Embraced By Darkness (Riley Jenson Guardian 5)

"He can't leave now," she said, with a glance at me.

Her eyes were cat-bright in the night, and filled with a sense of power.

"He can still attack us, though."

"Trust me, he'll soon have something else to worry about."

She walked past the two women and reached into the small carryall that was sitting several yards behind them. What she drew back out looked an awful lot like a nail gun.

"What's that?"

"A nail gun."

Which explained why it looked like one, I suppose. "What do you intend to do with it?"

"Shoot specially made iron nails into his chest and his skull."

"What?"

She glanced at me. "The iron nails will pin his spirit to his remains and prevent him from leaving."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Iron has been used throughout history as a preventative or warding measure against demons and ghosts."

"But... how? Why would something like iron - a real material from this world - affect a spirit, who is very definitely not of this world?"

"No one is really sure. There are some theories that the slow fire of the oxidation process has something to do with it, but no one has ever truly tested it. We just know it works."

She sighted the nail gun and let off two quick shots. Almost immediately a scream ripped through the air, a sound filled with anguish and fury combined. A sound that went on and on, sawing at my nerves and making my ears ache.

I had no sympathy for the spirit that was Wilson, however. He deserved the pain he was in. Deserved the eternity of it he was now locked into.

The magi with the cat's eyes looked at me. "You'd better call an ambulance for that poor fellow in the car, then you can go."

I raised an eyebrow. "Really? You sure?"

She nodded. "He's pinned now. We'll just finish the binding, then add some extra protection around his coffin before we get it backfilled."

"What happens if he gets handy with his psychokinetic skills again?"

"He won't. We have him totally contained with the salt, the incense, and the magic. This is one bad soul whose nights of destruction are over."

Thank God for that. I walked over to the man from the car, checking that he was breathing, and that he wasn't likely to choke in his own blood. Then I called in the medics as ordered. At least I hadn't killed him outright. For that, I was grateful.

With that done, I got the hell out of there. Wilson was no longer my problem, but that didn't mean I'd finished dealing with the dead.

After all, I still had Adrienne to find. Once beyond the cemetery gates, the tension that had been so much a part of the last few hours slithered from my body, and I was suddenly able to breathe easier, It wasn't just Wilson - and the knowledge of what he could have done - that had wound me up so tight. It was the awareness of all those other souls. The feeling that I only needed to open myself up a little and all their hopes, their dreams, and their anguish would be mine. That the sum of their beings could easily overrun me, until I was nothing more than a conduit for their pain.

I shivered. I mightn't be able to entirely avoid dead people given my job, but cemeteries were definitely off my list of places to visit in the future.

I slipped back into the flow of traffic and glanced at the dashboard clock as my stomach rumbled a reminder that it actually hadn't been supplied with sustenance in a while. It was nearly one, so most of the fast-food joints would be closed by now, but the restaurants near the Blue Moon would still be open. In fact, most of them ran twenty-four hours a day, just to make the most of the constant flow of patrons coming to and from both the Blue Moon and the Rocker. And the close proximity of the clubs meant I'd be able to case a deeper ache after filling my belly.

Except that I'd made a promise.

With a sigh that was only slightly filled with frustration, I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Kellen's number.

"Hey," I said, when he answered. "You feel like something to eat?"