Revenant (23 page)

Gage
started to speak
again
and the wind
picked up outside.

“Now
sense
the spirits around you. That’s it.”
Mildred’s hand came up and rested on my arm. “The spirits–can you feel
them?”

I can
. I felt ghostly fingers slide along my arm. I heard
whispers glide past my ears.

“Now
call them
to
you. You want them to swarm
around you so they’ll leave the boy alone.” Mildred moved closer and said in a
soft voice, “Imagine you’re the flame—the light in the darkness—and
the souls are seeking out light. They’re like moths attracted to a burning
candle. That’s it,” she said as I felt her move away from me.

Gage’s words got louder, and
mist began to form in the trees nearest to the tent, curling around their branches
and drifting our way.

Mildred’s voice called out, “Concentrate,
Colina. Keep the spirits focused on you.”

I had never before felt so
much energy around me.
It bounced off my skin. It was as if the air
was thick, like water. I could hear voices babbling
close by
. Ghost faces appeared in front of me.

Suddenly I felt claustrophobic—like an
invisible crowd stood around me. Unseen hands reached out and grabbed my hair.
Fingers pulled on my clothes. I cried out in surprise, stumbling farther back
from the boulder and putting distance between myself and the others.

Gage shouted a word that rang out in the air
and a bright light flashed around the boy
and
Luke.

And then there was silence. What was that?
I looked over at Gage. He stood behind
Luke with a dagger in his hand.
What is
he doing?
He raised
it
and I screamed
out Luke’s name. My nightmare was coming true. Gage was going to go back on his
word—he was going to kill Luke and there was nothing I could do to stop
him. I couldn’t lose him again, couldn’t be alone.

And in that brief moment I stopped breathing
and I swear my heart stopped beating for a second as the dagger swung down—only
to restart when I saw it slice across Luke’s arm.

Luke jerked back, but Caleb and Jacob were
holding his arms stretched out on either side.

The whirlwind of energy lessened around me and
I felt the ghostly caresses stop as they started to move away.

I focused on Gage again—he was catching
Luke’s dripping blood in a bowl. After a moment Gage reached over to the boy laying
prone on the boulder and smeared the blood onto his face. Gage, book back in
hand, began to recite the spell again. The mist had entered the tent and was growing
thicker. It curled around my legs, spreading like a carpet through the tent.

“Colina—the spirits!” I heard Mildred’s
voice shriek in warning. My head whipped around. She stood off to one side of
the tent and next to her—

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Mildred held the
two hellhounds on leashes like dogs. The beasts’ red, glowing eyes
were trained
on me. My blood turned cold, and
my heart pounded hard in my chest.

I forced myself to focus on the spirits
again. I could sense them hovering over the boy on the
boulder
.
Gage said I have to
keep them out
. I took a deep breath and with every ounce of strength I had,
pulled those lost souls away from the body. The mist grew thicker, rising from
the ground and filling the air around me. All I could see of Gage was his
glowing red eyes, but I could hear his voice shouting out the words of the
spell as they echoed through the fog like waves on the ocean.

Luke’s outline began shimmering with light
and I watched him fall to his knees, dragging Caleb and Jacob, who were still
holding his arms tightly down with him.

Mildred’s lips moved as she whispered into
the mist, but the
wind
carried her words
away before I could make them out.

A bolt of lightning hit a
nearby tree, and in the split second it took for its flash to die down, I could
have sworn I saw the same rune symbol I’d seen earlier on Dean’s arm floating
in the air.

I could hear
voices
,
see shadows moving through the fog, and felt powerful magic throbbing in the
air, and a sense of impending tragedy almost overwhelmed me. Everything inside
me was telling me to run, but I stood my ground.

Flaming eyes moved through the mist at knee
level, and I realized in shock that it was the hellhounds.
How did they get loose?
Without warning, the fog turned black and
screams of panic filled the air. Gage, too, was yelling.

Then lightning struck the ground by the side
of the tent. I looked on in horror, watching a hellhound race forward just as another
bolt struck the same place, causing the mist to dissipate.
Mildred has the power to use lightning
, I recalled. I couldn’t help
glancing over at her, but she just stood calmly watching the chaotic scene, the
hellhounds’ now-empty leashes hanging from her hands.

People in the tent shouted and scrambled for
escape in panicked fear. Through the havoc, I saw Luke, Jacob, and Caleb rise
from their kneeling positions, staggering into
each
other as the twins attempted to keep a tight grip on Luke’s arms
.
Is he standing because the spell worked? Did
Luke’s spirit transfer
? The boy’s body on top of the boulder still lay as
still as ever.

That’s when I realized one hellhound was
heading for all three of them.

I stood stunned for a moment, not able to
comprehend what I was seeing.
The
hellhound is loose. It’s heading toward Luke
.
This was
a creature intent on destruction, a monster capable of
killing with very little effort. I started forward, shoving my way through the
throng. A scream burst from my lips, but the crowd’s shouts of fear and panic drowned
it out.

Caleb and Jacob seemed to see the creature at
the same time. Jacob let go of Luke, diving to the side, but Caleb was not so
lucky. Before he even had a chance to react, the hellhound lunged and dove
straight into him, knocking him and Luke to the ground.

I heard a throaty scream, and then I
heard the sounds of terrible
gnashing
and
gnawing
—sounds I’d heard
once before in the mansion, when a hellhound attacked one of Macaven’s
men
.
It
had made those same sounds when it tore out the mage’s soul. For a
moment,
time seemed to stand still. My feet
stopped moving, my body frozen in place.

This cannot
be
happening.

Moments
ago, I was about to get what I’d been dreaming of: Luke would
be transferred
into another body—one he
didn’t have to share. We’d find a way to be together.

I
closed my eyes, willing the chaos to all be some terrible nightmare that would
disappear any moment, but when I opened them, the scene before me was all too
real.
Luke and Caleb lay in a tangle of limbs on the ground, the
hellhound looming over them. It was gleefully gobbling…something. The beast
shook its head, spraying out a cloud of ash and embers, and, horrified, I
realized the beast had just devoured a soul.

For one terrifying moment, I thought it was
Luke’s soul. My heart stopped. But then Luke’s head moved ever so slightly. Relief
washed over me. The creature must have killed Caleb.
Good riddance.

The second hellhound, which had hung back
during its brother’s attack, crept toward Luke until it was only inches from his
unconscious body.
At any moment, he’ll tear
into Luke
.
Any moment now, and he’ll devour
Luke’s spirit.
That thought shocked me out of my frozen position, and my terror
dissipated. It would not take him from me! I called for help through the link
granted to me by the old gods, and I felt the immediate response. The pack was
coming, but it did not relieve my sense of urgency. I raised my hands and took
a deep breath, knowing there was no time to wait for my spirit pack—by
the
time
it appeared, Luke would be dead.

I screamed in a mixture of frustration and
determination, and without thinking, reached out to the spirits still hovering
around me. A jolt of electricity ran through me as a mass of images and sounds
slammed into my overwhelmed mind. A swell of pain and anger filled my body and
soul as the spirits’ histories flooded my mind. In that moment, I knew these
were spirits from the nearby battlefield—the one Gage had explained
earlier.

These spirits died violent deaths, full of
pain and regret. They were warriors, men who fought for
country
, for king, fought to protect their homes and families. They
died too soon in a bloodthirsty
battle
and were angry that their lives had been cut short.

I took all of it in—all that pain, all
that rage—and, on pure instinct, raised my arms and forced the energy
out.

A crack of thunder filled the small space,
and suddenly a concussive force pounded against the tightly pressed bodies
before rebounding back. It slammed against me from every direction, only a
shadow of the force that struck those around me, but it still made me stagger and
caused my head to throb. As my vision cleared, I saw something form out of the
ether and move into the physical world. It floated in the air before me.
I created that?
I knew without thinking
that it was a collection of the rage I felt—both my
own
anger and that of the spirits surrounding
me.
Its consistency was a reddish-gray, swirling
light, like rippling lightning in a cloud at sunset.

It was the horror of war made manifest, but I
felt no evil in it. There was only violence and pain and rage, the suffering
and horrible purpose of good men fighting for what they believed.

Freed from their burdens, the souls that had
been ensnared here for hundreds of years drifted away, and small flashes of
cascading lights filled the night. Anger had been all that was holding them
here, and now that I’d removed it from them, the
trapped
spirits could find their way across the veil. They left
behind a well of power, pulsing in the air with the promise of violence.

The first ghostly form of a wolf burst into
the tent, leaping over the prone bodies that had been standing before the blast
of released energy. Voices cried out in shock and alarm, and there was a
general rush out of the tent. Most jumped up and ran—those who couldn’t
walk crawled, or were dragged by their compatriots.

The wolf spirit stopped in front of me,
howling a challenge to the hellhounds. I felt the force of his challenge in my
soul, a call to join the pack, to fight and defend it against all that was
unnatural and evil. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I
bared my teeth in a matching challenge.

The hellhounds turned to face the wolf,
meeting its challenge with growls that caused painful pins and needles as the
power rolled over me. The fire in their eyes flared higher, and the smell of
smoke and sulfur filled the tent. The lone wolf spirit looked tiny compared to
their heavy-shouldered bodies, but it did not back down. I felt the rest of the
pack coming, but in the few seconds it would take for them to arrive, the fight
could be over.

The
wolf
advanced slowly, moving into the coruscating red cloud to reach the hellhounds.
With a sudden rush of insight, I thought of a use for the liberated power. With
a push of will, I gave it all to the wolf. It paused, frozen for two heartbeats
as it absorbed the power that surrounded its ghostly form like a sponge. The
wolf swelled, becoming larger than any natural wolf, almost the size of a bear,
and its eyes glowed red gold with the power that filled it. I felt the drain on
my energy as I fought to maintain the link between the wolf and the stolen
power and rage.

Rushing forward, the wolf flashed through the
air and lunged at one of the hellhounds, which stumbled under the sudden
onslaught. It spun in circles, trying to face its attacker, but it wasn’t quick
enough, and neither was the second hellhound. Its jaws snapped at empty air as
flashes of molten fire flared on the
beast,
and it screamed out in pain. The wolf moved so fast—biting and burning
away chunks of the first hellhound’s flesh before attacking the other—that
it flashed in and out of existence like lightning striking. More flashes of red
and sparks of orange shot into the air.

Despite the battle going on
before my very eyes, I stood immobile, my hands raised. All of my attention was
focused on holding the link between the wolf and the power that made it posible
for it to take down the beasts that threatened Luke.

The two hellhounds fell to the
ground, one in markedly worse shape than the other,
and—somehow—they seemed to turn from solid to murkily transparent.
What’s happening to them?
I roughly
grasped the idea that not enough of their physical bodies remained to hold their
earthly shape.

There was a sudden burst of flame, and one of
the beasts
was gone
. In the spot where the
hellhound last lay, a cloud of ash fell gently to the ground. The other lay
immobile on its side, breathing painfully. As I watched, it stumbled to its
feet and began its escape, limping off into the night.