cHApTEr 19. rusH Hour (3 of 3)

The finger bullet was aimed at Farah’s heart, but when it struck her black top, it only cracked against it and ricocheted into the ice beneath her feet. Jean’s finger was crushed into a bloody pulp, while Farah remained untouched, aside from her missing eye.

Farah had hardened herself with a layer of ice armor – thin, transparent, but incredibly sturdy. The idea must have come to her only now; otherwise, she would have used it from the beginning. There would have been no need to raise ice pillars, and she might not have been injured in the eye.

The ice armor protected her spectacularly, though her black top was ruined with a crack that would surely show once it thawed. Still, that hardly mattered. What mattered was that Farah had found a way to counter Jean’s finger-shooting ability. If he could no longer hurt her, then he was at a disadvantage, unless he had more tricks up his sleeve. If he did, it was high time to show them.

Farah did not wait for him to act. She raised another ice pillar beside her, but this one was different from the others. It resembled a podium with an axe resting on top of it in a vertical position. The axe was connected to the podium by a thin line of ice, making it easy to break free. It was an impeccable display of ice shaping on Farah’s part.

She grabbed the axe by the handle and snapped it loose. Then she took aim at Jean – just like she had at the axe-throwing range – and hurled it at him, the weapon spinning through the air like a frozen wheel. It was heading straight for Jean. As Mioray watched it fly, he once again became convinced that it had been no accident when Farah buried an axe in his own back.

Jean raised his right arm, now down to only three fingers. He did not flinch as he fired his ring finger at the incoming projectile. The ice axe and finger bullet collided. Scarlet splashed across the transparent ice, knocking it off course. Its spin stopped, and the axe fell helplessly from the rooftop without ever reaching Jean. The gunman had only two fingers left now, a thumb and a pinky.

But before he had fired at the axe, Farah had already tapped the ice beneath her feet again. Another ice ridge began to form, creeping toward Jean with far greater force than before. The man was focused on the axe when the ice ridge reached him. Without his left arm or leg, he was half-lying on the ice, and the ridge swallowed him up to the waist, trapping him in place.

By the time the ice axe disappeared from view, he was already shackled. He briefly glanced at his two remaining fingers, considering shooting the ice in the hope that it would break, but dismissed the idea.

“I’ve lost,” he said, as if this were just a cozy session of board games.

But Farah had already turned her back on him. Rubbing her shoulders to keep warm, she dragged herself toward her black winter puffer coat and pulled it over her shoulders.

“Any news from Mia?” she asked in a trembling voice.

Mioray took a moment to shake off the eerie feeling of Farah looking at him with her only eye.

“Reyna called just a moment ago,” he said. “The Soul Collective is visible now, and it’s killing people. Mia showed up and drew its attention to herself, but that’s all I know so far.”

“Ugh, it’s like I have to do everything myself,” Farah grumbled. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets, huddled into herself, and headed toward Jean, who was still trapped in the ice. “You’re giving up, right?”

The gunman propped his head on his fist, or what was left of it.

“I don’t see how I can escape the ice on my own,” he said. “I know when it’s time to give up.”

“You’re not going to shoot your remaining fingers?”

“I’d rather keep them.”

“Good,” Farah shook her head and let out a weary sigh, “because I won’t hesitate to freeze you completely if I have to.”

“Why won’t you?”

The question clearly caught Farah off guard.

“Because I’m not an assassin?” she said with a frown. “Besides, the cold is freezing me to death, and that’s with my coat turned up to maximum heating. It’s like the depths of Snowrealm are devouring my flesh and I’m dying again, only this time it’s a thousand times worse.”

“Honestly, it baffles me,” Jean said. “I thought we undead didn’t feel pain.”

“Well, obviously!” Farah pointed at the hole in her face. “For the most part, I don’t. And it’s not like I feel cold from the surroundings. It’s the cold inside me that hurts.”

She stopped in front of Jean, standing over him. If he had wanted to, he could have shot Farah point-blank. She would not have had time to react. But he did not. The assassin was a man of his word. Somehow, those hired killers seemed to live by their own code.

“Look, I’m not going to kill you, but I’m not planning to free you either,” Farah said. “You’re really messed up. But I’m prepared to strike a deal with you.”

Jean snorted.

“I don’t think you can afford it,” he said.

“If it’s money you want, I can give you money. You transferred me a hefty sum before, after all.”

Mioray raised his eyebrows. What was it with those two and their obsession with money? Not in a million years would he have expected Farah to try to strike a deal with an assassin, especially one who had been after their heads just moments ago. They should have been focusing on why Jean had been instructed not to let them go after the Soul Collective. Was it because of the competition, or was there some other, more malevolent reason?

“Oh?” Jean, meanwhile, showed interest in Farah’s offer. “I thought you valued money.”

“The money I earned, yes. But this kind of money doesn’t feel earned, and I can part with it. But you’re not picky about where it comes from, as long as it ends up in your pocket, am I wrong?”

“You’re not. I don’t care about the source. So what do you want to hire me for, miss?”

Farah looked him over, weighing whether he was worth it.

“I want you to kill the assassin in you,” she said.

Jean snorted again.

“Kill the assassin in me, you say?” With his remaining fingers, he brushed the edges of his mustache. “Taking a life has its price, but after all this time, I still haven’t figured out how much a life is worth. When Lokiel gave me a second chance at life, I felt like I could never repay him. You can’t put a price on your own life. Does it cost a million? A billion? More? Less? How do you put a fixed price on it?”

“Cut the crap, okay?” Farah pulled her hand out of her pocket and held it out to Jean. “I’m offering you a third chance. Become a free person and live your death, or whatever.”

“You’re the client,” Jean said, taking Farah’s hand and shaking it with the one that had only two fingers left. “And I always fulfill my clients’ requests.”

While they were discussing their new transactional relationship, Mioray was distracted by his phone vibrating. Almost mechanically, he looked at the screen, and for the first few seconds, he did not even register that it was a message from Mia. Once it sank in, he checked what it said.

It’s heading your way.

He understood what it meant instantly, but the Soul Collective appeared before Mioray could even finish reading the short message. Its claws, black as the darkest night, latched onto the roof ledge and hauled up the rest of its massive body, revealing its full form.

It was nothing like what Mioray had seen in the crater not long ago. The Soul Collective was enormous. Reyna’s description had not done it justice. Any hint of something ghostlike was gone. There were no white sheets from children’s stories with holes for eyes and a mouth draped over its black mass of a body. Instead, it had grown many more limbs, all armed with sharp claws. Its mouth, packed with twisted teeth like a coil of barbed wire, behind which a rough, wet tongue twitched from side to side, took up more than half its body and gave off a green steam.

Huge as it was, it hurled itself at Farah and Jean like an arrow whistling through the air. The two of them were still locked in their handshake, unaware of the monster looming above them. Or at least Farah was unaware, because she stood with her back to the Soul Collective, unlike Jean. The gunman yanked her toward himself with inhuman force, sending her flying over him and off the roof. Her long scream mixed surprise, annoyance, fear, and anger all at once.

A moment later, the spiritual beast’s teeth snapped shut, wiping Jean and the ice trapping him from view. Horrified, Mioray heard the monster swallow, and then, for a split second, its black body flared with a blinding mint-green light. A new limb formed from the Soul Collective’s core, adding to the existing forest of limbs. The monster opened its mouth and shrieked. Mioray did not miss what layered through that sound. The multiplied voices of the souls it had consumed. The cry caused an excruciating pain he had never known before, piercing his brain – or something above it – with countless burning needles. Mioray nearly lost consciousness, but he managed to hold on. He had to, because the Soul Collective’s mouth turned toward him next.

He had no doubt, not even for a second, that the Soul Collective had absorbed Jean’s soul when it swallowed his body. What had once been only a theory was confirmed now. Mioray had not wanted proof in such a horrific way, but it happened whether he wanted it or not. The Cursed Blade of Avalon was not the only thing that could kill an undead. The Soul Collective could do it too.

And now it was coming for Mioray.

Well, he was not ready to cease to exist. He rolled over the edge of the roof, latched his unharmed left hand onto the ledge, and stretched his arm to lower himself toward the street. But of course, the reach of his arm was not enough, and the Soul Collective would bite his hand off before he could fully descend. Mioray had no choice but to let go and fall freely from the fourth floor. The impact might knock him out, but that was still better than the alternative.

For once, though, luck was with him.

Mia, propelled by her own scream, caught Mioray in her arms and then landed gracefully back on the road.

“The Soul Collective swallowed Jean,” Mioray told Mia the moment they were back on the ground, seeing the question already lingering in her eyes. “I don’t know about Farah. She fell from the opposite side of the building.”

He clicked on the earpiece.

“Farah! Farah, can you hear me?!”

But Farah did not respond. Jean might have saved her from being eaten by the spiritual beast, but after falling from the roof, she could easily have broken her neck. What if she was lying somewhere breathless and defenseless? She would be easy prey for the Soul Collective.

Though she was not who they had to worry about right now. Both Mioray and Mia looked up and saw the beast’s shadow engulfing them. The Soul Collective jumped from the roof, its massive body plummeting toward them. Mioray quickly launched his arms forward, grabbed onto a traffic barrier, and yanked both himself and Mia out of the monster’s path. The Soul Collective slammed down in a burst of dust, crushing the road into a crater. The ground shook, and part of the wall beneath the icy roof crumbled.

“My spiritual powers are depleted. I can’t make the portal,” Mioray said. “What about you?”

Mia shook her head, keeping her eyes on the Soul Collective.

Great. Just great. Neither of them could conjure a portal. Not that it would have changed much if they could. From where they stood, Mioray couldn’t think of any way to force the creature into the realm between realms, not even if they stretched the portal wide enough for it to pass through.

The Soul Collective’s mouth turned toward them. It had no eyes or ears, yet it could still sense them somehow. Maybe it could feel their souls. Perhaps that soul link Niles had mentioned was not exclusive to him, but something more common, something inherent in everyone. The Soul Collective shrieked again, impatiently. The pain it caused was almost unbearable. Then the monster lunged forward, dragging its body on countless limbs hanging from its core and leaving cracks in the road in its wake.

Mia hurled scream after scream at the spiritual beast. Wave after wave distorted the air, piercing through it with force and slamming into the creature, but even if it felt anything, it did not slow down at all. The Soul Collective was closing in fast. Abandoning any hope of stopping it in its tracks, Mia screamed at her feet again and launched herself and Mioray upward. He was terrified when he realized she was aiming to land on the monster’s body.

And once she did, the monster’s limbs immediately began striking at themselves in their attempt to skewer the prey clinging to its back. Mia raced along the Soul Collective’s body as its limbs rained down around them. She had to weave between them to avoid being pinned. Only then did Mioray fully realize how enormous the monster had grown, because seconds kept passing and they were still running across the surface of its body. At last, Mia reached its back. She jumped off and disappeared into the crossing street.

Mia kept running without looking back, turning into side streets whenever she had the chance. The monster’s shrieks still reached them, though they no longer hurt as much. She kept going for several more minutes, until the shrieks could no longer be heard at all. Only then did she stop.

She set Mioray down beside a fire hydrant, ready at any moment to pick him up again and run if the Soul Collective caught up with them. It was not as if they were the only ones on the streets. The danger hung over anyone who crossed the monster’s path. It was entirely possible that, even now, the Soul Collective had already found more prey to feast on.

It had to be stopped. The Soul Collective mattered more than the wager between greanrips. Erinel would understand. She had to understand. She was the one who had warned him and the others that the Soul Collective could not be allowed to absorb so many souls. And yet it had. It was growing bigger. And stronger. What could once have been dealt with as a dangerous nuisance had become a real threat. If left unchecked, it would turn into a disaster. Teams or no teams, they all had to work together and bring the monster down.

Mioray clicked on the earpiece to tell everyone exactly that, but before he could, Kevin’s voice came through first.

“Listen up, everyone, we have to sto–”

The transmission cut off abruptly. Mioray waited for Kevin to continue, but there was nothing except silence.

“Kevin, what did you want to say?” Mioray asked.

There was no response.

“Erinel, are you there?”

Still nothing. Mioray looked at the clock. There were barely ten minutes left before the competition ended. Once it was over, could he expect the other team to stop being hostile? Somehow, he doubted Amika would cooperate with him instead of trying to kill him at the first chance she got. Trusting Kiriya was risky too. Until she returned Matt’s blood, Mioray had to treat her as an enemy. And as for Saria… she was the most reasonable of them, but then again, she had been at the crater too, and Matt had been taken down partly because of her.

Mioray winced. Better not to contact them, at least not yet. They had their earpieces. They should have heard Kevin and Mioray, but they had chosen not to respond. On top of that, Jean had been instructed to stop Erinel’s team from dealing with the Soul Collective, and even if the assassin had not said it outright, it was obvious the order had come from none other than Lokiel. Mioray would have been genuinely surprised if it had come from anyone else. Lokiel was scheming something, and there was a good chance his companions were in on it too.

We can’t stay here, Mia signed.

“I know,” Mioray replied. “But we can’t do anything about the Soul Collective right now. Back at the crater, Amika tried to stab it with her hair, but it just passed through its body. It’s not immune to physical contact, but anything that would damage its form doesn’t connect.”

We can’t let it kill more people or consume more souls.

“Right. We need to get back to the Artery office.” It was the only rational choice. “We need Erinel to share her spiritual powers again and help us deal with the Soul Collective. She can’t refuse. Her goal is to stop something like this from happening in the first place.”

That was her goal, wasn’t it? It wasn’t less important than whatever else she wanted… right?

“Lokiel could help us too,” Mioray grimaced as he said it. This was not the time for personal grudges. “Kevin and Niles too. I wonder what happened there. Why did the transmission get cut off?”

Mia tapped her index and middle fingers against her thumb in a flat, dismissive motion.

“What do you mean – no?” Mioray frowned. Mia signed again. “You don’t trust them? Who?”

Greanrips, Mia signed, letter by letter.

That was hardly surprising. It was only natural. Mioray didn’t know how he would feel if he had gone through what Mia had.

She had been dead for a month after her suicide attack. When she came back, Terry was already gone, stabbed by Erinel with the Cursed Blade. And before that happened, nobody had known the blade had such power. Except Erinel.

No wonder Mia was angry. That anger still lived inside her, and now it seemed to have spread to other greanrips too. Though with Lokiel, at least, it was justified.

“Why now?” Mioray asked. “It’s not like we can stop the Soul Collective by ourselves. We need greanrip power if we want to force it through the portal.”

I know, Mia signed, pursing her lips. Call it instinct. Erinel and Lokiel showed their colors today. I don’t like what I saw. They don’t see souls as human beings. I’m not even sure they see humans as human beings, if you understand what I mean. We assume only Lokiel is behind this mess, that he alone wants the Soul Collective roaming free for some reason. I think Erinel is in on it too.

“No, she wouldn’t!” Mioray raised his voice without meaning to. He stopped himself and pulled himself together. “I mean, Erinel, she’s–”

A friend? Mia hooked her index fingers together, then broke them apart in frustration. Terry was a friend. Him I could trust with both my life and my death. I can’t say the same for her.

Mioray sighed.

He wanted to trust Erinel with his life and death, but deep down there was a doubt gnawing at him, telling him it would be foolish. How much time had they really spent together? Not as much as he would have liked, but not so little that he could complain. Still, it seemed he had never truly seen Erinel for who she was. What was it that she wanted?

“Fine,” Mioray forced himself to say with a nod. “Let’s look for Farah first. Maybe she’s fine, or at least not hurt badly enough to stay unconscious for long. There’s a chance she still has the spiritual powers. With the three of us, we might be able to defeat the Soul Collective.”

It was a blatant lie. Mioray did not believe they could defeat the monster, even with Farah. But they could not just sit back and do nothing. So this was a start.

Mia understood that too. She agreed, though her expression stayed stern. Going back to Erinel was the more logical choice. However, not at the cost of abandoning Farah. They had to make sure she was safe from the Soul Collective and had not suffered the same terrible fate as Jean or the other people the spiritual beast had consumed.

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