Too tired to care, I drifted around the room. The sensation of the thinnest bits of me dissolving into nothing was unable to rouse my interest.
The sensation of cobwebs drifting over me brought me around. I looked into the hint of a woman’s face. The wraith was unrecognizable; I’d seen the pictures of all the Judge’s other victims but I couldn’t have identified her. She seemed a super-misty version of that agonized figure in the painting ‘The Scream’. Only blurred gray pits where her eyes, nostrils and mouth should have been suggested a face.
She seemed to nod at me when she realized she had my attention. Then smoky tendrils of her drifted around me, slowly wrapping around my essence. It was like being embraced by silky strands of hair.
The suggestion of her head fell back, and the gray hole of her mouth gaped wide as a thin whistle of a scream scraped through the air. The next second a jolt zinged through me, and substance returned to me, along with the sensation of weight.
The wraith fed me her energy, subjecting herself to the horrible pain of being drained.
“Wait. Stop.” I didn’t spare a thought to the fact I could talk again, that Erica’s magic had died with her. I struggled against the wraith, and she shredded in places where I pushed. I stopped fighting, but the electric thrum continued even as she came apart. The smoky bits clung stubbornly to me, insisted on bringing me back towards wholeness.
“Why are you hurting yourself?” I cried, my voice growing stronger as she became less. “Stop it!”
“The Ripper,” a low mumble said in my ear. I turned my head – I had seemingly real body parts again – and I faced another drawn, gray featured face. “Down there.”
The wraith who’d fed me disappeared. I prayed she hadn’t sacrificed her entire existence just to pull me back together. Murdering Erica hadn’t offered a single guilty impulse, but my guts curled in horror to think I might have cannibalized another spirit.
“Down there,” the wraith at my ear muttered again. My gaze followed the direction she indicated, which seemed to be the shadowed area across from the card table.
Gentle pushes guided me towards that part of the room. The other wraiths gathered around me and seemed to be working together to move me where they wanted me to go. I adjusted my ghost enhanced night vision to the dim corner and realized a wooden crate sat there.
“In there. Lift the lid.”
Thanks to the one wraith’s sacrifice, I had the strength to do so. A Stygian black casket lay inside. Holy crap.
“He’s in here?” I asked. The very modern casket didn’t fit the Judge. He belonged in a wooden box, the kind used in medieval times. Scratch that. The bastard belonged in the deepest pit of Hell.
That’s right. I said bastard. Even I have a point where only a cuss word will do.
“Kill him.”
“Why me?” I asked. Yeah, I wanted justice for us all, but the Judge scared me spitless. The Judge was the Ripper, a coldblooded serial killer. A vampire.
“You’re the strongest. We’ll give you what we have left.”
They gathered tight around me and I realized what they planned to do. As God is my witness, I tried to get away. I’ll swear it on a library full of Bibles. I really tried.
“No, please!” I screamed, my voice louder than all theirs’ combined. “Stop! STOP!”
I twisted and fought, but it made no difference. They fed themselves to me, their pale shrieks ringing in my ears until they dissolved into nothing and their voices silenced forever.
I ended on the floor, my ghostly self mostly restored. I sobbed without reservation this time, grieving as I’ve never grieved for anyone before, including myself.
As Dan said, we all cry for the dead.
Chapter Eighteen
I don’t know how long I cried. When I finally stopped, I noted with horror the reddish-orange light filtering into the shack. The sun was setting, and the Judge would be climbing into his body pretty soon.
He planned to kill Tristan.
I jumped to my feet in an instant and rushed at the casket. I struggled to open it. I might have regained my strength, but my regular hum of energy wasn’t what I typically used to move real world objects. This wasn’t going to be easy. Par for the day.
I closed my eyes and homed in on the steady pulse of the earth. Drawing in. Drawing in. Drawing even more in until a little tingle twitched my fingers and toes.
It wasn’t as good as a hit of computer or camcorder, but it would have to do. I concentrated the energy into my hands and sprung the casket open. I jumped back with a gasp when the Judge was revealed to me, his black eyes wide open and staring.
When he didn’t rise and suck me back into a wispy wraith, I calmed enough to approach the casket again. The Judge – the Fulton Falls Ripper – lay still, staring coldly but emptily at the ceiling. Unfortunately, the last bit of scarlet sunlight didn’t reach him at all. I would have loved to see him burst into flames.