Grave Visions(95)

The silver-blue soul of Tommy Rawhead exploded from the corpse. I had hoped he’d be disoriented. That would have given me time to get him away from the body so I could raise the inner circle. But Rawhead lunged toward me before his form solidified.

I stumbled, throwing out my arms to guard my face.

The ghost locked his jaw around my forearm, and cold pain sliced through me as those pointy teeth sank into my flesh. I screamed, blood welling up on my arm.

Outside my circle, yelling erupted, and I felt something slam into my barrier. The force reverberated through my magic. The idea of dropping the circle flitted through my mind, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to break the spell—Rawhead was still attached to my arm.

He locked his jaw, and I swore I heard his teeth grinding against my bones. Screaming again, I pushed against him with my grave magic. The ghost seemed to drink down the magic, becoming more real.

Damn it.

Rawhead released my arm and stepped back. He grinned, spreading his legs and arms like a wrestler preparing to tackle his opponent. Not good, as I was that opponent. He’d manifested exactly as he’d been in life, with blood running down his face from under his hat. But as it was now only an idea of what he’d been, that blood was pale, slightly translucent. The blood running from his mouth was mine, and very real.

I cradled my arm against my chest and backed away, but the circle wasn’t large. I had nowhere to go.

Rawhead’s bloody grin grew.

On the other side of my circle, Falin, the queen, and her council were yelling. What, I didn’t have time to listen to now, but at least no one was trying to break down my barrier anymore.

Rawhead lunged, but this time I managed to duck to the side. He slammed into the edge of my circle, and it shuddered, the barrier sparking. I yelped as the backlash tore through me. If the circle took another hit like that, the ghost would win this fight without even having to catch me because I’d be unconscious. I had to turn the tables.

Ghosts were just will and energy.

There had been nothing I could do about the fact that Tommy Rawhead had been a nasty bogeyman in life, or that he blamed me, at least in part, for his death. But energy? Yeah, that I could affect.

Lifting my uninjured arm, I reached for Rawhead with my ability to touch the dead. But this time, instead of pushing magic at him, I pulled.

Energy leapt from Rawhead to me.

Most of the magics associated with the grave were cold, but ghosts weren’t actually of the land of the dead. They were souls trapped in the land of the dead when they left their body without transitioning to wherever collectors sent them.

So as the energy slipped under my skin, it was the warm life energy of a soul that I absorbed, not the chill of the grave. I had drawn energy from souls twice before. The first time from Coleman, who’d used so much dark magic his soul was stained black with it, and the second from a creature native to the land of the dead. Both of their essences had been tainted and sludgelike. Rawhead, as reprehensible as he’d been in life, hadn’t actually damaged his soul. I drew on his energy and it rushed into me, warm and sweet as a spring breeze. It felt good. Which was so wrong.

But I didn’t dare stop as he reared back to charge again. He rushed toward me, and I pulled with all my might, drinking down the pure energy. Rawhead faded with each running step he took, his form becoming hazy, less solid. He crashed into me, but it was too late.

He dissolved, like morning dew in the sun. Then I was alone in my circle.

I collapsed to my knees, panting, but honestly, aside from the pain burning along my gnawed-upon arm, I felt better than I had in days. A fact that made me queasy.

I hugged my injured arm to my chest and pushed off the ground. Only then did I look around and take stock of what was happening beyond my circle. The queen was right on the edge of the barrier, Falin physically restraining her from slamming her fists into the circle. It said something about her mental state that she didn’t command him to release her. Maeve had backed away from both queen and circle. Lyell had a small scythelike weapon in his hands, but his arms were lowered as his gaze swept around my circle, searching for an enemy he hadn’t been able to see.

“What have you done, planeweaver?” the queen asked, struggling in Falin’s arms. “What injury have you inflicted on yourself? Are you attempting to skirt finding the answers I demand? Are you part of this conspiracy against me?”

I looked into her fevered gaze and felt hate, cold and pure, for this queen who regarded the value of others’ lives on a sliding scale of what she could gain from them. And yet, I also felt the smallest amount of pity for her. Something was wrong with her. I wasn’t sure if she’d snapped under the stress of her position or if something more malicious was at play, but this hateful queen was out of her mind.