Ghost Light (21 page)

“Do not blame your foolish brethren,” she said.  “The wisps were promised the return of their princess for their service.  And I, my dears, have delivered.”

Faerie bargains; they were always filled with loopholes and trickery.  I spat.  I would show her what happened to those who bound my people with deception and lies.  I would show them all what it meant to anger an Unseelie princess.

Melusine had to be stopped.  She would never change.  The fact she’d used my own people in her more recent evil machinations added to my conviction.  Melusine may have been Ceffyl’s queen, but she never cared about his people.  The bitch cared only for herself.  In a jealous fit Melusine had murdered the heirs to their kingdom and abandoned her king.  It was time she paid for her treasonous crimes against the kelpies.

Melusine shot toward me, fangs fully extended.  As she rushed me, she lifted a sword and aimed it at my head.  I adjusted for the change in distance and threw my knife with lightning speed, faster than I’d ever thrown a blade while practicing with Jenna.  I smiled.  I was drawing strength from the wisps now hovering around my head.

My knife buried itself deep in Melusine’s shoulder, putting her sword arm out of commission.  The sword fell from her hand, arm hanging limply at her side.  Without hesitation, Melusine dipped her body and retrieved the sword with her left hand.  Great, the bitch was ambidextrous—just my luck.  I readied my second knife to take out her left shoulder when Ceff stepped in front of me.

“I will not let you do this,” Ceff said, facing Melusine.  He risked a glance at me and shouted.  “Go!  I’ll take care of Melusine.  You and Jinx rescue the children.”

Ceff turned to face Melusine and widened his stance.  The telescoping handle of his trident shot outward as he flicked his wrist hard, the move an open threat.  If it came down to a choice between Melusine and the children, he’d pick the children, just as he’d always done.  The knowledge made the tension bleed from my neck and shoulders.

I nodded and lowered my blade.  I’d wounded Melusine which should slow her down.  If Kaye’s information was correct, lamias can only regenerate the serpent portions of their bodies.  Even with the rapid healing common to full blooded fae, she wouldn’t be using her right arm in this fight.

I had to trust that Ceff could handle his ex.  I sent up a silent prayer and turned my attention to the children who were indeed in need of rescuing.  Tiny feet stomped atop graves and gravel paths as the children’s bodies lurched to The Piper’s music.

The Danse Macabre had begun.

Chapter 23

I
watched in horror as Jinx struggled to rescue children from the circle.  She pulled and cajoled, but their tiny hands held firm.  No matter how hard Jinx tried, the spell was too strong.

As she tugged at the hands of a young wood nymph, a bony hand burst from the ground and batted her away.  Jinx stumbled, the earth roiling at her feet.

The dead were rising from their graves.

We needed to free the children from the dance.  I searched recent memory and began to recite the prayer that Father Michael had given me.  It was worth a shot.

“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil.  May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.  And do thou, oh prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God thrust into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world for the ruin of souls,” I roared.  Nothing happened.  I choked back my frustration and pulled my phone from a zippered pocket.  Maybe the prayer had to be read in Latin.  “Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.  Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur, tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis, satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute, in infernum detrude.  Amen.”

But the dead continued to rise.  I grunted in frustration.  I was too far away from The Piper and his demonic flute.  I shifted the phone to my left hand, gripping a throwing knife in my right.

All around the circle, the earth burst upward in clumps of soil and sod.  The dead clawed up through caskets and dirt, climbing out of their graves to scuttle like cockroaches toward the children.  I kicked at the hands and heads of zombies as I made my way around the circle.

The fight between Ceff and Melusine blocked my approach on the left, so I skirted to the right.  The rising dead and the horde of swarming rats slowed my progress.  I kept an eye on Jinx, who was positioned between us, as she fought to free the children.

Jinx tried again to pull a small child from the circle, but it was no use.  The children only parted long enough to clasp the hands of the dead, their feet never missing a beat as the zombies were welcomed into the circle.

The newly risen dead were in varying states of decay.  Bony skeletons wearing nothing but shreds of rotting cloth hurried alongside the bloated corpses of the newly deceased to find their place in the dance.

Blinking away sweat and tears of frustration, Jinx grabbed the crossbow slung over her shoulder.  She couldn’t fire at the dead that had joined the dance, since they were positioned so close to the children.  So Jinx turned away from the circle and aimed at a female zombie crawling out of her grave.

The face of the corpse had decomposed so badly that exposed teeth flashed where her cheek had been and hair hung from her scalp in stringy clumps.  The woman had been dead for months, but she moved with breakneck speed.  The zombie pulled herself to her feet and rushed Jinx.

Jinx fired the crossbow, but the bolt sailed straight through the rotting flesh of her assailant.  The zombie kept coming.  The dead woman barreled into Jinx’s chest and knocked her flat on her butt.

Jinx landed with a strangled cry and I took a step toward her, prepared to lose ground if it meant saving my friend.  The corpse ignored Jinx, leapt past her into the circle, and joined hands with two small fae children.  The female zombie was no longer an immediate threat.

Jinx slung the crossbow back over her shoulder and stayed low, making herself a smaller target.  The crossbow wasn’t an effective weapon in this fight, so she started using her hands and feet.  Jinx kicked and punched at both the risen dead and the sea of rats.

The rats that got past her nipped at the children’s feet and ankles, drawing blood.  The children cried out, but continued to dance.  The sound of their cries rang out even in my earplug filled ears, making my stomach twist and churn.  I turned away from Jinx and the children and focused on my target.

The spell was working.  The Piper was feeding off the children’s life essence.  Even at this distance I could see signs of his returning youth.  The white streaks that had been in the faerie’s hair were gone and his face was filling in.

I had to get closer to The Piper and interrupt the spell before he sucked these children dry.  I would not let a selfish, demon flute wielding faerie steal away the lives of so many children and sentence their souls to Hell.

I choked back hot, angry tears as I sprinted around the circle.  My boots crunched and I tried not to think of the rats underfoot.  I kept my eyes on the objective.

A figure stumbled into my path and I batted away the rotting corpse with the flat of my blade.  The zombie lurched to the left and I jinked right, avoiding its grasping hands.  The thing was dressed in a threadbare suit that hung from its body in tatters and smelled almost as bad as Stinky the ghoul.  I breathed through my mouth and ran faster.

I was halfway around the circle when something moved in my peripheral vision.  I twisted my torso toward the movement, knife at the ready.  A pack of shadows, teeth, fur, and yellow eyes rushed low across the ground heading straight toward me.  When they came within throwing range, the shadows parted to my left and right, heading toward the circle.  The newcomers weren’t interested in me.  They were here to battle The Piper’s pet rats.

Our backup had arrived.

I stared, eyes wide, as more cat sidhe melted out of the fog.  The first wave of faerie cats, led by a cat with torn ears, placed themselves between the children and the attacking rats.  The second wave of cat sidhe flanked the rodents, darting in to snatch up the weakest rats in their teeth and claws.

Sir Torn and his army had come to battle their natural enemy, the horde of city sewer rats, and help rescue the fae children.  As I watched, one cat sidhe grabbed a rat by the neck and flung it away from the children while another began using its rear claws to disembowel a second rodent.  I had seen enough.

I looked away and continued sprinting toward The Piper.  I now had to skirt around the perimeter of the battle between the rats and cat sidhe.  This added precious time to my run, but there was nothing I could do other than push my legs to move faster.  I tightened my fingers around the knife in my hand and ran.

I leapt over an injured cat sidhe and landed on a patch of grass beside The Piper.  The music seemed louder here and I struggled to remain focused.  I scanned the area for any immediate threats, squinting through the growing fog.

Farther away, Ceff and Melusine fought their own game of cat and mouse.  Their movements were too fast to follow, but the route of their battle could be discerned by toppled gravestones and demolished mausoleums.  Ceff was drawing Melusine away from me and the children.

I wouldn’t let his efforts go to waste.  A haunting melody buffeted my mind, but I shook my head and turned my attention to The Piper.  The effects of the Danse Macabre were evident.  His face was once again youthful, a thing of fae perfection.

I fumbled with my phone and prepared to read the prayer that Father Michael had sent me.  I wasn’t wasting time on the English version.  It was time to get old school.

“Hey, douchebag!” I yelled.

The Piper opened his eyes and I gasped.  The faerie’s eyes glowed red—the eyes of a demon.  Perhaps the demon flute exacted its own price, opening a conduit to Hell and changing the user into one of Hell’s minions.  The force of those eyes bored into my skull and I cried out.  I needed to recite the prayer from Father Michael’s text message, but I felt the phone slip from my hand.

I slid down to my knees beside the phone.  I panted and shook my head, trying to fight the faerie’s compulsion.  But the combination of demon and faerie magic was too overpowering.  I looked up into the face of The Piper and for one moment, the red eyes and youthful face was a thing of beauty.

“Poison Ivy, duck!” Marvin yelled.

When did Marvin get here?  My magic-addled brain couldn’t process the unexpected information.

Something large and spherical flew over my head and hit The Piper squarely in the chest.  Still on my knees, my jaw dropped as a cloud of pixies enveloped The Piper’s head and torso.  As The Piper fought off the pixies, my head began to clear.

Marvin had thrown an entire pixie nest at The Piper.  The kid had told me once before that the evil little critters didn’t bother his thick troll hide, but it took guts to carry an entire nest of hibernating pixies across the city.

Pixies not only cause an itchy rash when they lick their victims, they are also equipped with a hypodermic sized stinger.  Each stinger is filled with a toxin strong enough to paralyze an elephant.  An entire hive of pixies was swarming The Piper, using their stingers to show their anger for the person who destroyed their nest.

Marvin had just hit The Piper with a paralyzing pixie grenade.  The kid was a genius.

The Piper was playing the demon flute one-handed as he fought off the pixies, but his motions were sluggish.  The faerie was quickly becoming incapacitated, but the Dance Macabre continued.  The conduit to Hell was too strong.

It was time to recite the prayer.

“Saint Michael the Archangel defend us in battle!” I yelled.  “Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.  Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur, tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis, satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute, in infernum detrude.  Amen.”

A bright, ivory light poured down from the sky illuminating the flute in The Piper’s hand.  As the light struck The Piper’s hand, the demon flute glowed red and fell from his grasp.  I could immediately feel the power of the spell dissipating.

I struggled to pull myself to my feet, but kept my distance from The Piper who was still surrounded by a swarm of angry pixies.  The pixies flew in a flurry of beautiful wings, jabbing at him with their stingers.  The red glow went out of The Piper’s eyes and he fell to the ground paralyzed.

The beam of white light panned over the circle of children and the risen dead, continuing to break The Piper’s spell.  Depending on their states of decay the dead either collapsed where they stood or returned to the earth, clawing their way into nearby graves.

The children stopped dancing, halting mid-step.  Jinx was immediately there to offer comfort and pull each child away from the dead and back toward the cemetery gates.  I smiled.  I could trust my friend to get the children safely home.

I nodded and turned back to The Piper.  I had to find a way to keep the faerie incapacitated and secure the demon flute, but a long-lived murderer and a Hell-forged instrument were two things I really didn’t want to come into contact with.  I pocketed my phone and raked a hand through my hair.  The angry pixies that continued to swarm over The Piper’s body added to my unease.

I was still trying to find a solution when a corpse lumbered over to the faerie’s immobile form.  The zombie turned to face me and let out a hissing moan.  I took a step back and bent low, retrieving the dagger from my boot.  When facing an angry zombie, two knives are better than one.  I held the dagger in my left hand and the throwing knife in my right.

I relaxed my stance and shifted my weight to the balls of my feet, ready to spring forward.  The Piper may not be my favorite guy at the moment, but I wasn’t about to let him become zombie food.  If the corpse looked like he was in the mood for brains, I’d have to send him back to his grave with an empty stomach.  I wasn’t about to let the monster feed on someone with a bloodstream full of pixie toxin.  That just wasn’t a fair fight.