“I agree.” I was relieved that Gorrcon wouldn’t be able to summon anything from Tarth, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t raise the dead on Earth, and if he did that, it would be a freaking disaster.
I couldn’t even imagine how the news channels would treat such an event, and the image of Anderson Cooper’s faux concerned scowl as he stared at a reporter surrounded by zombies made me laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Becka asked.
“Nothing. My mind is telling me jokes.”
Eva continued. “Gorrcon will find somewhere he can work from. Necromancy takes an incredible amount of magic, and it will take him time to perform the ritual.”
“What is his goal?” I asked Scarlett.
She shrugged. “What his goal has always been; cover the world in darkness. He will raise an army of undead and try to conquer the world.”
“Then we need to get to him before he gets his roots in.” I grabbed my phone off the charger and looked up all the cemeteries around Lake George. There were nearly a dozen. I zeroed in on the golf course, and found three within five miles.
“What is that?” Eva asked when she joined me on the couch.
“A smartphone.”
She stared at me blankly.
“It makes it possible to speak to someone far away, even on the other side of the world. It’s also full of other information.”
“Like what?”
“Like everything.”
“Magical,” said Eva, eyes twinkling with wonder.
“Not sweeeet!” Doughboy yelled into the mic of the gaming headset. He sat on the edge of the recliner with a PS4 controller in his hands. He was playing Call of Duty, and he was kicking major ass.
“There are a bunch of cemeteries around here,” said Becka, who was on her phone as well.
“We should check out these three near the golf course first.”
We finished our meal and got ready to head over to Becka’s place. The girls put their clothes back on, and I realized how much Eva and Scarlett stood out in their Tarthian garb. But if we got pulled over by a cop, I could tell them we were headed to a medieval fair or something.
I cringed when I saw my car again. It was all dinged up, with a smashed front window and a big gash across the roof.
“Poor baby,” I said, patting the dashboard gently.
The girls filed in, and Doughboy followed, eyes glued to the Nintendo 2DS he must have grabbed from the living room.
We drove across town to Becka’s place. She lived in her parents’ old house. They’d moved to Florida five years ago and left her the place, which was an old two-story home built around the turn of the twentieth century. Another thing her father left her was the bulk of his gun collection, which ranged from handguns to hunting rifles. There were even a few semi-automatics. He was a retired cop and avid hunter, which made the arsenal less alarming than it might have been.
Becka kept the guns in a pair of huge safes behind a false wall in the bedroom. I helped her load them into a hockey bag, amazed at how much firepower there was.
“You think you’ve got enough weapons?” I asked with a small laugh.
“Can you have too many when facing a frigging warlock?” She tossed in hundreds if not thousands of rounds of ammo, practically cleaning out the safes. Her father had a bunch of holsters, and she offered me one.
“Thanks,” I said. I had my pizza shovel, but hey, it wouldn’t hurt to have a gun on me, and I’d fired enough of them on our last few dates to have gotten comfortable using them. I wasn’t a bad shot either.
Becka gave me a Glock and a box of ammo, then she holstered her twin Desert Eagles and loaded her extra ammo slots with clips. There were about ten other handguns in the bag, two rifles, a pump action shotgun, and even a small machine gun.
“Can I have one?” Eva asked.
“That’s probably not a good idea until I can show you how to use one,” said Becka.
Doughboy reached for my gun like a toddler begging for a toy in Walmart.
“No way, dude,” I said.
“Not sweeeet!” he complained and crossed his arms, pouting.
“You’re badass enough without guns,” I said. “You’re friggin’ magical, and your skin heals wounds. Guns would be overkill.”
He didn’t like it, but he was going to have to get over it.
We loaded all our stuff into the back of Becka’s jeep, then set the GPS for the nearest cemetery. It was almost two in the morning by that time, and while I should have been tired, the excitement of the hunt had set in.
Becka took the wheel, and Doughboy sat between the girls in back, eyes glued to his video game.
“Will your magical phones show us where Gorrcon is?” Scarlett asked from the backseat as we pulled out.
“No,” I said, trying not to laugh. “But they’ll lead us to the cemeteries where he might be. With any luck we can get to the bastard before he starts any trouble.”
Becka connected her Bluetooth and cranked “Dragula” by Rob Zombie. The girls shouted approval, and when Becka peeled out, they cheered.
We drove to the closest cemetery, and I let Doughboy run free with instructions not to engage Gorrcon if he saw him but to quickly report back to me. Becka drove around it a few times, but we saw nothing, so we moved on to the next one.
By the time three o’clock rolled around, we’d searched three cemeteries and hadn’t seen Gorrcon. I was starting to feel like we might have lost our shot.
“Let’s check the next one in south Lake George,” I said.
“Don’t worry, Jake. We’ll find him,” said Scarlett and rubbed my shoulder from the backseat.
“I hope so, because if not, it’s going to be a real shit show.”
As we drove south through town, I noticed a sheriff parked on a side street. I watched him out of the corner of my eye and in the side mirror after we passed, but he didn’t take any interest in us.
“Up here, you’re going to take the next left,” I told Becka, but she wasn’t listening. She was staring at the sky.
“Jake?” She pointed at the distant hills straight ahead.
A thin beam of light was shooting straight up into the air through the trees.
“That must be him,” said Eva.
“There’s no cemetery up there,” said Becka and turned onto the road that would take us there.
“No,” I said. “There’s no cemetery there. There’s something worse.”
Becka’s eyes widened with realization. “Bloody Pond.”
“What is Bloody Pond?” Eva asked.
“It was one of the sites of the Battle of Lake George,” said Becka.
“They say that over three hundred men died there,” I said. “Their corpses were rolled into the water, giving it the name Bloody Pond.”
“Not sweeeet.”
“I agree, D. But that was a long time ago. I doubt there are actually any bodies there.”
“The bodies of the dead are not needed.” said Eva. “The soldiers’ spirits escaped their bodies, which creates a kind of portal. Through it Gorrcon can pull the restless dead.”
“Great.”
Becka killed the headlights as we drew closer to the pond. There was a bike trail behind it, and I told her to park next to it. I got out. The thin green beam pierced the clouds, and the echoed chant of Gorrcon could be heard in the wooded area beside the road.
“Let’s make this quick.” I moved to the back of the jeep with Becka. She handed me a shotgun, and I loaded rounds. “We need to take out Gorrcon before he starts summoning the und—”
A cackle sounded in the distance, followed by ghoulish moans.
“Too late,” said Becka, cocking her shotgun.
“Doughboy, I need you to—put that damn game down!”
He glanced at me fleetingly, his attention on the game.
I swiped it out of his hands. “Keep the ghouls or ghosts or whatever the fuck he’s summoning away from us.”
“Sweeeet.”
> “The rest of us will hit Gorrcon with everything we’ve got and take the bastard out once and for all. Eva, how’s your connection to Celesta?”
“Weak,” she admitted.
“Take this,” I said, handing her a shotgun. I showed her how to use it, and warned her to keep her finger off the trigger unless she meant to fire and to keep the barrel pointed away from the rest of us.
“Arise, children of death!” Gorrcon bellowed.
“Let’s send this creepy fuck back where he came from.”
We followed the bike path, which moved away from the road, through the trees and behind the pond. The thin green light had been replaced by a deep emerald glow, and the illuminated pond churning like boiling pea soup.
We came to a grassy area beside the pond. It was small, perhaps a hundred feet long and nearly as wide. I motioned the girls to hunker down with me behind foliage and pressed a finger to my lips. Gorconn was at the end of the pond on my right. His arms were spread wide, sending green energy snaking into the water. There were already ghouls slogging to shore, looking like extras for the Walking Dead. The ghouls wore 18th-century garb, except for the Mohawks, who wore their signature attire, rotted and ragged as it was.
Opposite the pond was Highway 9, along with a few businesses and homes, and I didn’t want the ghouls going that way.
“Ready, Doughboy?” I asked.
He nodded determinately and punched his palm with the opposite fist.
“Give ’em hell.”
He raced along the bank toward Gorrcon. The warlock hissed and turned a glowing hand, but Becka and I popped up and fired at him. Her Desert Eagle barked like a cannon, but Gorrcon had enabled some kind of energy shield, which absorbed our bullets on impact.
He released a bolt of green energy at Doughboy, but my nimble friend ducked behind a French ghoul, whose head exploded when the bolt hit him. Doughboy’s extremities shot out like Spiderman’s webs, and he pulled the ghouls toward him and ate faces.
I led the charge, hacking and slashing the ghouls with my pizza shovel as they emerged from the water. Gorrcon thrust a clawed hand forward, squeezed it into a fist, and raised it above his head.
The ground glowed bright green, and a fetid fog rose. Skeletal hands burst from the soft earth and groped our legs and feet as we went by. One got hold of my ankle, sending me to the ground.
Becka blew the arm to pieces and pulled me to my feet. Scarlett covered us with her bow, exploding heads with her enchanted arrows and trying to get a shot off at Gorrcon. Eva blasted ghouls with her shotgun, which nearly put her on her ass every time she used it. For a neophyte, her aim was pretty good and she had spirit to burn.
I redoubled my efforts as I went into a lethal martial arts routine. A Mohawk zombie charged me with twin hatchets gleaming in the moonlight. Becka blew one of his arms off, and Scarlett’s well-placed arrow hit him in the chest. His rotten carcass exploded, but there were five more behind him.
A swing of my pizza shovel cut one in half. Another swing took the legs of a third. Guns barked, arrows sang, and the ghouls fell in heaps on the muddy bank.
But they kept on coming.
Our advance around the pond was slowed by another wave of dead soldiers and Mohawk warriors. Doughboy was tying them up as best he could, but there were just too damn many of them.
“Celesta! My goddess, my savior, lend me your strength!” Eva raised her arms skyward, but nothing happened.
“Take that fucker out!” I yelled at Scarlett as I frantically cut down the advancing horde.
Becka stood beside me, twin guns blazing.
One of Scarlett’s arrows hit the ground by Gorrcon’s feet. A ball of fire consumed him, and for a moment the ghouls wavered.
That was all I needed.
I charged through the stunned ranks, found Gorrcon in the smoke and fire, and swung for the cheap seats. He raised a hand to release energy, but my blade cut through his defenses, severing the arm at the elbow.
Gorrcon howled and reeled back, and I swung again.
This time he got a shot off, and a bolt of energy hit my pizza shovel and sent it flying out of my hands. I pulled my Glock, aimed it at his heart, and unloaded the entire clip. To my dismay, my bullets were absorbed by his glowing green energy shield.
He grabbed me by the throat and raised me into the air with ease.
“Come to bring me more blood for a new portal?” His fetid breath washed over me, and in that moment I was glad that I could hardly breathe.
He raised his bloody stump to my face, and to my horror, the bone grew back. He trailed a skeletal finger across my cheek, and it felt like he was cutting me with a woodburning tool.
“Your blood will open a portal between our worlds that shall never be closed, and soon I shall—”
“Sweeeet!” Doughboy suddenly grabbed onto Gorrcon’s face and wrapped his arms and legs around his head.
Gorrcon dropped me, and I scrambled to find my pizza shovel.
“Jake!” Becka tossed it to me as ghouls pulled her to the ground.
Gorrcon finally ripped Doughboy off his face and threw him into the pond, where ghouls dragged him underwater.
“Doughboy!” Eva yelled.
I swung my enchanted blade at Gorrcon’s head, but he raised a hand and stopped it in mid-air. Eva leapt into the pond after Doughboy, Becka ran out of bullets, and Scarlett’s bow was ripped from her hands by a Mohawk zombie.
Gorrcon sneered as he began to overpower me, and I was forced to one knee under the weight of his defensive spell. He practically held my enchanted blade in his hands, bearing down on me with my weapon.
The ghouls had taken the girls prisoner, and they gathered around their master, seething with demonic glee and watching with glowing green eyes as I was driven to the ground.
“Celesta, please!” Eva cried.
I desperately looked for something, anything that would help, but we were out of options. I noticed a ghoul standing beside me wearing the remains of what I assumed was a general’s outfit. His skin hung from him in strips, but there were human eyes behind the energy glow.
“General!” I barked, and he cocked his head ever so slightly.
“This man has invaded our world. He wishes to spread darkness and death.”
The ghoul glanced at Gorrcon, then back at me.
The warlock cackled wetly and pressed down on me harder, driving me onto my back and nearly chopping my head off. I pushed back on the handle of the pizza shovel, the blade three inches from my neck.
“You were all once human. Mohawk, French, or British, you all once loved another, perhaps a wife or a child. Your ancestors now thrive in this world, and your master wishes to kill them all!”
The general frowned, but Gorrcon only laughed louder. He pressed the blade to my neck, and I knew I was fucked six ways from Sunday.
Eva cried again to her goddess, but no miraculous lightning tore through the air.
Becka struggled defiantly against her captors, but it was no use.
Scarlett got a hand free and stabbed one of the ghouls, but the blade was torn from her hand.
“With your death, I shall trap your soul and make you the gatekeeper of the portal between worlds,” said Gorrcon. His breath nearly made me vomit.
The blade pressed harder against my skin, but no matter how hard I pushed back, I couldn’t bench-press the psychotic warlock.
Despite my bleak situation, I growled defiantly at him. “You will never have this world!”
“Oh, but I already do—”
Gorrcon’s words were cut short when a fist protruded from his chest. He let up on my pizza shovel as he looked down at his oily heart, held by a ghoul’s hand.
I rolled out of the way, bringing my pizza shovel with me. The general stood behind Gorrcon with his entire arm up to the elbow in the warlock’s back. The general ripped his hand back, bringing the heart with it.
Gorrcon’s breathing became worse than a two-hundred-year-old chain-smoker, and he
dropped to his knees, staring at his bloody hands. The general glanced at the other ghouls, and they slowly released my girls. He tossed the heart on the ground in front of me.
“Thanks, General.” I turned my pizza shovel, swung it over my head, and slammed it down sideways, smooshing the blackened heart to a pulp.
The howl that escaped Gorrcon was otherworldly, and he turned to ash before our eyes. The ghouls started disappearing as well. The general was the last to go, and I saluted him as he faded.
. Becka ran into my arms. Eva and Scarlett, however, jumped into the pond, and I remembered Doughboy was still in there.
I waded into the water as Scarlett and Eva turned toward shore, carrying Doughboy. He wasn’t all soggy and stringy, like he’d gotten the last time he’d fallen in water; he was green and sickly looking.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked as they laid him on the grass.
“It’s some kind of curse,” said Scarlett.
“The water was green and glowing with weird magic. Maybe it poisoned him,” said Becka.
“We need to get him back to Tarth,” I said, looking at Eva.
“I’ll try to contact her,” she said, looking apprehensive.
“What’s up? Can you do it or not?”
“I don’t know, Jake.” She started crying. “I may have used the rest of her power.”
“Maybe we should go to Romano’s,” said Becka. “There’s got to be some kind of residual intergalactic magical juju there.”
“Good idea.” I scooped up Doughboy. “Let’s get moving.”
We arrived at Romano’s at half past three, but the cops were there. Someone must have called about seeing a bunch of witches leaving the place earlier. Now that things had cooled down, I saw the full extent of the damage.
The front window had been smashed, and the outside of the building was scorched. The door had been blown off and taken the frame with it, and the sign was half destroyed and flickering weakly.
Needless to say, Romano’s would be closed for a while.
“Shit, we’re never going to be able to get in there,” I said as Becka crawled past the place.
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