Arise (35 page)

Somewhat satisfied, I turned back to the brawling ghosts. To my horror, I found Alex straddling Gaby, with his hands wrapped tightly around her throat.

“Let her go!” I screamed.

But a screeching noise from somewhere high above us drowned my voice. I gazed upward and felt my heart go cold.

Because a hundred black, birdlike shapes filled the bruised sky. And they’d started to dive right for us.

Chapter

THIRTY

I
didn’t have time to warn anyone before the black shapes descended, some dropping to the wet sand and some landing noisily inside the pavilion.

Within seconds of landing they transformed, shifting from indeterminate forms to humanlike figures with white-blond hair, sleek black clothing, and bloodless-pale faces.

They were glorious. Hideous. And each of them turned their black, pupilless eyes on me.

One of them—a male with a cleft chin and thick jaw—broke rank and strode over to Gaby and Alex. The male placed one hand gently on Alex’s shoulder and when Alex glanced up, gave the boy a sharp-toothed grin.

Instead of being horrified, as any sane person would be, Alex immediately rolled off Gaby and dropped at the creature’s feet.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, touching the hem of the creature’s pants. “Thank you for allowing me inside. Thank you.”

The creature smiled benignly down at Alex’s show of gratitude. Then it affected a worried frown.

“Oh, child. It seems that you’ve gotten yourself killed.”

Alex shook his head forcefully. “But not before I brought them here. Both of them, sir. For you.”

“Ah, excellent,” the creature murmured. He looked down at Gaby, who was still gasping and clutching at her throat, and then up at me. When his black, pupilless eyes locked onto mine, he smiled again.

“Truly excellent.” He glanced back at his companions. “I believe one of you is here for this one?”

Another demon stepped out of the crowd and approached us casually, moving as though she had all the time in the world to claim her prize. When she came close enough for me to see her features—long white-blond hair, angular bone structure—I hissed in recognition.

It was one of the demons from High Bridge. The female who had swooped down like a Harpy and dragged Eli with her into the darkness below the bridge.

And now she was here for
me
.

“Well, hello again,” she said pleasantly. “You’re finally home with us, yes?”

“This isn’t my home.” My voice sounded far stronger than I felt.

The female demon laughed, and at first her laughter seemed beautiful—crystalline and sparkling. But listening to it made my ears ring painfully. When I clapped my hands over them, she laughed even harder.

“Please stop,” I begged, nearly unable to hear my own voice.

To my surprise, she listened, and obeyed.

In fact, she was silent as the grave when she flew, lightning fast, to stand in front of me. Now only inches away, she flashed me a ghastly, needle-sharp smile. Then she
touched
me—wrapping her frozen, skeletal fingers around my wrist.

I tried to scream. But once again I didn’t have time. I hadn’t even opened my mouth when the fiery glow burst forth across my skin like a torch.

This
was what the demons wanted;
this
was what they’d hunted me down to claim.

But when the red-orange glow ignited, the female demon shrieked, dropping my arm and scuttling away from me like an insect. She ducked behind her companion, peering around him only to hiss angrily at me.

I should have felt relief that she’d let me go. And I did.

I also felt very, very confused.

After all, her companion from High Bridge hadn’t feared my glow; he’d coveted it. So why on earth was
she
suddenly afraid of me?

Frowning, I stared down at my arm. There, where she’d gripped me, was a steaming handprint. It looked like she’d burned me, which didn’t make any sense since I didn’t hurt.

Then I realized:
I’d
hurt
her
. The handprint on my arm wasn’t a scald—it was the spot where something icy cold had touched something fiery hot.

I peered back at the female demon and saw that she cradled her burned hand in the uninjured one. Her male companion cast a scornful glance in her direction and sighed.

“Stop cowering and take her,” he commanded.

“You take her,” she spat, “if you think it looks so easy.”

He sighed again and shook Alex off his feet. The movement roused Alex from the thankful prayers he was still mumbling, and he stared reverently up at his new master.

“I assume you can touch her now, child?” the demon asked him. When Alex nodded, the demon gave him a stern look. “Then if you truly want to serve us, you’ll take her.”

Alex glanced back over his shoulder and flashed me an eager smile. In response, my glow flared brighter. Although Alex winced, his smile didn’t falter.

Unlike the female demon—unlike Eli—Alex obviously wasn’t afraid of me. He stared me down like prey, rising from his knees and stalking over to me with clenched fists.

I clenched my fists too, trying to think of how I would fight him. My pulse began to race as I came up blank. Could I burn him as I’d burned the demon? Could I hurt him as I’d once hurt Eli? Could I still act as a poltergeist and make this place quake?

Alex was stalking even closer, and I still hadn’t come up with a reasonable solution. I raised my fists to the sides of my head and groaned in frustration. Abruptly, Alex froze in place and mimicked me, clutching his head and groaning even louder.

At first I thought he was trying to mock me, but the longer he moaned, the more I doubted it. His groans turned into yowls, and his face contorted in pain. Something or someone was hurting Alexander Etienne.

I peered past him to his would-be masters, who were staring at us in disbelief and confusion. A few of them even started to hiss defensively. Over the sounds of their hissing and Alex’s groaning, however, I heard another sound. A sound I’d forgotten to track since the demons arrived.

I spun back around to find that the young Seers still held hands, still chanted. Their murmurs had lost that initial edge of reluctance and were now coursing through the air with urgency. With strength.

Even better, the darkness around them had abated. Through the purple shadows of the netherworld, I could see a faint, ghostlike outline of the footbridge. And in the sand beneath the Seers, I could see traces of concrete, shifting like seaweed underwater.

Whatever spell the Seers wove, it hadn’t just brought Alex to his knees—it had also torn through the veil of the netherworld. Maybe even weakened the magic that held this place together.

My head whipped back around to Alex and his masters, and I grinned in triumph. Although Alex continued to moan and whimper, the demons unfortunately looked far more composed now. They still hissed and spat in my direction, but one by one their glinting smiles returned. Watching me intently, they began to cluster together. Gathering … for something.

“Gaby,” I murmured, despite the fact that I held their full attention, regardless of my volume. “You need to get over here.
Now
.”

Still lying on her back where Alex had left her, Gaby rolled to one side, coughed, and then began to crawl slowly toward me. Without taking my eyes off the congregating demons, I crouched low and stretched out one arm to her.

“Just a little bit farther,” I urged her. “Come on....”

She’d crawled several feet, with only a few more to go, when the demons began to screech again. In a flash they shifted back into indeterminate shapes and launched up in the air like startled ravens. But as they climbed higher in the sky, I realized that they were anything but startled: they were arcing, curving back around for a swift, final descent.

“Gaby!” I cried, far past the point of urgency now. “Hurry, please.”

I took my eyes off of her for a moment, casting a panicked glance over my shoulder at the Seers. They still chanted in their circle, unaware of the shrieking army above them. Thankfully, even more elements of the living world had grown stronger around them. By now the footbridge was fully visible, and I could see the vague outline of several buildings in the French Quarter.

The netherworld was thinning all around the Seers.

But not around me. Here it was as dark and bleak as ever.

I turned back to Gaby and then leaned forward to close the gap between us. She reached out to me and I grabbed her hand, pulling her close. We huddled together a few feet from Alex—who still gasped and moaned—and stared up in fear at the wounded sky.

After a heavy silence, Gaby cleared her throat.

“Hey, Amelia,” she whispered hoarsely. “Do you know you’re on fire?”

Despite everything, I laughed. “Yeah. I don’t think it’ll be much help right now, though.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw her grin. She wrapped one arm around me and gave me a tight half hug. I read the gesture well enough: if we were going to be swept into the darkness, at least we would go together.

“Friends till the end,” I whispered with a wry smile.

Gaby snorted. “God, you’re corny.”

I laughed again and moved to give her my own half hug. But suddenly, she slipped from my arm and began crawling backward across the dark sand like a crab.

Except … she wasn’t crawling. She was being
pulled
.

Alex must have fought through the pain of his exorcism, because he now had his arms wrapped around Gaby’s shoulders as he dragged her across the sand. I scrambled to grab her legs, but she was struggling so hard against Alex that I couldn’t hold on to her.

The three of us were a tangle of flailing limbs and shouted threats, but no matter how hard I fought, Alex appeared to be winning. Perhaps he felt emboldened by his masters since they were only seconds away from attack.

Everything seemed lost: Gaby, Joshua, the young Seers, my own afterlife.

The unfairness of it all—the eternal unfairness of this existence—seared me to my core. I threw back my head and screamed up at the night.

And at that moment my fiery glow literally
exploded
.

The fire was uncontrollable. Inescapable.

I wrenched my eyes closed, shutting out the impossibly bright light until I could sense through my eyelids that it had dimmed—at least, enough for me to reopen my eyes.

The dark beach looked as though an atom bomb had gone off on it. Sand flew back in waves, showering against the pavilion, which rocked in the gale from the explosion. In an instant, the night seemed to turn to day, glowing brightly like a real beach in the sunshine.

The explosion had done another amazing thing too. Something I smelled, before I saw its source; it was a nasty chemical scent, like burning tar and singed hair.

Or singed feathers.

That’s what the black bits of ash looked like as they fell around me: burned feathers, crisping and flaking all over the slate-colored sand. I looked up to the sky for their source and gasped.

Where a hundred bird-shaped demons had been, there were now less than twenty … and most of them had flown higher in the sky, away from this beach.

Away from
me
.

Their screeching sounded different now, more plaintive and wounded. The remaining demons gathered together in the sky and then shifted course, toward the black waters of the river.

To go home?

Was that possible? Were they actually retreating?

Another look around me suggested that the answer was yes. All along the beach and across the pavilion, images of the living world were filtering through the purples and reds. Even when my glow began to dim, I could still see the real Toulouse Street Wharf fighting its way through the veneer of the netherworld pavilion. I could see the concrete reappearing beneath me and the lights of the Mississippi River boardwalk shining through the darkness.

Gaby saw them too. She grinned up at me from Alex’s arms, her blue eyes radiant in the gloom that still surrounded her.