Fierce Lessons (Ghosts & Demons Series Book 3) (16 page)

The crowd of neighbors parted to let the police through. There were eight cops, all with their guns drawn and pointed at us.

“What do we do?” Malta asked. For the first time since we’d met, her voice was that of a little girl. She must have been embarrassed because she cleared her throat and asked with more force, “What are your orders, Iowa?”

I stepped in front of my crew as bright red, white and blue lights strobed over me. A spotlight found me and one of the cops screamed at me to drop Excelsior.

I spoke in a low tone only my people could hear. “Choir, we are about to find out if Victor is right about what happens when the Normies get a taste of the truth.”

Manhattan and Malta helped Wilmington to her feet and held her between them. “Come what may,” Wil said, “I’ll face it on my feet.”

“We’re all going to get arrested!” Spider said. “Shit. What’s the statute of limitations in California?”

“For what?” Dallas asked.

“A little bit of everything,” Spider said. “You don’t get to be as holy as I am now without a lot of motivation from some…er…youthful indiscretions.”

The command came again. “Drop the sword!”
 

I whipped off my Santa hat and beamed a big smile. Surprise rippled through the crowd and everyone but the cops seemed to be trying to get a good picture with their cell phones in the dark at eighty feet.

“Take a good look, boys!” I yelled.

One voice rung out above the others. It was the cop closest to me. “Drop that sword, kid! Drop it and identify yourself!”

I tore my shirt open to reveal my armor. The gold breastplate shone in the spotlight. I held my weapon high. “This is Excelsior and yes, those
are
horns growing out of my head! Stay back! I’m mean, I’m annoyed and I have daddy issues! I…am…
Chaos!
”

Okay, that was a little cartoony, but this is a weird paranormal adventure packed with ghosts and demons and jokes and swords and sorcery. Excuse me, but what the hell did you expect?

The cops thought my defiant little speech was a bit over the top, too. They began to laugh at me. I even heard Spider chortling behind me. I assumed Anguloora was five kinds of pissed off and had already disappeared over the fence.

Still, I stood there in my best heroine takes on the world sort of stance with red, white and blue lights glittering down my blade. I did not budge and I did not lower my weapon.

Sure, laugh it up, assholes. It’s all great fun until the neighborhood erupts in terrified screams.

Which it did.

Lesson 182: It’s not
deus ex machina
. It’s called planning ahead. Try planning ahead and you could save yourself from whatever your issues are, too.

23

T
he first time I saw a ghost, it was my first love, Brad Evers. The boy who defended me from a high school bully was murdered by my father. The boy who took me to my first dance became a ghost standing in a field.

That shock left me unhinged at first. I remember the terror. I remember the sorrow. For a little while there, I even thought I belonged in the mental hospital I was sent to. I worried what it meant for me and everyone I knew that we could be trapped by our old lives after death.

We ignore death until we have to confront it, but I think, in our quiet moments, we feel time sliding away from us like mercury, uncatchable. We worry about many transient concerns: bills, what to eat, where to go, what to do. But the one fear — the terror that is most legitimate and permanent — is what happens when we die. We wonder about what’s next all our lives but we don’t want to solve that mystery too soon.
 

As I look back on that night in Palo Alto — the parts where members of my team weren’t hurt or killed — it was a marvel. I felt the heat of the burning mansion at my back. It seemed that the world had stopped to look at my disfigurement but, in that moment, the horns growing out of my head didn’t seem to matter much.

I’d watched what seemed like a hundred videos of police shooting and beating people. I wondered which cop was going to get so nervous they would shoot me in the face.
 

When you expect to be shot in the face, time can slow down. You think about a lot of things. I thought of Mama hearing the bad news. I thought of the demons I’d met, laughing at me for getting killed by my own kind. I thought of how I’d never get to save Samantha from the demon dimension. I wondered how much damage my failed mission would really do to the world. If the truth is supposed to set us free, maybe it was past time everyone knew about the threat of invasion from the Ra.

Kill me and maybe I’ll get some peace,
I thought.
My heart was always in the right place, I think. But I’m ready to die.

I knew I was lying to myself when the first scream reached me. Immense relief washed over me as the screams spread.

Ordinary humans cannot see ghosts but every Magical and each sword singer of the Choir Invisible can. With Psymon’s help, the cops and the onlookers all saw what we saw. Psychic Psymon was on the job showing the Normies what terror might await them after death.
 

Rory came down the street toward the burning mansion. The rising flames lit the faces of the army of the dead following Rory’s lead. They shone in the night. Every mortal wound was on display. From burn victims to the unscarred dead and the shuffling elderly, the misty wistfuls followed Rory into the crowd. Rory had collected them from the graveyard down the road. Some of those civilians might even have recognized some of the ghosts coming back to the neighborhood.

Many of the Normies froze in place at first. Some wet themselves. Others ran screaming with their hands held high over their heads. The screams of horror spread out in ripples. Then all the humans began to flee. They fled from the horrors Psymon allowed them to see. They ran from the truth of those who are left behind when the funerals are done.

I heard shouts of, “Stop! Stop right there!” The good protectors of Palo Alto had not been informed on the delicate details of ghost wrangling. Unblessed bullets and blades do nothing. One cop tried to tase Rory.

Heh. Good luck with that. Unless you’ve got a lot of sacred stones, you can’t burn and torment Rory.

“Stay back! Stay back!” The cops screamed that a lot. Finally, they took the hint and retreated.

Unless you’re a demon princess with a powerful ghost like Rory to order around, ghosts don’t do as they are told.

Feeling threatened, some of the cops at the rear began firing into the horde as they ran. To be fair, a bunch of the ghosts
did
look like zombies. Car accident victims, mostly. My poor Brad had had that same shell shocked, vacant look. Two bloody stumps for arms was also a tad off-putting.

As the ghosts kept coming, the police forgot about me and my team. The police officers rushed back to protect their own and put some space between themselves and the scary things that wouldn’t fall down when shot.

In the midst of an otherworldly panic, I’m sure I would have done the same. That’s what I’d been counting on.

The pale spirit of the bodyguard I’d killed rose from behind the Barracuda. He looked confused as he stared down at his lifeless body.

“You’re dead, you idiot,” Spider said. “Go wait outside a cemetery for a hundred years or something. You’re in a time out! Go think about what you’ve done.”

I might have laughed at our triumph but Minnie’s death spoiled that. All I wanted to do now was go get Pandora’s box and dig the pointy end of Excelsior through a slot and see if demon mages scream in high octaves.

The dead bodyguard lurched forward, his eyes fixed on me. I almost sent him Elsewhere with a blessed blade then. Then I decided, no. This is your fate. Spider was right. “I’m not letting you off so easy. I’m only killing you once.”

The dead bodyguard gave me one more long look, bowed, and wandered away to follow Rory.

“Mount up!” I ordered my team. “Get out of here! I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point!” (That sounded more impressive than, “I’ll meet you behind the Sizzler closest to our Motel Six!”)

As my crew made for the vans, I heard a shout of pain behind me. I knew that voice.
 

Rory popped into view as I blinked. “He’s upstairs, child! Go!”

“Thank you, Rory!”

“No need for that, Iowa. Thank you. I’ll see you again! I’ll keep watch and I’ll try to come when you need me! Go! Go! There’s little time!”

The old ghost was gone again with my next blink. I leapt for the fence and ran along the top of it, back toward the burning house.

The first floor was in flames. I’d already had plenty of experience with burning buildings and really didn’t want to do that again. The last time I went into a burning building, bad things happened that haunted my dreams. I’d lost my friend and friendly boss, Samantha Biggs, to the demon dimension.

A crash and a shriek of pain splintered the air.

Key and Peter Smythe captured and kidnapped Sam back at Castille as it burnt to the ground. I couldn’t bear losing any more people. Not tonight, anyway. I leapt for a second story balcony, made it easily, and kicked through a glass door. The hole acted like a chimney and smoke poured out. Coughing, I rushed in.

“Anguloora?”

Nothing.

“Anguloora!”

“Here!”

The first floor of the house was an inferno. I expected to see him writhing amid the flames pinned under a beam or something, or perhaps he’d fallen through the floor. Instead, he called to me from the third floor.
 

When I found him in a bedroom it was clear what the screaming had been about. He had already gone through the flames. The archer’s eyebrows and hair were gone and his clothes were burnt and stuck to his blistered skin.
 

He lay on a huge bed, wincing from the pain, teeth gritted. He held a large silver case to his chest. Anguloora was panting. “I was quick. Wasn’t quick enough.”

I stepped toward him.

“Don’t touch me!” he said.

I nodded. “It’ll hurt too much, Devin, but I’m going to have to touch you to get you out of here.”

I watched his pulse pound in his neck. His respiration was shallow. The smoke inhalation hadn’t killed us yet but he’d probably burned his lungs with superheated air.

“What have you risked your life for, Devin?”

He looked down at the case. “It’s one of the unholy of unholies.”

“Not helping. Tell me.”

Tears slid from the big Samoan’s eyes. “It’s what we’re really here for. You had your game to run but mine was the real mission. Merlin only got you command of this mission to get what he wanted. I’m here because of what Victor wants.”

I’d had reason to distrust the conductor of the Choir before but hearing this hurt. Not as much as burned skin, but still.

Something crashed downstairs. We were running out of time.

“Take this back to Victor,” Anguloora said. His voice shook. “There’s a charm in my gauntlet. Take that, too, in case you ever lose this. The charm will help you find it.”

I pulled the charm out. It hurt him, but I got it. It was a gem that looked like an ordinary chunk of jade. It glowed green, then black, in my palm.

“A Merlin special,” Anguloora explained. “It is the Charm of Lost Things. Keep it. Maybe you’ll lose your car keys or something. You picture the thing you’re looking for and it will guide you. No matter how far away what you’re looking for is, you’ll know whether to go right, left or straight. Hold on to it, Iowa. It’s very valuable. That’s part of how Merlin bought you your mission…the one
he
wanted.” Despite his pain, he actually chuckled. “You have no idea what you’re doing. You’re a tool.” Spasms of pain wracked his body again and more tears came.

Getting laughed at made what I was about to do easier.

 
I heard more sirens, closer now. The fire department had arrived. The screams had died so I was sure Psymon was safely out of range with the rest of the team. The Normies would be unplugged now. The ghost herd would still be wandering through the neighborhood, but imperceptible to normal humans. The terror would hold for a while. The confusion would reside in them for the rest of their lives. Now was the time to use their confusion to escape.

“I came here for Chronos so Merlin’s immortality finally ends. I get that. What’s in the case?”

“The solution to keeping the Ra out of our dimension for a long while. Merlin’s using you. Victor’s using you.”

“And you?” I asked.

“Me? I was only following orders.”

I hate that sentence so much.

Anguloora began a hacking cough and couldn’t seem to stop. Something else crashed and thundered downstairs. My guess is that was the sound of a baby grand piano falling into the basement.

“Devin, I have to get you out of here now. The house will collapse under us any second.”

He shook his head and held the case out to me between shaking hands. “Go.”

“You hold the case. I’ll hold you.” I slipped Excelsior onto my back and bent to pick him up.

“No! No!” His next ‘no’ turned into a scream as I scooped him up. He struggled weakly as bright cinders wafted behind us. I jumped to the ground.

“It’ll hurt more if I have to drag you, tough guy.”

He dropped the case, in defiance, I think. That was a tactical error. I picked it up. Its weight surprised me. “What is this? Made of lead?”

He wouldn’t answer. No matter. I have demon muscles. I dragged him. It hurt him more. I didn’t mind too much.
 

Lesson 183: You can want to do a bad thing but still do the right thing. There is a time for spite but you can still rescue a lying douchebag.

24

G
etting back to the Sizzler was harder than I expected. I’m a nice girl next door from Iowa. My boyfriend drove his parents’ tractor without permission once. My point is, I’m not accustomed to carjacking. However, this was one of those situations where the horns were helpful.

Picture this: you’re driving along Juniper Sierra Boulevard on a cool evening in Palo Alto contemplating the frozen yogurt melting in the back seat. Out of the night, a shadow whips across the road.