chapter 17
Samantha stood beside Alon in the gray gloom that preceded the dawn. Behind them the Ghost Children awaited Alon’s order to attack.
She glanced at Alon, tall and imposing in his most lethal shape. He looked every inch the leader of his people. His fierce expression and the tension radiating from him sent a shiver down her spine. She was glad she would not face him in battle.
To the right in the wooded area by the river lay the army of Ghost Children who had been coerced into the service of Nagi.
Nagi was immortal. He could not be defeated, yet somehow, they must do just that.
To the east the sky brightened. It would not be long now. Across the open field the army of Skinwalkers assembled beside their new allies. To the left, before the hastily dug earthwork barriers, Blake and his Spirit Children waited. Nagi had the low ground. But he did not seem to care—perhaps because of his superior numbers. Samantha knew she, Blake and her mother could defeat the possessed humans by dispossessing the ghosts. It would be up to the others to keep the Seers alive so they could do their job.
How many of those below hidden in the woods would join their cause if given the chance? How many fought only because their backs were to the wall?
Waiting was torture. The worst that could happen unfolded like scenes in her mind. She did not believe that her brother would order his people to attack Alon. But she was not certain about her dad. He hated the Naginoka and was eager to kill as many as possible.
She felt responsible for them all, because it was she who convinced Alon, and Alon who convinced the others to fight.
The burden of responsibility pressed down on her. If Alon felt uncertain, he did not show it. She mirrored his calm, knowing it was a thin facade.
Behind them the sun broke, gilding the leaves of the cottonwood as it crested the hill behind the Spirit Children. Still the Ghost Children lay in shadow as they had lived their whole life. Today they stepped into the light and into history.
A flash of white light ignited beside Samantha as Bess flashed into her raven form and burst into the sky. She called her farewell, a cry that perfectly relayed the sorrow of the day. Samantha rested both hands high on her chest and drew a deep breath, feeling the energy surge through her body as she changed to her animal form, rising to nine feet. She looked at Alon, now anxious for the signal to fight.
It would have been wiser for their enemy to wait for the Skinwalkers and Spirit Children to advance, forcing them to leave the hillside, rather than trying to take the high ground. But instead, Nagi’s forces spilled from the wooded grove, charging uphill toward Blake and Sebastian’s position. She could see both now, a huge bear standing before her brother, who was still in his human form. Blake stepped out from her dad’s shadow to stand in the light, but did not change to his bear form. Instead he held his medicine wheel loosely at his side, ready to perform his work as a Seer expelling ghosts to the Way of Souls.
There beside them, low to the ground, Samantha saw Nicholas Chien, a wolf shifter and the leader of a pack of Skinwalker wolves. Beside that a pride of mountain lions waited the signal to attack.
His wife, Jessie, had done her work through the night with the other Dream Walkers, visiting the sleeping Ghost Children of Nagi’s army, planting the seeds of descent against Nagi. Hawks, eagles, owls and even swans burst into the air, their beating wings carrying them skyward.
The Spirit Children stood upon the hill. Though their powers were impressive, Samantha considered them of little use in combat. The time for words had passed. Truth Seekers, Peacemakers and Clairvoyants would be needed afterward, if any survived. Still they stood with guns and swords like a ragtag postapocalyptic army of misfits, ready to do whatever they could. Samantha remembered her dad’s words. If Alon fought, he would be treated no differently from the enemy. Would her father really follow through with that threat?
Her stomach twisted as anxiety roiled like acid.
Samantha looked at Alon, knowing that Nagi’s forces would rip the Spirit Children apart like wolves through a litter of newborn kittens if they gained the hilltop.
The Naginoka howled as they ran, their speed a wonder and a terror to behold. All about them, Alon’s Ghost Children grew restless. What was Alon waiting for?
“They won’t be able to tell us from them,” he muttered. “To them, we all look the same.”
She glanced back at the faces of the Ghost Children. Some looked eager but the expressions of many held apprehension. They did not look the same to her.
The wolves and lions surged down the hill, followed by a herd of buffalo. Samantha knew Tuff Jackson was leading them. Dust rose into the air in clouds behind the herd.
“Advance and intercept,” he called to his followers.
Samantha charged with Alon guarding his flank.
The vanguard of the Skinwalkers raced down the hill, meeting Nagi’s army head-on. Wolves circled the outskirts, looking to hamstring an opponent or rip into an exposed neck, but the Ghost Children’s quills protected from such an attack. The buffalo plowed through the center, swinging their massive heads like wrecking balls, knocking their foes to the ground and trampling them with sharp hooves.
Samantha saw her dad rear up on hind legs, fourteen feet of muscle and power. He roared and met his foes, using his long, curved claws to slash deep as he took his opponents to the ground. Ghostlings fell before him.
Blake led the Niyanoka on the hill, directing the firing at the Ghostlings, who charged directly into the bullets. None reached the hill.
She bellowed and charged, unwilling to watch as the horde attacked her mother, father and brother. She was glad for the chance to stand between them and Nagi.
All about her the Ghost Children locked in individual battles. Blood sprayed across the grass and she charged on.
The blue smoke from the gunpowder hung in the air, casting the hilltop in a haze. Here in the field dust burned her eyes and stole her view of the field.
The buffalo ran through the middle of Nagi’s forces like bulldozers, skewering those not quick enough to evade their horns. And the wolves were there, taking advantage of the panicked flight.
She heard the growl of the pumas, now just to her left. Samantha reared up to deflect the attack aimed at Alon. The lion veered away, choosing another target with supple grace.
In her momentary distraction, one of the enemies leaped and she braced, but Alon met the strike meant for her with one slashing blow of his claws. Her enemy fell, gouged across the face and neck. Blood sprayed from the great artery at his throat, but Samantha had no time to linger as she and Alon each met a new attacker.
Two drove into her at once, taking her to her back. Samantha lifted her rear feet, trying to disembowel the Ghostling on top of her before he could sink his claws into her chest.
* * *
Blake ordered the riflemen to shoot over the combatants at the reinforcements surging from the woods. Just the Ghostlings. The possessed humans were for him and for his mother. But the bullets did not stop them. They just kept coming.
From his vantage point on the hilltop he could see his father fighting paw to claw with Nagi’s forces. His heart nearly stopped as his father fell, but a huge buffalo knocked away his attacker.
“Tuff Jackson,” he murmured, sure he was right. “I’d bet my life on it.”
Above them, hawks, eagles and ravens soared in circles, some darting away to return and report what they observed.
He could barely see now through the gun smoke and dust. The acrid scent of gunpowder burned his nostrils.
Beside him, a raven landed.
“Alon’s fighting to your left. Tell your men not to fire at Ghost Children there unless they advance to the hill. Alon knows to stay below that mark unless you are overrun.”
“How do you know Alon?” he asked the raven.
“I’m his mother. And I changed your diapers, Blake Proud, so do as I say.”
“Bess?” he asked. But she had already taken to the air again. Alon had brought an army, despite Blake’s instructions not to do so. Without Alon, Blake knew the Spirit Children’s position would already be overrun. Now he had to keep his forces from killing the wrong Halflings.
“Cease fire!” he said.
The guns fell silent.
“To the left! Fire if they break through the Skinwalkers. Sharpshooters! Aim only for the ones actually engaging the Skinwalkers. And only if you have a clear shot.”
This was more dangerous, for his sharpshooters might accidentally kill the Skinwalkers.
“He’s sending humans now,” called someone from the line. “To the west.”
Blake swung his binoculars right and saw the humans, dressed in rags, hair a tangled nest of sticks and debris, as if they had walked for days and slept on the ground. Even through the smoke, he could see the telltale yellow eyes of possession.
“Mother!” he called.
Michaela was there beside him in an instant. Though his senior by more than two decades, she looked as if she might be his younger sister, for like all Niyanoka, she aged very slowly. If they survived the day, they might both enjoy another two hundred years.
“They’re possessed,” he said, pointing toward the mob now halfway across the field.
Neither the Ghostlings nor the Skinwalkers engaged them, letting them walk right by, like toddlers wandering on a battlefield. But these toddlers carried clubs and guns.
“There’s so many,” he said, as he and his mother rushed to the end of the earthen wall.
“Call the Memory Walkers and Peacemakers. They will need to revise the memories of the humans after we remove the ghosts.”
“I’m not sending them down there until the fighting is done.”
His mother nodded, her lips pressed into a grim line. “Very well.”
She handed over one of the two medicine wheels that helped channel their Seer gifts. She had had hers since before his birth and had used it successfully the last time she faced Nagi’s ghosts. That day there had been no Ghostling army, for the third Halfling race had not yet come into being.
His wheel was also made of cottonwood, bent into a circle. Two strips of wood bisected the center and crossed each other at right angles. Her wheel held one eagle feather at the center with her medicine bundle tied beneath. His bundle was likewise tied in the center, but he had also wrapped one feather on the bisection of each of the four directions using red trade cloth.
Together they ran toward the puppet army of humans.
“Wait until they are on the hill. Then we’ll work together. Remember, just keep breathing and focus on the middle of their bodies, right above the navel.”
His mother raised the medicine wheel to the sky. Blake lifted his as well and together they began to chant their prayers. His mother’s high voice rang clear above the chaos, while his boomed in a deep bass. In unison the people halted, clamping their hands to their ears as if the Calling Prayer was some heinous wail. The entire mob dropped to their knees, still clutching their heads, and together collapsed on the ground.
All the humans lay in the same direction, heads pointed north, motionless, except for their breathing. Blake gave a shout of triumph. They had removed the ghost invaders. All of them and without harming a single human.
He hugged his mother and she patted his back.
“You did well,” she said.
His elation died when he looked across the battlefield to see Nagi, billowing black and menacing at the tree line. He seemed to be looking directly at them.
Blake acted on instinct, dragging his mother to the ground as the killing blast ripped into the earthen embankment and shot above them into the sky.
“He’s seen us,” said Blake.
His mother lifted her head to peer across the battlefield. “He’s coming.”
* * *
Nagi billowed in delight. He had found two of the three Seers. Had the stupid Niyanoka actually brought them to the battlefield? The Seers were all that prevented him from enslaving the entire human race, so he would kill them first.
Where was the third? Nagi’s gaze swept the hilltop, looking for the telltale aura of violet that was unique to those three Halflings.
His search kept him from noticing when the tide of the battle shifted until the nearest of his forces charged past him. Had he not made it clear that any retreating would die?
He zapped the first half-dozen deserters with one blast. They stood seized in the grip of his killing force. He let the energy course through them as they began to smoke, their flesh cooking from the inside out. When they burst into flames, those retreating behind them reversed direction to make another stand as the souls of those he had killed slipped quietly away.
“Very smart,” he muttered. His children were fast, strong and deadly. But they lacked intellect. “Must get that from their mothers.”
His gaze swept from the hilltop to the mayhem in the valley. The Skinwalkers again, he realized, shocked to see that they were defeating his children. His offspring were stronger. So was it cowardice?
And then he understood what was actually happening. Some of his own children were fighting with the Skinwalkers. Impossible. Yet there they were, shoulder to shoulder with bear and buffalo, engaging the dwindling numbers of his vanguard.
“Traitors!” he bellowed.
Nagi searched the field for the leader of these traitors and found the huge Ghost Child fighting beside a Skinwalker grizzly. That one, he decided. Then, he did a double-take, blinking away the film of smoke and grime in his eyes. This world was very dirty, he thought. His second look confirmed the impossible, a violet aura glowing all about the bear that stood beside the biggest of his offspring.
The third Seer!
“Get her!” he screamed. “Kill that bear!”
The horde turned toward the Skinwalker grizzly. He did not need to win this battle. He only needed to kill the Seers to ensure victory.
Soon he recognized two things: his numbers were inadequate because of the traitors, and he would not reach any of the Seers. Nagi billowed with fury, unwilling to accept what he saw.
He had hoped to avoid this step. But really, how could he? The Seers were all within his sight. All he need do was remove their souls and, poof, problem solved. And while he was at it, why not take the souls of the traitors and of the rest of the fighters, alive and dying? Simple, clean, foolproof.
Such a blast would mean that his loyal children would also perish, but who had time to sort them out?
Nagi summoned all his powers to tear the living souls from their living bodies. He had never reaped so large a harvest, and he was not strictly allowed to take souls from the living, but once done, he’d control the Living World. Then he’d make his own rules.
* * *
Alon’s fighters turned the battle. He sensed the malicious ghosts still hovering over the battlefield. The Seers had expelled them, but they waited for their hosts to recover to repossess them. His kind and the Seers still needed to send them to face their judgment.
But that must wait until after the last of Nagi’s forces fell. Alon gave them opportunity to run, keeping his forces from pursuit, but it did not matter. Nagi forced them back into the fighting. They would die at the hands of their siblings or die at the hands of their father. The entire battle made Alon sick.
It would not be long now. The wolves and bears chased the last of the Ghostlings.
Beside him, Samantha, bloody and weary, engaged a female of his kind as two of his own leaped in unison at him.
His claws ripped into the torso of one, finding the soft cartilage between the ribs. His attacker crumbled. Alon turned, lifting his spines, and heard the scream as the second’s soft underbelly contacted with Alon’s hundreds of knifelike quills.
Alon found Samantha had defeated another challenger and now bled from a wound on her shoulder that was terrifyingly close to her jugular. Alon felt fear lance him once more. Samantha’s injuries and the danger she faced overshadowed his own peril. He would give his life to save hers, even to get her to run. But she wouldn’t. He was admiring and furious in equal measures.
“What’s that?” asked Owen, one of his compatriots, a Beta twin just six years younger than himself.
Owen’s twin, Ophelia, turned with him to look in the direction Owen indicated. Samantha reared up to look.
Before them, the Skinwalkers were falling, rolling backward, crumpling to the ground and cascading facedown.
Samantha bellowed and fell sideways. Alon caught her as she toppled, feeling the blast of invisible energy that passed through him an instant later. It took his wind, leaving him unable to draw breath for a moment. Samantha, unconscious, shifted into her human form, her upper body draped in the great bearskin cape.
Owen recovered first. “They’re all changing back.”
Alon scanned the field. The Skinwalkers dropped in human form. The wolf pack toppled, naked in their hunting formation, still as death, and the pride of lions crumpled in the grass, their lion skins spread out about them like tawny wings. Even the great herd of buffalo now lay naked, their pale limbs poking out in every direction from beneath the curly-haired buffalo robes. The Owl, Raven, Eagle and Hawk Skinwalkers began changing and falling from the sky.
“Catch them!” Alon cried.
His men rushed to snatch them from the sky. Alon spotted a woman falling. His mother. He changed to his ghost form and flew as fast as he ever had along the ground, reaching her in time to change back and catch her in his arms. He lay her beside the fallen buffalo shifters and ran back to Samantha, leaping over the prone bodies.
“The Spirit Children!” shouted Ophelia.
Alon retrieved Samantha, clasping her to his chest and holding her.
“They’re dropping, too,” cried Owen.
Alon patted Samantha’s pale cheek. “Wake up, Sam. Please, wake up.”
Instead he watched her soul seep from her body, like mist rising from a meadow.
“No!” he howled. Alon was on his feet in an instant. He knew now what had happened. Nagi had done this. He had broken every law in both worlds and harvested the souls of the living.
Nagi had gone too far. And he would pay for this outrage. But how to defeat one who is invulnerable? Now, there was the crux of it all.
“Look,” said Ophelia. “Their souls are all escaping.”
Before them a mist of souls slipped from the bodies of the fallen.
“Why aren’t we dead?” asked Owen, patting his chest to assure himself that he was still corporeal.
“It doesn’t work on us,” growled Alon.
“Why not?” asked Owen.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m going to kill him and then I’m going to retrieve their souls.”
The twins spoke at once.
“All of them?” squeaked Ophelia.
“He’s immortal,” reminded Owen.
“He’s already tried to kill us and failed. Maybe we don’t die, either.”
“We die,” said Owen. “I witnessed our enemies kill Gail and Gregory. And I saw Nagi murder the deserters among his ranks. We die, Alon.”
“How do we kill him?” asked Ophelia, ready to join Alon.
Alon was already flying across the distance that separated them. He summoned all his remaining energy, determined to take his father’s soul—if he had one.
In the valley, Nagi’s troops turned to watch him. The silence of the battlefield added to Alon’s fury. Nagi would win. He knew it. Still he raced over the uneven ground, straight at the billowing rain cloud that was his sire.
So this was the great Nagi, Ruler of the Realm of Ghosts, stealer of innocent souls. This was the creature that had forced his essence on innocent humans and created him. This monster.
Alon struck at his sire with all the self-loathing in his heart. The energy that shot from Alon’s fingers was strong enough to steal a mortal’s soul. The power collided with Nagi’s vaporous body.
He writhed and then turned his yellow eyes on Alon.
“You dare attack me?”
In answer, Alon hit him again.
This time Alon saw a small wisp, a trace of Nagi’s essence, leave his body and evaporate into the air. The mark, the tiny nick that was no bigger than the bite of a field mouse, quickly disappeared in the rolling smoke that was his father’s earthly body. The similarity between Nagi’s shape and Alon’s flying form sickened Alon. He hit him again.
“Stop that!” said Nagi.
Had Alon actually caused this Spirit some discomfort? Had he caused harm? Alon felt a surging of hope. He hit him again.
Nagi flinched and then recovered.
“Does it hurt you, Father?”
“No more than a bee sting to a bear. You cannot harm me. Stop or I shall end you.”
He didn’t. Alon struck again. As his energy wave struck Nagi, one more hit landed from a different direction. He turned to see Aldara shocking Nagi from his right. Then more stings hit and more. His army had followed and all of the Ghost Children struck with their soul-harvesting force, the gift inherited from their sire, using his power against him.
“Stop!” Nagi bellowed. But he writhed now, billowing and contracting as the stings hit him, sending tiny traces of smoke hissing from him.
He was right. A single bee cannot stop a bear. But a nest of hornets will send any creature fleeing. Alon struck again. Beside him, Aldara attacked.
“You killed Blake! I hate you!”
“Kill them,” cried Nagi to his dwindling troops.
But they did not move to stop Alon’s army. Instead several rose cloudlike into the air and joined the attack.
“Traitors!” Nagi turned to retreat.
Alon pursued. The others followed.
“Run, Father! Run back to the Realm of Ghosts and know that if you come again your children will be waiting to send you home. This is the harvest you reap.”
Nagi turned to face them once more. “You fools. We could have ruled them all. You are their masters. Instead you act as their slaves.”
Alon hit him again. “This world is for the living.”
Nagi writhed. “Who will harvest the evil ghosts without me?”
Alon spoke. “We will. We need you no longer.”
The others roared their assent.
“Enough!” Nagi bellowed. “I go! But none of you will ever cross the Ghost Road. When you leave this world you come to me.”
Alon knew it was true, and it only enraged him more. He struck again but Nagi was already gone.
“Hurry,” cried Aldara. “Before their souls leave the Living World.”
The Ghost Children raced back the way they had come. Upon reaching the battlefield they stopped in unison. Their spiny quills drooped in dismay at the multitude of drifting souls.
Below the souls the Skinwalkers lay strewn across the grass. Upon the hill the Spirit Children had crumpled. Nothing stirred but the souls of the dead, glowing brightly, hovering near their mortal forms, confused by the sudden severance between the body and spirit.
“There are so many,” whispered Owen.
Alon felt a desperation creeping in to drown him. How could they return them all?