The Brotherhood of the Snake (Return of the Ancients Book 2) (35 page)

It was already dark. A quick, surreptitious glance revealed nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I could see anyway, so I took a step forward.

And then I saw it.

The weird garden gnome wearing the black suit and the black top hat was sitting on the corner of the porch.

I bit back a scream.

I stayed there, staring at it for what seemed like an eternity but then logic finally conquered my fear.

Most likely, there was quite a rational reason for the weird gnome’s sudden appearance.

Mrs. Patton had probably loaned it to Al so that it could be added to his Operation ID spreadsheet.

Laughing a bit nervously at myself for behaving so foolishly, I jumped onto the porch, scurrying past the weird lawn ornament as fast as I could.

I’d just unlocked the door, and my hand was still on the knob when it moved.

In absolute horror, I watched the garden gnome stand up and begin to grow, taller and taller, morphing into the image I’d seen in the Hall of Mirrors.

It was the man in the black suit and black top hat, the man that had opened the door for the lizard people and had forced them into exile.

Chapter Eighteen – The White Mask

Dimly, I heard the sound of screaming and on some level, I knew it was coming out of my own lips, but I was far beyond being in any kind of control.

Somehow, I managed to open the door just as the man in the top hat tried to step in my way, but somehow, I went right through him as if he were made of smoke.

And then I was in the house, shoving the door closed.

But just before I slammed it shut, I saw his face.

The face was kind and strangely familiar, and the expression on it was sad, a sadness so deep that I felt like weeping.

The door closed between us, and he disappeared.

I closed my eyes, taking in deep, shaking breaths.

But with each breath, a deep sense of dread began to grow, and all at once, the very air itself felt thick and evil.

I froze.

A scratching sound was coming from the kitchen. Biting my lip, I forced myself to walk forward.

My heart sank.

It was Marquis.

He stood in the kitchen, poking through the groceries littering the kitchen counter, but his livid eyes were locked on me, and his lips lifted in a ruthless sneer.

“Welcome, Sydney,” he greeted me, sweeping the groceries off the countertop. “I’ve been waiting for you for quite a while. It’s about time you got home.”

“Where is everyone?” I gasped. “What have you done to my family?”

The words just naturally sprang from my lips, and it was then that I realized I really did consider Al, Betty, and Grace to be my true family.

I felt totally sick with fear that they’d come to harm.

“Oh, she’s safe … for now,” Marquis promised. Crooking his finger for me to follow, he led me to the family room where Betty sat on the couch.

To my horror, she looked just like a Madame Tussaud wax figure. Hunched sideways on the couch, she was staring straight ahead with a vacant look in her unblinking eyes. On the coffee table in front of her was a plastic plate with a cheese sandwich. And judging by the look of the dried piece of cheese hanging out the sides, she’d been mesmerized for quite some time.

“Betty!” I cried with my voice choking.

“Oh, she can’t hear you.” Marquis laughed and bowed, holding out his hand. “Go ahead, take a look! There’s nothing you can do to wake her up. Nothing!”

I ran to her side and waved my hand in front of her face, but she didn’t respond. She was in a deep, cataleptic trance.

“Stop it!” I said, turning on him. “Take her out of it!”

“Oh, not until I get what I want.” He smiled, clucking his tongue. “I’ll let her starve first.”

I shuddered.

“What do you want from me?” I gasped in a strangled voice.

His cold, sharp eyes narrowed into razor thin slits as he advanced, and pausing inches from me, he whispered in a low, menacing tone. “I want the Tulpa.”

I swallowed hard. “I don’t know where it is.”

He lurched forward, grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked hard. “Wrong answer, Sydney!”

Tears stinging my eyes, I gasped, “I’m telling the truth!”

Twisting my arm behind my back, he pushed me forward. I struggled, fighting against his punishing grip, but he was hard and unmoving, seeming to possess an unholy strength.

“It’s here,” he hissed, his voice rumbling in that low, distinct, Mesmer way. “We all know it is. We can taste it.” His tongue flicked out in the most disturbing of ways.

“I haven’t seen it! It isn’t here! I’d know if it was!” I swore. “Even Ajax can’t find it. It probably went back to where it came from.”

“It didn’t return from its mission!” His gaze frightened me. “It isn’t in our facet of existence. It’s still here!”

“Mission?” I felt nauseated. “Then it really is alive!”

“Oh, it is very much alive now!” Marquis grinned widely, and his pupils turned into vertical slits. “And we have humanity to thank for that! Your collective terror gave it life!”

I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear anymore as t
he voice I feared the most whispered in my ear.

“We meet again, Sydney,” Blondie’s rasping voice hissed at me.

It was all I could do to keep from screaming as I saw his sickening form again.

I knew there wasn’t any way I could reach Rafael, but Jareth was a different story. Desperately, I tried to recall the phone number he’d written down on the piece of paper, the one I’d used to call him when I’d unleashed the Tulpa from Marquis’ tube. If I could just think of it, he’d come immediately. At least, I hoped he would.

“You humans are ridiculously simple,” Blondie hissed insidiously. Slithering over to Betty, he encircled her wrist with a claw.

As I watched, Betty seemed bathed in a golden light. My throat closed in horror. I couldn’t think of any numbers then. I could only think about the golden cord of light extending from Betty’s navel.

Blondie laughed. “Oh, she’s not connected to us, silly human. She’s of no value. She’s still attached to her egg.”

As I watched, I saw what he meant. Betty’s cord was attached to an egg of light suspended in the air a few feet behind her.

Blondie withdrew his claw and the illusion faded.

“All it takes is a simple snip, Sydney,” he cackled. “If she’s severed from her egg, she’ll cease to exist. It’ll be as if she’d never been. Only you would remember her existence, because I’ll make you perform the actual deed.”

I gaped.

I didn’t know if they were telling the truth or playing on my fear, but it didn’t really matter. I was totally and utterly terrified.

“We can’t lose this Tulpa,” Blondie rasped, sliding off the couch to circle around my feet. “We’ll risk anything to find it.”

Frantic, I searched my mind for Jareth’s phone number. I tried several combinations, whispering them aloud.

I must have remembered the right number because Jareth suddenly appeared.

His dark eyes widened, and he drew his trion out in an instant, pointing it at Blondie, and at that moment, I totally and utterly knew I could trust him.

He really
was
one of the good guys!

Blondie shrieked.

Marquis pointed his own trion straight at me. “One false step, Jareth, and she’ll be gone,” he said with a maniacal gleam in his eye.

Jareth didn’t move. He stayed where he was, trion still trained on Blondie.

“You’re one of us, Jareth!” Blondie’s lips drew back into a sneer, and his golden eyes seemed to be glowing. “You’re an agent of chaos and fear. You’re one with the Brotherhood!”

Jareth didn’t answer.

I decided to answer for him. “No, he’s not one of you! Jareth’s good!” I said, forcing the words out of my dry throat.

Blondie’s head swiveled my direction. “Jareth belongs to us, foolish human.”

Jareth moved. He began to approach in a slow, calculating manner as something dark unleashed behind his eyes. “I’ll never belong to anyone, Fae or Brotherhood,” he swore. “You’ll never control me.”

Blondie turned and smiled at that. “Your test has not yet arrived, foolish lizardling.”

Jareth’s lip crooked in a mocking smile of his own. “And your arrogance will be your undoing. You may not give birth nor may you die, but you may cease to ever have existed. This truth I know.”

Both Blondie and Marquis’ eyes widened in alarm, and they hissed in a horrible, rattling sound.

Suddenly, Blondie leapt onto Betty’s lap, laying one claw on her wrist and holding the other up to her cord of light, clearly preparing to slice through it.

“No!” I screamed.

“It is this worthless human, or the Tulpa,” Blondie grated. “You have three seconds. One. Two. Th—”

“Wait!” Rafael’s voice rang through the family room. “I know where the Tulpa is!”

I burst into tears of relief and launched myself straight at him.

Marquis didn’t even try to stop me.

Rafael squeezed my shoulder in a comforting gesture and nodded towards the kitchen with his chin. “Follow me. Leave the human alone.”

Blondie eyed him suspiciously, and then exchanging a long glance with Marquis, slithered off Betty’s lap to lope into the kitchen.

He moved in a creepy, disturbing way, slinking and slithering like a mutated snake creature out of a horror movie.

“Rafael—” I sobbed, but he silenced me with an elegant finger on my lips.

“Odd that Blondie’s taking your orders, Rafael!” Jareth’s dark eyes were filled with anger.

But Rafael merely silenced him with a look.

We all followed him to the kitchen where he pointed to the garage door.

I didn’t even have time to ask before Marquis lifted his trion, and the door disappeared as if it had never existed.

Marquis motioned me in first, and I gingerly stepped through the opening to see Al’s PVC pipe tent filling up the garage. It really was covered on the outside with chicken wire.

What was Al up to?

Rafael approached the tent, lightly touching the plastic sheeting with his fingertips before rapping the piping with his knuckles. “Clever,” he said. “It’s an effective shielding mechanism. It’s no wonder we couldn’t detect its presence. Crude, but effective.”

Marquis moved to join him, placing his hand on the plastic before drawing back with a sharp hiss, “Lysol!”

Reaching back to grab my arm, Marquis wrenched me forward and ordered, “Get it!”

I stared at him, open-mouthed, in confusion and then looked to Rafael.

“Get it, Sydney,” he said in a strangely monotone voice.

I frowned, unsure of what was happening. I saw Jareth still standing close, his trion still pointed at Blondie, but with Marquis’ trion still pointed at my forehead, he wasn’t making any moves.

“Get it, Sydney,” Rafael repeated, but he was strangely pale and looked a little ill.

With a trembling nod, I stepped inside the tent.

There was just a chair and a card table, and on that card table was a large hamster cage. And inside the hamster cage was the alien detection kit Al had given me before last Thanksgiving, with its glass tube, panel of lights, and metal disk on top that had reminded me of the blade inside a food processor.

But the tube was red.

I frowned.

It hadn’t been red before. It hadn’t been filled with anything. And this red seemed to be moving.

All at once, I realized with horror what it was.

It was the Tulpa.

It was caught in the alien detection kit.

We’d finally found it.

Jareth was shouting at me, “Let it loose, Sydney! You’ve got to let it loose. It’s the only way!”

I looked at him like he was mad.

“If you don’t let it loose now, Rafael will make the wrong choice!” he was choking with emotion. His hand holding the trion was beginning to shake. “This is his Blue Thread!”

“Don’t let it free, Sydney,” Rafael ordered me calmly. “You know how dangerous that is. Just give it to me. It looks like Jareth might be mesmerized.”

It wasn’t a hard choice for me to make. While I might be just beginning to trust Jareth, I knew I certainly trusted Rafael.

Opening the hamster cage, I took the alien detection kit out and stretched my hand out to Rafael.

I saw Jareth fall to his knees, dropping his trion on the ground.

“No!” he choked.

I froze.

Something was wrong, but it was too late.

As if in slow motion, I watched Rafael reach out, take the Tulpa, and calmly hand it to Marquis.

“You’ve done something meaningful for the first time in your life, Sydney.” Marquis laughed, holding the Tulpa up in a gesture of pure triumph.

Blondie jumped onto his shoulder, his tongue flicking in and out of his mouth in a very lizard-like way. “We do not die. We do not give birth. We do not transcend the dimensions as humans do. We are here, always constant … until now.” His eyes glowed with anticipation at the Tulpa. “Because of this Tulpa, we will soon enter the facet of human existence.”

My stomach tightened.

There was a cloud of mist and Melody appeared. 
She didn’t seem the slightest bit disturbed to see Blondie or Marquis. And she barely spared Jareth a glance.

Her eyes were focused solely on the Tulpa.

“At long last, you have found it, my prince,” she said, bowing before Rafael.

Unable to comprehend what I was seeing, I simply stood there, watching as Marquis and Blondie joined Melody to bow deeply in front of Rafael.

“Then let us be gone,” Rafael was ordering them. “You know what must be done next.”

Marquis, Melody, and Blondie all nodded with deep respect.

Jareth drew in a long breath of horror, and I found myself running towards him. Tears fogged my vision and I tripped, falling heavily, the cold cement of the garage stinging my palms.

“Who are you to order them?” Jareth was asking Rafael hoarsely, even as he swung around and caught me in a close protective embrace.

Slowly, Rafael turned to face us. He avoided looking at me and focused his gray eyes only on Jareth.

“I invited them here,” he said in a cold voice.

Melody smiled. She held up her hand and snapped her fingers.