Hellsinger 01 - Fish and Ghosts (P) (MM) (21 page)

Help me
, the man mouthed once. Then he shuddered, his body convulsing in waves of violent spasms.

It was enough incentive to break free. Tearing himself loose of the woman’s ethereal grip nearly ripped his insides apart, and Wolf could barely stand, his feet unwilling or unable to support his weight.

He reached for the first thing he knew would help. It’d been too long since he’d been in the kind of life the rest of his family lived, but he’d sat through enough lessons and more than enough exercises to know what would work.

And the banquet table the house staff had set up for the Hellsingers outside the ballroom door had enough ammunition to help him loosen the ghost’s hold on his lover.

The creamer set was sitting where he’d last seen it, edged up against a trio of coffee decanters they’d long ago emptied and washed out. While the creamer was bare, its companion was still full, and Wolf grabbed at it, turning on his heel to lurch back to where Tristan fought off his ghostly attacker.

Wolf’s mind scrambled for any word he could use to trigger the will to send the woman away. Stumbling through the language bits floating through his brain, he plucked out the first thing that seemed even remotely useful—a spell of any kind, even if it were ludicrously stupid. His mind responded, grabbing at a single word, and Wolf flung the silver dish of sugar, spraying its sweet crystals over the wildly screaming woman covering Tristan’s body.

“
Hanareru
!”

He didn’t really know what to expect—especially since he didn’t know if he even got the word right. Certainly not a howling steam of smoke and dust shooting up to the ceiling in a twisting line and disappearing into the hall’s etched tin above them, leaving behind a stain of black ichors that slowly began to drip down to the floor below.

“Tris… babe….” Wolf kneeled down and slid his arm under the blond’s shoulders, lifting him up from the floor. “Talk to me.”

“Was… that Japanese?” Tristan gasped, coughing out a mouthful of sugar.

“Yeah, um… sorry. It was the only thing that popped up.” Wolf kissed the man’s forehead, relief flooding through him. “It doesn’t matter what the language is; you just need to be firm about the intent.”

“And the sugar?” The blond struggled to sit up, and Wolf cradled him closer, patting his back as he caught his breath.

“Yeah, you hear everyone screaming about rock salt and shit like that, but really, sugar will work too. Anything granular and mirrorlike. I’ve got a cousin who uses ground-up mica, but he’s fucking insane.” Crossing his legs, Wolf slid down to the floor next to Tristan and pulled the man into his lap, ignoring the blond’s feeble protests. “Shush and just… try to breathe. I’ve got to make a phone call.”

His cell was in his pocket. Surprisingly. Digging out the thin metal device with one hand, he kept his other arm around Tristan’s waist, holding the man to him. Thumbing the screen on, he hit the first number in his contact list, then tucked the phone into the crook of his neck and looped his other arm around Tristan’s body. Caught in his embrace, the slender man sagged against Wolf’s chest and exhaled hard, his breath ragged and thin.

The phone rang in Wolf’s ear, once, then twice, before a lilting, floral-pretty voice answered. Smiling despite himself, Wolf kissed the back of Tristan’s sweaty head and nearly lost the phone before he could slide his shoulder up to catch it.

“Hey, Mom. You busy? I need some help.” He paused, listening to the worried but excited ramble start up on the line. Taking his own deep breath, he whispered into the receiver when she stopped long enough to be heard. “And, um… can you bring a few boxes of condoms with you when you come up?”

Chapter 12

T
HEY
FOUND
Gidget and Matt huddled together in the ballroom, sitting cross-legged inside an unevenly laid circle of white powder. Dozens of empty sweetener packets were strewn on the floor around them, and they both look startled when Wolf swung open the ballroom doors. Their faces were flushed, but there was a definite bleached-out fear beneath the pink of their skin.

Shaking his head, he stalked in, approaching their dubious sanctuary. “Ah, there are the two lovebirds now. Tris, come in and let me take a look at your chest.”

“I’m fine. I just need something hot to drink.” Tristan shuffled in after him, rubbing at the spots where he swore he could still feel the ghost’s clammy fingers digging into his flesh.

There were pockets of chill left under his skin, but the mottling she’d caused was gone, leaving his skin as pale as it’d been before she touched him. His heart, however, was still skipping a few beats, and his lungs hurt from trying to suck in enough air to sustain him.

But what really pissed him off was the growing suspicion that Dr. Wolf Kincaid knew a hell of a lot more about getting rid of ghosts than anyone else in the damned place, and it was about time he spilled his guts.

Or Tristan was going to spill them for him.

“Equal?” Wolf picked up one of the packets off the ballroom floor. “Don’t know if that works, but hey, there’s enough sugar and saccharine to make up the difference. Now here comes the big question. Why didn’t the two of you just put a line across the door and call my cell phone? What’s with this whole fucking circle nonsense? Trying to summon Houdini? Get up. She’s gone.”

Tristan staggered over to a wing chair near the Hellsingers’ equipment and fell into its stuffed comfort with a weary sigh. As Gidget and Matt sheepishly stood up and brushed away the sweetener, Tristan took inventory of his body’s aches, sorting out which were Wolf’s doing and what he could put down to his ghostly attacker.

A new, pulsating pain on his tailbone was definitely from Granny. He’d hit the floor hard, and his ass now hurt on the outside and down his spine, an alternating beat to the once pleasant, faint sensation of Wolf’s lovemaking. The pains in his shoulders and chest were definitely from their enraged dead serial killer, but he couldn’t decide if the twinge at the crook of his throat was from her nails or a remnant of his lover’s ravenous biting during their shower.

Either way, he narrowed his eyes as he spied Wolf sweeping up the floor, then spreading the sweetener on the floor in front of the closed ballroom doors. He really could blame every single ache and pain he was feeling on the three people in the enormous chamber with him.

Tristan waited, a patiently simmering bundle of nerves stroked to a fury so very different from the floating, contented state he’d woken up in. Wolf checked a few things at their equipment bank, turning knobs and murmuring complicated things at squiggly jumping lights on gauges Tristan couldn’t make heads or tails out of. Gidget and Matt rushed about as well, and Tristan sat, slowly notching every second that passed into the fucking-pissed-off ledger he was holding against Wolf.

“Here, drink this. It’ll help with the shakes.” Wolf handed him a cup of steaming coffee Matt had brewed for the team. “There’s… um… no sugar because well….”

“Yeah, because it’s all over the floor by the door, but no worries, maybe I can shake some out of my armpit hair from the time you threw the salver over me,” Tristan snarled, unleashing everything he’d been percolating inside of him. “How about if you sit your damned ass down and tell me what the hell I’m in the middle of, because it sure looks like you know a fuck of a lot more than you’ve let on.”

The look Wolf gave him was priceless. Nearly as embarrassed as the one exchanged by the couple working behind him. Pointing to a folding metal chair, Tristan raised his eyebrows at his lover until the man lowered himself into it. Taking the paper cup from Wolf’s hands, he grunted at Gidget and Matt.

“Both of you too. You started this shit here,” he growled. “Pull up a fucking chair, and let’s all play
Catch Tristan Up On The Fucking Shit
game.”

He had to give them some credit. They moved quickly when motivated. Chairs scraped, and his coffee was still steaming by the time he had his meager audience gathered around him. Leaning back in his chair, Tristan winced at the stretching ache along his thighs as he pulled his knees up, but he waved off Wolf’s concerned hands reaching for him.

“No, no touching me. Not until I find out exactly who
you
are.” Tristan shook his head at the man he’d sucked to a shivering, boneless heap a few hours before. “Start talking, Kincaid, and don’t give me any of the what-do-you-want-to-know shit.”

Wolf ran his hands over his head, pulling spikes of dark hair. He stared up at the ceiling for a bit, as if to gather his thoughts. Beside him, Gidget fussed a bit with her nails, shooting her love a look every once in a while from under her lashes. She and Matt seemed to be having some sort of silent conversation between them, a mute language evolved from years of being together. Tristan would have been envious of that bond if he hadn’t been hurting in places Wolf hadn’t gotten to, and he was about to rap the man in question across the knees when Wolf began to speak.

“Let me start by saying I never lied to you, Tris.” This time, he let Wolf’s hand skim over his knee and rest on his thigh. The fan of the man’s fingers was familiar but still made Tristan’s insides clench with the want of him. “I want you to know that.”

“Okay,” he replied softly. “So… what?”

“I
am
in the business of disproving hauntings. It’s what I do for a living.” Wolf cocked his head, his lush-blue eyes sharp and focused on Tristan’s face. “It’s just not… what my family does for a living.”

“Um, do we need to be here?” Matt interrupted. “’Cause I’d really like to do some readings outside now that…
she
’s gone.”

Wolf looked over at the couple, and Gidget nodded toward the ballroom doors. “Really, Kincaid, I think we’re okay now. And we can always leave the sugar trail up in case we run into trouble.”

“Sure. Go on. But take your cells with you and call if you run into any shit,” Wolf replied softly. He waited as they gathered up their things, halfway listening to their subdued chatter as they exited the ballroom, leaving the doors open behind them. When their voices had faded off into the echoing halls beyond, Wolf turned back to look at Tristan.

“You know… stuff about ghosts.” Tristan tried not to sound as if he was accusing Wolf of something, but the edge of it was there.

“You do too,” his lover pointed out.

“No, I just accept them… see them,” Tristan replied sharply. “You
know
shit like sugar and salt and words. Who the hell knows those kinds of things and
still
doubts ghosts exist?”

“Because they… don’t always exist!” Wolf exhaled sharply, forcing his words out between his teeth. “Because there are people out
there
… in that world you’re avoiding… who con and trick others into believing things that aren’t real. Are there such things as ghosts? Maybe. Yes. In this place… with you… I can say, yeah. They do exist. But it’s rare, and even in this crazy hotel you’ve got, I’m not so fucking sure that what we’re seeing is—”

“Real?” Tristan pulled at the collar of his shirt, exposing the tiny bruises he’d found from the specter’s grasp. “What the fuck was that out there if it wasn’t real? I was hallucinating some crazy woman trying to push into me? That I
imagined
you throwing a sugar bowl at her and she flew away screaming? That I’m
crazy
?”

“No, you’re not crazy.” Wolf pulled up and leaned closer to wrap his arms around a resisting Tristan.

“No… you’re going to make me… do something stupid like forgive you and stop being pissed off. Cough up the information, Kincaid. Before this… us… goes any further.”

The house moved around them, breathing in its own sanity for a moment before Wolf broke its silence with the slow rumble of his deep voice.

“My family’s… different from other families. Kind of… weird, if you want to go that far.” Wolf’s hands rested on the small of Tristan’s back, his knees settling on either side of his lover’s until they were close. “My mom… she’ll be here soon. She’ll be able to help us. She’s a… I guess you could call her a medium. She and my sister, Ophelia Sunday, own a crystal shop and um….”

“She sees ghosts. Like I do,” Tristan whispered. “You
knew
I wasn’t crazy before you got here.”

“I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know you, but no, I never thought you were crazy,” Wolf admitted. “I just didn’t know if you were…. Hell, Tris, I’m not even sure my
mother
actually talks to ghosts. She’s five ways of insane herself, but things
happen
around her. Things I can’t explain. Hell, I’ve spent my whole life trying to explain away the things that go bump in the night, but my family… all of my family, not just my mother… believes in the supernatural. We cut our teeth on herbal remedies and candle colors.

“For the Kincaids, Samhain was our biggest holiday, and attending school is kind of optional. Hell, going on a spirit quest could be your entire fucking freshman project and the family would be okay with it.” Wolf’s hands kept moving, warming small circles on Tristan’s chilled skin. “I have cousins who hunt out hauntings, hoping to… shit, I don’t know what they think they’re doing. My mother… my aunts… hell, even Ophelia Sunday… put people in touch with their deceased. My grandmother’s eyes used to turn white, and she’d start rattling off about where someone could find their watch. It was… hard to grow up in. For me, anyway. Everyone else, it was natural, but for me… it was hard. Sometimes I think it’s a lie, but then… they say things… things they wouldn’t know, and I’ve seen the relief on these people’s faces. I just needed more…
proof
.”