Limbo's Child (Book One of The Dead Things Series)

by Jonah Hewitt

  Moríro had one last thing to say though. “But of course, she didn’t expect to be murdered either, and now there is no one else.”

  “Murdered?” thought Lucy. He had definitely said “murdered” and not “killed.”

  He slammed the book he was working on shut, and pulled the next one over and opened it. “That is why I’m looking for answers.”

  “Answers to what?” Lucy replied.

  Moríro didn’t answer.

  “ANSWERS TO WHAT?” she repeated, yelling at him.

  He took a breath. “Who and why, Lucia. Who and Why.”

  “Who and why?!” Lucy asked, desperate for clarification.

  “WHO knew your mother was the heir to the Necromancer, and WHY did they want her dead.”

  Lucy sat there stunned. She didn’t know if this confirmed Amanda’s statements or not. She thought about what Yo-yo had said. How the long-haired witch had scared him into the street and that that was what had caused the crash. Had Amanda killed her mother? She sat there with the milk in her hand. She set it down. She wasn’t hungry or thirsty anymore; she was just numb.

  Abruptly, Moríro stood up straight and removed the reading glasses, his eyes frantically darting about.

  “Imposible!” he said it in Spanish but she understood that, no problemo.

  “What?” Lucy asked, “What is it?”

  “Someone’s here,” he said, and his expression terrified Lucy. If THE Necromancer, champion of Death, and all those other high-falutin’ titles was this scared, then she was horrified. “Someone who should not be here. Someone who CAN’T be here.”

  He dropped the glasses on the book and walked towards the front door. “Stay here!” he barked at her, but she thought of Yo-yo and how he was still out there and followed anyway.

  He stormed down the hall and out the front door. When he reached the porch, he stopped at the steps abruptly and looked out into the darkness, but nothing was there. Lucy nearly ran into him. He looked back at her contemptuously. For a moment, it looked like he was about to scold her and order her back into the house when a clear and calm voice penetrated the darkness.

  “Well, well, well. From the palaces of Castile and Budapest to a rundown farmhouse in Pennsylvania. How the mighty have fallen.”

  “Amanda!” Lucy whispered in shock. She hadn’t meant to speak it out loud, but she did anyway. Moríro turned back to look at her in horror and confusion. Then he looked back into the darkness.

  “Amarantha? No es posible!” he muttered more to himself than anyone else.

  “Amarantha?!! Who the heck is Amarantha?” Lucy whispered frantically to Moríro, but he just brushed her aside.

  There was a cold chuckle from somewhere out there in the darkness. It was hard to tell exactly where it came from, but Lucy knew the voice instantly. It was the cold and austere Amanda. The scary-as-a-night-in-a-graveyard-alone-without-a-flashlight Amanda.

  “But it is possible, godson,” she said “godson” with complete derision and utter contempt. “I have clawed back from the inferno twice now. I think I have a better grasp of the impossible than most. I spent twenty very uncomfortable minutes in a near-dead fly you didn’t notice just to get back this time. That moth was just a distraction.”

  Lucy shuddered, then said, “Godson?!” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Moríro just shushed her and tugged his overcoat away from her. Unknowingly, she was clinging to him, scared. She stepped back, a bit embarrassed, and tried to think. How was Moríro Amanda’s godson?! Amanda said they were all family, but Moríro was supposed to be centuries old. At least, that’s what Amanda had said. If Moríro was centuries old, how old was Amanda?!

  “Come forward!” he called into the darkness.

  Slowly, from near the end of the drive, Amanda Tipping walked out of the darkness. She was wearing a long, black overcoat and had both hands in her pockets. She was just as elegant as usual in her chunky, square, amber-tinted glasses, short, dark hair, and high heels. She looked exactly the same as she had the first time Lucy had seen her in the hospital. You would have never guessed that the slim and petite woman in front of them could turn into a phantom-longhaired-witch-monster thing.

  “I had a devil of a time finding this place,” Amanda said utterly calm in a conversational tone, “Your records from the hospital were horribly vague, Lucy, and the road here isn’t even on the GPS. Perfect hiding-space really. Though the décor is certainly wanting.” She looked around the place with her nose in the air, wrinkled in disgust, as she casually strolled towards them. Then she smiled. “Nice garden though. Interesting juxtapositions, don’t you think?”

  “What do you want?!” Moríro barked at her. She ignored him but stopped a few paces in front of them.

  “Hello, Lucy,” she said pleasantly leaning forward to look at Lucy over her stylish glasses, which she pulled down to get a better look. Even in the dark, Lucy could see her warm, golden-brown eyes. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see that you’re ok. I was really scared when those boys took off with you.” She looked intently at Lucy with a completely disarming half-smile that looked like a mixture between regret and relief. She looked a lot like her mother when she did that. She raised her eyebrows subtly. “You found out the truth about that boy then, I take it?”

  Lucy nodded quickly but retreated further behind Moríro. Amanda stood up slowly, looked directly at her and smiled a smirk almost identical to one her mother gave her. It was a more subtle way of saying “I told you so,” but it burned all the same. Were these mannerisms genetic?! Everyone in the family seemed to have them, even Moríro. She just hated that Amanda had been right about Sky. She worried that she might be right about everything else as well. Yet still, as obnoxious as Moríro was and as nice as Amanda seemed, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something just awful lingering below the surface of Amanda’s pretty face. At any moment that long-haired ghost thing was going to pop back up, she knew it. Moríro looked down at Lucy with a look of confusion and contempt. It was clear he was fuming about being left in the dark about Amanda. Lucy retreated behind Moríro a little more. Somehow Moríro, as creepy and rude as he was, felt safer right now. He didn’t feel the need to sugarcoat anything, and that meant that however rude and condescending he was, he wasn’t pretending to be something he wasn’t. Moríro yanked his coat away from Lucy and pushed her back a little further behind him on the porch like a disobedient puppy.

  “What do you want?!” Moríro spat at Amanda.

  She went on ignoring him and continued to look around casually, hands firmly in pockets. “Oh and sending a mortal henchmen along with the usual bloodsuckers? Very clever. Hokharty hasn’t lost his touch has he?” She shot a sly glance at Moríro and smiled, but Moríro wasn’t smiling. “Where are the three stooges, by-the-way? Are they around?”

  Just then the sound of metal scraping against the gravel driveway met their ears. Amanda’s eyes widened beyond her narrow frames and slowly she turned around with a look of complete disgust on her face. There, coming up the rutted drive out of the woods was the battered and dented cream-colored Impala, its broken trunk bouncing open and closed, clanging with every bump.

  “That was supposed to be a purely rhetorical question,” Amanda said through gritted teeth.

  The car pulled up to a stop not far from her, the pick-up and the front porch. Out of the passenger’s side, stepped Sky, who was now shirtless and wearing Tim’s white blazer?! Tim got out of the driver’s side wearing Sky’s “Han Shot First” shirt?! Why on earth had they changed clothes?! Lucy thought that was weird. The brooding, red-haired Miles got out of the back. At least he looked the same. There was something else back there too, something jumping up and down agitated, but it didn’t get out just yet. It looked like someone was working hard to hold it back and restrain it. Had they picked up another victim?!

  Miles and Tim looked anxious, but Sky just leaned back nonchalantly on the dented fender, folded his arms confidently across his now naked �
�� and impressively ripped, Lucy had to admit – chest while he pushed the sucker around his mouth with his tongue playfully. He eyed Amanda from her heels to her eyes and back down again like a cat eyeing up a mouse.

  “Well…hello again,” Schuyler said to Amanda in a smoky voice.

  “Ugh,” Amanda winced. Lucy couldn’t blame her. Where was that nice, clean boy from the gift shop?! It was like he had been abducted by aliens that had sucked his brain out and replaced it with one from one of those incredibly self-satisfied scumbags you see on reality TV shows. The only thing Sky was missing was the spray tan.

  Amanda turned abruptly to face both Moríro and Lucy. “THIS is what the order has fallen to under your leadership, Moríro!” She tossed her head over her shoulder towards the three standing near the Impala, but she didn’t take her hands out of her pockets. “A hapless scarecrow, a strutting peacock and a swarthy, red-haired dwarf? This is the best that the Father of All Vampires can manage?”

  “Hey!” Tim said, offended.

  “You think I strut?” Schuyler said almost affectionately.

  Amanda continued under her breath, “Hokharty can’t even be bothered to dig up proper minions anymore! The insult!”

  “Oy! Lucy! Ya aw right?!” someone suddenly shouted out. That was Miles. He sounded genuinely concerned. That surprised Lucy. The last time she had seen him he was turning into a dog and chasing her. Lucy didn’t know how to respond to this apparent concern for her welfare, so she just said nothing.

  “And you!” Amanda turned coldly on Miles, “Don’t think I’m finished with you either, dog boy.”

  “Dudes! I got this,” Tim suddenly spoke up. He came around the front of the car a bit nervously, bouncing on his feet anxiously as if trying to convince himself.

  “Oy! Tim! Whatch’ya doin’ mate?!” Miles shouted out.

  “Yeah…I got this. I got this,” Tim kept repeating.

  “Tim…come back to the car,” Sky said as if scolding a child.

  “No, it’s cool,” Tim replied.

  “Dude…” Sky stood up and took the lollipop out of his mouth, obviously concerned about Tim’s newfound confidence, or overconfidence as he saw it.

  “No, I got this, remember, dude, she can’t touch a mortal,” Tim danced up to her like a fighter trying to stay light on his feet.

  “Yeah…no sucker punches this time, lady!! This witch is going down!” He rushed at her half-heartedly, withdrew as if he were planning to feint all along then started dancing again. Amanda rolled her eyes at him, but Tim was still selling it. “Yeah, how do you like me now, you bee-yaaah…THAT’S A GUN!!”

  Tim fell over backwards and scrambled like a crab on all fours towards the car when Amanda suddenly pulled a handgun from one of her pockets.

  “You’re not the only one who’s learned something from our last encounter,” she said coolly as she held it at arm’s length rigidly. She followed his retreat back to the car with the muzzle. Miles and Sky helped Tim back to his feet. Then Sky rolled his eyes at him.

  “Dude!” Tim said in shock, “Where’d you get the gun?!”

  “I got this one from an obliging security guard at the hospital,” Amanda said matter-of-factly.

  “You…you didn’t kill him did you?” Lucy asked nervously.

  “No, Lucy, he’s perfectly fine. He’s just locked up in a morgue drawer.”

  “What is it with you people and morgue drawers?!” Tim exclaimed.

  She turned back to look at Tim. “Shut up, you!” She reached up to feel the back of her head with her free hand. “I’m not normally in the business of killing, unlike some people.” She shot a sideward glance at Moríro. “But I have been known to make the rare exception when I am extremely irritated.” She took a menacing step towards Tim. Tim cowered behind Sky.

  Moríro used the momentary distraction to bridge the distance between him and Amanda. It was amazingly fast. He had left the porch and crossed the drive in less than an eye blink, biting his knuckle as he went. A half-second later, he had wrested the hand with the gun downward until it pointed harmlessly to the ground.

  “Stop!” Amanda yelled out, surprised.

  “AMARANTHA, DEPART!” Moríro yelled pressing one bloody knuckle with his free hand against Amanda’s forehead. Amanda gasped and shuddered and raised the other hand to push him back. It looked like her strength was leaving her, but obviously not quickly enough for Moríro.

  “Release her, Amarantha!! Release her!! AMARANTHA, DEPART!” he bellowed again. Amanda’s body went limp, her head hung on her shoulders, but she didn’t fall down or drop the gun. Moríro let her go and she hung there as if in a trance, lightly floating on her feet, the gun hanging gently at her side. The three boys took a step forward, but Moríro held up a hand of caution to warn them back. Moríro leaned in closer to examine her, and that’s when Lucy saw a faint trace of a smile on Amanda’s face. Lucy had no time to warn the old Spaniard. Amanda raised the hand with the gun and pistol-whipped Moríro across the face…hard.

  “Ay!” he cried out.

  Then she hit him again with the backhand.

  “Santa Maria!” he cursed and fell over backwards.

  Lucy heard the crunch of bone on the last hit and saw Moríro grimacing in pain, his nose broken and his brow bloody. Lucy nearly ran to him but stopped at the steps on the edge of the porch out of fear.

  Tim advanced but Amanda had the gun on him in a heartbeat. “Cool it, orderly,” she said menacingly. Tim obliged. Sky was edging around the front of the car stealthily as if to flank her.

  She called him back without even looking at him, “AND I DON’T EVEN NEED A BULLET TO KILL YOU!” Sky made his way slowly back to the fender as if he wasn’t planning anything.

  “Everyone just stay where they are!” she threatened. “I only came here to talk. No one gets any ideas and I won’t have to kill any of you. Some of you for the first time,” she pointed the gun at Tim, “Some of you for the second,” she shot Miles a vicious look.

  “How?!” Moríro said rolling over on to his knees, recovering from the attack, wincing in pain.

  “You don’t think you found Amanda Tipping by accident, do you?!” she said triumphantly wiping the bloody streak off her forehead with the back of her free hand. “I’ve…we’ve…been watching her…I mean me!…for years now. Her blood, I mean my blood, may be weak. She…that is I…may only just be one sixteenth necromancer, but that’s more than enough to summon a talented necromancer like me, Amarantha, who can make up all the difference.”

  She was obviously trying to relish this moment of triumph, but she was getting flustered, struggling with her pronouns. It was really weird. She was talking like she really was two different people.

  “What’s going on?!” Lucy screamed, but no one answered her.

  “Amarantha! Let her go! Let Amanda go!” Moríro yelled back at Amanda.

  “CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON?!!” Lucy screamed, nearly at her breaking point, “WHO IS AMARANTHA?!”

  “Hasn’t he told you, Lucy?” Amanda looked up at Lucy placidly. “Hasn’t he told you about the orphaned boy without hope of life or survival and the woman who took him in? Who raised him as her own and taught him all of her secrets?” She turned to face Moríro. “And how he later betrayed her and left her to die without mercy!” She pushed the muzzle of the gun tightly up against Moríro’s temple before shoving him back to the ground with it.

  She took a few steps back and regarded the fallen man before her. “And now I’ve come back for justice. First for myself,” she pointed the gun first at Moríro, and then slowly at Sky, Miles and Tim, “And then for everyone else.”

  “Her name is Amarantha!” Moríro said abruptly, as if to draw her attention back to himself. It worked. Amanda turned the gun back on him. “And she is…my godmother,” Moríro said this as if resigned to the matter, his voice tinged with something like shame.

  “Yes, Lucy,” Amanda stated smugly, “Welcome to the family! He’s yo
ur great uncle, several generations removed of course, and I am your umpteenth great aunt, his godmother and your distant cousin all wrapped up in one. We are your last known living relatives. It’s a great big dysfunctional family reunion!” she said in a mocking tone. “We should have our own television show really.”

  Moríro narrowed his eyes at her and continued to explain, “She passed away long ago.”

  Amanda snorted, “You say that as if you had nothing to do with the matter! You walked away and left me to DIE under that tamarind tree in Mexico, MORÍRO! REMEMBER?!” As she said this, she stood over him and pressed the gun hard to the old man’s temple.

  Lucy noticed that Miles stood up and tensed a little as if this meant something more to him. Amanda’s anger was palpable and seemed to affect the air around them like a sudden wind. Lucy caught a glimpse of the long-haired phantom she had seen in the hospital in Amanda’s face, but then it was gone. Amanda wasn’t finished, however.

  “When all it would have taken was for you to say a word, A SINGLE WORD, MORÍRO! And I would have lived!!” She beat against her chest with her free hand. “Yet you turned away and let me die!”

  “It was your time, you had lived too long, Amarantha.”

  “Ha! As if that were your choice to make alone!”

  “It is my choice!” he shouted defiantly. Then in a more mournful tone, “I never asked for it, but it is my choice. You made it my choice, when you trained me to replace you as Necromancer,” He added ruefully.

  Amanda stood there staring at him her nostrils flaring. “A mistake I hope to remedy very soon,” she said in an icy voice.

  An awkward moment passed before Moríro turned to Lucy and continued, “She was a necromancer once, THE Necromancer. She raised me, but died and descended to the pits of punishment. She is little more than a demon now.”

  “Demon?!” Amanda just snorted in derision as she pulled the gun away and rested it on her shoulder while walking in a tight circle, agitated. “Oh that’s rich coming from you. She…I…only want to save the world from death and misery, oh, she’s, I’m, such a monster, godson,” that last line was uttered with particularly venomous sarcasm that was effective even with the odd use of pronouns.