Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

with a concentrated blast of disbelief. The ghost blew apart in slow motion, falling away in bits and pieces, dissipating back into the fog.
    “Thank you, Happy,” said Kim.
    “You have no idea how much that takes out of me,” said Happy, trying for a companionable grin and almost bringing it off. “JC! They really are getting awfully close now!”
    “I’m on it!” said JC. “Time to go old school again . . .”
    He slipped the brass knuckle-duster onto his left hand with the ease of long practice, transferred the silver dagger to that hand, then produced a phial of holy water from inside his jacket. He carefully unscrewed the metal cap, poured a generous amount over the brass and the silver, drank the rest to be on the safe side, and tossed the empty phial aside. He grinned nastily at the ghosts before him and went to work.
    He strode right into the first rank of ghosts, cut them up and knocked them down. Being dead, they shouldn’t have taken any damage or felt any hurt, but because they believed they had bodies, they did, with all their inherited limitations. JC punched them in the head with his blessed brass knuckles and cut their throats with his silver dagger, and the dead figures fell apart before him, dispersing back into the fog before they could even fall to the floor. But even as JC turned to new opponents, the old ones were already re-forming, re-created by the power of the ghostlight. JC fought on, not because he thought he could win, but because while the ghosts were concentrating on him, they would leave Kim alone.
    And, hopefully, forget all about Melody.
    But no matter how hard he fought, no matter how much he roared and struck about him, he couldn’t hold them all. Some ghosts ignored him completely, heading straight for Kim, perhaps because she was dead but still acted as though she were alive. She still had the spark of life within her. She stared, horrified, at the ghosts advancing on her. She tried to back away, to pass through the wall behind her, and found she couldn’t. The ghostlight was in control of local conditions. JC saw what was happening and tried to get back to her, but the ghosts surrounded him, reaching out to him with cold, dead hands. It was all he could do to keep them at bay.
    “Happy!” he yelled. “Don’t let them touch her!”
    “Can’t you exorcise them?” said Happy.
    “Do these creeps even look like they believe in God?” said JC.
    The ghosts swarmed all over him, even as he lashed wildly about him, the silver dagger tearing through ghostly flesh and the brass knuckles smashing ghostly bone. They laid their hands upon him, and he cried out despite himself. Cold, dead hands, drawing the living warmth right out of him, to feed their endless hunger for what they had lost. A terrible cold shuddered through JC, a physical and spiritual cold, which numbed his thoughts as well as his body. Frost formed on his clothes, then on his flesh. He struck out at the ghosts, with slow, sluggish movements, though there was hardly any feeling left in his hands any more. He was trying to force the ghosts back, so he could get to Kim. But they crowded in around him, pressing him from every direction at once, and all he could see were dead, hateful faces, hideous grins that showed teeth but no human emotion, and all he could feel were the cold, dead hands, falling on him from everywhere at once, leaching the living warmth out of him.
    The golden light from his eyes didn’t bother the dead at all. They sucked it right up.
    Happy did his best to protect Kim, but the ghosts were closing in on both of them. He scowled till his head ached, concentrating on projecting a telepathic defence, a simple circle of sheer will-power, a line the ghosts could not cross, because he believed in the line more than they believed they could cross it. Happy truly was a powerful telepath, perhaps even more so than he allowed himself to know, but even so, he was only one man, and the ghosts were so many. The circle around Kim and Happy shrank, inch by inch, forced back by the pressure of so many dead minds, as the ghosts pushed remorselessly forward, wanting in. Happy stood between Kim and the ghosts, defying them to get past him, to her. Putting everything he had into her defence, and to hell with what that would do to him later. Cold, dead fingers reached out, and the defensive line shrank back before them, and Happy shivered, deep in his soul, from their proximity.
    But he made them work for