With my cane locked, I wasn’t sure I would be able to cast through it. Rather than risk it, I raised the cane overhead and, using all of my strength, brought it down on the back of Chicory’s head.
20
The blow landed at the base of Chicory’s skull with a dull thud, and he collapsed to the floor.
“Darling! Have you gone fucking mad?”
I spun to where Tabitha was entering the room, her eyes large with alarm. I stared back down at my mentor, terrified now that I’d been wrong and had killed or severely injured him. I backed from him, the cane limp in my suddenly-cold hands.
Blood spread through the back of Chicory’s moppy gray hair in a bloom so dark it was nearly black. I imagined Marlow watching through Tabitha’s eyes and congratulating the Front on their successful manipulation of me.
My gaze jerked to the opera announcement, still on the table, the cover featuring the robed figure in the gold mask. An illusion? But something was releasing in my mind, as though a hand that had been balling up the vessels was letting go. Familiar colors swirled around my vision. I’d last seen them in the Refuge, after I’d watched Chicory fall. They dissipated quickly this time, and I looked around until I spotted my dropped packing list. It was a flight itinerary again. I snatched it up and held it toward Tabitha.
“Can you read this? Tell me what it says.”
But Tabitha was backing away, refusing to look.
I dropped the itinerary and lifted my shirt. The ugly blue-green lash across my stomach was back. “Or how about that? Can you see it?”
“Um, darling,” she said, nodding past me.
I turned and almost lost my balance. Chicory was pushing himself up from the floor, but he wasn’t Chicory anymore. He was changing, shifting. A red layered robe replaced his professorial attire while his mop of gray hair shed to reveal a bald, vein-mapped head. When he turned toward me, his eyes glowed the same yellow I’d glimpsed on the night Chicory had appeared in my apartment following Lady Bastet’s murder. Violent power warped the air around him.
“No more artifice,” he said, his voice deep and strange.
I was vaguely aware of things fluttering down around me. One landed next to my foot. I glanced down. It was a message from James Wesson, updating the Order on our situation. Other messages were spewing from the column of fire still hidden behind the table, landing around the room. I spotted the one I’d sent from the Refuge. No Order meant all of the messages had gone to the only Elder still alive. Murderer of his siblings. Pawn of Dhuul.
There was no longer any doubt.
“Lich,” I said.
“I know what I penned in the archives,” he said, “but I did not create the fissure to the Whisperer—I merely found it. Dhuul’s coming is inevitable. That is what my brothers and sisters refused to accept. They wanted to expend all of our power and resources to stall Dhuul’s arrival—for that is all we could have done, stalled it—while I proposed we align our purposes to the being’s and become true immortals.”
“At the expense of the world and every living thing in it,” I said thinly.
As Lich’s transformation finished, he loomed on the far side of the room, his wasted head nearly touching the ceiling. The gray skin around his starved mouth was so tight and sunken that I could see the outlines of his teeth. His lips peeled back into a gruesome simile of a grin. “The world and every living thing would have been pulled into chaos anyway.”
“Is that why you’ve been sacrificing magic-users?” I asked, remembering Lazlo’s fungus-riddled corpse.
“I am not sacrificing them, Everson,” he replied, his teeth continuing to show. “I am taking them with me. When I attain immortality, so too will they.” He stepped toward me. “So too will you.”
I turned and lunged for the doorway but collided into an energy field. A mind-numbing charge ripped through me, dropping me to the floor. I looked around for Tabitha, but she had already fled.
“I have little more use for you,” he said. “Your soul is too green to harvest. Ending you would be the most prudent action, but you did destroy the Elder book, and for that you’ve earned a place among the immortals. It’s what you’ve longed for.”
I had been fascinated by the idea of the Elders, of one day attaining that state, but not like this.
“You’d only be fighting the inevitable,” Lich reminded me.
“Inevitable, my ass. You murdered the Elders because you knew they had the power to close the fissure and keep Dhuul from our world. Or maybe I should say Dhuul had you murder the Elders.”
Lich’s brow bunched together and his yellow eyes flared. He raised a hand of long fingers and stretched them toward me. I felt my mind begin to twist and bend.
“Vigore!” I shouted, thrusting my cane toward him.
But instead of a force blast, a torrent of nightmare bats spewed from the end of my cane. I covered my head as they flapped around the room on membranous wings the color of human flesh.
Beyond them, Lich said, “You are in my world now.”
I peeked beneath a forearm, and discovered that I was no longer in Chicory’s room, but standing at the edge of a monstrous hole that plunged into the earth. The bats I’d unleashed flapped around its opening, poisonous vapors drifting up from the roaring black depth. I peered over the precipice. A matrix of bile-green energy held the hole open. I understood these were the souls of those Lich had murdered and claimed over the centuries. I sensed they were still living, still conscious. I hurt, Lazlo’s voice rasped in my mind.
My head pounded with the knowledge he was in that foul-smelling pit.
Around the pit’s inside was a staircase that spiraled down. Creatures like the ones I’d encountered in Romania, all tentacles and shaggy bodies, trundled up and down in a nightmare procession. But most disturbing to me was the hole itself, a growing portal to Dhuul.
I could hear the being’s wet, horrid whispers now, issuing from the depths. The sound pulled and dug at my mind from all sides, like something chewing on rotten meat.
Hands clamping my temples, I backed away, squishing through the toadstools that swelled and stretched toward a forest like the one I’d seen in my nightmares. Across the pit stood a forbidding stone fortress, from where I guessed Lich oversaw his excavation project.
“Are you ready for immortality?” he asked.
The mage was looming over me, an astral projection—like myself, I realized. Our bodies were still in the safe house. Lich’s long-fingered hand writhed toward my head like tentacles. He began to chant, his voice aligning with the whispers climbing from the pit until they were one.
I struggled to wrench myself away, but a force pierced my soul like the hooks in the mouths of the shadow creatures I’d faced in Lazlo’s cellar. Only these hurt worse. Much worse. I squirmed, teeth gnashing, half insane from the pain. The hooks began to jerk and pull. I tried to draw back, but they had my soul. I could feel them drawing it out of me.
“Are you ready to become a god?” he pressed.
“No…” The word squeezed from my throat, a strangled cry.
The tugging stopped. I squinted my eyes open to find that Lich was no longer chanting. His head was tilted to one side as though listening. In the next instant, the world seemed to rip open. Wind roared around me as a pair of silver bolts slammed into Lich’s head.
The hooks released my soul, and I crashed back into Chicory’s bedroom, back into my body. More wind cycloned around as I pushed myself into a sitting position. An entire side of the house had torn away, as if by a storm. Beside the toppled lab table, Lich was on his knees, clasping his smoking head.
“C’mon!” someone shouted.
James was standing in the yard, energy crackling from his wand, waving for me to follow him out. I found my cane and staggered to my feet. I was about to run toward my fellow wizard when I remembered what Connell had said: You’ll have no defenses against his magic out there.
Though my staff still refused to release the sword, I n
oticed that the shield Lich had erected over the doorway had fallen, probably when he went down.
“This way!” I shouted back at James.
A hand on the top of his cowboy hat, James climbed inside, shot a worried glance at Lich as he crossed the room, and followed me down the hallway. I threw open the doorway under the staircase. “Illuminare!” I shouted. Light swelled from the orb as James and I raced down the staircase and across the basement’s earthen floor. At the basement’s far end, the casting circle was still intact.
“Inside the circle,” I panted.
James followed me into the etched circle, and we turned toward the staircase. “So, double bluff?” he asked.
“Double bluff,” I confirmed.
From the stairs, a pair of glowing eyes approached. I aimed my trembling cane at it. “Is someone going to tell me what in Lucifer’s name is going on?” Tabitha asked, her orange coat emerging into my light.
“Quick,” I said, waving to her, “get inside!”
To Tabitha’s credit, she picked up her pace to a heavy trot and even jumped over the edge of the circle so as not to disrupt it. “Ooh, who’s this?” she asked, blinking up at James.
“James Wesson,” he said, affecting a slight drawl. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
“Believe me, the pleasure’s entirely mine,” Tabitha replied.
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.
“Your pager,” James said, gesturing to my pocket. Sure enough, there was a heavy lump there again. “When I asked to hold it back at the bar, I slipped a hair of dog ear between the device and case. Gave me something to eavesdrop through for the last few days, make sure you were shooting straight. When I heard Chicory denying all the things you’d done, I knew the fix was in. I tracked the hair here before the magic over the house had ramped up to full strength.” He looked around. “But now what are we doing?”
Arianna had said I was to return to the portal on my side and they would transport me back to the Refuge. I was about to tell James as much, when the house began to shake. Debris rained from the rafters overhead. At the far end of the basement, a green glow descended the stairs.
“Cerrare,” I shouted, snapping the circle closed.
But had I just protected us, I wondered, or trapped us?
Lich appeared at the center of the sickly orb of energy, the outstretched fingers of one hand writhing toward us. I felt the magic penetrate the circle, penetrate our minds. Tabitha’s hair puffed out, and she let out a low yowl. Even James looked uneasy as he edged back a step.
C’mon, already, I thought desperately toward Connell and Arianna.
“You’re only fleeing the inevitable,” Lich said. “If not here, then there…”
With the next blink of my eyes, we were in the forest in the Refuge. Connell, Arianna, and a small army of magic-users surrounded the clearing, wands aimed toward us. James adjusted his cowboy hat as he turned in a circle.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
“Stand clear!” Connell shouted.
I became aware of a ripping sound above me. Tabitha bolted from the clearing first. James and I followed, taking up positions behind the ring of magic-users. Above the spot where we had been standing, reality itself was tearing open onto a growing black portal.
Calling power to my prism, I readied my cane.
Lich was coming through.
21
Lich’s eyes burned yellow, his red robes flapping around him in the widening portal between our worlds. In one hand he held a wand while with his other, he fashioned a warding sign. His lips moved in a chant, but above the tearing noise, I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“Respingere!” Connell cried. A current of blinding white energy ripped from his wand and exploded into Lich.
The other magic-users began to cast as well, streams colliding into the portal like ribbons of lightning. Within seconds a harsh scent of ozone filled the air—and no wonder. These were centuries-old practitioners unleashing some of the most powerful magic I’d ever witnessed. Any contribution I made would be puny in comparison.
I readied my cane anyway, squinting at the flashing impact site where Lich had been emerging. How much more magic could his defenses withstand? They surely had to be faltering, I thought, though with more hope than conviction. Lich was a first-generation magic-user and drawing power from a being more ancient than the oldest saints, a being that hungered for chaos.
A black tentacle shot from the exploding light and wrapped around a female practitioner’s throat. She dropped her wand as the tentacle hoisted her into the air. Another tentacle twisted itself into a man’s long blond hair and jerked him from his feet. He shouted above the noise.
I sprinted toward the woman, who was closer. I instinctively pulled on my sword handle, forgetting that Lich’s magic had entrapped the blade inside the staff. It refused to release.
Switching my grip, I aimed the cane at the tentacle and shouted, “Vigore!”
Much like what had happened in Lazlo’s cellar, the power that emanated from the cane passed through the tentacle as though it wasn’t there. More tentacles shot by me. Shouts and choked screams punctuated the riot of noise. As magic-users flailed, the streams of energy from their wands dwindled until I could see Lich again.
He was larger now, closer. His wand and hand were maintaining a protective field while writhing tentacles sprouted from his back. Without the Elder book to staunch the flow of Dhuul’s influence, Lich was stronger than the last time he had come through, as Chicory.
He might actually overpower them this time, I thought.
Savage barking sounded, and several of the Refuge’s mastiffs broke past me. Connell tried to shout them back, but they took no heed. They changed as they sprinted, white flames enveloping their muscular forms, making them appear larger, more mythic. One by one, they leaped at the portal, at Lich, only to burst apart. White flames rained around the clearing.
“Submit to the power of Dhuul!” Lich called, his molars bulging through the skin of his jaw. “Submit and all will be forgiven! I will take you with me! I will make you all immortals!”
The tentacles extending from his back gave a hard wrench. A pair of sick crunches sounded, and the woman and blond-haired man he had first seized plummeted to the ground.
“The alternative is death,” he finished.
Anger exploded through me and emerged from my lungs as a “Forza dura!”
I thrust the cane toward Lich. Somewhere beneath my storm of emotions, I knew it was a futile act. But this was the mage who had murdered my mother, who had watched her burn, and who continued to flaunt his disregard for life. My invocation was as spontaneous as it would no doubt prove ineffective.
But the force that burst from my cane staggered the mage. I blinked for a second. I hadn’t imagined it. Lich had taken a step back, tentacles recoiling. And the look on his face… What remained of Grandpa’s enchantment had hurt the son of a bitch.
I gathered my breath for another blast, but before I could release the Word, a tentacle lashed toward me. I swung the cane into its path. The tentacle caught it, wrapping the opal end.
“Respingere!” I cried, struggling to hold on.
Light and force pulsed from the opal, but the tentacle smothered both. I leaned from its muscular pull, the heels of my shoes digging into the ground. As the tentacle writhed toward my white-knuckled grip, I began to feel Lich’s warping power, began to feel my thoughts pulling at the seams, threatening to burst into violence and disorder. A straining whine emerged from between my clenched teeth as I fought to hold onto the cane as well as my sanity.
No matter what, something was telling me, you cannot lose your sword and staff.
Lich was staring down at me, the vessels throbbing over his head. A grim determination creased his face, even as more magic-users arrived and fresh energy collided into his shield. I was practically sitting now, like the anchor in a game of tug-of-war, my palms on fire. The tentacl
e wound toward my cramping hands. My grip slipped to the end of the cane handle.
And the blade slid free.
I fell onto my back. The tentacle whipped back toward the portal, clutching my staff. I heard magic-users thud down around me as the remaining tentacles released them. The tentacles disappeared into the portal along with Lich as the final emanations from the magic-users closed the opening.
Smoke drifted through the silent clearing.
Someone coughed. I looked from my naked blade toward the sound to find one of the magic-users who had been hoisted up writhing on the ground, clutching her throat. A green-black bruising stained the skin around her neck. Her eyes bugged madly from her face.
Arianna rushed to her and spoke a healing incantation. Moments later, light from her wand enveloped the woman. When the light receded, the woman was gone, transported to the palace to be purged of Whisperer magic. Several others who had been injured were treated similarly by other magic-users.
“That was some crazy-ass shit,” James said, coming up beside me, smoke curling from the end of his wand.
I nodded numbly as we watched the two who had been killed being covered with manifested sheets. Beyond them, a graying magic-user stooped to recover his wand. I watched him closely, wondering if he was Marlow, my father.
“Are you two all right?” Connell asked.
“I’m fine,” I said, turning to face him. James grunted a similar sentiment. I looked up at the space where the portal had stood moments before. “Is it closed? Can he come back through?”
“It’s sealed tight,” Connell assured me.
A horrible thought hit me. “By coming back here, did I let him through?”
“Any passage creates a temporary soft spot in the membrane between our worlds, but that’s not your fault, Everson. Lich’s power is growing such that he’ll soon be able to come and go at will.”
Well, that part is definitely my fault, I thought sickly, remembering the triumph I’d felt when I destroyed what I’d thought was Lich’s book. Connell gripped my shoulder and lowered his gaze to mine. A layer of perspiration made the faint scars stand out from his face.
The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 91