The Gate

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“Wait,” Berend says as they reach the bottom of the stairs. The house is still dark, but it’s an ordinary darkness, and the streetlights are visible from the front windows. An intermittent dark stain leads from the front door toward the back of the house. 

Isabel takes an instinctive step back. Is it blood? It was too dark, before, even with her candle, and she hadn’t noticed it. There are no other signs of violence that she can see, though the holy symbol of Alcos on the mantel remains corroded and black. 

“We should keep moving,” she says. She doesn’t want to give Geray a chance to begin another ritual. She had sent the ghosts away, but a powerful enough draw could bring them back, and others besides. 

Gods. For the briefest moment, she had held their tethers, felt them straining against her will. It was nothing like the gentle touch of the bell and her own ritual circles. The ghosts were in terrible, agonizing pain, crying out with a sound that Isabel could feel rather than hear. She had released them as soon as she had the awareness—she should have taken the time to guide them across the veil properly, but she could barely think. Still, the sensation of it lingered. 

If that is what necromancy feels like, she cannot think of a reason why anyone would willingly perform it. 

Brace

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Just like Berend suspected, Isabel’s sword proves far more effective against the ghosts. It’s light and springy in his hand, lacking the weight and authority of his own two-handed saber, but when it cuts through the misty forms, the spirits recoil and visibly dim. Their figures remain intact; they’re not like Mikhail, broken and screaming. 

Out of reach of the blade, the ghosts rally their energy, brightening and pressing forward again. Something—Geray, the house, or some mystical nonsense Berend won’t even try to understand—is giving them strength. Unfortunately for him, he is made of flesh, and can’t do the same. He’s not as young as he once was, and it’s so very cold in this hallway. The candle hisses and gutters, but for now, it stays lit. 

A hand of fog rakes at him with talons like a hawk’s. He brings the sword up, but it’s no use—the ghostly arm passes right through it, and its fingers reach his chest. He feels as though he has swallowed ice, the cold moving down the inside of his body. There is no pain, no sensation of being cut, but the ghost tears through his clothing and skin, leaving bloody marks from his shoulder down to his belly. The wounds ooze, and frost collects at their edges. 

They aren’t deep. Eventually, Berend guesses, the spirits will draw enough blood to kill him, or he’ll freeze to death in the aura that surrounds them, but for the moment, he is still able to fight. He’ll keep them off of Isabel until she finishes whatever she’s doing. 

It is that moment when she slumps over, hat askew, her body curled around the chalk circle inscribed on the wooden floor. 

Darkness

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The house is clean, the wallpaper tamely floral. Berend was expecting filth and rot, like the Belisia estate—some clear evidence of the spirits’ rage at their imprisonment—but there is nothing worse than a little dust on the wood floor. 

It is dark, though, darker than it should be. The narrow entry opens into a sitting room with windows on opposite sides, facing front and back. The curtains are all open, but no light from the street passes through the glass. Isabel’s candle casts thin light on the edges of the brick fireplace and the stiff-backed chairs. It’s bright, leaving spots in Berend’s vision whenever he chances to look at it, but the halo it casts is small and weak. Darkness hangs on the room like a thick fog, cold and heavy. It tastes like a coming storm.

Is this what dark magic is like? He’s not enjoying it, but he has seen worse—the Belisia estate, for one, and the battlefields overrun by the walking dead.