around the garbage man. He tried to kick the cat but missed and spun wildly, grabbing the bedroom door frame for support and to steady himself.

“Fucking cat!” he said, trying to figure out where the cat had gone.

Alice looked at her hands again—still glowing—then turned her attention to him. Something was happening. She could feel it in her chest and in her heart. Her closet door began to thump, and this stole the garbage man’s focus. His fear came off his aura in pulses so strong Alice could feel them without even trying.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his expression now a mix of fear and anger, “What the fuck are you doing?”

Alice looked at him, and though she had no idea what she was doing—or how she was doing it—she said “You’d better open that door if you want to live.”

Doug’s eyes widened and he approached, one careful foot after the other, toward the closet door. The door continued to thump and rattle, as if twelve people were banging at it from the other side. He was so taken by this, so utterly terrified, that he had lost all of his situational awareness—to the point where he didn’t see the corpse shuffling out of Alice’s bedroom.

Her first thought was of Nyx—the garbage man had lied to her; Nyx had been inside Raegan all along. But Raegan wasn’t moving intelligently. Her movements had an almost, she dared think, zombie-like quality to them. Her arms drooped, her back was hunched, and her eyes were glazed over and white. When Nyx had taken control of Helena, she had been capable of playing the part of
human
quite convincingly
.

Then she remembered what Isaac had told her.

When Isaac had used his magic to feed her a soul from out of the River Styx, Alice’s apartment had gone crazy. He had told her how her closet had started banging, how the cupboards and drawers in her kitchen had started to open and close, and how the floors had started to tremble. When she came out of her deep sleep, she had said “Quiet,” and it had all ceased.

“Hey,” Alice said, and the garbage man—who had been focused on the closet door—turned to look at Alice, but first he saw Raegan.

“Wh-what the… fuck?” he said. His face became a mask of horror, wide-eyed and open mouthed. “You’re d-dead!”

Raegan’s face twisted into an angry scowl and she lunged at him. The garbage man put his hands up to defend himself, but the shock had stolen his balance. He went down flat on his ass with Raegan on top of him. Alice used all of her remaining willpower to stand, and then she rushed around the corner, went past the garbage man, and dove for the knife.

Forget the fact that Raegan was up and moving; that was a thought to consider later, when she was free and clear of the garbage man. Now all that mattered was the knife, and when her hand closed around it again, she found herself suddenly filling with the thrill of the hunt. She wasn’t prey anymore—he was, and she had him where she wanted him.

Doug battled with Raegan, and while the big man was strong, the corpse seemed to be stronger. It was in many ways like watching someone struggle with a zombie who was trying to bite their face off, teeth snapping, eyes wide and hungry. But then Doug got a good grip on Raegan’s head and he bashed it into a nearby wall. Her skull split open and black blood sprayed out. The impact didn’t stop Raegan, but it did slow her down.

Alice’s glowing hands flickered like a TV screen losing reception when Doug smashed Raegan’s head into the wall, and she knew this meant her connection to Raegan was weakening. It was now or never. Doug was busy with Raegan, but he wouldn’t be for long and Alice was out of tricks. If she fled, he would find her again. She knew he would. The only alternative was to kill him, but while Alice had taken a person’s soul using Trapper before, she had never outright killed anyone—much less with a knife.

Doug got enough of a grip on Raegan’s arm to snap it in two. Raegan didn’t scream, didn’t register pain, she simply continued to growl and gnash, but with only one working arm left she quickly lost her hold on Doug, who slipped out from under her and began to get to his feet.

Alice didn’t think about it anymore. She took three quick steps and, screaming just as Doug turned to face her, plunged the knife into the soft skin of his throat. Warm blood came gushing out of the wound, covering the handle of the knife and Alice’s hands. She screamed again, this time forcing all of her anger—anger at Nyx, anger at Doug—out of her lungs, and twisted the blade. The skin gave easily, and the edge of the blade severed arteries, tendons, and veins before she finally let it go and stepped away.

Her hands had stopped glowing, and Raegan had fallen to the floor, limp and inert. The garbage man fell next, gargling on his own blood, and died on Alice’s living room floor. She stared at him for a moment—at both of them—shaking like a fig leaf on a strong breeze, and finally took in a breath of fresh air.

Clarity returned to her senses and she realized what had just happened, what she had just done, but her heart was
pounding
with a beat to match the ache in her temples. She was about to run her hands through her hair when she realized they were wet with Doug’s blood and thought better of it.
Hide them,
she thought,
I need to hide them both and figure this out.
It seemed like the sensible thing to do. Maybe she would deposit them in her bathtub while she cleaned the blood. It worked in movies, didn’t it?

A sudden expansion of light stole her attention and stopped her train of thought before it could leave the station. Doug’s chest was starting to glow.

Alice watched the light travel from his rib cage up past his collar, through his neck—illuminating the mess of tissue and severed tendons—and then into his open mouth. The light began to
exhale
from his mouth in a puff of blue and white motes which seemed to float, lighter than air, toward the ceiling.

Doug’s soul.

Immediately upon seeing the light, a pang surged through the pit of her stomach that had nothing to do with the kick she had received a moment ago. This pain wasn’t so much physical as it was spiritual—it was her body reacting to seeing its source of nourishment; a wolf’s mouth salivating at the sight and smell of fresh meat. Only this wolf hadn’t known it was hungry until it smelled the meat, and it didn’t know when it would get another chance to feed. She didn’t know how this was happening, how it was possible, and maybe if presented with another option—if she still had Trapper—she may have resisted, but she couldn’t pass this up.

Alice stretched her hand toward the cloud of light, almost as if to snatch it. The smoky curl snaked around her fingers, coiled up and around her arm, and travelled across her body until it reached her mouth. Alice sucked in a sharp breath of air, and the soul was gone, disappeared beyond her lips. For a moment she stood, numb and inert, then she shuddered and fell to her knees, shaking as the soul’s power coursed through her, empowering her, filling her with a fresh dose of supernatural energy.

The garbage man’s body, and the blood on Alice’s hands, began to slowly turn to dust. In the back of her mind she could hear the garbage man’s angry screams; on her lips she could taste whiskey, and in her heart she could feel his pain, echoing as though inside a cavern. Like a silent movie running in her head Alice saw Doug’s family—a wife and child, both deceased—saw the damage his alcoholism had done to them, how it had killed them, and heard the longing he had felt. He wanted to see them again, but he would never be with them now. Somewhere in his heart he had known this fate awaited him from the moment he saw Nyx steal souls.