Chapter 16
August 14, 1848, Plymouth, Massachusetts
Three Years Ago
Silas woke up to evening light streaming through a window and cursed both souls in his body.
It hadn’t worked. He’d jumped into the harbor, and somehow, he was still here , still chained to mortality with this thing inside him.
His lungs hurt. His bones hurt. His head ... too much pressure in his skull, his ears, his sinuses. He wanted to claw it out. He’d tried so many times to claw it out.
“He’s waking,” said a soft male voice.
“Charlie?” asked a woman. At the sound of her, the other leapt and clawed and barked. Silas seized, balling his hands into fists, biting his tongue, desperate to keep the second spirit down. No one will control me! You Will Not Control Me!
“Give him some space,” the male voice warned.
Garnering some control, Silas shifted his gaze to the two beside him. The man looked like a doctor, and from the pulsing of the other , he knew the woman was Charlie’s wife.
Blast. He’d thought the other’s name.
The room went dark for a moment, until Silas clawed his way back to consciousness. Now he was upright on the bed, wrestling with another man, who tried to restrain him. Shouting nonsense. Charlie had been trying to tell them. Charlie had been trying to win .
Silas laughed from deep in his belly. You won’t win, you fool. I will end you. I will erase you until there is nothing left of you but the memory in that trollop’s mind!
He called upon all of it: the kinesis, the necromancy, his luck and condensing and breaking spells. When his body became supple again, when his stomach stopped heaving and he remembered where he was, he picked himself up from the blood and the bodies and staggered outside. Flared luck to avoid being seen. Forgot what he was doing, then flared it again to find a place to hide. He found it amidst the trash in an alleyway. He breathed hard, barely noticing the scent of refuse and the buzz of flies. He focused only on caging the other , on shoving him so far down even God wouldn’t be able to find him.
But that was the trick, wasn’t it? Every time Silas tried to take his revenge, every time he tried to flee the country, and every time he tried to end it all, this blasted spirit pushed back, ruining everything. Ruining Silas .
Silas slammed his head against the brick wall behind him three times before coughing and digging his nails into his thighs. He was skipping steps. Yes, that had been the problem all along, hadn’t it? If Silas was to succeed, he had to overcome the other first. Completely. Fight the battle within himself before fighting the war with his offenders. He needed his focus wholly on that.
He would destroy the other , regardless of how long it took.
And then he’d come for them .