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

by Gleaves, Richard

  The bridge was made. The true Headless Horseman Bridge.

  The Horseman galloped furiously. A wind rose. The trees shook. Then, with a laugh like a thousand axes chopping the wood of the haunted forest, a laugh of triumph and release, he stretched out his arms, scarf held high and rippling like a banner. The hooves of Mitternacht struck the boards. Rider and horse thundered onto the bridge, and as they reached the very center, just above the capstone, they bounded into the October air, hanging there, caught in a moment of ecstasy.

  A pinpoint of light opened in space. It broke wide, like a shattering window. The form of the Horseman—the sticks and leaves and ash and stones of Sleepy Hollow—burst apart with a deafening crack of cannon fire. A blast of heat and light threw Jason and his friends to the ground. The stones of the bridge burst apart like a strike of ninepins, streaking across the water and splashing into the sky, and the bridge was broken once more.

  In space above the Pocantico hung a tiny red light. A firefly. The soul of the Horseman. It burned among the constellations, like the planet Mars, or a cinder risen from a fireside tale…

  … and winked out.

  Jason walked down the shore, exhausted, and gathered his friends. He and Joey and Kate and Zef sank to the ground as one.

  They held each other, and wept.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  “The Kiss”

  “The skull!” cried Kate.

  The explosion of the bridge had shaken the abutment. The glowing skull went clattering past, pitching and somersaulting. Jason tried to grab it, but it leapfrogged his outstretched hand and flew into the river, its glow dissipating.

  “Damn it!” Jason saw a flash of white bone roll through the water. “We have to get it.”

  “Let it go,” said Joey.

  “After all the trouble it’s caused?” Jason sighed. “Somebody could bring him back.”

  “I got you. But I need to get Zef out of here.”

  Zef had begun sobbing again. The fate of his father was finally sinking in. “I’m sorry. I’m useless right now. But…” He tapped his temple. “Mom says the fighting’s over. Everybody’s awake and the ambulances are coming.”

  “I can hear her too,” said Jason.

  Kate kissed Zef’s cheek. “You’re not useless. You go on. Jason and I will find the skull.”

  Zef stood, leaning on Joey, and they turned to go.

  “One question?” Jason caught Zef’s sleeve. “Why did you do it, man? Not that I’m complaining, but… why did you save my life?”

  “Van Brunt motto,” said Zef. He clasped Jason’s forearm and pulled him close, into a hard hug. “Look to family.”

  They touched foreheads, sharing a quick psychic handshake. And that was that. Joey led Zef away, up the slope, slipping an arm around his boyfriend’s waist. Just as they vanished into the woods, Jason heard Joey say to Zef, “Oh my God. You are so Sleeping Beauty.”

  Jason turned and reached for Kate. She melted into an embrace, her body warm against his. They stood like that for a moment, her cheek to his chest, his lips to her hair.

  “Do you remember?” he said.

  “No. But… I have blood on my hands.” She knelt and washed herself. “I’ll be okay. Really. I feel like myself. It was all her. Not me. I’ll deal.” Jason felt astonishment to have her back again, safe. What if Hadewych and Agathe and the Horseman were actually… gone? He wouldn’t have to fear for her any longer, only to love her, and do what he could to deserve her. That would be… a miracle.

  “Get to searching,” she said, striding into the water, the wedding dress rippling in the current. “The skull’s probably gone by now.”

  Jason followed with a sigh. He’d never be dry again. They picked their way from stone to stone, feeling around them. Kate ripped the train of her skirt off and let it spindle away, leaving her in a white mini-dress with lots of leg showing. She occasionally called for Jason’s light to search some crevice between the boulders. But Jason had trouble concentrating on the search. All he wanted to do was look at her. They were very… conscious of each other, getting in each other’s way, catching each other in little grins. Making eye contact and glancing away hurriedly.

  “Quit doing that,” Kate said with a smile.

  “What?”

  “Lurking upstream and checking me out.”

  “I am not.”

  “Don’t give me that, Mr. Innocent. Trade places with me. It’s my turn to watch you bend over.”

  “Oh yeah? Fine.” Jason lumbered past her, taking a downstream position, making a great show of industrious searching for her benefit. He hitched up his sodden sweatpants and searched the water. “How’s the view?”

  “Fine. It’s not a bad butt, actually.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “I call ’em like I see ’em. You find our friend yet?”

  “Actually… yes! There he is.” The skull sat at the edge of a deep pool, wobbling back and forth with the current. He braced himself, bent, and brushed it with his fingertips. It was close, but he couldn’t find a place to stand among the slippery boulders. “I can get him if you brace me.” He reached again. “Damn. I almost had it. Kate? Get over here, I need you.”

  A strong hand seized the back of his neck and brought him down hard, slamming his head against a half-submerged stone. Jason cried out and swallowed river water. Hands flipped him onto his back. Someone had him by the neck and was holding him under. He struggled and fought. He broke the surface, and his light revealed Kate, both hands around his throat, her expression vicious and wild.

  “You stole my Horseman!” she screamed. “You stole my love!”

  Oh, God. Agathe had taken her again. Jason could see the witch in her eyes. Wrathful, murderous, and insane. But how?

  Then he realized: yes, their plan had worked. They’d put Agathe under the Horseman’s dominance. But now, thanks to Jason… the Horseman was gone.

  “Damn it!” Jason shouted, but it came out as bubbles. She had pushed him under again. He couldn’t breathe. His hands searched the riverbed, found a stone. He could bring it up, crack her skull with it, but… No. He couldn’t hurt Kate. Even if she killed him. Agathe couldn’t make him do that. He refused. He opened his hand and let the stone fall away.

  Agathe muttered an incantation and Jason flew into the air, out of the river, and struck a tree. He fell hard to the ground. She strode against the current, her lips curling in a snarl. He tried to run, but a vine snatched his leg and pulled him back. She thrust an arm into the water and raised the hatchet he’d thrown away.

  “Is it you?” she said, rising from the black water. “Did Hulda mean you?”

  “Is what me?”

  “Are you the Necromancer?”

  Jason’s mind raced. The idea shot through him like a bolt of electricity. Could it be true?

  “You raised that boy from the dead! How?” She whispered a spell, lifting Jason off his feet, dangling him upside down, like the Hanged Man. Blood rushed into his face. “Answer!” She hurled him aside. His head hit the ground and he thought for a moment he’d broken his neck.

  Jason struggled to his knees. “It’s my Gift! It’s just another use of my Gift.”

  “Ichabod’s Gift?” she said, contemptuously. “How could a schoolteacher’s Gift raise the dead? What did I miss?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She straddled him, hatchet high. “‘By my blood a necromancer shall be born!’ That’s what she said. By my blood, not Ichabod’s!” Her eyes widened and her mouth worked as if she’d forgotten her teeth. “By my blood…” She groaned. “My blood in the slough… My blood in the slough made Ichabod a Founder!”

  A ghostly laugh cackled from the shadows. The laughter of Mother Hulda, the witch of these haunted woods.

  “No one laughs at me!” Agathe shouted into the dark. “You knew, didn’t you, meine schwester-hexe? You knew! My blood made this boy’s Founder! My descendants tested him!” She shook the hatchet at the
sky. “It was a Van Brunt he raised! ‘By my blood’! Oh, you clever bitch!” She brought the hatchet down, sinking it into the flesh of a nearby tree. She drew close—Kate’s beautiful face distorted by pure hatred. “You will use that power for me, boy.” She struck the logo on his chest with a brutal fist. “You will bring my Horseman back!”

  “He didn’t love you,” Jason spat, hoping to hurt her with words. “He had a wife! A little boy! You were just some naked slut on a rock.”

  “Liar!” She beat his head against the ground. “He wanted me!”

  “He spat in your face!”

  “I will have my kiss! I will have my satisfaction! You will drag him back from heaven or hell, or I will gut you here and now.”

  “Fight her, Kate!” Jason screamed.

  Agathe grinned. “Kate is gone.” Her hands closed on Jason’s throat. “I will give you one chance. Give me your answer or join her in death.”

  The shadows closed in. Jason’s light dimmed. He was losing consciousness. He could only shake his head and whisper, “I love you.”

  Somewhere inside Kate Usher, a tiny light awoke. It fluttered in the dark, blinking, feeling forgotten and lost.

  Jason’s voice echoed down to it. “I love you.”

  “I love you.” She’d heard those three little words before.

  “I love you.” It’s easy for people to say. It’s just a shallow phrase, with no depth to it. The last “I love you” that had echoed all the way down to this dark and lonely spot in the furthest reaches of Kate’s soul had come from Sophia Usher on her deathbed. That was the last “I love you” before Mama’s cancer took her. Had this void been open ever since? Her father had said “I love you” a thousand times, but Paul Usher had some master plan, and his daughter would be sacrificed to it if necessary. Zef had said “I love you,” but she’d had doubts about him, too, knowing instinctively that he was holding back—for some unfathomable reason—that he, too, had some empty place in his soul, a place she couldn’t reach, a similar wound they recognized, one that made them friends, but one that neither could heal for the other, for neither was the “I love you” the other needed to hear.

  Jason had said those words, many times, but his “I love you” couldn’t be real, not if they barely knew each other. Could it? Could it?

  It is real, she thought. It is possible. As ludicrous as that might sound. Love at first sight is real, sometimes, if you can let yourself believe in it. What are you thinking, Kate? Love is right in front of you! Jason’s not the skeptic. No. Jason was the believer all this time. You are the skeptic. You’re the one who can’t believe in magic. But magic is real, sometimes. Love is real.

  “You want your kiss?” Kate shouted, breaking to the forefront and crying out with her own voice. “You want your perfect kiss, Agathe? I’ll give it to you!”

  Kate bent and kissed Jason Crane. She kissed him as she’d never kissed anyone. Like she’d never kissed Zef, or any other boy. She kissed him with her full body, with her full soul, mind, and heart, her fingers linking with his. Agathe writhed and screamed down in the dark, but that perfect kiss could not be broken.

  Jason and Kate had coupled again.

  They coupled as they had on the night of the Spirit Dance. Their palms pressed, past and future, yesterday and tomorrow. A golden energy rose from him, rushing up to gather between their palms, hot and bright and powerful. So powerful. Oh, we are so powerful together. And with a rush of clarity and a ripple of light, Kate borrowed Jason’s Gift, and looked into the past… into the Spirit World.

  She sees a flash of red velvet, a glimpse of some ancient terror. Jason on an embalming table, herself at her mother’s bedside. “No one loves me!” cries little Kate Usher.

  But Kate didn’t believe that. Jason loved her.

  Kate broke the kiss and looked into Jason’s hopeful eyes.

  “I love you back,” she said.

  Their energies roared between them, all her lost magic, the Gift of prophecy, the Gift of the Ushers, renewed, strengthened, unstoppable. Her power mixed with Jason’s. She melted into Jason’s embrace. His hands went dark, his power halved, and Kate’s Gift was restored to her at last. Plus… a little extra.

  Agathe cried out. Kate felt the ghost’s helplessness and weakness. She shrugged the old invader off, like a cold chill at hearthside. Agathe fled from Kate, driven out permanently by the return of Kate’s powers and by the perfect kiss she could not withstand, let alone deserve. Kate and Jason clung to each other as Agathe’s ghost whirled overhead, a tangle of white hair and toothless malice, gaslight-blue and immensely pissed off. She’d been evicted from Kate, but she remained as powerful as ever.

  “You’ll never be rid of me!” Agathe cried. “Now that my Horseman is gone, I am the dominant spirit of Sleepy Hollow!”

  A familiar voice broke through the night. “I wouldn’t bet on that.”

  Above them, on a high rock, glowing yellow-white and bright as the tarot card that was her significator, stood Eliza Merrick.

  She raised a hand and beckoned to Agathe.

  “Bring it.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  “The General of the Dead”

  Agathe flew at Eliza. They met in the sky above the river with a splash of light. A shock wave scoured the Pocantico down to its riverbank, breaking the waters to either side, bending them around a patch of bare rock and mud, creating an arena—a coliseum with water for walls, with trees for columns, and the steep rocky shores on either side for spectator seating. The spectators—all the dead of Sleepy Hollow— gathered in throngs, to witness the battle upon which their freedom depended. Brom came, and Baltus. Debbie Flight came. So did Frank Darley, McCaffrey the funeral director, Carlos the stable-keeper, and Piebald the lawyer. Most faces Jason didn’t recognize—perhaps Mr. Couenhoven, Luc Fontaine, or Elise Van Wart. Perhaps Agathe’s father had come to bear witness. Perhaps her mother had arisen from the slough. Jason saw a man who could only be Absalom Crane, they looked so much alike. Absalom gave a nod. (“Hello, Jason. Guess who I am.”) Beyond the ranks of eager ghosts lining the Pocantico shores, the stars themselves appeared to descend. All the shadows winked with fireflies. The cemetery had emptied. The dead had come to witness…

  “Judgment,” whispered Kate.

  “The next-to-last card,” Jason said. He could almost hear the summoning trumpet of an angel in the sky above. Yes, this was Judgment Day for Sleepy Hollow. The future of the town, the end of this cycle—for good or evil—would be decided here. By the battle of two old ghosts.

  They circled and feinted, made little lunges. They flew at each other again. Agathe had no lips to whisper spells, no fire, no minions, only her clawed fingers and her naked will. She roared with anger, took Eliza by the throat, and squeezed. Eliza’s eyes went wide. Jason shot to his feet, to run to her aid, but spirits caught him and dragged him back to shore. This was Eliza’s fight, not his. A fight for Sleepy Hollow, a fight for leadership of the cemetery, for respect in the eyes of the assembled spirits, who would owe their allegiance to whichever general emerged triumphant. He and Kate stood wide-eyed among the watchers, holding each other. This was Eliza’s hour, and all he could do was urge her on—to be proud of her, come victory or defeat, the way she had always been proud of him.

  Jason cupped his hands to his mouth. “Kick her ass, Grandma!”

  The crowd laughed and jeered—an eerie, chain-rattling sound. Eliza broke from Agathe’s grip, turned upside down, and kicked her like a soccer player. Agathe struck a tree, exploded into mist, and gathered herself again. She poured her energy into pinecones and rocks and a fling of fiery mud. Eliza dodged these, turning a circle as Agathe buzzed around her like a mosquito looking for a vein. Eliza anticipated one of Agathe’s dodges and caught her opponent’s arm. Green sparks flew as Eliza tightened her grip. Agathe howled with pain but brought her free arm back and delivered a brutal punch to Eliza’s face, breaking free. Eliza spun away, looking disoriented. A strange green blotch ap
peared on her cheek, as if Agathe had bruised her. Agathe raked Eliza’s back with blue talons, drawing gashes of green fire. Eliza summoned a small boulder from the riverbed, set it glowing, and sent it to crash through Agathe’s chest, distracting her, but the witch pressed her attack and Eliza retreated.

  The battle traveled incrementally northward, to the broken abutments of the bridge. The watery arena moved with the combatants, the river raging and crashing around an invisible bubble of magical force.

  Eliza redoubled her attack, catching Agathe with a beautiful bitch-slap. But the tide of battle had turned in Agathe’s favor. The old witch bit and clawed and fought dirty. She pulled hair. She brought a bony elbow back and caught Eliza in the temple. Each blow rippled across Jason’s own face, each strike shivered his own bones. Agathe’s nails ripped across Eliza’s cheek and Jason cried out in agony. She kicked Eliza’s stomach and Jason felt the blow. She was toying with Eliza now, keeping her on the defensive. Eliza grew fainter, a wounded spirit, her yellow form drenched with green. Her eyes met Jason’s, and he saw fear. He understood. This would be no battle to the death. Both combatants were already dead. This battle would end in victory for one—and complete oblivion for the other.

  Eliza managed to get a few more good punches in, but they only bought her time. Agathe struck again, and Eliza fell to one knee in the mud. She looked exhausted and bewildered and… old. Older than Agathe, who, though frail and toothless, seemed a far more powerful spirit. Anger fueled Agathe. She’d carried a hoard of hatred into death, while Eliza had spent everything on life—all her energies, all her love.

  Agathe laughed. “You call this a contest?” She kicked Eliza onto her back and put a foot on her throat. “Beg.”

  Eliza gritted her teeth and shook her head.

  “Beg, and I will allow your existence to continue. I will salt your grave again, and keep you chained as an example to these others.”