Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry Page A

blood.
    â€œYou sicced something on me. A snake or a…”
    â€œMy sisters tasted you, mortal man,” admitted Mircalla, “and they wanted to drink deep of you. You may be damned and a fool, but there is so much power in your blood. So much. They wanted to drink you like a fine, rare wine.”
    â€œDrink me…?”
    Mircalla shrugged. “Men have some uses.”
    â€œGod! What are you?”
    â€œYou wouldn’t even know if I told you. Mircalla, Miracall, Millarca, Carmilla…”
    â€œYou’re not making sense.”
    She smiled beneath her veil. “Pick a card.”
    Without meaning to, without wanting to, he did.
    â€œTurn it over,” she commanded.
    Grey glanced toward the east. The ghosts were closer now. Time, he knew, was running out. He had lingered too long, even here in this dream.
    He turned the card over.
    The picture showed a man hanging by one foot, hands bound behind him, dangling upside down from a gallows. Unlike any gallows Grey had seen, this one was made from living wood and fresh leaves sprouted from it. Despite being so perversely executed, the face of the hanging man was serene and composed, and there was a saintly glow around his head.
    Mircalla grunted in surprise. “The martyr’s card,” she mused. “Interesting. I would not have thought it of you.”
    â€œI’m no damn martyr,” he snapped.
    â€œYou do not know what you are, man of two worlds.” She laughed and traced the edges of the card. “The man who lives between the worlds. Yes … that’s what it says about you. You do not belong to either life or death.”
    There was regret in her voice.
    â€œThat means that I and my sisters cannot have you, Greyson Torrance,” she continued. “You are exempt, pardoned. Not from your crimes but from my web. So sad. Such a loss. And I suppose you must have your companion, too. My sisters will be so disappointed.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” Grey said, and he could hear the pleading tone in his own voice. “Tell me what this all means.”
    â€œIt means,” she said, “that the universe, for good or ill, is not done with you. I am forbidden to claim you. Your journey is not over. Weary, weary journeys lie before you.”
    â€œMake sense, damn you.”
    â€œMake sense? You ask something very dangerous of a gifted one, my doomed young man. But you ask and the card compels me to answer and so I will.” She bent closer and spoke in such a low voice that he was forced to lean closer in order to hear. “You will walk in the land of the shadow, Grey Torrance. Deep into the heart of darkness. Worlds will turn on the wink of your eye. Worlds will fall in the light of your smile.”
    â€œI don’t understand any of that.”
    â€œNo,” she said. “You were not meant to. The clock has not struck the hour of understanding.”
    â€œBut—.”
    She swept the cards from the table and Grey immediately bent to catch the Hanged Man card. He did so, but when he looked up, the table, the other chair, and Mircalla were gone. He shot to his feet and turned. The ghosts were gone, too.
    And then, so was he.

 
    Chapter Seventeen
    When he opened his eyes the harsh sun of noon nearly smashed him back into unconsciousness.
    He flung an arm across his eyes and rolled over, groaning and sick. His head swam and his stomach felt like it was filled with sewer water in which ugly things wriggled and swam. He coughed, gagged, and finally gasped in a ragged lungful of dry air.
    To his left he heard a low, weak groan.
    Grey turned and saw Thomas Looks Away laying sprawled and sunburnt on the hard ground. Forty yards beyond him stood a tall, crooked cottonwood, and in the sparse shade cast by its withered leaves stood Picky and Looks Away’s horse. Just those two. The other horses belonging to the posse were gone. Grey looked around.
    The town was