The Ravaging in Between (The Reanimation Files Book 3) (26 page)

“The bind that was killing you…”

“Yes, I get it. I’m not disputing anything you said, but you are still backing me into a corner. You are forcing me to be OK with something I am not, just like before with that whole business of how Renton saved my life. You cannot do that to me—do you have any idea what it’s like inside my head right now? It’s like a fucking hurricane. I can’t figure anything out one way or another. I can’t decide how to feel about anything. Saying I’m happy Ethan’s still around but hate the reason why he’s still around is like two trains colliding with each other from opposite directions. Nothing matches up, and all it does is anger me and confuse me and frustrate me. And it doesn’t matter how much you say you did it for me, it’s still all based on lies and unethical dealings. None of this is making anything better for us!”

“I’m sorry.” Micah looked heartbroken.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “In the end, all you can say is you’re sorry. But it’s not good enough, Micah. It hasn’t been good enough for a long time.”

“What else do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”

“You think I have a clue? Did I not just describe the hurricane that is inside my head right now? I don’t know how to swim through all of this. I keep feeling like I’m sinking and I have no idea how to make it to the surface, far less pull our relationship up too.”

“You sound like you don’t have much hope for us.”

“I never said that. Although I am losing hope more than I’m gaining it. This thing with Ethan certainly did not help. I’m just sick and tired of standing in my living room having difficult-ass conversations with you that end with me wanting to throw something at you, then throw you out. This cycle has to end.”

“I wish we could go back to normal…”

“Normal?” I cut in. “And what exactly is normal for Micah and Selene? Let’s re-trace our history, shall we? We were friends and co-workers, then we spent a drunken night together, then you turned into an asshole for about a year and a half because you were pissy that I didn’t seem to like you the way you liked me. Then we worked through that and fell in love, but oh, here comes a psycho ghost and his brother murdering up the place. We take care of that, but a few months later while I’m dying of the Rot, your uncle rolls through and turns out to be an even bigger murdering psycho, to the point where I have to kill myself to stop him. Only I’m still here, and now here we are with the weight of all of that pressing down on us. There never was a normal for us, Micah, at least not the way it is for other people. This is our normal: painful, damaging decisions, and having to make sacrifices to save ourselves and everyone else. And I’m tired of it. It’s not the normal that I want.”

“It’s not the one I want either.” Micah took hold of my hands again, holding them tightly as he searched my eyes. “But through all of that we’re still here because we stood and fought together, that’s where our strength is, Selene, that’s who we are. We’re fighters.”

“I’m tired of fighting,” I whispered, tears brimming in my eyes. “I’m tired of being the one who has to save everyone and lose so much in the process. I don’t even know what my own normal is anymore. I can barely remember what my life was like before all this; everything seems like a dream. I can wish things were simpler all I want, but I know they will never be. Not for us. Not for me. And I know you think your job is to fix everything for me, but right now you can’t. Not when you’re such a big part of the problem.”

Micah pressed his forehead against mine and released a sigh. A tear rolled down my cheek.

“I wish I knew what to say,” he whispered.

“I know.” I pulled away from him, ignoring the part of me that wanted to wrap myself in his arms. That pull would always be there, no matter how frayed things were. I wiped at my eyes and then moved into the kitchen to get something to drink.

Or get a little further away from Micah, who knew…

“So what will happen with Ethan now?” This would always be a sore subject, but there was nothing I could do about it. As much as I was appalled by the runes on Ethan’s back and what was inside them, it wasn’t like I was going to go rip them off him. He made his choice and I would have to try to live with it.

“He’s going to stay in seclusion for a while longer and continue with the private therapy,” Micah said. “Once Tielle has sorted things out with the upper ranks, Ethan can reunite with his family and come out of hiding.”

“And what will he do then? Just integrate back into society? His house was burned down so he can’t go back there, and he’d be woefully behind in college…”

“Would you let him come home?” Micah asked. “Here?”

My eyes widened slightly. “Would he want to?”

“Yes, if you’d let him. He still needs you, Selene. Needs us. This journey is far from over from him. He will need us as he tries to get back to his normal life. He even wants to try and catch up in school so he can finish his law degree.”

“He was studying law? I never knew that. I figured his major would be something nerdy like computer science.”

Micah’s lips twitched.

“But yes, of course I would let him come home. I never ate so well before he was here.”

“Then can you tell him that? He needs some reassurance from you. He doesn’t think you’re happy he’s still around, despite what you said before you left yesterday. It would be good if you went to see him.”

“All right. I’ll go see him.”

“I can take you now, but I have to stop by the office to get updated information on some of the new victims of crossover ghost attacks.”

“How many are there now?”

“About a dozen.”

“Damn. And how many more have died?”

“Two.”

“Shit. I should try to see if I can draw the strains of ghost energy out of them. That was my intention yesterday, but I ended up following you and Tielle to Ethan. And then the whole Larry bullshit happened.”

“Let’s go now then,” Micah said. “And hopefully save these people’s lives.”

So off we went.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I stood at the bedside of Harvey Whittle. He looked bloated, as though the ghost energy was filling him up like a balloon. His skin was ashen and covered in bruises. I wasn’t sure if it was from the ghost energy affliction or his altercation with Grant. Glenda was seated at his side with his puffy hand in hers.

When she saw Micah, Tielle, and I walk into the room, she immediately looked hopeful and I cringed inwardly. I had hoped she wouldn’t be here because there was no guarantee that I would be able to use my reanimation power to rid the ghost energy from her husband’s body. I didn’t want to see the crushing disappointment on her face if I failed.

Before we came down here, Micah and I had met with Tielle and told her that I had my reanimation power back. I hadn’t been able to hedge around how I had reacquired it, so I’d had to tell Tielle about the powerful dead witch who did business in the depths of a graveyard. I’d half expected Tielle to immediately dispatch a task force to round Magda up, but she surprisingly had little comment on Magda. I would have thought for sure an off-radar dead witch of Magda’s caliber would sound the alarm for Tielle.

I wasn’t entirely unhappy that Tielle made no move to go after Magda though. Something told me that doing so wouldn’t end well for her or anyone else involved. And me. After I’d told my story, we ventured down here to see what I might be able to do.

“Glenda, do you mind giving me some room?” She was seated on Harvey’s right while I stood on his left so technically she wasn’t in my way, but I still preferred if she stepped back to where the others stood by the door. Glenda stood up, but hesitated. From the look on her face, I could tell it’d been pretty much non-stop crying since her husband landed in this predicament. She bent over and laid a gentle kiss on his forehead, then looked up at me.

“Are you sure this will work?”

“Not at all,” I replied honestly. Her eyes widened. “I don’t have any promises I can make you,” I said. “Just that I will try.”

Glenda nodded, glanced at her husband once more, and moved to stand next to the Micah and Tielle. Micah looked anxious but encouraging, while Tielle had her usual expressionless mask on. Behind that mask, I knew she was hopeful.

The first thing I did was use rune chalk to draw the runes I needed on Harvey’s body. Then I blew out a breath and slowly slid my hand over Harvey’s. His skin was cool and clammy against the warmth of mine, and it was not particularly pleasant wrapping my hand around his puffed-up flesh. But nothing about this was going to be comfortable. I just had to deal with it.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and connected with my reanimation power. In my mind’s eye I saw all three powers—red, blue, and black—and focused on the red while keeping the other two at bay. It wasn’t easy because the dead magic was quick to respond to any nudge, even if I wasn’t reaching directly for it. It was eager to engulf my reanimation power again, but I kept them separate. The effort was already making sweat bead my forehead, and my skin grew even warmer against Harvey’s.

With more care than I usually used when I harnessed my power, I channeled a stream of reanimation power into Harvey. Almost immediately I felt all of the ghost energy that was trapped within his body.

The dead magic reared its head like a curious cat and tried to follow my reanimation power into Harvey’s body, but I pulled it back. I’d like to say doing so was effortless, but it wasn’t. This power was strong and still foreign to me, and I couldn’t even control it without help. The bracelet Magda gave me almost burned against my skin as it worked to help me keep the dead magic away. Once I had successfully pushed it back, I refocused on the reanimation power I had pushed inside Harvey.

Reanimation could draw a soul out of a living body and put it into a corpse, but could it draw out pieces of multiple souls? Amid the foreign ghost energy, I could see Harvey’s soul. It was wrapped up in that foreign energy, much like my reanimation power had been wrapped up in the dead magic. I tried to attach my reanimation power to the ghost energy so I could draw it out, but was met with resistance. My reanimation power was far more interested in Harvey’s soul, and instead of attaching to the ghost energy, it tried to get around it so it could pull Harvey’s soul free. That would certainly get the ghost energy untangled from it, but it would also kill Harvey.

Damn it, it didn’t seem like this was going to work. At the end of the day my reanimation power was back to its basic form, no evolution of any sort, and it could only do what it was meant to do; pull someone’s soul out. Even if it was evolved, I wasn’t sure it would have worked. I resisted the urge to stamp my foot in frustration.

Then I felt a jolt. I had been focusing so much on my reanimation power that my hold on the dead magic had slipped and a tendril shot into Harvey’s body. It ensnarled my reanimation power and all of a sudden I went from in control to very, very, not.

My power slammed into Harvey’s soul and immediately started to wrench it free. I tried to pull it back, but when I did Harvey’s soul started to come with it.
Shit
. I stopped pulling and concentrated on untangling my reanimation power from the dead magic, but doing so in someone else’s body was a hell of a lot harder than doing it in my body. It was a tug of war that I didn’t think I was strong enough to win.

But there was no choice except to win. As I did everything I could to get my power out of Harvey without taking his soul as well, all the ghost energy started to swirl, like it was agitated. The dead magic liked that and started darting after every lick of ghost energy inside Harvey. Only problem with that was that the ghost energy was still wrapped around his soul and if the dead magic pulled it out, I was in big trouble.

Distantly I could hear people shouting over the sound of medical equipment making sounds that meant that nothing good was happening, but I kept my eyes closed. I was rapidly losing control. My reanimation power, under the influence of the dead magic, was preparing to yank everything it could out of Harvey and into me.

I tore at the dead magic like a savage, using every ounce of mental strength I had to peel it away from my reanimation power. I swallowed my fear and kept telling myself that I was in charge, that no matter how new or wild this power was, it did not control me. I was aware that I had fallen to my knees, but I kept hold of Harvey’s hand. It took almost everything I had to tear the dead magic away from my reanimation power and swallow it back into my body where I locked it down tight. Immediately after that, I recalled my reanimation power. It didn’t take his soul, but it didn’t take anything else either.

Then I let go of Harvey’s hand and collapsed.

* * *

I didn’t pass out, but I was on the verge of it. Through blurry vision, I saw Micah and Tielle rush over to me. They were shouting things that I couldn’t make much sense of. It felt as though I was hearing them from underwater. I was drained, exhausted, running on fumes. The amount of power that I’d just had to execute was tremendous.

Micah picked me up and carried me out of the room. He took me across the hall to where the doctors worked, and I soon found myself gratefully sinking onto the soft cushions of a couch. Moments later, Micah held a cup to my lips and I drank as though it was the last cup of water on earth. When I was done, he refilled it and gave me more to drink.

Once my dry throat was alleviated, I lay my head back and kept my eyes closed because I had a pounding headache and it made my vision cross. I still felt overheated, but ever so slowly I was coming back to myself. I felt a cool cloth on my forehead. Micah was tending to my feverish skin.

After what seemed like an eternity, I opened my eyes to the concerned faces of Micah and Tielle.

“I failed,” I said. I blew out a breath. “I couldn’t do it. Is Harvey…”

“He’s fine,” Micah said. “Or rather, he’s the same as before.”

“At least I didn’t make things worse,” I muttered.

“I take it your reanimation power was not interested in the foreign ghost energy,” Tielle said.