After a good thirty seconds had passed, Falconer said quietly, “What did you say?”
“I think you heard me right the first time, Mr. Falconer.” Off to the left now. Jess must be moving around in the dark, to keep the lich from getting a bead on her. Plus, she was on the other side of the dirt mound. Good tactics. “What kind of idiot buries his phylactery down in the same basement as his kidnap victims? A moron, that’s who.”
Just like that, the suave charm was gone. Falconer growled, low and primal,the sound of an animal whose young were being threatened.
“Put it down, child. Now. I will not ask you again.”
“Go jump off a cliff.”
The lich disappeared slowly into the darkness, looking for the oh-so precious container of his soul.
“Danny.”
“Huh?”
“Danny!” Becky hissed. I looked down, saw her nodding meaningfully at her wrists.
“Oh!” I began working on the knots, keeping one eye on the Dark Man; he was still in the doorway and not moving, obeying the last instruction from his master as slavishly as one of Asimov’s robots. The knots came undone in no time, and I moved straight on to the ankles while Becky flexed her throbbing hands in front of her.
“That’s it — the last one. Try standing up.” I held out a hand. Becky grabbed my forearm instead, using it as a fulcrum to come up and out of the chair. “How are you doing?”
“Hanging in there.” She stamped her feet, all the time looking around her into the darkness beyond the tiny circle of light thrown out by the bare bulb. Something hissed out there, something that sounded frustrated as all hell.
“Not everything’s going Lord Snotty’s way.”
“We need to get out of here.” Becky sounded resolute, none the worse for wear despite having been kidnapped and tied up like a prisoner from Gitmo.
“Not without Jess. Besides, we have to get past him first.” I nodded towards the doorway, where the Dark Man was…holy crap, if I hadn’t seen it, I would never have believed it. This supernatural shark, this avatar of dark and malicious spiritual power, was…fidgeting.
Footsteps scrabbled on dirt somewhere out there on the far side of the berm. I squinted, trying to make out just what exactly was going on out there, but it was pretty much pointless. If you’ve ever sat around a campfire late at night and tried to see which animal was making noise out just beyond the circle of light, you’ll know pretty much how I felt…though chances are that a pair of undead nasties weren’t gunning for you.
The roar was triumphant, and took us both totally by surprise. I practically jumped right out of my skin. It was followed almost straight away by a scream: Jessica’s scream. Then Falconer began to laugh, high-pitched and strident, the laugh of a lunatic.
“Not so cocky now, are you, you little shit.” The lich stepped into the firelight, holding a bucking and writhing Jessica to his chest in a bear hug. True to her word, she clutched a tiny human skull in one hand. She was obviously terrified, and fighting hard not to show it, but she couldn’t hide the emotion totally, and it was feeding Malachai Falconer more power.
Suddenly, I knew what I had to do.
“Becky, listen. I have to tell you something.” I took both of her hands in mine. She stared back at me, her eyes wide and bulging in disbelief. It was as though I was on fire, and not in a good way.
“Danny, this is hardly the time—”
“Oh yes it is. It is exactly the time. There’s no better time. Listen…there’s something I have to tell you. Something important, and it can’t wait a minute longer.” I half-expected her to chew me out for cutting her off — that was one of Becky’s hot buttons — but she let it go this time. I looked left. Falconer was dragging a still-struggling little goth tornado toward us. I shut him out, shut everything out: everything but Becky, and what I wanted, no, what I needed to say to her. “Listen, I know that I’ve been kind of a jerk lately—”
“No kidding,” she interrupted, but there wasn’t any harshness in her voice. I plowed on regardless.
“—and I’ve finally figured out why.” I took a deep breath. My hands were shaking, and it was nothing to do was cold; this basement was already warm enough to get me sweating from every pore. Becky could sense my nervousness, and actually gave my hands a supportive squeeze. I could have kissed her for that. If I’d been even a tenth as brave as my Dad, I would have done, right then and there, lich and Dark Man be damned. But I’m not my Dad. My courage has limits. So I did the next best thing.
I told her how I really felt.
The words came so freely and easily then, but I can’t remember even one of them now as I’m writing this all down. It was like a dam breaking, slow at first, the barrier coming down brick by brick, but then suddenly the whole darn thing went ka-blooey, and my feelings gushed out almost faster than I could articulate them. I told her that I had been afraid: afraid that she would leave me any time now, because what would a girl that beautiful see in a scrawny guy like me? Not when it seemed as if half the guys in school were paying attention to her, flattering and schmoozing her with an effortless confidence that I would never have, even if I lived to be a hundred.
Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and looking back on the past few weeks, I could see it all so freaking clearly now. My feelings for Becky were so much stronger than I ever realized, and they were eating away at me day and night. I was too scared to tell her how I felt, because that would have opened the door for rejection; no, so much better to drift along in the friend zone, because at least that way I wouldn’t have to ever hear those words that every teenager dreads hearing from the person that makes their heart pound like it’s having an attack. I just couldn’t take the idea of Becky smiling at me in that way she had, or even worse actually laughing, and telling me that hey, I was a great guy, and she really liked me a lot…as a friend.
It would have killed me.
So how did I handle it? Like an idiot, that’s how. I tried to hold her close and push her away at the same time. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She must have thought I was crazy (yeah, a smile and a nod of agreement — she had) but subconsciously, I was trying to force the issue, too scared to tell her how I felt and dreading spending the rest of our time together as nothing more than her friend. So I snapped at her. Undercut her when she talked. Became a living embodiment of the stereotypical moody teenager. All to try and break out of the zone, one way or the other. I just wanted the misery to be over, but I didn’t have the guts to step up and tell her how I felt—
Then she kissed me.
All the cliches you ever heard, came true. My heart skipped a beat: several, actually. Then I think it fluttered inside my chest, hard enough to put John Hurt’s from Alien to shame. The world all around us went away, just like that, replaced by the reality of an embrace that I had spent every night for the past few months imagining in exquisite, excruciating detail. I could feel her arms around me, and mine around her, the softness and warmth of her body pressed against. Her soft lips…oh my, those lips…
It felt as if I was drowning, or drunk, or drowning drunk, if that makes any sense. I didn’t want to come up for air, not now and not ever again. Every negative emotion that had built up a barrier between us both now dissipated, and that cruel wall came tumbling right on down. The only thing left in me was love: the kind of hopeless, uncontrollable love for Becky that made me want to scream it from the rooftops. It filled every cell in my body, from the hair follicles on my head down to the tips of my toes, filling everything in between with joy and warmth and life.
I knew then, with total and absolute certainty, that we were going to be together forever…and it made my heart sing.
Suddenly I was coming up for air. We separated. A terrible keening screech filled the air, echoing off the basement ceiling and grating my ears like the sound of nails on a chalkboard.
Malachai Falconer was screaming. Hands pressed to the sides of his head, the lich had dropped Jessica and seemed to be in terrible pain
. His knees buckled, and the stick-thin figure was bending over at the waist. This wasn’t a cry of anger: it was more the sound of a tortured soul giving vent to something agonizing that was tearing it apart.
“It’s the love,” Becky said, taking my face in her hands and turning it back toward her. “He can’t stand it. Our feelings are weakening him.”
She hugged me again, squeezing me tightly and pressing her cheek against mine. The lich howled as though he was being stabbed. Becky was right: expressing our feelings—
Wait a minute. Our feelings? I mouthed the words and she nodded back, smiling and going teary-eyed all at the same time. She felt the same way. Yes! I exulted, wanting to punch the air in victory. All this time, I had been living in fear for nothing .
Jessica was laughing, standing and pointing at Falconer as his body began to convulse. I saw what she was trying to do, but I put a hand on her shoulder and when she turned to look at me, shook my head in warning. Mockery wasn’t a positive emotional response. Becky and I had just started to cut off the lich’s air supply, and the last thing we wanted to do was turn it back on again. He seemed to be pretty much incapacitated, and looked as if he was trying not to puke. Not so badass now, huh?
“Danny, look out!”
The Dark Man hit me with all the force of a speeding truck. Becky staggered backward, her arms windmilling as she fought for balance. Whether he was acting on some kind of psychic order from his master, or purely upon instinct, really didn’t matter: it cleaned my clock just the same. I hit the dirt pile hard, the breath whooshing out of my lungs in one big gasp. Something hit me hard in the face, once, twice, then a third time. I could already feel my right eye beginning to swell shut. Falconer’s attack dog was hovering in the air in front of me, fixing me with a death’s head grin and drawing back an emaciated fist, ready to pop me again. Throwing up a fist to block, I winced at the bolts of pain shooting along the side of my face, running from the eye down to the jaw — but the blow never landed.
Instead, everything went quiet. Then it was broken by the sound of a child’s skull cracking against the back of a chair. It was still mostly-intact, but fragments of the half-smashed phylactery dropped onto the dirt floor of the cellar. Falconer howled again, but this time, it went up to a whole new level. Lurching upward to his full height, the lich staggered towards the three of us like a drunk spoiling for a fight. His eyes bulged out of their sockets, and his oh-so prim and proper face took on a look of desperation that would have been comical, if it wasn’t also so terrifying. Becky threw herself on the Dark Man’s back and started whaling on him, slamming her fists and elbows into his head and shoulders in a whirlwind of martial arts badassery.
The Dark Man snapped round, throwing Becky off him with a swat of one gangly arm. The love of my life sailed through the air until the dirt berm stopped her with a cringe-making thud. Then the tulpa turned its attention right back to me. I felt my nose break, twin streams of blood running down into my grimacing mouth. Another punch came in from the side, with what felt like enough force to crack the ribs there. Fighting hard to breathe, I spat a thick gob of blood out to clear my mouth. He hit me again right on my broken nose, and now I was competing with the still-screaming Falconer for the title of most agonized yelp of the night.
My eyes were tearing up, a reaction to the pain. I blinked them hard and fast, struggling to see clearly. Now it was Jessica’s turn. She might have been young, but man, that girl was fury personified. She had dropped the skull in the dirt. Its jawbone was hanging off at a sick angle, and a huge crack ran up the front of it from just beneath the nose and all the way up to the top of the skull. Instead, Jess had picked up the metal chair and swung it with as much force as she could muster into the tulpa’s back. He laid off me for a second, turning to loom over the young goth like a creature straight out of nightmare. Gamely, she swung the chair at him a second time. The Dark Man swatted it aside, sending it off to land with a thud somewhere in the darkness.
The tulpa floated toward her, bunching up his fists and pulling the right one back to strike. He was backing Jessica up against the big wall of mud. Just a few more steps to go, and she would be trapped.
Then somebody kicked the basement door in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“You really, really need to back away from my son.”
Mom wasn’t messing around. She was speaking along the barrel of what looked like a 9mm handgun, which was aimed squarely at the Dark Man. Standing next to her, just inside the doorway, was a second woman, who was also pointing a pistol at the tulpa, which had stopped what it was doing and was looking toward its cowering master. Falconer was now curled in a ball just outside the circle of lamplight, mewing like he had just been kicked in the nuts.
“Mom!” I don’t know if I was happier just to know that she was safe after all, or that she and her backup — whoever the hell that was — had arrived just in time to save the day.
“Honey, are you alright?” Her eyes never left her target for an instant, but her voice was full of concern.
“Yeah, Mom — I’m fine. But I think Becky may be hurt.”
“Becky, are you okay, dear? Because if you’re not, I can promise you that somebody is going to be very sorry for hurting you.”
Becky groaned, both hands pressing against the left side of her chest.
“I’m okay, Rachel.” Becky screwed her eyes up as she rolled slowly to her feet. “I might have cracked a rib, but I’ve been hurt worse at Krav Maga.”
“Me too, Mrs. Chill.” Jessica took three steps to her right, working her way warily around the Dark Man. He hissed at her, but didn’t make a move toward her. I didn’t know if guns could actually harm a tulpa, but I was betting that they were way more likely to be effective now that Jess had smashed its master’s philactery halfway to smithereens. I looked down at the spot where I’d last seen it. Oh crap, I thought frantically: it’s gone…
“That’s good,” said the woman who had come along with Mom. “Now as for you,why don’t you get your lanky butt away from these kids…before we see how good my aim is these days.”
I knew that voice. It was the lady from the hotel…what was her name? LaWanna. The one who had sneaked down here once with her friends and a Ouija board. Although I couldn’t make out much in the way of detail down here in the dark, her body language had changed from friendly and welcoming hotel clerk to gun-toting badass. Hey, I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side: that gun arm wasn’t even wavering.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” Mom sounded almost conversational, now she knew that the three of us were alright, but her voice was wavering just a little. I knew that waver well. It meant that she was on the brink of becoming super-pissed. “Danny, Becky, and Jessica are going to walk through this here doorway and go upstairs. Then LaWanna and I are going to follow them. As for you two psychos…you’re going to stay right down here and wait like good little boys for the cops to get here. Your only other choice is to see how quickly we can empty a pair of fifteen-round magazines into you both. My guess it, less than five seconds. Children, come on.”
Obediently, the three of us picked our way toward the doorway. Becky and I made sure that we kept out of their line of fire, but I had to gently push Jessica toward the wall to prevent her from crossing in front of Mom.
“Which one of you two clowns is in charge?” Mom demanded, her barrel sweeping from left to right and back again so that she could cover both the lich and the tulpa.
“That would be me, my dear Mrs. Chill. And may I say that it is so good to see you.” Falconer had somehow gotten to his feet, and despite the fact that the skull that had been carrying his soul was now spread in pieces all over the floor, suddenly seemed to be feeling better. Worse still, his right hand was holding the remains of his phylactery. The tiny little skull was glowing an angry red, almost as if it was bleeding sparks of light.
How on Earth had he begun to get his strength back?
Then it hit me.
“Mom—” I began, but she put her free hand on my arm and practically shoved me through the doorway at her back.
“Not now, Danny.” Mom’s blood was up, and she obviously wasn’t in a mood to listen to reason. “Get back upstairs. All of you. Now.”
“But Mom—”
“GO!”
She wasn’t taking no for an answer. Turning and grabbing the handrail, I made sure that Becky and Jessica were behind me, and then hightailed it up the staircase.
It was dark in the upstairs hallway. The Snare must have been empty by now, the last of the paying customers and volunteer actors would have gone home long ago. Becky already had her phone out — the time on it was 05:42 — and brought up the touch-pad.
“I’m going to call 911,” she explained, but no sooner had she said it than the phone shut itself down. Becky cursed. “Freaking battery! Danny, Jess, how are yours?”
We checked. Both our phones were dead. Battery drain was pretty common in haunted places; spirits liked to use the energy to help themselves manifest, and there’d been enough paranormal activity in the Snare of Souls tonight to drain a thousand cell phones.
“So what do we do now?” Jess wanted to know, looking at the two of us older kids for some direction. I opened my mouth to answer her, but Becky got there first.
“We run,” she said firmly. “We find the closest 7/11 or motel or anywhere with a light on, and we call the police.”
“Works for me,” I agreed. Nothing even close to a better plan was floating around in my brain right now. “This way.”
The double-doors that led outside were at the end of the long hallway to our left. To our right, the corridor dead-ended in a T-junction…and the chapel. I turned left, jogged my way down to the exit and grabbed the door handle. I cursed and rattled it.
Last Halloween (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 2) Page 20