Last Halloween (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 2)

by Richard Estep

  Alright, I thought, squaring my shoulders, let’s do this.

  It might have been the last thing I wanted to do in all the world, but Dad would have been proud of the way I marched my ass over there. Was I afraid? You’d better believe I wanted to be. But I slammed a lid down on that emotion the second it reared its ugly freaking head, forcing myself to concentrate on something else. I started thinking about plot of an episode of Star Trek, the episode from the first season that introduced the Romulans. It’s called Balance of Terror. If you haven’t seen it, then take it from me: it’s awesome. Mark Lenard guest-stars. He went on to play Spock’s father later on.

  I hadn’t gone any further than the Romulan Bird of Prey appearing for the first time, when I suddenly lost the plot…both literally and figuratively. I couldn’t focus on it any more. Becky’s face kept popping up in my mind and getting in the way. All I could think about was how badly I wanted her to be okay, and what would happen if she—

  That laugh again. Baiting me. Taunting me.

  It knew.

  It was inside my head. And it was taking strength from what it found there.

  Part of me wanted to get angry. Part of me wanted to be afraid. I had to be ruthless with both of those parts, or it was going to be the death of me. Well, death…or something worse.

  I went through that doorway without missing a step. I was proud of that, right at that moment, and I figured that was something I could use. Pride could be a weapon, and depending on how you dealt with it, it could work either for you or against you.

  I wanted it to work for me.

  Pushing all thoughts of Becky aside, I started to think about my Dad. I was proud of him, and I knew that after I had stood up to the psychotic spirit of a Nazi war criminal back at Long Brook Sanatorium, he was proud of me too. More than anything, I wished that he could be with me right now, backing me up. He wouldn’t have been scared of any lich. Dad had been USMC through and through. The lich would have been scared of him.

  Light from the fluorescents wasn’t getting any further than a couple of feet inside the entrance to what looked like a basement full of dirt: and when I say full, I mean full. The roof was maybe ten feet above my head, and the mound of soil reached almost to the ceiling. There was a dim glow coming from the other side of that huge mound of dirt, and I had to figure out a way to get there. Pipes ran along the wall to my left. I reached out and touched one, if for no other reason than a little comfort, and jerked my fingertips away when I felt how hot it was.

  I followed the pipe deeper into the dark interior of the basement, until it came up against the sloping mound of earth. Then I saw that the pipe cut sharply to the left. There was a corner, almost invisible in the darkness. I turned left, following the wall and being careful not to burn my arm. All the time I was thinking about Dad, and how proud of him I felt, how proud Mom had been—

  Mom.

  Oh, crap.

  The cackle told me that the lich really was feeding off my emotions. It came from the other side of the dirt mound, and got louder as a spike of worry for Mom broke its way past my guard. I struggled to keep a lid on it, but now my brain was turning traitor on me. It showed me visions of Mom being cornered by the dark spirits that worked for Falconer, helpless and alone there in the hotel room by the graveyard.

  No, not alone. Lamiyah had her back. And no matter how badly the world had treated her sometimes, I don’t think that Mom had ever had a helpless day in her life.

  “No!”

  Oh, yes. I felt the lich lose grip over me, just like that. A sense of warmth flowed through my entire body; not the heat of the basement, which was already making my shirt cling to me, but a kind of spiritual heat. I was suddenly convinced that everything was going to be alright. Following the wall further round, I made it maybe twenty feet before I found a break in the mound. A bare electric light hung down from the ceiling, the source of the glow that I had seen when I first came in. It cast a small circle of light on the concrete floor, and in the middle of it was a chair.

  Becky was sitting in it.

  Electrical wires looped around her wrists and ankles, tying her securely to the chair. A strip of grey duct tape had been slapped across her mouth to keep her from talking. Her face was covered with dirt and sweat, but she looked pretty much unharmed apart from that. When she saw me step forward out of the shadows, her eyes went wide with…what? Relief? Happiness?

  No. It was a warning.

  The Dark Man came out of nowhere; well, out of the shadows to my left, which was pretty much the same thing. He didn’t leap out at me like some movie monster though: no, this guy floated serenely without even moving his legs, moving about as fast as a senior citizen with a walker.

  When he stretched out his arms like he wanted to give me a hug, I danced backwards, moving to stand between him and Becky. I shuffled backward until I felt my heels scrape against the front of her sneakers.

  “Mmmmmmffff!”

  There was no way I was taking my eyes off the Dark Man, even for a second, so I reached back behind me with one hand and felt my fingertips brush against something soft and squishy. Whoops. That would be Becky’s nose. Well, it was a place to start, at least. I slid them downward to where her top lip ought to have been and felt something smooth and flat. The Dark Man was closing on me, less than six feet away now and grinning like a lunatic.

  Come on, damn it, come on! I could feel the cold sweat breaking out on my forehead. Searching frantically now, my fingertips finally found a corner of the tape and managed to tug it away from Becky’s skin just a little.

  I pulled.

  She screamed.

  “Danny, get out of—”

  I never heard the rest. The Dark Man suddenly lunged, and this time I wasn’t quick enough to get out of his way. His body was cold. He had locked his arms around my shoulders and dragged me toward him, burying my face in his shirt…which felt weird, by the way, not like any human-made cloth I had ever touched. It’s hard to describe, but the best I can do is to compare it to touching cold water: having my face jammed into the tulpa’s suit was kind of like sticking it into an unheated swimming pool, especially the way that it rippled across the surface of my skin.

  A wave of sickness swept over me, flooding straight from my head down to my feet. I suddenly wanted to puke so bad, I thought it was going to happen right then and there.

  “Enough.”

  There was a loud click, the sound of somebody snapping their fingers.

  Reluctantly, the Dark Man let me go. I wanted to turn around to face the owner of that voice, to square off against Falconer and finish this once and for all. Instead, I bent over at the knees and threw up all over the dirt floor.

  Falconer just stood there, right behind Becky’s chair, and let me do it. Slowly, I stood up and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth.

  “Feeling better?” the lich asked with fake sympathy.

  “I’ll feel better when you’re dead.”

  “Oh, how you wound me.” He flourished a hand up to cover his heart. “My dear boy, I already am dead, for all intents and purposes. Either that, or I am effectively immortal. To tell you the truth, one could look at it either way.”

  “I know what you are.” I took a step toward him. Then another.

  “Danny, be careful,” Becky said, her voice desperate. “He’s dange—”

  “Oh, do shut up.”

  “Shut up yourself, child.”

  The slap across Becky’s face was just hard enough to be humiliating, but it had to sting a little. It was also enough to make me see red. I could feel the anger starting to boil in the pit of my stomach, replacing that I want to puke feeling the moment I saw it happen. Now I wanted to plant a fist in that smug, pale face.

  Falconer must have been reading my mind, because he favored me with a knowing smirk. He straightened up to his full height, seeming to grow in stature by about a foot. Then I realized what was happening: I was feeding this jerk. He wanted me to take a swing
for him, because the rage that was making me feel that way was sweeter than the finest restaurant meal to him. As I got angrier, the lich was getting stronger.

  How had I let myself forget that? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “What do you want?” I demanded.

  “I’d have thought that much was obvious, young Daniel.” Falconer spread his arms out to his sides in a manner that said, hey — trust me, because I’m a reasonable guy! “I want you.”

  “Me?” I knew it already, but I’d seen enough 007 movies to know that sometimes the best thing for the good guy to do was keep his arch-nemesis running off at the mouth. It would buy me thinking time, which was something I desperately needed right now, and once Mom was safe, it would buy time for Lamiyah to maybe get here with the cavalry…if there was any cavalry.

  Besides, where on earth had Jess gotten to?

  “Yes, you. Allow me to explain…”

  “Go right ahead, Blofeld,” I muttered. The reference must have been lost on him because he just went on talking. Thanks for proving my point.

  “From the first time that I ever saw you, Daniel Chill, I knew that you were special. Only one in a hundred thousand souls possess the psychic powers that you do.”

  “Huh? Seers aren’t that rare, Falconer.”

  “True.” He extended a pointed finger, settling into lecture mode. It felt more than a little weird to get a lecture from a half-dead/undead/whatever-dead creature that was standing just inches away from the girl I loved most in all the world. “But the ability to perceive the spirit world isn’t all that special, in the grand scheme of things. Take it from me…I have lived for more than ten human lifetimes, and such parlor tricks are actually rather commonplace. No, in your case, the power runs far deeper — and blazes so much stronger — than you can possibly imagine.”

  I frowned. “There’s nothing special about me, Falconer. I’m just an everyday kid. I mean, yeah, I can see dead people, but I’m not exactly Dr. Strange.” I locked eyes with Becky, willing myself not to think about the angry red flush that marked one side of her face. Hang in there, I tried to tell her without saying a word, it’s all going to be okay.

  Don’t ask me how, but I somehow knew that it really would be.

  “I am not an unmerciful master, Daniel, nor even a particularly demanding one.” He gestured toward the Dark Man, who was standing silently between us and the basement doorway. The tulpa grinned inanely. “Our friend here likes to go for a little wander every once in a while, and who am I to stand in his way?”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet he has a killer social life.”

  “You would be surprised.” Falconer raised an eyebrow. “I was most certainly surprised when he returned to me late one night several months ago, and told me of what he had witnessed inside an abandoned old sanatorium named Long Brook.”

  What…the…

  “Oh yes.” His smile broadened now, probably because he was enjoying the look of disbelief that I must have been wearing. “I was there. Watching you from the shadows.”

  “Garbage. Von Spiessbach would never have let you on his turf.”

  “Von…oh, you mean the Teutonic psychopath? He had not the slightest idea of my presence. The surgeon may have been the ruler of the roost, as it were, but his powers paled in comparison to mine. And, as it turned out, to yours.”

  “I’m not buying a word of it.”

  “That is entirely your choice,” the lich shrugged. The sick feeling was back in the pit of my stomach, because in a way, I was starting to believe him. Don’t ask me why, but for the first time since I’d known this douchebag (which admittedly wasn’t very long) I was getting a truthful vibe. “Suffice it to say that I watched with great interest as you — with a little help from your father — not only survived the night, but also managed to liberate a significant number of earthbound souls. Really rather impressive, if I may say so.”

  That cinched it. How else could he have known that Dad had come back in spirit to help save my ass? Even Mom didn’t know about that. Only me, Lamiyah, Becky…I looked down at Becky, who gave a little shake of her head. Okay, so Becky hadn’t told him that little nugget.

  “If you’re such a big fan of mine, you might have helped out when things went to crap out there.”

  “But you were having so much fun on your own!” Falconer laughed, clapping his hands together and making Becky jump. She didn’t get far, thanks to the wire around her wrists and ankles. Falconer patted her condescendingly on the shoulder. “There, there, my dear. It shall soon all be over.”

  “You’ve got that right,” I said, with way more conviction than I actually felt.

  “But perhaps not in the way that you imagine, Deadseer. You and your young lady friend here cannot possibly think to get past myself and my companion there.”

  I realized that he hadn’t mentioned Jess, which meant that she had probably sneaked past him somehow. Maybe she had gotten out of here and was going to call the cops after all, despite what we’d said upstairs. Hell, I’d take pretty much any help now…Lamiyah’s most of all. Just so long as she made sure that Mom was safe though, I’d be okay.

  “So what is it that you want, exactly? I’m guessing that it’s to leech away my life energy for the next however-many years until I’m pretty much dry, am I right?”

  “No, you are not.” Well, that was a surprise. I was sure that was his gameplan. “I have a more than ample supply of sustenance here, thanks to the children who do so love to volunteer at the Snare of Souls. Aptly named, is it not?” He flashed me another fake smile, and I noticed that his eyes weren’t laughing at all. Or blinking. They were like a reptile’s eyes, and had about as much warmth and mercy in them as something that slithered on its belly.

  “Alright, then what?”

  “I know that your little Indian friend has traced my lifetime, Daniel. I sensed her doing it, though there was nothing that I could do to prevent it. After all, you know what it is that I am. And so I must presume that she has told you all about the manner of my birth…my second birth, into this new life of darkness.”

  I nodded. “Yes she did. I know all about your family; both your families. Neither of them ended well.”

  “You make a fair point.” Falconer’s face slackened and his grin became a little sickly, as though it was an effort to maintain it. “However, the third time’s the charm, as they say. The problem with my coven was that it lacked true leadership, you see, and that is why it failed. Such is nature’s way. The weak must give way to the strong, and they were all so much weaker than I.”

  “I can see where this is going. You want to start your own lich coven again. Here in Tyrant’s Grove. And I’m guessing that you want me to be a part of it.”

  “Precisely! But not just you, my dear boy…” His eyes drifted meaningfully down towards the top of Becky’s head. “You see, I really do need the complete set…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Oh no. No. Freaking. Way! You leave her out of this!” There it was again: the anger. I willed myself to calm down. Falconer was playing me like an expert, letting me calm down and then dialing up the anger again.

  The instant that I raised my voice, the Dark Man began to glide forward. Falconer held up a hand to stop him.

  “I did rather hope that you would do this willingly,” the lich said, sounding oh so very Britishly disappointed, “but if you simply must refuse to listen to reason, then we are more than capable of taking what we want by force. It will be less efficient that way. Messier, if you will…but the end result shall be basically the same.”

  “I’ll never join you!” It was a total Luke Skywalker steal, but I’d watched Empire Strikes Back so many times by now that I knew practically every line off by heart — and sometimes one of them would jump out of my mouth when it fit the situation.

  “You’re not exactly giving him much incentive to play ball,” Becky added. I saw that she was trying to bend back her right hand and work at the wires looped around her wrist. S
he was keeping it as slow and under-the-radar as possible, but didn’t appear to be having much luck unfastening the loops.

  “She’s right,” I agreed. “I’ll tell you what. Let Becky go, and I promise to consider it.”

  “There’s not much in that particular deal for me,” Falconer chuckled, in a voice that was no longer silky smooth. “I shall have both of you anyway, whether you choose to cooperate or not. And as for your incentive, well, let me think…” Touching two fingers to his chin, the lich tilted his head back, putting it almost totally in shadow. “Join me as founder members of my new family, and I shall promise not to extend the same invitation to your really rather delectable mother.”

  Just like that, I went cold as ice.

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Try me.”

  He would dare. I knew it, and what’s more, he knew that I knew it. Dammit, Lamiyah, what was taking you so long?

  “I’ve got a better deal for ya.” The voice came out of the darkness behind him. Falconer turned to look, and even Becky turned her head as far as she could and squinted to try and make out the source of that very familiar voice. “How about you let both of them go, and I don’t smash this thing that I’m holding.”

  “Who are you?” Falconer demanded, taking a pair of tentative steps forward into the darkness. “Who’s there?”

  “My name isn’t important,” Jessica said, her voice coming from even further away and off to our right now. She had moved pretty quickly after speaking the first time, unless the acoustics down here were really jacked. “What’s important is this: you’ve been very, very stupid, Mr. Falconer.”

  “Oh, I do rather think that it is you who have been stupid, young lady.” He gestured toward the Dark Man, who floated soundlessly over toward the door and slammed it closed, then planted himself squarely in front of it. Great. That was our only way out. “Now there is no way that you shall leave here alive.”

  “Then I guess I’ll just hang out down here…along with this kid’s skull that I found.”

  Everything went silent, just like that. All I could hear was somebody breathing hard. Then I realized it was me, and willed myself to slow it down.