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The Department's Resident Dead Expert

Chapter 4

By Draconicon

Aisha's breath caught in her throat as she stared at the figure in the mirror. It had almost touched her, and the shadow felt cold. Colder than the room, colder than anything that she'd experienced on the cold city winters, and she knew that if it actually reached her, things would get far worse.

The hyena flung herself forward, hitting the ground and rolling away from her bed. As she threw herself to her feet, she whipped her head back - and saw nothing.

Nothing, that was, until she looked at the window. Just like with the mirror, there was a reflection of something, something dark, something ghostly, and it was moving. Moving right for her.

"Shit, shit, shit!"

The hyena threw her door open and ran, not bothering to slam it shut behind her. If that was a ghost - who the fuck thought ghosts were real, asked the woman that had blown a necromancer - then the door would do jack shit against it. If it wasn't, then she doubted that it would be stopped for long by a door. The hyena ran for the kitchen, throwing open cupboard after cupboard until she found what she was looking for.

Salt. A simple box, something that was still full because of doctor's orders telling her to watch it, but fuck it, she heard that worked. She ripped it open and whipped around, thankful beyond measure for the many mirrors that dotted her hallway. The thing was coming, and it was halfway down the hall already.

"Come on, come on..."

She swung her arm back and forth, making a long line of salt at the end of the hallway. She'd always heard that ghosts and undead and demons were supposed to be repelled by salt lines, right? Maybe if they were real, so were the stories?

When she had three lines of salt so thick that she could see them through the carpet, she backed up, panting hard. The ghost...had stopped.

Aisha stared, unable to help the odd mix of shock and awe that she felt looking at the strange apparition in the mirror. It was...small, smaller than she was, smaller than Finlay, but she didn't feel like she was looking at a child. If anything, it felt like...like an old thing looking at her, old and slightly wizened...

And amused.

There were no details to the ghostly thing, just this black mass that moved in the mirrors, but it seemed to try and smile as it looked past the salt lines at her. For a moment, she wondered why.

But only for a moment.

The ghost stepped over the lines, ignoring them completely. Aisha's eyes went wide, but she only hesitated for a moment before lunging for her jacket and running right out the door. Her phone was in her hand the minute she hit the hallway, and she was still running, running as fast as her feet would carry her.

Ring ring.

Ring ring.

Ring ring.

"Come on, pick up, you ornery son of a bitch, pick up!"

Click.

"Finlay -"

"Get your ass back here right now!"

"What's going on?" the sheepdog said, and she heard the gratifying sound of burning rubber as he must have been yanking the car around.

"Tell you when you get here. Bad shit."

"Back-up?"

"Wouldn't help. Just get here, fast as you fucking - CHRIST!"

Her only warning had come as she'd pulled the phone down to look at the screen, catching a hint of the ghostly reflection just over her shoulder. The hyena threw herself sideways, and the air where she'd been standing went cold as ice. The railing she'd been about to grab for the stairs turned shiny with ice on it, and she swore she could feel invisible eyes staring at her.

Fuck, fuck, fuck...

She couldn't see the ghost, couldn't tell where it was looking, unless she had something reflective to make it show up. The terror of not knowing where the threat was at any moment, and knowing that it could pass through the walls - as it must have done to catch up with her - sent a chill right down her spine.

Gotta get out...gotta...get out...

Desperately angling the phone screen to the side, she managed to get a glimpse of the ghost. It was coming straight for her, walking menacingly down the hallway. She turned, looked the other way -

A window.

A window so high off the street that it'd be risking a trip to the hospital.

Better a hospital than a morgue, was all that the hyena could think before shoving herself to her feet and running as fast as her legs could carry her. Her eyes focused on the window in the distance, tunneling in on it as she got closer and closer. She pulled her jacket up, wrapped it around her hands, and at the last minute, took a flying leap.

CRASH!

The glass broke and she flew right through it, going out the window and into the surprisingly warm night air. She was flying, then falling. Falling fast, as a matter of fact, faster and faster as the seconds went by. She only hoped that -

Thump.

Oh, it hurt. Oh, it hurt so much more than the movies made it look like it would, but it was a hell of a lot better than landing on the sidewalk.

Aisha groaned as she rolled onto her side, slowly sliding off the overhang that covered the side door of the building. She'd hoped against hope that it was there, that she wasn't just flying to the sidewalk, but she'd been terrified that she would be proven wrong.

She hadn't been.

She was alive.

The roaring sound of a car and the familiar whine of a police siren filled her ears. Finlay spun around the corner, and she groaned as she lifted her phone again. Glancing at the screen, she could just barely make out the distant dark shape several floors up. It hadn't come through the window yet, but it was reaching through the gap.

Fuck...

She groaned as she dropped to the sidewalk, feeling the impact in every bone in her body. Finlay braked to a halt right in front of her, and she slid into the passenger side.

"Drive," she muttered.

"Where?" he asked, kicking the engine into high gear again.

"Motel."

"What happened?"

"Something just tried to kill me."

And it might have been the necromancer.

#

Jaceb had just finished helping one of the old ghosts of the motel pass over - a process that the old cleaner had been wishing to do for over a decade - when the thump at the door nearly took it off its hinges. The mole yelped, biting back the urge to immediately blow himself to smithereens, and instead got to his feet and walk to the door itself. Another thump stopped him in his tracks, leaving him biting his lips in trepidation.

The third actually took the door down. The mole leaped backwards, yelping in shock as the giant wooden block almost slammed into him, and the sheepdog cop lunged in, gun in hand. Jaceb's eyes went wide as Finlay held it right to his forehead, the cop's other hand wrapped around his throat.

"The fuck did you just do?!"

"Finlay!"

"Did you just try to kill my partner?"

What happened? Jaceb didn't know. The mole's mind was completely blanked out by the threat and the sudden return to horror and mortality. His breath caught in his throat, eyes blank.

Eventually, the hyena woman pulled her partner back, and the mole realized that he could breathe again. Yet, there was no gentleness in her eyes, nothing that suggested that she had any reason to be nice.

What had happened?

"Jaceb."

"Y-yes?"

"Something just tried to kill me. Was it you?"

"N-n-n-"

"Answer, you -"

"No! It w-wasn't me. W-what happened?"

Aisha glanced back at Finlay, then back at him. Something had obviously happened, and it must have been something magical if they were this scared. But if it was magical - but there wasn't any magic out there. It wasn't...what was -

"He's lying," Finlay said.

"Look -"

"He's gotta be. There's no way he's not responsible."

"Finlay."

"He's the only one that can do this. He's a monster. And I should put a bullet in his fucking head right now."

The gun flashed, light streaking down the barrel. The end pointed right at his head again, and Jaceb did the only thing that he could think of to do: he exploded.

As bones ripped through flesh, as skin peeled and a hole appeared where his head had been, the mole's spirit leaped into the air...and as it did, it knew that they had a visitor that was most definitely unwelcome.

#

Aisha groaned, holding one hand to her head. The mole's dead body was not what they needed right now. Even Finlay almost looked a little sheepish - not to mention sick from the blood that was bubbling around the neck hole - at what he had done, and the sheepdog slowly holstered his weapon.

"Well, that's a problem," she muttered.

"We're better off without that."

"You seriously think that we can track down the culprit without him?"

"You keep talking like he could be anything but the culprit."

"He says he isn't, and I have no reason to disbelieve him."

"You - sss!"

Aisha felt it, too. The same cold that had descended on her apartment had just entered the room. She whipped her head back and forth; there were no easy mirrors here, and she doubted that she could pinpoint it with her phone screen fast enough. But it had to be somewhere, and somewhere -

"NNNGH!"

Finlay.

Aisha turned back to the sheepdog. He'd dropped to his knees, head in his hands. Screams died in his throat as he grunted and wheezed, huffed and fell. He landed on his side, spasming from head to toe. His eyes were wild, one of them slowly going dark, then black. The other started to do the same as one hand started shaking, fighting against him.

"Finlay? Finlay!"

She couldn't hep it. The process, the fascination, was too terrifyingly fascinating to look away from. Even as he slowly reached from his face to his waist, even when she realized he was going for his gun, she couldn't entirely believe it.

BANG!

He pulled the trigger, the bullet going right by her face, impacting in the wall. It had only missed because he'd yanked his other arm up to shove the gun off-track, but it wasn't going to work a second time. She could see him already losing control, the other eye going completely black. His face twisted up into a smirk.

"Well...got you now," Finlay - not-Finlay - said, chuckling. "One shot, and the little necromancer won't have anyone supporting him anymore. I won't even have to finish it after that; this one will finish the job for me."

"You...who are you?"

"Mmm, I don't think it's a good idea to answer that. I mean, after all, you might live, and that's not exactly -"

Something dark lunged from around the corner, and Finlay - not-Finlay - shouted as it seized him around the legs. He went down, the sheepdog still clinging stubbornly to the pistol as -

What...what...what?

It was just a shadow...but it was Jaceb's shadow. And it was moving on its own, darting, twisting, grabbing hold of the sheepdog's shadow, biting it as if it was real, and her partner was reacting as if it was.

What - how -

What was she supposed to do? Shoot him? That'd do her a fat lot of good. But if she didn't do something -

S-s-sorry.

"Jaceb? What - ah!"

It was like someone shoving a shard of ice into the base of her neck. Cold went up and down her back, freezing her in place more efficiently than the gun had. She stiffened up, her mouth hanging open as something stepped into her. She felt it like someone putting her arms and legs on like so many garments, her head tilting ever so slightly from one side to the other. Everything felt like it was pushed out for a moment, sliding up to her skin, before coming back down to rest in the proper place.

What...

She couldn't even talk. Whatever it was, it had taken her faster than the other thing had taken Finlay. She couldn't even whisper.

Her hand moved without her permission, both of them in front of her eyes. She felt like someone else was looking out of them -

"S-sorry," she heard her own voice say.

Jaceb?!

"W-w-won't b-be long."

Won't be long? He was in her, and not in the way that she had ever meant him to be. Wait, could he read her thoughts? Was he - oh god, what if he was seeing what she had just thought about with that comparison and -

If he was, then he wasn't reacting. Instead, he was weaving his hands around - her hands, her hands! - and pulling at something that she was only barely aware of. There was...there was something in the room with them, a sense of...of life, and the lack of it, and the thing that pushed through it all.

Her vision changed, and as Jaceb reached out with her hand, she saw him grab something that ran out of the back of Finlay's head. The sheepdog went still, eyes wide, and she saw the thing in him look out of those eyes at her.

"...So...you're a real necromancer, then," not-Finlay said.

Jaceb nodded her head.

"What are you going to do? Kill me? That'll kill him, too."

"Nnngh...n-n-no," Jaceb said through her mouth.

"N-no? N-no?" not-Finlay laughed. "Is that what you sound like? And here I thought you were something to be worried about."

"S-should b-b-be."

"Heh. Not when all you so is - ulk!"

Aisha wasn't sure what it was she felt, but she felt something as Jaceb pulled at the line outside of Finlay's head. The thing inside of her partner must have felt it too, because he went completely silent.

"Don't have t-to k-k-kill...Just have t-t-t-to g-get y-you out."

"Nnngh...that...that..."

"Connection...pull as w-well as cut..."

"You - nnnngh!"

Jaceb yanked upward, pulling her arm out and back. As soon as he did, the chill in the room started to fade. Not completely, but somewhat, and she could see the thing that she'd been running from the whole time. It was dark, dark as the shadow that had been attacking Finlay, but it was more formed, more solid than that. She felt the mole's shock inside of her, and in that shock, her grip loosened.

The darkness fled before they could do anything with it, and just like that...the room was back to normal. Or, as normal as a room could be with a dead body on one side of it.

Jaceb sat her down on the bed, his shadow moving away from the panting, unconscious Finlay. As it wandered around the room, picking up bones and carrying them to the mole's body, Aisha tried to piece together what she'd just seen.

"Another n-necromancer," Jaceb said through her mouth. "B-b-bad one, t-too."

What was that, though? He wasn't...here, was he?

"S-sent his s-s-spirit. Possession. Nnnngh...s-sorry."

You...you...

"G-gonna...g-g-go b-back to b-body...when b-b-back t-to n-n-n-normal."

But that wasn't -

He looked at his body, and her eyes went wider still. It was slowly getting put back together, the bones getting stuffed in by the mole's shadow. Little by little, it was getting rebuilt, and the skin was starting to stitch together, too.

...We have to talk.

"W-without...him."

Agreed.

Finlay had come to help her, but after getting possessed, after nearly killing Jaceb, she wasn't sure he could be trusted in the same room. At least, not before they saw just what he would do after waking up.

At least -

"Um...I...um...S-sorry...n-n-not s-sure I can do...th-that one."

That - oh god. You saw. Oh, you saw. Ohhhhh, god.

Apparently, he could read her mind, after all. She didn't know that it was possible to blush that hard.

The End

Summary: Aisha fights back against the ghost, and then goes to see what the fuck happened.

Tags: No Sex, Mole, Hyena, Sheepdog, Necromancy, Ghosts, Supernatural, Possession, Embarrassment, Near-Death, Fighting, Series,