Cole and Jenna struggling, too.
Cole was the first to drop, falling to his knees with hands pressed against his ears. His face flushed as he screamed, howled, but I couldn’t hear it. Jenna dropped next, and then me, until the three of us were huddled together. Jenna and I grabbed Cole, shielding him as best we could and trying to help cover his ears with one of our own.
“Vex dunn,” I shouted. “Vexic dunn. Vexa dunn.” I screamed out every variation of the only muffling spell that I knew, but though the magic ignited around me, the chains penetrated through.
There was movement—lots of it—around us, but it was everything we could do to stay together. I felt, rather than heard, Jenna continuing to shout spells into existence, but nothing did any good.
My muscles screamed, and I tried to shift only to find they wouldn’t respond. It was like being hit with a stun gun, my body was no longer my own, tucked and frozen in place like an abandoned marionette.
They’re going to die. And it’s all my fault. Keeping Cole and the others safe was my job, my only job. And I’d failed. I should have done something, should have been smarter, or stronger.
I’m sorry, I mouthed.
The silence was so sudden it hurt. Agony replaced by an empty void so vast I thought it might drive me mad. A pounding sound that resolved itself into my heartbeat, a rattle that became my breath.
Quinn towered above the three of us, a little bloodier for the trouble, and had a knife in his hands.
The echo of what he’d done still hung in the air, creating a poster bed-sized space of safety where sound was normal and even.
“Keep them safe,” Quinn shouted at the redhead before he started his advance on the wraith.
The wraith held out his hand, whispered a word, and a wave of gray rushed out from him. It caught up to Quinn and Virago before either of them could deflect or cast a counterspell, and I couldn’t help but watch in terror. They were all that was standing between us and the wraith.
Quinn aged in seconds, his body shifting, changing, stooping forty years in less time than it took me to realize what I was seeing. His skin became sallow, his posture hunched, his hair went platinum, then full on white, then wisps. Pock marks and liver spots lined his skin. Virago had her back to us, but I could see the color draining from her hair until it was a sterling silver.
The spell spread across his body, and Quinn’s arm trembled before he defiantly slashed down with the knife. “Aret!”
The effects of the spell dissipated at once, severed somehow by both the knife and the spell, the aging reversing almost as fast as it had started. Quinn straightened immediately, but Virago dropped to her knees, winded or worse.
“Witchers,” the wraith sneered. “Vermin.”
“Learn how to use a verb, douchebag,” Cole muttered.
I clamped my hand down over his mouth, eyes darting fearfully towards the wraith, who appeared not to have heard, thankfully.
Part of me had known what Quinn and Virago were as soon as they arrived. Witchers.
Witchers were Navy Seals, Green Berets, and Chuck Norris combined in one. They were trained, heavily, in offensive spells and in counteracting supernatural threats. A single Witcher was about as deadly as the average coven. A group of Witchers, on the other hand, could take down almost anyone. Or anything.
“We need to get away,” Jenna said out of the corner of her mouth, lips barely moving.
“Tell that to the wraith,” I said.
“Justin, Jenna, go,” Quinn said over his shoulder, though he didn’t look away from the creature.
“Stay,” the wraith countered, its rheumy, cataract-
colored eyes trained on us.
“Who sent you?” Quinn demanded.
The wraith laughed, releasing a cloud of dust from somewhere deep in its chest. “Bridger,” it answered, shaping the word like a caress.
If possible, my panic intensified. Cullen Bridger? He’s supposed to be a myth!
No one knew who he really was, where he came from. The stories say he appeared on
Moonset’s door, and they took him in. Indoctrinated him. Trained him. During the war, people called him the Disciple. Bridger was the name he created to suit his new role.
When Moonset was captured, Bridger had escaped. He’d been working in secret for over twenty years, and no one had any idea where he was or what he wanted. He was the only living link to Moonset’s dark agenda. Not a single sighting in all those years.
The three of us took a step backward simultaneously, and the wraith’s frozen mouth snarled.
“Ess debok ssen,” it hissed, pointing a hand at us.
Quinn threw himself into the path of the spell even before the wraith had finished speaking.
“No!” I gasped, waiting for the effect, the fall.
But the spell sailed over him, around him, and past us until it caught the far end of the hall, and repeated in seconds what it had done to the wall it had entered from.
Entropy swept out and around, and the hallway simply started to fall apart. But unlike before, when even the bricks had decomposed down to ash, this time everything stayed solid. Walls fell in, the ceiling collapsed, sparks of electricity flared against the sudden darkness of lost light, and the hallway was swallowed up in ruin.
We threw ourselves to the ground, trying to get out and away from the collapse, but for the first time our synchronicity failed. Jenna and I both hurtled to the left, but Cole broke for the right.
It took me a second to get my bearings, in between coughing through all the new smoke, pulling myself back upright, and figuring out where Cole had landed. A standoff had developed between Quinn and the wraith, and he’d pivoted around until he could safely back up to Cole without losing ground.
“Enough,” the wraith rasped. The chains, which had only writhed around him like serpents until this point, began to shoot forward, striking for Quinn, and behind him, Cole.
Quinn didn’t even hesitate. “Da lum,” he said calmly, making a tiny slicing movement with the knife. One of the broken electric lines, abandoned and voided of energy, surged up into the air, and struck at the chain. Iron links sparked electric blue as a surge of electricity caught the chain, and traveled back up the line to the wraith, who stumbled back.
Quinn used the opportunity to reach down and help Cole to his feet. He murmured something
I couldn’t hear, and at first Cole looked at him in utter confusion, but then something clicked, and he smiled and nodded. Looked almost eager.
Another chain flew forward, and another burst of electricity stopped it short. The creature didn’t look slowed by the energy charging through it, but Quinn didn’t look any worse for the wear, either.
“Am I supposed to be scared of you?” Cole laughed—laughed!—at the wraith. “You should see Jenna without makeup. That’s scary.”
“Cole, shut up!” Jenna and I shouted as one.
The wraith growled, the next chain flying a little sloppier, a little less fierce.
“You look like Betty White’s grandmother,” Cole called. “And you smell like a Kardashian.”
“I can do this all day,” Quinn added, twisting the knife in his grasp.
Cole’s ability to irritate even the undead was going to his head. “I mean, really? You know this guy’s a virgin, right?” Quinn’s mouth tightened. “And he’s kicking your ass all over the place.
All the other ghouls are gonna laugh at you.”
Another volley, another electric shock. But this time, Quinn stepped around Cole, behind him.
Using him as a shield. Quinn ducked his head, whispering something. Cole’s face hardened, and he nodded.