“No, V.D.! I’ve done everything I can do! Everything, and nothing worked! Whatever that rotting tool did to put Garrett across, I can’t undo!”
Jules steps toward her and she can feel him pressing in her mind. She looks nervously at him before speaking again. Her volume goes down, but the cutting edge stays sharp.
“He’s had a lot more time to study up on how to be all abra-cadaver than I have. I do what I know how to do, and I pick up things here and there. I can push things into the spirit world, but can’t pull things back across. Believe me when I tell you that no one wishes I could fix this more than me. It’s almost as much as I wish you were dead, but that’s just not the way it is.”
I don’t think, no matter how this turns out, Sunny and I are ever going to get along. She’s decided that she hates me, and that too, is just the way it is.
“Well, I guess you can grab whatever gear you are taking and we can set this plan in motion.” I look at the clock on the wall and it’s hard not to shudder as I can feel the panic in my stomach. “It’s almost time.”
She opens the back door of the suburban and starts to do a quick inventory of what looks like a terrorist’s mobile warehouse of firearms and explosives. Having this girl as an enemy might prove to be painful over time, but I’m a little comforted knowing that she’s on our side tonight.
Frank steps close as I watch her and whispers to me, “Are you sure we should take a child back into a dangerous situation like this?”
“Hey, fairy, I’m in the room! If you have a problem with me, take it up with me.” She slams the door closed and looks at Frank and I. “I may look twelve, there’s nothing I can do to change that, but I’m almost twenty-eight years old. I’m not a child, I’ve got a stake in this, and there’s nothing short of death that’s gonna keep me outta this fight. You get me?”
Before anyone can answer Julie chimes in with a well timed, if not comfortable, distraction.
“Garrett says he’s going with you guys, and so am I.”
I try to appeal to her instead of issuing her commands. “Julie, you can only get hurt, and Garrett in his condition is too vulnerable to Paco’s powers. I’m afraid you two won’t make it.”
Sunny is actually nodding with me. “I don’t want that thing to have another shot at finally killing Garrett off. He needs to stay here.”
Julie is unfazed and judging by the listening she’s doing, Garrett isn’t either. I slide the single-lens goggles back down over my eyes and I can see him, and how animated he is.
“He says that he can draw some of the heavy hitting spirits off of you guys. At the very least he can do some damage somewhere, and so can I. With the spirits busy dealing with Garrett and I and all of Lucy’s people, you’ll have a better chance of actually getting your hands on Paco.”
Sunny smiles. “Oh, I’ll get my hands on him. What I’m worried about is the unquiet ability to shred the souls of average spirits. I’m not sure how they’ll impact Garrett, and I know they’ll kill you.”
“He says he’s felt their impact and he’s still alive, and I’m willing to risk it. This guy killed me and had me do awful things. We both have our reasons to be in this, and neither of us is backing out.”
I’m at a loss. Julie and Garrett make good points, but I feel like I’m watching them commit suicide and it’s not helping me that Sunny and I are actually agreeing on something.
“Are you sure it was their worst?” Sunny asks. “Take these charms.” She holds up a couple of what look to me like friendship bracelets, and pushes them into the shadow world.
“I only have two and I was going to give one to Lucy and use the other myself, but I think the two of you need them more, if you insist on going. It will make you more resistant to the kind of damage they can do to you.”
I really hope she’s right. I don’t want to lose Julie again, and Garrett can’t die. He just can’t.
***
Jules pulls the suburban over and stops a few blocks before the funeral home, so I follow suit. I’m not sure what he’s doing until I see Serena walk out onto the sidewalk. I have to get out and join their conversation. I want to know what kind of deal he’s struck with her.
Her silver hair whips out in the breeze; I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so uncontained. She’s wearing a white suit as usual, but she has a black hooded cloak on over it that makes her look like something out of a comic book. She looks at me and I get a chill.
I’ve wondered for a long time about her dabbling in ‘the arts’ as she calls them, but if Jules puts any stock or faith in her then it must be founded on something.
“What were you able to accomplish?” Jules asks her while she’s still boring a hole in me with her eyes.
She knows something I don’t, and I can’t quite place it in her thoughts. She’s hiding something.
She finally turns to look at Jules. “I’ve managed to encircle the area with a mystical energy that should stop him from performing his ritual. He’ll know what’s happened when he makes his attempt, and he’ll likely be able to reverse it, if what you tell me of his power is true. It should serve to slow him down a bit though, and offer you your window of opportunity to strike.”
“Are you not going to fight with us?”
As soon as I ask the question I know the answer. But it’s enough that I asked, to make her laugh out loud.
“No, I will not be joining in some brawl. Especially if he’s as powerful as I’ve been told.” She looks to Jules again, more seriously.
“Your payment still stands?”
“If you have managed to stop him so that we can attack, then it’s a small price to pay.” Jules is hiding it from me too. Whatever arrangement they’ve made, they both intend to keep me in the dark about it.
She crosses the street to her little silver Toyota and she’s gone. I look at Jules with questions in my eyes, but we both know there’s no time left for them now. We have to move quickly if we’re going to make it there in time.
We both start our vehicles and navigate the short distance remaining between us and the evil that means to crush us. I feel like I’m going to throw up.
We park on the same side of the lot where Paco had dropped Garrett and I off just days earlier. I can’t get the ‘if only’s’ out of my head. If only I’d known then what I know now then we could have just killed him at the plant and avoided all of this. If only I hadn’t left Garrett there alone.
We get out and stand on the sidewalk. I can feel the unease. I know that Jules wants to wait for Lucy, but he doesn’t think we have time.
“We have will have no benefit of surprise tonight. He knows we are going to come to try and stop him. He will be prepared. This is going to be brutal.”
There’s a lull as everyone steadies themselves, listening to the screams of the shadows rippling through the wind.
Frank breaks the silence by readying his rifle to fire. He puts on a pack full of ammunition with a harness, and side holsters a couple pistols.
Sunny follows suit, taking her pistols and some explosives from the suburban and loading up like she were going to war.
We all begin to walk slowly forward, grim determination and fury with the man that’s caused our problems driving us forward. Frank is the last to speak before we get to the building. “Let’s show this fucker how we play.”
***
As we enter through the hole that Sunny made last night, all of the shadows shrink back away from us. They seem to be making our way clear to enter. That does nothing to make me comfortable with being here. If I live through this I want to buy the place and have it bulldozed and turned into a public parking lot.
Everyone is ready to jump at any noise or movement as we walk down the hall, but it seems that we’re being allowed to enter.
The main parlor looks much the same as it did when we left this morning, with the exception of a gaping hole in the middle of the floor.
Sunny’s team are all standing now, armed and lining the walls. I guess Paco decided that he’d have them animated by his little spirit friends to fight us. Insult to injury I guess.
An altar is now on the far end of the room, across the hole from us, where you’d expect a casket to sit, and as we enter Paco comes out of the back behind it.
“Welcome back, pet.” He hisses the words as much as says them. Clearly he felt some sense of betrayal at my leaving.
“I see you’ve brought friends with you, even ones with short life expectancies.”
He raises his hand, like I’ve seen him do before, and the room gets darker. The moving shadows circling the room around us become substantial, losing their transparent quality. I am, as always, unsettled by their eyes. I doubt that burning glow is something I’ll ever adjust to.
Then looking to my right I see Garrett and I think I finally understand what it is Paco has done. He’s made the film between the spirit world and our own so thin that we can see through it.
“I don’t mean to sound callous, but your friend Garrett there, he doesn’t have long left. He’s at death’s door. After all, physical creatures like him will decay and erode in the spirit realm rather quickly. Even bloodsuckers, whose bodies heal rather rapidly, can’t live there indefinitely.”
He feigns sadness. “I just wish there were some way you could save him. That poor sad fella.”
Paco almost falls down laughing at what he’s said. Sunny is about to lob a grenade at him when I stop her. I whisper to her, “Wait. See where this goes.”
She looks at me like I’m out of my mind. She looks at me like I look at Jules when he tells me to do things I don’t understand. Have I really gotten old?
“You’re going to give us the little girl, and you’re going to bring Garrett back across. Once you’ve done that you’re going to take your spirits and leave town,” Jules says it forcefully, but Paco’s mind isn’t affected like those of the living and most of the dead. He scoffs at Jules.
“If you’ve come to tell me I’m done for and I should just give up, you’re too fucking late!” He spits the words out with a shower of decomposing liquid. “I used Jacobi’s blood to complete my first ritual after you fled this morning. I’ve awakened one of the great slumbering giants, the all consuming darkness. I’ve called it forth from the depths of the pit the Greeks called Tartarus, the deepest region of the underworld.”
The leathery black demons that Paco commands are all keeping their distance from us. I notice as he’s speaking that most of them are also keeping their distance from the hole in the floor. This giant he decided to play alarm clock for must be down there.
“It predates man, this creature. It was spawned by Nyx in the world of forever-night; all it has ever known is to consume and slumber. It will devour you. I have the pleasure of knowing that you will serve me, even if it is only to feed the beasts I command. You will not stop me from sacrificing the child, and becoming as powerful as I am destined to be.”
I can’t help but share my contempt for this arrogant puss filled windbag. “This great creature of myth and legend is coming to Pekin? Wow. Now that’s got to be a sad chapter to add to its life.”
Then we can hear it. There’s a roar I can feel in my soul as I see a giant wormlike thing scraping up out of the hole in the floor in front of us. It’s a colorless pallor with no eyes. Its tendrils, like arms, flail wildly. It sweeps a few of Paco’s servants that foolishly stood too close into its vacuous maw.
The part of it that I can see has to be the size of a Boeing 747. This is going to be a little harder than I had thought it would be, back when I thought it was completely hopeless.
“It looks like a giant potato maggot,” Sunny whispers, the only one of us able to find their voice.
As more of it comes into view it exudes an even deeper blackness, blanketing the room. A darkness accompanied by a sense of loss and gloom. Just being near it makes the idea of fighting it seem pointless.
Paco screams from the other side of the pit and monster he’s called forth, “Veronica dear, I thought that’d you’d like to know that while you’re being devoured, I will be completing my last ritual, sacrificing this.”
He holds Rachel up in front of him, already bound back into her dead corpse. She’s gagged, but I can still hear her screaming in agony.
A wicked attempt to smile contorts his face as his enormous worm, in the space between us, swings wildly trying to force anything it touches into its rows of jagged teeth.
”Once I’m finished my power will be too great for any here to oppose me.”
Before I have time to respond, telling him he sounds like a cheap B-movie villain, the thing lunges forward out of the hole toward us.
It’s fast for something that size. It wraps one of its limbs around Sunny’s leg, pulling her to the floor off balance and almost succeeds in pulling her into its cavernous mouth.
Frank empties a magazine into the tentacle holding her leg. The sound it makes in pain as it drops her is the most awful guttural cry imaginable. This was definitely worse than we had planned for.
It lurches forward again with its grasping appendages thrashing wildly, knocking Frank and me to the floor. We’re both able to roll away fast enough to avoid their grasp. Now we’re both aware, as Sunny already was, of the barbs on the inside of the tentacles. Once this thing has its would-be meal it doesn’t mean to let it escape.
Jules takes the opportunity of its next violent jerk toward us to leap up onto its back. Using it as a springboard he jumps again, landing in front of Paco.
I can see the two of them struggling with each other, but I can’t follow what’s going on closely. It’s all I can do to keep Frank, Sunny and myself from being eaten.
Frank gets smacked back out into the hallway by the creature’s next advance, and that’s when I realize what Paco’s spirit servants are really doing.
They lift Frank off the floor and knock him back at the monster’s mouth hard. They are acting like the bumpers in a sadistic game of pinball. Conserving their energy, they’re simply watching to prevent us from escaping.
Sunny leaps in front of Frank, stopping his slide toward oblivion. They crumple to the floor in a heap of arms and legs. Smacking the things grasping limbs, I manage to buy them enough time to stand and get back out of reach.