“Billy—”
“Shut up, Cass!”
“I won’t shut up.” Because we weren’t going to make it; there were too many. And while none of them wanted to be first, as soon as one attacked, they’d all be on us. I knew that because I knew ghosts—and so did he. “If you stay, you’ll just die, too. But if you run—”
“Shut up!” He turned that horrifying visage on me, but it didn’t work. Because it didn’t look terrible to me. It looked like a friend. One I was suddenly desperately afraid for.
“—they’ll let you go,” I sobbed. “Please, Billy, they don’t want you—”
“Too bad, because they’re going to get me!” he snarled. “Next one who tries it never tries anything again. How bad you want it, huh?” He stared around at the all-enveloping cloud. “How bad?”
That last was a scream, echoing through the air. It was pretty intimidating, even to me, and it might have worked— on humans. But these weren’t. And while some had enough sanity left to understand the threat, plenty didn’t. They didn’t understand anything anymore—except hunger.
“Billy!” I screamed, glimpsing something coming this way. But it was too late, because it was too fast and too strong and—
And ours.
I stared as the colonel swooped down, colliding with two ghosts that had been sneaking up behind us. The trio turned into a whirlwind of flashing lights and screeching voices, while another ghost, this one huge, shot past them and jumped Billy Joe. The two immediately became embroiled in a fight so furious it was impossible to tell where one started and the other stopped.
But the dam had burst now, the attack giving the hovering spirits a chance to descend in force. Hard nips, painful gashes, and biting wounds seeped what remained of my power out into the air of this place, like a haze of blood. I screamed and fought, even knowing it wouldn’t do any good, because they were literally eating me alive.
And then a ghostly screech, louder than any I’d heard so far, louder than any I’d ever heard, shivered through the space around me. It was deafening, a piercing din that cut through my head like a stake to the brain, making me cry out. And momentarily stopped the attack when the ghosts, most of which were too nebulous to have faces, nonetheless gave the impression of looking up—
Just in time to be swallowed whole, like a school of fish by a diving whale. Only the whale was an old woman in a neon-lit housecoat, so bright she seared the eyes, and so solid she might as well have been human. Daisy roared, I stared, and she took off, chasing after the remains of the fleeing mob.
I looked around but couldn’t see the colonel. But I caught a glimpse of Billy off to my left. And it looked like he was winning, too, the smear of his red ruffled shirt slowly eclipsing the blue of his assailant’s. Unfortunately, the ghost had drawn him off, leaving me open to be savaged by the smaller spirits Billy had frightened away, who flew back at the first sign of an advantage.
What felt like a dozen wasps stung me all at once. And each tiny bite, each bit of stolen power, left me more vulnerable the next time. From within my body, they wouldn’t have been able to hurt me much, but without it—
I wasn’t going to last long without it.
But Billy had gotten me close enough to the barrier that it spilled a haze of light all around me. I could see it. I could even see through it a little, although what I could see didn’t make sense. Just an empty room, swirling with snow light, with not even my acolytes remaining.
But I didn’t care about that now; I only cared about getting back—into time, into my body, into some kind of protection—for all of us.
My friends wouldn’t leave without me, so I had to get out.
I had to.
I started crawling, the ghosts coming with me, still feeding. I lashed out when I had the strength, ignored them when I didn’t, and crawled as fast as I could. Until the light got stronger, flooding the area around me, while the screams and screeches and muffled roars from behind grew fainter.
But not the ones that had come with me.
They even sounded like insects, I thought, a constant buzzing in my ears. But increasingly, they didn’t feel like them. The spirits weren’t biting now so much as leeching on to me, a dozen, maybe two, hanging off my sides, my back, my thighs, while more circulated, trying to find an open spot. I could feel my remaining strength going into them—not as fast as in Apollo’s attack, but fast enough.
They were bleeding me dry.
My hands finally found the skin of time, and scraped across it, desperate, shaking. No, I thought, watching the ceiling slide by in fits and starts, as someone dragged my body across the floor. No, I’m not dead yet; no, please help! But they couldn’t hear; they didn’t come.
And I was running out of time.
I got to my knees, pounding against the barrier with my fists, but there was no way in. And then a spirit darted in from the crowd, bigger than the others, brighter, stronger, and latched on to my throat. It felt exactly like an animal bite, fangs sinking deep, causing me to scream in agony. And to rip it off, blind with pain and with the shimmering energy that the move released.
The discharge of power caused something like a feeding frenzy, the cloud of spirits suddenly so big and bright that I couldn’t even see the barrier anymore. I couldn’t see anything, except for pulsing brilliance. And, increasingly, I couldn’t feel, my body becoming lighter and fainter, and dimmer, as my own light began to fade.
*
“Immortals don’t know how to die, do they?”
It was Roger, back in the cottage, talking to me while Jonas waited outside. The place was so pretty, a doll’s house of a home. And cozy. Made even more so by the faint rain falling past the windows. It was a strange counterpoint to his words.
I looked back at him. “Don’t they?”
“No, I don’t think so. Just as most humans would not do very well as immortals, the gods do not handle it well when confronted by death. They don’t have our peace with it.”
“I don’t have any peace with it,” I said bitterly.
“Compared to them? Yes, you do. We humans have an instinctive knowledge of death. We are born, knowing that, one day, we will die. It gives us certain advantages.”
“I don’t see any.”
“Don’t you? Each day is more precious when you know you don’t have an infinite number of them. Each experience more savored, each friend more valued. We may live shorter lives, but in a way, we live fuller ones.”
“Is that what Mother wanted? To live fuller?”
He paused and pushed the ridiculous glasses up his long nose. They reflected the light of the weakened spells, making them run with rainbows, like some novelty item out of a souvenir store. They should have made him look ridiculous.