Nodding, Lia held open the door. We filed out, still chuckling, and past hotline workers who were giving us odd looks. Lia’s SUV was getting a workout the past few days. It felt like we were in and out of it more than the bathroom. Phi gave her the closest location as she started the vehicle.
It took less than five minutes to reach St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. The moment I stepped through the gates, I felt like I'd walked into a blender. The empathic chaos was immediate and overwhelming. There were dozens of spirits crying out in anguish. Their energy was slowly being drained away.
"This is worse than I expected," I gasped as I gripped Lia's arm for support when waves of spiritual anguish crashed over my consciousness.
"The harvesting is active," I growled. "This location is currently feeding copious amounts of energy to the Collector."
We moved deeper into the cemetery. I was drawn toward a family mausoleum. It was a focal point of the Collector. The air around the structure shimmered with the kind of heat distortionyou'd expect from a fire. What caused this was far more disturbing. “That’s the stolen life forces,” I told my sisters.
"Can you disrupt it?" Dre asked.
I approached the mausoleum carefully, extending my spiritual abilities toward the source of the distortion. I nearly stumbled backward from the sheer evil radiating from it the moment I made contact. "I’m not so sure. It's like trying to redirect a river with my bare hands," I said as sweat beaded on my forehead from the effort of keeping my hand in place. "The energy flow is too strong and embedded too deeply."
"What if we don't try to stop it?" Phi suggested as she studied the symbols that covered every surface of the mausoleum. "What if we just... muddy the signal?"
A smile spread over my face when she pulled out a piece of chalk and began drawing new symbols over the existing ones. She wasn't erasing them but adding layers of protective magic that would interfere with their function. "You’re creating magical static," Dani observed with growing excitement.
Nodding, I grabbed a piece of chalk. "We can't break their transmission, but we can make it harder for them to receive a clear signal."
We spent the next hour using Phi's technique to alter the sigils. Once done there, we moved on and did the same at the other convergence points. Essentially, we turned the Collector's network against it by introducing enough interference to reduce its efficiency. It wasn't a permanent solution, but it would buy us the time we needed to find a better one.
By the time we reached the French Quarter for our final sweep of the day, the sun was setting, and the tourist crowds were thinning. There were still a lot of people out, but they hung close to the bars. That made it that much more obvious when we spotted a group clustered near Jackson Square. They lookedlike death warmed over. Something had been draining their life force.
"Look at them." I pointed toward the group. "Something's feeding on them."
Semi-transparent figures drifted around the group like spiritual vultures. Their forms were barely visible even to my spiritual senses. They circled their victims while drawing away ribbons of life energy that sparkled briefly before being absorbed.
"Harvesters," I told them grimly. "The Collector's sending out foot soldiers."
“We need to stop them,” Lia replied. “We can’t see them, so you will have to direct us.”
One of the tourists—a middle-aged woman with a camera around her neck—suddenly swayed on her feet. Her face went gray as whatever was stalking her intensified its feeding. She was going to collapse within seconds. She’d likely end up in a coma that she'd never wake up from.
"I’ve got the harvester, you guys protect her," I snarled as I channeled every ounce of energy I could muster into an attack on the parasite while my sisters cast a barrier around the woman.
The harvester recoiled from my intervention with a shriek. Its semi-transparent form momentarily became solid as it was forced to defend itself. That was all the opening my sisters needed. Dre hit it with a magical blast while Kota wrapped it in containment spells that prevented it from dissipating back into the ether. Within seconds, we had a very angry spectral entity trapped in what amounted to a supernatural fishbowl.
Dani and Phi took control of the confused tourists. "Everyone, move along," Dani suggested in a voice carrying just enough magical compulsion to overcome their natural curiosity. "The street performer's show is over. Nothing to see here."
The tourists wandered off with the woman looking confused, but no longer on the verge of collapse. That left us standing in Jackson Square with a captive harvester that was doing its best to tear its way out of our containment spells. "Time for some answers," I said as I approached it.
Establishing contact with the harvester was like trying to have a conversation with a hurricane made of hunger and malice. Its consciousness was fragmented. It was controlled by its directive, which had been given to it by someone else.
"What are you?" I pushed the question directly into its awareness.
The response was a torrent of images and sensations that nearly made me physically sick. It was a human soul that had been ripped from its body. Someone had reshaped it into a tool for harvesting life force. I felt its compulsive need to feed and gather energy for its master. And underneath it all, whoever this thing had been before the Collector got its hooks into them was trapped.
"It was human once," I told my sisters. "The Collector is turning people into these things and using their souls as spiritual parasites."
"I bet they are the missing people," Dani gasped. "I bet it’s using the Guardian families that have been disappearing."
The harvester's struggles against our containment spells intensified, as if our conversation was causing it distress. I pressed deeper into its consciousness, searching for information about the Collector's plans. "As expected, I told the others. The Collector is also planning to tear open a permanent rift between the world of the living and the realm of the dead."
"How close is it to succeeding?" Lia demanded.
"It’ll be powerful enough by the new moon," I whispered. "Less than a week from now. It's going to use the reunion partyas the final sacrifice. All those Guardian bloodlines gathered in one place will power the ritual that will break it free."
The harvester let out a sound that might have been laughter before its form began to waver. “The Collector is recalling it to whatever supernatural command center it’s operating from,” I warned them at the same time I redoubled our containment. It was no use. The harvester vanished a second later. “That thing is going to come back and bite us.” And it wasn’t going to be pleasant.
