Chapter Twenty-One
Bells
BELLS WATCHED THE MURDERER DRAW IN THE BLOOD OF their victim. The dark pool of it had spilled onto the night-slick pavement of the narrow alley. She couldn’t tell what the dying creature was from this angle, only knew they were human-looking enough to blend into the urban environment.
The killer, however, was wearing tactical gear.
She was never seen in a vision, and used to feeling like an observer after watching one vision of death and then another, her dreaming ones so much more physical and capable of pulling her into the place the kill was happening.
As usual, she could do nothing but watch, standing behind them wearing her striped pink and white pyjamas, bare feet in an iridescent puddle she couldn’t feel.
This vision, though, was weird.
It hadn’t ended after the killer had struck. Usually, after a death or during, she woke with a start, freed from the confines of the vision, as if it had merely wanted someone to see it. She could understand that.
But today, she was lingering as the killer rose and stalked down the alley, their back to her. The air seemed dense and magnetic.
Bells crept closer to the markings and tried to figure out what the supernatural had been drawing, concern and curiosity tilting her head.
There was nothing but lines.
She looked around, wondering if there was something else she was supposed to See. Other than the two walls and narrow, moonlit stretch onto an unfamiliar city street and vacant fire escape, no one else was here.
Instead, the creature before her finally stilled, and it was quiet.
Bells moved closer. ‘Safe travels,’ she said softly.
A prickling at the back of her neck had her looking up into the sliver of dark sky, and stoppered her breathing in her throat.
The darkness seemed to move.
That magnetic charge condensed as the night sky poured into the alley in an inky, sparkling mist.
Bells backed up, entranced as it pulsed in an otherworldly sprawl of navy and black and flickered with light, as if minuscule stars gleamed inside.
And then a figure stepped out of it.
They were completely hooded in a long coat and stepped up to the body, holding their hand out over it. For a breathless moment, Bells only stared, heart racing, confusion dancing through her mind.
Then, they turned their shadowed face towards her.
She flinched, a cry trapping in her throat as their head tilted in interest.
It felt so real.
Surely, they couldn’t see her. No one ever could. Even Death Seers were only usually visible to the person or creature that was dying. But this …
Bells raised her chin the way she’d seen Nicole do. ‘C-can you see me?’
They dipped their head slightly, then turned back to the body.
‘Are you … dead?’ she managed, mouth dry, heart tapping in her ears so loud she wasn’t sure she’d hear a response. ‘What are you doing?’
They chuckled – a simple huff. ‘No. But you shouldn’t be here, little one.’
A neutral voice. Unfamiliar. Dark.
Bells stared as they cupped something invisible above the body then stepped aside to let whatever it was drift towards the coiling darkness suspended behind them.
A soul, Bells realised.
They had probably taken the creature’s soul.
Bells risked a step closer. ‘Why am I here?’
The hooded figure glanced to her once more. ‘I think you should start to figure that out, don’t you?’
Without another word, they stepped back into the dark mist and disappeared. It spiralled up, looking for a moment like a stampede of those mythic deathless horses of the Hunt, before evaporating into the night and the distant sounds of the city.
Then, she was alone again.
With death, with blood.
And the remnants of the Wild Hunt spiralling in the air.