Autumn Bones (48 page)

It worked. The axe didn’t fall.

For a split second, I was suffused with a sense of power and triumph. Sinclair, who was closest to Stacey, sprinted forward to haul her behind him with one arm, breaking her paralysis and backing her out of danger.

And then the Tall Man turned his skull in my direction, gas-lamp blue flames flickering in his eye sockets, the end of my mental bullwhip wrapped around his bony fingers, and I realized I couldn’t retract my energy, realized he was drawing on it, the flames leaping higher, and I could see the malevolent joy of the obeah man’s spirit in those fiery hollows, riding the madness of Talman Brannigan’s ghost like some supernatural jockey, working death magic and sowing destruction, draining my very life essence to gain even more strength.

All the power and triumph I’d felt leached out of me, pouring into the apparition along the invisible tether that joined us, the tether
I’d
created. The sounds of shouting in the background grew faint and muffled. It felt like I was falling into a deep well of sleep, and I wondered if this was what dying was like. My knees hit the concrete, the spirit lantern falling from my nerveless fingers.

If I’d had the strength to cry, I would have.

A voice raised in bronze-edged fury rent the night, penetrating the cotton wool that seemed to be stuffed into my ears.

Lurine had shifted, her basilisk stare fixed on the Tall Man behind the feathered mask as her powerful coils lashed out to encircle the skeleton’s armor-clad waist. The invisible tether broke as he turned his attention to chopping at her with his axe, and I fell to my hands and knees in the street.

“God’s blood, Daisy!” Stefan’s hand jerked me partially upright, his eyes searching mine, pupils as dark as night. “I
told
you not to use it as a weapon!”

“I know,” I whispered. “But—”

Somewhere beyond us, Lurine snarled in ancient Greek, a note of pain mixed with the fury.

“Tend to her,” Stefan said to Cody, stepping back to draw his sword.
“Kyria!”
he called to Lurine. “Guard the innocents, leave the creature to me!”

“Daisy.” Cody crouched in front of me. “Are you with us?”

I managed to shift one hand to point at the spirit lantern, lying on the street a foot away. “Take it.”

Cody hesitated, then gave a grim nod, picking it up and opening the shutter. Nothing happened. He swore, gave it a shake, and tried again, to no avail. “Either it’s broken, or it has to be you, Daise.” He wrapped my limp fingers around the lantern. “Try.”

I promptly dropped the lantern, then fumbled for it on the ground. Sitting on my heels, I struggled to pry open the shutter. It seemed to take forever, the sound of steel clashing against steel ringing in my unstoppered ears as Stefan engaged the Tall Man, but at last I succeeded. Blue-white light spilled forth, illuminating the combatants’ lower legs and feet, shinbones behind steel greaves, blue jeans and motorcycle boots. Somewhere something was buzzing, a shrill voice spitting out curses.

“Daisy.” Cody’s voice was strained and urgent. I found the strength, barely, to lift my chin and look up. “Daisy, we need you.”

I looked past him. It was Jojo I’d heard, the joe-pye weed fairy darting around Stefan’s head, slingshot in hand, hurling pebbles at the Tall Man’s eye sockets. With no shield or armor, Stefan had his leather jacket wrapped around his left arm, and he was fighting for his life against an immensely tall armor-clad opponent who couldn’t be killed. Off to the side, Lurine had drawn herself to her full height, coils stirring as she stood guard over Sinclair and Stacey.

“Daisy!”

I placed my free hand on the concrete, pushing and trying to rise. My arms trembled with the effort. “Sorry,” I whispered.

“Beslubbering, addlepated apparition!” Jojo shrilled, amethyst eyes ablaze, tattered wings gone dry and brown, beating the air as she fitted another pebble into her slingshot of woven grass. “Vile, grave-ridden—”

In the heat of her furious passion, she darted too close to the Tall Man. It happened so fast, the axe rising and falling in a swift flash. One second, Jojo was there in midair, a look of terrible agony on her tiny face.

Then, gone. A flurry of glittering pollen drifted away, and a limp, ragged stalk of joe-pye weed fell to the street.

A wave of rage filled me, lifting me to my feet with an incoherent shout. I held up the spirit lantern, sending the Tall Man’s bony shadow stretching the length of the street. The concrete street, unfortunately.

“Over there!” Cody pointed toward a patch of landscaping on the corner, tall plumes of grass nodding. “Either corner, Daise!”

“Go!” I shouted, moving sideways to angle the Tall Man’s shadow toward the far corner. My arm was still trembling with the effort, but the anger burning inside me gave me strength. “Anyone who can!
Go!
”

Cody was already dodging past the Tall Man, but the Tall Man was pressing Stefan backward toward me, and I had to retreat. All along the sidewalks, the remaining spectators were shouting and shoving in a frantic effort to flee the scene, terrified parade participants crowding them from behind.

“Daise!” On the near corner, Jen signaled me with raised arms, waving wildly, light glinting off the hammer. Amid the chaos, she’d managed to slip down the street unseen. “Here!”

“Bingo,” I whispered, sidling to the left to send the Tall Man’s shadow in her direction. She hammered the nail into the soil with one solid
thwack
.

And nothing happened.

The Tall Man loosed another booming laugh, making the windows rattle all along the street. The capering figure in the leisure suit echoed it with a demented cackle.

Shit.

Hel had warned me that the spirit lantern and an iron nail might not work on Grandpa Morgan’s duppy because his spirit had never been laid to rest in the first place. And it didn’t work on the Tall Man because he
wasn’t
a spirit; he was flesh and bone, or at least bone and metal-plate, thanks to former inventor and insane agoraphobic Clancy Brannigan. Although I guess he wasn’t agoraphobic anymore, since he’d emerged from his lair for the first time in decades. Maybe being possessed by a duppy before it ditches you to animate your great-grandfather’s corpse has that effect.

“Man of science, my ass!” I shouted across the intersection at him.

He cackled in reply. Maybe he wasn’t agoraphobic, but whatever shreds of sanity he’d been clinging to were gone.

“Hel’s liaison,” Stefan said in a formal tone, parrying another mighty swipe of the Tall Man’s axe. “I fear my strength is not without limits. The same does not appear true of the creature.”

I winced. “Sorry!”

I knew what I had to do. I just didn’t know how the hell I was going to do it. I set down the spirit lantern.
Dauda-dagr
sang as I drew it, the hilt cool and reassuring against my palm. The ridge of hair along my tail prickled as I assessed the embattled Tall Man for a weakness in his armor at a vital point.

There was one—there, when he turned his skull, his spine was exposed beneath his helmet at the nape of his neck.

Only I hadn’t the faintest idea how to reach it.

There was a thrumming sound from the rooftop of one of the buildings on the intersection, one that had sat empty and for sale since the Birchwood Grill it once housed had closed. A thrumming sound followed by a
splat
.

The Tall Man staggered backward as a water balloon filled with red dye burst against his breastplate.

Atop the roof, there were cheers and whoops, heads peering over the edge. I felt a fierce grin stretch my cheeks. “Go, Easties!”

“Oh, I don’t think so. No, I’m afraid that won’t do at all.” In the middle of the intersection, Clancy Brannigan calmly withdrew a pistol from the waistband of his polyester leisure suit. Considering that he’d gone entirely around the bend, he sounded surprisingly coherent. He raised his arm to take aim at the figures on the rooftop and cocked the safety. “Let’s let this play out, shall we?”

I froze in shock. A gun, or an insane mortal with a gun, was the last thing I’d expected. But Cody spun around and drew his service pistol, his expression grim and determined. “Drop it!”

Talman Brannigan’s last living descendant moved with startling dexterity, grabbing Jen around the neck with his left arm and positioning her between them, his gun to her temple. “I’d say it’s a standoff, Officer. Why don’t you drop yours?”

Jen let out a faint squeak, her dark eyes wide with terror and helpless fury, showing the whites. Cody hesitated.

“Oh, God,” I whispered, the blood running cold in my veins. “Jen, no!”

There was another sound, a whooshing sound, as one of the figures atop the roof vaulted over the edge, the panels of a long coat flaring like dark wings, briefly blotting out the streetlights overhead. Someone let out a shriek as the figure dropped like a stone. A highly cinematic stone. Clancy Brannigan swung his pistol and fired at it, the gunshot echoing loudly along the street.

“Missed me.” Bethany Cassopolis landed in a three-point stance, straightening to adjust the folds of her long Victorian frock coat. She showed her fangs. “No one fucks with my brother and sister, creep. Not anymore.” Brannigan lowered his pistol and fired on her at point-blank range, but a bullet to the chest barely even slowed Bethany down as she fell upon him with inhuman speed, wrenching the gun from his hand as she jerked him away from Jen and sent him stumbling in Cody’s direction. “Count yourself lucky I don’t drink you dry, asshole!”

Cody slapped a pair of handcuffs on Clancy Brannigan. One psychotic mortal down, one possessed zombie skeleton to go.

Okay.

“Wait!” I shouted. “Stefan, everyone, just hold on!” I addressed the Tall Man’s figure. “Mr. Morgan, I want to parley!”

The helmeted skull turned toward me, eye sockets filled with blue fire, blue fire crackling along its bones. Grandpa Morgan was listening. Opposite him, Stefan braced his hands on his knees, keeping his grip on his sword, taking deep breaths. Blood was running down his left arm, dripping from his wrist.

“Let Talman Brannigan’s spirit go,” I said. “He committed a terrible crime. Don’t let it happen again. That can’t be what you want.”

Blue flames surged in the hollow sockets. “Let my
grandson
go, she-devil!” It was a different voice, not as booming, but creaking with sharp, rusty edges. Well, that and a Jamaican accent. “That’s all I ask. Give me my grandson, and you and your cursed bloodclot of a town can have your murderer’s bones!”

“No one
has
me, Grandfather!” Emerging from behind the protective barrier of Lurine’s coils, Sinclair confronted the apparition. There were tears on his cheeks. “This is my town and these are my friends. I chose this path, and you have no right to choose a different for me; not you, not my mother, not my sister! No one! You can force me to change my mind, but you can’t change my heart.” He opened one hand to reveal the withered remnants of a joe-pye weed. “You can only break it.”

On the outskirts of what had been a crowd of spectators, there was still shouting and pushing, but the street surrounding us had gone quiet. Everyone who wasn’t already fleeing was transfixed with a combination of horror and fascination. I caught Lurine’s eye and pointed toward the Tall Man’s ankles, then held up one finger to indicate she should wait for my signal. Lurine nodded, slithering forward a few feet. Behind her, Stacey Brooks stood with her arms wrapped around herself, teeth chattering in the warm night air.

In silence, we waited for the Tall Man’s—for Grandpa Morgan’s—response.

“Sorry, bwai.” There might even have been a hint of regret in the rusty voice. “But your mother bound me to her will.”

And then, “CAVANNAUGH!”

Grandpa Morgan had loosed the reins on the Tall Man and given him his head. The axe rose, the skull turning in search of Stacey Brooks. Stefan straightened, hoisting his sword, his irises like pale rims of frost around his pupils.

“Easties, fire!” I shouted, praying that Brandon and his friends were still up there manning the ramparts.

My prayers were answered. Atop the roof of the old Birchwood Grill building, the industrial-strength water-balloon launcher twanged over and over, launching a barrage. The Tall Man flailed, batting at the onslaught. It wasn’t anything more than an annoyance to him, but all I needed was a moment’s distraction.

“Now!” I shouted to Lurine.

Her iridescent tail shot forward, snaking around the skeleton’s bony ankles, upending him with a single yank. The Tall Man clattered to the ground, bones and armor rattling. Stefan was on him in a flash, both booted feet stomping down hard on the skeleton’s axe-wielding arm, the point of his sword jamming into the exposed vertebrae at the back of the Tall Man’s neck through the same gap under the helmet that I’d spotted.

Of course, there was no magic in his blade, only skill, and it seemed the skeleton was held together with death magic, not sinew. Blue lightning crackled as the Tall Man flung him off with supernatural strength, rising to one knee.

One knee was good enough for me. It put the nape of the Tall Man’s neck at right about eye level.

Stealing up behind him, I drove
dauda-dagr
home.

It cut through the brittle old bones like butter. The blue lightning vanished. The Tall Man’s figure collapsed.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Too soon, of course. The air around the fallen heap of bones and metal roiled, smelling of scorched hair and rot. Without a host to contain it, Grandpa Morgan’s duppy was manifesting at long last.

“Gentlefolk of the coven!” Casimir called in a fierce, determined voice. “My darlings, our time has come!”

Sinclair turned to me. He held the empty pickle jar in one hand and the sad, trampled reminder of Jojo in the other, and the determination in Casimir’s voice was echoed in his level gaze. “Stand back, Daisy. We’ve got this.”

I nodded. “Do it.”

I admit it—I’d had my doubts about the coven. But they converged in a circle around the Tall Man’s armored bones and held hands, with Sinclair in the center, facing his grandfather’s spirit. Sandra Sweddon, Warren Rogers, Mark and Sheila Reston, Kim Crandall, Mrs. Meyers, whose first name I really ought to learn . . . their ordinary, mortal faces were strong and beautiful as they chanted an invocation.