Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) (18 page)

“You see everyone like that?”

I shrugged. “If I’m sideways. Adriel has a lot of silver energy. White Feather, now that was weird. His energy is a blue fire with icy white bands.”

Lynx nodded. “He’s one cool dude.”

“I don’t think I knew any of this stuff before I died. I certainly never saw it.”

“Probably because dying halfway changed some things. It changed ’Trick, that’s for sure.”

“Patrick, the vampire?”

He nodded.

“He’s not dead. He’s like one of the creatures In Between. Maybe.”

I expected Lynx to ask me more about In Between, but he didn’t. He exhausted all the energy I had left asking about what I could and couldn’t do while sideways. We tried a few things, but I was too tired, too fast.

He went for burritos for lunch, and I went back to bed.

Chapter 24

The next morning, I accompanied Lynx on a breakfast burrito run. Stepping out into the sunlight was like being born again. It was bright. Alive. Full of noise and smells. Full of life force. Energy was
everywhere.

He filled the empty bowl with cat food and added water to the other one.

“You have a cat?”

“Nah. One adopted me a while back. She helped us out of a tight spot. I just feed her.”

Most people would consider that having a cat, but apparently Lynx didn’t apply those rules to his situation.

I walked over to the first line of juniper trees and breathed in the medicinal pine scent. Crouching, I grabbed up fistfuls of juniper berries. There were hundreds just lying all over the ground where any ghost could come along and eat for weeks.

I slid sideways and absorbed the sparks of energy until the berries in my hand shriveled. Guilt assailed me. I offered some to Spook. He didn’t seem to mind that I had pigged out first. He probably didn’t need my help harvesting energy either. He wagged his tail, conveying his happiness.

I gave him a pat on the head and asked if he planned to join us today. He looked at the car and then barked an enthusiastic yes.

“Okay.” I rejoined my body.

Lynx could easily discern my sideways maneuver if he watched, but if he wondered what I was doing, he didn’t ask. He just waited patiently as if everyone he knew collected juniper berries and talked to their ghost dog.

I brushed the shriveled berries off my hand, but was unable to resist harvesting a few more for my pocket. Just in case. Because they were still a little bit alive, and I couldn’t quite forget being more than a little bit dead.

As we climbed into his white Mustang, he asked, “You know how to drive stick?”

I glanced at the gears. “Yeah. Blue car.” I thought hard, but couldn’t remember when or where or if it was my last car or my first. “I wonder what happened to everything that was me.”

Lynx shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

He seemed more concerned about my future than my past.

I stared out the window. If I had seen much of Santa Fe before I died, there were no recent memories in my head. The desert had a familiar feel, but I had changed so much from seeing the world through the eyes of the dead, it was hard to be certain what was new and what wasn’t.

We stopped at Walmart, and Lynx shuffled me inside before demanding that I purchase better fitting sneakers, food and “whatever else you want.”

“I don’t need anything. Adriel’s clothes are fine, and there was a fresh toothbrush in the bathroom.”

He lifted my hand and dropped a credit card onto it. “I hate shopping. I ain’t gonna do it, and Adriel’s shoes are too small for you. You walk funny in them. When you need to run, you need the right shoes.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Maybe if I’d been able to run...I frowned.

“Will you just buy shoes already?” he hissed.

Absently, I grabbed a pair of white and gray size nines. “I couldn’t run.”

“That’s what I just said. You gotta be able to run.”

“During the attack. I was trying to break away, but I couldn’t run. I can’t remember why.”

“Maybe you had bad shoes.”

I snickered. “Fine, fine. I’m letting you buy me shoes. But now I owe you.” I sighed. “More than I already do.”

“Get other stuff. As long as you’re running a tab, make it worthwhile.”

During checkout, I asked the lady if they were hiring.

“It’s easiest if you fill out an application online,” she replied, bagging the purchases. “Takes almost an hour to answer all the questions.”

Lynx didn’t say anything, but his ears went flat against his head and stayed that way even after we were back in the car.

“’Trick has been tracking every nurse and doctor who helped treat you or Espy. But you were there long enough that just about everyone had access.”

“What about Sonya? She was the nurse who brought in the IV that might have been tainted.”

“So far, everyone is coming up clean. And almost anyone who works at the hospital has access to the blood bank—either legitimately or not. The place isn’t that well guarded. The bags can also be tampered with before or after they were picked up.”

“What happened to Espy?”

“Tara and Adriel’s mom helped her. She’s doing a lot better.”

That was good news. And maybe her condition was just a coincidence. Maybe nothing had been after her. “Are you sure the vampires are on the up and up? I mean, anything like that on the other side viewed us as dinner.”

“He’s cool. He and his girlfriend, Tina, work at the hospital. They siphon off their meals from the blood bank.”

“How’d he lose his arm?”

“Fighting a ghoul.”

“Here or In Between?”

“He said he’s never been to In Between. That’s why he went vamp. He didn’t want to cross over.”

“Ghouls are worse than hellhounds. They’re mindless. They do nothing but eat souls, entire body and all. Bad news.”

“Damn straight.”

We didn’t say anything more until we pulled up at the hospital. Instead of parking in the front, he backed the car behind a dumpster in the rear of the building.

I was tiring fast, but didn’t admit it out loud.

Spook followed us out of the car this time and bound ahead as soon as Lynx opened a large metal door leading into the back of the hospital. Both Lynx and Spook paused and sniffed.

Lynx had let me enter first at Walmart, but here, he led the way. He glided along the wall, moving fast. “Door isn’t open. I told ’Trick we were coming.”

I didn’t spot any doors, but Spook prowled ahead down the hallway and then stopped suddenly.

My new shoes made it easier for me to shadow Lynx silently down the concrete steps. I kept far enough behind him that we wouldn’t interfere with one another, but his eyes had me beat in the dark until I slid sideways. “Nothing in the hallway,” I whispered.

He eased forward, his feet soundless. “Can’t get in if the door isn’t open. This doesn’t look good.” He stood back from the wall, staring at the same section of painted cinder blocks that Spook watched.

“Maybe if we knock?”

“He always knows when we come here. You better wait in the car.”

“I can check behind that wall. Watch my...me.”

Before he could argue, I went fully sideways and hunted for the cracks that had to be there. There wasn’t even enough of a gap for air, but then, vampires didn’t need to breathe. Neither did my floating form.

I slithered through and got more than my money’s worth.

Tina was surrounded by dots of blood that formed a strange pattern. Instead of a regular pentagram, the blood was a trail map of arrows forming a general circle shape. The lines wound in and around and were connected by black flames.

Patrick was balanced on his toes, just outside the line of blood surrounding Tina. A snarl peeled his face back, revealing fangs. There was barely room for him between the circle of blood droplets and a half full bag of blood that had been dropped nearby. A ghostly face hovered over the bag.

I gasped. “Amy!”

She would have noticed me if she hadn’t been busy talking. “Either you welcome me, or I take your girlfriend. I assure you, it will be temporary until I find the host we prepared.”

I hightailed it back through the door, hitting Spook in my haste. He was crouched low, waiting for a signal from me.

I slid back into my body so fast, I nearly knocked myself over. “Tina.” I stopped to heave in air. “She’s trapped in a blood circle. Amy is there!”

“Amy? Who is Amy?”

“Amy was In Between causing all kinds of havoc. But she’s in there trying to convince one of the vampires to take her in!”

Lynx shook my arm. “Can you open the door? Getting the key will take forever and picking a vampire lock is worse than stupid!”

“It’s tight in there.” I didn’t tell him just how tight or what the squeeze meant. It had been possible to knock things over when I was ghosted, but it required an enormous effort. Maybe I could still do something similar now, but it had hurt then, and in a tight spot like a lock, any energy was sure to ricochet.

I reached in my pocket and clutched the juniper berries. If nothing else, maybe I could hit Amy with them.

“Is there a turn lock on the inside?”

Lynx shook his head. “It’s keys only. That’s how I ended up stuck in that room with the zombie. I was checking rooms, helping Patrick investigate. That one room was locked, marked as a lab, so I knew something was up. I picked the lock, ducked in and closed the door to have privacy. A few seconds later, the lock clicked, and I was stuck in there with Beef for Brains.”

There wasn’t time for further explanation. “Be ready to push on the door if I succeed.”

The berry was nothing more in my hand than a smear of ghost energy. There was no such thing as fingers with my essence squeezed to fit into the space. What I really required was a bomb of some sort. I couldn’t snap the berry like a towel.

I shoved the berry essence into the lock mechanism, but there wasn’t enough room to leverage it. I tried pushing my own essence at it, but there simply wasn’t any momentum. Popping the berry might help. I could absorb its energy and possibly donate energy, but how much energy would be required before it would affect the physical lock?

Frustrated, I flitted inside the room. Patrick needed to open the door for Lynx.

I spun a berry hard at the female vampire, hoping to break her free. The gray energy hit an invisible wall and exploded back. That was more like it!

Spook took my action as a signal to attack. Without so much as a warning growl, he sprang at the enemy.

Amy screamed and dove for the female vampire, but Spook knocked her sideways.

“Open the door,” I yelled at Patrick. He was dead; he should be able to hear me. From the way his cold stare flicked to me and then avoided me, I knew he could see me.

His nearly liquid motion was even faster than Lynx, but he wasn’t interested in running for freedom.

His foot kicked the bag of blood with a vengeance, almost separating Amy from it.

The bloody container slid a good three feet from Tina. The weave sliced deep, and Amy’s face wavered, half melting into shreds.

Patrick was suddenly at the door, slamming the key home before my eyes could track him.

Instead of the click of a lock turning, the door gave a muffled boom.

The noise didn’t deter Lynx. He slammed into the room, claws out and ready to pounce.

I returned to my body and staggered after him.

Patrick went for the bag of blood again, but the weave stopped him dead in his tracks. With Amy focused on him, he couldn’t close in. If she didn’t claim him, the weave would.

He growled, fangs out, but was forced to step back before In Between could bid him welcome.

Amy still hovered over the bloody plastic, her face a nasty contortion of frayed bits. She pleaded with him. “I’m no different than you. I just want to live!”

Patrick kicked the door closed. I glanced at Lynx for reassurance, not liking being shut in here.

The vampire cursed. “The lock is blown.” His dark eyes focused on Lynx. “Did you cram explosives in there?”

Lynx raised empty palms, never batting an eye my way. “Didn’t bring any.”

That cat knew how to keep secrets, although not even I understood exactly what had happened. When Patrick stuck the key in, it must have pushed against the juniper essence enough to explode it. Ghosted energy was unpredictable. It took enormous amounts to create a breeze, but a sensitive person—or cat—could feel the presence of it without any expenditure whatsoever.

“It might be a good idea if a few more people had a key,” Lynx advised.

“It’s not as if the lock kept out the vermin,” Patrick snarled.

“What is preventing her from taking over Tina?” I asked.

Amy smirked. “I’m halfway there. She drank the demon blood when she picked up her lunch. That ties her to me.” Amy indicated the IV bag below her. “The binding diagram is complete. It’s her or her boyfriend here, but one or the other of them is mine.”

“It doesn’t look that way to me,” I said. “You can’t reach her now that Patrick kicked away the portal to In Between. And Patrick isn’t about to invite you to possess him just because you ask.”

She bared her teeth and reached my way, but the weave held her tight. “None of this would have been necessary had you given me your body, you bitch. The vamp is only temporary. I need a living body!”

The truth clicked. “You were the reason I died. But you aren’t the one who trapped me!”

Her smile was a black slick of oil across her face. “Ted cornered you inside a circle of your own blood, but you were fast. You just about killed him even though the demon blood made him incredibly strong. After you cut him, he finished linking the drops with his own blood. I thought we had you, but when I tried to possess you, your life force vanished. I didn’t realize then that demon blood in your system was the key to forcing your cooperation.”

I peeked sideways. The blood in the IV had a black, glowing energy. So did the trail along the floor encasing Tina. I slid back. “Demon blood. How in all of In Between did you persuade a demon to offer you blood?”

“I was still alive for the summoning. You can’t entice a demon without life. We placed a syringe in the circle before we summoned it. The demon agreed to provide blood in exchange for human blood from one of the patients in the hospital.”