Page 63 of All Her Ghosts

He fires again and the ghosts of dead DNR soldiers boil anew, hissing against the metal of her RV door, working up the strength to force their way through—

The soldier fires again and I—

Scream.

The sky rips open. Lightning cracks. Hail shatters helmets harder than fist-strikes. The helicopter spins away, fleeing the storm, looming so low it rattles abandoned flea market tables. Ice crawls up the buildings and the SUVs, misting every black metal surface ashy gray.

Out in the distant fields, I feel the ley lines boil. They thrash in the earth, swimming straight at me. Hills heave like a sick belly, buildings shaking, gutters unhinged. A rusted weathervane crashes down from the slope of the auction barn roof, its comically huge chicken shattering into a man and sending another two to the ground.

“It’s her!” they bellow.

“Target acquired!”

“Engage, engage!”

Before they can move, Bas heaves himself onto the roof of the jeep in one smooth motion, sneakers thundering—and heburns. Sunlight cuts through the storm to sing into his hand. Fire boils from his eyes, catches in his gray hair until he stands in a living cloud of light. Gun barrels swing up, acquiring a new and pressing target.

Bas explodes forward, charging into the frost-chucked dirt, scything his way through with a heavy blade of light.

Bodies crumple, silent in the maelstrom, folding to the ground like wheat.

The screams change.

“Secondary target!”

“Unnatural combatant engaged!”

“Fall back, fall back!”

A nice sentiment, but too late. The only place to fall back—the only place away from our unrelenting onslaught as patient and furious as an incoming tidal wave—is the RV tossing in a seething sea of ghosts.

And all ghosts belong tome.

Stepping out of the jeep without my meat, I stride into the middle of the battle, swelling with every step, tall enough to eat the world. The ghosts fall away from their rage and desperation. They look up at me, mouths gaping, and not for the first time, I wonder what they see. What do I look like to them? What do Isoundlike that the earth shook at my open mouth, that the sky broke and the ley lines fought themselves awake?

Bas blurs around me,harvesting, and I stare at the awful fruits of his labor—newly blossomed, bright-burning flowers in the dead and shriveled grass.

Look at them: they still remember themselves so clearly, down to the littlest detail. These cruel and complicit thugs, these world breakers, damned a million peaceful souls to suffer and meanwhile here they are, staggering to their feet when they shouldkneelto me. When they shouldweepandbeg.

And yet, instead—this one remembers how many bullets he has leftin his gun. That one, the exact weight and scuff of his boots. Theyallremember the badge on their breasts—that wicked upside-down caduceus, drooling asps with fangs bared.

God, they must have been so proud, to have built their entire lives and selves around the DNR that they still remember it now—when aching strays lost in the gutters can’t even remember their ownfaces—and this is what they did with that life? Caused more suffering? Broke the world worse? Tried to hunt me down to finish their warped little science experiment—is this what they wanted?

Am Ieverythingyou hoped? Are you so fucking proud of yourselves, dead in this cursed dirt, my mother’s RV with windows shattered and blood along the frame—

Wait—blood?

“Cain!” I scream.

The ground quakes but no ghost by that name answers me. Small favors.

Trapped between the pressure of my weight on the world and their own training, the DNR ghosts don’t know what to do. Trembling, every finger memorized, one walks forward. He stares me down, lifts his gun, and fires.

But guns have no soul. He holds a useless memory in his hand, only the residue of his own hatred, and I stare at him, watching him uselessly fire, fire, fire with a storm raging in my oceanic chest and I…

Let go.

I swell. I grow. Taller than Bas, than a funeral pyre, than a graveyard angel with stony hands outstretched. I reach down and gather them, every wretched spark, my fingers spread in two hateful stars.