by Layton Green
“No!” Will shouted, pulling away from Lance. He knew Mala couldn’t win this fight. He also knew that with her potion, she could have escaped if she wished—but she wouldn’t leave them to face the majitsu alone.
And now she was going to die.
“Got it!” Caleb cried, standing up with the ring.
Will snatched the ring from his hand as the majitsu moved to finish Mala. Before Will could slip the ring onto his finger, Mala sheathed her short sword and took off her own amulet, a silver talisman streaked with blue. As the majitsu lunged forward with that strange leaping motion, she crouched to meet him, ducking his blow at the last moment and then wrapping him from behind as she pressed the amulet to his chest.
After a flash of light, both their bodies turned the deepest shade of black Will had ever seen, two cardboard shadows, and disappeared with a pop.
Will took a few steps towards the obelisk and dropped his head in his hands. He had a thought, and raced to the platform. Perhaps she had taken a potion of invisibility, like the ring. He scurried back and forth, feeling the air like a madman, until Val wrapped him in his arms. “She sacrificed herself to give us a chance,” he whispered. “Don’t waste it.”
Will realized that an invisibility potion wouldn’t have masked the sounds of battle.
She was gone.
He shuddered, the pain of her loss surging through him, hollowing him like a jack o’ lantern left to rot on the porch.
Numb, he moved like an automaton to join Lance and his brothers. As they reached the doorway, a shriek from the rukh broke the silence, a prolonged cry of agony that sounded to Will like a death rattle. At the end of the shriek they heard a tremendous splash, the faint sound of a smaller splash, and then the sound of someone swimming through the water.
“Move!” Lance said, shoving everyone inside and slamming the door closed. He threw a wooden lock bar into place.
Will prayed the things in the lake would drag their tormentor’s body to a watery grave. Somehow he doubted it. Sick with fear, he took in the new environment with a glance.
The bottom level of the obelisk was a stone-floored parlor that looked like it belonged to an aristocratic vampire in an old horror movie. Standing candelabra illuminated the room, and the air smelled faintly of cloves. Faded medieval tapestries draped the walls, and black-upholstered furniture surrounded a spiral staircase in the middle of the room. The stairs led upward through a vertical shaft, quite large in diameter and extending to the top of the obelisk. Looking up, Will guessed the shaft was how Zedock accessed the different levels, and that the staircase in the middle was for the servants.
“If the portal’s here,” Will said, “it’ll be at the top.”
“Agreed,” Val said.
Following Lance and his brothers as they bounded up the staircase, Will kept glancing down the vertical corridor, waiting for the majitsu to burst through the door. He was surprised not to find more guards, though as they passed the second floor, dimly lit by Val’s torch, he understood why.
An entire phalanx of human skeletons lined the perimeter of the level, weapons in hand, standing mute against the wall. The skeletons of dozens of larger creatures filled the center of the room. Will saw another manticore, a bat with the wingspan of an eagle, two cat-like skeletons that looked like saber-toothed tigers, a small dragon, and a host of unfamiliar but monstrous shapes. It was a museum of natural history for the bizarre, and Will knew it served a different purpose.
This was Zedock’s army, awaiting his command.
They spiraled past the third floor, a combination morgue and biology lab. Corpses preserved in chemicals floated in glass-walled vats, scales and instruments of vivisection hung from hooks on the walls and from the sides of laboratory tables. Pipes on the tables led to grates set within the porcelain floor, drainage routes for bodily fluids. A large silver container with handles spaced apart like drawers took up one side of the room.
The kitchen and dining area came next, and a hysterical chuckle slipped out of Will at the placement of the dining room just above the laboratory.
As they moved to the fifth floor, a curving hallway of closed doors indicative of living quarters, they heard a splintering sound from below.
“Faster!” Lance yelled.
They burst forward on exhausted legs to the next level, the last below the top. Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw a study marked by leather sitting chairs, floor to ceiling bookshelves, a claw-footed billiards table, and an antiquated map covering one wall.
Will had gained the lead, but as they approached the final floor, his head bumped against an invisible barrier. He hit it with his hand. It didn’t budge.
“Warded,” Val said, in a dead voice.
Will risked a glance down and saw the lithe majitsu who had defeated the rukh bounding straight up the shaft, leaping from level to level, one foot touching down on a banister or a ledge and then springing fifteen feet upward at a time.
“God, no,” Caleb whispered.
Without thinking, and with no expectation of success, Will unsheathed his sword and thrust it above his head. With a flash of white-blue light, it jabbed upward into the shaft with no resistance.
Will waved his hand above his head. The invisible ward was gone.
They could hear the majitsu coming closer. They clambered up the final few feet of the staircase and onto the last floor of the obelisk, racing across the walkway that spanned the vertical shaft. A swift glance revealed a room with tinted glass walls overlooking sweeping vistas of the swamp. Will noticed three chests, a high-backed chair next to a telescope, and a table containing an obsidian helm and other items of esoterica. When they entered the room, an orb suspended from the ceiling ignited, illuminating the room with an indigo glow.
What drew Will’s eye from the start, however, was the giant ring of weirdness near one of the glass walls, a circle of darkness ten feet in diameter and streaked with pulsating silver light. Framed by a thin lining of what looked like azantite, the bottom of the disc rested on a sturdy wooden stand.
Caleb clutched Will’s arm. “The portal!”
Will slipped the ring on his finger and unsheathed the Spear of Piercing, in case Zedock was waiting on the other side. Will was horrified to see that while less substantial, he was still visible. “It doesn’t work. The ring doesn’t work.”
“It’s a ring of shadows,” Val said. “There’s too much light.”
“Shut up and go,” Lance said, his voice hoarse. He started towards the portal as a black shape vaulted over their heads and landed right in front of the sphere of darkness.
The majitsu straightened. A slow, cruel smile creased his face. The left sleeve of his robes was in tatters, but he appeared unharmed, the silver belt looped casually around his waist.
The loss of hope Will felt in the face of this impossible adversary was all the more bitter because of the proximity to home. The majitsu knew what they were after; his position in front of the portal and his mocking grin confirmed it.
Left with no option, Will stepped forward, the Spear of Piercing in one hand, his sword in the other. Perhaps if Mala were here to distract the majitsu, Will could catch him from behind with the spear, and then try to figure out something else for Zedock.
Lance whooped a battle cry as Will rushed forward, leading with his sword. The warrior-mage leapt to meet him, breathtakingly fast.
The majitsu reached out with a contemptuous hand to block Will’s sword, and in a combination too fast to follow, he struck the Spear of Piercing and shattered the translucent blade.
Will heard someone gasp behind him. At first he thought it was because the shards of the magical spear were sprinkling to the floor, which they were, but as he looked at the majitsu, wondering why he had not sent Will flying forty feet through the air or snapped his arm in half, he saw the robed figure looking in shock at the hand which had attempted to block Will’s sword. A hole gaped from the center of his palm, blood dripping onto the stone floor.
Th
e majitsu recovered in time to dodge Will’s next blow, but Lance tackled him from the side. He escaped and kicked Lance across the room, but the delay had given Will the split-second he needed. With both hands on the hilt of his sword, body aligned and thrusting at the hips, he ran the sword straight through the majitsu.
Will saw a flash of silver-blue light on the majitsu’s chest and knew the sword had somehow pierced his defenses. The warrior-mage doubled over as Will yanked the sword out. “How?” the majitsu asked through whitened lips, the light in his eyes already fading as Lance kicked him into the vertical shaft.
They didn’t hesitate. Will shooed everyone through the portal while standing guard with his sword. The last sound he heard before stepping through the ring of silver-streaked darkness was the corpse of the majitsu flopping against the floor of the obelisk.
-49-
Traveling through the Zedock’s portal was a different experience than using Salomon’s key. As soon as Will touched the pulsating ring, he felt pulled forward, as if he had no choice but to continue. The sensation lasted for an instant and then he was through, stumbling through a similar disc and onto a battered wood floor.
There had been no feeling of vibration or of being whisked away, just a tug and then instantaneous passage through a curtain of darkness.
Lance, Val, and Caleb straightened next to him. They were in an empty room with a closed door and a window overlooking a familiar cemetery.
Will drew his sword and opened the door, entering a room with built-in bookshelves lined with preserved skulls. “Zedock’s study. We’re back, guys.”
Will wanted to shout with relief, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the skulls. As they had before, the empty eye sockets seemed to follow Will around the room, and he wondered if the leering visages possessed some sort of unnatural consciousness or connection to Zedock, informing him of their arrival.
He walked to the window and joined Lance as he peered outside. Not just at the cemetery, but at the streetlights in the distance, the ambient light in the night sky, the telephone wires, the twenty-first century vehicles parked outside.
It all seemed so unreal, as if they had never left. Like it had all been an extremely vivid dream. “We’re back,” he said again, to no one in particular.
Caleb started whooping and performing a jig, but Val put a hand on his arm. “This isn’t over yet.”
“Yeah, I’d completely forgotten about the world-class necromancer holding Charlie, and the broken Spear of Piercing. Thanks for reminding me, big brother. Hot damn, I’m just shocked I’m still alive.”
Val let his hand slide off Caleb. “You’re right,” he said, grasping him in a fierce hug. “We made it. All of us.”
An image of Mala dancing by the campfire on a moonlit night came to Will, black hair tumbling into her face, violet eyes soft and free.
Not all of us made it, he thought.
And the ones who did will never be the same.
“From what I just saw,” Lance said, “we might not need the spear.” He turned to Will with an expression of respect Will had longed for his entire life. “Blackwood just skewered a majitsu.”
Will realized that during the entire encounter at Zedock’s stronghold he hadn’t felt a twinge of panic. Terror and adrenalin, yes.
But not panic.
“I have no idea what that sword is,” Val said, “but I don’t think it combats the undead. I think it cuts through magic.”
The sound of a ticking clock atop a cabinet pushed everything else into the background. “Charlie!” Will said. “We have to know the date!”
The clock read eleven p.m., and Val strode to the desk by the window, picking up a copy of The New York Times. “October 31st. Halloween. The day after we left.”
Will gripped his sword. “We made it, but the time differential must be fluid. Charlie only has an hour to spare.”
“What if the paper’s old?” Caleb said.
Will’s voice was rough. “It’s not.”
Val set the paper down, put his hands on the desk, and stared out at the cemetery. “The question is, where’s Zedock? I think we’d know by now if he were here.”
“Wherever he is, we don’t want to fight him in his own house,” Lance said. “I say we make a plan and ambush him. This is our world.”
“Let’s search the house for Charlie,” Will said. “He’s got to be keeping him here somewhere.”
Besides the fact that it served as lodging for a necromancer, the house creeped Will out. A collection of musty furniture filled the rooms on the second floor, and judging by the dust and cobwebs, the furniture had sat unused for some time. The period architecture and dated furniture made Will feel as if he had stepped back in time, into a haunted Victorian mansion.
Finding nothing of interest on the second floor, they descended to the first. Still no sign of Charlie.
Down the end of one corridor, a large antique bed with a meticulously folded duvet filled the center of the master suite. An armoire stood opposite the bed, as well as a trunk underneath a window with drawn blinds.
Val strode over to the trunk. “Maybe there’s something inside to help against Zedock.”
“Make it quick,” Will said, as Caleb ran his hands over the clasp of the trunk to search for traps. While his brother worked, Will glimpsed a stack of magazines on the nightstand, National Geographic and Scientific American, along with a collection of books on magic and the occult, all of them from this world.
He must have been disappointed with those.
Will held his breath as his brother extracted a poison needle from the trunk’s lid and then eased it open. Gold coins filled half the chest, resting underneath a pile of folded clothes. Shoes and more articles of clothing filled the armoire, all of them consistent with Zedock’s aristocratic style.
Nothing useful. They rushed out of the bedroom. As soon as they entered the hallway, they heard a faint thumping from the other end of the floor, the only portion of the house they had yet to inspect. It sounded as if someone were banging on a door.
Will led the dash down the hall, unconcerned with the amount of noise they were making. If Zedock were in the house, they would have known it by now. “Charlie!” he yelled. “We’re coming!”
The thumping grew louder as they approached the end of the corridor. The sounds were coming from behind a gray wooden door. Will found it odd that Charlie didn’t call back to them, then realized he must be gagged and bound.
Will yanked the door open, shivery with relief when he saw Charlie standing in front of him, his face a mess of ugly bruises but his arms reaching out to embrace Will, a coil of gnawed-through rope lying in a heap on the ground.
Charlie shambled into him, arms outstretched, and after that first fleeting moment of sensory deception, Will saw him clearly: the lack of life in the eyes, the unnatural stiffness to his movements, the smell of putrefaction, the discoloration of the skin that Will had taken at a glance for bruising, but which he realized in a flash of horror was lividity, the settling of the blood after death.
Charlie, father figure to Will and friend of the family for as long as he could remember, was a walking corpse.
-50-
Will fell on his back as the Charlie-thing clambered on top of him, the putrefied body sagging against his, ragged fingernails clawing for his face. Will scrabbled to escape, eyes wet with grief.
This is too much. Not Charlie.
Despite all that had happened, all the mystery and wonder and terror that had befallen Will and his companions on the journey, this final slap in the face by Zedock, this useless taking of a good man’s life, this abomination, was simply too much.
The panic attack hit him hard. Will lost control of his body, his limbs rigid, his heart a metronome on speed. He lay helpless on his back as Charlie’s mouth opened, teeth bared like an animal as he leaned down to bite Will.
Will felt a tug on his hand. Lance dragged the thing off of him as Val ran Charlie through with Will’s sw
ord. When Val pulled the sword out, Charlie’s body flopped to the side, the corpse deflated and still, as if the unnatural burst of life had never happened.
Val cradled Will’s head until he could breathe, and Will felt as if he were twelve years old again, suffering yet another debilitating panic attack.
“I thought zombies were harder to kill,” Caleb said quietly.
“It was a thing like the manticore,” Val said, swallowing hard to gain control of his emotions. “A servant of the necromancer. Will’s sword severed the magic.”
“How?” Will managed to whisper.
“I don’t know. Alexander said the ability of the necromancers is a hybrid thing, that the magic gives dead things life and then circulates in their systems. My guess is the necromancers somehow reanimate the leftover DNA found in bones and corpses. But they can’t return their souls, Will. That wasn’t Charlie.”
Caleb stared down at the desecrated corpse. “He deserves a proper burial,” he said, as somber as Will had ever seen him.
“He’ll get one,” Will said grimly, lurching to his feet and reclaiming his sword from Val, “as soon as we finish this.” Will wheeled and started down the hallway, gripping the sword in both hands. “Zedock’s a dead man.”
A blast of cool air met the brothers and Lance as they stepped into the maelstrom of an approaching storm. Leaves whipped through the sky, the wind rising in whining octaves as if boiling in a teapot, trees and branches shimmying in its wake.
Will leapt off the porch, sword raised above his head as a pair of goblins approached from across the street. The two goblins let out high-pitched squeals and ran away. Lance grabbed Will by the shoulder. “Easy, cowboy. They’re just kids. Halloween, remember?”
Lance’s voice sounded muffled, lost in the rage coursing through Will’s veins. Through a fog of anger he noticed the pumpkin containers jiggling at the kids’ sides as they ran, saw the costumed revelers filling the street and the sinister decorations on the houses.
He lowered his sword, his breath heaving out of him. He had indeed forgotten the day; he had forgotten the entire universe. That newspaper hadn’t been out of date, he knew. It was Halloween. Zedock had killed Charlie before the deadline.