Building Faith

By Ellf

Fools Rush In 34

Disclaimer: Jim Butcher owns the Dresden Files, any other works of fiction mentioned are not owned by me.

Oh, thank God. Sanya had appeared. Sanya, much like my father was one of the Knights of the Cross, wielding Esperacchius, the Sword of Hope. The saber had one of the nails of the crucifixion within it and it was the embodiment of the virtue, wielded by someone who himself inspired Hope. Daddy wielded Amoracchius, the Sword of Love, and Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith was currently without a Knight, with Shiro Yoshimo having died a couple years ago. I'd asked for a miracle. I'd prayed for help. In Sanya, perhaps I'd found both. Of course, God helps those who help themselves, and Sanya must have gotten the message from Father Forthill. Maybe it was better that it was Sanya that showed up rather than Daddy. Sanya wouldn't try to keep us out of the fight. Daddy might, but he wasn't here. Maybe that was why He sent Sanya here instead of Daddy.

The man stood between me and Guase, sword shining with holy light, banishing the dark visions that plagued me. The battle wasn't quite as bad as I'd feared. At least, as far as I could tell from my position. There was no way that the Alphas would have been taken down that easily, especially if the zombies had no way of doing any sort of ranged attack. That didn't mean that they weren't having issues, but they had to be alive. They just had to be.

"Faith, are you well?" Sanya asked without looking away from Guase.

"Better now that you're here," I answered.

Guase sneered. "One more means nothing. Sterben!"

The necromancer raised her right hand and a wave of cold blue light shot at Sanya. I could feel the hate, the death, the chilling power that came from the spell, and I gasped. Sanya stood his ground, unflinching. He shifted his grip on Esperacchius, and when the spell came close, he sliced upward, parting the spell with the magic blade. The spell split on impact, dissipating into harmless motes of light.

"Faith. You should check on your sister," Sanya said. "I will keep her occupied."

"Are you sure?" I asked, getting to my feet.

"Thanks for reminding me," Guase said.

"Your fight, ved'ma, is with me." Sanya charged Guase, forcing her to look at him. At that moment, I started toward where I could feel my sister. If Sanya could keep the bitch distracted long enough, I'd be able to make sure Molly was okay. I did not doubt in the abilities of a Knight of the Cross, and I heard his battle cries as Guase used her magic to try and hold him off.

I barely gave the drummer a second glance as I made my way across the falling snow to where Molly had landed. My sister had crashed through two trees and disappeared back that way. I'd seen it before Drew's ghost and Guase… came after me, made me see those things. First I found one of Molly's wands as I approached. I picked it up into my left hand, looking for where she had landed. God, I hoped she was okay. I still felt her in this direction, and I continued looking. There. An imprint into the snowbank… Please, God, I wanted my sister to be okay. That I could still feel her was a good sign.

Molly, I sent, brushing her mind with my own through our link. She wasn't… No. She needed to be conscious. I would make sure she would be. Margaret Katherine Amanda Carpenter, I bid thee awaken. Get your ass up, sis. Please.

Some stirring in the snow. It seemed to be working, and I moved closer, even as I heard four distinct howls of wolves. The Alphas… They must have still been fighting the zombies. I could feel them, distinctly. There was pain there, just as it was ahead. Please God, I needed... If Molly wasn't able to… No. I needed her awake. I sent her Name again. Margaret Katherine Amanda Carpenter, awaken. Get up, Molly. Come on.

More stirring, and I smelled the rotting stench of a ghoul's claws, feeling their hunger. Fuck. Was this where they'd come? We hadn't seen where the ghouls landed, and I wasn't sure if they'd survived. The smell told me otherwise. Molly as she was… She'd be a sitting duck. So I made my way to where my sister laid. Shit, there'd been a gravestone near there. Had her head struck it? No. Until proven otherwise, no. She'd wake up. I'd make sure of it. Margaret. Katherine. Amanda. Carpenter. WAKE THE FUCK UP!

Twin inhuman roars sounded from either side of Molly and I, and I could hear as heavy bodies left the ground. In that instant, Molly sat up, we locked eyes and we joined our left hands, extending our right. The falling snow slowed, nearly pausing in the air, giving us the perfect view of the pair of ghouls, one with the muzzle of a jackal, the other with the jaws of a grizzly. They hovered mid-leap, claws extended on either side of us, and we simply aimed.

"Sessakufuu." We focused the wind again, making it razor sharp, and we pushed. The wind bit into the fur-covered flesh of the ghouls, pushing them back out of their leap as the snow fell at normal speed again. The wind buffeted onward and through, driving knife-like icicles into the ghouls in the process. They must have come from the trees, falling as we used the wind. We focused our anger, our fear and kept this power going. If the First Law of Magic applied to nonhumans, we'd probably just broken it, but this was do or die.

We'd much rather it be them instead of us. The ghoul bodies… upon hitting the ground, they fell apart. There would be no regenerating from what just happened, not when the top-left of their bodies separated from the rest. God, what had we done?

"Necessary," we whispered, and we made sure we could stand. "it was necessary." And they were fucking ghouls, a part of us thought. We agreed with it, but it was… Lord, that feeling… we felt their lives slip away. We could feel their last moments, the fear, the anguish, the anger, and the hunger. No. It was wrong. It was… Fuck, what had we done?

"Those were good kills," one of Marcone's men said, tossing the body of a zombie to the side, sliding it off his sword. Lord, he was huge. We didn't think that this was the normal sort of man that Marcone employed. "Worthy of a place in Valhalla. Are the two of you all right? I saw you engage the necromancer."

We glanced over to where Guase and Sanya were fighting. Sanya paried her spells with Esperacchius, being forced back slightly before charging again. I gasped as two ghosts came from behind him to grab the Knight, but he slashed at their arms with his saber, then blocked another spell from Guase. The energies she was throwing around. Fuck. We were way out of our league, and her boss was worse. We couldn't let Kemmler get resurrected if that was her goal.

"I'm fine," I said, in unison with my sister. We might not have been fully linked at the moment, but we still thought alike. I continued, "We need to stop her—"

"—but how?" Molly looked over the graveyard as I did. The drum's beat still kept going.

"There still are zombies to deal with," said Marcone's man, no, a Monoc Security guy. "If the two of you are—"

Drew's ghost slammed into me, pushing me away from my sister and the Monoc Security man. How did I miss him? How could I have missed this emotion? This… rage… This longing… this…. Fuck, it was Drew. Drew had every right to hate me, to despise me for what I couldn't do. His spectral arms slammed me against the wall of a mausoleum, holding me there as he curled his fingers into claws.

"Faith, you left me alone!" Drew snarled as he clawed at me, and I raised an arm to try and block it. His hand passed through the arm and into my chest, pulling… something. It hurt. Oh fuck, did it hurt. God, Drew… I didn't want to… I really didn't want to… With each statement, he punctuated with a claw. "You let her kill me! She tortured me! She tore my heart out!"

"Drew, I didn't… I didn't know… I didn't think…" I stammered, wincing with each blow. What could I do? This was Drew. He was… I didn't want… It was…

"She tore my heart out, Faith!" Drew growled. "I'm going to have you join me. Tearing out your own heart…"

Drew wouldn't do this. Drew couldn't. How was he doing this? Please, God… I just… The rage I felt from him, the despair… the cold sense of emptiness. Wait. Emptiness? I needed to think. I needed time to think.

"S-S-Soukotte!" I cried out, focusing my magic to keep it localized to myself, and though I was pinned in place by Drew's spectral form, his claws weren't quite digging into me yet. I had time. I had time to breathe, time to think. Drew was a ghost, but he was able to interact with me. I needed to be logical here. Push the emotion out. Use the emotion for what I needed it for, but I needed to not let it prevent me from doing what was necessary.

What did I know about ghosts? One: ghosts were not the souls of the people that they were made from. This meant that regardless of the being's appearance in front of me, whatever I did to it, I wasn't doing it to Drew. Two: ghosts were actually a collection of memories that came from the people they were made from. If they ran low on memories, they became… other things. Three: ghosts normally can't interact with the material world. I'd been betting that the reason Drew could was because of something Guase did. Something related to the spell. I probably was right, but that brought us to item four: memories can be transferred between ghosts, but the emotions that came with them wouldn't be felt the same way.

Fuck. There was only one way I could think of that'd let me see if I was right. If Guase had done something to Drew's ghost, there was only one way to tell. I could feel energy all day long, but that alone wouldn't let me know. I knew whatever Guase did, it would be burned onto my memory forever if I did this, but I didn't have a choice. I looked past Drew's clawed hand and around. More ghosts on Sanya, along with another spell from the necromancer. There, I could see Murphy and Hendricks standing in formation with Marcone and Gard. The Alphas were bloody, but they stood fine. However, if I looked only at Drew, the only thing else I'd see… was the swirling storm above the ritual site and the blue energy. It was time.

I opened my Sight. The Sight is more than just vision, really. It encompasses more or less all of the senses, but it guarantees that what you see will be the real thing, be true. If the thing attacking me truly was Drew's ghost, I'd be able to see what Guase did to him and maybe stop it.

What I did see, when I Saw Drew's ghost… I saw a being cloaked in black shadow that slithered along the ground. Where Drew's ghost's hands had curled into a claw-like shape, the being had genuine skeletal claws poking out from its shadows, long, sharp, and pointed. Still it hovered there, stuck in place until I released my spell. The head… Its head… Drew's face was wrapped around its head like a Halloween mask. I suspected that if I were to release my spell or it ended, I'd hear whatever this thing's voice truly sounded like in dual-tone with Drew's voice. Lemur. Wraith. One of the two. I'd have to ask Mort Lindquist when this was over what it was, but this certainly wasn't Drew. It wasn't Drew's ghost at all, but it was something that Guase had made to have Drew's memory, mannerisms, shape, taste.

I looked past the thing that wasn't Drew, and I gasped. The ritual… God, I could see the energies of the leylines, shaping around the book. I could see the sky opening up and the ground below it mirroring the same. What was Guase doing? Why was the book's cover dripping with blood? Was this…. No, this couldn't be where Kemmler was buried, could it? He'd had to have been cremated this last time they killed him, right? Whatever it was… it needed to be stopped.

I reached into my pocket with my right hand, and pulled out a handful of Harry's ghost dust. This. Fucking. Bitch. I closed my Sight, and as I released the perception spell, I shoved my hand into the… not-Drew thing and released the dust inside.

"Faith, what?" The not-Drew thing managed to look confused, but all I could feel from it was its anger, its hate, its despair. No, whatever this thing was, it wasn't Drew. It wore the man who would have been my boyfriend's face, and it dared… I shook the dust around, and the not-Drew thing hissed and pulled away from me, allowing me to drop to the ground.

I didn't even give it a chance to recover, channeling all my anger, all my hate. Both my gloves flared blue and sparks leaped between my fingers. Fuck this thing. It dared to wear Drew's face? It dared to make me... to pretend to be Drew? Fuck no. I held my hands barely apart from each other, and I snarled out my spell. "Fulminaga!"

Lightning lanced into the not-Drew thing, pushing through its body and I still held the spell. The fucking thing needed to go away. Gone. Now. The ghost dust did its job, anchoring it in place long enough for my spell to work. Energy swirled around my lightning as I pulsed it at the dark ghost, forcing my memories of Drew to the surface. The fucking thing would regret impersonating my friend before it perished for good. I held it for ten seconds, and the thing's Drew mask burst off in a shred of light, and then it collapsed into shards… showing some sort of faded lights coming off of it.

"You… aren't…. him… fucker…" I breathed out, looking at the remains as they turned into ectoplasm. Fucking whatever it was. It wasn't Drew. It wasn't. God, I hoped it wasn't. I needed to get back to Molly.

Fai! Molly sent to me, and I ran toward her, ignoring the snowy terrain. She stood now, leaning against the Monoc Security guy. "Fai, you're okay…"

"Not… fully…" I said, looking toward Sanya. Guase managed to nail him with something, but he still stood. The power of God was on his side, but our power needed to be as well. "Hey uh, you…" I addressed the Monoc Security guy.

"Yes?"

"See if you can take out the drummer…" I looked to my sister, and she nodded. She wasn't really in any shape to be moving the way we needed to, but she could do things remotely. I gave her the wand I'd found, and she pulled out her other. We knew what we were going to be doing.

"What do you plan on doing?" The security guy asked.

I reached into my jacket's pocket and pulled two things from within. I hooked the shadow capture crystal onto my necklace, nestling it between my crucifix and my pentacle, and I grasped the manacles Gard had given me with my left hand.

"Something magical." I could only hope it worked.