Chapter 20: Vengenful spirit

The old man’s head stayed turned toward the corner Lian had pulled back behind.

"Somebody’s standing there." He pointed. "I can feel them."

"Go and look, then." Harwell kept his eyes on the bundle half wrapped in his arms. "If it’s a nurse, we’re finished anyway. Better to know."

Lian slid into the next alcove and pressed his back to the wall. The paint was cold through his shirt.

Footsteps started down the service hall. Even steps.

Lian shut his eyes.

The steps reached the corner and stopped.

He counted. One. Two. Three. Four.

On five they turned and went back the way they had come.

Lian let his breath out through his nose. His knees dipped, and he locked them.

"That was close," he whispered.

He turned to find Wen Ruo.

Camphor. He smelled it first. Then the old man was there, directly behind him, close enough to count the creases around his mouth.

"You thought I wouldn’t find you." The old man’s hand rose. "Senseless brat. I can’t let you live, not now that you’ve seen me."

The hand reached for Lian’s throat and stopped a finger’s width from his collar. The old man’s eyes went to the space beside Lian’s shoulder.

"Huh." He drew the hand back. "You can see and command a spirit too? What a peculiar little thing you turned out to be." He smiled. "I think I’ll open you up when this is over. See if you look any different on the inside."

He glanced at his own wrist.

"If I hadn’t moved when I did, you’d have taken my head clean off. Wouldn’t you."

Wen Ruo did not answer. She was a step ahead of Lian now, one hand already changed, the fingers long and sharp.

"Soul cultivator," she said.

The old man’s eyebrows rose.

"Well, now." He straightened, and the stoop was gone. "Spirits don’t usually know that word. Who taught you?"

Wen Ruo kept her eyes on his hands.

His smile widened until it showed teeth. "Never mind. I’ll find out."

He moved before he finished the sentence.

Wen Ruo’s arm came up. Her nails met his wrist a hand’s width from Lian’s chest, steel on bone, and the crack of it rang down the corridor and shook dust off a ceiling tile.

"Lian. Behind me. Now."

He was behind her before she finished. He hated how fast he had gone.

The old man stepped back and rolled his wrist. Wen Ruo rose until her head touched the ceiling tiles.

He did not look up. He pressed two fingers to his breastbone and said a word Lian had never heard.

The air dropped ten degrees. Lian’s exhale showed white in front of his face. Down the hall the fluorescents buzzed and went out one by one, and the exit sign at the far end turned the floor red.

Something knocked inside the wall behind him. Knocked again.

A vent cover rattled. A shape the size of an orange dropped out of it, hit the tile with a soft smack, and crawled.

Then more. They came out of the ceiling gaps, from under a gurney, through the crack beneath the supply closet door. Waxy, unfinished, infant-shaped, every mouth working on no sound. Lian stopped counting at twelve.

They gathered at the old man’s feet. He stood in the middle of them with his arms spread and his eyes shut. Harwell backed against the opposite wall with the bundle clutched to his chest and stayed silent.

"Go," the old man said, and pointed up.

They climbed the walls and crossed the ceiling toward Wen Ruo.

She dropped to meet them.

Lian heard it more than he saw it. Small bodies giving way in twos and threes. Black fluid ran into the grout lines, and the corridor smelled of coins.

Some of them cried out as they died. One short note each, cut off.

Lian put his hand over his mouth.

He counted, because counting was the only job he had. Six. Seven. Eight. A small shape slid along the floor toward his bare feet, and Wen Ruo’s hand came down on it from above.

Nine.

Ten.

The corridor stopped making noise. Black fluid ran off Wen Ruo’s fingers and ticked onto the tile. The old man opened his eyes. He had not moved from the middle of the floor, and he looked at the mess around him with plain interest.

The air in front of Lian’s face flickered. A box assembled itself out of static, letter by letter.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

S̸u̷c̴c̷e̶s̷s̸f̶u̷l̴l̸y̷ D̴e̸v̷o̸u̸r̴e̷d̶

10 l0w-t1er sp1rits ○ut of 20/30

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Twenty out of thirty. Lian read it twice. He had no idea what waited at thirty.

Above him Wen Ruo floated with her hands dripping, reading it too.

"How many more can you do?" Lian whispered.

"I don’t know." Her voice was steady. Her hands were not. "Ask me at twenty-five."

"Ten," the old man said, wiping his palms down his sleeves. "That is a start."

His fingers moved.

They folded into a shape, broke it, folded into another. Two fingers together. Thumbs locked. One fist wrapped inside the other hand. Lian could not follow them. The part of his brain that had watched too much anime supplied the answer anyway. Hand signs. He had seen this a hundred times on a screen, and it had looked better there. Some stupid part of him waited for the old man to shout the name of the technique.

"Be careful." Wen Ruo’s voice had changed. "That isn’t a technique. He’s calling something."

"Calling what?"

"A vengeful spirit. A whole one."

The old man crouched and set both palms flat on the tile. The black fluid in the grout lines ran toward his hands, every thread of it, until it pooled between his fingers and rose.

A body climbed out of the pool, dripping, in no hurry.

It was shaped like an infant. It was not one. The head was an infant’s head, too heavy for the neck, and the arms belonged to a boy, long enough that the knuckles brushed the floor. Its skin was the same waxy white as the small ones, but dark at every joint, bruised black. The eyes were black from rim to rim. It stood about as high as Lian’s waist.

Across the corridor, Harwell shifted the bundle higher on his chest and turned his face to the wall.

Wen Ruo stared at it. "That’s where they went."

"Where who went?"

"The small ones. They weren’t strays. He’s been feeding them to it." Her voice cracked in the middle. "Taking what each one had and pressing it into one body. Years of it. He didn’t summon that. He built it."

"Not fully grown," the old man said, and patted the thing’s oversized head. "But it will do."

The thing raised one hand.

The air around its fingers smelled of burnt hair. A dark film unrolled from the ceiling to the floor, shivering, and closed around Wen Ruo like a lid.

She stopped in the air with one arm still reaching. Her eyes found Lian’s. Only her eyes moved.

The thing turned its head toward Lian.

It walked like a toddler on its first day, tilting from side to side on short legs, knuckles dragging, and every step left a black print on the tile. Lian’s legs, which had worked so well the last time he needed them, stayed where they were. He thought, absurdly, of his mother kissing his forehead twice.

It stopped in front of him and looked up.

Its mouth opened.

Ma.