Chapter Two
Nygohl spins away from the blast, scattering into darkness in the process before resolidifying a short distance away. His eyes are like blue fire when his head snaps up to look at me. Corpse pale with long midnight black hair whipping around him, he is shockingly beautiful with his dainty black horns.
Hmmm. He is not just a wraith it seems, but a minor demon hybrid. Interesting. A wraith by itself could be challenging as they are one of the primordial infernal spirits, but I had not expected this from his file. I make a mental note of this as I holster my blaster and drop from the rooftop to land in a crouch several feet away from him. As expected, the wraith’s eyes follow me, and I can see the shadows begin to stretch and flow from him as he prepares to shield himself and slip away. Little does he realize that Jugong is circling above, drawing gradually closer as he waits for the right moment. He merely awaits my signal. Giwung are quick but not so quick that a wraith wouldn’t be onto them in time to dematerialize and escape if not properly distracted.
I offer Nygohl a smile as I pat my weapon blatantly. “Nygohl Vasheer. It is a pleasant surprise to discover that you are here, after all. I am sure you are aware of who I represent.”
A cold smile flickers on his face, and he shrugs casually in response. He doesn’t look entirely surprised but other than streaming thicker gusts of shadows around him, warping the visible edges of his body, he is making no move to attack or escape.
“I can imagine,” he whispers, his rasped words carrying with a rolling echo common to wraith speech patterns. Despite being partly from a minor demonic family group, it seems that his wraith nature is far more prominent. He begins to walk casually, giving me his profile as his glowing eyes continue to track me. “It seems that the inspection and intelligence office had a requisition specialist sent to clean up their mess.”
I frown at his words and take a cautious step closer, my fingers curling once more around the handgrip of my blaster. “Their mess?”
Nygohl’s eyes glitter with amusement, the corner of his mouth hitching in a cold, cynical smile. “The edges of the underworld ruled by the great court… and what is beyond? What authority truly wields the power of the dark places beyond the eyes of the infernal gods? And who better to penetrate it and gather information than one born of the primordial shadows themselves?”
He has a point. But it is not adding up. My eyes narrow on him as I edge closer, my every step slow and calculated and my weapon a solid and reassuring presence under my palm.
“If that is the case, then why would they send someone from reclamations to find you?” I challenge. “Why not call you in themselves to make your report?”
He smirks in response, and a dimple creases his right cheek in an entirely distracting way. “What if I say that I have seen things out there that shatter all that we know and exposes the lie that the great court has been keeping? That these carefully maintained lands open to the dead are pockets that they have managed to carve out and nothing more—and ever under threat of collapsing completely to that which dwell beyond its borders?”
My eyebrows raise skeptically. “Are you trying to frighten me?”
As expected, his smile widens in a dangerous grin, but he shakes his head. “I do not need to try to frighten you. Reality is far more frightening than any story that can be spun. The lords of the great court keep it all quiet as they maintain the tenuous balance of their kingdoms. Do you know how they accomplish it?”
I frown at him, my curiosity piqued despite myself. More than that, however, I hope that if I keep him talking that it will give me the opening that I need to launch my attack. “How?”
His icy chuckle flows over me, penetrating me to the marrow as he leans over me, his eyes glowing down at me like the embers of the first kindling of life in the abyss. His hand curls around my arm, drawing me in. Finally. I signal abruptly with my other hand and above me Jugong’s wings fold, the darkness collecting and solidifying into a bullet as he drops from above. Unexpectedly, Nygohl’s gaze lifts, a knowing smile replacing his grin as he looks directly at the Giwung dropping directly toward him.
Laughter as chilling as ice blasts over me and suddenly his cold grip grows even icier in less than the space of a breath as he rapidly darkens and fades right into an enormously dense and dark smoky shadow with burning eyes. Those eyes pin me for a moment, and he rushes forward, his shadow form passing over and through me with a freezing intensity. Every part of me locks up in shock and I feel like I’m dying all over again. Distantly I hear Jugong’s roar, but he is obscured completely from my sight as my world is suddenly veiled in dark, rolling smoke for lack of a better word. I choke weakly. My entire body is numb as his shadows draw through me. What only has to be a moment feels like an eternity encompassed by the coldest of hellscapes. And then just as quickly he is gone, his icy darkness releasing me as his shadows fly away from me like thousands of ribbons.
Somehow, I’m able to slowly turn in place, my feet stumbling and my legs shaking from the effort. I can feel myself crumpling as my legs give out completely, but I’m spared contact with the hard street when I’m jerked up brutally into the air as Jugong’s massive arms snap around me and haul me up off the ground in pursuit.
In Jugong’s arms and his body heat surrounding the numbness recedes at a shocking speed, but it is almost immediately replaced with a hard blast of nausea that makes me want to hurl with every powerful downbeat of his wings. I wrap his forearm with my knuckles, silently begging him to adjust his grip as I struggle desperately not to hurl, and finally grip his fuzzy hide between my finger and give it a hard pinch.
Funny thing about being dead—or the damned in this case, your spirit body still needs to be sustained with energy too, hence the buffets for the dead are not just for the pleasure of past enjoyments. I may not precisely have a biological stomach in the strictest sense, but I am pretty certain that the underworld’s version of cheap coffee and that brick of a pastry I ate while hunting is about ready to make itself reappear at any moment. Unfortunately, my stubborn sidekick is ignoring my cues and instead doubles down to shoot head to dart after our quarry heads for two tall towers rising abruptly from the cityscape.
Groaning miserably, I press my lips together as Jugong shifts his body weight unexpectedly, turning abruptly at a sharp angle to skim between the buildings in a dizzying fashion as the dark blur of the wraith’s shadow form streaks ahead and disappears from sight. Despite the urge to puke, I can’t keep my startled yelp to myself as I tuck my legs in and pray that he remembers to compensate accurately for my body dangling helplessly within his grip. I stare at the stonework of the towers worriedly but gradually squint against a strange build up of light pouring from them.
What the fuck is tha--?
A blinding flash cuts off my thoughts as a deep, freezing blast encompasses us far worse than the touch of the wraith’s shadow form. It is so cold that it feels as if it is blasting me apart into tiny shards only to suddenly be replaced by an inferno of heat drawing everything back together again. Cliffs rise up on either side of us, the lower portions dense with dark trees, the tops of which barely seem to penetrate the heavy fog below that reaches towards us with ghostly fingers.
A portal! We passed through a portal . My thoughts are sluggish but uninhibited by the alarm rushing like a high-speed train through me. Where the fuck did the portal come from?
Then—awareness. It was a trap. The wraith had laid fucking trap and led us straight for it. I would cuss a blue streak if I felt like my lips could move wards and if I hadn’t been distracted by Jugong’s wings crumpling with the shock of the portal as we begin to rapidly lose altitude.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck me!
The arm I was abusing in protest of his grip suddenly doesn’t feel nearly strong enough and I cling to it with a deathlike grip. Although this fall is unlikely to be what is capable of killing either of us, it will still hurt like a bitch and incapacitate us for a dangerous amount of time in the wilderness of the outer reaches. Fortunately, Jogung’s stubbornness is proving invaluable because even as shocked as his system is, he is putting up a hell of a fight to keep us in a controlled drop with weak, rapid flicks of his wings.
His arms tighten slightly as the space between the cliffs narrows into a deep valley plunge. Between rising tree tips and the snaking ropes of mist, red splatters of what appears to be blood stains the rockface in an eerie way that makes my hair prickle on the back of my neck before it disappears completely as we plummet into a white sea of fog.