Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) (16 page)

He wasn’t spending much time at his canyon. When I asked about it, he said, “Too dangerous. I sip the energy quickly and leave. There’s a demon on the hunt.”

After that, I completed my rounds in fear, harvesting from the edge as far from the hospital room as possible. I caught a glimpse of the girl, Espy, and her Aunt Brenda once. One or the other was doing the medium trick again, but they were no longer at the hospital. By the time I was able to hop closer, the weave was thickening, and there was no time to ask if Espy was better.

I saw the nurse Sonya frequently, sometimes working with Paul, the technician, or one of the vampires. The female vampire wore a tag identifying her as Tina. There were two male doctors, one of whom was an impossibly older guy who included me on his rounds. He wasn’t as decrepit as the near-corpse on the bed, but it was a close second. He must love his job to still be working at his age. His badge was so old, the letters were faded beyond recognition, except for a “C.”

There were other patients and technicians, but none ever glanced my way. I grabbed bits of energy and stayed on the move.

It must have been the third or fourth day after Martin had talked to his friends when he found me on the way to my hospital room.

“Now. Hurry.” Rather than waiting for me to follow, he just spurted ahead. For an old guy, he was fast.

I kept up, but barely. “How do you know it’s time?” I demanded.

“I stopped by your hospital room this morning.”

“You can thin the weave there?”

“It was easier once Lynx showed up there with bloodstone. Been monitoring the room a bit, and since he had the bloodstone, as soon as he showed, I knew they were ready.”

By the time we reached the lake, the broken violin was an ugly foghorn, echoing intermittently.

Martin bobbed up and down anxiously. “That demon is on his way. He’s been popping in here like a man addicted to a whorehouse. With Amy no longer hiding the portal and herself behind Troy’s essence, he knows right where the window is located. He must not be able to open the portal himself, and unless he has a body waiting, it wouldn’t do him any good. Success depends on whether we can push you through fast enough.”

Kyle perched on top of the cairn. He had his guitar out, but wasn’t playing. “Now?”

Martin knelt at the water, muttering incoherently, the bloodstone out. “This will work. You ready?”

Was I ready? No. How did one get ready? I wasn’t sure I wanted to accept that nearly dead body in the hospital room, but the key point was that it was nearly dead. I was currently dead-dead. “Yeah.” I glanced at Kyle. He watched the water hungrily. “I’ll tell your wife. I have the address. Given the condition of my body, it might take me a while, but I’ll do my best.”

His eyes flicked to me, and he ran a shaking ghost hand through his dark hair before he remembered there were no longer any individual strands to soothe him. “Will you remember? Or will everything suddenly be forgotten when you pop through?”

He knew that I retained little of who I’d been while alive. He answered with me. “I don’t know.”

“Right. Got it,” he said then, resigned.

Because I was facing away from the water, I saw the enemy first. It was the red-eyed boar, waiting in the fog. This time, it was not alone. Its rider nodded at me with a smile that should have frozen the water behind me—or burned it up, given the flames that licked along his dark body.

“Uh, Martin,” I squeaked.

Martin’s hands formed a circle. He dropped the bloodstone into the center.

“Martin!”

The demon cackled. In Between rattled from one end to the other. “Go ahead.” He slashed his violin with a flame instead of a bow. “When you go, I go. Or you can stay here. Either way you are my new host, and those on the other side will be totally unaware. They’ll call you, and one way or another I will own your body.” He laughed, spitting fire. “There will be room for both of us,” he crooned. “You’ll learn to love me. I’ve been waiting for a host ever since I was freed.”

His evil chuckle was in perfect discord with the chords he ruined on the violin.

My ghost form shook with fear, but I was riveted in place, held by his promise.

I would not play host to a demon. I’d rather be dead. My eyes flicked to the circle.

When my eyes shifted back again, the demon was next to me. His glowing eyes haunted me, but they were beautiful in their own way. Red orbs, full of promises. I shrank inside myself, but could not break free.

If I took a single breath, I would live. The demon would flow through me, repairing all that was ruined. Wait. That didn’t make sense.

The demon soothed my worries, explaining it all. “I was so lonely until I gained enough power to let my friends through. Once you are with me, they are yours to command. You’ll never be lonely again. You will wield power you never dreamed of.”

I realized now that he was the first demon I had seen. There had been no boar, no violin. He hadn’t played music; he was simply a lost demon trying to survive, just like me. If I hadn’t run then, we could have been friends so much earlier.

Barking and an intense cold made me shiver. Wait a minute. The demon hadn’t been friends with Spook. Spook had lost a leg to the demon we fought. I frowned. Something wasn’t right. Where was Spook? I could hear him. Why couldn’t I turn my head or move my eyes to find him? It had been this way right before I died. I had been trapped then and now.

I fought, screaming at the voice inside my head, shrinking inside myself like I had done the last time something had come after me, but this time, there was nowhere to run. There was nothing but brilliant eyes, shining, promising, enveloping me.

Music with an actual melody slammed into me like a physical blow, rocking me with vibrations. I blinked, shutting out the red demon eyes for a millisecond. The notes continued, breaking the shrill chords of chaos that the demon was using to hold and choke me. The song started as a strumming, a note that floated and held, sneaking between the crying violin strings.

“Kyle!” I choked out his name. One eye floated free, finding him.

He was back on the rocks. He might not be safe there, but it was better than standing by an open portal waiting to be eaten by a demon.

Kyle played. The notes of
Bad Moon Rising
faded in and out.

The demon guffawed and cut the song into bits with flames streaming across his burning instrument. But Kyle’s music had broken the demon’s thrall, one that had gripped me before I had time to realize it. Troy had been like that, helpless against Amy. The only difference was that the demon didn’t want to destroy me. He wanted to possess me. He needed me alive as much as I wanted to live.

When Kyle changed the song to
Help Is On Its Way,
I sucked in air that I didn’t yet need to live, and puffed myself closer to Martin and the portal.

Kyle’s music was stronger now, without the hesitation. His notes didn’t drown out those of the demon, but just as the demon violin tried to cut Kyle’s notes to shreds, Kyle’s song suffocated the noise from the demon.

Despite the screaming in my head from the raw blistering notes, I hummed along with Kyle’s melody. I wasn’t completely in tune, but then, it was hard to hold the line when flames licked at your eyeballs and a demon pushed at your sanity with broken despair.

I refused to meet the demon’s mesmerizing gaze again. I focused on the song, holding it to me like a physical presence. It was not fog, it was not In Between.

I pushed a ghostly foot forward.

From the other side, the side I longed for, a wind began to moan, echoing Kyle’s music. There was no instrument, but the wind played nonetheless. I focused on the portal. Martin spread his hands, and as I watched, he slid one of the rocks further out.

I took another step and hit water. I couldn’t afford to stop, not even if a mermaid started chewing on my feet.

The warlock, White Feather, stood inside the hospital room. His magic drifted on the breeze, squeezing out a flow of music, the sound of wind whistling through a canyon. His life force danced through the air, a beautiful blue flame that had no trouble outshining the burning flames from the demon.

I grabbed that life force and held it between me and the demon. When Kyle played the first bars of
The Devil Went Down to Georgia,
I knew it was now or never.

The demon shrieked with glee. “That song is a stupid myth!! You can’t beat me by outplaying me!” His rumble of rage bounced against the portal, causing it to vibrate under the strain. Martin grunted, and his ghostly hands shook with the effort to hold the opening.

Kyle missed a note. The music around me shuddered, threatening to fall apart. My own singing wasn’t enough to keep the thread of song together. The demon flamed closer, muscling me aside to fill the tunnel that led to the other side.

White Feather’s whistling wind encompassed the gap in the nick of time.

Kyle picked up the tune again, not caring if the story in the song was true. He played with conviction and
life
even if he was already dead. Music was a living thing, and he was holding onto it and playing for all he was worth. The demon might covet life, but he didn’t have it, nor could he create it with his empty and broken screeching.

I swam within the odd current of music, one hand clutching the braid. Time to return it to its owner. Ghosts couldn’t cry without leaking, but a part of me was in tears because it wasn’t fair that I had a body to return to and these guys didn’t.

Kyle kept plucking and strumming notes.

Roberto yelled, “Okay, I’ve got this end. Now! Hurry!”

Lynx said nothing, but his hand held mine, and I could feel the sister to the braid in my ghost hand. For the death of me, I could not figure out why Lynx was helping me, but his fingers wrapped around mine was enough.

I dove across the water, careful to keep singing, careful to keep drawing music between me and everything else. The jump was similar to gathering pieces of myself to me when I leaked. Jump, but contain.

The flame from the demon seared one side of the music, tearing at me. I screamed.

The surface beneath me was crystal clear, a window, but not. There were fish flicking golden tails as they dodged in and out of sight.

Lynx had his hand out, reaching for me as though I had fallen in the water, as though he would pull me out. He said my name, only he called me Shadow because it was the only name he knew.

A doctor or a maybe a nurse with long black hair held a hand to my forehead. She wasn’t wearing a smock, but I could feel the warmth of her life force. Unlike the command that had tried to own my soul, her presence was only a welcoming warmth.

The devil clawed in a panic at the music. The second he neglected to play, I felt the last of the licking flames drop.

I puffed out the last of my air, aiming for the braid in Lynx’s hand, wondering if I’d make a splash.

The last thing I heard was Martin, humming the song. For once, he was in tune.

Chapter 22

Kyle’s melody was a steady stream across the open portal as I slipped through. His song wrapped around me, a protective life magic. The demon beat against it and me, causing the portal to shudder. Roberto’s magic resembled a fog with an opening. The smoke of his magic cracked from the strain, fine lines splintering the surface.

The portal bent, but the demon bounced against Kyle’s music. He raised his violin then, his attack paused for less than a second. Perhaps he intended to kill the music with his own evil cacophony.

In the space of that tiny pause, Troy’s dog slipped in beside me as I tumbled towards the body on the bed. Even without my physical eyes open, I sensed the three-legged ghost come through. He passed right through Lynx.

The cat’s hand jerked on mine, but he held fast.

Roberto’s fingers, already held high, darted forward and nabbed the bloodstone from Martin, yanking it free.

The portal snapped shut, silencing the shrieking ugliness that was the demon version of music without a soul.

“Got it,” Roberto shouted.

“I can’t believe you agreed to try that after what happened last time,” Adriel grumbled. She stepped away from him, her arms relaxing at her sides. Her magic, a pretty silver, slid away from Roberto and back into her bracelets. Her magic was full of life, protecting Roberto from sliding across the portal.

“Tara, how is she?” White Feather asked.

The girl with the long hair stepped away from my body, but she didn’t answer White Feather. She watched Lynx watch me. The only time he looked away from me was when his slitted eyes followed Spook’s progress.

Roberto asked, “Is that dog safe?”

I wanted to speak, but my body was too weak, even though my spirit was now safely in the same room.

Spook sat his haunches down near my feet and put his ghostly head across my knees.

“The dog doesn’t look like he’s planning on hurting her,” Roberto observed, answering his own question.

“She has a
dog
?” The girl White Feather called Tara peered anxiously around the room, but she was unable to see Spook.

“Lynx, how is it that you are able to see ghosts so clearly even though the curtain is closed?” Adriel was now tucked protectively under the warlock’s arm.

The cat shrugged. “Roberto taught me.”

The witch swiveled to face Roberto. “You can teach that sort of thing?”

Roberto grinned. His words were less clear to me now, but still understandable. His fingers flew through sign language as he talked. Lynx translated. “All he had to do was point out that cats have the ability to see spirits.”

Adriel tilted her head for a second or two. “So you call your ca—” She broke off and shrugged. “Call enough of your magic without changing.” She nodded. “Excellent. Is the dog likely to attack?”

Lynx shrugged. “He ain’t attacking right now.”

Tara said, “My work is done.” Her eyes were downcast as she brushed by White Feather and Adriel.

Adriel stopped her with a touch to her shoulder. “Tara. Thank you.”

Tara lifted her eyes to Adriel before glancing at White Feather. He nodded his head in agreement.