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Abysmal eyes—we take a sustenance from the blood of others. Without it, we—the First Borns—would lose control and release the body. The host would die as the physical being tried to return to its natural state.”
    That sounded . . . awful.
    They were like vampires, and as she said before, not like vampires. “I take it the First Born is the key.”
    “Yes,” Lex said. “My First Born—Yamato—is more than a mere parasite to me. She is me, in so many ways. And when she joined with me, she brought with her all the joys, tragedies, and experiences from the previous hosts. Knowledge was mine. Our bodies are like yours, Wraith.” She smiled. “Human . . . but also Abysmal. We—as I said before—are sisters.”
    Joe and Rhonda looked at me, and I shrugged. Help! Stop pointing that out!
    “A ghoul,” Lex continued as she put her hand lovingly on the girl’s head and smoothed out her hair. “We can’t make others like ourselves. We live in seclusion away from the Phantasm’s eyes. But we can make a companion—a creature of legend—if we choose. Mialani was beaten in her home village—having bedded a man besides her husband-to-be. She was then stoned. But before she was burned—I came to her and offered her a life with me. I gave her a taste of my blood—and her dying corpse was reanimated and given life. And as long as she drank a single drop from me every month, she remained as beautiful and young as the day she died.”
    I realized my mouth was hanging open, so I shut it. “She was literally—the walking dead.”
    Lex nodded. “There are drawbacks, of course. If she were to have missed a drink, madness would take her, and she’d have gone on a killing spree to relieve her hunger.” She waved her hand. “But that rarely happens. We’re careful about our ghouls and take care of them. And you would never know you’d met one unless they told you, and you wouldn’t believe them.”
    Wait . . . can we go back to that whole madness thing and killing spree for hunger?
    Joe pointed to the girl, and Lex nodded. “Someone killed Mialani in the old way. Using a ritual devised by the present Phantasm to annihilate all First Borns within the planes. The draining of blood, the carvings, the spell—it’s all here. Only Mialani wasn’t a First Born and so suffers a fate worse than the death of a First Born.”
    “And what’s that?”
    Lex looked at me, and I finally saw the sadness locked away behind that Symbiont’s eyes. “Her soul is now seared to the flesh. She cannot move on. She is there—calling out to me every second as her body dies. And she’ll feel it worse than you, Wraith. Even after the flesh melts away, and the organs return to dust, she’ll feel the bones as they decay until piece by piece she’ll become sand, and disappear.”
    I knew I shouldn’t have asked.
    Rhonda sighed. “Lex—you think someone targeted Mialani purposefully? A message?”
    “Yes.” Lex nodded. “There are two other bodies like this one—south on Tara Boulevard. But they were humans, so the souls weren’t touched. They were drained of blood.”
    “Is that part of the ritual?”
    “Yes and no,” Lex said. “You can drain blood from a body in a thousand ways. This killer is using the bite marks to send a message. Somehow, they have found the old texts about the spells and are using them. I feel they’re incomplete though—or else there would be a First Born body and not that of a ghoul. Draining the body of blood weakens the First Born’s hold, then the symbols are carved in, locking the soul in place. Once the ritual is complete, the First Born is obliterated.”
    Something TC had said earlier that morning touched off my question meter, and my left hand shot up. Okay . . . so we’re back in school? “Wait . . . I thought Abysmal creatures couldn’t be destroyed. That even if I release them in the physical plane—they simply re-form into the essence of life and reshape again. You’re saying this