Autumn Bones

Page 69

“Man of science, my ass!” I shouted across the intersection at him.
He cackled in reply. Maybe he wasn’t agoraphobic, but whatever shreds of sanity he’d been clinging to were gone.
“Hel’s liaison,” Stefan said in a formal tone, parrying another mighty swipe of the Tall Man’s axe. “I fear my strength is not without limits. The same does not appear true of the creature.”
I winced. “Sorry!”
I knew what I had to do. I just didn’t know how the hell I was going to do it. I set down the spirit lantern. Dauda-dagr sang as I drew it, the hilt cool and reassuring against my palm. The ridge of hair along my tail prickled as I assessed the embattled Tall Man for a weakness in his armor at a vital point.
There was one—there, when he turned his skull, his spine was exposed beneath his helmet at the nape of his neck.
Only I hadn’t the faintest idea how to reach it.
There was a thrumming sound from the rooftop of one of the buildings on the intersection, one that had sat empty and for sale since the Birchwood Grill it once housed had closed. A thrumming sound followed by a splat.
The Tall Man staggered backward as a water balloon filled with red dye burst against his breastplate.
Atop the roof, there were cheers and whoops, heads peering over the edge. I felt a fierce grin stretch my cheeks. “Go, Easties!”
“Oh, I don’t think so. No, I’m afraid that won’t do at all.” In the middle of the intersection, Clancy Brannigan calmly withdrew a pistol from the waistband of his polyester leisure suit. Considering that he’d gone entirely around the bend, he sounded surprisingly coherent. He raised his arm to take aim at the figures on the rooftop and cocked the safety. “Let’s let this play out, shall we?”
I froze in shock. A gun, or an insane mortal with a gun, was the last thing I’d expected. But Cody spun around and drew his service pistol, his expression grim and determined. “Drop it!”
Talman Brannigan’s last living descendant moved with startling dexterity, grabbing Jen around the neck with his left arm and positioning her between them, his gun to her temple. “I’d say it’s a standoff, Officer. Why don’t you drop yours?”
Jen let out a faint squeak, her dark eyes wide with terror and helpless fury, showing the whites. Cody hesitated.
“Oh, God,” I whispered, the blood running cold in my veins. “Jen, no!”
There was another sound, a whooshing sound, as one of the figures atop the roof vaulted over the edge, the panels of a long coat flaring like dark wings, briefly blotting out the streetlights overhead. Someone let out a shriek as the figure dropped like a stone. A highly cinematic stone. Clancy Brannigan swung his pistol and fired at it, the gunshot echoing loudly along the street.
“Missed me.” Bethany Cassopolis landed in a three-point stance, straightening to adjust the folds of her long Victorian frock coat. She showed her fangs. “No one fucks with my brother and sister, creep. Not anymore.” Brannigan lowered his pistol and fired on her at point-blank range, but a bullet to the chest barely even slowed Bethany down as she fell upon him with inhuman speed, wrenching the gun from his hand as she jerked him away from Jen and sent him stumbling in Cody’s direction. “Count yourself lucky I don’t drink you dry, asshole!”
Cody slapped a pair of handcuffs on Clancy Brannigan. One psychotic mortal down, one possessed zombie skeleton to go.
Okay.
“Wait!” I shouted. “Stefan, everyone, just hold on!” I addressed the Tall Man’s figure. “Mr. Morgan, I want to parley!”
The helmeted skull turned toward me, eye sockets filled with blue fire, blue fire crackling along its bones. Grandpa Morgan was listening. Opposite him, Stefan braced his hands on his knees, keeping his grip on his sword, taking deep breaths. Blood was running down his left arm, dripping from his wrist.
“Let Talman Brannigan’s spirit go,” I said. “He committed a terrible crime. Don’t let it happen again. That can’t be what you want.”
Blue flames surged in the hollow sockets. “Let my grandson go, she-devil!” It was a different voice, not as booming, but creaking with sharp, rusty edges. Well, that and a Jamaican accent. “That’s all I ask. Give me my grandson, and you and your cursed bloodclot of a town can have your murderer’s bones!”
“No one has me, Grandfather!” Emerging from behind the protective barrier of Lurine’s coils, Sinclair confronted the apparition. There were tears on his cheeks. “This is my town and these are my friends. I chose this path, and you have no right to choose a different for me; not you, not my mother, not my sister! No one! You can force me to change my mind, but you can’t change my heart.” He opened one hand to reveal the withered remnants of a joe-pye weed. “You can only break it.”
On the outskirts of what had been a crowd of spectators, there was still shouting and pushing, but the street surrounding us had gone quiet. Everyone who wasn’t already fleeing was transfixed with a combination of horror and fascination. I caught Lurine’s eye and pointed toward the Tall Man’s ankles, then held up one finger to indicate she should wait for my signal. Lurine nodded, slithering forward a few feet. Behind her, Stacey Brooks stood with her arms wrapped around herself, teeth chattering in the warm night air.
In silence, we waited for the Tall Man’s—for Grandpa Morgan’s—response.
“Sorry, bwai.” There might even have been a hint of regret in the rusty voice. “But your mother bound me to her will.”
And then, “CAVANNAUGH!”
Grandpa Morgan had loosed the reins on the Tall Man and given him his head. The axe rose, the skull turning in search of Stacey Brooks. Stefan straightened, hoisting his sword, his irises like pale rims of frost around his pupils.
“Easties, fire!” I shouted, praying that Brandon and his friends were still up there manning the ramparts.
My prayers were answered. Atop the roof of the old Birchwood Grill building, the industrial-strength water-balloon launcher twanged over and over, launching a barrage. The Tall Man flailed, batting at the onslaught. It wasn’t anything more than an annoyance to him, but all I needed was a moment’s distraction.
“Now!” I shouted to Lurine.
Her iridescent tail shot forward, snaking around the skeleton’s bony ankles, upending him with a single yank. The Tall Man clattered to the ground, bones and armor rattling. Stefan was on him in a flash, both booted feet stomping down hard on the skeleton’s axe-wielding arm, the point of his sword jamming into the exposed vertebrae at the back of the Tall Man’s neck through the same gap under the helmet that I’d spotted.
Of course, there was no magic in his blade, only skill, and it seemed the skeleton was held together with death magic, not sinew. Blue lightning crackled as the Tall Man flung him off with supernatural strength, rising to one knee.
One knee was good enough for me. It put the nape of the Tall Man’s neck at right about eye level.
Stealing up behind him, I drove dauda-dagr home.
It cut through the brittle old bones like butter. The blue lightning vanished. The Tall Man’s figure collapsed.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Too soon, of course. The air around the fallen heap of bones and metal roiled, smelling of scorched hair and rot. Without a host to contain it, Grandpa Morgan’s duppy was manifesting at long last.
“Gentlefolk of the coven!” Casimir called in a fierce, determined voice. “My darlings, our time has come!”
Sinclair turned to me. He held the empty pickle jar in one hand and the sad, trampled reminder of Jojo in the other, and the determination in Casimir’s voice was echoed in his level gaze. “Stand back, Daisy. We’ve got this.”
I nodded. “Do it.”
I admit it—I’d had my doubts about the coven. But they converged in a circle around the Tall Man’s armored bones and held hands, with Sinclair in the center, facing his grandfather’s spirit. Sandra Sweddon, Warren Rogers, Mark and Sheila Reston, Kim Crandall, Mrs. Meyers, whose first name I really ought to learn . . . their ordinary, mortal faces were strong and beautiful as they chanted an invocation.
Grandpa Morgan’s duppy fought them. It manifested in a shifting array of forms: a bull-calf with fiery eyes, chains jangling around its neck; a black dog with its hackles raised; a giant fish leaping and twisting in midair.
Members of the coven held fast to one another’s hands and chanted louder, their voices strong.
In the center of the circle, Sinclair opened the empty jar, the sprig of joe-pye weed tucked into the breast pocket of his polo shirt. He uttered a word—a word like the word his mother had uttered in the cemetery, all stern, tolling syllables that sounded as if it came from before the dawn of recorded time.
The duppy’s appearance dwindled into that of a stooped, elderly man with tired, bloodshot eyes, gazing at his grandson with a pleading expression.
Sinclair said the word again.
A cool, crisp autumn breeze sprang up, banishing the scent of decay and blowing the manifestation of the duppy into tatters. There was a . . . a sucking sensation, like what happens when contestants on Iron Chef America use the vacuum sealer.
With a deft, deliberate twist, Sinclair screwed the lid onto the pickle jar, capturing his grandfather’s spirit.
It was done.
Forty-seven
In the aftermath, I burst into hysterical laughter. I couldn’t help it.
“Daisy.” Stefan’s calm voice anchored me. “Are you harmed?”
“No.” I wasn’t entirely steady on my feet, but the sense of debilitating weakness was beginning to fade. “I’m okay. Is everyone else okay?”
Unfortunately, the answer was no. At least the Tall Man hadn’t succeeded in doing a lot of damage. His axe had nicked Lurine’s coils, and Stefan had a gash in his forearm. He assured me it was nothing, although blood was soaking through the bandanna he wrapped around it. Jen was shaken by her encounter with Clancy Brannigan but otherwise unharmed. Her sister, Bethany, was displaying the bullet she’d expelled from her chest—don’t ask me how, since I’m not up on the intricacies of vampiric healing abilities—with all the pride of a first grader with the coolest item at show-and-tell. While Stacey Brooks was either in a state of shock or pretending to be in order to justify clinging to Sinclair’s arm, she didn’t have a scratch on her.