Feet tangling together, I spun and fell flat on my face. I didn’t hit the dark floor of this strange realm. Instead, I fell and fell until I crashed back into my own body and woke with a gasp.
Solid earth and bright sunshine brought me back to the world of the living. I pushed myself up and savored the feeling of tiny stones digging into my palm. It meant that this was real. I was alive.
Movement caught my attention. A little brown rabbit hopped in front of me and cocked its head. My heart dropped. I reached out to the creature but let my hand fall before I touched it.
Now that I knew what I’d done, guilt turned my limbs heavy again. I hadn’t meant to pull the little creature’s soul out of the afterlife, but I’d done it, nonetheless. The small thing had been enjoying a world that was safe and carefree, and I’d yanked it back here.
That’s what happened when I didn’t draw on the lifeforce of the things around me. When I used the power within myself, I opened a portal to the afterlife and plucked the creature’s soul out of it. The thought left me even more unsettled than I’d been to begin with.
“What have I done?” I whispered.
The rabbit didn’t care. It was still waiting. It would do nothing unless I gave it a command. The thought made me choke back a sob. The creature’s soul was trapped in a body that was completely under my control.
It was a horrid thing. Why was I capable of such horrors? Mom, why didn’t you tell me that this was so awful?
Why didn’t you stay to help me?
Mom had known that we shared the same arcana. That meant I would have been able to see her ghost. Had she stayed to help me in death, then I wouldn’t be doing such horrible things on my own. I would have a better handle on this.
I reached into my pocket and drew out the rosary that she’d left for me. I pulled each bead between my fingers until I calmed enough to think clearly again.
“Be free,” I commanded the rabbit.
Its eyes snapped wide. A bit of confusion flickered across its inhuman face. The rabbit didn’t know what it meant to be free. So, I had to give it another command—one that would truly set it free.
“Die.”
The word hurt to say. It caught in my throat and tore its way out of me as I forced it upward. Yet, the moment that it reached fruition, the rabbit collapsed. Its body quickly returned to the earth.
This wasn’t how I’d expected to spend my day. I never thought that I would be able to reach into the afterlife and pluck a spirit from their rest. It seemed wrong. I shouldn’t be able to do it. No one should be able to disturb the dead so thoroughly. It was one thing to raise a corpse. It was another to do what I’d done.
I stood and went about packing up my campsite. Once the firepit was cold, I stared at the dead embers and wondered what had happened to get me to this point. It wasn’t so much about where I was, but that I was willingly exploring this power.
There’d been a time when I’d promised myself I would never raise the dead. Now, here I was, practicing it willingly. This wasn’t right, but I couldn’t go back. Danger still crept in the shadows behind me. If I wanted to live, I would have to learn more about my own arcana so I could protect myself and Maddox.
I hoisted my pack high on my shoulders and began the trek back to the park lot. A tingling on the back of my neck gave me pause. I didn’t stop or look back, though. Instead, I let my arcana roll out behind me in search of undead minions. There was no way the killer would come at me without a weapon, and their choice of weapon had been undead so far.
When I felt nothing, I thought I should feel some sort of relief. My tension didn’t go away, though. That sensation of being watched never left. I rolled my shoulders to try to ease the knots tightening between them, but it did nothing.
An idea struck me. If I could reach into the afterlife to pull spirits back into their bodies, then maybe I could send an S.O.S. to someone. Pausing to open a portal to the afterlife cost me precious moments, but I did it anyway. I sent my power into the portal and thought about my mother.
However, my mind quickly turned the tables. Thoughts of my mother slipped away. No matter how I tried to focus on her, my mind kept shifting to Maddox. The great, white wolf made me feel safe in the middle of the night, and now I wanted him back.
I shouldn’t rely on him to protect me, especially since his new form was my fault. I couldn’t use him when I was the one to destroy who he used to be.
I felt the air change before I heard them. I lurched forward just as a knife cut through the air where I’d been a split-second ago. My palms hit the ground, and bits of gravel cut into my skin. I wanted to drop the rest of the way and roll, but the giant pack on my back kept me from being able to.
Behind me, a man in a…a Halloween rabbit mask?Seriously?
He towered over me, a knife in his grip like he was some sort of slasher flick villain. My heart lurched. Barely a breath later, my arcana responded and rolled out. It brushed against his arcana and made his seem like a puddle compared to my ocean.
The man snarled and reached down towards me. I was distracted by a flicker of motion and color. The sunlight caught on a set of beads—no, it was a rosary. A necklace similar to the one that my mother had given me slipped out of his shirt and dangled over my head. I noticed the tiny spark o flight in nearly every dark stone in the chain.
Adrenaline slapped me across the face and broke me out of my thoughts. Time jumped back into motion. I threw myself to the side to escape his grasp. However, that sent me sliding into a ravine much like the one the first body had been found in.
I cursed at myself as I slid over rocks and branches, each one jabbing at my soft skin. However, it put distance between us. This was my terrain. I came out here so much that as soon as I picked myself up, I was speeding through the messy ditch while the man was still fumbling down the hill.
My arcana still drifted around me. I trolled across the ground in search of dead things to raise. If I didn’t direct the power, it would raise an army again. I had to get ahold of it and find somewhere to direct it.