“The snow’s hurting them as much as it’s hurting us?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Fell said.
I nodded.
“We stopped a good few of them, maybe their leadership, Elder Sister excepted. I’m hoping the headaches they get will keep them out of the fray for the next bit. If the weekend ends and they have to go to work, and if my arguments had any effect, maybe that’s enough doubt to make them reconsider what they’re doing.”
“He still has the Shepherd, the Eye, the Astrologer, and he should have the support of the lesser Behaims, if he’s convinced them that helping him is the only way to rescue Laird,” Fell said.
“I know,” I said. I shivered, a sudden, jarring movement more than a gentle tremor. It seemed to startle Evan, who shuffled around some where he was tucked in between my neck and coat collar.”Fuck, can we get inside?”
“Joel sent a text before the phones died,” Alexis said. “There’s a place a block and a half this way. I’ll show you.”
We marched off as a group. I could see how the others crowded around one another, shoulder to shoulder. Only Maggie, Fell and I stood apart.
It bothered me that I wasn’t part of the huddle, but I was willing to trade the physical discomfort for the psychological security.
I rationalized it by thinking that I was wet and snow-covered enough that I’d just get them wet and more covered in snow.
It was feeble, but I’d put up with it.
Nobody was talking, and the- it wasn’t silence, with the wind howling and the nearby trees creaking as they blew, but it was a lack of conversation. I spoiled it by speaking up. “In terms of territories, how many do we have?”
“We left our mark at the garage, three apartments if we include that last one, and your place,” Alexis said. “A bit of graffiti, kind of saying ‘we live here’. I don’t know if that counts.”
“It’s pressure,” I said. “He’s lost soldiers, he’s getting meaner. The snowstorm may be a part of it.”
“We’re winning?” Alexis asked.
“We’re not losing, and that’s the important part,” I said. I was mumbling, my lips were so cold. “It’s a matter of time before he gets more involved.”
We passed a grocery store. There were people crowded inside. Taking shelter, and stocking up on supplies, it seemed.
“Joel didn’t say how stocked this place was,” Alexis said. “Should we grab stuff?”
I stopped. I could see Rose in the window. Where our hair and coats were flapping from the cold wind, Rose was still, her hair in place but for a few strands that had slipped through. Her face wasn’t as red as ours were.
Mary Francis was beside her, knife in hand.
She looked imperious, and it wasn’t just because the Bloody Mary made for an excellent contrast.
“We could,” I said. “I don’t think any place is delivering.”
“We shouldn’t,” Fell said. “Look.”
I looked, and I saw.
Ghosts. They were more monstrous than most I’d seen. Twisted, influenced by outside sources, maybe.
The Shepherd had our location. The ghost-keeper.
The ghosts were entering the grocery store from the far wall, mingling with the crowd. Searching among the vague silhouettes that represented people in the real world going about their business.
They weren’t looking for us.
One ghost stepped forward, crossing paths with an old man.
Another, a woman, walked forward, while a small boy ran from another direction, his head turned, oblivious to her, a plastic container of candy in one of his hands.
They stepped forward, overlapping. As ghosts were prone to do in the movies and tv shows, they dissipated, breaking up and becoming fog on contact, then began to draw back together.
But they weren’t walking through the people.
When they congealed, they congealed around or in the people.
The child continued on his way, but something stayed behind, a woman who’d bled.
The result was a mingling, with traits of both, a bleeding hermaphrodite woman-child.
More physical.
“Wraiths,” Fell said.
Wraiths. Ghosts twisted by negativity and spirits. Some, like Leonard, faded with time. Others found sources to tap to fuel themselves, but became twisted. More like the Mary Francis summoning that was keeping Rose company right now.
These were the twisted ones. I could imagine they were the Shepherd’s special reserve.
The old man and young man mingled to become a shadow bent by disease. The old man didn’t continue on his way. He fell like a rock, his features clarifying as his emotions grew stronger. Others leaped to his side to help.
The ghost had taken something from him, and he hadn’t had much to give.
I saw as another ghost found another victim. A ghost of a woman slender, finding a heavier man who looked all the heavier in full winter gear.
My view of the heavier man faded until he wasn’t visible at all, no matter how I focused my vision.
Not someone of much substance, it seemed.
The three ghosts headed straight for us.
“They know exactly where we are,” Fell said. “They’ve known for a bit. We just- this is a trap.”
“Drat and dagnabit,” Maggie muttered. “I wish I could swear properly.”
Fell looked around. “I don’t know how those scrying papers can even see us. This snowstorm-”
“Maybe the scrying papers aren’t what found us,” I said. I pointed.
It was a shape. A man, half again as tall as any of us, naked, his hair long and curly, a thin beard on his face. He carried a sword and a round shield that was broad enough to cover him from knee to shoulder. The snow piled on his shoulders, dusting his hair and pubes white.
Where he was supposed to have eyes beneath his eyelids, he had only shafts of light projected from some inner luminance, extending out in our direction.
When I changed my focus, viewing him with the Sight, I saw sun flares and bright spots.
“The Astrologer,” Fell said. He was backing up. He’d already drawn his gun. “She’s making a play.”
“Fuck,” I said. I shivered. “Can’t accuse him of not holding to the idea of the challenge. He’s playing the general, timing things to corner us.”
The glass window of the grocery store broke. I saw people shriek.
Mary Francis stood in the shattered window frame, but she wasn’t why they were screaming.
No, the screaming had started earlier, but it had been muffled by the distance between us and them and by the glass.
Someone was kneeling on the ground, bleeding openly. The silhouette was no longer vague, but was showing glimmers of something that might become a ghost. A psychic impression on the fabric of reality. Vague as the person was to my senses, the blood was very real.
More ghosts were finding victims in the chaos. I saw one ghost pass by several subjects before choosing another.
Picking hosts, complimentary souls to leech from, who shared some common element.
There was blood elsewhere. Spatters, further from the wraiths.
It took me a second to make sense of the storm within. Dark shapes that had been people were gathering and mingling like waves in a storm, crashing against one another.
The wraiths seemed to be getting stronger, feeding on the negativity and violence.
The people were rioting, and the Wraiths were both feeding on it and lapping it up.
I clenched my teeth.
An eye for an eye, Conquest? I went after the very core of his being, attacked his ability to be Conquest and subjugate others by putting him on his back foot, and he was returning the favor. Attacking my conscience and my drive to fight. This violence and these deaths were on my hands.