The Necromancer (26 page)

They could still hear Cedric’s screams, but they were much farther away now, miles perhaps. Whatever it was that took him was fast and ruthless...and it would be back.

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“We must go away from here,” Milton said. “It will be back for the rest of us. And then—”

“And then,” Edward said, “we will kill it.”

“No,” Milton said. “It cannot be killed. You saw what it did to Cedric...to William. We’re doomed if we stay.”

“Maybe so,” Roger said. “But if we do not kill it and it reaches Salem or some other town or village...”

“That shan’t happen,” Edward said. “We will not allow it to happen. It must be killed.”

*****

Corwin and Lawson ran across the strangely colored

landscape toward the screams and found an enormous wall of dazzling silver that went on north and south and to the stars in the red sky as far as they could see. This was where the screams came from.

Corwin reached out to touch it but his hand passed through it and was surrounded by a tingling, vibrating sensation. He yanked it out as if he had touched something which he found repulsive, then stuck his hand through the wall again. He looked at Lawson and noticed that Reverend Parris wasn’t with them. He must have stayed at the house. Well, there was no time to think about it. The reverend would have to take care of himself until they could come back for him.

“Take my hand,” he said to Lawson. “And hold fast.”

“You’re not...”

“I am.”

Corwin reached to Lawson and Lawson gripped the

sheriff ’s hand and wrist tightly with both hands.

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Holding his breath as if he were about to be

submerged in water, Corwin pushed his face through the wall with his eyes closed, then opened them.

The world he saw was the same he had always known, but it was colorless and sparkles of silver dust glittered everywhere. Senseless noise and magnifi ed sounds echoed throughout. There was energy here. He could feel it pulsing through his face, his teeth, and the bones of his skull. His hair stood on end, rising in perfectly vertical lines from his scalp.

He inhaled. His nostrils drew in the sparkling silver air. It tingled, but didn’t harm him. He removed his head from the wall and turned to Lawson again.

“It is safe,” he said, exhaling the bright sparkles which fell away and were sucked back into the wall. Lawson’s head jerked back slightly in surprise. His hands fell away from Corwin’s arm.

“Load up,” Corwin said, pouring gunpowder into his pistol. “We must be prepared for whatever we may encounter in there.”

When they were fi nished and their guns were loaded and cocked, Corwin said, “Let us make haste.”

They stepped into the wall together with their hands extended before themselves as the crazed din of Cedric’s screams gave way to the deafening crunching of their own footsteps on brittle leaves. Their hair shot out from their heads.

Their bodies tingled. When they breathed, they drew in the particles of silver dust which then puffed out of their mouths and noses like the steamy breath of wintertime.

They moved slowly through the silver mist, their weapons poised and ready in their hands.

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A fl ock of ravens fl ittered across their path in mocking swoops. Startled, the two men locked onto them and tracked the birds until they were gone.

They walked on. Corwin had almost hoped the

screaming would last long enough to lead them through, and even though it had stopped, he had a fairly good idea of its direction from the moment he stuck his head through the wall—straight ahead. That was where they headed.

The confi nes of the wall grew narrower, nothing but black emptiness beyond its shimmering fabric. It was little more than a tunnel now, the mouth of which was just up ahead of them: an opaque door of whiteness.

Lawson’s curiosity was piqued by pondering the walls of the tunnel they traveled through. He reached through one of them as he walked on. As soon as he had passed his hand through the silver veil to the blackness beyond, he jerked it back and groaned, falling to the ground. That blackness harbored the coldest of cold. Frostbite chewed hotly into his hand.

“What happened?” Corwin asked, crouching down

beside the burly hangman.

Lawson held the iced hand up close to his chest for display, frozen and gray, and covered with crisp white frost.

“I passed it through the wall,” he said.

Corwin shook his head and helped him up.

“Can you continue?”

Lawson nodded, and they proceeded.

When they reached the tunnel’s mouth, Lawson

hesitated.

“What if it’s cold...like the wall?” he said.

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Corwin thought about this a moment, then removed his coat and swung it into the mouth’s whiteness. It returned unscathed.

He slipped back into his coat, and they stepped

through the doorway.

*****

It was coming. They could hear it: the fl apping of its wings, its grinding breath. The stench had returned; its stench.

It was the ripe smell of spilt blood; of death.

“We must go,” Milton said. “If we do not leave, we will die.”

“We are not moving from here,” Roger said, “until we destroy that thing.”

“Roger’s right,” Edward said. “If we fl ee, we will most certainly be responsible for the deaths of many an innocent soul. We have a responsibility. We cannot go.”

“Oh God,” Milton said, rocking back and forth

holding his ribs. “We are going to die, we are going to die, we are going—”

“Shut your mouth,” Roger snapped, raising his gun over his shoulder, “or by God I’ll thrash you.”

Milton’s babbling decayed to grumbling, then subsided completely to bitter, white-lipped speechlessness.

The creature hovered about them now, circling them in the mist. Its growling was everywhere.

The three of them stood back to back as before, anxiously anticipating the impending attack. Every second was an endless cruelty. When would it spring on them? And whom would it claim as its next victim? Those were questions all of them were asking themselves now, but Milton felt the horror 240

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of his pessimistic answers deeper than the others. He wasn’t prepared for anything like this—none of them was. He wasn’t prepared to die.

He had thought it would be a simple matter of

arresting Blayne and his witch-bitch Susanna and carting them off to Salem Prison to await a brief trial and a speedy hanging. He hadn’t expected to have to do anything. If they encountered any problems, the others would take care of it as he watched. He simply wanted to be there to see justice prevail.

He wanted to see someone—it really didn’t matter who—held accountable for what his son was going through.

Now he thought about his son, his wife, his life in Salem. What if he never saw them again? What if—

Through the chronic, omnipresent growling, he

thought he heard something snap—a twig, perhaps—just up ahead of him to his left.

CRACK!

Roger and Edward turned to the noise as Milton

aimed in the direction of the sound. Something dark was moving toward them through the cloud. Edward swung his arm under Milton’s and knocked the gun up as Milton pulled the trigger, making the shot go wide and up into the air.

“Wha...” Milton gasped, turning to Edward.

Edward nodded and Milton followed his gaze back to Sheriff Corwin and Morley Lawson coming out of the mist.

“I...” Milton said. “...could have...”

Edward looked at him critically. Milton felt ashamed by what he might have done.

“Where are William and Nyle Cranley?” Corwin asked.

“What happened to Cedric? We heard him—”

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“Dead,” Edward said. “They are dead.”

“What happened? What is that noise?”

“It...” Milton stammered. “It...ate them.”

“What?” Lawson asked.

“It’s true,” Edward said. Then after a moment, “Where are Reverend Parris and Wilfred?”

“Wilfred is dead. The reverend must still be at the house.”

“Have you found Susanna?” Roger asked.

“Yes,” Corwin replied. “But...” He huffed. “But she was not conscious.” He placed his hand on Roger’s shoulder.

“Roger, I am not sure she was alive.”

“Not...No,” Roger said, shaking his head. “I do not believe that.”

A roar resounded in the mist and they all turned to it, being able to discern the creature’s location for the fi rst time. A moment later curls of white fog eddied away from it, revealing sections of the creature’s body while others remained obscured in the bulk of the cloud.

A shudder crept up Corwin’s spine as he realized the hideous enormity of it and fi red into its midst. The others followed suit, but it still rushed at them with furious speed.

Before Morley Lawson could reload his weapon, before he could scream, the creature swooped down and ripped into his throat with its taloned paws. Blood spouted from his neck in a long dark gush. He opened his mouth, gurgling, and staggered back, dropping his gun and groping for his throat with both hands. The creature swiped at his head, knocking him to his knees. He reached up with one of his hands and it slid under something warm and soggy like a cap, but it was his scalp.

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The creature gored him with its tendrils and thrashed him against the ground with a series of dull, wet thuds. His body twitched miserably. His eyes were wide open. The expression his face retained in its death rictus was one which allowed the living to know he was aware—if only briefl y—of the horror of his demise.

Edward dropped his rifl e and removed a pistol from his breeches. He had a clear shot at the thing’s head as it fell to eating Lawson’s remains. Edward fi red and managed to put out one of its eyes.

It roared again, but in pain.

If it can be wounded, Edward thought, it can be killed.

But it was hurt and angry and would surely attack them in moments. It whipped to its left and to its right, every appendage lashing out in the madness of an infuriated fi t.

It let out a tremendous cry, and they fl ed.

*****

Blayne glanced down at his chest where Parris had

shot him, then looked back at the reverend.

“You foolish, foolish man,” he said. “It shall take quite a bit more than that to kill me. I would have thought a man of your learning and intelligence would know better. Well, I suppose I shall have to educate you.”

Blayne strode up to Parris and smashed him in the face with the back of his hand, sending him sprawling to the sticky, bloody fl oor.

“Fergus,” a preternatural voice called from behind.

Ambrose straightened up. His face went blank. He turned around slowly.

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Susanna stood in the darkness wearing a white robe with intricate gold symbols embroidered around the collar, cuffs, and hem. But it was not Susanna. An aura of blue fl ame hung about her, illuminating her in the darkness. And the features of her face and the texture of her hair were somehow different.

Ambrose stood silent, unsure of himself and what to do. Parris looked on from the fl oor, holding the side of his face.

“
Fergus
,”
she said, frowning. “What has happened to you?” He could almost hear tears in her voice
.
“Why have you become so wicked?”

“Odara?” he whispered lowly.

She stepped toward him, and he backed away.

“Why do you fear me?”

“I know not fear. I do not fear you or any other being.”

She stepped toward him again, and again he stepped back. He couldn’t understand it. All these years he had yearned for her, and now he recoiled from her.

“You do not speak the truth. You are affrighted by my presence.”

“I insist I am not.” But as hard as he tried, he could not bring himself to make one step toward her.

Outside, gunfi re and screams continued to echo in the hills.

“You must stop this, Fergus. You must send the

demon back to the pit. There is yet redemption for you. Please.

Repent. For me.”

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But he could not repent. Time had hardened him.

Whatever good that had resided in him when Odara was still alive was long dead.

“I love you,” he said. “But I cannot repent.”

“Then you cannot love me. The man I knew...The man I loved, Fergus, my brother and husband, is dead. You are but a hollow shell of that man. You no longer know what love is.”

“I love you!” he shouted. “Everything I did was for you!”

She covered her face with her hands and shook her head.

“Do not say that! You have done many terrible deeds.

I do not wish to be their cause.”

He wanted to reach to her, touch her, comfort her, but he could not. His feet would not move.

“If you ever loved me, you will send back the demon.”

His face grew impassive.

“I will not.” And after uttering those three words, he felt a black wave of perdition fl ush over him, and he knew that all he ever did he did for Ambrose. All he ever loved was Ambrose. Fergus was dead, and never a part of him. They were two separate entities who had shared the same body and struggled for control of it. Vengeance was merely an excuse Ambrose used to sate the guilt Fergus felt by all the treachery they incurred together. Now that Ambrose had won and Fergus was dead, there was no guilt—only hate.

A light breeze blew in from outside and swept through the house, building up quickly to a cold, powerful wind. The windows shattered, glass fragments blowing inward. Odara’s hair streamed back over her shoulders as her robe billowed, 245

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defi ning her breasts and the lines of her body beneath the white linen.

She stepped forward and proceeded toward Ambrose, to the doorway behind him. As she approached him they stared at each other longingly, like strangers whose eyes become riveted upon each other with an awful feeling of familiarity or déjà vu.