Unholy Ghosts Read Online Free PDF Page B

gravel.
“Right,” Terrible said, turning back to her. “Let’s finish this up, go home.”
The rest of the airport consisted mostly of scrub grass and broken cement. They wandered the perimeter, the breeze cool on her fevered body, but she didn’t find anything. No transmitters, no interrupters, no projectors or even electromagnets. Nothing indicated the airport wasn’t genuinely haunted.
And her skin, her own powers, clearly indicated it was, even without the Spectrometer’s sudden violent awakening. But why had it hit her so hard and so suddenly, when the apparition was right on top of them? She should have felt something before that, shivers of warmth, goose-bumps, anything.
Unless that speed was doing more than “crazying her up.” Her Cepts didn’t really interfere with her abilities, at least not in normal doses, but she didn’t do speed very often, especially not while working.
It was odd that her Spectrometer hadn’t so much as beeped before redlining, but that was easier to explain. Someone could have sent a blast of magical energy to it at the same time as they switched on whatever powered the lights and transmitted the sound; there were lots of illegal gadgets that fucked with Spectrometers, which was why they were simply tools for detection used in addition to the Debunkers’s personal powers.
Hell, if the gadget and the sound-and-light set was portable enough and whoever ran it was fast enough, they could have ducked through the fence and been gone before Terrible pulled her out of the building.
Either way, one of the first things she’d learned in her training was never to assume anything, and to keep investigating until an undeniable conclusion had been reached. Which meant, damn it, this was going to take a lot longer than she’d originally thought.
She was still ruminating on it when they reached the far end of the field. The remains of the building were little more than a shadow when viewed from here, and the grass brushed against her thighs.
Terrible plodded along ahead of her. His tall broad frame parting the weeds sounded like death whispers in the still night, like a predator sliding over the plains.
She took another step, and stopped short. Power shot up her leg, curled over her skin. Something had happened here, a ritual…a sacrifice, even. Something that cooled her blood and made her wish desperately that she was back home in bed.
“What’s troubling, Chess? Why you so white?”
She shook her head. It was trying to talk to her, to tell her something…she just didn’t know what. She couldn’t hear it, it was trapped in the whispers, all the voices crowding together in her head.
Her skin crawled as dark energy skimmed over her tattoos. It took everything she had to step back, not to crouch down and listen, to put both feet inside the circle and let the darkness take her where it wanted to go.
“Somebody’s been doing magic here,” she whispered, then, feeling a little foolish, she said it again louder. “Forbidden magic.”
“Like raising ghosts?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
She took a step to the right, placing her foot carefully, trying to feel the edge of the circle as best as she could. She did not want to walk into it again. At least, most of her didn’t.
The breeze picked up, lifting her hair and cooling the back of her sweaty neck. It wasn’t old, the spell. A month, six weeks at the most, but probably more recent. She couldn’t imagine how much power there must have been here while it was being cast. The kind of power that required either a very experienced, very powerful sorcerer, or a very innocent victim. Or both.
Either way, it wasn’t anything she wanted to be around anymore.
Three more careful steps gave her a good idea of how wide the circle was. Nine feet, big enough for several people.
Terrible started toward her, but she put her hand out. “Don’t. You don’t want to chance stepping into it. You still got that flashlight?”
He stopped and held it