Page 21 of Wicked Warlock
“We don’t have a minute.” Kylian marched forward, stomping his way toward the tornado of souls. He paused for a moment, tilting back his head, looking up at the endlessness of souls. He gave a single shrug and began to step forward.
“NO!” I screamed, but it was too late. He already stepped into the tornado.
Kylian was swept up into the bright glowing winds. His body twisted in the air and spun around like a piece of debris getting a caught in tornado alley. He flipped and twisted as he spun with the rest of the souls. Then like a shot he was flung from the swirling mess. His body smacked into the wall as his head snapped back into the stone. He crashed to the ground and landed in a heap, lying there for long moments not moving. Ashryn and Soto rushed to him and dropped to their knees by his side. Soto rolled him to his side and gave him a hard shake.
He rocked back and forth. His eyes finally rolled into focus, and he spoke like he’d drunk way too much alcohol. “Whatever you do, don’t walk into that.”
“How do we get past them to get to that?” Beckett pointed toward the key hovering in the middle of the tornado. A single beam of white light shined down on it, highlighting the dark bronzy finish of the ancient-looking key.
They all looked to me. Why? Because I was the death girl, the one who was supposed to know about all things dead. My entire life was literally all death. I sighed and moved closer to the tornado. “Spirits with unfinished business need to find peace so they can move on.”
“So we need to make them move on?” Astrid came a little closer to me yet still stayed back.
“In theory… yes.”
“How?”
I turned to look at her. “We have to listen to them.”
Her eyes widened and that swirling green light seemed to reflect in her own emerald eyes. “All of these souls? It’ll take us years.”
Beckett groaned and rolled his eyes. “Of course, Hades would give us a task that’d take years to accomplish.”
I couldn’t agree more. This challenge spoke of Hades’ deceitful ways. He walked on the line between love and hate. No one ever knew which one he felt or where they stood. Some days I thought he liked me. Other days, like today, not so much. But we didn’t have time to listen to all of them, didn’t have time to solve the issues of thousands of unrested spirits. I glanced down at my glove-clad hands and thought for a moment. There was only one thing we could do, one way to finish this and get back. Zinnia was waiting for us, if she didn’t think we were already dead.
“Astrid, I need to you to move back.”
“What?” She looked from me to the souls and back again. “You can’t walk into there. You’ll get thrashed like Kylian.”
“I am death.” I waved her back, and she moved away from me and took her place back against the walls. I held up my hand and hooked my finger in the end of my glove and pulled it down off my arm.
The cool air felt weird on my skin. I’d been wearing the gloves all my life, day and night. To be bare didn’t feel right, yet I needed to do this. I killed them all, brought all my friends down here in hopes that we would come back. Now I wasn’t so sure we were going to make it. Hades didn’t seem as willing to help as I thought he would. And now it was up to me to get us there. I called on my powers and felt them flowing through my body and down my arms.
Purple sparks leapt from my fingertips, and I forced them into the swirling tornado. I felt the spirits brush against my power and in my mind, I willed them to stop moving. At first, they fought my hold, but as my power spread higher and higher, they slowed their furious pace. Purple sparks wound in among the ghosts, turning the area from angry green to my warm purple. Then they all stilled, holding their positions.
“Holy shit,” Beckett hissed under his breath.
I didn’t want to look back at him. I had to concentrate with everything I had. I held up my hand and stepped forward. The ghost closest to me moved back as though I were a magnet and they were my opposite charge. They drifted back and came to a stop. I took another step and more of them drifted back. I didn’t look back, didn’t dare stop. My power filled the space and a tunnel through the spirits appeared leading right to the key. When I stepped onto the other side of the wall of ghosts, I sucked in a breath of relief.
The key was only a few feet away, and all I had to do was grab it. A ghost appeared next to me, startling me for less than a second. I froze, looking him up and down. He didn’t look like the others. No, he had a slight glow to him that didn’t scream dead to me. Yet his body was translucent. He was tall like Beckett and Kylian. Yet he was built more sturdily; his shoulders were filled out and his waist was slim and trim. Dark black hair fell in wild loose waves down to his chin. There was something familiar about his full lips and dark purple eyes, but I couldn’t place it.
He smiled at me and a single dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth. “What are you doing?”
I sauntered past him. I didn’t have time for ghosts, not even hot ones. “Beat it, ghost boy. It’s none of your business.”
“Curious. I’m pretty sure this,” he motioned to the frozen souls, “is cheating.”
I sighed. “Look, me and my friends have to get back to the land of the living.”
He chuckled. “Want me to tell you a little secret that might help?”
I stopped in front of the key and waved him on. “Go ahead.”
“People who are dead usually stay dead. I would know.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t apply to me.” I shrugged. I didn’t have time to debate the intricacies of life and death and how I’d been dead before and came back.
He seemed amused by this when that little smile played on his lips once more. “Funny. I was under the impression there were only two things certain in life.”
