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Chapter 1: 2105 C. E.
I-10 came into view, what was left of it, anyway. Despite the warm spring morning, Casey Rockwell ducked into the hood of her hunting jacket, slowing to sneak up to the treeline. Ten yards separated it from the interstate proper, which, as far as she knew or cared, still ran from California all the way here to Jacksonville. But it had changed since she was young. Train tracks now took up the majority of the width, leaving the cars with only one lane each direction. Strange, considering the long dominance of the automobile, but she had little use for any of that anymore. Her homemade tracking receiver started blinking rapidly, and she halted in the cool shade of a loblolly pine. There was her quarry, on the roadway just beyond.
No doubt the deer was magical. Translucent, resinous antlers; curly gray-green fur, the same color and texture as Spanish moss; unsettling orange eyes, streaked like pine straw. She’d been close enough to see those eyes properly only once, but they haunted her psyche. So she’d taken to haunting it right back. Casey had expertise in games of chase, and the longer this thing went out of its way to vex her, the more she needed to capture it.
The beast nibbled at some dandelions in the median between road and rail. To anyone seeing it for the first time, it probably looked so poised, but Casey saw how its belly heaved, how its ears twitched every direction, how it shifted from leg to shaking leg. She retrieved a McGuyvered set of bolas from her bottomless fanny pack. Her DSLR camera was in there, too, to mark her final victory with a trophy selfie. She found a space between two trees and spun the bolas over her head. One of its ears locked on her position, and it turned an orange eye to her, tracking transmitter swinging from one of its tines. It spun around, stamping its foot and lowering its head.
She let loose.
The bolas tangled in its antlers and wrenched its head back. It let out a high-pitched bleat as the momentum forced it onto its hind legs, which collapsed. The deer hit the ground with a wheeze. Casey dashed from the trees, yanking a rope from her bag, and giggling madly.
“Finally!” she said.
But when she got close, it tossed its antlers, knocking her to the ground. Her head cracked against the pavement and the world flashed black. When her vision cleared, it was back on its feet, full attention on her. She crabwalked to the shoulder of the road to stay out of striking range but wasn’t fast enough. It reared up, and a second later drove its front hooves into her chest.
Her sternum collapsed, followed by her lungs. She went from panting to choking. It reared again and plunged into her shoulder, slicing deep and dislocating the joint. Agony flooded her, sharp enough to muffle her hearing and numb her sense of touch.
And that was that. The deer snorted in her face then daintily stepped over her body, listing with the weight of the tangled bolas. It disappeared from her view, the victor once again.
Casey baked on the pavement. Liquid clotted in her throat. She forced an inhale, which painfully shifted her broken bones. She stared at the bright blue sky, frustrated. Decades of chasing the bastard down, hitting on something clever, and finally cornering it—just to be sent back to step one.
How inconvenient.
Ever since Casey became a ghost, she’d only grown more fascinated by the world she inhabited. Some undetectable barrier surrounded all magical creatures and extra places on the planet, rendering them invisible to humans. Now on the other side, she saw all the layers of reality. The only catch was that she, too, was invisible. She couldn’t’ve been more thrilled.
Being immobile on the side of the interstate was less thrilling than usual, however. The pain was so intense that it stopped being a bother and instead warmed her like an alcoholic buzz. Her head swam from the heady cocktail of choking, the itch of sweat building up in her jacket, and the sun beating down from the cloudless sky. Thankfully, it was late March; had this happened in August, she’d’ve also been drowning in excess humidity. As often was the case in Florida, today was merely regretfully moist.
The ground rumbled. Casey could tilt her head just enough to see a passenger train run by. A welcome distraction. She counted twenty-five cars and hoped a longer freight train would come next to keep her occupied.
Her chest cracked back into place as the sun hit its mid-afternoon gleam. Her lungs reinflated with a deep, moaning gasp. Her middle spasmed as she attempted to sit up, and she fell back, panting, coughing, shaking. Another hour before she powered through the cramps. All of her blood—or whatever dark, viscous ichor now flowed through her body—had pooled during her little lie-down. It oozed back into circulation, like slugs trapped in her capillaries.
Three inter-city coaches, five semis, eight more trains, and a single sports car with a solar panel on its spoiler passed by before she got her feet steady underneath herself. The sun was just about on its way out, too.
“A whole day lost,” she said, voice hoarse.
She hacked and spat. The rust-colored glob landed on the tracker. It was a primitive thing, made from weeks of obsessively toying with an ancient children’s circuit board kit and some hobbyist books she picked up decades ago. She wiped her spit away and turned it off, then turned it back on. The lights flickered, all of them at once, and then one settled into a slow but regular blink.
“Hm… I thought it returned to the forest.”
Judging from the frequency, it looked like the signal pointed much farther east, deep in the heart of Duval. She winced. She’d grown up in Jacksonville but hadn’t returned to the city proper since her death seventy-five years earlier. If she needed to raid a store or two for supplies, the Oakleaf suburbs were right next to her forest.
“I was so close though…” The closest in three decades. Something occurred to her: “What if it’s finally migrating? Trying to leave forever?”
Fuck that thing if it thought it could get the last laugh. She ran her fingers over her frizzy braid before tossing it behind her. Casey always knew what she wanted, and she went all out to get it.
“Very well. Round two.”
It was well past midnight when she finally got within a decent range of the transmitter. She hopped off the Skyway—the local elevated rail that started expanding from its embarrassingly useless route some fifty years ago—and right into the Holiday Hill neighborhood. She hesitated to leave the platform, despite the insistent blinking. Her eyes traced one of the streets below and almost turned down another one. She shut them and focused.
“It knew,” she said of the deer. “It brought me here on purpose.”
She took a breath to alchemize her anger into determination, and then entered her old neighborhood.
The streets were simultaneously denser and emptier than she remembered. Dense in that there were a lot more mixed-use buildings, all of which seemed occupied; empty in that all the remaining driveways, save three that she counted, were devoid of vehicles. If not for the well-maintained gardens, the shiny soccer balls resting in the dew, and the driverless streetcars trundling along the secondary roads, she’d’ve thought it all abandoned. At the mouth of Nightingale Road, her gait stuttered, but she forced herself onward. There was nothing left there, not after all this time.
Her navigational memory failed once she reached what, long ago, had been the elementary school. It was still there, but what had been a bog-standard school property was now a cozy building at the edge of a wide, encompassing park that stretched deep into the darkness. Casey tried to make sense of it; certainly this was where half the neighborhood houses had been, once upon a time. The full moon glinted off far stands of oaks and sabal palms, a gazebo or two, at least one mosquito pit, and a sign reading “Holiday Hill Commons – West” standing sentinel over it all. The tracker urged her on. Gathering herself up, she stepped onto the lawn and continued her hunt.
*****
The stars were wrong, as always. The Wraith stood in the middle of the commons, head tilted to the sky to look at the foreign constellations as he waited. They were neither wrong nor foreign, not for this world, but even after five hundred years of being trapped here, the arrangements startled him. They were constant, at least.
A few oily shadows slithered from his ankles to his shoulders. They curled through his long hair and settled on the back of his neck, cool to the touch even against his clammy skin. He pulled a few of them off and let them twirl around his fingers.
HUNGRY, they whined. The Wraith sighed, but otherwise did not reply. He glued his eyes heavenward. The shadows contained their impatience for a full minute before they said again, louder, HUNGRY!
As if he wasn’t aware. They were always hungry, and by extension, he was always hungry. Hatred, deceit, anxiety, forlornness… All their staples were less common these days, at least on this continent, in this country, at this side of the sprawling city. Cozy homes and comfortable families surrounded the park. Both could be hotbeds of interpersonal conflict, but rarely to the degree necessary to sate them.
PRISON. The shadows rubbed under his chin like a cat and draped over his shoulders. His mouth watered despite the shuddering nausea that bubbled up.
A few months ago, they found a state prison in a nearby town. Starke, had it been? An appropriate name for a place so bleak. It hadn’t been their first prison, nor would it be their last, but he hesitated to return so soon. The Lighístal—those self-important justiciars—were always patrolling the world, and he had already overstayed this city by a wide margin. Lingering meant a higher chance of being discovered, caught, and either killed outright or thrown in a cell of his own. In his current state, he would not be able to escape again.
The shadows curled loosely around his throat, whining and crying. He flinched but didn’t remove them. Their mewls reverberated until he was engulfed in the multitude, starving alongside them. He was halfway across the lawn when he dragged himself out of the rising frenzy.
No, he said. We’ll only find enough to get us to the next block if we don’t take it slow.
The protestations were predictable and immediate, but if they didn’t have the strength to be on their own, then they had to make peace with where he went. The last time their collective energy peaked was a mere five years ago: a false start of grief and outcries but far too much hope to sustain them. Inspiring for the humans, but the Wraith knew better. Humanity was a series of cycles, and at some point, everyone would return to that most popular pastime of violent disgust of the Other. The trick for him was being in the right place at the right time to benefit, rather than just scavenge the cold remains.
He strolled around the commons, the movement distracting him from the gnawing hunger and the shadows yelling about said gnawing hunger. His gaze drifted back to the stars, but the moon was so bright he had to squint to keep from being blinded. Although the moon was not at its perigee, and thus could not sting him with its borrowed light, the instinct to avoid it was burned into him. He sought shelter in one of the copses of trees littering the park. To his mild surprise, there was a tent pitched there, sitting under a small radio antenna disc tied to a branch. He couldn’t determine if there was a singular camper or multiple, but regardless, they all slept peacefully. The absence of emotions he could taste told him that much. Not even a hint of discontent.
Then, something substantial wafted over: anxiety, its bouquet subdued but unmistakable. He melded into the shadows and coiled into the branches of the nearest tree as a human, dressed head to toe in camouflage, wandered into the area while carrying some sort of blinking device in her hands. She paused in front of the tent, then threw back the hood of her jacket, flinging her brown, disheveled braid about. She flinched as the bulky hair tie knocked into her white face. He hummed a laugh. Human clumsiness came in as much abundance as their foolishness.
She recovered and held the device before her, looking from it to the tent to the antenna a few times, muttering under her breath. She flicked it off and on. It apparently refused to give her the desired outcome, as she swore and then marched past the tent. All the while, discontent churned below the surface. The shadows slipped out to snap it up and begged to follow for more. The Wraith hesitated. He could spare time for a distraction, and she seemed keen to be in the area for a few more minutes. He sank between the blades of grass and trailed her.
She stopped barely a hundred meters away, turned the device off and on again, and then cried out, “Are you kidding me? The fucking antenna?”
Rage boiled in her, flashy and brilliant. She threw the device on the ground, and it snapped in half on impact. She looked at it for a second, flames of emotion seeming to snuff out. Then she hauled back her leg and kicked it.
“Piece of shit!” she screamed.
She chased the largest remnant down and kicked it right into the crotch of a tree’s roots. It shattered, and the woman let out a slightly manic laugh. The Wraith glanced around, sure that someone would yell at her for disrupting the night.
“Waste of time…” she said. Her anger settled, but more anxiety took its place. She glanced around a few times, cracking the knuckles of each finger in sequence. “Fuck this.”
Such an anticlimax. He wound his way into the treetop and watched her skulk away, down one mysterious gadget. And then finally, his patience was rewarded.
The world grew unnaturally quiet, and then a sound he felt more than heard hummed through the plants. Just one speck of a glow at first. Then another. Finally, enough to resemble a swarm of drunk fireflies caught in a breeze. It was pollen, fresh from the Gardenways: raw magic. It wasn’t especially powerful, but it could provide enough strength to get him back to the prison and a little beyond without too much exhaustion in between.
He shook some loose from the leaves, but a gasp caught his attention. The human, rotating slowly, reached into a thick swirl of pollen overhead, mouth agape.
She can see it, he realized.
It wasn’t every day he stumbled across a clear-eyed adult. Not even every year. The shadows collected any pollen that came their way as he watched her, keeping their leash tight so they didn’t immediately waste it.
She can touch magic.
The shadows ceased collecting and watched with him. An idea spread through the multitude, and then excitement, which swept the Wraith away as well. His grip loosened.
She can touch magic; therefore, magic can touch her, too.
They would eat well tonight, after all.
Chapter 2: Frenzy
Deep in her forest was a marsh that did not appear on any map. It was one of many non-places she’d found over the years. They reminded her of stories where people got lost in strange, impossible areas. Going there set her on edge, yet she kept returning because, about once or twice a month, glowing, green-gold specks puffed up from the distant reeds. A beautiful and inexplicable mystery. She’d tried to get a closer look multiple times but couldn’t find a way around the water by land, and when attempting to swim across, confusion and dizziness overwhelmed her only a few yards from shore. Ten times, she’d nearly drowned. The specks didn’t occur anywhere else she frequented, but perhaps that was due to rarely leaving the forest. Clearly, some habits needed adjusting.
In life, Casey had been a chemist by trade and a botanist by sincere interest. She picked up a master’s in organic chemistry for kicks and then a doctorate a few years later, though she was mere weeks away from her thesis defense when she died. More’s the pity, as all her professors and her advisor implied the defense was just a formality in her case, due to a recent accomplishment.
The glowing particles emerged from mimosa puffs on the lawn, cracks in the trees’ bark, and behind the whispering palm leaves. She caught some and laughed when she examined it. Regardless of the direction her life took, she’d be damned if she didn’t recognize pollen.
A breeze danced through, spiriting the specks away. They settled on the nearby “Holiday Hill Commons Community Center,” according to its now-glowing sign. The logo was a flower of joined hands in various browns and beiges, surrounded by a progress rainbow. Weirdly, it was that detail that put her more at ease in this mirror universe of her past. Some things hadn’t changed. Like her own curiosity.
She retrieved her camera and a crumpled baggie. Dust lined the bottom of the plastic bag, so she blew into it to clear it out. It immediately flew into her face, causing her to sputter, bat at her eyes, and wonder if she was half-moron. A slippery noise shush-ed behind her, not unlike a fish breaching the surface of a pond. Casey wiped her eyes. The mosquito pit was a short hike the other direction, past the tent. She scowled at it, still sour at being deceived.
Deciding it was just an insomniac squirrel, she scooped the mounding particles into the baggie with a stray magnolia leaf, resurrecting ideas of how to fight past the stupefying marsh reeds. The lost euphoria over the deer rebounded exponentially at the prospect. However, try as she might, she couldn’t shake the dread that built from lingering where she didn’t belong. Throwing herself into near-obsession over the discovery worked some, but the ambient memories scratched at the pit of her stomach.
“Might be time to head back,” she murmured, zipping the baggie up. She drew the camera to her face to take a few pictures and some video.
There was movement in the corner of the viewfinder. Something slithered through the grass. She flattened herself against the sign, searching the ground. Pollen coated her jacket and hair.
“Just a snake,” she told herself. One of the prices of living in this region, along with alligators and palmetto bugs. Hell, she’d gotten bit a few times by the venomous snakes, too. Sometimes even by accident. This was most likely just a black racer or glass lizard.
For a mundane, glorious moment, it seemed to have disappeared, off to catch a moth or a mole for its dinner. Then, a serpentine silhouette lifted from the grass, so dark it was only an implied movement of shadow against shadow, save for a dusting of pollen that betrayed its outline. Casey couldn’t tell if this end was its head—until it bulged and split. Her vision tunneled and her mind fuzzed as she stared down the gaping maw of the most terrifying magical creature she had ever come across, dozens of pointed teeth spiraling down its gullet.
*****
His plan when they started stalking the woman was to nudge her emotions until she was a terrorized wreck. It would be enough to feed them well and still have enough left to make it back to the prison or, better yet, another state.
They slithered into the cover of her shadow as she examined the community center. Its darkness wasn’t the same as theirs, but malleable to their influence all the same. They settled into her blind spot and threaded tendrils out to catch more pollen. Then she reached her entire arm into her bag, which gave them pause, as it was no more than a dozen centimeters deep. She pulled out a single-use plastic zip bag, the kind most of the world had long abandoned, as well as a camera of mid-century design—so much plastic, so many grating sound effects.
They carefully felt around the edges of her emotional core. Its aura felt familiar but the multitude continued probing. It crinkled under their light hold, emanating wisps of jumpiness. They squeezed, pincers grasping at a stray thread. The shadows churned with excitement, but the one tempered their frenzy. Energy conservation was key.
She responded beautifully, shivering as fear overwhelmed her for a second. The shadows snapped up the bitter scraps, all the more nourishing for having earned them. They tugged again, rushing to her other side.
“Just a snake…” she whispered.
Sometimes, they took suggestions. The shadows merged into a thin taper, larger than any native species by far. They prodded her fear, just a little harder. As they revealed themselves, she quickened from disturbed to panicked.
Pollen, the Wraith ordered within the multitude.
A fine layer coated them, itchy with unused power. He activated a few patches, careful not to ignite all at once. Points on their body flared with the only “light” the shadows could stand, and it granted enough energy to grow and tower over her. The woman froze as she stared down her fate. A frenzy grew. He tried again to discourage such useless behavior, but faintly wondered if he had promised too much. His hold was taut as a wire.
Acerbic confusion and worry fell from her, unable tear her eyes away from that which she conjured from the darkness. They constructed a jaw and unhinged it to taste her rich, bitter terror. The wire snapped, and they plunged mouth-first.
They narrowly missed as she pushed off the sign and ran, leaving a pungent wake to follow. Her camera thumped against her chest like a heartbeat. Twice, she slipped on newly formed dew, the second time landing on her knee at a terrible angle. Her cry garnished their meal.
As they caught up, snapping their jaws, she tossed a handful of leaves and soil. It flew down their mouth and caused them to halt and spit. She hobbled into the nearby trees, but they could outlast wounded prey. They were stronger than they had been in ages, needed to use more pollen and gain more power—
The Wraith yanked on the reins. Too much! You’re using too much!
The shadows responded to the one that he was a hypocrite. He dined, too. He frenzied, too! This wild hunt was his idea. Despite his pleas to pace themselves, the shadows congealed into exhilarating solidity. They curled through the trees, rubbing against the rough bark, soft lichens, slick dirt. Their pseudo-scales snagged on one tree, weak and dying, and they could not resist the impulse to bury part of themselves into the drying wood.
They could start seeding blight again.
Too much at once!
They flung ahead, cutting the woman off. She pivoted too fast, skidded, ran into a tree. Clutching her head with one hand and her camera with the other, she limped for another few meters, bleeding desperation before careening into the tent. Pollen jostled from the canvas. It clung to her as she went sprawling.
CONSUME, they thought. They had not fully consumed for many, many years.
She knew she was caught; resignation’s astringent aftertaste invigorated them. Then, beeps and blips cut through the air. Despite being cornered, her back literally against a wall, she inexplicably fiddled with the camera. Well, humans always did strange things when on the brink. Let her have her moment. Then, they could have her. Perhaps someone would find the device and witness its final testimony, but that was deeply unlikely. Her hands shook as she raised it to her eye, but when she pressed the shutter, nothing happened.
Incorrect. The device was still beeping. Panic accelerating, she glanced at the screen and swore. Calm was broken. Her moment was past.
They rose above her, ready to feast. They would go further and farther than that measly prison and sow the soil with blight to worm its way into the humans’ weak, suggestible hearts yet again. Below them, she wrestled feebly with the device, smearing pollen over her hands and arms. They opened their mouth and dove.
She dropped the camera to cover her head. As they closed in, the pollen on her flared to life, accentuating that thread of familiar aura from earlier. Too late, the Wraith clawed his way out of the frenzy. He recognized what she was, now.
The flare wrapped around her arms and traveled down to her fingertips where it became silver. The camera beeped three more times in the space it took to close the gap. The silver shot from her as they made contact, searing pain following. At the final beep, the camera let loose a series of flashes.
*****
Glowing pollen, demon snakes, silver threads… what a lottery of a day! Casey would’ve never guessed any of the developments of the last sixteen hours. Least of all this.
“Magic,” she whispered, tempted to scream. “I have magic?”
The camera started going off. As she’d run from the snake, her fingers slipped over the touchscreen until they landed on the rapid-fire option and queued up a hundred or so. Between the strobes of light, the silver ran over the creature in thin lines, slicing it and branching off where two points met. It writhed and screeched. The further the magic spread, the looser the dark skin seemed to be, until it fell away like paper. Some pieces held on with thin slivers, looking like flags in a hurricane. Disconcerting, but it didn’t hold a candle to what was underneath.
The threads unzipped a pale, elongated body, like a desiccated corpse gone wrong. The under-skin had a gray pallor, and it was heavily scarred and tightly stretched over every knobby joint jutting from under a dark, sleeveless, ankle-length tunic. Its arms and legs were too long for a human, and its clawlike hands twitched and grasped. The shadows kept unwinding, revealing a curtain of long, black hair and a wide, screaming mouth with fangs. Casey referred to her immortal condition as being a ghost, but this was a true specter. If it had eyes, she never got to see them, as the silver faded, and the camera took its final picture.
The area plunged into darkness. Casey’s vision, long adjusted to seeing under the moonlight, reset. She squinted, as if that would help. The monster hadn’t stopped shrieking, so she followed the sound until she could just discern the bubbling, too-dark shadow and the contrasting pale body. Despite her shaking limbs, she got to her feet and took a hesitant step toward the mass. The body fell to its knees, panting, and its howl cut off so suddenly her ears rang with a phantom scream. Before she could get any closer, a knot of darkness enveloped the body and streamed past her. Once it was gone, the area lightened a degree or two.
She flexed and examined her hands. No marks, nor any remnants of the silver. She concentrated, trying to prove she hadn’t made it up, that she did the magic. But nothing happened. After flipping them over a few times, she realized something.
“The pollen!”
It had coated her arms but was now cleanly absent. She checked the baggie which was thankfully still there, still sealed, and still glowing. Though muted, her obsession reignited. Seven decades of understanding had unraveled in front of her, but she had a roadmap to new one.
“Excuse me,” came a soft voice at her hip. Casey jumped.
A young, dark-skinned Black girl in a satin cap looked up at her, eyes gleaming. Behind her, the tent was unzipped. An adult-shaped lump snored inside. The girl clutched the camera.
“Excuse me,” she repeated, “what was that? Are you a ghost hunter?” She hopped from foot to foot. “Can you teach me?”
Casey’s triumph drained away. This human girl saw the creature… and her. She didn’t know what to say, even less what to feel. The uncertainty curdled suddenly, and she started backing away. The girl’s smile dropped.
“Are you okay?”
Casey bolted. It was too much for one night—hell, for one year. She ignored the girl’s cries behind her, outpaced a streetcar, and boarded the next westward Skyway, forgetting the camera until it was too late.
*****
The Wraith reappeared in a tree nearby after the flashing let up. The shadows, diminished from their irresponsible waste of energy, sulked around his shoulders. He felt flayed. He had been flayed, hadn’t he, if the fresh scores on his body were any indication. The cuts rubbed and stretched as he shifted. Magic always left a mark. He’d be lucky if these didn’t scar, however faintly. Though how would he be able to tell them apart from all the rest on him?
He took a deep breath and rubbed his face. Then he paused. The shadows were still there, still part of his consciousness, and he could hear what they were complaining about. Yet, despite the wracking hunger that plagued them all, he was comfortably himself.
A twinge of unpleasant surprise reached his tongue. Meters below, the human woman stared at a child that had appeared. He snorted. No, not a human. She was an immortal, just like him. An immortal who, if he read her instability correctly, was having a rather awkward interaction. Bitterness and embarrassment compelled him to find that thin tether of her core again, and tug her discomfort into fight or flight. He laughed as she stumbled over herself. The child ran after her a few steps, but returned to her tent, disappointed. Mundane night quiet returned, but something bothered him.
Socializing with other immortals never went well for him. Such opportunities had presented themselves a mere handful of times since he arrived to this world, but once the Lighístal caught up, the potential allies turned on him. After all, why stick their necks out for a known dangerous criminal. It behooved them to stand on the “right” side of the war.
However, at no point in their confrontation did she acknowledge him. She didn’t spit, “Wraith!” nor seemed to understand what she was dealing with. He hadn’t met every immortal on the planet, but more than a fair few were aware of him, courtesy of Lighístal outreach.
And she acted so modern. He only caught snippets of what she said to herself before the chase, but her speech patterns aged her no more than a century and a half. If she had no idea who he was… there might be a chance for him.
He flattened into the shadows. After beating back the whines of the multitude, he darted across the commons to catch up with her.
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