Forever and Beyond (17 page)

“No freaking way,” I muttered, jumping back down. The Night Guard might not mind climbing up a wall in the middle of the night, but I wasn’t going to risk my neck for nothing. Kneeling the way I had been taught, I pressed my knuckles into the ground and then jumped. I’ve no idea how I did it but somehow I managed to land on top of the about half a foot-wide wall without tripping, toppling over, or losing my balance.

I took a deep breath and planted my feet wide to steady myself before scanning the city of
Morganefaire
below. Gosh, it seemed a long way down. Heights weren’t really my thing. I could only hope jumping down was as easy as jumping up, otherwise I might just have a problem.

“It’s going to be okay,” I mumbled to myself as I focused on the task at hand. It was like being lost in a time warp. To my left, cafes, shops and townhouses in the style of twelfth-century architecture lined the main street. To my right, a giant windmill whirled away in the breeze. Not far from it, a few stray sheep huddled together on a small picturesque field near a winding cobblestone street lined with quaint cottages, beyond which were terraced vineyards and fields. With the rain cleared, my vision amazed me; I could even see the raindrops dripping from the colorful potted flowers dotting the porches. From the corner of my eye I caught an orange spark flickering and growing into a fire as large as the trunk of a tree. In spite of its size, the darkness around it remained impenetrable.

“That’s the night torch,” Julie said from my left, startling me.

I jumped a step back, losing my balance for an instant. “What’s wrong with you?” I hissed. “Never sneak up on people like that!”

“Why the grumpy face?” She regarded me curiously.

“For starters, I almost fell. I could’ve broken every bone in my body,” I said.

Julie laughed, her crystalline voice echoing in the silence. “You’re forgetting you’re not human anymore.”

I forgot indeed. “Thanks for the reminder. But just to clarify, I’m not immune to pain.”

“I’ve never met a vampire who’s afraid of her own shadow. That’s funny.”

“I highly doubt you ever met a vampire at all,” I muttered.

She inhaled, tossed her head back, and stretched out her arms to the side Titanic-style chanting something like, “This is the life.”

I couldn’t agree less. “Get out of my way. I’m supposed to do a job here,” I muttered. “And you’re definitely not helping.”

“Nope. This is
my
job and you’re helping
me
, remember?”

“Fine.” I inched closer, figuring she’d step aside if she thought I’d walk through her. She stood her ground.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Julie said.

“That’s where I was told to go, five hundred feet to my right and then back to the meeting point.”

Julie heaved an exaggerated sigh. “And you do everything people tell you to do?”

She had a point. Dallas told me to get a housekeeping job and retrieve some gems. I did it. Aidan instructed me to find the Book of the Dead. I did it. Cass told me to channel ghosts for her reality television program. I did it. Rebecca made me kiss another man. And I did it—well, technically, I was possessed so it doesn’t really count. But you know what? I was tired of being bossed around.

If I was supposed to waste a good night’s sleep out here, then I might as well have fun whilst doing so. I was missing all the action because the guys told me to, and in my book a guy ordering a woman around was unacceptable.

Shooting her a thankful smile I took off, past the five hundred feet parameter I was given. The night torch disappeared behind me as I moved north. I hurried my pace, exhilarated at the thought that I was breaking a few rules here. Even if someone caught me, there was nothing they could do. I could play the dumb chick and pretend I couldn’t count to five hundred. Or, even better, I could tell them to suck it up.

A strong breeze began to shake the shutters of the buildings below. The night remained dark, illuminated only by the soft glow of the stars, until we reached the next torch. Julie’s hand wrapped around my wrist, sending an electric jolt through me.

“We’re near the north side,” she whispered, as though she feared being overheard. “This is where the torch went out.”

It all looked just the same to me. I frowned as I peered at her pale face. “Why isn’t a guard stationed here? Shouldn’t there be one every five hundred feet?”

“Every one thousand,” Julie said. “He never turned up yesterday, and today he doesn’t seem to want to be here either.”

“That’s strange. Do you think something scared him?”

Julie shrugged. “I don’t know, but
Morganefaire’s
guards never abandon their positions, no matter what. They took an oath to protect the city.”

Foul play? “We should go back and inform the others.”

I turned on my heel when Julie stopped me, whispering, “Listen. Do you hear that?”

I nodded, only now noticing the scratching sound coming from outside the city walls directly beneath me. It was faint, barely audible, and yet unmistakably there. Probably some animal or small rodent sharpening its claws. “What
is
that?”

“The hands I told you about,” Julie whispered. “If you lean over the wall far enough you can see them.”

A shiver ran down my spine. Crawling hands were so not my thing. Even though I didn’t really believe in them, I felt compelled to look. Kneeling down, I tilted my head over the edge, but not far enough to topple over.

“Do you see them?” Julie whispered in my ear.

I craned my neck to get a better glimpse at the darkness below. “Not a single finger.” My lips curled into a smile. The people here were so superstitious they’d make every fanatic cult rich beyond their wildest dreams.

“A vampire with a bad sense of humor,” she muttered. “You’re just in denial.”

“Seriously?”

She raised her chin defiantly. “They’re there. Everyone knows that.”

I nodded slowly. Another grin tugged at my lips. “Yeah. Without a doubt.”

Something flickered in Julie’s gaze. Hot waves of anger wafted from her. Yet another ghostly mood swing coming my way. I figured I’d better take cover before it hit me. “Let’s go,” I said, standing.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Julie hissed. Before I even realized what was happening, her hands moved through me, grabbing and shoving with such force I stumbled backward. It was just a tiny step but enough to trip over my own feet. Flapping my hands about to grab onto something, I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet.

And then I fell.

No matter what movies tell you, vampires can’t turn into bats and they certainly don’t possess the ability to fly. What they can, however, is hold on for dear life. I was the living proof. Okay,
dead
proof, but you get the point.

As Julie pushed me off the wall and the solid ground disappeared from under my feet, my arms flailing around me, my fingers miraculously managed to grab the edge. My legs bounced in mid-air, trying to find something to hold onto and heave myself up, but my attempts remained futile. This side of the wall was as smooth as ice.

“Get someone,” I said.

“You act like you’re in trouble. As if. Embrace your immortal DNA. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

My hand strained to hold my weight, but I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on. “Be quiet for a change and help me.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’m calling a light worker, or priest—whatever gets rid off you,” I yelled at her.

“What’s a light worker?” Julie asked, unimpressed.

“A case worker for ghosts.”

“Oh.” She giggled, obviously not taking me very seriously. “Just climb over.”

My boots glided across the wall ungracefully. I probably looked like someone having their first ice skating lesson, only on a vertical surface. It was beyond weird, not to mention embarrassing. “I can’t. There’s nothing to hold onto.”

“
Morganefaire
magic’s a bitch, huh?” Julie kept staring at me, not moving from the spot.

I peered below. It seemed like the impenetrable darkness stretched out for hundreds of feet. I might physically survive a fall into that bottomless pit, but my ego wouldn’t.
With my crappy luck, the Night Guard might just find me flat on my butt. And that wouldn’t be good because
half the paranormal world was already laughing at me. The other half might just join in soon if I couldn’t even patrol a wall without taking a tumble. Of course it wasn’t even my mistake, but who’d believe me a whacky ghost pushed me?

“Julie, stop just floating around and get Aidan,” I hissed.

“He can’t see me.” She sighed. “This is all your fault. What sort of vampire are you if you can’t even keep your balance?”

Grimacing, I forced myself to keep quiet because arguing with a ghost was useless, not to mention a waste of time. Instead of calling the priest I kept threatening her with, I merely smiled in a beatific sort of way, thinking how soon all these things would be inconsequential to me, basically part of a distant memory, alongside saving humanity from Rebecca’s gathering vampire hordes. I had to focus on coming up with a plan to climb back up before a guard found me. My second hand moved up but my fingers couldn’t grab onto the wall. It was as though the stone turned to ice beneath my grip, and it felt just as cold. I had never seen or heard of this kind of magic before, but it certainly scared the hell out of me.

Julie sat down and bounced her legs over the edge as though she had no care in the world. “Do you see them now?”

“See what?” I tried to keep my annoyance out of my tone, but it was hard.

“The hands.”

“Oh, the hands!” I smirked. “That’s why I’m risking a few broken bones, to see some freaking hands that don’t even exist!” Her eyes glimmered with anger again. I had to tread carefully, or she might just decide to do something even more stupid than shoving me.

A scratching sound carried over from below. I peered into the darkness, but saw nothing. And then the noise started again, only this time it seemed to come from several spots and didn’t stop.

It had to be mice, my brain argued. Nothing else made sense. When Rebecca haunted me inside Aidan’s house, she had made similar sounds. But I doubted I had another poltergeist activity on my hands since poltergeists don’t bother you outside of buildings. Rodents was the only reasonable explanation I could come up with.

My gaze was glued to the black pit beneath my feet. Something pale shimmered in the moonlight, then disappeared, only to appear again a second later. I swallowed hard and tried to avert my eyes, but for some reason my curiosity kept me both petrified and fascinated at the same time. I squinted and focused until I could make out the shape of a hand with long fingers, distorted in places so it didn’t even look human any more. It stretched up, fingers coiling and recoiling, as though reaching to grab me. Thank goodness the ground was a long way down.

A second hand appeared, then a third, and so on, until the ground below was covered in limbs that shimmered in the night, swaying softly as they clenched and unclenched, reminding me of a macabre dance. Whatever those were, no way was I falling in there and letting them touch me or drag me to hell, buried alive beside them. The thought sent a cold shudder down my spine.

I swallowed hard and held onto the edge tighter. “Julie, get someone
now
,” I said. “There’s something down there.”

“Told you,” Julie said, triumphantly.

“Just shut up and help me. If those things touch me you’ll have a very pissed necromancer on your hands.” I huffed as I tried to grab hold of the edge with my dangling hand, and failed…for the umpteenth time. “Do you know what’ll happen to your sorry ass? I’ll channel your ghost into one of those things below and leave you trapped in there for a month. How about that?”

“That’s not fair,” she screeched, giving me a headache. “What am I supposed to do?” She stood from her sitting position and peered around her. The ghost was as useless as she was annoying. In the end, she just reached out, as though to clutch my arm. “Give me your hand and I’ll try to pull you up.”

“What?” I snorted. “No way. You’ve been a ghost for a whole two days and might’ve figured out how to blow out a few candles and open a door, but I’m not trusting you with my
life
.”

“I can do it.”

Not only was she annoying, she was also delusional. But what other choice did I have? “Fine.”

I raised my dangling arm to hers. She hesitated, which wasn’t a good sign. As she leaned forward, her face scrunched up in concentration. Her fingers touched mine…and ran right through me, sending a jolt through my arm that was so strong I almost lost my grip.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

“Just do it again,” I said through gritted teeth.

She nodded and tried again. The jolt was stronger than before, but this time I felt something else: a tremor followed by a hard push. My heart almost skipped a beat. In that fragment of a second I thought my body was gone and I was floating in a giant void surrounded by
nothingness
. I no longer felt the wind caressing the physical sheath of my mortal body and the stars above were gone, just like the wall. Even my own heart was gone.