The Necromancer (28 page)

254

All Hallow’s Eve

“OH GOD! GEORGE! OH GOD! NO!

NO! OH GOD NO NONONONOOOOO!

GOHAAAARRRGGGGHH!”

The screams faded into a garbled mess of grunts.

Corwin had started toward him as soon as he knew the beast was attacking, and he was almost there now. He stopped and fi red, breaking one of its wings. The demon whirled around in the air and crashed beside Milton.

It scurried after Corwin. He ran, the creature’s pincers clicking at his heels.

*****

He stood up, holding the back of a chair for support.

He still felt dizzy.

He looked out the window and saw the skeleton man walking away from the house.
What’s this?
he wondered
. Has the
Lord’s Day come? Have the dead begun to rise from their graves? Is this
the work of God or the Devil?
He would follow the skeleton man and fi nd out.

*****

But he, too, was weak and unsure. It had taken much of his strength to fi ght the spirit, and he had not succeeded in destroying it. He had sent the strongest of his demons to do battle with it, and it had killed them. Odara’s strength and resilience had surprised him. All his power seemed to be leaking away from him. He couldn’t retaliate or move. He wasn’t even sure he was able to reanimate Eames to come to his aid.

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But then he saw Eames coming and knew his

summons was answered.
Attack her,
he willed.
Kill her.

Robert Eames walked toward Odara. She rested on

her side now, straining to keep her arms up.

Parris saw the skeleton man change direction, saw Odara’s rays locked on to Ambrose, and knew the skeleton man’s intent. He raised his gun slowly, took careful aim, and fi red.

The shot struck Eames in the back of the head on the same side Roger had caved in with the poker. The whole right side of the skull exploded into bits, sending white dust and sharp fragments of bone everywhere like shattered pottery.

No agonized howl issued forth this time. His vocal cords had long since rotted away. He was all bone and cartilage now.

The skeleton turned around and faced its assailant.

Parris stood there, mortifi ed and all too conscious that he was alone. He reached for his gunpowder but the skeleton man was fast and stormed over toward him. Parris stood still, petrifi ed.

No
, Blayne willed
. Forget the reverend. The girl. Kill the girl.

Eames turned and continued toward Odara. There was no time to reload. Parris ran after the skeleton man and tackled him, pistol-whipping the yellowed skull, knocking off hunks of bone and teeth with every blow.

Eames rolled over, half his skull mutilated and missing, and clasped Parris’s wrist before he could strike again.

Parris tried to pull free, but Eames was strong. The reverend grabbed the gun with his left hand and swung it at the skeleton man’s face. Eames blocked the blow and gripped Parris’s other wrist. The reverend rocked back and forth and side to side but couldn’t shake loose.

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Eames sat up, the decrepit grin of death smiling coldly from his broken face. Parris stood up, hunched over the skeleton man almost as he would an elderly man who had fallen and couldn’t get up. But instead of helping Eames rise, he kicked him in the ribs, cracking and breaking several of them. He stomped on the skeleton’s knees and pelvis, crunching the dead, brittle bones. He booted Eames in the gut, but there was no gut and his foot shot through the moldy, tattered shirt which hung loosely on his frame and crashed into his spine, popping disks out of place and clicking vertebral bones together as the back locked. Parris kept kicking, but Eames still wouldn’t release him.

The girl,
Ambrose willed again more urgently.
Kill the
girl! Do it now!

Eames let go and Parris fell back and thumped to the ground.

Odara was almost drained, but it was working.

Ambrose had weakened greatly. He dropped to one knee, then the other. His complexion was pallid, his expression weary and blank. He glowed like white-hot steel. His shoulders slumped forward. He sank back on his haunches then pitched forward and hit the ground with a heavy thud.

The beams cut off and the spheres of light evaporated from Odara’s hands. Eames collapsed into a pile of bones and rags as he crawled up beside her and reached for her throat.

She sighed, then went limp and lost consciousness.

Parris ran over to her. She was still breathing, but barely. He approached Blayne and knelt down beside him. He too was alive. Parris didn’t know if either of them would live, but precautions had to be taken. Blayne had to be shackled, and perhaps the Harrington girl as well. In matters of witchcraft one had to exercise great care. No undue chances 257

The Necromancer

could be taken lest the evil once captured be given reign to perpetuate itself and wreak its mischief.

But the world he was in remained the same. The

wagon with the shackles in it was not here; it was probably on the other side of that silver wall, and he wasn’t certain he wanted to go through it. There were still sounds of shouts and gunfi re coming from beyond that wall. For all he knew, Hell was on the other side of that wall.

No. He couldn’t chance venturing through. He had to fi nd something here, in this world, to restrain them with.

He looked about him. The aftermath of what had

occurred here was in great evidence. Malformed demons lay dead and decaying on white grass. Black clouds scudded across a red sky that ended at the edge of a wall of silver. A witch and a warlock lay unconscious and near death. Shifting a little, still alive between the warlock and the wall, the silver spirit roused and rose up.

Parris approached it slowly.

“What are you?” he asked.

“I am Aingealag. I was summoned by my master to

banish the demon of the pit.”

“What master? What demon?”

Aingealag gestured toward Susanna.

“I am afraid she may not live,” Parris said calmly. A roar echoed through the wall. “Is that the demon?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, I think you best banish it, and make haste about it. Men may be dying.”

The spirit fl uttered up into the air, then turned and plunged into the wall.

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All Hallow’s Eve

*****

gunfi re. They had all hoped to elude the creature long enough to fi gure out a way to kill it, but Milton’s screams testifi ed to their failure to do so. Hopefully, they would be able to reach Corwin and Milton in time, but it didn’t sound promising.

A fi gure came toward them in the mist. They could not see it clearly, so they stopped.

“Go back!” Corwin hollered. “Go! Now!” he yelled waving his arms wildly at them. But they just stood there.

Then they saw it. It was right behind the sheriff, mammoth and hobbling after him with hungry speed. It clamored, making a sound none of them had ever heard before. It was a harsh, repulsive, regurgitating sound, as if it were hacking to cough up enormous balls of phlegm which had become lodged in its throat.

“Run!” Corwin cried.

But neither of them ran. The creature was too close for them to simply run; they probably wouldn’t be able to get this close again. They raised their guns and leveled them at the demon. Edward fi red, then Roger. Edward’s shot pelted it in the head but went too high and ricocheted off the slope of its brow. A few gray scales chipped off in a spray of muck, only wounding it mildly, not enough to stop it. Roger had more luck, blowing a hole in the yellow underbelly of its throat, creating a more serious wound. But it still rushed at them, its tendrils lashing out ahead of it. They turned and ran as Corwin caught up with them.

They all ran as fast as they were able, unsure where they were heading in the fog. Then the tall, thin silhouettes of trees came into focus just ahead of them. The trees were 259

The Necromancer

cluttered close together. Corwin was exhausted, but glad they had come this way.

“Through the wood,” Corwin said raggedly. “We must run into the wood. It’s too big to follow us in there.”

They ran into the woods. Corwin felt some relief after having entered them, and slowed down. Roger and Edward slowed also and looked back. For a second they heard and saw nothing. Then loud creaking and cracking sounds as the leafl ess trees at the entrance to the woods swayed and then fell and crashed to one side and the other. Then more creaking and cracking; more falling trees.

They turned and bolted again, faster than before.

The crisp sounds of breaking tree trunks and swooshing trees as they fell and crashed through the woods followed the men. Those sounds grew louder and closer, as did the sawing breaths and growls of the beast that pursued them.

“What can we do?” Roger asked, panting heavily as he forced his leaden legs to work their hardest.

“Keep going,” Edward replied. “Don’t stop. Whatever you do, do not stop!”

Then Corwin noticed something, something familiar.

He realized he had been in these woods before. He and Lawson had come through them after passing out of the wall.

“Faster...” he yelled. “Run faster.”

The fog dissipated a little. They could see a clearing up ahead. It was the same clearing Corwin and Lawson had encountered upon exiting the mouth of the tunnel in the wall, and beyond that stood the silver wall itself.

They ran into the clearing and stopped.

“What...?” Edward asked Corwin, leaving his mouth open and his bottom lip quivering as he glared at the sheriff.

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All Hallow’s Eve

Corwin ran over to the wall and pressed his hands against it. It was solid. He felt along the wall, groping desperately for the doorway as the growls and crashing trees grew louder.

“It was here,” he said emphatically, pounding his fi sts against the cold metal surface. “I know it was.”

The demon roared. They all turned and looked back at the woods. The trees parted as the creature made its path through them, and now they could see its horned back bobbing up and down over the treetops.

“George...,” Roger stammered.

But Corwin could only turn back to the wall and

pound it so hard and so many times that his fi sts bled and the bones broke. He broke down and cried, slumping against the wall and crumbling into a helpless ball at its base.

“Stand up, Sheriff,” Edward said, grabbing Corwin by the shoulders and hauling him to his feet. “We must run.”

But Corwin only shook his head and babbled, his eyes half-lidded.

The demon parted the last of the trees that came between it and its prey. Its mass was immense, its ugliness nothing short of revolting. It was apparent from its posture and the manner in which it moved that its injuries were minimal. They had barely affected it. Edward had put out one of its eyes and Corwin had broken one of its wings, but now a new eye had grown beneath the missing one and its wings didn’t appear to be damaged to any degree.

It lurched toward them slowly.

The three men huddled close together. Corwin was useless, a gibbering mess. Edward was out of ammunition.

Roger fumbled with his pistol in an attempt to reload but it 261

The Necromancer

was too diffi cult. He had been able to reload several times since losing the use of his right arm by pressing the gun in his armpit as he fi lled it with gunpowder and loaded the metal ball and packed it all down, but it was a diffi cult process and he was tired. He was too tired now to do it again. He handed the pistol to Edward, but he wouldn’t take it. There was no time.

It would be futile to attempt to defend themselves by fi ring one solitary round at a beast that would recover so quickly and regenerate itself.

“Take it, damn you!” Roger hissed in a whisper.

“It would be of little use. We haven’t time. We must separate, each man in his own direction. It is the only way. It cannot catch all of us if we are in different places.” He turned to Corwin. “You hear me, Sheriff? When I say run, you run.”

Corwin nodded, regaining his bearings once again.

The creature stepped toward them, the whole of its body trembling fi ercely, its breath sawing out in low grunts and growls. It was uncomfortably close now.

“Run!” Edward hollered. “Run now!”

They ran. The creature seemed confused for a

moment, then attacked. A large, slimy tentacle whipped out and caught Edward, coiling itself around his torso and hoisting him into the air. He struggled in its grip but couldn’t free himself. Its grip was so powerful he couldn’t breathe. His ribs were cracking slowly and the blood rushed into his head, arms, and legs with such speed and under such pressure that he was sure his head and feet would explode. A terrible ache swelled up in his ears and behind his eyes. The demon’s hot, foul breath gusted in his face as it brought him up to its open mouth, its sharp teeth and fangs dripping with saliva. A sour, metallic taste rose up Edward’s throat into the back of his mouth. All he could see was the demon’s maw. He went limp 262

All Hallow’s Eve

and began to lose consciousness, vaguely aware that if he did, he would not wake up again.

Everything was graying out on him when a bright fl ash of light lit up the demon’s

face...and then another...and another. And then Edward fell.

The fall knocked the wind out of him, leaving him breathless and coughing and gasping for air. He looked up. The demon hovered above him, its wings fl apping. A section of the wall was glowing bright white. It rippled and poured out of itself, gushing out in a liquid stream of white-silver light which plowed into the demon and drove it back through the woods, setting the fringes of the fallen trees on fi re. It was Aingealag attacking the demon, forcing it back to the abyss from which it had come. The demon and the spirit vanished into the fog; the demon’s clamoring fi lling the air.