King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle)

by Joseph Nassise

  Now what?

  Panic gripped me.

  For just an instant I imagined how it would all play out, how I would sit there, unable to do anything but be there for her, my hand on hers, my soft, soothing but otherwise useless words falling from my lips as she was consumed, an inch at a time, just another soul added to the Angeu’s power source.

  I had to do something!

  As I frantically glanced around the room, looking for an answer, my gaze fell upon the faces that watched me from inside the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room itself, the ghosts that had already added their essence to the Angeu’s power base.

  That’s when it hit me.

  I wasn’t trying to save Denise’s physical form—that was still lying in a hospital bed in New Orleans. The only thing I was concerned with was her soul. Her spirit. Her ghost …

  Pulling my harmonica from my pocket, I caught Denise’s gaze with my own and smiled reassuringly.

  “I think it’s time for a little music,” I said, then brought the harmonica to my lips and began to play.

  Normally it takes me a few minutes to find the frequency, so to speak, to discover the right melody and tempo for my music to have any impact on the ghost I was targeting. But I’d lived with Denise for months now. I knew her as well as I knew anybody, from her quick wit to her hot temper, from her generous nature to her affinity for all living things. I didn’t need time to find the right tune, I carried her song in my heart, never mind a little piece of her soul in my own. My music burst forth in a soft, gentle melody that had a core of steel, just like Denise. It filled the room, washing over the floors and walls, calling Denise to my side just as I’d called hundreds of other ghosts in the past. I closed my eyes and let the music guide me, let it build into a celebration of the life and love that Denise had given the world, until I could hear only the swirling strains of music and the call built deep within its depths.

  One minute she was lying trapped on the floor in front of me, the next she stood by my side, free of Caer Wydyr’s grip.

  I didn’t waste any time, just grabbed her hand and ran for the door.

  “What about them?” she asked, but I just shook my head. I didn’t know if freeing her had set off any kind of alarm or warning device, and I certainly wasn’t going to stand around and wait to find out. Never mind the fact I still had the Preacher’s deadline to contend with.

  We were getting out of there and that was that.

  Now that Denise was with me, the instinct that had guided me to her side on the way in faded, leaving me to puzzle out the path back to the entrance myself. It took us less than ten minutes to descend the central tower, make our way back through the lower floors, and exit the Fortress by way of the same door through which I’d entered …

  … only to skid to a stop when we found the Angeu and his rickety old cart waiting there for us in the shadow of Caer Wydyr.

  56

  HUNT

  You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought as Denise and I stopped short only a few feet from the horses that drew the Angeu’s cart. This close, even they looked pissed at us.

  That’s when the Angeu opened his mouth and let loose a wail that would have done a banshee proud.

  Agony exploded in my head, driving me to my knees before the King of the Dead, and it was all I could do to keep from curling up in a ball and weeping like a baby from the pain. I sensed Denise on the ground beside me and knew in that moment that all I’d managed to do in finding my way here and freeing Denise from the clutches of Caer Wydyr was about to be undone in a matter of seconds.

  And man did it piss me off.

  For the last few weeks I’d been pushed and pulled in a thousand different directions, none of my choosing. I’d been dragged halfway across the country to a city crippled by a plague that wasn’t really a plague, attacked by what should have been harmless harbingers of the dead that tried to suck my soul from my still living body, been shot in the back and left for dead by an angry FBI agent, and finally made a deal with my own personal devil to travel to the land of the dead to retrieve the soul of the woman I was beginning to think I loved, only to end up on my knees in front of a horror-movie reject wailing at me like a little girl.

  To put it bluntly, I’d had enough.

  I let my feelings run free and felt my anger swell inside me like a tidal wave on the verge of breaking.

  Deep inside me, something new responded to its call.

  Maybe it was the rage.

  Maybe it was something left over from the ritual Denise had used to save my life.

  Maybe it was nothing more than the fact that I was one of the living here in the land of the dead.

  I don’t know, but I do know that it responded to me when I called it forth.

  Without conscious thought, I flung a hand out in front of me, my fingers carving a complicated sigil in the air as I did so, and to my surprise a bolt of power arced across the gap separating me from the Angeu. It struck him dead center in the middle of the chest and flung him off his cart like a worn-out rag doll, cutting off his banshee wail in midstream.

  Where the fuck had that come from? I wondered.

  I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I’d use what I could get and figure it all out later.

  When the Angeu’s wail had stopped, so too did the pain in my head, but I knew it would only be a temporary respite unless I did something to put an end to this confrontation once and for all.

  Thankfully, this time I had a plan.

  For the second time that day I snatched my harmonica from my pocket and brought it to my lips, letting my music speak for me in a way that nothing else could.

  This time I wasn’t playing for a single ghost or entity, didn’t try to tailor my song to call a solitary ghost to my side.

  No, this time, I called them all.

  Every last one of them.

  The Angeu might be the King of the Dead, but right then and there I was the usurper waiting in the wings, and I felt the dead all around me respond to my summons.

  As the music unfurled from deep inside me, the Fortress at my back began to shimmy and shake, the ghosts that formed its very foundations struggling to free themselves from its confining magick and go forth to meet the one who called them home. At the same time there came motion from deep within the shifting field of bone before me—for that was what it was, not sand at all but bone ground so finely that it took on the look and feel of sand—motion that grew until it resolved itself into shambling forms the size and shape of human beings. Behind me the great fortress of Caer Wydyr was coming apart at the seams, the ghosts flowing down around us like fog on a summer’s evening, mingling with those rising from the sands.

  That’s when the Angeu rose to his feet, revealing himself to the ghosts gathered around me.

  Like moths to a flame, they swarmed around him, burying him under the weight of their numbers.

  I knew an opportunity when I saw one.

  Using one hand to keep playing, I gathered my will and flung the other out before me again, this time with a different pattern of motions and a mental shout in a language I’d never spoken before.

  A rift opened a few feet away, a gleaming disk of silver that hung like a curtain in the air before us.

  On the other side, I could see the hospital room I’d left behind when I’d started this seemingly suicidal journey.

  Shoving my harmonica into my pocket, I pulled Denise to her feet and ran for the portal as fast as my legs would carry me.

  Behind me, the Angeu roared with anger, but it was too late. My ghostly army had held him occupied for long enough. With a shout of triumph, I threw Denise and myself into the portal’s open mouth.

  57

  HUNT

  Going back to the other side proved to be just as unpleasant. There was the same sensation of stepping through a curtain of intense cold, a cold so deep that for a moment my heart was shocked into stillness, and then pain exploded through my head and I staggered forward out of th
e rift into the empty waiting room I’d left behind what felt like years before. My head was pounding, my knees felt weak, and I only managed to remain on my feet by stumbling into a nearby chair and using that for support.

  I turned to Denise to ask if she was all right, but the words died stillborn in my throat before ever reaching the air outside my mouth.

  I was alone in the room.

  Denise was nowhere to be seen.

  I stood there, blinking dumbly, unable to process even the simplest of thoughts for a long, long moment. I’d rescued Denise from the Fortress of Glass and the clutches of the King of the Dead himself. I’d called an army of the dead to my side through magick I had no memory of having learned and used it to hold off our enemy long enough for us to dive into the rift. That I could have lost her in that final step, after surviving everything else, was just inconceivable.

  When the answer finally dawned on me, I literally sagged in relief.

  There was no reason for Denise to be in the room with me. I’d gone to Caer Wydyr to retrieve her soul, not her body. The minute we crossed back into the physical world the two should have been reunited, leaving me on my own.

  A glance at the clock on the wall told me it was just after three, and the darkness outside the windows told me it was a.m. rather than p.m., though what day it was I didn’t know. The truth was that I didn’t really care either, as long as I’d come back within the Preacher’s three-day window. All I needed to do now was to go find Denise and make sure that she was all right.

  Given that it was the dead of night, the halls were empty and I was able to make my way to the room where I’d left Gallagher and Denise what felt like days before. I entered the room with a smile on my face, eager to wrap her in my arms and welcome her home, only to come to an abrupt halt just inside the doorway.

  Denise lay on her back in the hospital bed, unmoving.

  Maybe she was asleep.

  I crossed to her side and put my hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her.

  She didn’t respond.

  I touched her face, only to find her skin cold and clammy.

  Nothing had changed.

  I should have been angry, should have been filled with rage at having been duped by that empty-eyed devil, but I couldn’t find anything but despair in my heart. Again, I’d failed to save someone I loved, despite my best efforts.

  My best wasn’t nearly good enough, it seemed.

  “Why the long face?”

  I lifted my head.

  The Preacher stood on the other side of the bed, watching me closely.

  “Go away, you bastard,” I said, but there wasn’t any heart in it. I felt completely drained, empty of every last scrap of emotion, as if I’d left my own soul behind in Annwyfn along with Clearwater’s. I turned away, unable to face him or my failure.

  But the Preacher’s next words ignited a fire in my blood.

  “You’re not done yet, Hunt.”

  Like a puppet on a string, I slowly turned around.

  “Not done?”

  He frowned, like a teacher disappointed by a student’s performance. “Does it look like you are finished?” he said, indicating Denise’s still form with one hand.

  “You’ve freed her soul from the Angeu’s stronghold, but you haven’t returned it to its proper place. Until you do, she will remain like this, trapped between worlds, neither living nor dead. We don’t want that now, do we?”

  I ground my teeth together in an effort to contain myself.

  “What do I need to do?”

  He reached inside his frock coat and removed a long-bladed knife. I recognized it immediately: it was a twin to the soul knives that Denise had used against the Angeu, but this time the blade was black rather than silver. The Preacher spun the weapon around in his hand and extended it to me, hilt first.

  “It’s nothing, really,” he said. “All you have to do is pick up the knife and stab her in the heart.”

  I stared at him.

  “What?” I asked, when I could find my voice again. It came out as little more than a whisper.

  He smiled, revealing a mouth full of decayed teeth. “Surely you remember what you learned about knives such as these, Hunt?”

  At first I didn’t have any idea of what he was talking about and then, like a diver coming up for mouthful of air, a memory surfaced in the back of my mind: Gallagher explaining why we needed the weapons in order to confront the Angeu. “… When properly charged, they have the power to return a soul to its rightful place,” he’d said.

  My gaze was drawn back down to the knife, the blade reflecting the green and red lights from the life-support monitors beside the bed.

  To return a soul …

  It couldn’t be that easy, could it? I wondered. That thought was quickly followed by another.

  Dare I trust him?

  I’d done so twice before, with mixed results. Each time he’d told me the truth, but he’d also left out some additional information that would certainly have influenced my choices. Like the fact that I would lose my normal sight by accepting the unusual abilities I’d gained. And this choice facing me now.

  This time, the trap was fairly obvious. If I did as he instructed and stabbed her in the chest, I’d be causing a mortal injury. I might return her soul to her body, but that would do little good if I caused her bodily death in the process.

  On the other hand, as crazy as it sounded, if I had to stab her in order to save her life, she was in the best possible place for me to do so, short of the intensive care unit itself.

  Which raised another question.

  Could I even do it?

  I looked down at Denise’s still face and thought about what it would be like to drive a six-inch blade deep into her unprotected chest, to stab her in her tender heart, all in the name of saving her life. Did I have the sheer backbone it would take to do such a thing?

  Yes.

  I reached for the knife, only to have the Preacher close his fist around it.

  “Do you remember our agreement?”

  I nodded.

  “Say it.”

  “In exchange for your help, I will carry out a task for you at a later time and place of your choosing.”

  I know, call me crazy. But when he’d offered to send me to Annwyfn in order to rescue Denise’s soul, I’d been ready to make a deal with the devil himself.

  And apparently, I had.

  Satisfied with my response, he opened his hand.

  I picked up the knife.

  It was heavy, much heavier than I expected, though that might have been my imagination. It also felt unusually warm to the touch. As soon as I picked it up my arm began to vibrate slightly, as if the knife was giving off an electrical current of some kind that was running up one side of my arm and back down the other, bringing to mind Gallagher’s comment about the weapons needing to be “properly charged.”

  Was it reacting to me or the scattered remnants of Denise’s soul that resided inside me? I wondered. At this point, was there any difference?

  I didn’t know, didn’t care. All I knew was that I had to get this over with before I lost my nerve.

  I’d get only one chance.

  I needed to get this right the first time.

  The Preacher stepped away from the bed, leaving me alone at Denise’s side. I could see her chest rising slowly, ever so slowly, beneath the sheets and was suddenly overcome with my feelings for this woman. I didn’t know where it had started or exactly how it had come about, but somewhere along the way I had fallen for her in a big way. I needed to hear her laugh again, to see her smile, to take her in my arms and tell her how I felt.

  If this was what I had to do in order to have that chance, then it was a price I would willingly pay.

  Voices came down the hall, loud angry voices, and, as I did my best to steady myself for what was to come, I could hear them getting closer, the words becoming more audible as they came down the hall.

  I took hold of the dagger in tw
o hands and raised it above Denise’s chest, the point of the blade centered directly over her heart.

  “You cannot do this, Doctor! I forbid it!”

  That was Gallagher; his brogue got a bit thicker when he was upset, I’d noticed, and right now it was out in full force.

  “Mr. Gallagher, if you do not step aside right this instant, I will have security remove you from the premises. Ms. Clearwater is beyond our help, and it is time that you acknowledged that fact and allowed someone who needs that bed to make use of it. We have a medical emergency on our hands, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  They were right outside the door; I had a moment, maybe two, and no more than that.

  It was now or never.

  I focused my attention on her still face, cast a prayer heavenward, and brought the knife plunging down with all my strength.

  As the blade fell toward her unprotected chest, the door beside me opened.

  58

  HUNT

  Chaos erupted.

  The air was full of sound: shouts of alarm from Gallagher, Dmitri, and several other voices I didn’t recognize; the Preacher’s insane laughter; and the beating of my heart so loud that it threatened to drown out everything else. I could sense people pushing into the room through the open door, but I ignored them, my attention solely on the task at hand.

  With an animalistic shout of my own, I stabbed Denise deep in the heart.

  Blood spurted from the wound to coat my hands where they gripped the hilt of the knife, and the air was suddenly full of its crisp, coppery scent. Power erupted from somewhere deep within the blade itself, exploding down its length and into Denise’s body, slamming her against the hospital bed as if I’d shocked her with a defibrillator. For a moment I thought it had all been for naught, for there was no change in her condition, and then she gave a sudden gasp and sucked in a lungful of air.