“Where’s he moving her?” the one asked, and I froze again. If we didn’t find my mom in the castle, I would need a second place to look.
“Devil’s Meadow,” the other replied.
I looked at Gage, praying he knew where that was, and he nodded once.
Time to die, bastards.
Leaping out toward the entrance, I slashed the level six demon right across the throat as Gage took care of the other one. They both went down quickly, and I did a full three-sixty to get my bearings and make sure there weren’t any others.
We were alone, halfway up the mountain. I could see Shadow City in the distance.
Thank God.
“Help us,”a voice whispered, and I spun but nobody was there.
“She’s here to save us,” a female said, and my heart hammered in my chest.
“Do you hear that?” I asked Gage.
He frowned, looking at me like I’d grown an extra head.
Awesome. That was a no.
“Free us,” a woman said, this time closer, and I spun around to come face to face with a ghost.
A shriek tore from my lungs, and I stumbled backward. The woman was see-through like Skye, but unlike Skye she looked ill. Okay, she was dead, so of course she wasn’t healthy, but her cheeks were sunken in and patches of her hair missing. Parts of her transparent form were missing, like holes in Swiss cheese.
“Are you here to help us?” she asked me.
I swallowed hard.
“You okay?” Gage stepped protectively closer to me.
“I’m seeing a ghost,” I reported to him, and the woman frowned.
“Skye?” Gage asked.
I just shook my head. The woman was looking at me like I’d shot her dog.
“He’s killing me,” she sobbed, pulling at her hair. “Each day I feel myself wasting away. He feeds on us until there is nothing left. So many have already been lost.” Tipping her head back, she wailed into the dark night sky.
Geez.She had to be talking about Apollyon.
I did not want to deal with this kind of ghost drama right now, but the woman didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave and I felt really bad that she was sick or disappearing or whatever. As she drew closer to me, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and looked over to see several other shadowy ghosts clambering up the side of the mountain toward me.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, “I wish I could help you all, but—”
“Please!” She lunged, her bony fingers wrapping around my wrist.
I hissed when the cold rushed through my system, but the second she touched me a jolt of power left me and bled into her. Her ghostly form wobbled and wavered, and I yanked away from her.
The woman gasped and I stared at her in shock. She was more solid now, a full ghost like Skye, and her hair had grown back, as well as fat put into her cheeks.
Holy ghost rejuvenation!
“I’m so lost here,” Gage muttered.
I ignored him, because now the spirits that had been climbing toward us had arrived. There were half a dozen, and they all looked at the woman in shock.
