My Demonic Ghost: Banished Spirits (11 page)

              His hand shot out, punching a hot blast into my head, pitching me to the ground. The dirt shot into my mouth as I landed head first onto my stomach. I went to swipe at his ankles but my hand skimmed through him.

Screaming, I tried to sit up, but he pushed me into the gravel before flipping me over onto my back with two powerful flicks, towering over my body; the yellow slits of his eyes turning my limbs into concrete. Lock’s eyes didn’t burn like this, not since he’d changed back into human form. The man knelt down, one knee then the other onto the ground by my head, his hand held out above my face then lowering, the tips of his fingers gliding against my neck. The darkness; it was starting to swallow me, taking over my senses. The first to go was sight, then sound and finally touch, my last memory being of his icy strokes hovering over my collarbone.

“Lo-” I wheezed but he took my voice away.

I was nothing, lying on my back in a pool of shadows, untouchable and lost. What was he doing? It could’ve been anything; I could be dying and wouldn’t know any better. Lock’s face flickered through my head, his upturned forest green eyes watching me, searching mine deeply before those sweet memories were stolen too. What was I? I had no body, I had no sense and I had no memory… but I did have my thoughts, I had my mind. But how long until that was taken too? I’m becoming a motionless wall.
Then what would I be? Is this death?
I cringed mentally but the fear was gone, my sadness was gone; all of my worries and happiness… just nothing. Nothing…

A familiar tickle itched across me. It faded then sprung out from the darkness once more. I started to react to it, to feel again; small pinches against my neck, then spreading out from my wrists and around my ankles. The nipping got stronger as I forced all my concentration into my limbs, pulling them up like a sheet. They gained weight, clinging to me, tight like cuffs that were a size too small. I suddenly felt overwhelmed, as if a train had hit me head on; my head shattering into painful shards of light, heat, sound, touch…

“What’s this?” the dry voice gritted his teeth from above me. My eyes bolted open to see the Soul’s hazy face, fluttering with the blaze of the colours before I quickly shut my eyes, pushing the ache back behind my eyelids. “You’re already taken.”

“Loc-” I tried calling him again but my throat closed me off.

With the little strength that I had inside me, pulsating through my body with each heartbeat, I managed to flip myself over and kicked up onto my feet. The haze sharpened into recognisable objects, again was I able to view the contours of the Spirit’s face as he rubbed at his forehead, hovering just inches above the ground. Around him foamed a dark aura, sizzling away from his body like moisture evaporating off a hot summer road. The shadows were starting to grow across his face, long thin strings stretching its silhouette across him and covering his skin.

He screamed, turning backwards and fading through the gravestone like mist, cowering beside the lifeless body of the old woman who’d been left behind it. Looking as though she was merely sleeping, chains appeared and broke off from her wrists. The spirit snapped his neck towards me so recklessly that I heard a loud crack.

“COME HERE!”

Thrashing the old woman’s body out of his way, he leapt onto the headstone, back arched and releasing a beastly howl that ripped through the city breeze. Just like a wild animal and I knew instantly what he wanted. Me.

My feet turned, running, screaming, reaching out for the church, reaching out for Lock. But the spirit was on top of me before I could get more than two steps away, hitting the centre of my back and tripping my clumsy feet, my body tumbling into the gravestones. The chains that bound me to Lock appeared in metallic smog, still attached around my neck, wrists and ankles as the Spirit took the chains and thrashed at them angrily. He was trying to break the links, wanting to rip them apart and take me as his own. The chains rattled me but did not shatter. The spirit then unhinged his jaw and took a heavy bite.

SNAP

The chain, it tore in two and whipped out into the free space like a retreating tail, the weight escaping me as the hot kisses of the outside air embraced my exposed wrist, burning my skin. I screamed again, begging for help but no one came. The Spirit was now holding up the other chain; tearing his teeth into the metal and thrashing his head from side to side with such speed his head was nothing but a blur. I couldn’t kick him off, I couldn’t do anything…

“RACHAEL!” A voice roared from behind me before an agile shadow leapt into the Spirit, crashing through his body onto the ground. The spirit let the chains go, flinching back. I could see Lock there, but I couldn’t hear him. The air was tranquil around me and my wrist still burned from the broken connection. Lock punched the air twice but it had no effect as the ghost hovered above Lock’s head, spiralling underneath the dark cloud steaming from his body. I couldn’t see the Banished spirit’s face but I could make out his eyes, a boiling, gold magma smouldering with rings of greed.

I have to get out of here!
I moved quickly, the dirt kicking out from underneath my feet as I sprinted. The ground cracked underneath; the weight of my legs heavy, slowing me down. Through my mad dash I could still hear them, snarling and snapping at each other, before a gust of ice started flicking at my calves and trying to ring itself around my ankles. I kicked back and kept running. As the air chased me down another pair of footsteps joined in the game, leaping across the gravestones at speeds that far surpassed my own. Fear controlled me completely, turning my body from one way to the other.

With my mind distracted, a powerful strike took out my knees, flipping me over the stone hedge and toppling onto my back. The spirit appeared only seconds later, diving down toward me as my hands shot up to protect my face. Lock’s footsteps were too far away, clumsy in his human form. I held my breath, waiting for the darkness to appear again, to become nothing but invisible words scribbled across a blank canvas.

A fiery comet shot past my fingertips, slamming into the back of the attacking spirit, shooting him across to the other side of the fence. I glanced up to see Lock, his form glowing with a dark vapour lingering around his arms, his hair slightly darker, and his skin marble white with the patches of ash crossed over his face. And his eyes, those powerful eyes of luminous, opulent green embedded beneath the locks of his fringe, caused the earth underneath me to undulate like waves beneath the ground. It was the power of my heart striking through the earth and booming underneath me.

“Rach are you okay?” He appeared next to me in a cluster of ash, leaning down to touch my cheek but his fingers slipped through. In the distance, I could see the other Spirit flickering above the priest who had rushed outside. The Spirit disappeared just as the priest’s body suddenly stopped moving, shivering as if touched by a cold breeze. The mist of the Spirit’s body dove into his mouth and eyes without as much as a warning. And just like that, the priest went completely still; lowering his head, eyes glazed over, face losing all emotion.

The attacking Spirit vaporized back into his original, handsome ghost form, his face full and flawless as he ran his large hands through his hair. When Lock attached himself to me it had felt as if the world was being swallowed into a black hole; I hadn’t realised that to everyone else it had only looked like a shiver.

“Just my luck; the old bat dies while in a cemetery of all places, and then I have to attach to this,” he said, pointing sourly to the priest a few metres behind him, the man as still as the graves surrounding us. My body flinched when the spirit took a step toward us. He was dangerous.

Lock took my wrist, reconnecting the chain that had snapped. His body shifted as the power drained out of him and into me through the mouth of the cuff.

“Listen, buddy,” The spirit started, “I wouldn’t have attack like that if I had known she was yours, but you know how it is...”The Spirit was watching us; no, actually, he was gawking at us. My entire body was trembling. “What... what did...?”

I turned my head, watching the ghostly aura around Lock’s skin ripple back into his human corpse. 

“Howl, you never change-”

“Are you insane? Do you want to get captured Lock?” I glanced upwards confused.
They know each other’s names?
Lock stood up, his eyes fading back into a soft meadow green, but the glare still just as intense as if he were wielding a knife under the spirit’s chin. Turning, he then offered me his hand, which I took cautiously and was hauled to my feet.

“Do you have any idea how stupid you’re being?” Howl continued almost mockingly.

“Excuse us,” Lock snarled, looping his arm around my back and guiding me towards the exit. Howl had no intention of leaving us alone, though; appearing through a portal of smoke in front of us again and holding up both hands to stop us from walking any further.

“Whoa! Whoa! Come on Lock, talk to me.” Lock let out a throaty, gurgling growl. I ducked behind Lock again, not appreciating Howl’s persistence. “Does Betrayal know?” Lock’s body tensed. “Oh…. So she doesn’t.”

“She knows!”

“She knows you’re in the city then?”

“That’s really none of your business.”

“Sure, that’s true, but I don’t think it being any of my ‘business’ or not would matter to her,” he grinned and Lock growled again. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new Host? She smells much better than that other Host you had.” Howl inhaled the air around me and his eyelashes fluttered.

“Cut it out!” Lock leaned forward, slamming two hands into Howl’s torso, but foolishly fell through his skin. Howl laughed and shifted around him to get into a more direct line with me.

“No hard feelings or anything, right? Things can get a little… unruly sometimes,” he beamed and I melted into his smile. “My name is Howl. I’m an old friend of Locks.”

“Rachael Hastings,” I answered.

“Last I heard from you, Lock, you were stuck in that dead end town Whitehaven. What are you doing here?”

“We’re looking for the Staff.” The words fell out of me like vomit.

“You think it’s in the city?”

“Not exactly,” Lock interrupted, making Howl drop those paralysing eyes off of me, “but we’re desperate.”

“Obviously,” he sneered, referring to the human sponge that Lock had shackled himself to. “Interesting. Tell me Lock; doing the Forbidden Act…did it trick you or something?”

“It?” I snorted, “I didn’t trick him. Lock actually has a conscious and doesn’t see me as disposable waste like some others seem to.” I motioned in the direction of the woman behind the grave, but Howl didn’t appear to be affected by the sight of her.

“A conscious?! HAHAHAHAHA! You really think you’re any different from those other Hosts?” A wave of anger spiralled down my spine, then becoming an inflating balloon in my chest, throbbing with its expanding force. I leaned in to protest but Lock lunged forward aggressively.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” his voice firmly spat and Howl shifted backwards in response.

“Defensive, eh? No need to shout, Lock. I’m starting to think you’re not telling me something, especially seeing how you brutally attacked me before…”

“YOU WERE ATTACKING HER!” Lock’s voice rang with a hint of sarcasm.

“Yeah but I would’ve stopped… actually, you just might be the person I’ve been looking for. There’s been some talk about the Sins…” Lock raised his brows, familiar with this terminology, and Howl grinned. “You’ve probably noticed that the Hunters aren’t looking for us anymore; apparently some lucky bastard got into the Third Realm…”

A smile touched my lips and spilled over onto Lock’s face. The doubt, that annoying ankle-biting doubt, has finally taken its last gulp of surface air and was now buried deep inside. Someone was saved, so there’s still hope for us.

“How? What did they do?” Lock asked.

“The guy had a thing for causing blood to pour, a real psychotic mania, and he would go on rampages drawing the blood off his Hosts and other animals. Idiot didn’t realise that every time he killed his Host, a Goon would come to collect the dead. One of the beasts nearly nabbed him once, so the bastard conjured up a spirit Mother to hide in and spent most of his time causing mayhem in the Sins Realm. You know the Sins right; those demons can’t die no matter how much you hit them. So, he visited each Sin and collected all seven blood smears, and one of the other spirits watching swore they saw a bright light take him away somewhere. No one has seen him since and they presume he was taken into the Third Realm…”

“So, it isn’t exactly the Staff technique he’s using?”

“Nah, I don’t believe so, but, hell, if it works... I heard talk; Sins are temptations set up to lure people into misbehaving, but if you conquer them it’s like a free pass. Defeat the Sins and you’ll be saved.”

“Umm, Lock… Don’t you think that’s a bit dangerous?”

“Sweetheart, performing the Forbidden Act was dangerous, and that didn’t stop you,” Howl grinned.
I don’t like him, stupid cocky Spirit…. Vanish already!

“Maybe she’s right Howl…”

“And I guess searching for the Staff in crummy churches is your best go, hmm?”

“But to drain the blood of the Sins?”

“Drain? Hardly. It’s as easy as a pin prick and collecting a droplet, that’s all,” Howl reassured.