Page 72 of Silver Claw

I stood, taking a small bag of salt with me, and began sprinkling it in a wide circle around the entire bed. “Don’t step on this,” I murmured, and the Kellys nodded to show they understood.

The salt circle was a few feet away from the bed, because if the spirit and I fought, I’d need some room to navigate the space. I didn’t want to stand on a bed and try to trap him.

I had to pour some between the headboard and the wall, and I poured it liberally, because I couldn’t see where it was going. I wanted to make sure there was enough to keep a very old, very deranged spirit from escaping.

If he escaped, he would find his way back to Mila eventually. No. This ghost was going to be sucked into a ghost trap and contained forever.

He had attached himself to the girl, wrapping around her like a wavering stole, his teeth buried in the side of her neck. He’d been young when he’d died, but much older when he’d been killed.

Once a human. Then a vampire.

When I’d walked around the bed, I’d seen that he’d been staked, and the point of the wood had gone all the way through him. The hole was still there, gaping and black.

Bastien had asked me once if I’d ever seen the spirit of a vampire. Vampires were divided in their beliefs. Some of them believed they didn’t get afterlives. When they got the true death, they simply ceased to exist in any way.

Some of them believed they got an afterlife of terror, horror, and agony. I believed Bastien was one of those. No matter what they believed, they feared what came after more than anything else.

An eternity of terror, or an eternity in a black void.

There was nothing else.

It was what vampires traded for their immortality.

It made them cling to life with extra determination. They believed they faced punishment for their sin of being a vampire, and it terrified them.

But now, for the first time in my life, certainly the first time I’d ever heard of such a thing happening, I was witnessing something extraordinary.

A vampire spirit.

Proof that perhaps vampires were like humans. They died, they went to their afterlife, they lived on in the spirit world. Not in lakes of burning fire and not an end.

Proof. Ghosts who wandered this physical realm, looking for food if they failed to cross over.

I wanted to talk to him so badly I could hardly contain myself. I wanted to ask him questions. Why was he the only vampire ghost I’d ever seen? What did he know? Did all vampires get that opportunity?

I couldn’t ask him, though, because saving that little girl’s life was more important than my curiosity or Bastien’s desperation.

I’d tell the master vampire what I’d seen there that night.

Maybe that would give him some peace.

I wanted to talk to the ghost, but I wanted to destroy him even more. He clung to Mila, his teeth in her flesh, and he was draining her dry. He was killing her, the monstrous bastard.

God help us all if more vampires managed to become ghosts and wander our realm after their true death. God help us. And the longer I thought about it, the more horrified and less amazed I became. Would every vampire ghost that failed to cross over need to attach to the living and drain their life force to…what? Remain a spirit?

Maybe all vampires crossed over after their death, just like the rest of us. Some of them could have gotten stuck here. But because he was the first vampire ghost I’d seen, it must have been a rare occurrence.

He appeared to be mostly comatose, at least while he drank. I doubted he ever stopped drinking. I activated the trap with my thumb, automatically reaching for my demon blade with my free hand.

But my demon blade wasn’t there, of course. I started to pull my hunter’s blade from its sheath but changed my mind. I’d thought of something else.

Something that might be, at least when it came to ghost trapping, even better.

Lennon’s wand.

Lennon’s wand could do to a spirit what a stake did to a living vampire. I believed the wand was essentially useless to me. It had belonged to a witchwolf, and it would only have worked for her.

I’d kept it hidden in a locked case for the longest time after Jared had given it to me, but then I’d put it in my bag after I’d lost my magic. I’d secured it with one of the leather bands attached to the bag so it wouldn’t get lost in the other items, and I had no trouble finding it.