A few yards farther and Gallagher brought us up short. We stood in an undeveloped section of the cemetery; a wide grassy lawn, empty of mausoleums, stretched ahead of us for a couple dozen yards before it sloped gently down to the banks of the Mississippi. Across the dark waters, the city of New Orleans loomed, glittering like a jewel in the night.
“Well?” Gallagher asked, a bit impatiently, but I tuned his annoyance out and took a long hard look around. I couldn’t afford to be wrong. If I was, one helluva lot of people were going to die.
But no pressure, right?
I walked around a bit, moving from left to right so as to parallel the river, and then getting closer to the water’s edge before backing off farther than where I’d originally started.
Eventually, the pieces of the puzzle—the view of the waterline, the location of the city against the horizon, the rounded bubble of the Superdome, even the moon, now almost full, hanging off to one side at just the right distance—all came together.
This was the spot.
I was certain of it.
“Here,” I said, and as I did so I felt the nexus deep beneath my feet surge with power. The hair on my arms stood at attention and my blood seemed to race more quickly through my veins as I felt the flow of potential fill the air around me.
Gallagher nodded, his expression grim.
“Time to get to work, then.”
* * *
On the night of the solstice, we returned to the cemetery shortly before midnight.
Over the past day and a half we’d done everything we could to prepare us for the confrontation that was coming, and now we moved with purpose, intent on the job before us.
Given Gallagher’s combat prowess and my affinity for the dead, we were the logical choices to lead the attack on the Angeu. Assisting us were the surviving wardens and a small group of Sidhe. While we kept the Angeu distracted, Dmitri would carve a path forward to the Angeu’s side where Denise would use the soul knives to send the bastard and his ghostly army back to where they belonged.
It sounded good in theory, but I had a feeling that things were not going to be anywhere near as easy when reality showed its ugly face.
We’d marked the location of the nexus with a brightly colored stake and had placed another marker twenty feet in front of that. As the others took up position among the crypts at my back, I walked out to that second marker and took up my position.
Because of my ability to see into both realms, I’d been assigned to act as point man.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in all my life.
My heart pounded, my throat felt three sizes too small, and as I felt my hands start to shake, one thought kept repeating itself over and over again in my mind.
I can’t do this.
It was insane. Absolutely insane. We never should have come here. We should have simply packed up and headed south, away from Gallagher and the trouble surrounding him, and screw the compulsion Denise had been feeling. We would have found a way to break it …
I was on the verge of losing it, of turning tail and running for the hills as fast as my legs would carry me, when I felt a child’s hand slide into each of my own.
They were soft, ethereal hands, and it was difficult to hold them, but I clung to them, even if only figuratively, with all of my strength.
Glancing down, I found the ghosts of my daughter, Elizabeth, and her friend Abigail, the girl I had once called Whisper, standing on either side of me, their hands in mine. They looked up at me and I found courage in their support. I was here, doing the right thing, and if I died in this life tonight, at least I knew I would not be alone in the next.
Raising my head, I found Abigail’s father, Matthew, the ghost I’d called Scream, standing off to one side, as protective of his daughter in death as he had been in life. We understood each other, Scream and me, having chased our daughters’ killers to the ends of the earth, and when he silently nodded at me, one long solemn nod, I felt the last of my fear vanish.
As the ghosts slowly faded away, I felt the night around me move.
The air grew heavy with a sense of anticipation, like the feeling of a summer night with a thunderstorm looming on the horizon. The sensation slowly built, growing stronger, until the air was practically vibrating around me with all that raw power running through it.
I reached into my pocket and withdrew the two items I carried there: my harmonica and a roadside emergency flare. I was going to need both of them very soon.
There was an audible crack and then the sky before me was lit with a flash of light so bright that I was forced to look away, tears streaming down my face from the sudden pain.
When I looked up again, the world had dissolved into a sea of white.
I couldn’t see a thing.
Panic threatened, but I beat it back down with the sheer force of my will. I’d known this was coming and had planned for it; there was nothing to worry about, I told myself.
I reached inside my mind and the world in front of me sprang into view, lit with the pale silver blue light of my ghostsight.
The rift was directly in front of me, a shimmering curtain of power that hung down from the heavens in exactly the spot we’d predicted it would be.
Harmonica in hand, I stood there and waited for Death to come to me.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long.
The sound of horses’ hooves reached me first.
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.
It was a slow, steady pace, one without any sense of urgency, but it carried with it a chilly kind of inevitability, Death’s steady march come to claim us all.
As the sound drew closer, I began to see a hazy figure through the glistening curtain.
Clip-clop, clip-clop.
The figure grew more distinct as it got closer to the other side of the curtain, until it resolved itself into a pair of horses pulling a cart of some kind.
Clip-clop.
Even as I watched, the curtain parted and the horses stepped into our world, dragging their cargo along behind them. One of the horses was the picture of good health, its coat gleaming, its eyes full of spark and fire, while the other looked to be at the end of its journey, all skin and bones and eyes gone filmy with age or disease.
The driver sat hunched in his seat, dressed in the same wide-brimmed hat and shimmering cloak he’d been wearing the first time we’d encountered him. In the light of the rift, though, I could see that the cloak was not the rich fabric I’d originally assumed it to be but was crafted from the very souls of his victims! Faces swarmed about its surface, eyes blinking here and there, mouths opening and closing in silent screams.
The Angeu lifted one skeletal hand and cracked a whip fashioned from human hair, urging his steeds forward, out of the way of the gate behind them so as to allow the army of ghosts to begin making its way across.
I waited, watching the cart’s forward motion, trying to gauge it just right. When it reached a point halfway between the rift and the spot where I stood, I knelt and slammed the butt of the flare against the ground, activating it. As it sparked into life, I tossed it at a point in the grass a few feet in front of me.
The flare hit the ground, igniting the oil we’d poured in an intricate pattern across the lawn that afternoon. Within seconds the flames ignited the entire design, surrounding the cart.
Gallagher and his people started chanting the minute the flare left my hands, and now their voices filled the night air, rising and falling in a complicated rhythm that activated the circle’s power, sealing the cart and its driver inside its confines.
With a quick jerk of the reins, the Angeu brought the cart to a halt. He slowly raised his head, staring out across the dozen or so feet that separated us. I could feel his gaze upon me, but I knew what that gaze could do, and this time I was ready for it, focusing on the center of his chest and refusing to meet his eyes.
Behind him, his ghostly army began its crossing, stepping out of the land of
the dead and returning to the land of the living. As they passed through the curtain, they fanned out on either side of the flaming circle that held their master captive, moving steadily in my direction. The eldritch fire in their eyes reflected the hunger and desperation that rolled off them in waves, and I knew that if this vast host ever reached the city itself, there would soon be nothing left worth saving.
With what felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders, I put my harmonica to my lips and began to play.
49
HUNT
It was a light, whimsical tune at first, the kind of thing designed to catch your attention and draw you in with its lilting melody. I filled the night air with its intricate dance, snaring the ghosts’ attention with my song, forcing them to pay attention to me and me alone.
As more and more of them turned their gaze in my direction, I added a new dimension to my tune, a secondary melody that was darker and more powerful than the first. It sang of loves lost and chances missed, of striving for but failing to reach the goal, of opportunities gone and efforts squandered.
It was the type of song that filled your heart and soul with regret and forced you to examine all that you held dear.
Like a spider’s web catching a fly, my song took hold of the ghosts before me and seized them firmly in its grip, preventing them from moving even one step forward. The great army slowed and then staggered to a stop.
Surprised, the Angeu pulled sharply on the reins, bringing his cart to a halt as well. He gestured at the spirits around him, ordering them forward, but none of them moved.
As long as I played, there they would remain.
So far, so good.
In just the first few seconds of the encounter, we’d brought the Angeu to a halt and seized control of his phantom army. Now all we had to do was get Denise close enough to use the soul knives.
That’s where Dmitri came in.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw him step out of hiding, Denise at his side. His berserker nature was fully in control, and in my ghostsight he appeared as an eleven hundred–pound monster covered in white fur and sporting a nasty-looking set of teeth and claws. Even as I watched, Denise seized hold of his fur and swung herself up onto his back, gripping the sides of his muscular body with her legs to keep her steady. No sooner was she settled than Dmitri lumbered into motion, headed straight for the Angeu and his cart.
Knowing I needed to keep the Angeu distracted to give the others time to reach him, I moved closer to the circle, flaunting the tune I was playing, making certain that he saw that I was the source of his troubles.
He reacted predictably, cracking his whip against his horses’ flanks, urging them forward, trying to get them to cross the flames and run me down. The horses rushed forward but reared up at the last second, refusing to cross the barrier.
The circle held.
When that didn’t work he turned his attention instead to disrupting the ritual that kept the circle active, staring at the men and women assembled behind me, trying to catch them in his paralyzing stare.
Our people had been forewarned, however, and all but one resisted the temptation to raise their eyes from the ground before them.
Just a few more minutes were all we needed.
Unfortunately, we weren’t going to get them.
From behind us came a voice blaring over a megaphone. “This is the FBI! Remain where you are and do not move. We have you surrounded!”
It was the last thing on earth I expected to hear.
I spun around to find uniformed officers emerging from the darkness behind us, pointing guns at Gallagher and his people. Leading them was none other than Special Agent Dale Robertson.
He walked toward me, his gun out and pointed at my face.
“Got you this time, Hunt,” he said.
I couldn’t believe it.
What the hell did he think he was doing? Didn’t he see what was going on? How could he think we were a bigger threat than an army of specters just waiting to tear into any living soul they could get their hands on? Was he that freakin’ stupid?
And then it dawned on me.
He couldn’t see them.
By their very nature, the Angeu and his servants were hidden from Robertson’s view. As a Mundane, he didn’t have the capability of perceiving creatures from the other side, the way the rest of us could. From his perspective, we must have looked like a bunch of lunatics standing around a cemetery in the middle of the night chanting and playing crazy music.
“Hands over your head, Hunt!” he yelled, brandishing his weapon.
But I couldn’t do that.
If I did, I’d be forced to stop playing. And if I stopped playing, the army of hungry specters at my back would surge forward and engulf us all.
I had to hold them long enough to allow Denise to reach the Angeu.
I deliberately turned my back on Robertson and continued playing, betting that he wouldn’t shoot me out of hand in front of all these witnesses.
Gambling was never my strong suit, however.
A shot rang out and a bullet whizzed past my ear, close enough that I could feel the heat of its passage.
“Last warning, Hunt. Hands up.”
I could hear it in his voice. He was going to shoot me if I didn’t comply.
I had no choice.
If I wanted to live, I had to stop playing.
Fuck him, I thought and played on.
I watched as Dmitri reached the outer edge of the ghostly army. He plowed into them with all the force of a battering ram, scattering them out of his way, and driving forward until he reached the flames that made up the edge of the protective circle.
Using his momentum to her advantage, Denise sprang off Dmitri’s back with a huge leap, clearing the flames and landing well inside the circle’s edge. Without hesitation she ran forward, vaulted the side of the Angeu’s cart, and rushed toward his unprotected form, the soul knives gleaming with mystic light in each of her hands.
Just a few more steps and it would be all over.
Behind me, Robertson said, “You leave me no choice, Hunt.”
That’s when things went from bad to worse.
The Angeu grinned and surged to his feet. Opening his mouth impossibly wide, he threw back his head as if he were screaming, except no sound came out of his mouth, at least not in the conventional sense. Instead, the most god-awful inhuman shriek I’ve ever heard exploded inside my mind, reverberating around and around inside my skull like an echo through an empty canyon, driving out all rational thought in the face of its relentless attack.
The sound drove me and everyone else in front of him to our knees, our hands coming up involuntarily to cover our ears in a vain attempt to make it stop, cutting off not just my song but also the chant that powered the mystic circle.
I forced my eyes to remain open and I watched helplessly as Denise leapt for the Angeu’s back, her knives out and ready for the killing blow, only to have the Angeu spin around and seize her in midair. He held her at arm’s length, the bony fingers of one hand wrapped about her throat, her feet kicking helplessly several feet off the ground as he leered at her with his skeletal visage.
It might have ended there if it hadn’t been for Dmitri.
He charged forward, roaring out a challenge as he slammed his massive bulk against the side of the cart, rocking it up on one side, toppling Denise and the Angeu over the other side.
They fell together, Denise on top, and, as I watched, her slim hand rose above them, the blade of a soul knife gleaming in the light from the rift at their backs, and then plunged back down.
A howling cry split the night, a scream of such misery and anguish that it seemed as if all of the world’s pain was wrapped up in one blistering sound.
I saw the other knife rise above it all, saw it start to make its downward descent … and then lost it from view as the horde of angry specters rushed forward.
Knowing I didn’t have time to get out of the way of the oncomin
g horde, I curled up into a ball and brought my harmonica to my lips.
I didn’t have time to re-create the song I’d used earlier to keep the angry mob of ghosts pinned in place, had barely enough time to play anything at all, really, so I used what I had simply to get them to overlook me as they surged forward. Like a stream that parts around a rock, the army of ghosts rushed toward me, flowing around my huddled form, without noticing that I was there.
I could hear Robertson screaming behind me and chanced a glance in that direction. A pack of specters had surrounded him. Some were ripping and tearing at him with their claws while others had sunk their teeth into his unprotected flesh. Blood flowed, hot and bright in the night air. Robertson, of course, couldn’t see what was attacking him, only the results of their efforts, and the look of horror on his face was something to behold as he fought vainly to throw them off. Beyond him, his men were also under attack, their shouts and cries adding to his own terrified screams.
As I turned away, an unearthly cry rent the air. In its wake came a shock wave that shook the earth beneath us, jolting the harmonica loose from my grasp and knocking me off my feet.
Silence fell.
Cautiously, I raised my head and looked around.
I could see Agent Robertson kneeling on the ground a few feet away, blood streaming from half a dozen wounds. He was gibbering to himself like a madman and rocking back and forth. He’d lived through the specters’ assault but would probably never be the same.
In a strange way, I almost felt sorry for him.
Behind him I could see Gallagher and several of his men already up and on their feet, dealing with the federal agents who had survived the attack. Gallagher’s job was made easier by the fact that there weren’t many of them.
Turning in the other direction, I realized that the light was gone; the Curtain, and the ghosts that had come through it, had vanished as if they had never been.
Over by the ruins of the Angeu’s cart, I could see Dmitri, back in human form, pulling himself up off the ground. Blood ran down his face, but he didn’t seem to notice it, his attention on something else lying a few feet away.
King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) Page 24
