One More Bite (15 page)

Rhona pointed. “What’s the fuss all about? Mr. Haigh wasn’t even hurt!”

“Not on the first pass, no,” said Vayl. “That was simply an expedition.”

“For w {izeaidhat?”

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Vayl nodded at the Highlander, who’d gained color and solidity in the past few seconds.

“Humphrey’s humanity. He only needs a bit of it to become . . .”

“Become what?” Rhona demanded.

Vayl pointed as the ghost charged at Humphrey again. The jeweler gaped at the Highlander, began to shake his finger, tut-tut-tut. But this time the two collided.

Vayl said, “To become physical.”

Humphrey let out a surprised grunt as he hit his back and went rolling into the legs of a group of people who hadn’t quite decided whether they should run for the hills or stay and take video.

As an Ann Boleyn lookalike helped Humphrey to his feet, the Highlander struck again. I could see the disturbance of air as his arm slashed forward, catching the old jeweler across the face and neck.

He staggered backward, shrieking like a little girl as his hand flew to the claw marks already filling with blood. His shoulders finally hit solid wood and he spun, his entire face lifting as he realized he’d made it to the door. He rushed out, slamming it behind him, leaving Lesley stranded on the other side.

Cole gripped Iona by the arm. “Let’s go,” he said.

She pointed to Rhona, Floraidh, and Dormal. “Not without them.”

The rest of the crowd didn’t seem to feel the same loyalty. Relatives separated, dates split, people rushed toward the exits like the place was under a bomb threat, yelling at each other, dumping chairs, and shoving the slowpokes aside in their attempt to escape the rising fury behind them.

We’d been able to push everyone to the aisle, and this time escape seemed a real possibility. Until Rhona jumped up on the chair, her purse dangling from her elbow like an enormous tumor.

“The ghosts don’t mean you real harm!” she yelled, holding her hands out as if she really believed she could stop the tide of humanity rolling toward safety. “This is exactly why they need to be protected! Write your local MPs!”

Suddenly something rose in the room. An unfamiliar power that gave off the psychic scent of a foul burning, like bodies roasting on a pyre. I turned to Vayl so the women couldn’t overhear. “I’m feeling vast weirdness,” I murmured. “Something other is . . .”

I tried to zero in on the source. It could be the ghosts ripping into our world. Or the Raisers pulling off some kind of stunt I hadn’t believed them capable of. I concentrated, trying to focus my Spirit Eye on that signal.

“It’s Floraidh and Dormal,” I whispered. “I think they’re conjuring. Maybe it’s some sort of ghostbe-gone spell.”

Iona gasped loud enough that I swung my head around to check on her. A panic-stricken bald man wearing years of pub visits around his gut steamed toward her. He’d already knocked the two chairs in front of her aside in his bid to pass slower pedestrians, and he clearly intended to mow through her now, since she blocked his path to safety.

“Get out of my way, you!” he { wa hi snarled.

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I moved to deal with him, but stopped when I realized Rhona had pulled a snub-nose .38 out of her bag. She clutched it in both hands, which shook just enough that I feared she’d shoot the guy accidentally before she could even start with her demands.

“You leave my employee alone!” she screamed, her voice high and wild.

As the guy tried desperately to shift into reverse, Vayl spoke in his gentlest, most convincing tone of voice. “Rhona, put down the gun.”

She jerked the barrel on a track meant to land on him, yelling, “You men are all alike! Shouting orders! Making demands! Raping innocent young girls! You should all be shot!” Time slowed, as it always does when you realize a deadly weapon is about to swing past you and the person wielding it is out of her gourd.

I started to raise my hands, to say something harmless, but those jittery fingers of Rhona’s whoopsed into the trigger before the .38 had quite made it to Vayl. I dove to the floor, but even with the increased speed my donation to Trayton had given me, I couldn’t outquick a bullet. I felt it hit my arm and knew immediately the wound was minor. The impact hadn’t even made my shoulder twitch, though I could see blood welling through the hole in my jacket. Goddammit, that was expensive!

Rhona screamed again, dropping the gun, which thundered out another shot. Thank God it had twirled to face the opposite direction or I’d have been one dead Jaz. Iona moved quickly toward Rhona, holding up her hands, talking so softly I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She’s like a Horse Whisperer, I thought. Only for nutty old mums. Iona Clough, the Mum Whisperer.

At the same time Cole let out a surprised whoop. The guy who’d spooked Rhona had tried sidestepping to get beyond her, but his bulk wouldn’t allow a clean pass. He’d banged into Cole on the way out, who’d fallen into Iona, who did a domino and knocked Rhona off her chair. Though the Mum Whisperer tried to catch Rhona even as Cole reached out to cushion the ladies’

fall, they all crashed to the floor like an amateur circus act gone terribly wrong, pulling chairs with them while bags and bobby pins went flying in every direction.

When Cole sat up Vayl growled, “Dammit, boy, now you have done it! Your forehead is bleeding!”

Cole touched the cut with his fingertips, winced as he realized the truth. But the pain of his injury wasn’t enough to wipe out his indignation. “What the hell, Jeremy? Aren’t you supposed to be a little more concerned about the welfare of your employees? Not to mention the nice ladies here?”

Vayl began hauling people upright, starting with me. “Too much blood in one place is going to attract the ghosts,” he said. “We must go!”

“My dears, are you all right?” asked Floraidh. As she helped Rhona up, I glanced toward the front of the room. Vayl had predicted too well. The hippie and the soldier had blinked out of sight again. And the Highlander, along with Stumpy, were flying toward us like a couple of doomsday missiles.

I grabbed Rhona’s gun and stuck it in my jacket pocket as Vayl jerked Iona and Cole to their feet. Floraidh was hunting a tissue because b {ssu’s lood streamed down Rhona’s cheek where she’d caught it on the edge of a chair back, but she looked so dazed she probably didn’t even realize she’d been injured. Iona shoved Rhona’s purse into her hands as I pushed them both toward the exit. Floraidh put her hands on their shoulders in a show of guidance and comfort. But they only took a few steps before stopping to look back. When their eyes went wider than my poker chips, I glanced behind as well.

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We’d wasted our head start. The ghosts had arrived.

Chapter Seventeen

Though the tech guy had flipped on all of the lights in the great room, I had no trouble seeing our attackers. At this proximity, with the wall between our worlds crumbling as Rhona, Cole, and I bled and the ghosts moved toward the smell, I began to pick up their outlines. To catch glimpses of their hideous, grinning skulls. This is what would leap through to tear at our living skin. Not the pretty remnants Gerard and Francine had raised, but true-form ghosts. I’d been right about one aspect of their appearance though. They really were wearing torques, ancient necklaces favored by fierce warriors now long fallen to dust.

“Where’s Dormal?” I demanded as we struggled to get everyone into the aisle.

“Right behind me,” said Floraidh.

But she wasn’t. She’d gotten lost in the crowd, which had swelled in our section of the room as escapees bottlenecked at the main exit doors, forcing us and those around us back toward the main stage. Our path toward the door Vayl had used earlier looked even hairier. A bonfire’s worth of thrown chairs blocked our immediate escape, and it looked as if a heart attack victim had caused a backup closer to that exit. The door Humphrey had left through might’ve worked, if we hadn’t been forced to charge through a couple of rampaging shades on the way there. And Rhona couldn’t have pulled off that kind of move anyway. In fact, she kept spacing out, ambling forward with such a lack of concern and, more important, speed, that I began to suspect concussion.

“Come on,” Floraidh said, pulling at her just as the Highlander hit her. She screamed as the impact sliced into her already cut cheek.

Behind us I heard an enormous crash, almost like a bookcase falling, and someone yelled,

“Snakes!”

Shit! It’s Bea! Of course, this is the perfect time to—

As I turned to look, I felt the blow, not unexpected, but still sharp and painful, as Stumpy opened an eight-inch gap along the length of my wounded arm. Cold! My mind shivered as what passed for his tongue darted out for a taste of the new blood that poured from the cut before the Raisers could rebuild the wall that bound him.

I wanted to run. God yes! Follow the example of my fellow me-firsters, shoulder these slow, struggling women aside and sprint toward the exit. Anything to keep that netherworlder from touching me again. Because in that moment I’d fully Seen.

Fear rested square on my head like a cage full of spiders, making me shiver as I came to my first realization. In the Thin everything is hungry. And I’d leapt in without weapons.

I stood, as ethereal as any ghost, hoping no one would notice yummy little me tucked away in the corner of a big, open room so dark I shouldn’t be able to tell it was a dungeon. But I knew.

The phantoms, glowing red with their own inner light, explained their Castle Hoppringhill absence by their presence here. Even now the RAF shade hadn’t jumped through the breach because the flower child was feasting on his entrails. I put my hands to my ears, certain his screams had made them bleed. But our worlds hadn’t experienced so much a collision as a near miss, so his howls couldn’t hurt me any more than he could die from the wounds her fangs inflicted.

I tried to blink. But my Spirit Eye doesn’t work like that. It’s either on or off. Lately—mostly on.

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Which was why I couldn’t look away when he strode in, the force of his personality placing color and form on what would otherwise be the thick inkiness of the Thin. The room he made consisted of rough-hewn stone. An arched doorway grew behind him, the brackets that flanked it containing not torches, but stacks of skulls whose eye sockets blazed with fire.

His boots thumped against the unfolding floor, hard and cold as his obsidian eyes as they caught mine. His dark, braided hair flew out behind his bare back as he moved, giving me a full view of his tattooed chest and arms. The barbed shards and looping whorls that painted his flexing muscles imprinted themselves on my brain. Remember this, I thought. It’s like the Phaistos Disk. Don’t forget. Because I knew, just watching that purposeful stride emphasized by rawhide breeches tied at the waist with a leather band, that anything carved into this man’s body wasn’t just decor. It meant something.

He glared down at the cannibalism taking place at his feet. Leaning over, he grabbed the gorging specter by the hair and yanked backward so hard I heard something snap.

You can do that here? Touch and twist? What the hell kind of rules apply in a place inhabited by the bodiless?

I’d thought what I was seeing was a version of hologram, the restless soul’s outpouring of its physical sense. Just like the visuals you get when a ghost materializes in the bedroom where it died. But the hippie girl screamed as her neck cracked. And the flyer, trying desperately to shove his intestines back into his stomach cavity, cried real tears. What the hell?

The tattooed man gave the girl a kick that sent her scurrying into a corner, her head listing so badly to one side that she had to support it with one hand. He stepped over the soldier, ignoring his whimpers as he moved toward me.

I swallowed. Well, I tried. My throat was too dry to allow more than one sad attempt. He raised one powerful arm and made a curt, come-to-me gesture.

I shook my head.

He stopped, slapped himself on the chest with both hands.

“Aw, for chrissake, I’m not your poodle,” I said. “I’m not even a—” I pointed to the soldier.

“No, you are unique. But what?” His brogue twisted his words hard enough that I didn’t understand him at first. His voice, so gruff I’d have sworn he’d spent the last decade lining his windpipeƒng rog with nicotine if I wasn’t sure he’d been dead for millennia, gave me an involuntary shiver. I knew he’d commanded death with that growl. As he was trying to control me.

“I’m just a girl who Sees too much,” I said. “And now I gotta go.”

“No! Stay!”

“Seriously, guy, you’d better stop with the doggy demands. It really pisses me off.”

“Brude.”

“Huh?”

“My name is Brude.” Even his beard demanded a curtsy.

Ahh. As in King Brude. The guy Floraidh’s loeden threatened us with. “Well, King Brude, you ghosts are trespassing and it’s about to get really ugly. So I suggest you back off—”

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“I am no ghost.” And that’s final, his tone pronounced, as if he’d just passed a law.

“Sure you are.” Dumbass. You’re in the freaking Thin!

“You dare to argue with the king?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, it’s pretty obvious you’re wrong. And if I don’t set you straight, I’m fairly sure nobody will. They’re all too busy chowing on innocent humans. Or”—I jerked my thumb at the flower child—“each other.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “You should be frightened. And you do not quake. You should kneel and beg for mercy, yet you stand. You are certainly wrong about who I am, but in the absence of other proof I see that you will defy me.” He nodded slowly. “You are the one I need.”