Nothing can stop a haunting ghost from going up their portal to the spirit world. The wisdom he'd heard constantly growing up. Yet here were hundreds of haunting ghosts who had been prevented. Who had been unable to leave. Who had broken out of their haunts.
Perhaps this is the consequence of holding back haunting ghosts, thought Hemmett. For truly nothing can hold them back. If their portal is displaced, they are free to find another one.
They just needed someone to lead them out.
Aether hesitated above the downtown streets of the town. She stopped singing. The ghosts behind her kept coming--Hemmett glanced back nervously at the many death-forms heading straight for them. Those ghosts were beyond riled and out for blood!
"Where?" Aether's curly hair whipped around her eyes and she held onto her hurt wrist, making her look like a little girl.
Hemmett grasped her good wrist and pointed.
"There," he said. He didn't know why. It just came to him. The large, flat roof near the end of the street. He plunged downward, dragging Aether after him. The ghosts didn't need any encouragement to keep following--they whirled downward in a maelstrom of limbs and screaming faces and half-material shapes.
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Aether and Hemmett slid through the roof and immediately felt the shock of being inside their own vision. There, all around them, the colorful books. There, behind the espresso counter, the many-colored glass bottles--syrup bottles, Hemmett realized, for Italian sodas.
Aether gripped Hemmett's hand hard.
"It's happening!" she shouted. "The danger!"
At that moment, a hundred death-form ghosts slammed through the ceiling and raged around the bookstore, sending the mortal customers screaming for the exits. The ghosts, long denied their full powers, burned with spectricity, spitting it at the mortals, blackening the books, breaking the bottles of Italian syrup into a sticky, vivid mess on the floor. The barista crouched beneath the counter, dodging shards of broken glass.
"There's no portal in here! Hemmett! Why did you bring them here?" Aether's face glowed with anger. "They're scaring these mortals!"
Hemmett lowered to the floor, and Aether followed him. In the confusion, he hoped no one had seen him burst through the ceiling. Particularly not those mortal girls he liked.
Standing on the floor, he watched the tail end of the ghost swarm wisp through the ceiling. Then one final ghost popped through. A burned ghost, with spectricity hair and red eyes--still wearing a trench coat, Hemmett noted with some irony.
"Blade!" Hemmett's bident shot from his arm, reflexively. Aether raised her spectral shield, although it shimmered and showed through in places. Hemmett worried that it wouldn't be strong enough to protect her.
The ghosts whirled round and round the ceiling. The mortal's bookstore resembled The Haunted more and more. Why hadn't he taken them there? He could have gotten help from Mom and Dad! Why had he listened to this strange urge to pull these ghosts into this clearly non-portaled bookstore?
Blade growled and charged at them, firing spectricity. Aether raised her shield higher, trying to cover Hemmett too. Hemmett caught one of the spectricity bolts on his bident and sent it zinging back at Blade. He whirled the bident, gathering spectricity from the highly charged air.
YOU ARE READING
The Half-Ghosts: A Spirit Prince
FantastiqueHemmett d'Espers-Fitzhugh is sick and tired of school at the Interspiritual Academy of Portales Espirituales. Most of the students are half-ghosts like him--either his own cousins or kids he's known all his life--and he's BORED. His twin sister Aeth...
