King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (34 page)

I was sufficiently horrified by what I was seeing, but that didn’t compare to how I felt when I realized that not only did I need to walk on these poor lost souls in order to search the Fortress for Denise, but that there was a strong possibility that Denise’s soul had already been pressed into service as well.

The latter didn’t bear thinking about.

It couldn’t be; it just couldn’t. The Preacher never would have sent me here if there wasn’t some way to rescue her. Without that possibility, our bargain would be worthless, and if I knew anything it was that the Preacher desperately wanted me to be in his debt. No, she was still safe. All I had to do was enter this place and find her.

Steeling myself, I grasped the handle of the door, pulled it open, and stepped inside.

I moved quickly through the maze of hallways and rooms, searching for the central staircase that would take me upward. My instincts told me that Denise was being held in the central tower, the one that rose higher than the others, so that’s where I was headed; thus far, my instincts hadn’t been wrong.

The staircase spiraled around the central core of the tower, and I climbed it swiftly but cautiously. I knew the clock was ticking away, and after that seemingly endless trek across the landscape I really didn’t know just how much of the Preacher’s three-day deadline remained. For all I knew time operated differently here; I might be days ahead or days behind already. The narrowness of the staircase made it an ideal location for an ambush, so I kept my eyes and ears open as I climbed higher into the tower. The last thing I wanted was to stumble into a nest of Sorrows or a group of angry ghosts.

At the top of the stairs was a single door, fashioned of wood and bound with iron. To my surprise, it was unlocked. With a pounding heart, I opened it and stepped inside.

The size of the room surprised me; it seemed much bigger inside than out. But the moment I laid eyes on what it contained, I forgot all about its shape and size.

The floor was littered with the souls of the dead.

Dozens of them.

Men. Women. Children.

And my gut was telling me that Denise was among them somewhere.

I had to find her and set out to do just that. But as I moved among the dead, I realized the situation was far worse than I’d realized.

I knew in the back of my head that I was the only one who was actually present here in physical form, that the “bodies” in front of me weren’t actually bodies but were just the physical representation of what was left of that person’s soul after the Angeu claimed it as his own. It only took a few minutes of observation for me to realize that each soul was in the process of being broken down and consumed by the floor beneath my feet!

In some cases the person’s soul was intact and whole. In others, very little remained beyond the edge of a face or a portion of a limb jutting out from the floor. Each soul that was consumed added to the solidity of the Fortress overall, making it that much stronger.

Even as I looked on, the body closest to me, that of a pretty blonde, settled nearly a half inch deeper into the floor around her. What made it so horrible, though, was the fact that she seemed fully conscious and aware of what was happening to her. She couldn’t move, her arms and legs having sunk more than halfway into the surface beneath her, but her eyes were open and rolling around in her head like a panicked mare.

I had to find Denise and I had to do it fast.

Fuck being careful.

“Denise!” I shouted. “Denise Clearwater!”

Commotion off to my left pulled me in that direction.

I hurried over and knelt beside her.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She didn’t say anything, just stared up at me, her body rigid and unmoving. Her eyes were full of fear and had that round, panicky look that told me she was on the verge of losing it.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

But when I tried to help her sit up, I discovered that I was too late: the Fortress had already laid claim to her. It wasn’t much, maybe an eighth of an inch or so, but that was enough. No matter how hard I tugged, pushed, or pulled on her, I couldn’t get the Fortress to relinquish its grip.

Now what?

Panic gripped me.

For just an instant I imagined how it would all play out, how I would sit there, unable to do anything but be there for her, my hand on hers, my soft, soothing but otherwise useless words falling from my lips as she was consumed, an inch at a time, just another soul added to the Angeu’s power source.

I had to do something!

As I frantically glanced around the room, looking for an answer, my gaze fell upon the faces that watched me from inside the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room itself, the ghosts that had already added their essence to the Angeu’s power base.

That’s when it hit me.

I wasn’t trying to save Denise’s physical form—that was still lying in a hospital bed in New Orleans. The only thing I was concerned with was her soul. Her spirit. Her ghost …

Pulling my harmonica from my pocket, I caught Denise’s gaze with my own and smiled reassuringly.

“I think it’s time for a little music,” I said, then brought the harmonica to my lips and began to play.

Normally it takes me a few minutes to find the frequency, so to speak, to discover the right melody and tempo for my music to have any impact on the ghost I was targeting. But I’d lived with Denise for months now. I knew her as well as I knew anybody, from her quick wit to her hot temper, from her generous nature to her affinity for all living things. I didn’t need time to find the right tune, I carried her song in my heart, never mind a little piece of her soul in my own. My music burst forth in a soft, gentle melody that had a core of steel, just like Denise. It filled the room, washing over the floors and walls, calling Denise to my side just as I’d called hundreds of other ghosts in the past. I closed my eyes and let the music guide me, let it build into a celebration of the life and love that Denise had given the world, until I could hear only the swirling strains of music and the call built deep within its depths.

One minute she was lying trapped on the floor in front of me, the next she stood by my side, free of Caer Wydyr’s grip.

I didn’t waste any time, just grabbed her hand and ran for the door.

“What about them?” she asked, but I just shook my head. I didn’t know if freeing her had set off any kind of alarm or warning device, and I certainly wasn’t going to stand around and wait to find out. Never mind the fact I still had the Preacher’s deadline to contend with.

We were getting out of there and that was that.

Now that Denise was with me, the instinct that had guided me to her side on the way in faded, leaving me to puzzle out the path back to the entrance myself. It took us less than ten minutes to descend the central tower, make our way back through the lower floors, and exit the Fortress by way of the same door through which I’d entered …

… only to skid to a stop when we found the Angeu and his rickety old cart waiting there for us in the shadow of Caer Wydyr.

56

HUNT

You’ve got to be kidding me
, I thought as Denise and I stopped short only a few feet from the horses that drew the Angeu’s cart. This close, even they looked pissed at us.

That’s when the Angeu opened his mouth and let loose a wail that would have done a banshee proud.

Agony exploded in my head, driving me to my knees before the King of the Dead, and it was all I could do to keep from curling up in a ball and weeping like a baby from the pain. I sensed Denise on the ground beside me and knew in that moment that all I’d managed to do in finding my way here and freeing Denise from the clutches of Caer Wydyr was about to be undone in a matter of seconds.

And man did it piss me off.

For the last few weeks I’d been pushed and pulled in a thousand different directions, none of my choosing. I’d been dragged halfway across the country to a city crippled by a plague that wasn’t really a plague, attacked by what should have been harmless harbingers of the dead that tried to suck my soul from my still living body, been shot in the back and left for dead by an angry FBI agent, and finally made a deal with my own personal devil to travel to the land of the dead to retrieve the soul of the woman I was beginning to think I loved, only to end up on my knees in front of a horror-movie reject wailing at me like a little girl.

To put it bluntly, I’d had enough.

I let my feelings run free and felt my anger swell inside me like a tidal wave on the verge of breaking.

Deep inside me, something new responded to its call.

Maybe it was the rage.

Maybe it was something left over from the ritual Denise had used to save my life.

Maybe it was nothing more than the fact that I was one of the living here in the land of the dead.

I don’t know, but I do know that it responded to me when I called it forth.

Without conscious thought, I flung a hand out in front of me, my fingers carving a complicated sigil in the air as I did so, and to my surprise a bolt of power arced across the gap separating me from the Angeu. It struck him dead center in the middle of the chest and flung him off his cart like a worn-out rag doll, cutting off his banshee wail in midstream.

Where the fuck had that come from? I wondered.

I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I’d use what I could get and figure it all out later.

When the Angeu’s wail had stopped, so too did the pain in my head, but I knew it would only be a temporary respite unless I did something to put an end to this confrontation once and for all.

Thankfully, this time I had a plan.

For the second time that day I snatched my harmonica from my pocket and brought it to my lips, letting my music speak for me in a way that nothing else could.

This time I wasn’t playing for a single ghost or entity, didn’t try to tailor my song to call a solitary ghost to my side.

No, this time, I called them all.

Every last one of them.

The Angeu might be the King of the Dead, but right then and there I was the usurper waiting in the wings, and I felt the dead all around me respond to my summons.

As the music unfurled from deep inside me, the Fortress at my back began to shimmy and shake, the ghosts that formed its very foundations struggling to free themselves from its confining magick and go forth to meet the one who called them home. At the same time there came motion from deep within the shifting field of bone before me—for that was what it was, not sand at all but bone ground so finely that it took on the look and feel of sand—motion that grew until it resolved itself into shambling forms the size and shape of human beings. Behind me the great fortress of Caer Wydyr was coming apart at the seams, the ghosts flowing down around us like fog on a summer’s evening, mingling with those rising from the sands.

That’s when the Angeu rose to his feet, revealing himself to the ghosts gathered around me.

Like moths to a flame, they swarmed around him, burying him under the weight of their numbers.

I knew an opportunity when I saw one.

Using one hand to keep playing, I gathered my will and flung the other out before me again, this time with a different pattern of motions and a mental shout in a language I’d never spoken before.

A rift opened a few feet away, a gleaming disk of silver that hung like a curtain in the air before us.

On the other side, I could see the hospital room I’d left behind when I’d started this seemingly suicidal journey.

Shoving my harmonica into my pocket, I pulled Denise to her feet and ran for the portal as fast as my legs would carry me.

Behind me, the Angeu roared with anger, but it was too late. My ghostly army had held him occupied for long enough. With a shout of triumph, I threw Denise and myself into the portal’s open mouth.

57

HUNT

Going back to the other side proved to be just as unpleasant. There was the same sensation of stepping through a curtain of intense cold, a cold so deep that for a moment my heart was shocked into stillness, and then pain exploded through my head and I staggered forward out of the rift into the empty waiting room I’d left behind what felt like years before. My head was pounding, my knees felt weak, and I only managed to remain on my feet by stumbling into a nearby chair and using that for support.

I turned to Denise to ask if she was all right, but the words died stillborn in my throat before ever reaching the air outside my mouth.

I was alone in the room.

Denise was nowhere to be seen.

I stood there, blinking dumbly, unable to process even the simplest of thoughts for a long, long moment. I’d rescued Denise from the Fortress of Glass and the clutches of the King of the Dead himself. I’d called an army of the dead to my side through magick I had no memory of having learned and used it to hold off our enemy long enough for us to dive into the rift. That I could have lost her in that final step, after surviving everything else, was just inconceivable.

When the answer finally dawned on me, I literally sagged in relief.

There was no reason for Denise to be in the room with me. I’d gone to Caer Wydyr to retrieve her soul, not her body. The minute we crossed back into the physical world the two should have been reunited, leaving me on my own.

A glance at the clock on the wall told me it was just after three, and the darkness outside the windows told me it was a.m. rather than p.m., though what day it was I didn’t know. The truth was that I didn’t really care either, as long as I’d come back within the Preacher’s three-day window. All I needed to do now was to go find Denise and make sure that she was all right.

Given that it was the dead of night, the halls were empty and I was able to make my way to the room where I’d left Gallagher and Denise what felt like days before. I entered the room with a smile on my face, eager to wrap her in my arms and welcome her home, only to come to an abrupt halt just inside the doorway.