Spirit And Dust Part 23

"I know you have it. I can sense it." All sincerity vanished, leaving only the glitter of avarice in the specter's gaze as he pointed to Carson. "He is carrying it now."

I shot a look at Carson, who was coming to the same realization that I had. Alexis hadn't hidden a clue to the book or the Jackal. We'd been carrying Oosterhouse's translation of the Book of the Dead all this time.

Carson reached into his pocket, pulling out the mummy-shaped flash drive. "You mean this?" Oosterhouse's gaze seized on it hungrily. "First, the secret of the Jackal."

Something moved behind me in the dark. I whirled, and kept turning as three, then four, then five young men stepped into the replica tomb, blocking all the exits. I recognized two of them, even without the jackal tattoos on their arms.

"Hey, Maguire," said McSlackerson. "Thanks for bringing that flash drive along. I'll just take it off your hands."

"Hey, Johnson," said Carson. "Not arrested yet, huh?"

I ignored the banter, busy trying to figure out what I was Seeing. Cupped in Johnson's fingers was a basketball-sized incandescent glow of raw power. With dawning horror, I realized why there was nothing but a trace of the drowned sailors on the statue. Johnson held them all. He had stolen the fire of dozens of deaths-dozens of remnant souls-and he held them between his palms like a balled-up snarl of yarn.

"Carson-" I warned, too late to do him any good.

Johnson pulled free a strand from the tangle and snapped it like a whip. Power made a wave of the air and washed over Carson before he could dodge. His next breath was nothing but a drowning gurgle. He struggled against it, doubled over, and heaved up a spew of dark water that stank of brine and diesel fuel.

"Stop it!" I called up my defenses and lunged toward Carson, trying to get close enough that he could use my shields to push the magic away, out of his lungs. But two of the brethren s.n.a.t.c.hed me by the arms, pulling us apart.

"Give me the flash drive," said Johnson, letting Carson grab half a breath before throwing another thread of drowned spirit at him. Carson dropped to all fours, sputtering salt water from his mouth and nose. But he managed to lift one hand-and one finger-to McSlackerson.

"Carson, you idiot!" I cried, wondering why no guards were coming, wondering why some sort of alarm wasn't going off. "Give it to him!"

The file was encrypted. That would give us time to think of something, some world-saving plan. But we couldn't do anything if he was dead.

On his hands and knees, Carson wheezed and spewed. "Alexis first. Where is she?"

Johnson unraveled another thread and spun a darker threat. "You're not in a position to bargain, Maguire. There are a lot of cute little kids in the museum today. They're all eating lunch right now, just on the other side of that wall. Maybe we should see how far this magic will reach."

The next shred of spirit left Carson heaving helplessly on the ground. I wrestled against the guys who held me until I thought my shoulders would pop out of joint.

Oosterhouse whirled to me, so quick, so intense that his form blurred. "Hurry, my girl, and we can save him. If you open the Veil, I can help you."

I didn't question how he could do what he said. I couldn't afford to doubt him and be wrong. With herculean effort I pushed back my panic and my tears and found the song inside me that called the curtain between us and eternity. I let my whole soul ring with it.

The Veil was sluggish to answer, and I pushed it, poured my desperation into the ethereal serenade until slowly the air began to shimmer behind the shade of Oosterhouse.

"You must cut my ka free from the statue," he said, shouting over the bell-tower racket of my psychic call.

He'd used the word before, and I knew what he meant. I pictured my shadow self unknotting the threads of his silent, weak remnant in the heart of the statue. As they loosed, they blew toward the Veil but met Oosterhouse standing between. There was only one phantom strand remaining tied to the statue as they tangled around his grandfatherly form, sinking in, reuniting....

Reclaiming.

The Veil changed, brightened along the edges with warm yellow light. In the next moment it opened, like a daylit doorway to a tomb. A figure stood silhouetted by the blinding glow, the same shape depicted on the walls around us.

It towered over Oosterhouse's shade. The two figures superimposed and merged as the glare became blinding. The guys holding me let go, and I shielded my eyes as every display case in the room shattered.

Gla.s.s rained down and the awful brilliance became red-tinged darkness and ringing silence. When I could see again, the Veil had disappeared, and so had the fusty-looking professor with his neat white beard and khaki kangaroo pockets.

In his place was a jackal-headed G.o.d.

"This is the thing you seek," he said, in a voice that flooded the room like the Nile. "I am the Black Jackal, and now is the end of all things."

28.

WHAT. THE. h.e.l.l.

No one moved. There was only the plink of gla.s.s shards falling and the sound of Carson pulling in air like he'd just swum up from the depths of the ocean. The brethren stood slack-jawed, staring at the jackal-headed apparition that loomed larger than life at the head of the preparation chamber.

Then Johnson dropped to one knee. The rest did the same, bowing before the figure of the canine-headed man who used to be Professor Oosterhouse.

This? Was not an improvement in our situation.

"Thank you, my brothers, for remaining true. Your loyalty will be rewarded." The voice that rolled from the Jackal was the professor's, but shaded with darkness and the resonance of eternity. "What I have, I share with you, and together we will start a new dynasty that will endure age upon endless age."

"Thank you, my lord," said Johnson, lifting his head. The other guys took their cue from him. Their shock had faded to wary awe, and what looked like antic.i.p.ation and greed.

Carson hauled himself to his feet, staring at the Jackal in disbelief, then turning to me over the heads of the kneeling minions. "Daisy, what did you do?"

"Nothing!" I managed a horrified protest. Except I'd obviously done something.

"You opened the door to the afterlife and freed me," said the towering figure. "I died a man, with a weak body and powerful knowledge. And I have come back a G.o.d."

Wow. Forget the sacrilege. That was some supreme arrogance right there.

Was there really a jackal-headed G.o.d standing before us? That was what it looked like to my eyes. But to my Sight, it was Oosterhouse. Not the gray-bearded professor who had talked me into opening the Veil for him, but a younger man. Tanned, blond, and fit-he was bare-chested, wearing the draped linen skirt and heavy gold ornamental accessories of an ancient Egyptian priest or royal.

He pulsed with vitality, and I realized I wasn't looking at a remnant of Carl Oosterhouse. He was too substantial, too present. I was looking at the real thing. His spirit. His soul come back from beyond.

That wasn't supposed to happen.

But it had. This was real, and this was really bad.

Johnson rose to his feet and gestured to the others to get up as well. "What should we do with these two?" he asked, meaning Carson and me.

The Jackal Oosterhouse turned to me. "Will you join us, Daisy Goodnight? Think what wonders you could do with your power and ours. I've heard you speaking with young Maguire, and I know you have great ambition for remaking the world."

But I didn't. The world wasn't perfect, but remaking it to my own design wasn't the answer. I wanted to fight the problems, not be the problem.

"b.u.g.g.e.r off, Professor," I said. His try at temptation had p.i.s.sed me off, because he'd been playing me all along. And there's nothing this idealist hates more than abuse of her good nature. "If you were a G.o.d, you could have opened the door yourself."

He rippled with fury; as solid as he looked, he still had no body. Over the roar of adrenaline in my ears, I heard people coming to investigate the crash. Oosterhouse did, too, and the wave of anger pa.s.sed, becoming a gloating smile, which was much worse.

"You need proof, my girl?" he said. "I will give it to you, as thanks for your role in reuniting my spirit."

He drew himself up, breathing in the dust of antiquity that swirled out of the broken cases. His figure swelled, his barrel chest expanding. I felt a pull across my psyche, all over, like silk dragged over my skin, and I realized he was drinking in not air but the remnant spirits of twenty-three human souls.

The dust circled him like a vortex, and he gulped it all down, growing larger, brighter. Then he breathed it out again, an impossibly long exhale, blowing life into the desiccated corpses around the room.

They stirred like sticks in a thunderstorm, rattling and trembling, then rising from their sterile museum tombs.

With jerking motions they came, fragile wrappings ripping, trailing like scarves. They peeled off their coc.o.o.ns of rotting linen and they climbed out of their cases and they pushed open their sarcophagi. The Brotherhood minions scrambled, wide-eyed, out of the way of the animate dead as they shambled out of the chamber to the halls beyond. Children, guards, patrons-their terrified screams rang through the exhibit.

Three of the undead grabbed Carson. They were indomitable-held together not by brittle tendons or dried muscles but by magic. They bloodied his nose and twisted his limbs, and then I lost track, because they came at me.

I stumbled away, horror wrenching a sandpaper shriek from my throat. It wasn't their grasping arms or leathery flesh that terrified me. I didn't dread the touch of dust and ancient bodies but the touch of the spirits trapped inside these abominations that warped everything I believed in.

The undead circled me, and I could feel the shredded souls trapped in the magic that animated them. They'd been rent apart, chewed up, and spit out. s.n.a.t.c.hed from any hope of the eternity they'd awaited for thousands of years. Transformed by Oosterhouse into a consumable power source.

No-not Oosterhouse. The Black Jackal.

He had Oosterhouse's face, but the eyes burning with power were alien and frightening. He wasn't a G.o.d, but he wasn't any remnant of human anymore, either.

"I will give you one more chance," he said as the undead held me bound with bones as strong as oak. "Bow, Daisy Goodnight, and become one of my brethren. I would rather have you freely than enslave your spirit."

Carson fought against the undead that held him immobile with a bony arm across his throat. "Don't you dare, you son of a b.i.t.c.h. Let her go. I'll do whatever-"

He broke off with a wheeze, and for a horrible moment I thought he was broken-his neck, his windpipe, or some other vital, fragile thing. But Johnson, stepping forward, had cut off Carson's words with nothing but a gesture.

"Quiet," he said. "You've done your part, Maguire. We don't need anything else from you."

Carson was turning purple from the relentless bony hold on his throat. He tore at the dried flesh and it crumbled under his clawing nails, but the ancient undead wouldn't let go.

How do you fight something that just won't stop?

Use us, Daisy.

I shuddered at the hum that ran through me-the perfectly tuned collective spirit of the place. A century of scientists, academics, archivists, their psychic traces permeating stone and steel and gla.s.s until the building itself sang its offer to me. The unified remnant was as fresh as a wellspring amid the muddy magic in the room. I reached for it and it infused me, not with a swelling rush but with a slow seep of support and bracing, ghostly cold that reminded me who I was.

I was Daisy Goodnight. And no lame-a.s.s mummy-raising Boris Karloff knockoff was going to get the better of me.

My Sight found the lines of power that connected the Jackal to the undead that held me. With my new strength, I broke the ties like fragile thread and the mummies collapsed into piles of chunky ash. Magic cut off, the fragile remains could not stand the physical strain.

Johnson turned as if to stop me, but he was startled and I was quicker and shoved him into the wall with only a gesture. A push at the undead that held Carson and they flew apart like piles of leaves in a gust of frigid wind.

Carson sagged, gasping for breath-only for a nanosecond, though, before he charged Johnson, picked him up, and slammed him again into the exhibit wall in a hail of grunts and plaster.

"Where is Alexis?" he demanded, giving him a shake. Johnson fought back, but it was kind of an unfair match.

The Brotherhood goons seemed uncertain whether to rescue Johnson from Carson. As for the rest of the mummies, the only signs of them were the screams from beyond the exhibit.

The Black Jackal just laughed at our struggles. He glowed with power, stolen from the spirits, from the upheaval of terror. "Grab the girl," he told the dithering minions. "And meet me in the place you've prepared."

I couldn't let him vanish. He was still just a spirit, an uber-ghost created by the re-joining of remnants and soul. I was responsible for that, and worse, I'd untethered the piece from the stone jackal. I could not let him escape to wreak havoc on all of Chicago or beyond.

With all my strength I grabbed the fabric of Oosterhouse's soul, clutched the shreds of the human being that had made the Black Jackal. I didn't know how to fight a self-proclaimed G.o.d, but I knew how to handle pieces of a spirit. By binding the remnants of Oosterhouse to this place, I could leash the creature he'd become.

He seemed to realize what I was about to do. "Stop her," he told his minions. They didn't move, maybe because I didn't look like I was doing anything, and the Jackal snapped, "Idiots! Grab her! Knock her out!"

They rushed me, but Carson shoved Johnson into their path, flattening two like bowling pins and linebackering another into an empty mummy case. There were five of them and one of him, and I don't know how he did it, but he kept them off me.

"Whatever you're going to do, Sunshine," he said, slamming the lid of the case and trapping a minion inside, "do it now."

I used every bit of my strength to tie Oosterhouse, and the Black Jackal with him, to the foundation of the gigantic museum itself. I went down to the sublevels, where nerdy scientists spent their days, nights, and happy afterlife. Their remnants were faint but mighty, and they grabbed on and knit the Jackal's essence to the bedrock.

He flailed at the binding, the power of his fury sending his minions staggering. It bought Carson and me a few seconds to get our feet under us. I couldn't remember falling, but as I staggered upright I had cuts on my hands and knees from the shrapnel of the museum display cases littering the floor.

"Come on," said Carson. "Let's get out of here."

I pressed a b.l.o.o.d.y hand to my aching head. "We have to clear out the museum. I don't know what the Jackal will do to try to get loose. I bound him, but he can still work his magic. And there is a freaking a.r.s.enal of remnant energy here."

"I don't think clearing the museum will be a problem," said Carson as shrieks continued to echo through the building.

The Jackal realized we were escaping. He spread his arms and the Brotherhood got up, riding a wave of renewed energy. Johnson, whose nose was obviously broken, looked at Carson with murder in his blackening eyes.

"Brethren who bear my mark," said the Jackal, like a priest at an altar, "I am the guardian of the well of souls. What I have is yours. Take it and use it well."

Then he blew another infinite breath, like he had with the mummies, breathing power into the henchmen. Raw power, raw energy ten times more potent than any I had ever felt.

It just kept coming. There didn't seem to be any end to it. Where was it coming from? Not anything in the room, from some bottomless well ...

I am the guardian of the well of souls.

I shuddered at the idea. Surely that was another overdramatization.

"Get them," said the Jackal, abruptly pragmatic. "And if you can't bring them back alive, just bring back the book."

The brethren turned toward us. The shared power that the Jackal had given them crackled like a static field that p.r.i.c.kled my skin and raised my hair.

Johnson smirked through his split lip and wiped the blood from his mouth. "With pleasure," he said.

Carson grabbed my arm and started pulling. "Now. We're going now."

I was already moving.

Carson and I ran through exhibit halls, following the trail of undead looters-shreds of ancient linen wrappings caught on toppled signs, a spatter of blood on a torn display. Ahead of us were the screams of terrified children and behind us was the sound of pursuit.

"Come on," said Carson, like I needed to be told twice.

We burst out of the exhibit into a hallway, with Johnson on our heels. I glanced back in time to see him push out his hands, just like he'd pushed the ghost volcano at us before. I flashed on the drowning magic he'd used against Carson, just as a wall of water gushed from nowhere and washed my feet out from under me.