Disclaimer: We are not Kelley Armstrong, we don't own the rights to Darkest Powers and we make no money from this.
I've always considered myself a strong, capable person. I've lived through – and seen others live through – events that many people would have crumbled under. I've been shot at, kidnapped, injured and betrayed. I've experienced far too many deaths already and every day I face the reality of even more deaths on my conscience.
With all of these experiences under my belt, you would think that a little thing like a ghost that I just can't seem to get rid of wouldn't be that big of a deal. But for the past week, my nerves had been strung tight with guilt and stress, so when Mark's voice echoed in my ears, I jumped like I had been goosed with a cow-prod.
Derek was out of bed in a blur of action. His skin stretched tightly across his shoulders, muscles coiled. "What is it?" he said harshly, eyes narrowed, scanning for a threat. "Chloe. What's wrong?"
"Oh, that's sweet," Mark's disembodied voice crooned in my ear.
For about a nanosecond, I contemplated lying.
"Mark." That one word seemed to sum it up well enough for Derek.
"Sonofabitch." The words ran together in a snarl, followed by the most animalistic growl I've ever heard from him while he was still in human form. "You bastard," he said louder, clearer. "You fucking bastard, leave her alone!"
Mark's taunting continued, unabated in my ears the entire time, but I tuned him out, only catching the odd word as I struggled to focus on Derek.
"I've tried everything," I said softly. "I even made a deal with a demon, for heaven's sake."
His eyes alight with rank fury, he turned around and pulled me against him. I went without a struggle, too worn out to protest. "We're calling Jaime."
"But-" I was going to say that Jaime had already helped me to the best of her abilities.
"Dammit, Chloe, we're calling Jaime, we're calling Jeremy, we're calling the freaking North American Pack and we'll summon whatever and whoever the hell we have to to get rid of this piece of garbage. I refuse to let this go on for one more second. Got it?" The look in his eyes told me that 'no' would not be an acceptable answer.
The last thing I expected was to feel a lump in my throat at his take-charge attitude; normally I'd get annoyed and insist on looking out for myself. Except I had tried to handle this by myself and I had only made things worse. Time to accept the support and help that I was being offered.
"Yes," I said thickly. "I get it." I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders as I accepted Derek's help.
Derek wound up having to be the one to Skype Jaime; Mark – knowing we were trying our hardest to banish him for good – upped his harassment, screaming obscenities inside my head until I was so distracted I could barely put a coherent sentence together. Livid, Derek got a sleepy Jaime on the line.
Barely able to hear them, all I got was the impression of a lot of terse words on his part. Jaime seemed calmer, but dismayed nonetheless. Finally, Jeremy came on the screen, urging Jaime aside for a moment, his lips moving near her ear. She seemed skeptical, but nodded slowly and faced the webcam once again.
"-whore, piece of worthless garbage, thinking that your mouth on his dick translates to love! He's just screwing you because you're there, you filthy fucking whore, he's got no emotions, no love in him, you're just an easy piece of ass for him, an easy lay, the minute you deny him, he'll be gone. You think you're powerful, you can't even get rid of me, you slutty-"
I clapped my hands over my ears, gasping at the sheer vileness of his words. I had never thought it would be this bad. Jaime must have seen my sudden desperate movement, because she said something to Derek that seemed to satisfy him, and he nodded brusquely.
"Come on, kitten," he murmured, his voice unusually gentle as he picked me up and headed towards the door. Mark's voice followed, an endless litany of abusive words flowing around me, some of his thoughtless comments hitting sore spots and trying to take root.
Channeling my focus for a minute, I managed to put together a sentence that seemed understandable. "Where…are we going?"
He almost seemed to know to pitch his voice low to be heard through Mark's shrill tirade. "We're meeting Jaime and Jeremy halfway. Jaime said she'll take care of this."
"Wha-what is she…" Mark spewed forth another mound of garbage and my train of thought got derailed, but Derek seemed to understand that I was trying to ask what she was going to do.
"I don't know," he said, helping me into the car and buckling the seatbelt around me when my hands shook too much to do it. I hated feeling helpless but I knew that without Derek I would be slowly going insane on the bedroom floor. "Chloe." He waited until I processed his voice and met his eyes. "It'll be ok."
Love, warm and powerful, swelled inside me and for a moment Mark's voice faded into the background. "I love you, too," I replied with a little smile. Satisfied, he closed the door and loped around to his side, getting in and starting the car.
The drive felt like a dream. To deal with the neverending stream-of-consciousness ranting, I let my mind blank out a little, holding tight to Derek's right hand the whole time. I refused to look at the speedometer, knowing full well that I wouldn't like the number that I'd see, but at the same time, I knew I'd wish for it to be faster.
Derek's cell phone rang at one point and he punched on the Blu-tooth function. "Where are you?"
If I had had the mental faculties to spare, I would have rolled my eyes at his abrupt "greeting". Fortunately the Pack was just like him and Jeremy was definitely not going to take offence.
"There's a rest stop coming up at the next exit. Get off there, park at the rest stop and head a half-mile into the woods behind it. I've left you a clear trail."
"You can't get rid of me, Chloe, little Chloe, little, tiny, weak, defenseless necromancer." He spat the last word like it was a dirty one. "You will never get rid of me, sweetheart. I'll always be like this, in your head, in bed with you, watching you when you're bending over, offering yourself for that bastard's-"
"Chloe! Listen to me!" Derek's frustrated tone snapped through Mark's and thankfully broke off his sentence before he had a chance to finish. "We're nearly there, ok? You're just going to have to hold on a bit longer."
Numb, I nodded. After sneaking a look at my face, I saw the muscles in his right thigh clench as he pushed harder on the accelerator, the engine responding with a roar.
One hundred million years later – or so it seemed at the time – we pulled into the parking lot at the rest stop. At the late hour, hardly anyone was there. Derek parked haphazardly across two spots, popped our buckles and hauled me over and out through the driver's door, striding briskly towards the woods.
Jeremy must have left a perfectly clear trail, because Derek didn't have to pause even once to find his way. He simply stormed through the woods, sheltering me against his body, his jaw locked but his hands gentle where they touched me.
Mark's ranting picked up again, and I had to seek out that blankness that was my only respite from him. Not much processed in my mind when I was like that, but I hazily saw Jaime's bright hair through the trees. When she saw me, she looked stricken, and her lips moved. I thought it was odd that Jeremy didn't answer her.
"Help her," Derek barked, tossing his sweater onto the ground before lowering me onto it. "Jesus, look at her…this isn't right."
Jeremy touched his shoulder, drawing his attention. He must have issued an order or something, because the muscles in Derek's cheek twitched furiously, but he reluctantly obeyed, rising up with a lingering hand on my hair.
"It'll be alright." His words somehow made it through the haze of Mark's abuse, and I held onto them like the proverbial lifesaver.
Jaime knelt down next to me, one hand on my shoulder, her eyes meeting mine. "Mark, this has got to stop."
Seemingly delighted with having another person around who could hear him, Mark stepped up his abuse, this time including Jaime in it. Lucky her. But instead of reacting, she arched a brow, her mouth twisting into a half-smile.
"Oh, come on. I'd think you could be more creative than that." She rolled her eyes, being deliberately insulting. It felt like she was trying to buy time, but I wasn't sure for what. "You're still pretty new at this, aren't you? Do you seriously think you're the first pervy little prick to threaten me and tell me what you'd like to do to me?" She wiggled her pinky finger in the you-have-a-tiny-dick motion. "You'd need me to tell you if it was in anyways."
If I wasn't too seconds away from a mental breakdown, I would've laughed out loud. Mark's sudden silence was the verbal equivalent of a gaping stare, complete with the goldfish mouth, lips working but no sound coming out. And just as he inhaled, ready to lambast both of us with even more of his creative comments, I felt the air stir around us and I looked up in shock at the Amazon who appeared like an avenging angel behind Jaime.
"Sheesh, took your time, didn't you?" Jaime muttered to her, and received a glacial stare in return.
"I am the bloody *bleep* freaking *bleep* of the other side. I'm a very busy woman," the Amazon snapped, some of the words muted as if she wasn't allowed to say such words. Noticing me staring she studied me. "Huh, another necromancer. Interesting."
Apparently even Mark found her as fascinating as I did because he was still silent. I could feel his confusion that mirrored my own. This…woman, or whatever she was, was stunningly beautiful in a lethal sort of way. Nearly as tall as Derek, she was slender with sleek muscles and bikini-model curves shown off in her white wife-beater, skinny jeans and mile-high stilettos. Her long dark hair hung in an ebony curtain past her waist and her face was just as beautiful as the rest of her, all cunning angles and fantastic bone structure.
"Jesus, Jaime, she's just a kid," she said sadly as she looked at me.
Jaime's red hair swirled around her as she shook her head. "She's more powerful than I'll ever be, Eve, but she – we – need your help."
Eve's eyes focused on what I could only assume was Mark's form, which was still invisible to me. "Ah, yes. So this is the little shit."
"Excuse me? "Little shit"? And who the hell are you?" Mark's tone took on a belligerent note and I was finally able to see his form as he shimmered into our world.
A predatory smile crossed the woman's – ghost's? – face. "Someone whose job it is to take out trash like you."
"Fuck you, bitch."
She outright laughed in his face. "No, no, asshole. You're the one getting fucked tonight." And before I could so much as blink, she grabbed the handle of a sword that was strapped over her shoulder and swung it free. Mark's face looked like he'd been poleaxed.
"N-no," he stuttered, taking a stumbling step backwards, turning as he tried to scramble away. "No, don't, please!" He sounded seriously scared but there would be no sympathy from any of us.
Eve slashed the sword forward on a muttered incantation. It burst into diamond-bright flames as it sliced towards Mark's ghost. With blinding brilliance, it slashed into him and they both disappeared in a furious gust of icy wind.
"Chloe? Hun? Are you ok?" Jaime's voice intruded. I realized I was staring at the spot where the two ghosts had vanished.
"Yeah," I said slowly, then with a sharp shake of my head, "yeah, I'm alright." Focusing on Jaime, I inhaled and exhaled a shuddering breath. "What the hell was all that? Who was that?"
Jaime was usually flippant and full of laughs, but she was grave as she stared at me. "What you saw, Chloe, can't be repeated to anyone except Derek. Do you understand?"
Nodding mechanically, I still voiced my question. "Why am I allowed to tell Derek?"
A little grin turned up Jaime's lips. "You'd just tell him anyways. But seriously, Eve is a…spirit guardian, I guess you could call her. I can call on her when I need a particularly nasty ghost taken care of. I should have just called on her from the beginning, but I was so convinced that I could get you through this."
Shivering in the night air, I looked around, hoping to see Derek. "Why did Mark come back? I thought deals with demons were usually kept."
"Valefar was pretty pissed off when we let go of the body we were supposed to allow him to inhabit. He probably used a loophole in our contract to justify not keeping Mark out of your way."
I voiced the question that was uppermost in my mind. "Will he be able to come back?"
Jaime waved as Jeremy and Derek appeared out of the recesses of the forest, Derek nearly jogging to get back that much faster. "Eve…isn't your typical ghost, Chloe. She'll make sure Mark won't ever bother anyone again."
Just before Derek reached me, I felt that swirl of air again and saw Eve striding towards Jaime, dusting off her hands, a satisfied smile on her face.
"That's that," she said, nodding towards me. "He won't be bothering you again, kiddo."
"Thank you," I said gratefully, letting Derek's body wrap protectively around mine. I hugged him. "It's alright, Derek, he's gone."
"He'd better be gone for good this time," he growled, glaring at Jaime as if it were her fault.
Eve chuckled. "God, he sounds just like Clay. Sure he isn't related?"
Rolling her eyes, Jaime let Jeremy give her a gentlemanly hand up from the ground. "Let's hope they broke the mould when they made Clay."
Temporarily ignoring Derek's questioning glance - he was surely wondering who Jaime and I were talking to – I offered Eve a smile. She started to return it, only to whirl around as another breeze tickled across my skin.
"My beautiful girl. I love you, baby. Be safe."
A flash of blond hair caught my eye before Eve hustled forward. "You can't be here. You know the rules."
And once again, she was gone with the ghost that had reached out to me in a hauntingly familiar voice.
Jaime looked stricken. "Chloe, was that…?"
Emotionally drained, physically exhausted and unable to deal with my reality for one more second, I sighed and tucked my face into Derek's neck as the tears started to build. "Yeah," I choked out. "That was my mom."