Chapter 9
Voren
Dreven steps out of the shadows in the rotting foyer, looking like he’s just swallowed a wasp.
“We need a distraction,” he announces without preamble.
Dastian stops juggling three antique vases. “I love distractions. Explosions? Fire? A rain of frogs? Please say frogs; I haven’t done that since the sixteenth century.”
“Wraiths,” Dreven says, his gaze landing heavily on me. “I just had a frustrating, yet informative conversation with Tabitha. The Order is suspicious of Nyssa. We need to give her a stage to prove she hasn’t turned.”
I arch a brow. “You want me to terrorise the village? Oh, I haven’t done that in a while.” This day is looking up. Though it would be better if it were night, I can do some dawn-time hauntings. “To the cemetery then.”
I vanish from the rotting grandeur of Marrow House and materialise next to a damp, moss-slicked headstone.
It’s almost insultingly easy. I extend my senses, tapping into the soil. It’s teeming. Generations of villagers who died of old age, bad hearts, or the occasional sheep-related accident.
I raise a hand, palm up, and pull. It’s not a gentle tug; it’s a command written in frost. “Arise,” I whisper, the temperature dropping sharply enough to crack a nearby vase of plastic flowers.
The ground shivers. A heavy fog rolls off my skin and curls around the graves like a lover. Figures pull themselves from the earth, grey, indistinct, and confused.
“Let’s watch from Marrow House,” Dreven says. “If Nyssa knows we are here, it will ruin the optics.”
As one, we vanish back to Marrow House, to the bedroom where we can get a clear view of the graveyard. My wraiths, ghosts and ghouls, move through the cemetery like lost fucking farts in a thunderstorm.
“Come on, Nyssa,” I murmur, invested in this farce. Dreven doesn’t exaggerate, so if Tabitha has warned of the Order turning against its slayer, we need to fix it before they haul her in and do whatever it is they do to rogue slayers.
Personally, I’m not keen to find out.
The fog rolls down the hill like spilt milk, swallowing the iron gates and spilling onto the tarmac. It’s a decent effort for a rush job. The spirits are confused, but they’re visible enough to cause panic.
“They’re a bit lethargic,” Dastian critiques, hovering near the window frame. “I would have gone with fire zombies. Faster. Crunchier.”
“And far too messy,” I counter, watching a particularly confused spectre try to walk through the iron fencing and bounce off. “This requires finesse, not a barbecue. We need the Order to see a threat, not an apocalypse.”
Dreven says nothing. He stands rigid, his gaze locked on the road leading from Nyssa’s cottage. He’s vibrating with tension, likely calculating the exact probability of this backfiring on our arses.
I’ll save him the trouble. It will, one hundred per cent, kick us in the nuts.
“She’s coming,” he says abruptly.
I follow his line of sight. A figure sprints down the lane, blade already drawn.
“She’s going to be absolutely livid when she realises it’s us,” Dastian muses, sounding delighted.
“Me,” I gritted out. “When she realises it’s me.”
“As long as she puts on a show for the Order,” Dreven murmurs.
She reaches the first wraith and slices through his ectoplasm.
The spirit unravels like cheap wool, dissipating into the fog with a confused moan.
“She’s not holding back,” Dastian notes, practically pressing his nose against the glass.
I flex my fingers, sending a pulse of command through the fog. The remaining spirits stop meandering and turn towards Nyssa with unified, moaning menace.
Nyssa doesn’t flinch. She dances between them. Every strike severs my connection to a soul, a sharp, stinging snap against my mind. She’s efficient, lethal, and absolutely furious. I can tell by the way she stomps on a ghoul’s foot before banishing it.
“She’s going to make you pay for this later,” Dastian chuckles, watching her decapitate a spectral gardener.
“Better she takes it out on me than the Order takes it out on her,” I reply.
My focus stutters as, for the second time in as many days, I see her death.
The first one by my hand was something I knew I had to do. It was the only way to stop the beast. I saw it. I saw myself bring her back. But this…
I choke on the power of the death coursing through me.
It hits me like a sledgehammer to the chest. It’s a vision so sharp and visceral it bleeds into my sight.
I see her broken. Cold skin, empty eyes, and a silence that screams of finality.
It’s not the realm taking her; it’s something else. Something older.
“Voren?” Dreven’s voice cuts through the haze, sharp with alarm.
I stagger back from the window. “She dies. Again.”
Dastian spins around, his amusement vanishing. “What are you talking about? She’s kicking your ghosts’ arses down there.”
“Not now, not with them,” I snarl, clutching the sill as the icy tremor in my hands refuses to settle. “It’s a thread snapping. An absolute end.”
“The Devourer,” Dreven mutters.
“It’s closer than we think,” I say, watching Nyssa slash at another wraith.
I drop the connection. “Return.”
Nyssa stumbles as the undead vanish around her.
“We need to see if the Order bought that,” Dastian says.
“We need to protect her from dying again,” I grit out.
“One thing before the other. If the Order takes her under suspicion of turning against her code, we will never find her.”
“Dastian’s right,” Dreven says. “But we wait. Let her play her part. If we interfere now, we undo the work. The Order is watching, and they need to believe the Slayer is still theirs to control.”
“Begs the question why Tabitha chose to give you the heads up,” I muse.
“She knows the Devourer is coming. She knows we are all doomed if we don’t stop this. If we don’t help Nyssa stop it.”
“Self-preservation is a powerful motivator,” I mutter, turning back to the window. My hands are still steady, but the cold inside me feels brittle, liable to snap. The vision of her broken body is burned onto the back of my eyelids, a negative image that won’t fade.
“She will return to the Order now for a report. We have provided her with time, nothing more,” Dreven says.
“Yeah, well, let’s hope she comes to us after her debrief. Let’s hope she is able to,” I mutter, hoping that despite her unclear motives, Tabitha will help the slayer out, at least for long enough for the Order to back off.