SLEEPY HOLLOW: General of the Dead (Jason Crane Book 3)

by Gleaves, Richard

  Lightning lit up Valerie’s face. She scowled at Joey. “You knew this?”

  Joey looked terrible, caught in a trap. “Yes.”

  Jason raised a hand. “It wasn’t Mike’s fault. He’s a good guy. Why do you even care?”

  Valerie balled fists and whirled away, collapsing as if someone had cut her strings, ending the puppet show.

  Kate came up behind Jason and whispered, “Jason, they’re together.”

  “Who are?”

  “Valerie and Mike,” said Joey. “And she had no idea what he’d done, until you just told her.”

  “Valerie and Mike are a couple? Since when? Why didn’t somebody tell me? How was I supposed to—” Jason felt miserable, as if he’d just told a child that Santa didn’t exist. But this was worse. He’d just told his dear friend that her… lover… (really?) was a murderer. No. He hadn’t even told her. He’d blurted it out in her presence, without so much as a “this will come as a shock.”

  Valerie’s shoulders heaved. She hid her face in the corner. Jason took a deep breath. He went to her side, offering comfort. At the touch of his hand she whirled, her eyes now savage, and muttered an incantation. Something wrapped fingers around Jason’s neck, as if an invisible noose throttled him. He staggered backward, twisted, and fell to the stone floor, raising a cloud of thin dust.

  Valerie was trying to choke him to death.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  “Lightning Strikes”

  Jason writhed on the stone floor of the tower room, seeing spots before his eyes. The invisible noose kept tightening, ever tightening. Valerie had lost her mind to grief and outrage.

  Joey realized what was happening. “Stop it!” he shouted, stepping between his friends. “Stop! Yes, I should have told you. But you were happy. I liked seeing you happy! It’s not Jason’s fault! Let him go!”

  Valerie crumpled. Her hand dropped and the garrote vanished from around Jason’s neck. He rose to his knees, coughing and sputtering. Kate dropped to his side.

  “Mike’s no better?” Valerie groaned, her voice painful to hear. “No better than her?”

  “Than who?” said Joey.

  Valerie rose, intending to escape downstairs.

  Joey blocked her, holding out his arms. “Stop. Talk to us! We’re your friends.”

  “You’re not my friends! You let me—sleep with him—and love him—and worry for him—when the whole time—” She wiped her eyes. “I hope that—murdering bastard—rots in—”

  She let out a wail, as if stabbed in the heart with a pitchfork, and sank to the floor again. The group approached her, tentatively, as one nears an animal with a broken leg, trapped between fight and flight, baring its teeth in agony.

  “Mike doesn’t even remember,” Joey said.

  “That’s just what she said.” Valerie mimed gouging out her own throat with a car key.

  “Your mother?”

  “She pretends she doesn’t.”

  “I didn’t,” said Kate. “I didn’t remember anything that happened while I was possessed. God knows what Agathe made me do. I’d… have a little blackout and wake up wondering if I’d cut my finger on something… ’cause I had blood on my—” Jason reached for her, but Kate broke away. “Get off me! So if Mike deserves to rot in jail, I do too, right? Right? Is that what you think?”

  Valerie looked awful, wild and incoherent. “Yes! It’s a… moral failing.”

  Kate screamed curses at her.

  “Just calm down,” said Jason. “Everyone calm down.”

  “That poor girl,” Valerie said. “That poor Debbie girl. God! He could have killed m-me next.” She was reverting to her old self. The frightened, buzzing coward.

  Jason knelt. “It wasn’t Mike’s fault. Or your mother’s.”

  “Yes, it was. They were weak. They could have fought.”

  “No they couldn’t!” spat Kate. “You have no idea what it’s like. You’ve never been possessed.”

  “And you’ve never been—the victim.”

  Kate was furious. “Are you kidding?” Jason intercepted Kate before she could punch Valerie’s face. Joey snatched the grimoire up before Valerie could cast another spell and stuck it in his pocket.

  “Agathe’s to blame,” said Jason. “No one else. Period. We’re losing it here, people! Only we can stop her. So, are we going to freak out and scream at each other, or end the bitch?” He scowled at Kate. “Don’t you want to end her?”

  Kate took a last grim look at Valerie, and stared out the rain-lashed windows.

  Jason knelt at Valerie’s side. “Let go of it. You’re strong now. Forgive your mom. Forgive Mike.”

  “I can’t,” said Valerie. “Never. Leave me alone.”

  “We need you. We can’t stop her without you.”

  Valerie looked lost. “Then you can’t stop her. No one can stop her.”

  Jason felt completely helpless. He’d come to see Valerie as a guide and mentor. If she’d given up, who was he to say otherwise? Maybe it was for the best. Maybe evil wins sometimes, and the smart thing to do is to make your peace with it. To find your acceptance, even in the face of certain death. Sometimes we yell, “Geronimo,” and leap, and the parachute never opens. Valerie saw only the ground rushing up at her; she’d given in, unable to fashion wings and unwilling to ride the wind. But Jason could never do that. No. He refused to give up. No matter the nightmare, he would wake from it. He’d wake from it… somehow.

  “We have to try,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Joey. “Before we run out of Gifted people.”

  “What?” Jason looked over at him.

  “There’s only eighteen in the house—plus you and Kate—and she’s killed at least three already.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Joey scratched his head. “Oh. It’s… something I found out. Nothing, probably.”

  Jason sank to the floor, feeling grateful for any change of subject. “What do you know?”

  Joey raised an eyebrow. “Promise not to interrupt?”

  “Joey…”

  “Okay! The first guy, Darley? He worked for Mather’s hedge fund guys. He had a Gift. So did Debbie Flight. Her brother’s here. I met him and—”

  “That’s weird,” said Jason.

  “Very weird,” said Kate, at the window. “What are the odds?”

  “There was another one,” said Joey. “Rackham. Arthur Rackham. Died last November?”

  “The man in the woods?” said Kate.

  “The Hanged Man,” said Jason. “You said ‘Rackham’?”

  Joey nodded. “That’s what the guard in the—”

  “I know the Rackham family.” Kate turned to Jason. “I told you about my friend Jill, remember? The night I slept at your house?”

  “When?” said Jason.

  “Right after your grandmother passed—when I first told you about the Curse. My friend Jill who cursed her playmate?”

  “The girl with super-hearing? Yeah. Okay.”

  “Jill’s uncle was Arthur Rackham. They stayed with us once. He had the same Gift Jill did. Never could sleep because of the crickets, or because the faucet was dripping. A real pain.”

  “Didn’t you recognize him?” said Joey.

  “He was kind of upside down.”

  “And inside out,” Jason muttered. “So. Rackham, Debbie, Darley, Valerie.”

  “Only Gifted people?” said Joey. “That’s totally—”

  “Bizarre,” said Valerie.

  Jason stood, turning a circle, wringing his glowing hands. He was thinking of Agathe and her diary, of the last words the old witch had spoken before snapping the book closed. “‘No… ordinary… blood. Crap, crap, crap.”

  “You want to clue us in, Jase?” said Joey.

  “Agathe said no ‘ordinary blood’ would do to resurrect the Horseman. She needs Gifted blood. Gifted blood like Mother Hulda’s. It was… magic blood that made the Horseman. It’ll take magic blood to bring him back to
life.”

  “So?” said Kate.

  “So?” Jason pushed the hair out of his eyes. “So tomorrow night she’s gonna glut the millpond with Gifted blood. Where do you think she’s going to get it? Where are all the Gifted right now?”

  Kate understood. “Oh my God.”

  “They were in hiding,” said Jason. “She had to bring them out.”

  Kate covered her mouth. “She knew everything I knew.”

  “Including your father’s protocols.”

  Joey got it. “That’s why the homecoming massacre?”

  “It had to be something big to force a quarantine,” said Jason. “That’s why she attacked Sleepy Hollow Manor last spring. But that wasn’t… dramatic enough.”

  “To bring us here,” said Kate. “In one place.”

  “Without our Gifts,” said Valerie.

  Jason spread glowing hands. “It’s a trap.”

  “Nice of you to notice.” The three of them turned, searching for the source of the voice. Mather stood on the stairs, holding Zef by the elbow, a party of armed guards at his back.

  “This quarantine has barely begun!” said Mather, dragging Zef along. “And yet here you are, conspiring together, trying to escape, enlisting others to join you. I had thought at least—”

  “Mather!” said Jason. “Take the Gifted out of here. We were set up. Agath—”

  Mather gestured. A guard swung the butt of his weapon, striking Jason in the temple. Jason fell to all fours and blinked, his ears ringing.

  “I was speaking, Mr. Crane. Does anyone else wish to interrupt?”

  Joey came to Jason’s side and helped him to his feet. “You do need to work on that, Jase.”

  “Mather, you are so fired,” said Kate.

  “What was that?”

  “You can’t threaten me. Or my friends. I’ll tell my dad.”

  “You still think I work for your father?” Mather actually laughed. “And I thought you were a smart girl. In local Sleepy Hollow affairs, he’s in charge. But when it comes to the fate of our entire world…”

  “You are?”

  “No. But I’m a channel to the Elders.”

  Kate scowled. “What… Elders?”

  Mather looked the group over, his purple eyes shifting involuntarily: purple, cornflower blue, red, yellow. “I have authority here. None of you will last long in the Gifted world unless you learn obedience. I don’t care what happens in the outside world. I don’t give a damn about your normal parents or your normal friends, and neither should you.”

  “I thought we were locked up to protect them,” said Zef, with sarcasm. “All you care about is Paul’s election.”

  Mather scowled. “Back to your rooms.”

  “Go to hell,” said Joey, and the room began to shake. “We’re leaving. I can level this place. You know I can.”

  “Joey, don’t,” said Zef.

  Mather raised a finger, and one guard drew a bead on Joey. ““I would listen to him, rogue. You’re not bulletproof.”

  “You wouldn’t,” said Joey. The stones went still.

  “Why not? Young Jason here could heal you. A few bullet holes might be just the lesson you need.”

  “Joey’s dark to me,” said Jason, in case it changed Mather’s mind. It was a lie: he’d never read or healed Joey or Zef, or even Valerie—and if Kate was right, his coma had caused a reset anyway.

  “Pity,” said Mather. “We’ll shoot out his knees then. A fair compromise.”

  “What the hell is this?” Jessica appeared, ascending the stairs. She slapped the guard’s rifle down.

  Jessica? Jason shouted telepathically. Can you hear me?

  Her eyes shot to his. Not now.

  We’re all in danger. This was a setup. Agathe’s on her way.

  Why? thought Zef, joining the psychic conference call.

  She needs our blood. She’s going to—

  Mather stepped between Jason and his cousins. “What are you three saying to each other? I know you’re up to something.” Apparently the Gift-Catcher had some sensitivities that didn’t require touch.

  “Jason says we’re in danger,” said Jessica.

  “He’s right,” said Kate. “She’s coming. Agathe’s coming.”

  “Nonsense.” Mather spread his hands. “We have ample protection.”

  “There is no protection,” said Valerie, drawing her knees up. “Not from her.”

  “I’ve heard enough,” Mather said. “Jessica, put them in their beds.”

  Jessica hesitated. “What if they’re right? What if—”

  “Do it.”

  Jason pressed a palm to his cut temple, then held it out, red and slick. His Gift glowed through the blood, turning the room pink. “Agathe’s coming for us. For this. I swear.”

  Mather looked worried. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re perfectly—”

  “Sir,” said one of the guards, raising a hand.

  “What?” said Mather.

  “Forgive me for… interrupting. I wouldn’t unless it was—”

  “Spit it out!”

  “We’re, uh, getting calls. There’s a situation outside.”

  “What situation?”

  Kate went to the window and gasped. The others joined her, making little sounds of fear. Jason pushed his way through the group and touched bloody fingers to the wet glass. The next flash of lightning revealed the “situation.”

  A lone guard came hurtling toward the house, half running and half flying, flipping and bouncing like a black leaf in a hurricane, and behind him…

  … an army of scarecrows marched down the hill.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  “Scarecrow Invasion!”

  The guards opened fire, but their bullets merely chewed moth holes through the scarecrow bodies. Empty wet sleeves wrapped around strong necks and arms, cutting off oxygen. A couple of guards went face-down in the grass, either unconscious or dead. A flurry of Halloween masks whipped through the foggy air—a green witch and Casper, Freddy Krueger and Boba Fett, Nixon, Spider-Man and Leatherface—as if surveying the battlefield and directing the endless scarecrow troops.

  Brian Flight raised his rifle and blew Spongebob out of the sky.

  “They won’t get in,” said Mather confidently, turning away from the control room windows. He patted Abby’s shoulder as they watched the chaos on the infrared monitors, where red-and-orange humans wrestled the cold and unseen.

  “Sir?” Abby fiddled with her lip piercings, her green Mohawk gone limp with nervous sweat. “Why won’t they get in?”

  “We learned our lesson at Stone Barns. No manifests can enter here. Didn’t I order the thresholds to be salted?”

  Abby glanced at Madison, the grounds crew guy. “Uh, yes, sir. But—”

  “You did it, yes?”

  “Oh, sure. We laid down bags and bags of salt. Blue Thaw, Magnamelt…”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Well, sir… it’s been raining.”

  Mather straightened. His jaw dropped. Glass exploded somewhere below. He turned and hurried for the door.

  He threw it wide.

  And the mannequin monsters attacked.

  A cardboard box burst open in the vestibule, disgorging a dozen bird-nosed plague masks. The masks swarmed into the house, searching out the Gifted. Scarecrows shuffled through the smashed-out glass of the entry. Fake spider web veiled their vacant faces. They trailed rainwater and straw across the diamond-patterned marble, knocking over tables and vases, pitching a delicate urn to the floor with a sound like a popping light bulb.

  The scarecrow with the axe shattered the last of the vestibule glass. The ranks parted as a dark figure filled the jagged opening—and the Headless Horseman, his bare torso streaked with bloody war paint, rode red-eyed Gunsmoke across the threshold of Lyndhurst Manor.

  Zef turned from the tower window and shook Jessica. “You’ve got to let them go!”

  On Mather’s orders, Jessica had telepathically
ensnared the escapees. Kate, Jason, and Joey stood blank-faced near the eastern windows of the tower room, primed and ready to take commands, but Zef refused to let her touch them. She tried to pull away, but he held tight, as if to lose her now would be to lose her forever, as he’d lost his father.

  Jessica pointed at the floor, looking angry and scared. “Sit down. I have to do what Mather says.”

  “Why? You’re an adult!”

  “That’s why! I’m an adult. I need to think of our future, kiddo.” She touched her forehead to his, going telepathic. Now that Jason’s back, we’re broke again. So Mather and Paul are our… only…

  “Meal ticket?” Zef said aloud, glaring at her. He backed out of her psychic range.

  “If Paul throws us out,” Jessica cried, “what happens to us?”

  “We get over it! We get jobs! You’d hurt people? Just to stay on Paul’s good side?”

  “I can’t… sell popcorn again. You have no idea how people looked at me—like I was nothing. We could be a senator’s wife! Maybe First Lady!”

  Zef kept backing away, evading her thoughts, until he stood among his blank-faced friends. “You’re unbelievable.”

  Valerie hadn’t been snared, for she never let her guard down. “Hadewych was—right about you.”

  “Shut up, you cheese grater,” Jessica snarled.

  “You don’t—love anyone.”

  “I love Zef. I’m doing everything—”

  “Doing everything for me!” Zef punched the wall, wincing. “You sound just like Dad. Someone please tell me I’m adopted.”

  “What do you expect?” said Valerie. “From a woman who’d—abandon her own son?”

  “I said shut up.”

  “Who’d cheat on her husband?”

  “Can it!”

  Zef laughed mirthlessly. “Is she wrong, Jackie O?”

  Jessica looked at him with pained, glistening eyes. “No. She’s not. But I know what’s best now.”

  “No. You don’t! Not for me, not for this town! We have to fight our own battles!”

  As if to underscore his words, a chorus of angry shouts rose below, along with the sound of breaking wood and a few gunshots.