“Keep telling yourself that.”
“What else is there?” he cried. “We can’t run forever!”
“If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears,” Chelsie replied, and then she shoved him hard. “On your left.”
He stumbled to the ground just in time to miss the ax flying through the air where his head had been. As always, the weapon turned to water vapor before it could hit the ground, but the little glimpse he caught of the wickedly curved blade before it vanished confirmed it was different from the others, just as they’d all been. “How many of those has he got?!”
“From what I’ve seen? Infinite.” Chelsie pointed across the circle. “Go north. We’ll pincer.”
Julius didn’t see the point in attacking. In the short time since she’d lost her sword, he’d seen Chelsie rip off Vann Jeger’s arm, both legs,andsplit his head to the teeth with just her bare hands. Every time, though, the spirit had reformed good as new in seconds.
The obvious difference in power was unfair enough to make even Julius feel murderous. If it wasn’t for the seal, he’d have changed and blasted Vann Jeger ages ago, whatever his sister said. But then, just as he was imagining how good it would feel to burn Vann Jeger until he evaporated, a wind rose in the dark.
If they’d still been in the open field, that wouldn’t have been remarkable, but here inside Vann Jeger’s watery prison, the only wind Julius had felt was the gust of a weapon as it narrowly missed him. That alone made the breeze remarkable, but what really caught his attention was the cold.
Given that it was mid-September, the nights were starting to get chilly, but no amount of seasonal change could explain this kind of dry, creeping, bone-chilling cold. It was like someone had let in a draft from the abyss. Even Chelsie stopped when she felt it, a move that nearly cost her her head when Vann Jeger whipped a long sword in her direction.
The attack must have been habit by this point, because Vann Jeger wasn’t even looking at them when it happened. He was standing still at the center of the circle, his black eyes darting from side to side like he was searching for something. But while the spirit’s distraction gave them a chance to catch their breath, Julius didn’t think it was a good development. An opinion that only grew stronger when the freezing wind picked up, blowing the dirt into dust devils that stung his eyes and smelled of old graves.
“Get back.”
Julius jumped and turned to see Chelsie standing right beside him. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” she said, covering her nose with her hand. “But something’s here. Can’t you smell it?”
Julius wished he couldn’t. In the few moments they’d been talking, the graveyard smell had become overpowering. The temperature had dropped as well, plummeting from normal evening chill to meat locker levels, and as it got colder, the wind grew stronger.
It came from everywhere and nowhere, ripping the loose soil from the torn-up battlefield and spinning it into shapes that looked almost like people in the dark. A few seconds later, there was no “almost” about it. The dust figureswerepeople—shuffling, faceless human forms of every age, sex, and race. Some looked like they’d walked straight out of ancient paintings, while others looked like dust copies of normal people you’d see on the streets of the DFZ. All of them were silent, their bodies blown in and out of existence by the freezing wind that had no beginning and no end as they circled around Vann Jeger, the apparent center of the strange, spontaneous storm.
“Enough!” the spirit roared, forming a large, wicked-looking ax in his hands. “Who are you?”
The one who remembers.
Julius nearly jumped out of his skin. That deep voice had beeninsidehis head, the words blowing though his mind just like the freezing wind blew over his skin. It wasn’t just him, either. Chelsie jumped, too, her head snapping around as she looked for the voice’s source. Vann Jeger was doing the same, turning in a tight circle with his teeth bared and his ax ready. “You are not known to me,” the spirit thundered. “And you are not welcome. This is my fight. Show yourself or be gone!”
But I have always been here.
Despite the bitter cold, Julius began to sweat. Maybe it was his imagination, but he’d have sworn the voice had soundedfamiliarthat time. He was desperately trying to remember where he could have possibly heard something that terrifying before when Vann Jeger froze in his tracks. Chelsie grabbed Julius’s shoulder a split second later, yanking him around until he was facing the prison’s far edge. But while both his sister and Vann Jeger were clearly looking at something, Julius had no idea what. So far as he could tell, that side of the circle was filled with the same ghostly, shuffling dust figures as everywhere else. A second later, though, he realized that wasn’t quite right. One figure in the crowd, a shadow of a soldier in the tattered armor of the Roman Legion, was standing still, and his eyes—two angry slits that glowed like blue fireflies in the empty dark of his helmet—were looking straight at Vann Jeger.
Had Julius been in Vann Jeger’s shoes, this was the point where he would have started running. But being functionally unkillable must have been a crazy confidence booster, because the spirit just looked pissed. “I’m in no mood for games,” he growled, swinging his ax through the swirling ghostly figures. “What are these shades? Answer truthfully, or die.”
For some reason, the soldier seemed to find this hilarious.Die?he cackled, his voice growing stronger.But they already have. They are the forgotten dead, memories lost to all but me.
“And who are you?” Vann Jeger demanded.
The soldier raised his head, and when he spoke again, the words were no longer in Julius’s head, but actual sound—a man’s deep voice, warped by the blowing wind into something much more terrifying. “I am the Empty Wind, Spirit of the Forgotten Dead, and I have come for what is mine.”
By the time he finished, Julius was petrified. He’d never heard of a spirit of the forgotten dead, but it didn’t sound friendly. The only positive thing he could say about their situation was that at least none of the terrifying, ghostly dust figures were looking at him or Chelsie. Their attention was fixated on Vann Jeger, who looked pretty terrifying in his own right.
“Spirit of the Forgotten Dead?” he roared, his blue face turning navy with anger. “Impossible!You are an illusion, a trick!”
The soldier tilted his head. “Does this feel like a trick?”
The wind picked up as he spoke, nearly blowing Julius over. Even Vann Jeger was starting to look spooked as ice crystals began forming in his kelp beard, but that didn’t keep him from yelling. “There are no more Mortal Spirits!” He swung his ax through the dust figures, who didn’t seem to care. “This is Algonquin’s land, the domain of millions of years of water! We have no place for fears made flesh.”
“You speak as if you have power,” the Empty Wind said calmly. “But you’re nothing but a misplaced drop of water riding on stolen magic and hiding in Algonquin’s shadow. Even the Lady of the Lakes is nothing but a pond who’s overflowed her bounds.” He held out a ghostly hand, pointing down at the ground. “This land is more my domain than it ever was hers. All that you call the DFZ was built on the forgotten, the unknown thousands who drowned beneath Algonquin’s wave and now lie lost without even a monument to their name.”
The wind rose higher as he spoke, bringing more figures out of the dirt. But while the ghosts were still little more than faceless shapes in the swirling dust, Julius could feel their anger like a weight as they pressed in around Vann Jeger.
