“Skeletons, not zombies,” Zoë corrected, coming up beside him. Her face was grim, but she took a battle stance, greenstone club in hand. “I hate the idea of having to smash the corpses of children. Unfair psychological advantage for the baddies!”
A pillar of light lit the scene. Cain March appeared momentarily about a hundred yards away, his Inverness cape billowing around him. He was a lithely-built man, handsome and bearded, who reminded Rachel of a youthful Agamemnon. (Perhaps one whom, upon arriving at Troy, had forgotten about Helen and grabbed Cassandra instead.) He surveyed the scene for an instant, his eyes narrowed, and he vanished again.
Half a dozen pillars of light flashed around the temple grounds. Cain March had returned with some of his Agents. Rachel saw her father appear, along with his best friend and second-in-command, the implacable Templeton Bridges. They stood together illuminated by torchlight, a pale figure and a dark one in billowing cloaks and tricorne hats, with their tall staffs in their hands. Spell-fire flew back and forth between the Agents and the cultists.
Rachel cheered at the arrival of the Agents, but there were only six of them to fight five times as many cultists and an army of undead. True, they were baby undead, but that idea was so disturbing that Rachel did not even like thinking it.
The cultists ran forward toward the Agents, firing off spells. The army of little skeletons surged like a bone-white glacier, coming slowly but inexorably toward the stairs where Rachel and her friends stood. Across the temple courtyard, they swept over where one of the Agents stood. He was knocked from his feet and carried forward by the undead wave. All around him the little skeletons—some dead nearly three thousand years—attacked him with whatever they could grab. Some hit him with rubble or bricks. Some bit him. Other wielded their own arm bones as knives. Rachel saw one of the taller skeletons, perhaps of a boy of nine, stop and put on the Agent’s tricorne hat.
It seemed so much like something a living boy would do that Rachel suddenly found herself unable to swallow.
“Okay…um…suggestions?” murmured Zoë. “I mean, I can play whack-the-kiddy-skeleton as well as the next gal with her own Maori war club. But, even on my best day, I think I can only whack three or so at a time.”
Siggy glanced warily over his shoulder. “Normally, I would sic Lucky on them, lighting ’em up like birthday candles, but he’s a little busy. When do we learn to throw fireballs?”
The clinking-clanking army of skeletal children drew closer. The odor of charred bones reached Rachel’s nostrils. The soot-blackened skulls of the foremost members glistened in the torchlight. Whooping, Zoë ran forward, whacking the taller of the young forms, sending heads flying like balls off a tee. Sigfried played a blast of wind. Silvery sparks that smelled of fresh spring rain swept a swath of them aside, their bones tinkling like ivory xylophones as they collapsed. Rachel tried a blast of wind, too, but hers was not strong enough to do more than rattle bones. Paralysis turned out to be ineffective against skeletons. She attempted a Glepnir bond, but nothing happened.
“How did you two find me?” Rachel called to her friends, as she tried to think of something else helpful to do.
“Mrs. March came to see if you had made it back safely.” Zoë smacked three skeletons. They collapsed like dominoes. The patu’s keening shriek rent the air. “She helped us find the real dream version of the temple.”
“How did you get by the cultists up in dreamland—to get down here?” asked Rachel.
“Goldilocks blinded them with her camera flash!” Siggy shot her a huge grin. “Some of the purple jokers even ended up in another scene, some sunny place. My G.F.’s so smart.”
From their left came a bellow. A flaming something flew by overhead, as if thrown by a catapult. Siggy let out a shout. Whatever it was sailed all the way across the horizon and out of sight.
“Lucky!” Siggy shouted, followed by, “It’s okay. He’s okay. But he’s kind of far away. I think he’s out to sea.”
Another bellow. The horned man now stood in the courtyard. He gestured. Over to the left, Cain March and Templeton Bridges were thrown a good ten yards. Both of them flipped in mid-air and landed lightly on their feet. A flash of light, and Rachel’s father jumped, appearing next to the paralyzed Sandra. He grabbed her from where she stood in the midst of motionless cultists and vanished again.
Rachel breathed a sigh of relief.
Had her father only just caught sight of her sister, she wondered. If so, did he even know that she and her mother were here? Of course, Sandra would tell him.
The flood of undead children was beginning to close in around them. Rachel stepped on the skeleton of a crawling toddler and fell down. The skeletons turned toward her, looming over her. Bones clacked, and jaws snapped. Empty eye sockets stared down at her. One face was black and mummified with withered, raisin-like eyes.
“Obé!” she shouted, gesturing with one hand as she used her other hand and her legs to scuttle backwards and leap back to her feet. The Word of Ending had the desired effect. A few of the closest skeletons clattered to the ground, but there were many, many more coming.
Rachel ran to stand closer to Zoë and Siggy. They tried to retreat up the stairs and around the temple, but four-foot flames shot now leapt from the open furnace door. After only three stairs, the heat was unbearable. They returned to the bottom.
The skeletons were closing in from all directions. The heat of the furnace blew hot on the backs of their necks. Rachel’s leg brushed against the bottom step. There was precious little room left.
“Obé,” she cried again.
Three more fell—three out of thousands.
“If only we could get them to come at us a few at a time,” Zoë said nervously. She glanced from the surging horde to the furnace ablaze behind them. “This is not the greatest spot. We have got to come up with something better. I am so not going to die, killed by skinless pre-schoolers. Should we retreat into dreamland?”
“And let the demon get away?” Siggy blew another blast, scattering another ten children and lambs. “Lucky! Get back here! Hurry!”
Zoë snorted, “I’m having trouble just keeping the baby skellies here at bay. I haven’t the foggiest what to do against the demon.”
“We can’t leave,” Rachel cried shrilly. “My mother is still here.”
She looked up to the porch where her mother had been but saw no sign of her. “Siggy! Can you see her?”
“Sure,” Siggy did not bother turning his head. “She’s fighting the crazy red-headed woman. She’s doing pretty well, considering that she doesn’t have anything but her mouth. Looks like she can do magic by whistling, like you do. She’s really good.”
“I learned to do that from her,” Rachel smiled slightly, her heart beating with concern for her mother, alone against the crazy Serena O’Malley. “We should go help her!”
“Can’t go up the stairs,” Siggy replied. “Too hot. We’d have to get through the bone-kiddies and around to the back of the temple.”
Click-clack. Click-clack. The child skeletons grew ever closer, their bones gleaming golden in the light of the furnace.
“Well, we have to do something,” muttered Zoë.
“I’m not sure what…” Rachel began, searching her memory for anything that might help against hordes of undead—baby or otherwise.
Oh, wait.
Reaching into her pocket, she yanked out the packet she had felt there earlier. Gaius had given it to her on All Hallow’s Eve. The paper was a bit warped from having gone through the wash, but when she ripped it open, hard round peony seeds fell into her hand.
“Here goes!” She threw the seeds, scattering them upon the ground in a semi-circle between them and the approaching army of undead kids.
The skeletons moved forward, as inexorably as ants. But the moment they came near the peony seeds, even though the hard, raisin-sized seeds were barely visible in the poor lighting, each child-like form bent or knelt and began to count. As Rachel watched them, she hummed a soft lilti
ng melody with a simple beat.
Beside her, Zoë and Siggy were humming the same song.
“The children…” Rachel clutched Zoë’s arm. Her mouth felt dry. “I think…they’re singing.”
The eyes of her friends grew round in the furnace light.
“Do you mean that ditty in my head is a three-thousand-year-old, Carthaginian children’s counting song?” murmured Zoë.
“Wait!” Siggy took a step backward, ending up on the first stair. Sweat gleamed on his skin from the heat. “You mean that there are ghosts here? I thought they were just macabre marionettes! I can’t attack the ghosts of little kids! What would King Arthur say?”
“I can see them,” Zoë said hoarsely. “In dreamland.”
The three of them stood, unwilling to attack, as the undead remains of dozens of two and three-thousand-year-old sacrificed children bent over counting peony seeds in the dark. The little skeletons surrounded them on all sides, except behind them where the heat of the furnace had grown unbearably hot.
“If we go back into dreams…will there be ghosts there?” Siggy sounded nervous.
“Yes,” said Zoë. “They’re everywhere.”
“And in dreamland,” said Rachel, recalling the prince of Transylvania, “ghosts are semi-solid. We’d be entirely surrounded.”
Two more flashes, then four, then a dozen. Teams of men dressed in black suits, moving in sync, each knelt and pulled from kenomanced bags some kind of strange device mounted on a tripod. Five teams in all, they circled the demon, each setting up their tripods with the muzzle of their device pointing inward.
“Who are they?” Zoë shouted. “More Agents?”
“No,” Rachel called back. “They’re dressed wrong. They’re…”
In the light of another jump, she spotted a white symbol on the breast of one jump suit.
“Siggy, what is that mark?”
“An infinity symbol,” he replied without turning his head. “Or maybe it’s a snake forming a figure eight and biting its own tail.”
“They’re from Ouroboros Industries!” Rachel cheered. “They must be the O.I. rapid response team, and their new secret weapon. Gaius sent them!”
“Valiant sent us the cavalry?” Zoë drawled. “Good for him!”
Another flash. Her father appeared next to Serena O’Malley, who was standing stock still on the far corner of the temple porch, as far away from the furnace as possible. Rachel’s mother stood on her tiptoes in front of her, prying her rings of mastery, with their decades of stored spells and conjurations, out of the frozen woman’s fist. Rachel’s father picked up both women. As they jumped away, Rachel heard her mother’s voice calling out her name and saw the startled look on her father’s face. Apparently, he had not known she was here.
Crash!
Two O.I. men were thrown across the temple courtyard and into a column, which toppled on top of them. Under the rubble, one man still moved, but the other lay motionless. Two more men in black suits appeared in a flash of light to take their place. There was a whining noise and a narrow beam of umber-colored light traveled from the first tripod to the second.
The demon gestured. Another team was thrown backwards. As they fell, however, they seemed to become weightless and wafted safely to the ground. Rachel suspected they were wearing floating harnesses. Again, more men appeared to take their place. The beam of umber light continued to the third tripod. The glowing line now formed three parts of a pentagon. There were more Agents, too. Some of them flung spells at the horned man, but he shrugged them off.
The umber beam reached the forth tripod. The mechanical whine grew louder. Rachel smelt a strange burnt air smell. One more, and the fiend would be entirely surrounded.
The demon saw this, too. Bellowing, it gestured. A brave man jumped forward, shielding the device. He was thrown headlong into the temple, which trembled, its stone grating.
The umber beam reached the last tripod, closing the five-sided figure. More beams of umber light sprang up, forming a pentacle inside the pentagon. The whole area within the pentagon began to fill with a thick, burnt orange substance, like glowing caramel.
With a bellow of rage, darkness issued from the mouth and nose of the horned man. The umber substance was filling the intervening space, but not quickly enough. Rachel saw that Morax would escape before O.I.’s secret weapon trapped him.
“Lucky!” Siggy wailed. “Hurry. He’s getting away.”
More shadows billowed from the bull-horned man’s mouth and nose.
“Wait. I have this!” Rachel lifted her wand and shot the demon with one of her grandmother’s three precious remaining charges of Eternal Flame.
White fire tinged with gold enveloped the growing shadow. An earsplitting bellow of pain and outrage rent the air. Then, the glowing umber substance filled the entire area. When the white flame died away, the original cultist, no longer sprouting horns, stood next to a large bull with the head of a man. Both were motionless, like flies trapped in amber.
With a loud clatter, all the little skeletons fell to the ground and lay still.
“Phew,” murmured Zoë. “The ghosts are gone.”
A cheer went up from the O.I. crowd. Rachel and her friends joined in. Siggy blew a flourish on the trumpet. Rachel noted that he was beginning to play rather well. Lucky came streaking out of the sky and crooned along with his master.
“Rachel!” her father appeared in another flash of light, his staff in his hand, his cloak billowing, his stars and lantern medallion gleaming on his chest, his tricorne hat at a rakish angle. He paused momentarily when he saw the other two students, murmuring something like, “Where did these two come from?”
“Um. I think this is our cue to leave, Smith.” Zoë threw her arm out and grabbed Sigfried’s hand. Lucky wrapped around his master. “See ya, Griffin.” With a flip of her braid, she glared over her shoulder at Rachel’s father. “You didn’t see us.”
A puff of mist, and they were gone.
Agent Griffin leaned down and lifted Rachel into his arms, and everything became light.
• • •
The next morning the three Griffin women sat in Sandra’s dining room sipping hot chocolate, while Agent Griffin and Agent Vicky Armel, her father’s prime Enochian, moved about the flat, laying wards and protections. Hammer blows rang out from where a craftsman from Gryphon Park busily replaced the door.
“Wisecraft Agent Kidnapped in Her Own Flat. I’m going to have a hard time living this one down at work.” Sandra looked both embarrassed and amused. “But at least Mum and Daddy captured that O’Malley woman. She’s a nasty piece of work.”
“So, Mummy had come by to visit me?” Rachel asked, naturally reverting to the more child-like form of parental address when talking to her big sister. She sat petting Mistletoe, who had curled up on a chair beside her, being too large for her lap. “Was that the surprise you said you had?”
“You heard that?” Sandra exclaimed. “You were still here?”
“I heard your voice, right before she took me.”
“Oh, what a relief! I’m glad you were not on your own for very long.” Sandra leaned back in her chair, visibly relaxing. “I was so worried that you’d be frightened there all by yourself. My heart felt like it leapt right through the top of my head when that boy landed on you, and you fell down the stairs. I’m glad you had the sense to keep your head down and stay out of the fire-fight!
“And yes,” Sandra continued before Rachel could get a word in edgewise. “Mum came to see you, as a surprise. Only when we arrived, the door was broken, and you were gone.”
“Then Veltdammerung jumped us.” Ellen Griffin gave her daughter a chagrined and yet impishly-sweet smile. “What ninnies we were, running around like headless chickens, looking for you, instead of taking precautions for ourselves. Your father gave me quite a lecture.”
“What happened to the demon?” Sandra put down her empty cup. “Who caught it?”
“The O.I. rapid response
team and their new secret weapon based on the research of our second cousin, Blackie Moth,” said Rachel, wiping away her chocolate mustache.
Sandra gawked at her. “And my little sister knows this…how?”
Rachel raised an eyebrow and gave her sister her best arch and mysterious look. “I cannot reveal my sources.”
“Oh, you’re so funny, Rachel!” Sandra turned to their mother, laughing “Look at Rachel! Imitating Daddy and I. Isn’t she just adorable? Do you remember the time she was four, and she put on Father’s boots and cloak and hat and took his staff and insisted she was an Agent? She wanted to go to work with him?”
“Oh, yes.” Their mother’s dark eyes danced with amusement. “She was so tiny! She couldn’t see from underneath the hat. It came to her nose!”
“And the b-boots!” Sandra could hardly speak for laughter. “They came up above her knees. She could hardly walk!”
They both laughed and laughed until there were tears in their eyes. Sandra reached over and mussed the top of Rachel’s head. “Little sis, you don’t need to pretend you have sources you need to protect, just because Daddy and I can’t tell you things.” She leaned closer and whispered with a happy conspiratorial smile, “It’s all right. I won’t tell anyone Gaius told you.”
Rachel smiled, but underneath, she felt disappointed.
She had been looking forward to telling her family about how she had stopped the demon from escaping. If she spoke up now, it would sound like bragging. Also, it would frighten them, to hear that she had engaged in the battle, rather than keeping her head down.
She gazed down at her cocoa, watching the whipped cream melt.
She hated being treated like a child. One reason she liked Gaius and Vlad so much was that they both always spoke to her as if she were an equal. She felt another pang of sadness. She did know this information, thanks to her wonderful boyfriend who, by now, would have received her letter and who may have decided he would prefer the title: former boyfriend.
Their mother took Sandra’s empty cup and went to the kitchen for more hot chocolate. As Rachel sipped her sweet concoction, she finally found the courage to bring up a subject about which she had been longing to speak to Sandra.
Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3) Page 45