Now, there’s a legend that Caulborn can’t drown, but I wasn’t about to put that to the test today. I ripped Open the biggest portal I could, straining against the pain in my chest, draining as much of the water as I could. The force of the water rushing out of the portal was enough to send the wights, the casket, and my friends crashing into one another as we were sucked through the portal and back onto the shore.
There was pandemonium for a few minutes. I’d landed on my back, which, if you’ve never landed on your back while wearing a thirty-pound scuba tank, let me tell you, hurts like a bitch. I ripped off my mask and struggled to my feet. Belzatha’s casket was right in front of me, its glowing wards still bright even in the daylight. Petra and Gears, unencumbered by scuba equipment, had fared better than Herb and I had, and were fighting the wights that had been attacking the coffin. Two of the wights suddenly exploded, as if they were living bombs, the shockwave throwing Billy and Petra back thirty feet and blinding all of us. When the stars finally faded from my eyes, there were chunks of wight corpse on the shore, but no sign of the one who’d been carrying Croatoan.
What the hell? I triggered my Glimpse and watched the last thirty seconds. Unfortunately, the light from the explosion blinded me even in my Glimpse, and I couldn’t see what had happened to the little bastard. I tried again, and a third time. On the fourth time, I thought I might have seen another undead rising out of the ground behind the wight holding Croatoan, but no matter how many times I replayed that moment, right after I saw a hand clawing its way up out of the frozen ground, the world vanished in a blinding white light.
I released the Glimpse and turned to my companions. “Everyone all right?” Nods and yesses all around.
“Chalk one up for the good guys,” Gears said. “They didn’t get the demon’s body.”
Herb had taken off his scuba mask and was rubbing his chin as he regarded the casket on the snowy ground. “I think they got part of it,” he said, crouching down. “Look here. It looks like one of the demon’s horns was broken off.”
I knelt down next to Herb and saw what he meant. Croatoan’s wights had broken through the concrete and granite casing surrounding the casket, and into the casket itself. A white skull stared sightlessly out, a broken bone nodule where a horn had been. The casket’s wards glowed brightly, still intact, and I watched with a measure of Caulborn pride as the magic wards began repairing the casket and its casing. I nodded to the broken spot on the side of the head. “What good would a single horn be?” I asked.
“Depends,” Herb said. “You can use parts of a corpse for a bunch of different things. Crush it into a powder, mix it into a potion, and you can turn into that creature for a while. You could use it to make contact with the corpse’s spirit. You can also use it like a relic and wield some of the powers that the creature did in life.” He tipped his head at me. “Any of that sound like it would fit?”
“Croatoan doesn’t have a body, so we can rule out the drink,” I said, conjuring a portal and returning Belzatha’s remains to the bottom of the reservoir. The wards had repaired the damage to the casket in the time we’d been talking. “Hades didn’t mention that Croatoan had allies in the Pit, either. In fact, it sounded like most of its denizens couldn’t stand him.” I tapped my lips. “Any chance you can track that phylactery he was in?”
Herb shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. I can sense undeath, but tracking a spiritual vessel is next to impossible unless you’re the one who built it.”
“Something isn’t right here,” I said. “When I fought him on the deck of the Dauntless, Croatoan had hundreds of wights, maybe more. We only fought a couple dozen.”
“Don’t forget the beaver,” Gears chirped.
“Right, but I expected to be fighting an army of undead, all of them backed with Croatoan’s full power, since he’s out of his imprisonment sphere.”
“Well, he may be out of the sphere,” Herb said, “but he’s got to be careful. While I can’t track the phylactery, I was able to sense some information about it. It wasn’t intended to hold a demonic spirit of such power. I think Croatoan has to pull his punches while he’s inside that thing. If he uses too much power, the phylactery will shatter, and then he’d have nowhere to go but back to the Pit.”
“Then perhaps we could trick him into overloading it,” Petra said. “Make him angry or trick him into drawing too much power. That would break the phylactery, and then Vincent could imprison him in the crystal Hades gave him.”
Gears snorted. “If there’s one thing Vinnie’s good at, it’s making the bad guys angry at him.”
“Love you, too, Gears,” I said flatly.
The mech’s face smiled in a pretty good imitation of Gears’s wise guy grin. “Billy’s scanners showed that the phylactery is something like ceramic with bits of metal and gems crushed in. I’ll see if I can find a hypersonic frequency that will destabilize it, too. Between that and Vinnie’s charming personality, we should be able to break it.”
“Good plan,” I said.
“It would be better if we knew more about this phylactery,” Herb said. “If we knew where it came from, we could learn more about its weaknesses.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, the person who made the phylactery keys it to their own soul. That means the vessel is prepared to take a certain personality and a certain power level. Another spirit can inhabit it, but it will be limited by the strength of the container, and by the soul it was prepped for. If you put an evil spirit inside a good phylactery, then the evil’s power gets blunted. The spirit may not be as ruthless.”
“There is such a thing as a good phylactery?” Petra asked.
Herb shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “Um, yes. Not all necromancers are bad, you know. So sometimes, if a necromancer doesn’t want a friend or loved one to die, they’ll prepare a phylactery to capture their soul until they can be resurrected. It’s easier than trying to call a spirit back from Above or Below.”
Whoa. Had he been making one for himself? Or maybe, for Megan?
“Okay,” I said, pushing the thought aside. “Let me see what I can learn about this phylactery.”
Herb’s face screwed up in confusion. “How are you going—”
But I had already triggered my Glimpse.
Rewinding what had just happened, I watched us fight off Croatoan’s undead, watched them slip into the reservoir, and then followed them backward onto the shore. From there, they walked backward for a long time. The zombie beaver broke off from the group first; Croatoan must’ve picked him up a few miles from the reservoir. I increased the speed of the Glimpse and watched something like an undead nature hike in reverse. At one point, one of the wights, the one that looked like a hiker, collapsed to the ground and sank into some mud, vanishing beneath the surface. Further back, they walked backward toward a small open grave, which a second wight scrambled backward into and covered itself up with dirt.
Okay, so Croatoan had started out with one wight that carried his phylactery, and picked up two more as he went. As I watched the lone wight continue backward, I tried to gauge where we were. Massachusetts is a heavily populated state, but there are stretches of thick forest and suburbs that you can sneak through. It would’ve been nice to have a road sign to give me a clue where we were, but for now, I had to settle on the fact we were heading east. Which of course would make sense if we were heading back toward Hockomock Swamp, where I’d last encountered both Croatoan and Treggen.
Suddenly, the remaining wight was standing next to a horrific skeletal creature that looked to be made of mismatched bones. Thin lines of darkness held it together like duct tape, and the wight handed Croatoan’s phylactery to the creature before dropping into the ground. This patchwork monstrosity lumbered the remaining distance backward into the swamp. As I studied it, I imagined what it wou
ld look like if it had skin and muscles. It was tall, maybe six or seven feet. Unless I completely missed my guess, this skeleton had been assembled from a mishmash of nirrin bones. I sped the reverse-Glimpse up and watched the skeleton bound backward into the swamp, then collapse into a pile of bones, which seemed to scatter to the wind. The phylactery was on the ground and slowly sinking into the steaming muck of the swamp.
All was quiet for a few moments, and then I was there, along with Xavier, Treggen, and Croatoan’s shell. I dropped the Glimpse into normal speed and let it play forward. The events of a week ago played out in front of me. I watched Xavier shoot Treggen in the leg, and saw Treggen collapse into dust. Xavier and I collected Croatoan and some of Treggen’s remains, and then we left. That had happened right after my fight with Sakave, right after I lost the Urisk. It hadn’t happened that long ago, but it felt like a lifetime had passed since that day. It was about two minutes later that the phylactery rose from the ground on tendrils of black energy. More arcs of black lightning crackled about, gathering cast-off bones to create a bearer for the phylactery.
So the phylactery had already been here? Had Treggen or Croatoan planted it? I snapped the Glimpse back into high-speed reverse and watched the empty patch of swamp for what seemed like an eternity. Seasons came and went, snow melted and fell upward, plants died and bloomed as I watched. And then a form raced backward into the swamp and flopped atop the spot where the phylactery had been, and then vanished. It happened so fast I thought I might have imagined it. I let the Glimpse normalize again and watched the spot. Three, two, one, pop. A naked man with a fringe of white hair and deathly pale skin appeared atop the spot where the phylactery was. I moved around in the Glimpse, trying to get a look at his face.
When I did, I was stunned. I was looking at Albert Wallenby, former lich and Herb’s father.
Albert felt at his chest and face, looked at his hands. His expression was one of utter confusion, which changed to one of shock and horror. He clawed at the swampy earth, pulled up the phylactery and stared at it for a few moments, muttering something under his breath that I couldn’t make out. A series of runes glowed blue along the edges, and tears flowed down his face as he read them. Then he crammed the device back into the muck before taking off at a drunken run from the swamp.
I shut off the Glimpse.
“— to do that?” Herb finished.
“What did you see, Vincent?” Petra asked.
There are only two people that can tell when I’ve used my Glimpse. The boss was one. Petra’s the other.
“The phylactery,” I said. “Was made by the Keepers.”
“Those guys again?” Herb said. “But you said you killed them.”
“Technically,” Gears piped up, “it was a Chthulu-wannabe from an alternate dimension that actually ate them. Vinnie and I just fed them to it.”
Herb waved a hand. “Whatever. How—”
I ran a hand over my face. I could try and play this subtly, which would take time and cleverness I didn’t have. So instead, I shot for being straightforward and honest. “Okay, Herb. What I’m about to tell you is going to be a mind fuck, but I need you to stay focused and objective for a minute.”
Herb’s expression became guarded. “What—”
“When you destroyed your father’s phylactery that night with your grandfather, you didn’t destroy him. Albert had made a bargain with the Keepers, just like I did. He got a secondary phylactery from them, a backup in case something happened to the original. He hid that phylactery in Hockomock Swamp, and when he respawned, he appeared there. The phylactery didn’t behave as expected, though, because it restored an older version of his soul, one before he transformed into a lich.”
Herb’s mouth moved, but it took a moment for him to find his voice. “How do you know all this?”
“Partially what I just saw. I can see into people’s or object’s pasts if I want. But the other part is from a conversation I had with your father a week or two ago.”
“My father’s still alive?”
“Sort of.”
“So let me get this straight. Megan’s been kidnapped again; my father’s still here; and the guy we’re chasing is using his old phylactery?” Herb ran a hand through his hair. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me? Is Ginger, my old golden retriever, back too?”
“Easy, Herb,” I said, raising my hands. “I’m sorry to dump all this on you. Normally, I’d be gentler about it but—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Herb said. “We’re on the clock. I get it. But when this is over you and I are going to have a long talk, Vincent.”
“Fair enough.”
I could tell Herb was struggling with all this, but like Megan, Herb was a trooper who could keep his shit together when things got rough. He rubbed at his face and said, “Well, if my father was in possession of the phylactery, then he’d be the best one to ask about it. Do you know where he is?”
“He’s got a shop in the Undercity,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 10
A portal took us back to HQ, where we stripped off and stashed our scuba gear. Mrs. Rita was in the hall as we came through, and told me that Psyke was still performing some complex magics on Cynthia and should not be disturbed. I thanked her and asked her to keep me updated.
A second portal took us to Oddities, the shop Herb’s father ran. Kristin had introduced him as Mr. Albert, and told me he was a unique undead who was in good standing with the Undercity. He never caused trouble for anyone, always paid his taxes, all in all, a good citizen. Until he stole the Black Flash. Then Kristin and I had interrogated him and taken him into custody. He’d been under a sort of house arrest for the last few weeks, but still got to run the shop, as long as he didn’t leave it.
The chimes announced our arrival as the door opened and the Beatles’s “Come Together” played over the speakers. The shop was as disorganized as Gearstripper’s workshop, and from Billy’s posture, the gremlin felt right at home amidst the clutter. Petra had her lips pursed as she took it all in, but Herb made a beeline right for the counter. Next to the cash register was a small silver bell sitting atop a handwritten “Please Ring for Service” note.
Herb rang the bell. A moment’s pause. Herb rang it again. “Coming, coming. One moment, please,” came from the back room, which made Herb mash the bell over and over again, making it sound like a three-alarm fire was ringing in the shop. “Gracious,” Albert said as the door to the back room opened, and he stepped through, wiping his hands on a towel. “What is the emergen—”
The last peal of the bell hung in the air as father and son stared at one another. I hadn’t really seen Herb in Albert’s features when we’d met, Herb must look more like his mom. But their posture and the shock on both their faces were nearly identical.
“Herbert,” Albert said. A trace of a smile crossed his face, but he looked as if he were facing down a wild animal that might flee or try to kill him. I understood why when a crackling black character appeared in the air above Herb’s outstretched palm.
“Give me one reason,” he said. “One reason not to unmake you.” If this were a movie, Herb would’ve sounded threatening, challenging, daring his father to try something. But this was real. And while Herb’s voice wasn’t whiny or anything, there was a pleading to it. When he’d last seen his father, he’d destroyed Albert because Albert had become a monster, literally and figuratively. I could hear in his voice just how badly he wanted his father back.
Albert’s red eyes were wet. “I’m sorry, son,” he whispered. “I made terrible choices. I did unforgivable things. I wish I could take them all back. I really do.” There was sincerity in Albert’s voice, and Herb must’ve heard it, too, because the crackling character of undeath vanished, and then Albert came around the counter and both men were hugging.
Gears and Jeal loo
ked a little embarrassed, but Petra just gave my hand a squeeze and grinned at me. Despite all the shit that was going down right now, something was happening that was worth smiling about.
I gave them a minute before I cleared my throat. “Herb, I’m sorry, but—”
“Right,” Herb said, breaking away from his father’s embrace. “Dad, we need to know about the phylactery you got from the Keepers. Anything you can. It’s important.”
Albert wiped his red eyes and sniffed. “That thing? It’s a complicated little device,” he said. “Full of more surprises than I realized when I accepted it. Things I didn’t realize until much later.”
“So let’s start with some basic questions, then,” I said. “What would happen if a demon took up residence in it?”
Albert rubbed his chin in a very Herb way. “That depends. If we’re talking about a literal from-the-Pit demon, then I think the phylactery would shatter, or always be on the brink of shattering, as it wasn’t meant to carry such a soul.” He paused, tapped his lips, then said, “What sort of body did the phylactery generate for the spirit?”
“It didn’t,” I said. “The spirit’s just living inside the phylactery and is being carried around by a wight.”
Albert frowned at this. “The appeal of that particular phylactery is that it automatically generates a body for the user.”
At my look of confusion, Herb explained, “Phylacteries aren’t meant to carry around a being’s entire essence; that’s too much strain on the device. Liches and other creatures gain immortality by tethering their soul to an inanimate object, which becomes their phylactery, and then they use necromantic magic to craft or preserve a body. When that body is destroyed, their soul temporarily returns to the phylactery until they can create a new body to live in.”
Albert nodded. “Because that one builds a body for you, it saves considerable time and energy. But that one behaved differently than I’d expected. For starters, it was a one-shot device. After I regenerated, my soul was no longer tethered to it. The other piece was that it restored my soul as I was before I transformed into a lich. I’d made the bargain with the Keepers years before I completed the ritual, thinking my foresight clever. And yet, it seemed that the phylactery took an imprint of my soul as I was then, rather than when I was destroyed.” Albert pondered this for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m going off track. If that phylactery didn’t create a body for this spirit, then it means that it isn’t powerful enough to do so. That would mean you’re up against something very dangerous, indeed.”
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