Sparks (29 page)

Anya stumbled back, still startled by the knowledge that ghosts could actually hurt her on this plane. This was their world, their rules. Leslie was armed with knives. Though her expression was still clouded, her hands flashed with purpose.

Hope's purpose. The bitch knew they were here.

The salamanders surged up behind Anya like an orange tide. She screamed at them to stop, but they swarmed over her like locusts.

"You all right?"
Charon asked, picking Anya up off the floor.

"Yeah." She fingered the scars in her armor. "She--"

"She's under Hope's control. There's nothing to be done for it.
"

The ghost flailed with the sparks of metal in her hand. Sparky plowed into her, knocking her off her ghostly feet. The newts had begun to tear into her, snarling. She slashed at them in broad arcs, making little contact.

Anya looked away. "There has to be another way!" she insisted. Tears stung Anya's eyes. Leslie had been an innocent.

"The only way to break the spell is to break the vessel.
"

Beyond the feeding frenzy, she could hear sighs and scrapes emanating from farther down the tunnel. Her hair stood on end. One look at Charon's face told her that Leslie wasn't alone, that the other ghosts under Hope's spell were coming for them.

The salamanders, caught in gustatorial delirium, looked up, gill-fronds twitching. They could smell them, smell the ghosts coming and the thrill of the fight. Even Sparky turned to the darkness, tail switching in anticipation.

Anya muffled a sob, stood beside Sparky. Charon was right: There was no other choice. Once committed to this path, she had to give herself fully to it.

She opened her hands as the first wave of ghosts rumbled down the bend of the tunnel, feeling the dark void in her chest open and blossom. It growled hungrily, just as fevered as the salamanders gnawing on ectoplasm behind her.

"Come on," she challenged them.

The tunnel was narrow enough to require the oncoming ghosts to march shoulder to shoulder, three abreast. The first row was familiar: She recognized the samurai ghost from the museum and one of his compatriots. And Bernie. The ghost of the bespectacled artifacts dealer in his slippers was incongruous beside the helmeted warriors, but for the sword he held in his grip. Anya recognized it as the missing sword that had hung over his mantel. Amber light from the salamanders glittered on their blades and armor as the ghostly warriors bore down on their targets.

The salamanders struck first. The newts ran just below the reach of their swords, hissing and clambering up their ankles and the backs of their legs. The samurai struggled to reach their backs, snarling, as the salamanders burrowed underneath their armor laces. Sparky tried to keep their attention distracted to the front, snapping at their distracted parries and thrusts.

A newt was hurled back by the edge of a sword, landing at Anya's feet. It mewed piteously, grievously wounded. Anya reached to scoop the creature up as its amber aura flickered. Seeking comfort, it dragged itself up her arm and curled up in the lip of her armor around her neck. She could feel its thready breathing and warm ectoplasm leaking down her collarbone.

Rage boiled in her throat, and she lashed out at the ghosts. She cast her hand out, palm open, and tried to devour the nearest ghost.

On the physical plane, this power was often subtle. Most onlookers, as well as Anya herself, rarely saw more than a flicker of pale energy dying out as she swallowed it. But here she could see the full, terrible ramifications of what had seemed, before, like a simple act.

The samurai's ghost half turned toward her, katana lifted. As if he were constructed of little more than cigarette smoke, he began to fray at the edges, pulling apart like a dandelion blown by a child. When she inhaled, she felt the cold smoke sliding down her throat and pooling in the bottom of her lungs. He tasted like dust. The ghost howled as he was shredded and devoured.

Beside her, Charon swung Kerberos's leash over his head. It made contact with a samurai's throat with a sickening rattle. Charon drew the samurai close, ripped a newt out of the samurai's fist, while Sparky clung to the samurai's sword arm. The ferryman viciously kicked the samurai, striking his armor with a clang that sent him stumbling backward and released the tension from the chain. Charon slugged him, hard enough to knock the helmet from his head and send it ringing to the floor. Sparky lunged up to tear the ghost's throat out. As the samurai fell, he began to fade, like an overexposed photograph, dissipating into the darkness.

Bernie confronted Anya, sword clutched awkwardly in a two-fisted grip. He swung at Anya, and she deflected the blow with the elbow of her armor.

"I'm sorry, Bernie," Anya muttered. She grasped his wrist, and her breath rattled in her throat. She felt the ectoplasm that made up Bernie's ghostly form begin to soften in her grip, like candle wax melting in the summertime.

Bernie howled. The sword rattled to the ground. Anya held on. Held on as her fingers and breath chewed through his skin. He tasted like carbon and burned things as he dissolved in her throat.

A second line of the ghost army was already pushing behind the first. Anya glimpsed the embroidered skirts of the Bohemian girls from the museum, fingers clawing the air near her face.

Anya reached for them, reached out for them with her hands and the black emptiness in her chest. She felt them dissipate, soft as moths fluttering down her throat. They screamed, hundreds of years of history silenced in one breath.

One breath.

And another.

She reached for the ghosts, the newts flowing like orange fire before her. She could hear the lash of Charon's chain on the left, Sparky's growl on her right. She reached out for the ghosts beyond.

Some, she knew. Some, she didn't. She recognized Katie's magnificent Egyptian; he tasted like myrrh when she breathed him in, shattering like sand when she touched him. Sparky was mauling a man in a letter carrier's uniform. Pieces of mail shook free of his mailbag like white birds from a magician's hat before dissolving into black. The crazy old man from the museum clambered to Anya, swinging his staff. Anya balled her fists, ducked. Though his eyes were clouded, she sensed some spark of independent volition in him. Or craziness.

"Ishtar,"
he hissed.
"Beware Erishkigal's poison.
"

Anya's brow wrinkled. The old man was still living in his myths. He struck at her again with his staff. Anya batted it aside. When she swallowed him, she tasted something bitter, like fresh earth and onion roots.

She kept pressing forward, devouring ghosts. But she couldn't help but feel the air thickening, that she breathed more shallowly. Her lungs ached as she moved through the spirits, pulling them apart like taffy. In the physical world, she'd devour maybe two ghosts in a month--these were more ghosts than she'd taken in a lifetime. And she could feel her body beginning to resist, to ache under the strain.

"Anya!
"

Charon's voice snapped like a whip over her, and she turned. But she was an instant too late. Something struck her armor, slamming her to the floor like a tin can. She tasted blood in her mouth.

"What the fuck--" she groaned, clutching her shoulder. She rolled over to see Charon's boot beside her head.

His body jerked as he stood above her, and she could hear him muttering,
"... two, three...
"

She looked beyond to see the museum security guards. They were armed with guns, as they had been in life. Charon was counting the shots as they advanced, shots that were tearing into his coat. The bullets were shockingly real on this plane, chewing into Charon.

Anya gasped, clawing the air before her to dissolve the ghosts.

"... four, five..."
Charon stumbled.

They had at least six shots in each revolver. No matter how much swimming Charon had done in the Styx, he wouldn't be able to keep standing.

She pulled the first one into her throat, nearly choked. Her chest was filling, and she struggled to devour the second, coughing. More ghosts were filling the corridor, filling the void left by the guards. Newts swarmed into the darkness, but the ghostly columns seemed to stretch too far into the distance. And Anya couldn't help but notice that there were fewer newts than when the battle had begun. A lump rose in her throat.

Charon fell to his knees, hands wrapped around his chest. Anya thrust his limp hair away from his face: "Are you all right?" It was a damned stupid question to ask a man who'd been shot.

"Yeah."
Charon took a shuddering breath. He reached up to finger the dent in Anya's armor.
"You?
"

"Okay." The armor had deflected the bullet, but it would leave a hell of a bruise. She could feel hot stickiness inside the armor, trickling down to her palm.

She hauled Charon to his feet. Sparky appeared at his side to take part of his weight.

"We've gotta break their formation,"
he growled.
"Get past the bottleneck.
"

Anya nodded, turned her head to cough into her elbow.

Charon snatched her arm, and Anya saw that her gleaming armor was speckled with blood.

"How many ghosts have you devoured?"
he demanded. He pressed his hand to her forehead, as if she were a child with a fever.

"I don't know. I--"

Charon ripped open the latches of her armor, pulling open her breastplate.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Anya moved to cover herself, though she had an overriding urge to slug him. She felt cold air on her skin.

"Shit."
Charon's blue eyes burned as he stared at her chest.

Anya looked down and nearly threw up.

When Anya took a spirit, it left a burn mark on her in the physical world. They eventually healed, usually over a period of weeks, and rarely scarred. But the battle, the dozens of ghosts, had reduced her flesh to burned bloody blackness. She looked as if someone had taken a blowtorch to her. Her skin felt numb under her fingers. Beyond it... she could almost touch that blackness that devoured ghosts.

"You're burning out."
Charon's eyes seared into hers.
"Lanterns can only take so many spirits before they burn out.
"

"Why didn't you tell me this shit?" she demanded.

"I assumed that you knew your limits."
His eyes were frosty, accusing.

"It's not like I eat these motherfuckers for breakfast." But now she understood what the old man's warning meant--the ghosts were poison to her. Too many, and...

Charon looked over her head at the newts. They were holding the line, but just barely.
"We've got to figure out a way to retreat.
"

Anya shook her head, fumbling with the closures on her breastplate. Sparky wound worriedly around her legs. "No. We keep going."

Charon glared at her.
"Here's the plan. The newts and I drive a line up the middle. You get behind us. When we get to the end of the line, you break out ahead for Hope. Sparky will cover you.
"

Sparky slapped his tail on the ground. Anya hoped he was taking notes.

A howl and a whinny sounded from the tunnel.

"Shit," Anya muttered. That could only be Pluto.

"Let's go."
Charon pulled the chain tight between his hands. Sparky fell into line beside him, and they began to push against the bottleneck. Anya plucked up Bernie's sword from beside the body of a newt that was fading away like a wisp of smoke. Charon's chain lashed into the battle, and Sparky launched himself into the fray. Anya stayed behind them, hacking at ghostly limbs that snaked through the spaces between.

Ahead, she could see Pluto rearing. Gallus clung to the saddle. The ghost-horse rolled an eye, foaming at the mouth. The end of Charon's chain wrapped around the horse's neck, and the ferryman pulled with all his might.

The horse struggled and wobbled in the crowd of ghosts, crashed down with an inhuman scream.

Gallus hacked himself out of the trap of ghost-limbs and tack, howling,
"You killed my horse!"
Tears glistened in his eyes under his helmet, and he raised his sword to behead Charon, whose fists were still tangled in the chain.

Anya thrust Bernie's sword between them, clumsily blocking the blow.

Newts clung to Gallus's back, chewed at his shoulders, but he cried,
"That was my horse! Pluto has been my horse for two thousand years....
"

A well of pity rose in Anya, and she tenderly reached out to touch his wet cheek.

She breathed him in, in the same breath as the broken and twisted horse. She tried to be gentle. She felt them mingling in her lungs, smoky and musky, bound together for all time....

She smiled sadly. The cold breath of the spirits seized her throat, paralyzing her breath. She couldn't inhale. Couldn't exhale. She felt as if she was drowning, could hear nothing but the echo of blood thumping in her helmet. She felt the sting of the ghost-burn crawl up her chest through her throat, seizing her voice.

Charon was holding her by her arms, shouting at her. He shook her so hard that the helmet rattled off her head.

But the thunder of her blood blotted him out. She could feel the poison of the burn spreading up her face, numbing it and crawling blackly over her vision.

The last thing she remembered was falling over Charon's shoulder with Sparky tangled in her legs.