Thirteen Days of Midnight (17 page)

I turn to look at the Judge.

“Nothing personal, boss,” he mutters. He raises his hand, and I can see an empty bottle held in his fist. He’s wearing a sovereign ring on his thumb. It catches the light, a miniature sun. I have time to wonder whether it’s a real bottle or somehow the ghost of one, and then he breaks it over my head with a flat white

Snap.

I wake up stretched out on Holiday’s bed. My neck feels like there’s a fire lit inside it. I’ve got a headache with a pulse and my mouth is dry. When I move my head I can feel hair itching at my shoulders and back. Holiday is lying next to me, eyes wide open.

“Holiday?”

I hold my hand to hers. It’s still warm, and I can feel the faintest heartbeat hidden there in her wrist. They didn’t kill her, and they didn’t kill me either. It’s not Halloween, so if what Elza said is true they can’t. My skeleton feels more like a collection of dry, weak twigs than the trusty lattice of bones I normally depend on. The room is still dark, but it’s closer to deep blue than black. Sunrise can’t be far off.

The shadows by Holiday’s dresser deepen. There’s the glint of spectacles, the slight mushy sound of lips moving.

“Luke,” says the Shepherd.

“What have you done to her?”

“Me personally? Nothing. I can’t speak for the Prisoner, of course. He does rather drain people.”

His voice has music in it. I want to throw myself at him, wrap my hands around his waxy throat, but I can’t. I gave up the sigil. I want to feed the Shepherd his own heart. Instead I stand, fists crunched up in my jean pockets.

“She’s got nothing to do with this. Nobody here does.”

“I quite agree, so I’d rather not get into any unpleasantness. Do exactly as I say or we’ll kill all of them.”

“All right.”

“Open the door and go downstairs, to the back garden. I will follow you. If you run, if you try anything, this girl here will suffer and then die. And don’t think we’ve forgotten that seer-child either.”

“Good luck getting to Elza. She knows all about you.”

“You really don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you, Luke? I have traveled through the cold beyond. I spoke with the Black Goat in the deepest woods. I plundered the ruins of Babylon and Solomon’s tomb. In life, there were kings who came to me on bended knee. Did you think the witchlet could help you against me? Against us?”

“Elza knows more than you think,” I say. “All you’re proving is you’re old. And I’m not afraid. I know you can’t kill me.”

I hope.

“Downstairs,” he says.

I haul my aching body through the door and across Holiday’s broad landing. The house is utterly silent, without a murmur or thump of footsteps. A clock reads 6:00 a.m. I run my eyes over a pile of neatly folded clothes, a gold-framed photograph of Holiday at eight or nine on a chestnut-colored pony. What have I brought down on their home?

Sitting in a white chair on the landing, there’s a blue bundle that starts to shift and murmur as we approach.

I’m a baby,
the bundle says.

I walk past the ghost, chill crawling over my skin.

Pick me up,
it says. The Shepherd doesn’t acknowledge it either.

“Are you familiar with the Innocent? A story lies therein,” he says, as we reach the bottom of the stairs.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“As you wish. Another time, then. Closer to your death.”

Nobody has left the party; everyone is still here. Every guest stands in place, hands clasped behind their backs. There’s not a human sound to be heard: no breaths, no coughing. Their faces have the flattened, sad expression of sleepers. Bottles and cans and glasses lie on the ground, surrounded by long-dried splats and spills of liquid. Whatever happened to them, it happened fast. I suppose this is real black magic. I didn’t realize, didn’t know the ghosts had this kind of power. Is this what Dad would use the Host for? If you could do something like this to people, freeze them like statues, then you could get away with just about anything. It’s not a nice thought. I remember learning about Pompeii, looking at all the plaster casts of the Romans who didn’t have the sense to leave town when their mountain started to smoke. Their eyes are open, but nobody is looking at anything in particular. None of them respond to my gaze. Everyone — every sexy cat, every Frankenstein, every Dracula, every Superman or cowgirl or zombie — all of them are facing the same way, staring toward the open back door.

The garden is dark, grass tinted white with frost. Beer cans glint beneath the bushes that surround the lawn. There’s a wide circle of people standing on the grass; some are living, some dead. I think of the guys’ drinking circle out here last night, and I smile a bitter smile. I see Holiday’s mum, and a gray-haired man with a paunch who I assume is her dad, standing beside each other with clasped hands and the same sleepwalker’s expression. I guess they came back early. Too bad for them. Kirk and Mark stand with their backs to me, still in their superhero costumes. Between the seven warm bodies stands the Host, filling out the circle: the Judge, the Prisoner, the Vassal, the veiled Oracle, the flaming form of the Heretic, who for once stands silent, and the blue-swaddled baby, somehow moved down from the landing, on the ground next to Holiday’s parents. And at the opposite side the circle stands another figure, something I can’t quite make out, a strange hunched shape like a mound of cloth that’s breathing. No, that’s not quite right either: It looks more like a shadow being boiled.

The Fury. I remember Dad’s notes:
Power — rage — enemy of life.

Just when you think things can’t get worse.

“Is the whole Host accounted for?” asks the Shepherd behind me, loud, near my ear. When nobody answers, he carries on. “Come stand with me, Luke. We’ve left space for you.”

I follow him through the damp, flattened grass, and my stomach lurches as we step into position. In the center of the circle is Holiday’s white cat, Bach, with a syrupy red slit in his belly. He lies still, like a toy someone dropped.

“Right there,” the Shepherd says. I’ve got the Heretic to my right, the Shepherd to my left. The circle is complete: eight living, eight dead. I stand where he indicated, fists clenched, head throbbing, and the Shepherd reaches up and touches the center of my forehead with my sigil. Cold spreads from the black ring throughout my body, faster and deeper than it did when I grabbed the Judge’s throat. I find that I can’t move. I’m frozen in position, like the others. All I can do is watch.

“There,” says the Shepherd after a moment, enjoying my discomfort at suddenly being paralyzed. “Our circle is complete. Allow me to introduce an infamous servant of your father. The Fury.”

At this, the boiling shadow, at first only waist high, unfurls like a great dark flag, and I realize I was looking at something wearing a black robe, kneeling on the ground with its back to me. It stands and
stands,
expanding upward until it’s past seven feet tall, its shoulders level with the taller ghosts’ heads. The Fury turns to face me, and I realize that each time I think I’ve seen everything, there’s just one more level of screwed-up weirdness.

The thing has long, thin arms, hands that fall down below its knees, fingers like groping roots. The demon’s skin is ink-dark, and I can’t tell where its cloak begins or if it’s actually wearing anything at all. It looks like a three-dimensional shadow, a shadow with depth and mass, like a sculpture made out of black smoke. The head is the lean, sharp head of a dog or jackal. The demon’s eyes are like keyhole views of a furnace, smoldering orange holes punched into the darkness of its face. It sniffs at the air and then opens its mouth, which also shimmers with red heat. Unlike the Heretic, shrouded in flames, this creature is burning from within. There’s a faint, awful sound, like someone screaming and shouting two streets away.

“Hear me now,” says the Shepherd. “The Fury and I have decided that Luke is lacking in the correct authority to manage this Host.”

The demon adds nothing. Its furnace eyes bore into mine.

“Luke has continually proved himself incompetent, slothful, and inconsequential. His grasp of necromancy is effectively nil. We believe him to be an unworthy owner of the Manchett Host, and we are relieving him of command.”

The Prisoner gives me a curdled smile.

“This is mutiny,” says the Vassal quietly.

“Shut it!” hisses the Judge.

“The first order of business,” says the Shepherd with an expansive gesture, “will be breaking our bonds. As you’re all aware, Halloween is seven days away. Our power will be at its apotheosis, its apex. I feel confident we will be able to slay our necromancer, and thence shall be free. Luke is weak, and such a chance may never occur again. Do you want to end up like the monk”— he points at the Heretic — “forever lost, mind worn down to nothing by centuries of service? We must break free!”

Nobody disagrees.

“Just in case anybody has some misplaced loyalty . . . consider this a warning, all of you.”

At this prompt, the Fury leaps at the Vassal and smothers him in its robe. The black shape billows and beats like a heart, and then the struggle is over. The Vassal is kneeling in the middle of the circle, looking down at the dead cat. His hands and feet are bound with what look like black briars. The Fury stands over him, blazing eyes empty of expression. Nobody looks pleased or smug anymore, not even the Judge. I’m guessing whatever’s about to happen, the Shepherd didn’t fill him in on this part of the plan.

The Shepherd speaks to the Host. “The Vassal is domesticated, a mewling house pet. At every chance for freedom, this traitor blocked the path.”

“Luke!” cries the Vassal, on his knees in the grass. “Luke, save me! If you have any goodness, any compassion, please save me! Stop this now!”

I try to speak, and my mouth won’t work. I’m frozen in place, totally silent. All I can do is stand and watch.

“Please! Oh, God, please don’t let it eat me! Please!”

The demon reaches inside its body and draws out something that glows with a hungry light: a long whip of flame, an impossible cord of boiling orange that swings down from its black hand to singe the wet grass.

The Vassal raises his head, eyes glinting in the fierce orange blaze of the whip. I can’t tell him how sorry I am, how much I appreciate what he’s tried to do for me, but he must be able to read my gaze.

“You are forgiven, sir,” he says quietly.

The Fury swings the whip in a wild arc, up into the air, where it spurts like the trail of a time-lapsed firework before tumbling onto the hunched shape of the Vassal. The whip hits his back with a hungry sizzling noise, and the Vassal screams in agony. I see now why Dad used the demon: to control the other ghosts, because I think you’d do anything to avoid what it’s doing to the Vassal. The scourge eats through the ghost’s body completely, and now the Vassal is split in half at the waist, and both halves are lying on the ground in the dawn-lit orchard.

“The lash of Tartarus,” the Shepherd says quietly, sounding almost awed.

The demon swings the whip in a tight circle, catching the Vassal’s kicking legs. The legs are held in the coils of the whip, and the Fury reels the limbs in. The monster raises the Vassal’s legs up to its snout and inhales. The spectral body parts dissolve into a fog and are sucked into the demon’s white-hot gullet. The Vassal screams again, higher and higher, like a siren.

He doesn’t last long after that first bite. The demon was hungry, it seems, and goes into a frenzy, lashing at the Vassal’s twitching body with the whip until he looks like a statue that’s been smashed with a hammer. The demon bends down at the waist and starts to suck and grunt, vacuuming up the shards of ghost. Eventually there is nothing left, and the monster recoils the burning lash.

“Thank you, my brother,” says the Shepherd. “I hope this has been instructive for you all. Follow us and glory awaits. We will be freed, and not only that, reborn. We can take new bodies, new lives!”

For a moment there is silence. The wind rises and the trees begin to murmur and rustle to one another. I’m shivering, muscles cramping, unable to move or turn my head or close my eyes. Then the Host kneels as one, the ghosts all touching the ground with their hands and faces. Even the Heretic manages a shaky, halfhearted bob.

“You’re dismissed,” the Shepherd tells them, and the Host vanishes like candles being snuffed out. Only the Shepherd and the Fury remain.

“Your father kept the Fury regularly fed with souls,” the Shepherd says to me. “You see the need, of course. A demon’s hunger is limitless.”

I can’t even turn my head to look at him. I can only hear his voice.

“We are unable to kill you, as you know. I could ask you to commit suicide. Hold Holiday and your mother ransom. Your life for theirs. But suicide is a great, bleak sin, and there are certain . . . interested parties whose involvement in this game we have here would complicate matters. We can’t attract their attention.”

“Fortunately, the Fury here had some excellent suggestions. Really quite ingenious, demons. Came up with some masterpieces of cruelty.”

The Fury examines me closely, like I’m an ant crawling over a plate it was thinking of using, and then bends down to the dead body of the cat. It reaches into the slit in Bach’s belly and draws out something that at first I take for guts but that turns out to be some kind of shifting red light, far deeper red than the whip, a red that’s almost black. The light streams out from the cat’s body and embeds itself in my chest just over my heart. It looks like we’re anchored together now, me and Bach, by the dark pulsing rope. It feels warm, actually, like a restful bed after a long night of walking and searching. The blue dawn sky is darkening again, sunrise in reverse, the sky fading to a black I never knew existed, black past black. The Fury reaches out with a surgeon’s careful hand and breaks the red rope.

I’m asleep, I think — I’m having this crazy dream. I’m in Holiday’s yard, except it isn’t really a yard at all. It’s this dining room, with dark stone walls, and it goes on forever. I’m sitting at the table, there’s someone else at the other end, and I realize it’s Dad. He looks bad, really ill, he’s sweating from the heat. It’s sauna hot and stifling in here. He’s in a white suit and violet shirt, and he’s got a napkin tucked into his collar. We’ve got rare steak in front of us, big bloody slabs. Dad starts to talk, but I can’t hear him properly, like a radio with bad reception. His voice doesn’t sync with his mouth as it moves.