The Ravaging in Between (The Reanimation Files Book 3) (17 page)

Vivienne jumped onto my back. The momentum caused us to fall, with me taking the worst of it. I tried to roll over and push her off me, but she had wild and sharply manicured ghost nails coming at my face so I had to throw my hands up to protect myself. She tried to get at my throat, and when she bent closer, I raised up and head-butted her as hard as I could. She yelped, and I used the moment to throw her off me. But before I could get up and start running again, I was dragged up, and Bald Guy had me in a full Nelson that I could not get out of.

“Die,” Baldy snarled. Moments later, Vivienne plunged her knife into my stomach. Searing pain shot through my body, and blood poured from the wound. With the blood it felt like my strength was also draining, and I sagged in Baldy’s hold.

“One more for good measure.” He pushed me to the ground, and I looked up just in time to see him bringing his knife down.

Just as I braced for impact, Baldy grunted and was suddenly airborne, flying away from me. Just as quickly, Vivienne was also dispatched with a yelp, and I was free, grateful, and confused. Until my eyes landed on my rescuer, who was standing a few feet away from me holding up the two energy runes he’d snatched from Vivienne and Baldy.

Kyosuke
.

The name came to me in an instant, as did a flood of memories that would have knocked me on my ass had I not already been sitting down. It was him I’d seen in the Underground. And the niggling feeling in the back of my mind that I couldn’t dredge up had, in fact, been memories from when I’d been dead. Memories from when I’d been in the In Between and encountered Kyo, Renton, ghost monster pits, and some hulking ghost that attacked me right before it all went dark.

Kyo grinned at me.

“I save you in the Afterlife and now I save you on this side as well. I should start charging.”

“What would you need money for?” I shot back. I was shocked to see Kyo here, but not as shocked as I would have been if I didn’t already know that ghosts were crossing back over.

“I’m sure I could find something to spend it on,” he said before he turned around. My attackers were hovering nearby, looking at each other uncertainly.

“Now, here’s how I see it,” Kyo said. “You three no longer have the means to hurt my friend, but you’re welcome to try, although I should warn you that you’d have to go through me first. Even with three against one, I don’t think you’d like your odds.”

They looked at each other, then without saying a word, turned around and fled.

“I thought so,” Kyo said. He turned back to me.

“Well Selene, it’s nice to see you again but…” He trailed off and his eyes grew wide and concerned.

“What?”

“Not to be overly alarming, but are you aware that there is a knife plunged into your stomach?”

I hadn’t forgotten, but the initial pain had subsided. I looked down at my body. “Oh, right.”

“Oh, right?” Kyo repeated. “Shouldn’t your reaction be more along the lines of screaming and me looking to get you some help?”

“Not exactly.” I took a deep breath, grabbed the hilt of the knife, and pulled it out.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, that hurt
.

I stayed hunched over, breathing hard for a minute while my vision crossed, nausea rolled through me, and my body tried to figure out just what the hell was going on. I tentatively touched my stomach, but though it was slick with blood, there was no wound.

“Um, wow,” Kyo said. “And…what?”

“Help me up, help me home, and we’ll talk. Between the two of us, I bet there’s a lot to cover.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Once we got back to my place, I almost felt back to normal.

I don’t think I would soon get to a place where I could fully comprehend that I was able to endure stab wounds and essentially shake it off. However, this was the third time I had been attacked with the intent to kill, so I wasn’t going to dwell on the impossible, mind-blowing aspect of it. I was just going to be grateful.

I left Kyo in the living room and went to take a shower. I came out to find him sitting on the couch staring in amazement at the television, which I had left on before going for my run because Luna didn’t do well when no one was home and the house was completely quiet. She was currently circling Kyo’s feet, sniffing him, and moving away when he reached out to her. She’d grown used to Ethan so she was probably wondering who this new ghost was. She trotted over when she saw me and I picked her up.

“This thing is incredible,” he said. “So there are people who spend their lives just acting things out every second of the day so you can be entertained?”

“Not quite.” I took the remote from him and changed the channel, instinctively putting on one of the channels Ethan used to love watching. Some anime show came on, one of the ones where people got into big metal suits—mechas, I think Ethan called them—and fought other people in mechas. The concept of anime was really lost on me.

“Whoa,” Kyo said. “Those aren’t real people. What is that?”

The bewilderment in his voice was highly amusing. “It’s a cartoon,” I said. “People draw pictures, then use various tools to make them move and they record human voices as their speaking voices.”

“Wow, someone drew all these moving pictures? And colored them?”

“Yup. But to answer your other question, yes, there are people who act and are recorded for our entertainment, but they don’t do it all day long. That would be quite impossible. The things you see with real people were recorded weeks, months, or even years ago. The people in them could be making new recordings right now or just living their lives until it’s time to record some more. Sometimes you can watch things going on in real time, which is called live, but it always ends at some point.”

Kyo sat back against the couch, shaking his head. “That is so weird,” he said. “I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Underground, so even though I have witnessed how different things are now, I have not had a lot of time to experience them.”

“When exactly did you die?” I asked.

“Hmm, calculating from what year I found out it currently is, I’d have to say it’s been about three hundred years.”

“Three hundred? Damn! Just about everything is different now.”

“Yes, I see people no longer get around by horse and carriage.”

“It’s a novelty these days. You can pay money to have someone drive you around a big park with your face in the back end of a horse. It’s supposedly romantic.”

Kyo laughed. “Not to you I see.”

“Definitely not my idea of romance.”

“What dance shall we dance, what darkness repel, what light shall be called forth for a chance to break your heart with my romance?”

My eyebrows rose. “Fancy yourself a poet, do you? If you worked, I’d tell you not to quit your day job.”

Kyo laughed. “I fancy myself a lot of things.” His face sobered. “But on to serious matters for a moment. Just how in the world did you survive getting knifed?”

“Part of my soul is missing. That’s pretty much the explanation. When I came back to life, part of my soul did not.”

“Oh…” Kyo was frowning deeply and seemed to be thinking something over.

“Oh?”

“The attack, right before you disappeared,” he said. “That ghost I’d been fighting, Garrus, was trying to absorb you. Ghosts organically strengthen the longer they are in the Afterlife, but the process can be accelerated by absorbing other ghosts. That’s what Garrus was trying to do to you, but he only got a small amount before I got him off you.”

“Shit.”
Well, that was some explanation.
“So part of my ghost is just wandering around the In Between inside some asshole?”

“Pretty much,” Kyo said. “But that may not be the worst thing. You now have a direct connection to the Afterlife. Part of you, even if it is a small part, is technically still dead. And that’s why you can get knifed, then get up and walk away from it. The part of you that is dead absorbs the blow and leaves the rest of you alone.”

That was along the lines of Tielle’s explanation, but it was still crazy to hear.

“You’re becoming more and more intriguing by the minute, Selene.”

“You’re a mystery yourself,” I said. “Thank you for saving me back there, but how the hell are you even here, and how did you know where I was to rescue me? I know I’ve caught sight of you before, why didn’t you come up to me?”

“I wanted to reach out, but I needed to know I was safe first,” he said. “I spotted you but didn’t think it was the best time to make an appearance. And to be honest, I am not entirely sure how I ended up back on this side. Therefore, I thought I’d lay low and try to figure things out and learn about the current times. I found my way to the Underground, which is something that existed even in my time, and was able to procure some energy runes as well as a lot of updates about your modern world.”

“You still could have shown yourself. I could have helped catch you up.”

Kyo shrugged. “My sense of self-preservation kept me in the shadows. But I kept an eye on you. That’s how I saw you getting attacked. What was that all about?”

“I don’t know. I have no clue who they were and why they wanted to kill me. I think they were working for someone. Which is a headache I don’t even know how to deal with. Especially if—like you—they aren’t even supposed to be here.”

“What do you mean?”

“You aren’t the only ghost from the other side who ended up back here. There are at least five more.” I then recalled the ghosts I had seen when I was searching for Ethan in the Underground that had been wearing clothes from different eras. It was likely that they were crossovers too. “Actually, there are probably a lot more than five.”

“Yes, I did encounter ghosts here who were with me on the other side,” Kyo said, frowning. “And no one out there knows how this happened?”

“Nope. What do you remember?”

“I was wandering the In Between, as per usual, then all of a sudden this…vortex I guess is the best word…opened up and I was sucked through. Before I knew it, I was back on this side surrounded by buildings, bright lights, and people who couldn’t see me. It was jarring to say the least.”

“I can imagine. And there’s no telling how many ghosts ended up back here and how many people they will hurt.”

“Why do you say that? I certainly haven’t hurt anyone.”

“The crossover ghosts that we are aware of have all tried to carry out the revenge that was denied to them when they initially died and their ghost rose.” I eyed Kyo.

“What? Wondering why I didn’t follow suit? Well you see, I died about three centuries ago, so if I had anyone to carry out revenge on, I’m on the wrong side to do so.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “It’s interesting to note that all of the crossover ghosts were ones who were sent to the Afterlife via a necromancer circle. Were you?”

“Indeed I was.”

“How come?” I really hoped it wasn’t because of some sinister unfinished business.

“Because that’s the way it was done back then,” he said. “Don’t you know your history? Ghost agencies were slowly emerging in my day as more awareness of the risks of necromancer circles started to come to light. But the practice was still the preferred method of getting ghosts off this plane of existence. As a matter of fact, they used to do bulk circles and ship off several ghosts at once. There wasn’t much in the way of settling their affairs beforehand.”

“I do remember learning about all those things. I just didn’t need that information once I became a working necromancer, so it wasn’t in my active memory.”

“Just be glad you weren’t a working necromancer in my day. You probably would not have lived a very long life.”

“Yeah, I would have been killed doing a circle. Or by tuberculosis, or consumption, as they said in your time.”

“Very true.”

“But anyway, the fact that you were all sent to the Afterlife through a necromancer circle has to hold some significance.”

“The significance is that all of the ghosts are from the In Between,” Kyo said. “I didn’t get to fully educate you on the In Between when you were there, but here is what I learned after being there for three hundred years. One, it is a holding place. Every person who dies has their ghost end up in the In Between at first. If they have unfinished business, they rise back to the living world. If they don’t have unfinished business they head on over to paradise. If, like in your case, they were able to be revived, then they go back to their bodies. And as you already saw, it’s also where all ghost monsters end up.”

“I see,” I said, thinking this over. “So I guess if a ghost’s unfinished business can’t be done, they get the circle and end up back in the In Between. And if they can be helped, they go to the real Afterlife.”

“Yup,” Kyo replied. “I’ve seen all those scenarios happen countless times. Ghosts whose unfinished business isn’t settled cannot move on to the true Afterlife. They remain stuck in the In Between. I wasn’t sure which scenario applied to you, but I knew at some point you’d blip out one way or another.”

“I didn’t remember being in the In Between when I woke up,” I said. “And I don’t think I regained consciousness when I was revived.”

“You got the best case scenario anyway,” Kyo said. “Back to life instead of back to the Afterlife.”

“I’m not complaining,” I said. “But back to the crossover ghosts—you all came from the same place. Something specific happened to target the In Between and allow you to cross back.”

“Yeah, that weird vortex thing I told you about.”

“Now the question is how did that happen? But the more important issue is getting the crossover ghosts off the streets because prolonged exposure to them has been causing people to fall ill and eventually explode.”

“Explode?” Kyo repeated, eyes wide.

“Yeah. Any idea what might cause that?”

“Remember what I told you when we were on the other side? Ghosts have the ability to morph, change, acquire new powers, and grow stronger. Ghost energy is exponentially stronger on the other side than it is here because that is a world made for ghosts. We are a lot stronger than the ghosts you deal with here.”