Chapter 33

Anton groans in dismay as he follows me through the door. “You’re going to kill me, Sinclair” he mutters. “The stress of being your ghost helper –“

“Handmaid,” I correct, striding forward into this new world.

“Is going to kill me,” he continues, and I can nearly feel him glaring hard at the back of my head.

“Well then you’d still also be here,” I say, casting a hand out to the world around me. “And I’d be coming to visit you, because I’d miss you.”

He glares down at me for a moment. But then we both go still, distracted from our argument by the absolute…nothingness that is this place.

I inhale sharply as I tear my eyes from my ghost and begin to look around at the rolling grey-brown hills, the beige sky, the almost complete lack of shadow and light. The entire place isn’t at all flat but it is…

“Lifeless,” Anton murmurs, glancing around, a shiver passing through him. “God it’s just…it’s dead, isn’t it?”

I step closer to him, gulping hard.

“Please,” he begs, and I look up at him. “Let’s just go, June –“

“Anton, we have to find him –“

“I have a terrible feeling about this!”

“Come on,” I insist, striding forward, our fight and my stubbornness the only thing that’s giving me the courage to move forward. Anton groans and keeps up with me, looking around anxiously. I glance at him again and again as we walk, my eyes hungry for the little bit of color that his blue shape provides.

“There’s a reason why there’s only one door to this place,” Anton murmurs as we move forward into the hills. “And why it’s kept at the bottom of a pit –“

“It was unlocked and unguarded!” I point out, tossing out a hand. Still, fear turns within me and my wolf stands still in my soul, her tail twitching, looking from side to side like she’s not certain where the threat is coming from – but sure that it’s there.

“Yeah, unlocked because no one is stupid enough to go through it!” Anton sputters out. “It’s the Deadlands, June! You’re lucky you didn’t die the moment you passed through it! We could – we could be stuck here!”

“We’re not stuck here,” I sigh, insistent, knowing in my heart, somehow, that it’s true. Still, real fear pulses through me the moment that I see the first soul.

Anton sees it a moment after I do, his arm shooting out in front of me as if to keep me back.

For once, I heed him, and still my steps.

The soul is…a woman. She’s vague, indistinct, her hair hanging in her face. Her clothes are that of a woman who lived several hundred years ago and she clutches anxiously at her skirts as she ambles through the valley between two hills, about fifty yards from us. Her footsteps are slow, exhausted, and her movements –

I mean, it doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere. Just moving…for the lack of anything else to do.

“Let’s…let’s go, June,” Anton whispers.

The woman’s head slowly raises, her eyes moving towards us.

Anton takes a step back, and so do I.

The woman stares at us for a long, long moment and I look between Anton and the woman, suddenly realizing how very, very different they are. Anton is a ghost but he is…he’s alive in so many ways. He’s sharp, he’s responsive, he sleeps for heaven’s sake –

This woman…barely exists.

Still, she moves towards us with a new curiosity on her face. As we watch, she slowly unfolds the fingers of one hand from her skirt and raises the hand towards us.

“June,” Anton whispers. “I’m sorry – I’m sorry for everything – but please, I am begging you, let me get you out of here – we’ll find Blythe, all right? Just – another way – I don’t think we should be here –“

“Okay,” I whisper, nodding frantically, agreeing to it. “I’m sorry too – I, um…Yeah, let’s go.”

Together we turn.

But there’s another soul there, in the valley behind us. And beyond him, another, all moving towards us, all quite curious.

I blink in surprise, though, because – because beyond those two vague souls there’s nothing but hills. I mean, how far could we have walked?

“June,” Anton whispers, stepping so close that I feel the pins and needles sting of him all along my back and shoulders. “Where…where’s the door.”

“Oh, fuck, Anton,” I whisper, reaching a hand up, wanting him close. Needing him. He wraps an arm around me, pulling me against him, and I swear I feel it – feel a solidness behind my back that could be his chest, feel the steady stretch of his forearm across my collarbone, his fingers wrapping around my other shoulder as he tries, so hard, to keep me safe.

I raise a hand, wrapping my fingers around that arm, wanting him desperately to be real.

My head whips from side to side as more come, drawn by us somehow – though I can’t know how. More appear every moment, climbing over the hills or just…appearing, out of thin air, in the corners of my vision. And I realize that they’ve perhaps been there all along – that they’d just faded so completely that they couldn’t be seen.

But something in us – in me – is drawing them forward.

And as they come close, and I can see their eyes, I realize that…they’re hungry.

“We’re going to have to run, June,” Anton whispers, his voice soft as he dips his head low, his mouth close to my ear. “All right?”

“Which way?” My voice is tight, frantic – because it’s impossible – they’re everywhere –

“Forward,” he says, steady, and I feel him nod. “Just – go. They can’t stop you – they’re not real –“

“Anton, I think that they are –“

I shriek a little as the one closest to me takes a step closer, his mouth stretched wide, his eyes as eager as a dead thing’s can be, his hand reaching.

And then I moan as his fingers draw close, because even if he can’t touch me – I feel it as he takes –

“Go, June!” Anton barks, giving me a shove from behind. “Run!”

And then he swipes out at the man, the blue of his arm ripping through the shade’s substance, slicing him in half even as he reforms in a moment.

I do as I’m told, bolting forward – but I only get a few steps before more souls reach for me, their hands drawing close. And they, too, take –

I don’t know what it is that they’re stealing from me, but I feel it deep in my bones like they’re sucking my marrow. I stumble as they reach, as they begin to moan in an eager, unending wail, as they look at me like something they never thought they’d see ever, ever again.

Like a meat for a starving man.

Like a slice of the living world for a ghost.

I stumble over my steps as I feel it all leach from me as hand after hand sweeps out. Anton shrieks my name, moving for me, trying to get close, trying to protect, his voice terrified as he calls for me again and again –

But I collapse to the ground, helpless, completely at their mercy. Even as I try to kick out and punch and scream, nothing works.

And quickly, faster than I thought was possible, I feel myself begin to fade.

“Juniper!” Anton screams, terrified.

I murmur his name, shaking my head against the end I can feel coming.

And my eyes start to flutter shut just as there’s a great burst of light.

And isn’t that funny?

Because I thought when you died…you were lost to darkness…