Spirit And Dust Part 24

I crashed into Carson and we went tumbling over each other, swept down the hall until we smacked up against a gla.s.s case, arms and legs in a sodden tangle.

"We've got to stop meeting this way," I wheezed, after I spit a mouthful of salt water over his shoulder.

"No promises," he said, climbing off me as the wave receded. "Not if we make it out of here."

There was an incentive, if I needed one other than staying alive.

Carson rolled to his feet and helped me up as Johnson stalked toward us, shoes squishing on the wet floor, murder in his eye. The one that wasn't swollen shut.

"How do you like taking orders from a dead man?" I asked him.

"No problem when it's something I want to do anyway." He pushed the air again, and I caught my breath, ready for another flood. But nothing happened. The last deluge had used the remains of that ghost magic. Something else was coming.

I waited, braced, until a predatory growl behind me sent a primal jolt of fear through my veins. Carson tensed beside me, and Johnson said, with a sneer marred by his fat lip, "I'll let you run. Just for grins."

A feline roar, close enough to rattle my teeth, put the spurs to my heart and my feet. Carson's, too. But I took enough time to read the sign on the case behind us: MAN-EATING LION OF MFUWE.

Something like a shade pulled free from the sad stuffed and mounted specimen. It shook itself as if waking from a nap, then leapt, pa.s.sing through the gla.s.s and landing on the tile with prowling grace.

I didn't realize I'd gone still until Carson grabbed my arm and pulled me out of shock and into motion. We ran, sliding on salt.w.a.ter-slick floors, and made it to the stairs. The click of claws on marble pursued us, and I glanced back to see golden-green eyes glowing with stolen power. The outline was hazy, but teeth and talons gleamed. It was a construct of magic and the ghosts of its victims, and it was made for killing.

Taking the stairs two at a time, I kept pace with Carson. "Those claws," he asked as we rounded the landing, "are they as real as they look?"

"I don't want to find out the hard way," I panted. "The volcanic ash was real enough. And the water-"

I broke off. We'd reached the main hall on the first floor, and chaos. I hadn't had time to wonder if the mummies could climb stairs, but now I knew. With no definite instructions, the undead ran amok, chasing sightseers, terrorizing children. Just ... grabbing people. And anyone they grabbed, they would Not. Let. Go.

Teachers held off mummies with umbrellas and satchels, trying to get their students to the doors. Security guards shouted over the noise, "Keep calm! Move in an orderly fashion to the exit!" But trying to maintain order was a losing battle.

The lion's claws scrabbled on the stairs. Carson and I split, diving out of the way as the beast leapt into the hall with a roar that shook my bones. It sprang on the nearest thing that moved-a man grappling with one of the undead-and took them both down with one swipe, slashing the man's leg and shredding the ancient corpse like confetti streamers.

The crowd screamed, making a deafening echo in the enormous hall. The panicked rush for the doors accelerated to ramming speed.

"Hey!" yelled Carson, getting the lion's attention. It turned, snarling, away from the easy pickings of the herd in the hall and focused on him with specific intent. "Handle the mummies," he told me, already backing away. "I'll take care of the lion."

He was gone, running full-out for one of the side galleries, before I could ask what he planned to do. I ran for the lion's victim; his blood made a garish arc across the white marble floor, and I pulled off the scarf I wore and tied it around the man's thigh, stanching the dribbles.

"That was a lion." His voice was flat with shock. "And a ... a ..."

"Yeah," I said. I couldn't see the brethren, but I knew they must be around, keeping the power flowing to the mummies. How else were they still so strong this far from the Jackal?

"Police!" came a shout. "Everyone stay calm and-"

The officer broke off as he got a look at the carnage in the hall. "What the-"

The rest was drowned out by the skull-ringing clang of the security doors on the far side of the hall slamming shut. A moment later the heavy gate of the remaining exit started rumbling down.

A policeman on a radio yelled for someone on the other end to raise the gates. The rest were shouting, "Go, go, go!" and hurrying the wounded through the closing gap to freedom.

"This guy needs help!" I called. An officer and a tourist hoisted the man up and half carried him toward the door. One of the undead marauders lunged after them; the reins of power that tied them to the Jackal and the Brotherhood glowed to my Sight. I was so close I could grab them with my psychic hands and rip them free.

The mummy collapsed, kicked apart an instant later by fleeing feet.

There was a shudder in the web of magic that animated the remains. Slowly, they turned their empty-eyed faces toward me. I'd been spotted. One of the brethren must have given them new orders.

At least they abandoned the innocent bystanders. Some part of me registered guards and police helping the shocked patrons to the exit, but most of me only had eyes for the undead that were backing me toward the towering skeleton of the tyrannosaur.

There were so many of them. My psyche couldn't reach all of them- Unless I let them get really, really close.

"Daisy!"

I thought I heard my name, shouted from amid the melee of escapees near the doors, but between the screaming and the yelling and the grinding of the gears on the security doors, I couldn't be sure, and I couldn't take my attention from the advancing undead to look.

There'd been a shift in the magic around the walking dead, the ropes of power thinning to mere puppet strings. I wouldn't have a better chance to shut them down. I hauled up the strength to slam closed a psychic door between the Jackal and the mummies, cutting them off from his control, freeing their abused bodies.

Without magic to knit them together, they crumbled and cracked. Dry, brittle bone and parched flesh turned to rubble and dust around me.

"Those were priceless! Priceless artifacts!" A hysterical woman in a business suit came out of hiding, fueled by outrage.

"They were more than that," I said, too shaky from the effort to be angry. "They were people."

The woman was accompanied by a guy in a lab coat and a woman in gla.s.ses. Nerd types, straight from central casting. "Forget that, Margo," said Lab Coat. "Let's get out of here."

With an almighty clang, the security doors slammed closed. Margo screamed, then shrieked again when another handful of stragglers, led by a security guard, emerged from one of the exhibit wings.

"You didn't make it out, either?" asked the guard.

I let the others answer him, and started worrying about Carson. He'd seemed like he knew what he was doing when he ran off, but he'd been gone so long- A lion's furious growl rolled out of the wing to my right. I spun toward it-and then whirled again as another roar answered the first. The sounds echoed through the huge hall, but it was unmistakably a second animal.

"That came from the African hall," said a woman with gla.s.ses.

"How many man-eating lions are in this place?" I asked.

"Three," she said as our band of stragglers cl.u.s.tered together. "One from Mfuwe and two from Tsavo."

Margo screamed again as the first lion, looking bigger and toothier than ever, burst from the hall of Ancient Americas. Behind him came the glowing shades of a half-dozen ancient Americans, each carrying a spear capable of taking down a woolly mammoth.

Limping behind them, holding a spear of his own, was Carson. As the clan of the cave bear drove the snarling beast toward one end of the Great Hall, he backed toward us, keeping the tribesmen in his eye line.

"Good to see you," I said-a ma.s.sive understatement, but I didn't want to break his concentration. "You found some friends."

He nodded without taking his gaze from the anthropological apparitions. "So did you. What's the situation?"

I glanced at the tight knot of stragglers. "Trapped like rats, I think."

"No service?" Margo tapped her cell phone with rising hysteria. "How can there be no service?"

Lab Coat just looked at her. "How can there be mummies?"

"They know people are trapped inside," said the security guard. He meant to be rea.s.suring. But my "they" was different from his. The world outside knew we were here, but so did the Brotherhood.

A prowling growl from the shadows raised the hair on the back of my neck. No one screamed this time; they all froze with a collective held breath.

"I don't think we can hold them all off like this," said Carson, meaning him and me. "We need a place that we can fortify and make a plan."

"But where?" I whispered. "This place is full of things that are full of spirits."

"What about the library?" asked Gla.s.ses Lady. She wore a staff ID badge, but I couldn't see her name. "There's a landline, and the reading room locks. And if things get really bad, the rare book vault is hermetically sealed and impenetrable."

"Sounds good," said Carson. "Daisy, take the lead to feel out anything in the way. I'll follow-I can at least keep the big lion at bay for a minute or two."

"Who put the kids in charge?" demanded an old guy with "retired tourist" written all over him. He and the woman with him were the only ones of the seven not wearing museum badges.

"Do you have a better idea?" asked a quiet man with a Morgan Freeman soul patch. "I, for one, refuse to be done in by a scientific impossibility."

"Then let's go," said the security guard, and we started for the stairs, the snarls of the lions snaking after us.

I prayed I wasn't leading everyone from the frying pan to the fire. Remnants respected certain barriers ... but these weren't ordinary shades. These were weapons made of spirit, memory, and magic.

Please, G.o.d, don't let me be the scientific impossibility that does us all in.

29.

AS WE MADE our breathless way to the third floor, Gla.s.ses Lady introduced herself as Marian. Marian the Librarian. Once the nine of us-the security guard and Carson bringing up the rear-had filed into the large reading room, Marian pulled her key card from under her sweater, ran it through a reader next to the door, then entered a code, locking us in.

It seemed like an electronic lock would be particularly easy to undo with magic. But I was just guessing. Until two days ago, I hadn't thought magic could materialize stuff out of thin air. Maybe a physical lock wouldn't make any difference.

The security guard-his name tag said SMITH-went directly to a phone on the desk and punched in a number. Besides him and Marian, there were Lab Coat, Soul Patch, Margo the administrator, and the retired couple, all anxiously watching Smith, waiting for word of rescue from outside the museum.

"Bad news," he said as he hung up. "There's some sort of problem with the computer that controls the locks. We're stuck here for a little while."

Carson pointed to the door. "Is this lock controlled by the same computer?"

"Hey," said Lab Coat, "if they hacked the computer to bring down the security gates, they could open this one."

"Who are they?" asked Margo.

"Whoever's behind the mummies rising and stuff," said Lab Coat, almost laid-back in comparison with the administrator's tightly wound hysteria. "Someone's got to be, right?"

The question was half rhetorical, half aimed at Carson and me. Instead of answering, Carson propped the spear he was carrying against the wall and gestured to one of the ma.s.sive library tables. "Let's move this in front of the door."

It took four of us to get the barricade in place, which seemed to make everyone feel better. Everyone but me. Walls seemed so flimsy next to the power I'd felt from the Jackal and his minions.

Going on instinct, I climbed onto the table so I could put my hands on the wall near the electronic lock. I'd kept a thin trickle of contact with the museum's ghosts, but the connection swelled in a rush of approval when I focused my intent on protection. The collective remnant pulsed through the walls like the building's own psyche; it took only a little direction from me to shield this room from spirit animal attack. I felt the defenses take hold, almost like a change in the air pressure in the room, and I let myself take one long breath of relief.

"Okay," I said to Carson, who I sensed standing protectively close as I worked. "I'm not sure it will hold against the Jackal if he goes thermonuclear, but it should keep the minions and their magic out."

Carson cleared his throat and I turned to find our whole band of refugees staring at me, eyes full of questions. "Maybe it's time for you two to tell us what's going on here," said Smith.

The Goodnight ability to make fantastic things sound reasonable saved a lot of ha.s.sle, but took some faith, because you just had to jump in with the truth. So I did, keeping it simple: "Evil secret brotherhood. Raising the dead. Taking over the world."

They stared at me for such a long moment that I wondered if the Goodnight charm had failed me. Then Soul Patch said, "Is that all? Secret brotherhoods have been trying that since the beginning of time."

"If we're going to be here a while," said Marian the Librarian, "I have an electric kettle and instant coffee in my desk."

The group dispersed. Except for Carson, who offered a hand to help me down from my perch on the table. He kept his voice a low rumble, and a bemused smile hinted at one devilish dimple. "You are impressive, Daisy Goodnight."

"Yes, I am," I said through my blush.

He grinned. "I wish I'd met you in a normal week."

I snorted to cover another fl.u.s.tered rush of heat. "In a normal week, we never would have met."

The others had cl.u.s.tered around one of the library computers. "Come look at this," said Lab Coat. There was a breaking-news Web page with the headline HOSTAGE CRISIS AT NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM. HALLUCINOGENS USED TO CAUSE PANIC.

"Hallucinogens," Carson said, reading over Lab Coat's shoulder. "That's the story they're going with?"

"Just wait." Lab Coat switched to a grainy video of the patrons running from blurry, dark figures, and one really good shot of my face as the mummies converged on me. "You're a YouTube sensation!"

"Awesome," I said, not feeling awesome about it at all. "Famous on the Internet." Then a detail from the news site's splash registered in my brain. "Go back to the main story for a sec."

When he did, I scanned quickly, finding the line right away. FBI agents already on the scene. So it was more than possible I hadn't imagined someone calling my name in the chaos. Since Taylor had Johnson's name, he could have tracked him back to Chicago.

First things first. I turned to Carson and held out my hand. "Flash drive." FBI or police, sooner or later, someone was going to send in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages, and that would be the end of my chance to put an end to the Black Jackal. I had to figure out how to do that before he worked loose of my binding or I got arrested.

Carson dropped the drive into my palm. It seemed to have faired well even after we'd gotten drenched. The plastic case was damp, but under that it was totally dry.

Marian had straightened from the YouTube watching and stepped over to watch us instead. "What do you need?" she asked.

"Answers," I said.

"Well," she said, with a hint of a smile. "This is a library. So we came to the right place."

Finally a glimmer of hope.

Right before the lights went out.