Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,62

building and then stretch all the way out to each of the ngkified surrounding ones.

Power. It’s the collective energy of all those frothing souls; it’s the bursting of history and lunacy and culminating sorcery, and it belongs to me. I can swish my right hand and collapse a city block. I am life and death incarnated, so much more than the bumbling manservant the Council abuses for their dirty work. The hungry dead surround me, base and pathetic little creatures, and I know in seconds they’ll swarm forward, through this brand-new gateway.

“And so it begins!” Sarco yells.

And then I jump him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

How to explain combat physics in the realm of the dead? Those phantom bodies are like watery sacks; they hold weight but only in the most slippery, translucent kind of way. You can feel the dead as a kind of dull, tingling pressure, the pressure of the spirit. They can rise up into the air as if buffeted by a supernatural wind, but it wears them out; flying is exhausting. The closest comparison would be an underwater fight that isn’t in slo-mo and with a touch more gravity.

It takes effort for a soul to rise, so I make sure to catch Sarco nice and off guard before I ram him. He really is shocked—I hear a horrified gasp as our bodies connect and I heave us both forward over the edge of the rooftop. About halfway down, he seems to recover himself and I feel the sudden pressure against our plunge. It’s too late though—I already have momentum on my side. I tighten my form and thrust us hard into the murky ground below. A crowd of old ghosts scatters languidly out of the way and we land in a heap.

They won’t stay scattered for long.

As Sarco scrambles to recover himself, I make a grab for his blade, the only real chance I have. He darts away, waving his arms, but not before I wrap my translucent fingers around the handle and yank it away from him. “No!” Sarco yells. I slash him once, twice, and then stab forward, tearing his loose spirit flesh into shreds. Then, for good measure, I kick him backward into the swarm of hungry ghosts.

I don’t wait to see what happens. There’s no time. Between me and the entrada there are hundreds of starving souls and more on the way. I slash out cruelly, slicing a few that got too close, and begin cleaving a path back up this shimmering, hellish version of Franklin Avenue. They’re furious, these ghosts—already been held at bay once, and now here comes another swashbuckler to tempt and then thwart them. A few times I feel them close in on me, but some well-placed slashes hold them off.

By the time I reach Eastern Parkway, I’m exhausted. I wonder, vaguely, whether my physical body is even still alive and what the hell would happen to me if it expires while I’m running around the Underworld. Then an icy hand slaps across my shoulder, pulling me down. I swing Sarco’s blade over it, chopping it at the wrist, and when I turn around, there he is, towering before me and howling as the hungry ghosts clutter over him like ants. He reaches out again, and I stumble backward, almost lose my balance, and then turn and run, cutting ghosts out of my way as I go.

I pass the emptiness of the Deeper Death. Up ahead, haunted treetops glower over the fog of Prospect Park. The ghouls are thick and enraged on all sides of me, and I’m losing my strength fast, but . . . I’m so close. I brace myself and dive forward. Sarco’s probably still behind me, grappling with the masses. I think I hear his scream carried on the howling wind, but there’s no time to bother checking.

The park. Everything becomes a frantic blur as I slash and slice my way toward the entrada. I close on it, shoot a last glance behind me at the ghost riot—no Sarco to be seen—and plunge through, gasping for air.

* * *

My frail spirit body screams at me to rest, but I can’t.

I can’t.

Not with that creature on my trail. Not with the chance of him somehow making it through that hellhole alive. No. Just the thought of his empty face coming through the entrada is enough to get my distraught ass up and staggering in the direction of home and my poor, skewered body. The rain stopped, but the air