Ghost guard, p.11
Ghost Guard, page 11
“Hold on, Ruby,” Abby crossed her arms. “Lady, just who the hell do you think you’re dealing with, anyway?”
“Yes,” Dominika nodded. “I know. The exulted Ghost Guard,” she leaned in and peered into Abby’s eyes. Her cataracts made the pupils look dull and sickly. “Don’t let your arrogance get the better of you, Abigail. You’ve never met, nor have you ever gone up against anything even remotely as powerful as Elyxa.”
She started for the exit, reclaiming the container she’d had earlier, a box made of thick pressed glass encased in stylish metal latticework. She gave it a sharp tap. At the sound, her strange friends, the pale beings, appeared from the cracks in the floor and slipped into the vessel. One last word before she slipped away, her sights fixed firmly on Rev.
“If you don’t want to hear my warning, so be it. Elyxa will be ready.”
DOMINIKA LOOKED STRAIGHT ahead, striding into the dark recesses of night. On her face she had the smile of a young woman, a lustful lilt on her lips. In her head she had but one thought—Rev. Who was this being? A spirit, most definitely. But what kind of spirit? Her intrigue was matched only by her jealousy. Abby would be a problem. That she could tell.
As her face passed through a shadow, the wrinkles over her eyes diminished. The milky film on her retinas cleared. Another shadow went by and her skin tightened even more.
By the time she emerged into the full moonlight her face looked completely different. Creases had vanished. Droopy eyelids were now lifted and new. Even her pallid, sunken cheeks appeared rosy and taut. She shed the garments of the old woman, furthering the metamorphosis, revealing a slim form, supple skin, and bouncing breasts as she bounded toward the street. As the cars passed, she smiled, knowing any one of them could be hers if she wanted. Too easy, though. The souls she was after presented much bigger challenges. Rev. She slipped into her awaiting Mercedes. She didn’t need to travel by automobile, yet loved the feel of the Corinthian leather against her bare legs, the bare legs exposed by a short, sexy skirt.
One last glance over her shoulder at the old, decrepit Gasworks and she giggled. This will be exciting, she thought. A touch to the steering column and the Mercedes roared to life. No key. No need. Without looking for traffic, she sped onto the highway and turned right, zipping past two semis and veering toward St. Johns Bridge. Horns blared and headlights flickered in the rearview mirror. She didn’t take notice. Rev. He was all she could think about now. She had to possess him. Elyxa peered over the side as she crossed the bridge. She’d be back.
NINE
RUBY SQUEALED PASSIONATELY about the strange visit from Dominika. The old lady had been gone a half hour and still the Ghost Guard team was baffled by the encounter. Ruby, as usual, voiced her concerns the most, prattling and babbling incessantly about the terrible sense she got from the whole ordeal.
“You felt it too?” Abby settled into her usual chair. “Because I got the distinct impression something wasn’t right about that woman.”
“That’s a polite way to put it,” Morris studied his computer screens, scanning for viruses or malware or anything foreign, searching for some kind of answer. “There’s just no way. I don’t care how much she’s in tune with the spirit world, or how many minds she can read, there’s absolutely no way that woman could have penetrated my electronic shield—unless…”
“Unless what?” Abby asked.
“Unless she had help,” he wrung his hands. “Darn!”
“Would you stop obsessing?” Rev hovered near the window, staring up at the bridge. “We’ve got bigger problems. Elyxa is obviously not to be taken lightly. If what Dominika said was even half right, we’ve got trouble.”
“We don’t know, Rev,” Abby said. “She may have been lying to us.”
“Abby, who do you think you’re talking to? We all saw what Elyxa is capable of.”
She nodded reluctantly.
“What do you think Dominika meant, though?” Rev asked nobody in particular. “That part about us stirring the ire of something we can’t understand? What did that mean?”
“This!” Morris indicated the video footage of their encounter with Elyxa. He had it playing on one of his monitors. “Elyxa’s very powerful,” he glanced at Brutus, then Ruby. “Look what she did to you two, how she overpowered you so easily.”
Brutus directed his eyes to the floor while keeping his chin high. He kept a silent vigil in his own shadow.
Ruby squeaked, saying Brutus didn’t want to talk about it.
“He never wants to talk about it,” Morris rolled his chair to the other end of his workstation.
Abby got up and stepped between them.
“Morris, now’s not the time for finger pointing.”
Morris held his forehead.
“I know, I know,” he got up and went to the dark corner where Brutus was loitering in his own morose stew of smoke and ash.
“I’m sorry, Brutus. I didn’t mean any disrespect, okay? It’s just that-that—I’m a little rattled…okay?”
Brutus exhaled. His breath was gray mist. Without a word he forgave his friend.
“We’re all rattled,” Rev tried to diffuse the tension. “I don’t know what gave me a worse feeling: the ass-kicking we got from Elyxa, or the social call from Dominika.”
Abby shook her head.
“I don’t like any of it.”
“THANKS FOR BRINGING us here, Mistress Elyxa!” Ogilvy dragged his knuckles in the soft dewy grass. The early evening showers had made the cemetery ground quite pliable. Perfect, Elyxa thought, for digging. “Master never takes us to cemeteries.”
“Yes,” agreed Renault. He raced behind his twin, each taking turns chasing the other around a small columbarium, six plaques in all, six spaces for urns. “Why don’t you take us to cemeteries to hunt, Master?”
“Because it’s beneath us, that’s why,” Aros cast a scornful glare across the broken-down graveyard. A lonely, forgotten place on the hill in the outskirts of a tiny town. He wondered exactly why such a dignified, omnipotent being like Elyxa would come to a place such as this. Elyxa pretended not to hear his thoughts. He didn’t need to know anything. As far as she was concerned, Aros was lucky she allowed him to come along.
Elyxa marched with determination, scanning the marble slabs, the carved crosses, the statuettes of cherubs in flight. Checking the dates, she saw most were right along the timeframe she was looking for—the late 1920s. That didn’t really matter. She already knew this was the place. She knew he was here.
“Why, Elyxa?” Aros’s displeasure got the best of him finally. “I have to know why you’re taking us to this…this place. You know as well as I do that only the lowest of the lowly hunters come to these places.”
Elyxa remained silent. Not a word, mentally or vocally. She had but one focus, and wouldn’t allow Aros with his inquisitions, nor the twin ghost goons and their antics, to distract her now. Not when she was this close.
“Honestly, Elyxa,” Aros wouldn’t stop berating her decision-making. “We all know the reason immortals hunt spirits. Not to feed from the spirit energy or revel in the supremacy. We don’t even hunt souls for conceited, self-centered reasons such as competing for the title of the greatest hunter of all time. Those are all secondary motives. We all know this. So why, Elyxa? Tell me why a graveyard? It’s too easy. There’s no dignity in it.”
“I don’t know about that,” Ogilvy flew between two headstones as a wisp of steam, then materialized into his full, lanky and powder-white physical form. “I think we can have fun here.”
Renault burst into existence from a puff of ashy fog next to his comrade.
“A soul is a soul, right?” he spied left to right to left, twitching his hairless eyebrows and licking his mottled lips with his mottled tongue. “And there has to be a soul around here somewhere.”
“But it’s so unbecoming,” argued Aros. “The hunt is a grand dance, a beautifully choreographed ballet between the predator and the prey. There’s a formality to it, a—”
“Looky! Looky!” Ogilvy stopped in midflight and pointed.
“We gotta dead one!” Renault shouted, and the chase was on, both ghosts jettisoning into the gloom. Elyxa had sensed the wandering spirit long ago. Aros had also, but wanted nothing to do with hunting in a cemetery.
“You two stop it!” Aros ordered. The thuggish ghosts paid their benefactor no mind, blinded by the thrill of the chase. The spirit they were after was a woman. Middle-aged and quite thin. It didn’t matter to Aros. He just wanted his slaves to quit wasting his time and their energy. “I said stop!”
Hooting. Howling. The spindly specters made great sport of cornering the terrorized lady, each coming at her from a different side. And then she slipped away and they started over with howls of delight, ignoring their master’s commands completely.
Elyxa watched the chaotic proceedings with an ember of irritation smoldering in her gut. And when it became obvious Aros had no control over his little dogs, she took it upon herself to yank the leash. Using thoughts only, she shrieked at them so loud they dropped from the sky instantly. Her nonverbal message came through to them quite clear: End this foolishness now or I take your souls!
It didn’t take any more convincing than that. Ogilvy rushed front and center, adopting a tall, rigid stance. A half second later, Renault was by his side, both scared witless but doing their best not to show it. Elyxa knew she’d shaken them, and that pleased her greatly. Obedient little ghosts. That’s what she needed right now, for this, most delicate of operations.
“That’s better,” she said with satisfaction. The gravesite she’d been looking for was right in front of her. “I have a job for you,” she gestured to the ground. “I want you to dig up this grave.”
“What?” Renault studied the inscription in the marble. “This guy?” he read the name. “Rever Ott?”
“What kinda stupid name is that!” Ogilvy slapped Renault’s back and laughed hard. Then Renault retaliated with a backslap of his own.
“Hey!” Ogilvy scowled and whacked Renault across the left cheek. Again Renault hit back, copying Ogilvy with an openhanded blow to the face.
“Son of a bitch!” Ogilvy bellowed, and locked arms with his gangly brother, the two becoming but swirls of milky white, snaking and bending around each other wildly.
Elyxa was on the verge of extinguishing these two insubordinate spirits, and, with a rapid burst of thought, showed Ogilvy and Renault exactly what fate awaited them. The emptiness. The nothingness. More terrifying than death. The true and final end. No more spirit. No more consciousness. No afterlife. No reincarnation. The soul was obliterated, and that chilling image made the two specters stop bickering and stand at attention once again.
“Like I said,” Elyxa hated repeating herself. “I want you to dig up this grave.”
Both ghosts, without turning their heads, sent their stares to Aros. Before Aros could answer, Elyxa commanded with a voice like thunder.
“GET DIGGING!”
In a snap the two got to work, long, spindly fingers scratching deep in the earth, reaching into the soil up to their elbows. Arms flying. Movements so rapid it was difficult even for Elyxa to keep up. For once she was impressed with the otherwise inept beings.
“At least they know how to dig a hole,” she said aloud.
“Pray tell, Elyxa. How is exhuming a body that has been in the ground since 1928 supposed to help us find and eliminate Ghost Guard?”
“It will help me,” she told Aros flatly. “Beyond that it is none of your concern.”
“I think it is my concern,” he wouldn’t accept her vague response. “We could be hunting right now. Really hunting, not shooting fish in a barrel. And you said we’d hunt down Ghost Guard. You said it.”
“I did. And we will,” her tone signaled the end of the conversation.
The ghosts produced a monstrous mess, tossing aside handful after handful of soil, making swift progress and delighting in their task. In no time they’d made it several feet down, carving out a near perfect rectangle in the ground. Like everything else, they made a competition of it, seeing who could dig faster. Unfortunately they forgot they were looking for a casket, and when Renault scratched the wood, he splintered it. One more good scrape with his muddy claws and he would have mangled the coffin and the body inside. Elyxa saw this and shouted for them to halt immediately, and they did, shivering with terror at what she might do to them if they made a false move.
“Open the box and get him out of there…carefully!”
They snapped to action, shaking and moaning in fear.
“Y-y-yes, Mistress,” Ogilvy cowered. “W-w-we’ll bring him to you. We’ll bring him…see?”
They laid the rotten corpse at her feet. Aros turned up his nose. Elyxa, on the other hand, positively beamed.
“He’s perfect…just perfect,” she sparkled with joy. “Put him in the car and let’s go.”
“What are you up to, Elyxa?” Aros asked. “Who is this Rever Ott?”
REV PRETENDED TO SIP SOME WINE. He didn’t actually take a drink. It was more for cover than anything else. He didn’t like being out in public alone, but, for Abby, he’d make an exception. Amid the restaurant regulars—middle-aged, nicely dressed—several different pairs of eyes drifted his direction occasionally. He noticed one particular woman glancing at him over her husband’s shoulder. It made him smile, and he couldn’t help but glance back.
“Do you ever turn that off,” Abby stepped into his view. He collapsed to a blurry mist for a half-second, then returned to physical form. His reaction to being surprised.
“What are you talking about?” he cleared his throat in an attempt at looking innocent. “Turn what off?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Rev,” she sat in the opposite seat. “You can’t go anywhere without attracting every female in heat for a hundred yards,” she searched the table at the far corner for the ogling admirer. A cougar with fake hair and fake boobs giggled at something said by the man sitting with her, then she darted her sights at Rev. She made eye contact with Abby and looked away quickly.
“Ah,” Abby nodded. “Rich and married. Very original, Rev.”
“I can’t help who looks at me,” he raised his glass to the woman. She blushed and glanced down as her unaware husband kept speaking. “Just some innocent flirting. No harm done.”
“Yeah, well I need you to get serious with me for a second. Can you do that?”
“Hey, I may not act like it all the time, but I can be serious,” he peeked over at the woman across the room.
“Rev!” he looked back at her. “Listen to me. There’s something we need to talk about.”
“Why here? Why now?” he looked around. “Why can’t we discuss this with the rest of the team?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know who or what exactly is listening to us, but I suspect we’re not fully secure in our conversations at Gasworks.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about Morris’s security system. I’m not sure if there isn’t someone manipulating things from the outside.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“Para-Intel? Why would they do something like that?”
“I don’t know yet. All I know is Morris set up one of the most sophisticated systems in the world, and it was toyed with by an eighty-year-old woman.”
“Dominika,” he nodded in acknowledgment. “That didn’t seem right. Not at all.”
“I just want to make sure you know…I held some information back earlier.”
“You did?” he leaned forward. “I knew it. What is it?”
“Rev, she’s coming after you.”
His smile vanished.
“Who’s coming after me? Dominika? Eww!”
“Elyxa, you idiot! Elyxa’s coming after you. She’s infatuated. She wants to destroy Ghost Guard. But most of all she wants to own you. She’s going to do it if we don’t get her first. That’s why I wanted to talk to you alone. We have to plan this quietly and carefully. Immortals are powerful, and they’re smart. We have to be smarter.”
“It sounds like you’re taking a big risk for nothing. Is it me? Could you actually be worried about me?”
“I’m worried about Ghost Guard. I’ve worked too hard and dedicated too much of my life to see it taken apart by that-that Elyxa.”
“Abby, why don’t you just come out and say what you want to say? You want to be alone with me, and this is the only way you can figure out how.”
“Rev! I mean it!” she banged the table. The low restaurant din dulled to almost nothing. Diners glanced their way. Rev didn’t look over to see if the woman was still watching. He didn’t need to. He could feel her licentious stare. If he wanted, he could penetrate her mind. Abby, though, had captured his attention, as she often had the power to do.
Abby lowered her voice after she noticed she was being noticed. That’s not what she wanted at all.
“See what you made me do? We don’t need this attention.”
“Then why ask me to come here?”
“I told you. I can’t trust Gasworks right now. Something’s going on, and until I get to the bottom of it, I don’t want to discuss vital matters when we’re there. Same with my apartment, and everywhere we normally go.”
“But why here, in such a romantic restaurant? Abby, is this a date?”
She stood.
“I should have known I couldn’t get you to be serious.”
“Abby, sit down,” he gave her a look that melted her knees. “Please. I apologize. Please, sit.”
She acquiesced, sitting slowly.
“Rev, I’m not playing.”
“I’m sorry,” he lowered his gaze. “Really.”
She trembled at his cold breath, his icy presence.
“I’ll never get used to how cold you are.”
“Are you cold?” he asked. “Here…”
A warm, gentle breeze. The lapping of tropical water. She closed her eyes and swore she could hear the ocean, waves like bathwater caressing her calves, her knees, her…
