Chapter 39 Ares
ARES
When Ember’s comm line went dead, I didn’t realize I was screaming. That Eryx was trying to keep me from launching myself out the backseat of the car. It took five full heartbeats to come back to myself. When I did, the boy from the metro tunnel sat between me and Eli, pale and gaunt.
“You got the Angel back,” the boy said. “You did what we wanted.”
Eryx stared at the boy and then at me. “What is he talking about?”
“Lara,” I replied, practically desolate. Now was not the time for this bullshit. My heart raced as I thought of ways I could get away from Eryx, back to Ember. “I think.”
Eryx rolled his eyes. Apparently, I’d misunderstood the trajectory of his question. “Obviously. When did Hypatos Bielke find you?”
Hypatos Bielke. Hypatos Bielke. The kid’s face finally registered in my mind. “You lived behind the shop.”
The child nodded. “You always talked a big game. Thought when you became boss, things would change, but you got the Angel hauled off.”
Rain pounded down the car windows, and it was nearly impossible to see where we were going, but I trusted Avaline.
She had us headed to meet Lara on the boat, no doubt.
I had to get my head straight. Much as every instinct in me told me to get back to Ember, no matter the cost, if I went without her sword, I would only distract her.
What I had to do now was focus on getting her that sword.
It was her best chance of surviving a weapon that had been imbued with a god’s power.
There were few secrets in Necroline history about gods, as even our own lore had been tainted by the Authority’s rewriting, but there were serious cautions against objects that had no power on their own, but were blessed by gods.
They were to be avoided at all costs. Though vague, I could only imagine that the warning had survived all other attempts to suppress our knowledge of the gods because it was important. Rhiannon twisted in her seat to look at us.
“Are you talking to a ghost right now?” she asked, directing her question to my brother. “At a time like this?”
Eryx sighed. “Yes. There’s a kid here. He wouldn’t be if he didn’t have something important to say, would he?” My brother raised an eyebrow to the kid who’d died in the fire that destroyed our parents’ flower shop, when the blaze traveled to the building behind us.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Hypatos said, twisting his mouth into a knot. “I came to say thanks, and that we’ll help your girl if you keep helping us.”
“What does that mean?” Eryx asked, using the voice he always used with children, low and calming. Rhiannon frowned at him, but it was a look of confusion, not anger.
I kept my mouth shut. Anything I would say would make everything worse. Every part of me still wanted to launch myself out of this car and fly in the opposite direction, even knowing that wasn’t what she wanted.
Hypatos watched me. “You have to get the swords, Ares. We’ll help her fight the godkiller ‘til you get there.” The little ghost boy’s chin quivered. “Will you help us, if we help her?”
I had no idea what I was agreeing to, but Eryx touched the boy’s arm. It was an odd part of his talent. Sometimes he could make physical contact with the dead. The little boy looked up into my brother’s eyes.
“You need help, little man?”
The boy nodded, then smiled. “Awww, I got it wrong. ‘S’you who’s to help us. Will you? If we help his girl, will you help us?”
Rhiannon’s eyes pleaded. Eryx held her gaze for a long moment. Whatever passed between them, I wanted to stop it, much as I wanted anyone to help Ember. Making deals with spirits was a dangerous business. I shook my head.
“Yes,” Eryx agreed, his eyes not leaving Rhiannon’s. “But you’ll help her fight until we get her the sword, right?”
Hypatos nodded. “We will. For the Angel’s sake as well. Tell her that when she crosses them over, we’ll make sure they get what’s coming to them. We won’t spare them one bit of suffering.”
Something deeper than a chill went through me. Spirits could be vengeful, that was a simple fact, but whatever this child spoke of, it was not normal. Not how spirits usually spoke or behaved. I didn’t like it, but the child disappeared before I could argue.
Before I even had a chance to say another word, Avaline slammed on the brakes. “We’re here,” she said. “Lara’s half a minute away.”
We jumped out of the car and ran towards the river.
In what felt like moments, we were aboard the speedboat Briony had helped Lara commandeer. The child was an utter menace to society, but she was our menace. As we raced towards the Midtown bridge, I shut my worries about Ember out as much as I could, but I was losing my shit.
A warm hand on my back brought me out of the haze of panic I’d sunk into.
Rhiannon’s beautiful face came level with mine.
Behind her, Eryx stood looming, watching.
Somehow, in the past few hours, the two of them had become a team.
I didn’t understand how it happened, or what it meant, but they seemed determined to work together.
“Ares,” Rhiannon said, tipping my chin up to meet her eyes. She spoke slowly, like she might to a toddler. “Ares, to help her, you have to help us.”
I nodded, swallowing hard. My brother stepped forward. “Av’s tracking the spirits—the spirit traps are still attached to the swords—and since we don’t have explosives, or any way to get them out on our own, you’ve gotta get those girls free fast so that she can talk them into helping us.”
Rhiannon raised an eyebrow. “I need you not to fuck this up, Necroline. For my sake and Ember’s.”
The task was nearly impossible, but I nodded anyway, rising from the seat in the bow I’d sunk into when we boarded. The boat slowed as we reached the bridge.
Av stood beside Lara, making eye contact with me as she nodded. “The truck is on the bridge, at the first stoplight. I have the spirits’ attention, but I still can’t speak to them.”
Rhiannon stood in front of me, her aura pulsing with light and immortal energy, and I reached through it, trying to make contact with the spirits’ essential nature.
The idea here was that the traps would sense Rhiannon’s aura first, and would ignore it because she was Maere, like the girls, thus making it easier to disentangle the unascended from the spirit traps.
If I did that successfully, Av might be able to communicate with them.
It was all a lot of mights and maybes, but it was the only shot we had.
The traps stopped that right now, as they operated under the same principle that governed Echoes: repeating a past trauma over and over, so the spirit no longer saw the outside world or the call to the netherworld.
In short, it was torture. Even filtered through Rhiannon’s aura, I heard the pain the young women trapped inside the truck were in. “Please,” I whispered as I worked, using Rhiannon’s aura to coat all of my movements so that the traps would not push me out. “Let me help you.”
Even if the girls couldn’t hear me, I spoke to them, reassuring them I was here to help.
It was impossible to know when they would be free enough to hear one of us, or who they might be predisposed to make contact with first. Av was their best bet, but we had no real way of knowing.
Perhaps Eryx or I would remind them of a brother, a father, a friend…
The bottom line was that we didn’t know them. We had to approach with kindness. They had been harmed for long enough.
My fingers moved, trying to untangle their auras from the traps. Sweat beaded on my brow and the back of my neck with the effort. It was difficult to do remotely, but Rhiannon’s aura helped to steady and focus my power.
In this case, like did reach like. But every time I had a knot undone, instead of releasing, it tightened. It was like one of the finger traps that were party favors at the high holy days. The harder I pulled, the tighter the traps became.
My heart raced. There wasn’t enough time and I was failing.
“Ares Necroline,” many voices spoke at once through my brother. His eyes had gone milky white, glowing with faint light from the spirits that spoke through him. “You cannot free us this way. There is a trick to this trap. You must rip and tear.”
“No,” Lara breathed, staring at my brother, as though she could see the spirits of the young women trapped inside the vehicle above us. “You’ll be destroyed.”
The truck was on the move. I had it in my sights now. Traffic moved slowly, but if I didn’t move quickly, the reverse-engineered charge would not release the swords. Sweat broke out on my back, causing my dress shirt to stick to my skin.
“We will become vengeance incarnate,” the spirits of the unascended Maere responded. “We will become dark matter, beautiful and terrible.”
I wasn’t going to be the one to explain to a bunch of dead teenage girls what dark matter actually was, especially because it was something of a natural miracle that they were speaking to us at all.
I took a deep breath. “If you hurt people you should not, I will have to destroy you.”
The truck had moved past the midpoint of the bridge. We’d already missed our window, but if this was the only way, I would do it.
“We understand,” they responded, through Eryx. “Do it now.”
My hands moved quickly; though the work I did was with my mind, it helped to focus my power as I took each of the girls’ auras in my hand and pulled, hard—with a violence I didn’t feel towards them, but towards their captors.
Towards the people who would use younglings in such a way for their own gain.
When their souls ripped free from the traps, I felt them change.
Felt their essences howl into the dark night, as they were torn asunder from their prisons.
Eryx crumpled to the deck. Rhiannon dove after him, keeping him from hitting his head.
When I was sure he was all right, I turned my attention back to the bridge.
The truck had skidded to a stop. Everything was still for a few moments, the air thickening as the mist over the river rose in dark clouds.
The truck doors blew open, the driver and guards tossed out.
They were dead. I could see that much from here; the blood and gore were overwhelming in scope and scale.
I’d seen hundreds of scenes just like it. Most Poltergeists were simply irritating, like Stanley, but those who were vengeful were pure, unadulterated destruction. Goosebumps raised over my skin as a chill slid deep into the base of my spine. What had I done?
I had turned six young women’s spirits that were destined for unimaginable power into vengeful entities with the power to destroy. Bile rose in my throat, and as it did, the spirits appeared on deck.
Their eyes were dark hollows, glowing with powerful red light, as were each of the four swords they carried.
Deep in the indigo dark of this autumn evening, the Maere’s swords shone with power.
Rhiannon took her sword and Sera’s, going to her knees in gratitude as Lara stepped forward to take the sword offered to her.
“Thank you,” the two of them whispered.
“Come with us, Ares Necroline,” the spirits whispered as one, an eerie amalgamation of all their voices.
Like Stanley, they had the power to change forms, and they did so now, melding together to become a six-headed sea dragon, a creature of legend, with eyes that glowed with the same crimson light as the swords.
Upriver, two boats sped towards us with purpose. Ember’s sword was in my hand before I could reach for it, and the spirit dragon had slid into the water. “Come with us, Necroline King. We shall aid the Queen together.”
Before Av or my brother could argue, I was astride the spirit dragon, holding onto Ember’s sword, and the reptilian spirit, for dear life. I struggled to tap my earpiece back into the “on” position as we raced through the water.
“Come as soon as you can,” I pleaded. “We’ll need all the help we can get.”