by Jim Johnson
Malcolm screamed nearby. I whipped my head toward the entrance to the shadow-Branchwood. Malcolm was dragged into the building by the yellow-gold tentacles that had wrapped all around him. He was fighting, twisting around in the energy tentacles, but seemed unable to break their grip.
I didn’t know what I could do, but I hurried after him. I called forth my protective shield again, even though it hadn’t seemed to stop the Spinner from grabbing Malcolm. I also tried extending more ley threads to brush away some of the tentacles wrapped around Malcolm. He was being dragged quickly through the gray and blue-sparkling hallway, and toward the Holding’s version of the same stairwell we knew so well.
My silver ley threads severed some of the tentacles that had wrapped around Malcolm, but it wasn’t enough. He was still fighting, but being constantly dragged toward the stairwell. I tried to pull more etheric energy from all around me and channeled that into my efforts, and was able to cut a few more tentacles away.
“Keep at it!” Malcolm cried out, as he writhed around in the mass of ley tentacles. Bursts of bronze flame shot out here and there, burning off more of them. Malcolm got dragged as far as the stairwell door and then fought harder, sending out more bursts of flame. I ran after him, flicking more silver threads ahead like little whips.
Between his bronze flames and my silver whips, Malcolm and I managed to burn off enough of the tentacles that he was able to get a hand free. He reached out and grabbed the replica of the stairwell railing. He held on tight, and then closed his eyes and seemed to focus inward. I could sense his energy level rising, building up from somewhere within.
I sensed what he was doing and covered my eyes just before a sudden flash of bright bronze light erupted like a nova all around Malcolm. The last of the yellow-gold tentacles burned to crisps and then powdered away. Malcolm was left kneeling on the ground, his hands upraised in a victory pose, bits of strange etheric ash floating to the ground.
“Yeah! Take that, you glowing tentacle bastard!”
I staggered over to him, working to gather fresh energies to rebuild my tattered shields. “What...what was that?”
Malcolm took a deep breath and pushed himself to his feet. “I figured if I could produce a few little flames, maybe I could produce one big one too.”
I gave him a quick hug and then stood up and helped him to his feet. He said, “Thanks for the assist, Rachel.” He glanced around, taking in the strangely washed-out walls and the circuit-like sparks of blue energy. “Where the hell are we?”
“The Holding. It’s the middle ground between our mortal world and whatever comes next.”
He stared at me. “Like Purgatory?”
I quirked a smile, remembering I had asked Miss Chin the exact same thing. “Something like that.”
He focused on the thick life-threads stretching down the stairwell and around out of sight. “We follow those, we find this Spinner punk?”
“That’s my guess.”
Malcolm started down the stairs. “All right, then.”
I followed him, alert to what we might find. We reached the bottom of the stairs and turned into an open storeroom that seemed to stretch for miles. It was totally not what I expected to see—it broke the boundaries of what I assumed the nursing home would contain. It had to be something the Spinner created, unique to the Holding version of Branchwood.
Malcolm stared ahead. “Oh, shit.”
I focused in that direction and whispered the same thing.
The life-threads from the people in the nursing home stretched out ahead, ending in dozens of prone forms, all glowing with a bright white light tinged in a different color—each had their own aura and so each of their soul-forms was a slightly different color from the base white glow. Most of them were older, frailer people—clearly the residents of the nursing home. Others had the shape and appearance of nurses and guards, young and old alike. The Spinner had somehow dragged them all into the Holding together.
All the soul-forms were on the ground in a mass, stretched out in front of a shadow-form of a wingback chair that was outlined in bright blue streaks of etheric energy. I gasped as my Eye registered the form seated in the chair.
The man who had taken my grandpa and so many others, the one who had caused so many deaths, grinned at us from that chair. The god-damned Spinner.
He stood from the chair and seemed to grow before our eyes as he gathered up the energies coursing all around him. Six feet tall, seven, onward up to some eight feet tall, the Spinner created an avatar to stand before us in the Holding. He looked powerful and unstoppable. I could see a thick life-thread connecting the Spinner’s avatar to the chair, which I had to guess was some sort of focus for the Spinner’s mortal form, somewhere back home. Somehow the Spinner was able to project his consciousness into the Holding and create an etheric form of himself here.
Powerful stuff. I wondered if even Miss Chin could manage something like that, and whether I’d ever get a chance to find out.
Once fully formed, he turned toward us with an evil grin on his glowing face.
“You have caused me problems enough. Now is the time for you to die and allow me to taste of your essence and make it my own.”
I had no weapons to throw at this thing; no clever words. I went with the direct approach. “This ends now, asshole! You’re not taking any more souls to feed on!”
The Spinner roared in laughter and then gestured in front of him. “Too late.”
I didn’t want to, but I looked anyway, as did Malcolm. The blood in my face drained dry. There were more than two dozen souls laid out on the ground, and while most of them were writhing in pain or groaning, some were still and silent and decidedly faded in comparison to the others. My heart leapt into my throat when I realized that my grandpa was among those still moving.
I stood there, stunned beyond belief. I was staring at my grandfather’s own soul. I panicked. Did this mean he was dead, or dying? Had I arrived too late to help, only to lose him to this monster?
“You son of a bitch! Give my Grandpa back his soul!”
The Spinner sneered at me. “Why, because you ask?” His avatar looked hungrily upon the prone souls. “No, I’ll feast tonight, destroy the nursing home, and then continue my rampage.” He stared at me with defiance in his eyes. “And no one is going to stop me, let alone you, little girl.”
I stared up and up into the avatar’s face, quailing inside. As much as I hated to admit it, the thing had a point.
I had no freaking idea how I was going to stop him.
Chapter 52
I WAS AT A LOSS. THE Spinner’s huge body was a controlled storm of gold and blue etheric energies—a glittering mass of power and strength.
Before I could even start to formulate a plan, he lifted his arm and pushed a wave of blue etheric energy toward me, the leading edge glittering with bright yellow light.
I braced myself behind a hastily-constructed silvery shield. The energy wave slammed into my shield, shattered it, and then pushed Malcolm and I several feet from where we had been standing. My grandpa’s soul-form tried to get to its feet, but fell back to the ground from another blast from the Spinner.
“Don’t move, Grandpa! Don’t let yourself get hit!” I couldn’t imagine what would happen if he got hit by one of the bursts. I felt like I’d been run over by a bus.
I pushed myself up to a plank position and then got my knees underneath me. I glanced up in time to see Malcolm also getting to his feet, both fists clenched tight.
I managed to get to my unsteady feet just as the Spinner loosed a double-fisted burst of energy toward Malcolm, sending him crashing into a gray-tinged wall. The whoof of air and then the groan Malcolm issued as a result of the impact didn’t sound encouraging.
Now that my shield was gone, I gathered what energies I could and tried to do what the Spinner had done—to throw that energy toward him with intention and power behind it.
My little etheric punch, with silvery light tailing along behin
d it, bumped into the Spinner’s form. It did little more than distract him from loosing another burst of energy toward Malcolm. Malcolm winced under the barrage.
The Spinner faced me and laughed, a deep booming sound that rattled my brain. “You’re no match for me, girl. Let me take what I want and I’ll let you and this child here go.”
The words were powerful, smashing into my ears with concussive force. I clamped both hands over my ears and tried to block out the sound, even as my feet shook on the ground from the Spinner’s deep bass-like tone.
“I am not letting you take any more souls!” I cried out. “You’ve done enough damage!”
He laughed again. “I’ve only just begun. My appetite grows the more I feast. I require more and more if I’m to rule the Holding and then the living world.”
I shook my head with my hands pressed tight against my ears. His voice was thunderous, rippling the ground all around.
I caught sight of Malcolm dragging himself up to his knees. He had that ten-dollar bill clenched in his hands. Through my Eye, I stared as he called up a dreadful amount of ley power and focused it into the bill. A tearing sound ripped through the air, and then that strange black form with sparkling teeth and claws burst forth from Malcolm’s bill and streaked toward the Spinner with a banshee wail trailing behind it.
The Spinner sensed it and turned, and was hit straight on by the terrifying black mass.
He cried out in a mix of pain and anger as the black form swarmed over him, slashing and rending with its glittering claws and fangs. Small cuts within the Spinner’s form appeared, leaking blue ley energy like blood seeping from multiple wounds.
The Spinner lifted a massive hand and swatted at the shadow-tiger, sending it reeling into another wall. The Spinner staggered back, tiny cuts all over his body gouting out energy.
The thing could be hurt! I looked around for a weapon, any weapon, but came up empty.
“Rachel!” The soul of my grandfather yelled out. I turned toward the sound of his voice. “Help us!”
I gathered energies to form another protective cocoon around myself and rushed toward Grandpa and the others. The Spinner was fending off a fresh attack from Malcolm’s shadow-tiger.
I hurried to my grandpa’s side and knelt next to him. “Grandpa! Are you all right? I mean…all things considered?”
He lifted a weary hand and I grabbed it. His soul-form felt strangely squishy, like a tube full of jelly. “That thing pulled us in here. I don’t…I don’t think I’m dead yet.” He stared at me, the terror in his eyes apparent. “I can feel my body in bed back at Branchwood. And yet I can sense being here too.”
I crouched instinctively as the Spinner howled in pain again, his noise coupled with another terrific screech from the shadow-tiger. The Spinner showed more cuts and oozing energies on its body, but again blasted the shadow-tiger into the ground. Both creatures cried out in pain and anger.
I turned toward Grandpa. “He wants to feed on your...your life-energy and add it to his own. He kills people and eats their souls, and gets more powerful when he does it.”
One of the other souls, that of an older lady, crawled up next to Grandpa. “You mean he was the one who killed the others? He killed Larry?”
“And more beyond that, I bet. I don’t think Branchwood was his first killing ground.”
A roar of laughter distracted me. I turned to see the Spinner grab Malcolm and his shadow-tiger in his two large hands, slam them together, and then toss them aside like bags of garbage.
Malcolm hit the ground with a crash and a groan. The shadow-tiger form crumpled on the ground nearby and was still.
“Malcolm!” I saw no reaction from him—he had either been knocked out or worse. I stared at the Spinner, wishing I was a few feet taller or better trained. “Leave him alone!”
The Spinner sneered and then loosed another double-blast of yellow energy toward me and the souls gathered around me. I couldn’t get a shield up in time—we were all knocked around again.
I rolled face-up on the ground and tried to gather my senses and my feet as the Spinner moved toward me. The Spinner said, “I’m tired of this game, little one. Time for me to feed and for you to die.”
I panicked and looked around for some sort of solution. A flicker of light caught my eye. I glanced down to see my crystal still shining bright against my breast.
Reaching out with faint hope, I crushed my hand around it and opened myself up to the energy contained with it. I caught a glimmer of the ley grid far below the earth, but it was so far away—too far to do any good, surely. Grandpa reached out his hand to me and linked hands with the other souls.
Grandpa looked me in the eye. “Use us, Rachel. Use us to fight him!”
“What?” I didn’t understand, couldn’t comprehend what he was asking.
He nodded his chin toward the Spinner’s looming form. “Now, while you still can! Use our souls to crush him! You can do that, can’t you?”
I frowned. Of course I couldn’t…wait! Suddenly, I saw it—the pathways I needed to pull it all together. I could tap into their etheric energy—feed on it like the Spinner must do, but rather than add it to my own strength, I’d push the collected energies toward the Spinner and break him apart.
I opened my senses and my will to the fullest, and reached out and gladly took what Grandpa and the other souls had to offer. I forced myself to throttle back on the power. I had no intention of killing everyone. I focused on the Spinner. “No! I won’t let you hurt them!”
I gathered the energies pouring into me from Grandpa and the others in the link. I focused it into my hands, and then pushed as much of it as I could, all at once, toward the Spinner’s form. I wondered if this is what it felt like when Malcolm pushed bronze-blue fire out of his hands.
The rainbow-colored burst of etherics shot from my hands and slammed into the Spinner. The force of the blow took him by surprise and he staggered back, but maintained his footing and held firm. He howled in pain and surprise and I had just a moment of satisfaction.
But then he reached out and gathered etheric energies of his own, somehow pulling it out of the very essence of the Holding itself, and pushed back against me. The force of the fresh blast knocked me to my feet once again, and also severed the connection between me and Grandpa and the other souls. My tenuous connection to their offered life-energy was gone.
Off to one side, Malcolm pushed himself up to his knees and feebly reached out an arm, shooting out a spray of bronze fire toward the Spinner. The Spinner took the fresh assault and staggered, but started toward me with a sneer plastered on his face.
The Spinner pulled more etheric threads out of the air around him, gathered them in his fist, and hurled them at me, one after another, a constant onslaught of power and pain. I deflected the first two, but the third one shattered my feeble shield. The subsequent blasts hammered into me, over and over.
I cried out in pain, feeling my Eye fading, my hold on consciousness slipping. All I had left was my crystal. I curled up in a ball to try and defend myself from the worst of the Spinner’s onslaught, and descended into spiral meditation, seeking out any hope, any spark, against the encroaching darkness.
Chapter 53
I DELVED DEEP WITHIN MYSELF, RUSHING along the endless arcs of the meditation spiral, spinning deeper and deeper down into my own soul. As I dug deeper, I sensed the warm, silvery glow of my crystal all around me, realizing that it was my own soul I was sensing—the crystal was an extension of myself.
I kept going, constantly moving, not knowing where the path ended or if it ended, but knowing only that moving was better than dying at the hands of the Spinner.
Unbidden, the spiral opened up and then ended at the edge of a brilliant blue pool of etheric energy. The endless ley grid lay before me, shining pure in its untouched brilliance, more power here for the taking than I could ever hope to use in nine lifetimes.
And then it all came together in one brilliant, profound moment of insig
ht. The ley grid, my ability to create a rift in the Veil, my ability to physically travel within the Holding. I could defeat the Spinner—I had all the tools I needed.
But did I have the boldness, the strength of will, needed to actually do it?
From somewhere far away, far outside myself, I heard Grandpa cry out my name. He must have seen me crumple underneath the Spinner’s cruel onslaught.
I had to do it—to save him, to save Malcolm, to save the others. Hell, maybe even to save myself.
Miss Chin had warned me that tapping into it could be dangerous and foolhardy. But now seemed like the right time for a little crazy.
Without another thought for my own safety or my own life, I reached and took hold of that bottomless wellspring of power. I called forth mighty ropes of pure etheric energy—not the little threads I was used to, but mighty hawsers full of incredible, unfocused potential. I shouldered as much power as I could, feeling parts of my mind and body burn away from the raw power under my control. Parts of my mind sloughed away and faded from memory, but I had no time, no way to determine what I had lost in favor of what I had to do.
Loaded down with salvation, I made my way back up the spiral toward consciousness. I sensed my body convulsing over and over from the Spinner’s cruel blasts, but I was beyond pain now—all I felt was determination to end this. Was this what nearing death was like? The feeling of invincibility coupled with the sense of inevitability? The moment that felt like my actions were about to change the world, and that I was prepared to die, if that’s what was needed to take this thing out and for good?
It had to be enough. I had nothing more to give than my own very life. This was the spark to my own immortality—maybe another Beacon would be kind enough to guide me home after I was gone.
But until then, I had a mission to complete. I surfaced enough to focus my will and my intent, and with the massive conduits back to the ley grid opening before me, I focused more power than I had ever held between my hands, aimed it at the Spinner, and dropped the god-damned bomb on him.
