Malachai looked up and over her shoulder towards the trees and the slowly-brightening sky above the lake. What he saw there made him smile. Agnes didn’t turn; she wasn’t about to be fooled so easily. But her expression changed from vengeful spite to one of total shock when the Dark Man’s long and slender fingers slid around her throat and jerked her backwards, far enough away from its lord and master that she could no longer do any harm.
“No!” Agnes screamed, frustrated and outraged that her victory was being snatched away from her. Falconer smiled, getting slowly to his feet and making a show of dusting himself off. He twitched his nose experimentally, and was pleased to feel it pop back to normal again, a product of his supernatural healing ability. There was no blood, or even swelling; liches didn’t bleed, no matter how hard you tried to hurt one.
They couldn’t be choked to death either, because although most liches seemed to breathe, it was more through force of long habit rather than a genuine need for oxygen. Agnes was struggling hard, reaching up to try and prise her captor’s hands apart. The Dark Man did what she wanted, letting go with one hand and grabbing her by the hair with it instead.
Roaring, Agnes slammed an elbow hard into the Dark Man’s belly. It made contact with something soft but solid. He didn’t so much as flinch.
Malachai wandered across towards the lakeshore. The heart still lay there in the mud where she had dropped it when she launched the surprise attack. Squatting, he picked it up and pretended to study it for a while, secretly watching her struggle from the corner of his eye.
“You heartless little bastard!” Agnes cried, giving vent to all of her rage and frustration. Malachai knew he had to be careful, because her powers of attack were fueled by negative emotions like those. Originally he had planned to draw this out, to savor every last drop of fear that the knowledge of her impending death was going to create, but he saw the danger in that now, and knew that he had to end this quickly before she grew too powerful.
“I am an orphan, not a bastard,” he said conversationally, dropping the phylactery back into the mud once more. “But I am heartless. As are you.” With that, he stamped hard on the fallen heart. His foot went straight through it, cracking and crumpling it on the first strike.
Agnes threw back her head and screamed.
Then she was ended.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“…and that is how Malachai Falconer became one of the most powerful liches in existence,” Lamiyah said gravely, finishing her tale.
“By killing the only living member of his biological family.” Jessica looked disgusted.
“And turning on the people who took him in,” I added grimly. “What a douche.”
“Liches are indeed heartless, sometimes in more ways than one,” my guide told us with a sigh. “As far as they are concerned, ruthlessness is a necessary trait for survival.”
“So let me recap,” I said, pushing all the air out of my lungs in one long, frustrated breath. “Falconer may be wiry, but he’s damn near invulnerable to physical harm.”
“Check,” Jessica said, ticking off on one finger.
“The Dark Man: he’s as dumb as a box of rocks, but fast as all get-out, and pretty much invincible too.”
“Correct,” Lamiyah agreed calmly.
“Check.” Second finger ticked off.
“Point three, and this is the big bad: they could have…I don’t know, between the cemetery and the Snare, practically an entire army of spirits working for them—”
“Not willingly,” my guide butted in. “If that is the case, then those spirits will mostly be enslaved, held in thrall by the lich against their will.”
“Does that make any difference?” Jess wanted to know.
“More than you would think, my dear. You see, serving a dark entity is not even close to being a pleasant thing. Few do it through choice, and even those who do start out by serving voluntarily, tend to see the error of their decision rather quickly.”
“Okay, soooo…” Jess didn’t know what Lamiyah was getting at, but I thought that I could see where she was going with this.
“So, it shouldn’t take too much to get them to rebel,” I finished, thinking out loud. I must have hit the mark, because Lamiyah nodded eagerly.
“Yes, precisely. To borrow a military term, you should think of them as conscripts. If you can weaken their master and gain the upper hand somehow, then you would become a far more desirable alternative in their eyes.”
I folded my arms. “That’s all well and good, but how exactly am I supposed to get the upper hand over someone who can’t be hurt?”
“Think, Daniel,” Lamiyah pleaded. “What is the one weak spot of a lich? Its Achilles’ heel?”
Bingo! The answer popped straight into the front of my brain.
“The skull.”
“Yes!” Jessica said excitedly. “The child’s skull! The p…the ph…”
“Phylactery,” Lamiyah finished for her, nodding eagerly. “The repository of Falconer’s soul. Find and destroy that, and you not only weaken the lich gravely — perhaps mortally — but should also be able to release his subjects from their state of unholy servitude.”
I still didn’t like the odds. “Lamiyah, you kicked the Dark Man’s ass pretty good in that forest. Can you—”
She shook her head, cutting me off before I could finish. “That was a memory, Daniel, not the physical realm. I believe that I can hold off the Dark Man for a short while, and perhaps buy you a little time…but do not expect me to check him completely.”
“I’ll be happy if you can just run a little interference for me.”
“For us,” Jess corrected me. I turned to look at her.
“That…may not be a good idea, Jess. Besides, I was hoping you’d make a run for it and go fetch the police.”
“And tell them what?” she demanded, hands on her hips. “That there’s a five hundred year-old undead British guy down in the basement, holding my cousin and your girlfriend hostage—”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
Jessica shot me a withering look that said don’t be an idiot, and went on, “—holding her hostage, keeps his soul in a kid’s skull, and has an evil spirit for an accomplice?”
“Well, yeah, basically…”
“Grow up. Besides, we don’t even know for sure that Becky’s even in the building still.”
Ah, crap. She had a point.
“She is,” Lamiyah said with a confidence that made me feel jealous. “I can feel her presence.”
“Lamiyah!” I broke into a massive grin. “You just did a Star Wars quote!”
If looks could kill…
“Do you know where she is, exactly?” asked Jess, rolling her eyes at me.
“Not exactly, but I sense that she is beneath us.”
“Beneath us?” I echoed. “Like, in the basement? Is there one?” I didn’t know if hospitals even had basements.
“Of course there is. It’s the one place in the building that’s off-limits to all the volunteers.”
That sounded promising. “How off-limits?” I asked.
“As in ‘the door is chained and padlocked’ off-limits,” Jess answered, “and unless you have some heavy-duty bolt cutters, you’re probably not getting down there anyway.”
“Can’t hurt to look. Is there another way in — like a window or something?”
“To be honest, I’ve never thought about it,” admitted Jessica. “Lamiyah, could you perhaps scout things out? You know, see if there’s a second entrance?”
“Yes.” My guide sounded doubtful. “However, there is another concern that seems equally pressing to me.”
“What?”
“At the risk of sounding alarmist, Daniel…when did you last hear from your mother?”
Mom! In all the panic over Becky, I’d plain forgotten about Mom. I tried to calm the sudden surge of terror that ran through me, my mind conjuring up thoughts of what the Dark Man could be doing to her even now. She was
back in the hotel room, treating herself to a hot bath and a few glasses of wine. The hotel room that was right next to the town cemetery…
“I have to go get her!” I was halfway to the door before Jessica grabbed me by the arms.
“Focus!” she hissed, putting her face right in front of mine. “Panicking isn’t going to help anybody.”
“She is absolutely right, Daniel,” Lamiyah said, resting a soothing hand on a spot between my shoulder blades. “I shall go and check on your mother. Above all else, you must be calm. Anger and fear are Falconer’s weapons — any negative emotions are. You cannot afford to make him any stronger than he already is.”
“We can’t just sit here and sing Kumbaya while he’s got Becky, and maybe Mom too,” I shot back, and then added snidely, “This isn’t exactly Boulder.”
My spirit guide sighed. “Jessica was right,” she said at last, “you do need to grow up.”
I opened my mouth to fire something back, but Jessica beat me to it. She let go of my arms and let her hands fall to her hips. “Danny, I get that you’re afraid. I am too! I get that you’re angry. I am too! Don’t you see what’s happening here?”
“Of course I do!” I snapped. “This maniac is going to hurt the two people I love most in all the world—”
“Haven’t you figured out why?” she sounded exasperated at how slow on the uptake I was.
“Because he’s a maniac!” I practically roared. “Because he’s freaking crazy, and that’s what crazy people do!”
“No, that’s not it! Look, Danny, you’re a seer, right? A super-powerful psychic?” I nodded, clueless as to where she was going with this. “So you give off a ton of psychic energy, right?”
“Right,” I agreed blankly. “So?”
“So,” Lamiyah jumped in, “you glow, Daniel. You practically shine with spirit essence. Don’t you see that that is how Falconer found you, and why he wants to provoke you now? Think, Daniel: think! In your agitated state, you are practically a banquet to him!”
Oh. My. God.
She was right. How had I been this blind?
“It’s not her he wants,” I said slowly. Realization was starting to set in. “It’s me, isn’t it? It’s been me all along.”
“Of course,” Lamiyah said in that oh-so-matter-of-fact way that drove me nuts sometimes. “He has an ever-replenishing food supply at his disposal, drawn from the volunteers at this facility…but in you, Daniel, he would find sustenance that could last him for a lifetime — and perhaps even longer.”
“That’s sick,” Jessica practically spat. “Most of us are just kids!”
“I could not agree with you more, Jessica, and that is why he must be stopped.” My guide crossed her arms slowly. I recognized that look. She was gearing up for a fight. “But if you deliver yourself into his hands, Daniel, then the outcome might be immeasurably worse than you can possibly imagine.”
“You’re totally right,” I agreed, “but I can’t just leave Becky down there with him, can I? He could be torturing her, or doing all kinds of sick stuff.” She knew that I was right. What’s more, she knew that I knew that I was right. “Falconer thrives on fear, and what are people more afraid of than pain? If he hurts her, Lamiyah, he’ll make her angry, yeah, but she’ll also be frightened. And that will just make him stronger.”
Lamiyah didn’t have an answer for that.
“So we have to go down there,” Jessica put in, seeing the big picture clearly for the first time. “We have to get her back.”
We all fell silent. Finally, my guide said, “I do fear that you are right. I am not sure that I can see any other alternative.”
“First things first,” I clapped my hands together, making Jessica jump. “Don’t fear anything. If you’re right about Falconer, that will be like pouring gasoline on a barbecue. Jess, the only way you and I have a chance against this creep and his nasty little sidekick is if we put a lid on our negative emotions.”
“Easier said than done.”
“I know, but we have to…otherwise we’re hosed. Fear, anger, aggression…the path to the dark side are they…” I couldn’t help it.
Jessica rolled her eyes. “It’s going to take more than a Star Wars quote to get us out of this, Danny!”
“Nevertheless, they are wise words.” We both looked at Lamiyah in surprise. “Your only chance of defeating Malachai Falconer requires that you maintain a spiritually-pure state of being at all times,” she shrugged, as though stating the most obvious thing ever. “It will require courage and discipline aplenty, but it can be done. Daniel, you have an abundance of the first. As for the second…well, we shall just have to hope for the best.”
“Hey!” I grumbled. “What are you trying to say?”
“That you can be kind of an impulsive jerk sometimes?” Jess smirked. “At least, that’s what my cousin says. Luckily for you, she says you’re a pretty cool guy underneath all of that teenage hormonal crap?”
Teenage hormonal crap? You’re, like, twelve years old!
“Great, thanks,” was what I actually said. Time to put the sarcasm on the back burner; there’s no way it could be thought of as a positive emotion.
She shot me a grin that said “just kidding, but not really.” I smiled back. That probably was what Becky had said about me, and to be honest, she was basically right. I’d been acting like a hormonal jerk, but I was a pretty cool guy underneath it all. No sense in arguing.
Even Lamiyah smiled. The tension bled out of the air just a little: you could practically feel it deflating like a balloon with a slow leak.
I took a deep, calming breath and turned to my guide first.
“Lamiyah, you have to make sure that Mom’s safe. She’s a priority, and I wouldn’t put it past Falconer to send some bad guys her way.”
“I shall take the very best care of her, Daniel,” she said solemnly — then disappeared, just like that.
“Wow,” was all Jessica could manage.
“She does that. You get used to it.”
“So what about us?” she asked, shaking her head and obviously still trying to wrap it around what she had just seen. “Do we just…go down there and get her?”
“Unless you have any better ideas,” I shrugged, because I sure didn’t. Jessica thought about it for a moment and then shook her head. “Alright, the frontal assault it is.”
“Works for me.” Jess laughed a little nervously. “I’m a frontal attack kind of girl. None of this sneaking around crap.”
I laughed too. It felt good, which meant we needed more of it.
“OK, so no matter what happens, we can’t get angry. Or frightened.” I was talking as much to myself as I was to Jessica, speaking my thoughts out loud. “Falconer’s a douchebag.”
“A massive douchebag.”
“Right, a massive douchebag. So he’s going to try to hurt us. Frighten us. Basically provoke us in any way he can to get what he wants.”
“We can’t let him push us.”
“Not an inch,” I agreed. “Otherwise he’ll just get stronger, and it’s game over for all of us.” I opened the door with one hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The basement. Of course. It just had to be, didn’t it?
At least the door opened smoothly and quietly when I pulled it toward me. Color me shocked: to be honest, I’d half-expected it to creeeeak and groan like the doors in any one of a thousand horror movies I’d seen.
“Do you want me to go first?” Jessica breathed in my ear. Oh yeah, sure; because what I needed right now more than anything else was another reason to feel ashamed of myself.
“No thanks,” I hissed back. “I think I got this.”
“Alright, alright. But we’re not doing this the old-fashioned way.” At Long Brook, we’d spent our entire night there trying to eke out the battery life on our cellphone flashlights. Whatever else Steve Jobs had been a genius at designing, extended battery life hadn’t exactly been his strong point. B
ut the sanatorium had been totally off the power grid, whereas the Snare was right in the middle of a small town. I reached out and flipped on the light switch. About twenty steps angled down ahead of me, bare wooden boards with a chipped metal handrail.
They hardly even creaked as we made our way down. Granted, we weren’t exactly big and didn’t weigh all that much, but I was still more than a little surprised that they weren’t announcing our presence to whoever might be down there.
Whoever, or whatever.
Ah, who was I kidding? There was a lich down here. There had to be. Which was actually kind of okay with me now — just so long as Becky was down here too, and still in one piece, I didn’t care if all the dark spirits in existence were backing him up. And if he’d hurt her…
…well, best not to think about that right now. No good could come of it. Focus on something else. Anything else.
The fluorescent strip lights flickered, taking a minute or two to warm up. The basement floor was bare concrete. I looked around. Apart from the steps, there were two ways out of here, both of them closed doors. Picking one at random, I walked across and yanked it open, then stepped back and brought my fists up. Yeah, I know it must have looked ridiculous, but I was totally expecting someone or something to jump out of the darkness at me. Instead, all I saw was a huge boiler and a room full of pipes. They clanked and popped every few seconds. Nothing else was moving in there.
Letting out the breath I’d been holding, I dropped my guard and closed the door firmly. Then I turned around.
Jessica was gone.
Crap.
The other door was standing open. All I could see through the doorway was shadow.
Something laughed, from deeper in the blackness beyond that doorway. Not a nice and happy laugh: the owner of this laugh wanted to hurt somebody.
Falconer.
Last Halloween (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 2) Page 18
