She slapped her yellow hand against the wraith’s covered shoulder and watched with grim detachment as the creature turned black and flaked away. Her grin was wide when she turned it to me. “See. Now we only have five left. In fact ... ooomph.”
She didn’t get a chance to finish her boasting. Another wraith, this one much larger than the one she’d just killed, appeared out of the darkness and tackled her. There was no fear on Zoe’s face as she grappled with the creature, and another hiss alerted me to trouble before I could slide in to help her.
“They’re all here,” Luna announced, raising her hands to head off an incoming wraith. “We have to take them all out here.”
I responded in kind, blasting one of the wraiths coming in from what looked to be a closet before he could touch me. I’d been hurt by them before and knew what would happen if they were allowed to go skin to skin. I was about to remind Braden and Cillian of just that when a black blur caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. It took me a second to realize what I was seeing, and it initially didn’t make sense. Then realization dawned. At least one of the wraiths had fled upstairs and dropped from the second floor when the battle got underway. Unfortunately, he didn’t land on an empty spot. Instead, Cillian was there, and the quietest Grimlock child went rigid as the wraith grabbed him by the neck.
“No!” Braden kicked out against the wraith he was trying to wrestle into submission for Zoe and practically leaped over the grappling duo to get to his brother. He jabbed out with his knife quickly, catching the wraith by surprise, and even though the creature attempted to lift an arm as a form of protection, Braden managed to slip inside.
The wraith hissed in pain and dropped Cillian, who flew to the side like a rag doll. Once on the ground, Cillian didn’t move and a sick feeling invaded my stomach. The wraith Braden had stabbed didn’t fall down as I anticipated. Instead, it removed the knife Braden had stabbed it with and offered up a gruesome smile, yellow teeth poking through the hood and causing my heart to hammer.
“It’s enhanced,” I said. “It’s another enhanced wraith.”
“That did it!” Zoe slapped her hands on either side of her wraith’s head and poured magic into the creature, barely wasting a breath to watch as it exploded. She grunted as she rolled to her feet, muttered something about it “being easier when she was twenty,” and then slapped her hand against the back of the wraith Luna was fighting. The creature, which wasn’t enhanced, blew up with one jolt, leaving only gray dust behind as Zoe strode toward the wraith in front of Braden.
“Hello, ugly,” Zoe intoned. “I hear you’re something special. Well, I’m something special, too. Would you care to play a game and see which one of us is more special?”
Rather than respond, the wraith threw the knife at Zoe. She didn’t duck, instead absorbing the blow. The knife hit her square in the shoulder, causing the wraith to emit a sound that sounded strangely like a chuckle, but the mage stayed on her feet, offering a mere grimace as she gripped the knife and pulled it from her body.
“Oh, crap,” Luna intoned from behind us. “We really are in a movie, aren’t we? It’s not clones, though. It’s something else.”
“She’s definitely something else,” I agreed, sliding behind her so I could drop to the floor and check on Cillian. His eyes remained closed and his breathing was shallow, which I didn’t take as a good sign.
“Stop messing around,” I ordered Zoe. “Cillian needs your help.”
Zoe flicked her eyes to me long enough for me to notice they were black. I was taken aback and cold fear slid through my belly. “I ... .”
“Just one second,” Zoe offered, her voice deeper than I remembered, somehow darker. When she turned back to the wraith, the magic that pooled from her hands into the knife was black. “I want to take care of my little friend.”
The wraith must’ve sensed she wasn’t someone to be trifled with because it took an exaggerated step back ... and smacked directly into the staircase. There was nowhere for it to go.
“I would question you,” Zoe offered. “However, something tells me you’re not going to have any answers for me. I guess that means there’s nothing left to do but kill you.”
“What are you?” the wraith hissed out, causing me to snap my eyes in that direction. I’d only ever heard the creatures speak once or twice, and I’d almost forgotten they could.
“What are you?” Zoe shot back.
“Death,” Luna replied. “They’re creatures who hid from death and used the souls of innocents to prolong their lives. They eat the souls. Kill it.”
Zoe didn’t have to be told twice. She plunged the black knife into the wraith’s chest and sneered as the creature went rigid. She didn’t pull away when red flames erupted from inside the wraith’s body, and she was still standing there when it blinked into nothing.
It was Braden’s sob that finally caught her attention. “We have to get him to the hospital,” he insisted as he cradled Cillian’s head in his lap. “We have to take him right now.”
Zoe’s eyes were back to their usual blue as she knelt next to Cillian. “It’s okay,” she reassured Braden, her hand glowing the now familiar soothing blue as it moved toward Cillian’s forehead. “I’ve got him. It’s going to be okay.”
I’d done the math
