"Where the hell are we?" Cynthia grumbled as she and Juliette made their way through dark, unfamiliar corridors.

She still wasn't sure exactly what had happened. They had seen a wraith appear behind them, a twisted, shadowy figure. Then, she had suddenly found herself in a different room, and then another. Everything had been spinning and swirling, she had felt as if she were falling, then being tossed into the air... and then it suddenly stopped. She had found herself in what appeared to be some kind of waiting room, and had found Juliette in a nearby office. They had wandered a bit, and now found themselves in a lobby that was completely burnt out, every surface charred black and crumbling.

"I... don't know..." Juliette replied, coughing. "We must be close to where the mental ward was, where the fire started." She approached a set of blackened metal doors and pulled, but they did not give, having been warped and melted by the heat of the fire all those years ago.

"Let me try," Cynthia said. She approached to within about ten feet of the doors, and waited for Juliette to step aside. Once she was safely out of the way, Cynthia charged, slamming into them with her shoulder. It was no good. She stepped back again, then delivered a mighty kick right below the door handle. She was rewarded by the sound of screeching metal as the door popped open with enough force to slam into the wall on the other side.

"Cynthia, you need to be careful," Juliette admonished. "You're going to rip open your stitches."

"Thanks, mom," Cynthia mumbled. Her leg actually did really hurt after that, but she'd be damned if she was going to admit it.

On the other side of the doors were the remains of a hallway, mostly burned out. The ceiling disappeared about twenty feet beyond where they stood, and the walls on either side extended for about another thirty feet at best. Beyond that, there was little more of this wing of the hospital that was still standing. It was all mounds of ashes and metal melted to slag, with the occasional support beam or section of wall jutting out. Water pooled on the ground in front of them as the heavy rain continued outside.

"Seriously, you're being reckless," Juliette persisted. There was something underneath the ridicule in her voice, something that almost sounded like genuine concern.

"You don't need to worry so much about me. I'll be fine." The rain was forming massive puddles in the hallway, extending nearly all the way up to where they had entered.

"We have to watch out for each other. We're all in this together," Juliette replied, resolutely. Before Cynthia could respond, Juliette's hand shot up, her index finger pointing at something in the distance. "What's that?"

Standing alone out amongst the ash and the detritus in the pouring rain was what appeared to be an iron-barred cage, the kind you would expect a wild animal to be kept in. Instead, it held what appeared to be the translucent form of a man, dressed in dark clothes and sitting, his back leaning against the bars facing them.

"Is that Thaddeus?" Cynthia asked.

"I don't think so," Juliette said. "Maybe it's another spirit he's trying to corrupt. No, wait... what if that's the psychopomp?"

"Then we have to free him," Cynthia said, matter-of-factly. She walked out from the shelter of the burned out hallway and started across the field of wet ash, the rain drenching her thoroughly within moments. Juliette had no choice but to follow, and was forced to jog just to keep up with Cynthia's long, swift strides.

They had crossed about half the distance to reach the cage when a shape came up over a mound of debris. It was vague and indistinct, skeletal with jutting, jagged protrusions along its limbs. Its hollow eyes focused on them and it began to move towards them in a slow, stilted gait.

"Run!" Juliette screamed, as the creature began to move more quickly now, despite its awkward, jerky movements. She bolted to the right, and Cynthia tried to dash in the opposite direction, but pain shot through her thigh, slowing it to a hobble. She stumbled to a halt, and turned to face the thing.

"You get to the cage!" she screamed. "I'll keep it distracted."

Juliette didn't stop, but she looked back over her shoulder, which nearly caused her to stumble over a toasted blood pressure monitor. "Keep running!" she cried. "Don't just stand there, you psycho!"

Cynthia gripped her hatchet with both hands as the wraith closed in on her. She could see the debris shift underneath the thing as it moved. Unlike Lucas and the wraiths they had encountered inside, this one was manifested. That meant she could hurt it.

The monster was upon her now, lunging at her with barbed hands. With no time to think about it, she dropped onto her back while swinging her hatchet upwards, over her head and straight into the wraith's chest as it landed on top of her, its fingers digging deep into her shoulders. Pain shot through her shoulder and back, but the wraith shrieked and reared back, its ribcage cracked by her blow. She took the opportunity to plant both feet against the same spot and half-push, half-kick the creature off of her. The hatchet clattered to the ground as she rolled over onto her side and struggled back into a standing position.

The wraith kept its distance, now, seeming to size her up before striking again . She risked a glance back at Juliette, who was almost to the cage now, but had stopped to look back at her.

"Get to the cage!" she yelled again, digging into the inner pocket of her coat where she had secretly concealed Detective Prescott's gun when Juliette hadn't been looking. She backed away, and when the wraith began to advance, she opened fire, unloading the entire clip within a matter of moments. The wraith staggered back, slowed by her assault, but the moment she was out of bullets, it lunged again.

She flung herself to the side and rolled, narrowly avoiding the clawlike fingers as they bit into the burnt detritus right next to her head. She glanced behind her to look for Juliette, but was blinded as her eyes turned straight upwards into the cold downpour. She closed them again tightly, and braced herself for the fatal blow she knew was about to come. She just hoped she had bought Juliette enough time.

*     *     *

"How did you think this was going to go down?" Thomas Gray asked, pressing a long, jagged shard of broken glass up against his own throat. The most disturbing part was that it was her father's own voice, his cadence, his mannerisms. She knew it wasn't him, not really. He wasn't in control of his words or actions... but it certainly was convincing.

"Did you think you would just walk in here, destroy all my work, finish me off with your mighty eidolon?" He laughed at the suggestion. He actually laughed. "It doesn't matter how strong you are, Alex. If you're stupid, you'll always be the one who loses in the end."

"You fucking coward," Alex hissed between clenched teeth. Every muscle in her body was tense, aching to strike out like a coiled snake. Her eidolon materialized instinctively, and it took tremendous willpower just to hold her, to keep her from lashing out with all of her destructive force. But she couldn't move. At the slightest provocation, the Plague Doctor could slash open his host's neck, and her father would bleed out and die on the filthy floor of this godforsaken building.

"You have to do it, Alex," Lucas whispered urgently, standing poised and ready. "He's not going to let your dad go either way. But if you strike first..."

If I strike first, I'll probably kill him myself, Alex thought. She knew what the eidolon was capable of, and she didn't have the strength to maintain full control any longer.

"Oh, don't worry," Thaddeus said in her father's voice. "I'm not going to kill you, Alex. Not yet. I'll start with your friends. Add them to my little collection. Then your family. Your sister will be especially fun. Just imagine the look on her face when her own father murders her in cold blood."

He was goading her. Too late, she realized what he was up to. All along, the reason he had been pushing her to fight, to let the darkness inside her grow until it consumed her. "This is what you do to people," she said. "You push them to the brink, corrupt their souls before they even die to ensure they become wraiths."

He smiled in response, sounding genuinely amused. The shard of glass pressed firmly against his neck now, a thin trickle of blood seeping down to the white collar of his shirt. "Yours will be especially interesting. I wonder what will happen to your eidolon? Will it fade away? Will it rejoin you? Will you become two separate wraiths, or one truly monstrous one? I've been wondering since I first laid eyes on you."

Alex struggled to remain in control of herself and the eidolon. She needed to focus, to think clearly. He wanted her to lose control. She would be playing right into his hands. No, she needed to catch him off guard. It was time to play what she hoped would be her trump card.

"There's a confinement circle just behind me," Alex announced, doing her best to mirror his smug-ass smile. She had to make this convincing. "Kill me, or my dad, and it will serve as a sacrifice. You'll be trapping yourself."

Her father—no, Thaddeus—scoffed at this. "You're only half right," he said, slowly walking towards her. "I can still walk out of here if I kill you first. A confinement circle won't work as long as I'm possessing a living person's body."

"This one will," she bluffed. "It's a special necromantic rune that your nephew created. The same one he used to ward his house. That's why you didn't enter right away, isn't it? You had to be invited in, even in Jay's body." She hoped she was right about that. "He really is better about this than you ever were."

The Plague Doctor stopped mid-stride. Had he bought it? He seemed to be uncertain, considering his options. For one long moment, there were no words, and they stood in silence, locked in a terrible stalemate.

Then, without warning, the plague doctor burst out of Thomas Gray with the fury of a sudden storm, the smell of carrion flooding the area like a burst dam, and his body fell limp to the floor. The stench almost debilitated her, and she stumbled back as he streamed away down the hallway, trying to make his escape. Her eidolon dashed after him immediately. Before she could close the distance, however, there was a blinding flash of light that exploded throughout the hallway.

At first, Alex thought it was another bolt of lightning, but there was no accompanying thunder. The light emerged from the Plague Doctor himself, a crescent arc of brilliant, blinding white. An instant later, his body split down the middle, bifurcated by a long, curved blade. The two halves of the wraith slid apart, rapidly disintegrating into a putrid black fog. It took Alex a moment to register what she had just seen; a tall, slender man in a priest's collar stood behind the two dissolving halves of the wraith, holding a scythe. His head was a bare skull, surrounded in a nimbus of white light.

Alex collapsed to her knees, her eidolon dematerializing again almost instantaneously. The threat was gone. She had never seen this spirit before, but she knew immediately what it was.

"You must be Grim," she said weakly, a smile of almost manic relief spreading on her face.

Grim? it repeated.

"Well, that's what Spooky Jay called you," Lucas said, relaxing now that the threat was over.

"Dad?" Alex bent down next to her father, who had dropped unconscious to the ground the moment the wraith had left his body. There was a small cut on his neck where Thaddeus had pressed the glass, but he did not appear to have any other injuries. Still, he looked anemic, and his breathing was shallow.

He will survive, the psychopomp said. But it will take several days for him to fully recover. That wraith's influence takes a toll on its host.

"Where did you come from?" Alex asked. "How did you get free?"

"That was us!"

Alex jumped at the sound of Cynthia's voice as she and Juliette appeared out of the darkness of the hallway. They were both filthy, smeared with something black, and completely drenched. Cynthia was limping, favoring the leg that Thaddeus had wounded the previous night. She had an arm thrown over Juliette's shoulder, who was helping her walk.

"Oh my god, are you okay?" Alex was on her feet again, and rushed to embrace her friend. Cynthia winced slightly, but returned the embrace with all her might. Then, she reached out to draw Juliette in, and Alex grabbed Lucas for one big, group hug. It was not a celebration of victory. It was a shared moment of relief.

"There aren't any more wraiths here?" Juliette asked, letting go of her friends to face Grim. The psychopomp shook its head.

If there are, I will deal with them. You have done enough. He gave a bow of gratitude to the group and added, I thank you for what you have done, but I must get to work immediately. I've been trapped for far too long, there are spirits in need of escort through the Black Gate.