Finally able to breathe, I scream.
I scream long and loud as a sensation like cold lightning snakes through my body, electrifying my bones and boiling in my blood.
The earth no longer has a stronger pull on me. The weight on my chest is gone, replaced with an energizing lightness that makes me want to cry at its beauty. I’ve never felt anything like it.
It feels like…freedom.
It feels like…power.
The whispers have gone quiet. They are still there, but no longer overpowering.
“Paige!” I hear Kincaid shout and turn to find him watching me from a safe distance. I don’t know what he sees, but his eyes are wide. His lips are parted as though he wants to speak but isn’t sure what to say.
Ignoring him, I glance around, seeing the world as though through fresh eyes. Like a monarch surveying her kingdom. A whisper rises above the rest, and on instinct, I call it toward myself. It’s as easy as breathing.
Once called by sheer force of my will, the whispering voice becomes clear.
“My brother did this,” it says. “And he got away with it.”
A phantom pain stabs into my chest, and I shove the voice back into the dark, trading it for another.
“I just wanted to hold my granddaughter before I went,” an elder woman’s voice croaks. “It’s all I wanted…”
My heart twists, and I shove her back, too.
At the edges of my vision, shapes begin to form in the dark corners of the cemetery. Wisp-like black forms. Like living shadows detaching themselves from the whole.
A third voice vies for my attention, this one dull and muted even when I attempt to draw it near. It feels different than the others.
Making it out is a challenge. Continuing to operate on instinct, I pull from the power of the scepter, gritting my teeth.
“Asmodeus!” the voice booms, a deep throaty bellow that makes me search my immediate surroundings as though I’ll be able to see the speaker.
Confused, I call to it. “Who are you?”
“You can hear me?”
The press of his spirit makes me tremble, and I begin to push him back, not wanting to talk to dead people anymore. I’ve done what Kincaid asked.
I want to go home.
But even as I think it, my body betrays me. Though I want to leave, I also don’t want to let go of this staff.
The runes carved into the side of the base glow a shimmering gold.
“That’s impossible,” the voice roars.
I chuff out a laugh at that.
“It damn well should be,” I mutter to myself.
“You can hear me.”
“No shit,” I retort, trying to do what I did before when I pushed the other spirits back, but this one is stubborn. He doesn’t fade like the others.
“Wait!” he cries.
Something in his plea gives me pause.
“My name is Malphas,” he rushes to say. “If you can hear me, I need you to tell Asmodeus I am dead. I’ve been trying to reach him. To reach anyone from this dark plane.”
A shape wavers and snaps like a flag in the wind before me. The outline of a tall figure with broad shoulders and a wide chin. His features are a blur, but slowly, they too begin to materialize.
“Why should I do that?” I ask the shadow man, fear zapping my heart into a faltering rhythm.
“Who are you talking to?” Kincaid demands, the wonder now gone from his voice.
The ground beneath my feet trembles again, and I throw out an arm to steady myself, my nose bleeding anew.
“Na’vazēm, let go of the scepter,” Kincaid calls from my left, getting closer now.
“Because,” says the shadow man, whose eyes are now visible in the wavering shape of his face. Ruby red and unmoving. “If you don’t, Asmodeus will die.”
My jaw clenches at his words.
“Let go of the staff!” Kincaid growls through the rush of wind swirling around me. The earth still trembles, like something is slithering just beneath the surface of its crust. Like something ancient coming to life.
“What do you mean, he’ll die?” I demand, loathing how the spirit man’s promise makes my blood chill and something squeeze in my chest.
He stares, unblinking, and I know he doesn’t intend to give me details, not without my doing as he’s asked.
I growl to myself, trying to make a snap decision because I think Kincaid is right. I think I need to let go of this scepter. I don’t know what will happen if I don’t, and I’m not sure I want to find out.
If I say nothing and the shadow man is right and Kincaid dies, then I’ll be free of him.
If I say nothing and Kincaid dies, I may also be giving up my only guaranteed way home.
“Damnit,” I curse and turn to Kincaid, who is pushed back from me by some unseen force. He fights against it, trying to push forward, closer to me, without success. His booted feet slide backward in the earth every time he gains a yard.
“Kincaid,” I call. “Malphas is dead.”
He goes ghost-white, and for a heartbeat, I have to wonder if I’ve somehow just struck him dead. Kincaid looks between where I stand and the air around me, as though he too can sense the spirit of the man called Malphas.
“That isn’t possible,” he replies. “Now let go of the scepter.”
I shrug at Malphas. “Sorry,” I say. “I tried.”
“No!” he roars, pressing forward. “Tell him…tell him the sun sets in the east.”
I raise a brow at the shadow, wondering if I should tell him he’s wrong. Instead, I turn back to a disheveled Kincaid. “He says ‘the sun sets in the east.’”
Kincaid stops trying to advance and stares incredulously at me.
“Malphas?”
“It’s me, brother,” Malphas replies.
I choke on the blood still streaming from my nose and bend to spit it onto the earth. The instant I do, a resounding boom and hiss sounds around us.
Next to me, a headstone upturns, and I watch in muted horror as an emaciated hand reaches out from the dirt. All bone and dark, desiccated scraps of flesh and sinew. A stench like fresh rot makes my nostrils flare and my stomach turn.
“Kincaid!” I call, stumbling away from the thing trying to free itself from its grave. I nearly trip on another tombstone and whirl to find the curve of a skeletal head pushing up out of the ground, its hollow eyes searching. Its mouth unhinged but moving as though trying to speak without a tongue or lips.
I scream and something slams into my side. The scepter is knocked from my grasp, and the suffocating pressure slams back down on me, its weight magnified.
“Hold on,” a familiar voice shouts through the din of heated whispers. I am lifted, and I feel the press of warm skin against my cheek as strong arms bear me away from the cemetery. Further and further until I can breathe again.
A car door opens, and Kincaid slides me into the passenger seat. I slump against it, feeling my eyelids begin to droop.
“Stay awake, Na’vazēm. I’ll be right back.”
When I turn my gaze to him, another scream attempts to liberate itself from my throat, but I don’t have the energy to evict it.
Curved silver horns jut out from the sides of Kincaid’s head. His black hair seems light compared to the color-absorbing pitch of his skin. His clothes, torn and in tatters, hang from his muscled demon form. A tail flicks out from behind him as he takes in my face, a look of pain twisting his features before he shoves the door closed and sprints inhumanly fast back the way we came.