by M. D. Massey
But you know what that hairy shit-stained sphincter of a skinwalker did in response?
He laughed.
“Oh, druid,” he chuckled, looking down at his chest. “I will admit, that tickled a bit. Now, it’s time for you and your friends to die.”
He spread his arms wide, and out of that hole in his chest spilled a flood of evil spirits that looked like they were made of black silk and smoke. And how did I know they were evil? Because their eyes glowed red, and they were screaming that they were hungry for souls. Not that I understood their language, but their message came across loud and clear inside my head.
As those demonic freaks flew across the cavern at me, I figured I was done. I’d never been very good at dealing with restless spirits, and these looked like the very worst kind. They weren’t your garden variety haunts, but the kind of spirits left behind by truly evil people, shades that should’ve gone to some hell or another when they died. Instead, they stuck around out of sheer spite and hate, just so they could pull more souls down with them.
Angry as they were, they’d rip me apart body and soul. And without blessed salt, a good protective ward circle, or a handy exorcism spell, I had no way to prevent it. As for my back up, Hemi still couldn’t see what was going on, otherwise he’d be doing his Ghostbusters bit on them. Fallyn was good with flesh and blood, not so much with incorporeal beings. And La Onza, well—she looked to be a no-show.
That double-crossing bitch, I thought as the first spirits neared me. I’ll come back from the afterlife to haunt that dwarf of a witch—I swear it.
Crunch!
The sound of bone and flesh being crushed was unmistakable, as I’d heard it too many times over the course of my young life. And it was loud—I even heard it over the dead people’s screeching. In an instant, those same spirits vanished, leaving Ernesto standing there with a seriously surprised expression on his messed-up skinwalker mug.
I heard another loud crunch, just before Ernesto’s head sort of flopped forward onto his chest, where it hung momentarily by nothing more than a flap of skin and gristle. Like a puppet with its strings cut his body followed, and the evil bastard tumbled to the ground in an awkward, deanimated heap. Behind that lifeless jumble of limbs, fur, and blood sat the biggest freaking mountain lion I’d ever seen, licking her paws and wiping the skinwalker’s blood off her face and whiskers.
When she was done cleaning herself, the bruja transformed back into her human form. Unlike the way ’thropes shifted, her change was instantaneous and obviously the work of magic instead of any inherited skill or ability. La Onza looked around, taking in our condition as well as Ernesto and Stanley’s corpses. She frowned at me and shook her head.
“Don’t you know anything, gringo? You can’t kill skinwalkers that way, not after they’ve slipped their skin. Have to shoot them in the neck with ash-blessed bullets, or cut their heads off. They’ll laugh off anything else you do to them.”
“I, uh, noticed that,” I said with a sarcastic smile. “And as for your timing—fuck that! You could’ve jumped Ernesto at any time. Why’d you wait until I was about to get butt-fucked by an army of angry spirits before you stepped in?”
“I had to wait until he was distracted to strike, mago. Although if you’d hit him in the neck with your lightning, you could have ended it like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Now, are you ready to face the Dark One?”
I suppose it makes sense, and I can’t blame her for fighting smart. Still pisses me off, though—and it makes what I might have to do a hell of a lot easier.
I wiped blood off my forehead with the back of my hand. “Geez—give me a sec, will you?” I turned to check on Fallyn and Hemi. “You guys alright?”
Hemi leaned on a rough-cut stone support column that had been left behind when the mine had been excavated centuries prior. He was covered in scratches and cuts, but the bleeding had stopped so it looked like his healing wards were kicking in already.
“Yeah, bro, vision’s starting to clear. Warn a bloke properly next time, aye?” he said as he rubbed his eyes.
“I second that shit,” Fallyn grumbled as she snapped Stanley’s neck. Hemi and I looked at her, mouths agape. “What? You heard the witch—if you don’t do it right, they shake it off. ’Thropes know the score—we learn it from the time we’re kids. Go for the kill or go home, right?”
“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” I said.
“Whatever.” She looked around the chamber, curling her lip in a silent snarl. “Guess it’s time for us to bail on you, huh?”
“La Onza has my back. Besides, I need you to see what happened with Mendoza and his thugs. If they’re waiting for us, sneak out another tunnel and meet up with the Pack at the rendezvous point.”
Fallyn eyed the stone faced bruja, who stood off to the side with her arms crossed. “Double-cross him, and I’ll strangle you with your entrails,” she said. “Let’s go, Hemi.”
The big guy gave me a reassuring smile and a bro hug. “This is your moment, cuz. Go finish it.”
“See you topside, buddy,” I said, patting him on the back.
La Onza waited until they were both long gone before she spoke. “If you are killed, I will do my best to make sure your body is unfit for the Dark One’s purposes.”
“Wow, you’re good at these pep talks, aren’t you?” I quipped, scratching my head. “Look, I’m fine with you doing the same number on the Dark Druid that you did on Ernesto. Stay hidden until you know you can tip the scales. No sense in both of us going down today.”
The dwarfish little witch gave me an inscrutable look, then she transformed into a mountain lion. La Onza headed into the dark, her voice fading as she stalked away from me.
“I will give you what assistance I can, druid. Just be sure to keep your word as well.”
With that, she blended into the shadows and was gone.
I checked my gear and took one last look around the chamber, just to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything. For the hell of it, I torched the skinwalkers’ corpses, making sure they were burning bright before I turned my attention to other matters.
You’re stalling, Colin, a familiar female voice inside my head said. It wasn’t really Jesse, but just my conscience speaking to me in her voice. Or maybe my subconscious wishing she were here. This was about the time she’d normally show up, when the shit hit the fan or thereabouts.
Even though I knew it wasn’t her, I answered that voice just the same.
Yes—I am stalling.
You can’t delay the inevitable, so you may as well get it over with, Jesse’s voice replied.
I never wanted this, you know. I wish we could just go back to the way things were, before the Avartagh showed up.
You can’t go back, slugger. There’s no rewind button in this life. I died, and you’re stuck with it.
Ah, but I’m learning time magic, I answered back.
Don’t get any bright ideas, please.
I chuckled, because my conscience was a real smart-ass. Jess would’ve approved.
“Fine. Time to send this fucker to hell.”
The Dark Druid was right where I thought he’d be. The moment I exited the last stope the bat had shown me, the signs of his passage were everywhere, in the most literal sense. Senses on high alert, I stopped to examine his work.
Well, this is a new level of fucked up.
Fresh human corpses—sacrifices, obviously—lay in twisted, desecrated heaps at intervals up and down the tunnels. As he’d done at the graveyard chapel, the Fear Doirich had used his victims’ life energy to power necromantic spells that he’d painted in blood on the walls, floors, and ceiling of the tunnels. Some spells I recognized, since I’d been studying up on death magic and necromancy since our first encounter—those spells had been used to raise and control the dead. Others were unfamiliar to me, but I could take a guess as to their purpose.
When the time came, he’d trigger them and use them to force my spirit out
of my body so he could take it over. And, if my hunch was correct, he’d trap me inside another phylactery, then torture my soul over the course of many, many centuries. I’d heard of necromancers forcing captive spirits to inhabit human corpses, animal carcasses, dead fish, you name it—sometimes for the sake of experimentation, and at other times, for the sheer pleasure of torturing their souls.
Could he do it to me, now that he had possession of Jesse’s weird life and death magic? I had no idea, but I was betting that I’d still have some residual resistance to necromancy left over from the time I possessed Balor’s Eye. I also theorized that being in my full Fomorian form would provide me with additional resistance, but it was a theory I’d never tested.
Maybe the combination would be enough to combat the Dark Druid’s necromancy and Jesse’s powers, maybe not. One way or the other, I’d know for sure soon.
As I followed the Fear Doirich’s handiwork further down the tunnel, I checked the corridor for wards and traps along the way, but there were none. Now that he’d gotten what he wanted, the Dark Druid had no need for subterfuge, nor for concealment. To quote a certain famous sorcerer, we were in the end game now, and at this point the prick wanted me to come and find him.
Oh, and I’m coming with bells on, I thought as I called my Hyde-side forth.
After shifting into my full Fomorian form, I took a deep breath and drew Dyrnwyn. It was more like a short sword in my hand now than a full-sized blade, but I figured it might give me a slim advantage. For my final preparations, I readied a few spells and sent some instructions to the Druid Oak, then marched down the corridor toward my destiny… or doom.
Sixty feet in or so, the tunnel opened into another long, narrow stope chamber. This room was roughly thirty feet across and eighty feet long, with a few smaller side chambers where miners had chased veins of cinnabar until they’d petered out. As in the other stopes, the miners had used room and pillar mining techniques, leaving a ceiling high enough for me to stand with a bit of head room, although I had to duck my head when I came near the hourglass-shaped pillars.
Save for the graffiti, the entire room glowed with a sickly green light—not the bright neon used to portray radioactivity in the movies, but the diseased viridian hues of algae-covered swamp water, of pond scum on an alligator’s back, or maybe green mold on old plaster. It pulsed softly, coming from everywhere and nowhere, illuminating the chamber in pestilent light that, to my magical senses, stank of piss and shit and decay and death. That magical “scent” was layered on top of the odors my physical senses took in, which were just as horrifying and overwhelming.
Just like the corridors leading in, the walls of this room had been painted with necromantic symbols and runes. More bodies were scattered across the floor at random intervals, slain and discarded with no concern for decorum or solemnity. Some appeared to be from across the border, others looked like vacationers and hikers who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and still others wore park ranger uniforms. I lost count at fifty, and soon simply diverted my eyes because I was starting to lose my shit—not due to fear, but anger. I needed to be clearheaded to win this fight.
The Dark Druid stood at the other end of the chamber, hood pulled back to expose the putrefied flesh of his face. Maggots squirmed beneath his skin, and pus ran in rivulets from wounds and sores. Dark, gangrenous veins stood out under what intact skin remained, and all that remained of his hair were a few stray wisps of gray.
He might not be locked in that body, but he damned sure looks to be suffering in it. If I can keep him from jumping ship, then I just might have a chance.
The old necromancer observed me with keen interest as I entered the room.
“I knew you’d come,” he rasped.
I glanced around the chamber and tsked.
“You might know necromancy, but you’re a shitty interior designer,” I said. “Two thousand years of extended life, and yet here you are rocking the Dark Ages necromancer from hell look. Although the green lighting is a welcome break from your past work, you really should consider expanding your color palette. The ‘Christmas in Hell’ thing is so passé.”
This sort of banter annoyed the Dark Druid, although I’d never throw him off his game with it. He was too old, clever, and controlled to let a little shit-talking trip him up. So, the only reason I did it was because I was petty like that.
“Are you done?” he asked.
“Well, now that we’re on the subject, we really need to talk about your wardrobe as well. I—”
A loud rumble cut me off as the tunnel entrance crumbled behind me.
Gulp.
“Jest all you want, McCool—you won’t delay the inevitable.”
Now, where have I heard that before?
“The inevitable? The colonization of Mars? The end of the two-party system? The nationwide decriminalization of marijuana?”
The Fear Doirich licked the corner of his mouth with a sickly gray tongue that reminded me of a hagfish’s tail. “I grow weary of your games, apprentice, and I’m impatient to inhabit that wonderful Fomorian body of yours.”
I grimaced and held my hand up, palm out. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hate to tell you, buddy, but this thing called the hashtag-metoo movement happened, and that kind of talk is just not socially acceptable anymore.”
“Enough!” he rasped, slamming his hand on a rune painted in blood on the wall behind him. All those runes that I didn’t recognize lit up at once with the same sickly green glow that was coming from the walls, floor, and ceiling above. Yet the runes flared brightly with luminescence, and within that light were flecks and streaks of black.
Life and death magic together, just like La Onza said.
I had little time to reflect on the Dark Druid’s methods, because as soon as he triggered the spell, I immediately felt as though I was being pulled apart at the molecular level. It was like each cell in my body was being forced to split in two all at once, and every neuron lit up with excruciating, burning pain. The only way I might describe it was that half of me was being ripped out of my skin, cell by cell, by a million tiny invisible hands.
“Oh, I don’t feel so good,” I said as I stumbled to my knees, vomiting bile and blood all over the place.
20
The Dark Druid calmly walked toward me, rubbing his decaying hands together slowly as he explained what I was experiencing.
“Ah, yes—that’s the wonderful effects of the former dryad’s magic at work,” he said in a casual tone. “Normally, life and nature magic cannot co-exist together in a single magic-user or spell casting. However, your young lady friend was a very unique creature. After living in the realm of the dead, and then being raised again as a kind of nature goddess, then becoming human—well, death and life found a way to co-exist within her, it seems.”
“And then you killed her again, you fuck—gah!”
I vomited again, and was starting to see double. Or, at least, that’s what I thought I was seeing. Then, I realized what I was really seeing were two versions of me being ripped apart, one human and one Fomorian.
“What are you doing to me?” I demanded in two voices at once.
“You must be referring to the fact that there will soon be two of you. That’s the brilliant thing about the way your former paramour’s magic works—or rather, worked, until I killed her and stole it. As you’ll recall, formerly I couldn’t use necromancy against you because of the immunity granted to you by Balor’s Eye. But recently I realized that immunity had to be hidden within your Fomorian DNA, because no human could wield—much less retain—even a smattering of the Eye’s magic.”
With a monumental effort, I lifted my heads to look up at him—now I was really seeing double as my body and soul split into two separate entities. In that instant, I could feel my spirit being ripped apart, with my human spirit energy going with my mortal body and the beast going with my Hyde-side. Neither one of us liked it, but there wasn’t a lot we could do about it at the moment except groan
in agony and vomit more bile and blood.
“But…” I struggled to get the words out, because I was controlling two mouths, two voices. Or maybe two people were trying to say the same thing in unison—it was hard to keep it all clear. “There’ll be two of us to fight now, instead of just one.”
The Fear Doirich stood close now, and he knelt down to look me in my eyes—or rather, he looked back and forth between both sets. “Ah, but that’s the delicious thing, you see. Once you’re split, it’ll only take me a moment to imprison your spirit so I can inhabit your human body. Then, before this”—he gestured at my Fomorian half—“beautiful, powerful beast can respond, I’ll rejoin your two halves and have the benefit of your full powers, all in one glorious, immortal body.”
“I’ll kill you for what you d-did to Jesse, a-and everyone e-else. I swear i-it.”
He smiled and licked his pale, decaying lips with that disgusting gray-green tongue. “She felt every bit of it, you know. The agony you’re experiencing now? That’s nothing compared to the feeling of having your magic, your life essence, and your soul sucked out of your body all at once. Connected as I was to her at the time, I heard her in my mind, screaming for mercy and to make it stop. My only regret was that I couldn’t capture her soul—a pity, really. I could’ve tortured you both together, for eons. Now, wouldn’t that be romantic, hmm?”
“A-all this because a young girl wouldn’t love y-you. Y-you’re pathetic.”
“Ah yes, Sadhbh,” he croaked. “But as you’ll recall, I had my revenge. I always have my revenge.”
At this point I saw two of his dead, decaying, sneering face, and seeing one of that fucker was enough. It occurred to me that I was about to lose this fight before it had even begun, and that pissed me off almost as much as what he’d done to Jesse. I struggled to move, to attack him, to do something—but when I tried to get my bodies to respond, both refused. I was completely locked within the grips of the Dark Druid’s spell and Jesse’s magic.