Bone Cold: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 2), page 7
“I assume your mother has taught you some healing spells.” Dad motioned to the men behind him, and they all turned as if they were one and strode back down the hillside, the ice crunching underneath their heavy boots. “Take him home, give him the proper herbs, and let him get some rest.”
“Dad.” I stood from Nathan’s side, crossed my arms over my chest, and lifted my chin. “What are you doing here? What the hell is going on?”
“I told you last night, Holly. I’m here to stop these abnormal spirits from hurting anyone.”
“How did you know they’d be in the cemetery tonight?” I asked, determined to get more answers than he was trying to give.
“We have some special equipment that gives us readings on spirit activity. The cemetery had a lot of blips on the screen, but it appears it didn’t alert us quickly enough in this particular situation.” He glanced from me to where Laura and Nathan shivered on the ground. “You kids be sure to stay home tonight. Seaport won’t be a safe place.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Laura stood and moved to my side.
“The readings are showing…” He cocked his head for a moment, studying me. “Did anything odd happen before the attack?”
My eyes darted to where Anthony laid underneath the ground. “That grave. It’s Anthony Lombardi’s, the man who attacked Mom last year. We thought he was still alive, but…there he is.”
“And just before the attack, Holly touched the headstone. Something happened, didn’t it?” Laura looped a hand through my arm and squeezed.
“Magic,” I said. “The headstone felt like magic. After that, the spirits surrounded us before we could figure out what was going on.”
Dad’s eyebrows rose high on his forehead. “Magic? Oh, Holly. I don’t know how he’s done done it, but when you touched his headstone, it unleashed a horde of spirits on this town.”
CHAPTER 8
After Dad dropped the news that dozens of shaman-resistant spirits were roaming the streets of Seaport, Laura and I headed back to my house to give Nathan some herbal treatment. If it weren’t for him, I would have demanded to join the task force against the spirits. Dad’s team had huddled together, barking codes I didn’t understand into walkie-talkies and pouring over maps of the surrounding area. Everything felt electric and full of purpose.
We’d been ordered to go home, lock our doors, and stay inside. Not that locks would do any good if a spirit wandered into our neighborhood. Apparently, nothing we could do would stop these new arrivals from sucking away our life if they got close enough. We were as helpless as humans, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
When we pulled up in front of the house, I couldn’t help but notice the perfectly manicured shrubs, the clean windows, the polished white panels. My heart ached for Mom to open that front door and welcome me inside with outstretched arms, to tell me that everything would be okay. But the door stayed still and silent, shut hard against the outside, like a crypt.
Jason had left while we were in town to join his family, so Laura and I had to wrestle Nathan’s slack body out of the truck ourselves. Grunting, we eased him off the seat and ducked under an arm each, shuffling into the house with his weight pressing hard on our shoulders. When I kicked the front door open, Astral shrieked and darted down the hallway to escape. I couldn’t blame him.
Once we’d eased Nathan on the couch, I headed to Mom’s room to grab some healing supplies from her closet. I had a few sage leaves in my supply bag, but Mom would have the really strong stuff, the kind Wanda sold in the back room where no one could see.
Frowning, my mind wandered to that strange orange-haired woman. She must have known what would happen tonight. The whole point in sending me there was so that I could find that headstone. But how could she do such a thing? What if Nathan had died? Fisting my hands, I closed my eyes and let my emotions wash over me. Anger, pain, and something bitter and sharp…fear. Dad’s team seemed prepared enough with their crazy rifles, but what if they weren’t successful tonight? If these spirits won the battle, there’d be no telling how many lives they might steal.
Shaking my head, I grabbed the herbs and headed back into the living room. Laura was murmuring on her phone, her back to me. When she turned around, she bit her lip and shut her cell with a click.
“What?” I asked, dread pooling in my stomach. “I know that look. Something else is wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong, but you’re not going to like it,” Laura said quickly. “George just called. She said she’d heard news on the grapevine that demons were on the loose. She wants to come here. Says she thinks she’ll be safer inside your house. I tried to tell her no, but…”
I frowned. “That whole thing between her and Wanda was really weird. I’m not sure I trust her.”
“Me either, but she’s kind of coming over anyway,” Laura said. “She didn’t listen when I tried to tell her no.”
The doorbell rang, and my eyebrows shot up my forehead. “Okay, I’m going to be seriously creeped out if that’s her. How could she have gotten here so fast?”
“I don’t know.” Laura’s eyes darted to the front door. “Maybe it’s your dad or something.”
“It’s not going to be my dad,” I said, dropping the supplies onto the coffee table. I pushed through the Chilean wooden beads and paused at the door. It was at times like these we could really use an eyehole to see who was creeping around outside. Bracing myself, I swung open the door to reveal George leaning on the doorframe, one hand on her phone as she texted away.
“Hey, George,” I said. “Now’s not a good time.”
“I know. That’s why I want in there,” she said, pointing down the hallway as Laura appeared behind me.
“How’d you get here so fast?” Laura asked. “Have you been hanging around on the porch or something?”
George raised her eyebrows and ambled into the house, kicking off her snow-crusted sneakers before disappearing down the hall. It was then I noticed she hadn’t bothered with a coat, a hat, or a pair of gloves. My scalp prickled.Weird. With a heavy sigh, I shut the door and gave Laura a look.
“Sorry,” Laura whispered. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.”
“Yeah, right.” We headed toward the living room where we found George frowning down at Nathan.
“He’s not looking so great,” she said, plopping into the recliner where Mom used to spend almost every waking moment of her life. The distant click of knitting needles still haunted me sometimes. I could remember exactly how she’d looked, eyes blurry, face drawn. Turning away, I tucked a blanket around Nathan’s shoulders. Now was not the time to take a stroll down memory lane.
“Yeah, well, he got attacked,” I said. “He’s lucky to even be alive.”
Swallowing hard, I placed a few of Mom’s healing leaves on Nathan’s damp forehead before taking the rest to make the strongest dosage of tea in the world. While the kettle boiled, I heard the distant hum of George’s voice and the surprising bark of Laura’s laugh. Frowning, I craned my head around the doorframe. They sat curved over George’s phone, looking down at something on the screen and trying their best to hold back their laughter.
What the hell? I didn’t know what George was up to now, but I didn’t like it. My Intuition prickled at my scalp. Somehow, she was involved in the magic world. Maybe she had the same kind of power that Wanda was so hellbent on hiding. She certainly wasn’t a shaman, even though she kept insinuating herself into our world and talking about demons and spirits and whatever else was going on around here.
Unfortunately for me, George was the least of my problems. There were much worse things to worry about than the new weird girl at school. Spirits-—or demons as she liked to call them—were on the hunt in our town, all because of me. And my boyfriend had been their first victim.
When I carried Nathan’s tea into the living room, Laura and George fell silent. I tried to catch Laura’s eyes to see if I could get some kind of hint as to what they’d been talking about, but she did her best to avoid my gaze. Instead, she flipped through the history book Mom had left for me to read. The one I hadn’t had a chance to look through yet.
Again with the secrets. This wasn’t like Laura. Frowning, I squatted next to Nathan and brushed damp strands of hair off his forehead. My heart constricted as I watched the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. He might be okay now, but he definitely wouldn’t be if a spirit attacked him again. I couldn’t let him get involved anymore, no matter what he said.
Gently, I lifted his head from the pillow and raised the steaming cup to his lips. His eyelids fluttered open, and he made a wheezing sound when he tried to speak. “Holly? What happened?”
“Shhh,” I said. “Drink this and go back to sleep.”
He nodded groggily and opened his mouth to gulp down the healing tea. The liquid dripped onto his chin, and I swiped it away with a napkin before lowering his head to the pillow. I removed the leaves from his forehead, now soaked through with sweat, and placed a fresh batch on his clammy skin.
“Is he going to be okay?” George asked, actually sounding concerned.
“He’s going to be okay as he can be, but there’s nothing I can do to replace what he’s lost.” I stood from Nathan’s side to stare out the front window at the dark world. Bare branches bent sideways in the wind, and power lines whipped overhead. A plastic bag from the local deli skittered along the empty road as the streetlights cast crazy shadows on the squat houses surrounding mine. “I’m going to try to call my mom again.”
I left the living room and found myself back in Mom’s room, face down on her bed. It smelled of roses and perfume and Astral’s fur. A moment later, I felt the soft bounce of something landing on the bed by my face. Lifting my head, I saw Astral sitting beside me, his eyes glittering in a way that made him look way more intelligent than any cat should be. I reached up and scratched his neck.
“I feel lost, Astral,” I said. “Even more lost than last year. At least then I had some kind of plan.”
He meowed, but I didn’t understand the language of cats. Whatever intelligence he had, he kept it hidden in his eyes. For once, I wished he could speak and tell me what to do. Rolling onto my back, I tried Mom’s cell again. This time it didn’t even ring, going straight to voicemail instead. She’d probably turned off her phone, I tried to tell myself. She was out on a mission after all. It’s not like she was normally contactable when she was off on shaman business. There had been plenty of times I hadn’t been able to talk to her for days.
But the fresh grave holding Anthony Lombardi’s body changed things. A lot. Instead of trying Mom’s phone again, I wrote out a text to warn her of what we’d found in the cemetery. I decided not to mention Dad yet, but I made sure to let her know that spirits were back in Seaport. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as last time. If something was going down, she had to know.
“Holly! Come quick!” Laura yelled. I jumped up from the bed and pounded my feet down the hallway, my breath caught in my throat for fear that Nathan had taken a turn for the worse, that he really wasn’t okay after all.
“What’s going on?” I yelled as I rushed into the room, my eyes trained on Nathan. His chest still rose and fell in the same steady rhythm, and a soft and peaceful expression had crossed his face. My shoulders sagged as I stopped short and caught my breath. He looked fine.
Laura was across the room, staring out the the window that overlooked the next door neighbor’s yard. George peered over her shoulder and tapped lightly on the frosted glass.
“There’s something happening next door,” she whispered. “We heard a yell. Then, something crashed.”
My heart sunk down into my toes. The house next door belonged to Jeff Cline, the man whose life I had stolen by summoning a spirit into his house during September’s chaos. He had ended up surviving the ordeal, but I’d never been able to forgive myself for crossing that line. There was life swirling through my veins that rightfully belonged to him.
“I think there may be a spirit over there, Holls,” Laura said without turning around. She knew what I’d done that night. She was one of the few people who did. I never told Mom or Nathan or anyone else about Jeff Cline. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. The only other person who knew I’d made a deal with a spirit to feed on my neighbor’s soul was Anthony Lombardi. And now he was dead.
“Well, then I’ll have to try to banish it.” The words popped out of my mouth before I even had a chance to process their meaning. But after hearing them aloud, I knew it was the right thing to do. Even if all I did was try and fail. I owed Jeff Cline at least that much.
Laura whipped her head around. “What about what your dad said?”
“If I don’t try, he might be dead before someone from Dad’s team shows up.”
“Wait a minute.” George moved away from the window to stand tall before me. “You really shouldn’t banish a demon. It messes up the balance.”
“Fuck the balance. That man could die if I don’t do something, George.”
“Fine.” She held up her hands in surrender. “But I’m staying here.”
“Good,” I said, rolling my eyes as I turned to grab my messenger bag. I didn’t want her coming along anyway. The only person I needed for this was Laura, and even then, I wanted her to stay out of that house. This was something I had to do by myself. No one else was going to get hurt because of my actions.
I dumped all my candles and parchment books and bones on the floor and plopped cross-legged on the carpet. I’d learned my lesson from the screw-up at Jason’s house. I wasn’t going to wait to cast any spells this time. They had to be done now before the spirit got a whiff of my arrival.
Laura joined me and held out her hand without a word. We pricked our skin and lit the wick, using our shaman song to drop ourselves into our magic, our blood mingling together as the spell washed over us. When we had finished binding ourselves together, I moved onto the next spell without a glance in George’s direction. I no longer cared what she saw. The way she talked, she’d probably seen this kind of thing a million times before.
I chanted, long and slow, pouring my mind into the image of a sage leaf. The one thing I focused on when I forced myself to enter the Borderland. Shadows and shifting sand swirled across my vision, weaving masses of black and red and gold into strands of writhing snakes. Taking deep breaths, I stood. The floor below me was a sponge, soft and bouncy, as if I were walking on a sea of marshmallows.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said to Laura, though I wasn’t entirely sure she could hear me when I was inside the Borderland. My voice echoed around me, canyons of darkness on every side.
Carefully, I exited the house, my body sliding through the door as if I didn’t exist. It took what felt like hours to walk the short distance from my front porch to Jeff Cline’s tiny home that squatted next to mine. The snow fell from the sky, but it didn’t touch my skin. I didn’t even knock when I reached his front door. Instead, I just slid through the walls, ghost-like and quiet as the dead.
The house was dark, but from somewhere nearby came the unmistakable sound of a man grunting and thrashing on the ground. My astral projected form moved down the darkened hallway toward the sound. A heavy crash exploded just ahead, and then silence. When I rounded the corner, a dark form rose high over Jeff Cline’s body where he lay sprawled on a spattered carpet. It was once a light gray, and now it was nothing but bloody red.
The spirit hissed and jerked its head toward me, mouth nothing more than a gaping black hole. Heartbeat pounding against my skull, I strode forward and held up a hand in front of me, gritting my teeth at the power building up in my veins.
“Leave!” I shouted into the wind that picked up steam, rattling against the open door.
The spirit rose higher in the air and let out a noise that sounded eerily similar to a harsh laugh. Its head lowered so that it was eye-to-eye with me, though all I could see were two oval burning disks of black.
“I said, go!” My hand shot out, and I threw all my power behind my words. It shuddered under my feet and shook the very core of my being. Holding my hands to my head, I steadied myself until the wave of magic had torn through me. When I finally glanced up, the spirit was still there.
It hissed and shot closer, weaving a web of darkness before my eyes. “Your magic has no power over me, shaman.”
Turning, it hovered over Jeff Cline’s fallen body, slivers of life winding from his curled form and into the spirit’s open mouth. I jumped up and rushed forward, throwing out my hands to try again. My fingers brushed against the spirit and ice ripped through my veins. Screaming, I pulled back, stumbling against the bunched up rug and falling flat on my ass.
My astral projected form felt nothing other than the violent sting spreading through my arms. Grimacing, I pushed myself up again. If I could touch the spirit, maybe I could drag it away from Jeff Cline before all of his life force got sucked dry.
But just as I stood, my body ripped in half. Pain tore through my head, and when I blinked my eyes, Laura’s face hovered before mine. The familiar sight of Mom’s ceremonial tapestries on our living room walls crowded in on every side of me, forcing a claustrophobic tightness in my skull. My eyebrows crinkled together as my mind tried to process what had happened.
Two rough hands grabbed my bare arms and hauled me to my feet, spinning me around to look up into the masked face of a shaman task force member.
“What the hell?” I jerked away. “You can’t just stop an astral projection like that.”
“I can, and I did.” His voice was low and dark through his helmet. “We’re under strict orders to stop you from interfering.”
“Seriously?” I threw up my hands. “What was I supposed to do? There’s a spirit next door killing someone.”
“That’s not up for me to decide,” he said. “I’m taking you to see your father.”
CHAPTER 9
