Autumn Bones

Page 68

My first thought when I saw the apparition shambling toward the rear of the parade was that it was one hell of a costume, or maybe a larger-than-life puppet like the Pumpkinhead. What else would you think if you saw a seven-foot-tall skeleton clad in steel-plate armor, wreathed in crackling blue lightning, holding a wicked-looking axe in one hand? As it drew near, spectators were craning to get a better look at it and already beginning to cheer.
But then Cody stopped dead in the intersection, so quickly I nearly ran into him from behind.
It wasn’t a costume, and there were no clever puppeteers controlling it with poles. Those discolored bones were real, and a foul, acrid scent mingled with the odor of rot and decay hung in the air around the figure. That axe wasn’t plastic; it was a serious and deadly sharp-looking tool for splitting wood. Whatever was causing the lightning, it wasn’t some clever use of LED lights. And the armor . . . I don’t know what the hell the armor was about, but it definitely wasn’t decorative.
The Tall Man’s grinning jaw gaped and blue flames flickered in his hollow eye sockets as he released a booming laugh that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, reverberating against the walls of the buildings.
The pit of my stomach dropped and my blood felt like it was turning to ice water in my veins.
“What the hell?” It was Chief Bryant, sounding angry and bewildered. “What the hell is it?”
“Talman Brannigan, sir,” Cody said flatly.
Sinclair arrived at a run, breathing hard. “And my grandfather’s duppy.”
Chief Bryant stared at all three of us, at the members of the coven, the Scooby Gang, and the ghoul squad converging behind us. The Tall Man stood motionless, axe raised. Several yards away, Stacey Brooks stood frozen in terror, the camera forgotten in her hands.
The noisy crowd had fallen silent and uncertain, and the parade participants were retreating into an uncertain cluster.
Behind the figure of the Tall Man, an elderly man in a leisure suit capered and cackled. There was something familiar about the tenor of that voice. I’d heard it over an intercom, although it hadn’t been cackling at the time. The Tall Man’s jaw gaped again, one bony hand rising to point at Stacey Brooks as he uttered a single word.
“CAVANNAUGH!”
Stacey let out an earsplitting scream.
Oh, shit.
It had been right in front of us the whole time. It wasn’t a descendant of the Cavannaughs that had stolen the Tall Man’s remains. That capering man in the leisure suit was Clancy Brannigan. It was the Tall Man’s sole living descendant that Grandpa Morgan’s duppy had possessed in order to work death magic. Unless I was mistaken, it looked very much as though Clancy Brannigan, former inventor and self-proclaimed man of science, hadn’t been building a spaceship or a new and improved widget in his basement. He’d been welding armor onto the stolen bones of his dead ancestor, now inhabited by the duppy and hell-bent on carrying out the Tall Man’s dying curse.
And not only had we conveniently assembled the parade outside the decrepit old Tudor house, but we’d provided a scion of the Cavannaugh bloodline as a handy target.
“Do something!” the chief shouted at us, then turned toward the crowds and the huddled parade participants, waving his arms. “Clear the street! Get off the street!”
After that, things got chaotic.
The Tall Man lunged toward Stacey Brooks, swinging his axe, and I reacted without thinking, summoning my mental energies the way I’d been drilling for hours. Stefan had made me promise not to attempt using them as a weapon, but I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t even know if I could do it, but as much as I disliked Stacey, I couldn’t just stand there while the resurrected corpse of Pemkowet’s infamous axe murder hacked her to bits. And so instead of kindling a shield as I’d been taught, I visualized a bullwhip of blinding light and cracked it in my mind, wrapping it around the Tall Man’s right arm and yanking on it.
It worked. The axe didn’t fall.
For a split second, I was suffused with a sense of power and triumph. Sinclair, who was closest to Stacey, sprinted forward to haul her behind him with one arm, breaking her paralysis and backing her out of danger.
And then the Tall Man turned his skull in my direction, gas-lamp blue flames flickering in his eye sockets, the end of my mental bullwhip wrapped around his bony fingers, and I realized I couldn’t retract my energy, realized he was drawing on it, the flames leaping higher, and I could see the malevolent joy of the obeah man’s spirit in those fiery hollows, riding the madness of Talman Brannigan’s ghost like some supernatural jockey, working death magic and sowing destruction, draining my very life essence to gain even more strength.
All the power and triumph I’d felt leached out of me, pouring into the apparition along the invisible tether that joined us, the tether I’d created. The sounds of shouting in the background grew faint and muffled. It felt like I was falling into a deep well of sleep, and I wondered if this was what dying was like. My knees hit the concrete, the spirit lantern falling from my nerveless fingers.
If I’d had the strength to cry, I would have.
A voice raised in bronze-edged fury rent the night, penetrating the cotton wool that seemed to be stuffed into my ears.
Lurine had shifted, her basilisk stare fixed on the Tall Man behind the feathered mask as her powerful coils lashed out to encircle the skeleton’s armor-clad waist. The invisible tether broke as he turned his attention to chopping at her with his axe, and I fell to my hands and knees in the street.
“God’s blood, Daisy!” Stefan’s hand jerked me partially upright, his eyes searching mine, pupils as dark as night. “I told you not to use it as a weapon!”
“I know,” I whispered. “But—”
Somewhere beyond us, Lurine snarled in ancient Greek, a note of pain mixed with the fury.
“Tend to her,” Stefan said to Cody, stepping back to draw his sword. “Kyria!” he called to Lurine. “Guard the innocents, leave the creature to me!”
“Daisy.” Cody crouched in front of me. “Are you with us?”
I managed to shift one hand to point at the spirit lantern, lying on the street a foot away. “Take it.”
Cody hesitated, then gave a grim nod, picking it up and opening the shutter. Nothing happened. He swore, gave it a shake, and tried again, to no avail. “Either it’s broken, or it has to be you, Daise.” He wrapped my limp fingers around the lantern. “Try.”
I promptly dropped the lantern, then fumbled for it on the ground. Sitting on my heels, I struggled to pry open the shutter. It seemed to take forever, the sound of steel clashing against steel ringing in my unstoppered ears as Stefan engaged the Tall Man, but at last I succeeded. Blue-white light spilled forth, illuminating the combatants’ lower legs and feet, shinbones behind steel greaves, blue jeans and motorcycle boots. Somewhere something was buzzing, a shrill voice spitting out curses.
“Daisy.” Cody’s voice was strained and urgent. I found the strength, barely, to lift my chin and look up. “Daisy, we need you.”
I looked past him. It was Jojo I’d heard, the joe-pye weed fairy darting around Stefan’s head, slingshot in hand, hurling pebbles at the Tall Man’s eye sockets. With no shield or armor, Stefan had his leather jacket wrapped around his left arm, and he was fighting for his life against an immensely tall armor-clad opponent who couldn’t be killed. Off to the side, Lurine had drawn herself to her full height, coils stirring as she stood guard over Sinclair and Stacey.
“Daisy!”
I placed my free hand on the concrete, pushing and trying to rise. My arms trembled with the effort. “Sorry,” I whispered.
“Beslubbering, addlepated apparition!” Jojo shrilled, amethyst eyes ablaze, tattered wings gone dry and brown, beating the air as she fitted another pebble into her slingshot of woven grass. “Vile, grave-ridden—”
In the heat of her furious passion, she darted too close to the Tall Man. It happened so fast, the axe rising and falling in a swift flash. One second, Jojo was there in midair, a look of terrible agony on her tiny face.
Then, gone. A flurry of glittering pollen drifted away, and a limp, ragged stalk of joe-pye weed fell to the street.
A wave of rage filled me, lifting me to my feet with an incoherent shout. I held up the spirit lantern, sending the Tall Man’s bony shadow stretching the length of the street. The concrete street, unfortunately.
“Over there!” Cody pointed toward a patch of landscaping on the corner, tall plumes of grass nodding. “Either corner, Daise!”
“Go!” I shouted, moving sideways to angle the Tall Man’s shadow toward the far corner. My arm was still trembling with the effort, but the anger burning inside me gave me strength. “Anyone who can! Go!”
Cody was already dodging past the Tall Man, but the Tall Man was pressing Stefan backward toward me, and I had to retreat. All along the sidewalks, the remaining spectators were shouting and shoving in a frantic effort to flee the scene, terrified parade participants crowding them from behind.
“Daise!” On the near corner, Jen signaled me with raised arms, waving wildly, light glinting off the hammer. Amid the chaos, she’d managed to slip down the street unseen. “Here!”
“Bingo,” I whispered, sidling to the left to send the Tall Man’s shadow in her direction. She hammered the nail into the soil with one solid thwack.
And nothing happened.
The Tall Man loosed another booming laugh, making the windows rattle all along the street. The capering figure in the leisure suit echoed it with a demented cackle.
Shit.
Hel had warned me that the spirit lantern and an iron nail might not work on Grandpa Morgan’s duppy because his spirit had never been laid to rest in the first place. And it didn’t work on the Tall Man because he wasn’t a spirit; he was flesh and bone, or at least bone and metal-plate, thanks to former inventor and insane agoraphobic Clancy Brannigan. Although I guess he wasn’t agoraphobic anymore, since he’d emerged from his lair for the first time in decades. Maybe being possessed by a duppy before it ditches you to animate your great-grandfather’s corpse has that effect.