Panther Prowling Page 29

  While I was thinking about it, I flipped on the radio and tuned into a local station. The news was not good.

  “Over two million households along the Western Washington coastline are without power at this point. There are no estimates on when power will be restored, but fifty crews from neighboring states have been dispatched to help with the recovery. Be careful—there are downed power lines everywhere, and hundreds of trees fell during the windstorm. The rain has saturated the ground so much that meteorologists expect more falling trees throughout the day, as root systems weakened by the windstorm give way. Seattle should expect heavy rains today through Wednesday. Rains will taper off on Thursday, and the weekend may bring some dry weather.”

  I glanced over at Camille. “Not too promising, is it?”

  She shook her head. “We need to rethink how we heat the house.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I quieted down as the announcer continued.

  “There have been at least three deaths from the storm so far—a car was hit by a falling tree over on the Maple Valley Highway, killing the driver and injuring the passenger. A brother and sister were killed when their house caught fire. The parents managed to make it out with minor injuries but the house was engulfed by flames before anyone could rescue the children. The cause of the fire is suspected to be stray sparks from the fireplace. Police are issuing a warning: Do not use lighter fluid on the logs in your fireplace. On to other news, we are working on getting a list of stores, restaurants, and hotels that still have power for our next update. Meanwhile, if you spot downed power lines, please call Puget Sound Power at the following number . . .”

  I flipped the radio off. “Yeah, this is going to be a big old bundle of fun.” The thought of a hot meal sounded really good right about now. At least we could grill on the back porch, and we had dragons to warm up next to. It occurred to me that now would be a good time for a vacation, but I decided not to even trot that idea out until we were done for the day.

  We entered the Greenbelt Park District and immediately the energy shifted around me. I noticed an upswing in foot traffic along the sidewalk, and at first, I wondered why so many people were out wandering around through the storm damage, but then it hit me. I stiffened as I realized they were shadow shapes. I was actually seeing spirits walk along the sidewalk.

  “Camille . . .”

  “Yeah?” She swerved to avoid another large limb lying in the street.

  “Do you see anything . . . out of the ordinary?” I knew it wasn’t my imagination, but—even with seeing Misty and Morgaine so clearly—I still wasn’t sure of myself. I had seen some pretty wacky things, but seeing ghosts casually walking by? Not really my forte.

  “Not in particular, not counting the debris all over the road.” As if she heard the underlying hesitation in my voice, she pulled over to the curb. “What’s wrong, Kitten?”

  I watched a woman walk by a chain-link fence enclosing a dirt lot. She was wearing a dress from what looked like the 1930s and she seemed oblivious to everything. She was also translucent and vaporous. I pointed in her direction.

  “What do you see?”

  Camille followed my finger. “A dirt lot. Fence. Litter on the sidewalk. Why? What do you see?”

  “I see a woman . . .” I described the spirit to her. “And she’s not the only one. I’m seeing people everywhere on the sidewalk. I don’t know what’s going on, and to be honest, it’s making me a little nervous.”

  Her hands clutching the wheel, she squinted, still staring straight ahead. “I don’t see anything. Maybe if Morio and I were together, I would but . . . Kitten, when did this start?”

  “This morning, with Misty. Then with Morgaine and now, as we entered the district.” I thought back to what I’d been talking about with Arial. And how Hi’ran had mentioned several times that I was growing and evolving in his service. “I think . . . it has something to do with my being a Death Maiden. This is connected to the Autumn Lord.”

  Camille’s next question startled me. “Can you speak to them?”

  I hadn’t even considered that. I didn’t really want to find out either. Most of our interactions with spirits were hostile, to say the least. “I don’t know. Want me to try?”

  She glanced in the rearview mirror. “Morio has pulled over in back of us. Why don’t you get out and give it a go. If you need help, we’ll be here. I’ll come with you.”

  We slowly got out of the car. At first, the shadow shapes on the sidewalk didn’t seem to notice, but then one of them—a man in a business suit—glanced over. I caught the man’s gaze and he stopped in his tracks, tilting his head to the right. I slowly moved forward, my hands up to show that I wasn’t armed. Although what the hell I could do to a ghost with my dagger, I wasn’t sure. The spirit stood there as I advanced, looking more and more confused.

  “Hello, can you hear me?” I had no clue what to say but that seemed as good a choice as any.

  All hell broke loose. Half the shadow shapes I saw on the sidewalk suddenly stopped and whirled, staring at me. Then, before I could even blink, about fifteen of them began rushing toward me, and a cacophony of voices filled my head. The thundering of shouts sent me reeling and I staggered, hands over my ears, as they surrounded me. The clamor was so loud that I couldn’t think, could barely breathe.

  “Help! Stop, please stop . . . please be quiet!” I struggled to speak through the cacophony that filled my head. Their voices were like angry bees, out of phase and too quick for me to understand.

  “Kitten . . . Kitten! Are you—” Camille was waving her arms through the spirits, but they didn’t pay any attention to her. I did the only thing I could think of and sent out a mental cry for help to Greta, my trainer. The next moment, she was standing there, and blessed silence filled my ears. The ghosts were on the outside, pounding against the invisible barrier she had created around us. She leaned down and helped me to stand.

  “Where are we?” We appeared to be on the sidewalk, but now it was Camille who looked out of phase, rather than the spirits.

  “We’re between the world of the living and the dead. Don’t worry about your sister—this is taking place outside of time. She won’t think you’ve disappeared.” Greta smiled then, and let out a long sigh. “So this has come already. I didn’t expect it for a while yet, but then again, you are still alive so your evolution can’t be measured against the rest of the Maidens.”

  “What has come? What’s happening to me?” Whatever it was, I wasn’t so hot on it. “I can do without a migraine brought on by spirit chipmunk chatter.”

  Greta snorted. “Leave it to you, Delilah, to turn a major milestone in your path into a cartoon reference, and yes—before you ask—I know what you’re talking about. They only sound like that because you haven’t learned how to listen to them yet.”

  “Yet?” I had a feeling I knew what was coming. “You mean I’m joining the I-can-see-dead-people ranks?”

  Greta nodded. “All Death Maidens reach a point in their training where they gain the power to see the dead. As I said, it usually comes later, but then we’ve never had a living member of the group. That said, it’s going to make things problematic for you until you learn to turn it on and off.”

  “You mean I don’t have to see them every which way I look? Because this is getting creepy.” I stopped. Foot-in-mouth struck again. Greta was a spirit, and so were the rest of my Death Maiden sisters.

  But she just grinned. “Creepy, perhaps, but you’ll learn to control it. We’ll have to start training you as soon as you’ve finished what you need to be doing here. Pretty soon, it will be like turning a light switch off and on.”

  “Is it just ghosts . . . or other astral hauntings? I’m not so familiar on the world of the spirits.” And then it hit me . . . Shade would know a lot about this. “Shade can help, too . . . except . . .”

  “I know what happened. We�
��ll talk later. But for now, I can mask your hearing for a short time. And I can give you a sort of invisibility to them—they will not know you can see them, unless you want them to. I cannot mask your vision, but I think that may come to your aid more than your detriment. But this is not permanent—it won’t last long. Within a few days, you must travel to Haseofon for the next step in your training.”

  She gently stroked her fingers across the tattoo on my temple, then over my eyes and ears. As she did so, it was as if a heavy pressure lifted and I was able to breathe again.

  Greta smiled. “There. You will be fine for a day or so, though you’ll have to get used to seeing them around. But come to me as soon as you can. The training will be intense and will take you several weeks. I hope you don’t have plans for the next month.”

  “Not any of my own making. But I can’t vouch for what happens to us on the demonic front with Shadow Wing.” I closed my eyes, relishing the silence that had descended. “I feel so much better.”

  “You’ll learn how to control both vision and sound, and how to use the power when it’s appropriate. You cannot walk around the world of the living constantly open to the spirits. Without warding, without boundaries, you’d go crazy. Come to me when you can—but don’t wait long. No more than a couple of days.” She stroked my cheek. “You’ll do fine.” And then, she vanished.

  The next moment, I opened my eyes, and I was standing there, next to Camille, feeling dazed. Behind us, Morio was getting out of the car. I realized that fractions of a second had passed between me calling for Greta’s help and now. The spirits still wandered the sidewalk around me, but now, they didn’t seem to notice me and I couldn’t hear them.

  “Kitten, are you okay? Answer me!” Camille sounded frantic.

  “Yes . . . yes . . .” I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. “I’m all right, it’s okay now.”

  Morio jogged over to us. “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah.” I rubbed my temples, the remnants of the headache starting to dissipate. “I’ll be okay. You know what? It’s nothing—I’ll explain later. I know what happened and why, but we have a job to do. It won’t interfere. I talked to Greta. Let’s just go, all right?”

  The thought of Daniel, caught with Einar’s ghost bearing down on him, hit me like a sledgehammer. Whether it was premonition, or empathy derived from what I’d just been through, I wasn’t sure, but I only knew that I wanted to get in there and stop whatever was going down, because my instincts were screaming bloody murder.

  Camille nodded. “Let’s go.” She motioned for Morio to return to his car. “We’re only a block or so away.”

  We jumped back in the car and cautiously edged back out into the street. I cringed as we drove through a couple of the ghosts, but they didn’t seem to notice. Yeah, Greta was right—I’d have to get my ass in for training or I’d never be able to drive again.

  Camille maneuvered down the wind-blasted road, skirting broken limbs that had blanketed the asphalt in a splintered trail of green and brown.

  “Care to tell me what went on?” she asked as we neared the crossroad right before where the Greenbelt Asylum had once stood.

  I sighed, then explained what had happened. “So apparently, I’m starring in my own version of The Sixth Sense. I see dead people. But Greta helped me shut down the voices for a little while, and they don’t know I can see them. She will train me how to turn it on and off, and how to cope. I gather Death Maidens see and talk to ghosts as a matter of course.” Even as I laughed, I realized that I was trying to comfort myself. The prospect scared me stiff. I didn’t like ghosts. I didn’t like fighting them. The thought of being on a permanent chat line with them gave me the willies.

  Camille grunted. “Seems like we’ve both got some changes in the works, huh?” She flashed me a sympathetic look. “I don’t know who I feel worse for—you, or me.”

  And then, she crossed the street and we eased up in front of a building that, to make an understatement, had seen better days. Huge, the building took up an entire block.

  The original asylum had sat on the family estate, which had been five hundred acres. The land left still ate up two full city blocks, but was a fraction of the original estate. Maybe nobody wanted to buy the remaining land because the thought of building a home over an old mental institution was just asking for trouble. Whatever the case, the city hadn’t stepped in to do anything about it.

  The tangle of vegetation had crept in around the gated hospital, and now was cascading over the walls and into the ruins. The fence was ten feet tall, solid iron bars, which meant going over it was out of the question. But it wouldn’t be a problem, because from where we sat in the car, we could see that one of the gates was off the hinges and lying on the ground. We’d just have to watch our step.

  The neighboring areas—originally part of the massive estate—had been built up into solid little houses, sturdy in the 1950s suburban fashion, but they were weathered now, and I wasn’t sure how many were still inhabited. Cars were sporadically parked up and down the opposite curb, but they, too, were weathered. Every time we came to the Greenbelt Park District, I felt like we’d stepped into an archaeological dig from sixty years back. I wondered if our mother had ever walked down this street, and if so, what had it been like back then?

  As Camille parked, Morio swung in behind us. Shutting the door behind me, I stared up at the gray remains of the building. Thank gods Greta had muted the ghosts’ ability to know that I realized they were there, because a whirl of spirits surrounded the place and I really really didn’t want to be at their mercy. But I couldn’t help wondering, as I gazed at the misty figures wandering through the crumbling tower and broken brick, how many ghosts were running around here? How many of them were still fighting against cruel overseers who had kept them in check with electricity and starvation, brutalizing them at the drop of a hat?

  As if sensing my thoughts, Camille sidled closer to me and reached out to take my hand. “I can smell death here.”

  I knew she wasn’t talking about blood or bodies . . . but the actual presence of death. A sense of loss and decay and violence had imprinted itself on the very walls and in the air of the asylum. Atrocities had happened here, to people who could not defend themselves, who could not speak out. The criminally insane had been locked up alongside those who were in need of help but had never turned their illness on others. The caregivers had been harsh wardens, and the entire building had been a pressure cooker, until that storm-ridden night when the inmates took over and Silas Johnson blew the place sky-high.

  As we slowly approached the gate, a figure stepped out of the shadows, so quickly that neither one of us had time to react. At first I thought it was another ghost, but then I was relieved to see that—not only was it not a ghost, it was Shade.

  “I made it before you, but didn’t feel like heading in there on my own, though I doubt much of anything in there could hurt me if I turned into my dragon shape.” Shade held out his arm, smiling, and I slipped into his embrace gratefully. He kissed me, but then looked over his shoulder at the building. “There are horrific things in there, and I can feel the sword. I know Einar’s energy from holding it. It’s there, all right, and I’m betting up in that tower.”

  Just then, Morio and the others joined us. Leif stared up at the ruins, a terrified expression on his face. “Of course Jay would come here. Why didn’t I think of it before?”

  “What do you mean?” My gaze was riveted to the asylum. Pins and needles raced through my arms and the back of my neck as I watched the spirits move around us, whispering and talking, going about their shadowed existence. They knew we were here—some of them—and they watched us warily.

  Leif let out a long sigh. “Jay Miles is the great-great-nephew of the man who owned and ran this hospital. He’s the one who owns the land here now.”

  And there was the last piece in the puzzle. He
must have grown up playing here, feeling the spirits, being drawn to necromancy. And perhaps . . . being twisted by the memories that haunted this place.

  My stomach lurched. “There’s an army of ghosts right here. Ten to one, Jay plans to harness the spirits of the patients. Einar will be their king—as cruel as the owners and staff were. And Jay will control Einar. Not only were the inmates shackled in life, but they’ll be controlled during their death. What kind of freak is Miles? And what does he hope to gain?”

  The wind gusted up and caught my words, spinning them into the air. It was time to go stop a madman who came from a long line of cruel nutcases. That is, if we weren’t already too late.

  Chapter 19

  “What’s the plan?” Morio asked me.

  I gazed up at the tower. “Shade, you said you can feel the sword. Can you guide us to it through its energy signature?”

  He nodded. “I think so. I have no idea if Einar is free yet, but I think we’d better be prepared for an ugly question. If he has already possessed Daniel, and if he can control the ghosts in this place, then how do we get rid of him? I can’t exorcise him . . . not anymore. Morio and Camille, do you have anything to send him packing?”

  Leif shot us a strange look. “Daniel . . . Daniel who?”

  I cleared my throat. “Jay Miles has kidnapped our cousin. His name is Daniel. He’s trying to free Einar to possess Daniel’s body so Einar can lead the asylum ghosts on a war through the city.” I turned back to Shade. I knew what his actual question was. He was asking if we had to, would we be willing to kill our cousin to prevent further bloodshed. And I wasn’t prepared to answer that. We’d been forced to do a lot of things we didn’t want to, that we still hated to think about, but we’d still done them.

  Camille glanced at Morio, who shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell what we can do without knowing just how powerful Einar is. The only thing we can do is go in swinging and play it by ear. There’s no way to find out anything else at this point, and we don’t have time to waste.”