The Necromancer (27 page)

He let her pass, the cool blue fi re of her aura brushing by him, sending a shiver into his heart and bones. In death, she had reached the attainment he had spent his life toiling to develop, but never quite achieved. He had taken a darker, easier path, a path whose fruits were more sour than sweet. She had power, a power he had never sensed in her before. She walked listlessly past the remains of Wilfred Brown and Anster, and left the house, stepping onto the white grass outside as Ambrose and Parris looked on in rapt bewilderment.

Parris, still holding the side of his face, turned up to Blayne, but Ambrose didn’t look at him. Instead, he followed Odara outside, walking as slowly and listlessly as she did.

Odara walked in the direction of the screams and gunfi re, to the silver wall. When she came to it, she stopped, outstretched her arms, and raised them heavenward, pitching her head back.

“I summon you,” she called, “O, Aingealag, most

righteous and benevolent spirit, to come hither with speed and grace, for thy service is needed, and I am thy master.”

“What are you doing?” Ambrose barked at her.

“I asked you to banish the demon to the pit from whence you summoned it. You refused, so I must do it.”

“NO!” he yelled, and pounced on her.

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They crashed to the ground, rolling and grappling in the grass like they did when they were adolescents, but this was no mock wrestling match between frolicking teenage lovers—

this was mortal combat.

Ambrose pummeled her face with blows that would

have crushed a mortal’s skull, but she tolerated the punishment and retaliated, clawing his cheeks with her nails and driving blue fl ames of icy energy into the gouges and under his skin.

She tore into his back, his arms, his legs, and each time she did so he recoiled.

He bled. He was hurt and angry and frustrated.

He pounded down on her chest with all the force he could conjure, sending searing-hot bolts of his own into her. Her ribs cracked audibly beneath her breasts as he spilled his fi re into her wounds. One of those breasts was ruptured. Blood seeped through her robe.

She gasped in wheezing hiccups, her eyes wide and rolling, silently imploring her assailant for mercy.

There was none.

Ambrose hammered away at her chest and face,

knocking her breath out of her before she could draw it, not caring that he was killing the only two women who ever meant anything to him.

The wall behind him rippled and began to roil. Flecks of silver dust sprang from it and danced above the ground, collecting themselves together into a massive silver cloud.

Odara jabbed her fi ngers in Ambrose’s eyes, fi lling one of them with blue fi re, blinding it.

He threw his hands up to his face and groaned.

She kneed him in the testicles, and he fell off her, coughing, one hand nursing his eyes, the other his groin.

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“Damn you, cunting wench! Damn you!” he growled.

Odara rolled onto her side and started crawling away.

Ambrose seized her ankle. She kicked at him but

couldn’t hit him and couldn’t kick free of his grasp. She saw the cloud fl oating behind him. Flashes of light were bursting within it and branching out through its structure as it molded and congealed. She reached out to it with an open hand.

Ambrose regained sight in one of his eyes and sprang on her again, one tightly balled-up fi st extended high over his head, prepared to dash her brains out of her skull. He cried out as he drove the fi st down at her head with all his strength, but was halted in mid-arc and thrown off her.

He tumbled to the ground and looked up, dazed.

Aingealag hovered above him, bright and silver with the dust of the world of the wall, its black eyes beaming down at him.

Ambrose scrambled back from it and whispered:

“Sinnis. Rotazater. Manatas.”

The distant sounds of gunfi re and panicked men on the other side of the wall were drowned-out by the noise of Ambrose’s demons rushing forth from the nowhere in which they dwelled. A slight, satisfi ed smirk crossed their summoner’s face. Then they appeared, soaring down from the roiling crimson sky, one by one in the order Ambrose had called them.

“Attack!” Ambrose barked, pointing an accusing fi nger at the silver spirit.

They dove at Aingealag, shrieking morbidly for its destruction, their dark distorted ugliness contrasting sharply with Aingealag’s luminous elegance.

Aingealag extended one of its arms out in front of its chest and passed it from left to right as if bestowing a blessing upon them. At once, Sinnis and Rotazater stopped 248

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dead in mid-fl ight, choking in high-pitched squawks, fangs and teeth gnashing together over their ulcerated black lips. They plummeted from the sky like lead bricks, hitting the ground with heavy thumps as they thrashed in fi ts and clawed at their faces and raked the rotten fl esh from their skulls.

But Manatas kept coming. Aingealag passed its arm at him again and he fl inched, but he kept coming.

Aingealag raised both arms out in front of its face when the demon crashed into it and drove it back toward the wall. They struggled in the air, a mass of fl uttering black and silver wings holding them aloft as they tore into each other.

Ambrose rose to his feet as they fought. His wounds were sore and throbbing, but he was well; certainly better off than Odara, who still fl oundered in the grass wheezing and coughing up small amounts of mucous and blood.

He approached her slowly, confi dent she could neither fl ee nor attack him. She was at his mercy, and he wasn’t feeling very merciful. Her fate would soon be realized, and it would be a fate of suffering. He stood above her and kicked her in the ribs hard, snapping two more. She rolled a few times and stopped.

She wept. Her hands trembled. Blood oozed from her mouth in strings and gobs. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and sad. Susanna and Odara both stared out those eyes now, both acutely conscious of their plight.

Ambrose kicked her across the face. Her head jerked to one side and everything went gray. Susanna had served his purpose as his concubine, as a substitute for Odara, and now she had to die. He never wanted it to end like this, but he had no choice. Odara possessed her body and had betrayed him.

As long as she remained inside that body and controlled its thoughts and actions, she would continue to betray him. That could not be tolerated.

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He crouched down beside her and slid his hand under her neck, raising her throat up to him, baring it as her head stirred slackly then fl opped over. He placed his other hand over her windpipe and began to squeeze. Her hands fl ew up to her throat and clutched Ambrose’s wrists, then groped upward toward his face.

Her wheezing narrowed to a thin, clotted hiss. Then it stopped.

Her body bucked and stiffened, bucked and stiffened.

He bore down on her slowly, grinding his thumbs into her windpipe. He could feel it beginning to collapse under the pressure of his grip.

Her face was red, almost purple. Her eyes sprang open and bulged like eggs from her sockets. Odara’s aura grew dim.

She bucked and stiffened...and stiffened...and stiffened. The world was fading from gray to black, slipping away from her.

She sensed that death was no more than a heartbeat away.

Suddenly, Ambrose’s grip slackened, and he released her. She gasped and relaxed a little. Her complexion began to fade from dark purple to red as she heaved and breathed deeply. She opened her eyes. The world began to come into focus again. Ambrose still straddled her, but his face was knotted up in a grimace and he was arching back and holding his chest.

She was too weak to throw him off her. All she

could do was lie there helplessly, breathing in and out in slow, methodical breaths.

Behind him hovered Aingealag, an arm extended

at him; the demon, Manatas, lying dead and mangled on the ground before it. Ambrose turned to face it, rising to his feet.

It raised its other arm, extended it at him palm down, then rotated the palm upward in a deliberate wrenching action as its fi ngers folded one at a time from pinkie to thumb into a 250

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fi st. A new paroxysm smote his chest, harder than the fi rst.

He fl inched and his knees buckled, but he fought the pain, endured the pain, made it his, and stood up.

“I will not be defeated by you,” Ambrose shouted insolently. “...by your God, or by any other of your God’s servants!”

He removed the clutching hand from his chest and raised his chin up proudly.

“I am your master. Kneel before me or suffer my

wrath.”

“Nay. I know you not as my master, but as my master’s foe. I shall not kneel nor yield to you.”

“Then die!”

Ambrose leapt at Aingealag, gripping the sides of its head and vomiting gouts of liquid red fi re from his mouth, eyes, and nostrils into the spirit’s face. They wheeled around in the air, whipping around in half circles.

Susanna sat up, Odara’s aura fl ickering back to its former brightness.

Ambrose tore into the spirit’s head, ripping one of its ears and several locks of its long hair from its scalp, turning them back to silver fl ecks of dust which fell and were sucked back into the wall from which they came. Aingealag voiced its pain in a long, agonizing, high-pitched shriek through the fi re as Ambrose spewed into its face. The spirit sank to the ground as Ambrose proceeded to strangle the life from its body, the fl apping of its wings slowing considerably.

Odara’s aura, once again full and blue, receded up her legs and torso and down her head and neck into her arms and open hands where it grew into two spheres of blinding light.

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She held them up at Ambrose’s back like cannons as the light pulsated with increasing speed.

Ambrose, seeing the brightness all around, stopped pouring his poison into the spirit and released it. He turned just in time to see the sharp beams of light issue from Odara’s fi ngers, but by then it was too late.

The beams locked onto him and wouldn’t let go. He writhed in their light as it penetrated his fl esh and muscles and organs, and seeped into his joints and bones like arthritis.

“O-dara!” he groaned, his countenance palsied, his arms crossed defensively over his chest. “No! Stop! STOP!”

But she couldn’t stop, although she wanted to. He had no right to the sympathy for which he was pleaded.

Ambrose shut his eyes tight and braced himself up harder against the searing beams as he summoned every last particle of energy he had to direct his will to the clothed bones lying between the house and the foliage of the bramble bushes beside it.

Robert Eames woke from a rest once thought eternal, but which was for him fl eeting and substituted with torment.

He rose and obeyed his master’s will.

*****

way; Roger and Edward went the other. It was still almost impossible to navigate through the fog, so they had to be slow and careful or risk falling into the pit.

The demon was loud and angry, and Milton was

certain it was after him and the sheriff.

“George, what will we do? What will we do?” he kept asking in an annoying, whining voice as he continued to sway back and forth.

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“We must fi ght,” Corwin responded, trying to ignore Milton’s worried gibbering.

That was not the answer Milton wanted to hear, but he felt safer being with the sheriff, and he had to live with his decision.

“Have you loaded yet?” Corwin asked.

Milton nodded nervously, the mask of dried blood on his face making him look like a savage or a jester, Corwin couldn’t determine which.

The sheriff checked his pistol, then looked up into the fog toward the direction he thought the roaring was loudest.

“Come,” he said as he strode ahead. But Milton didn’t move.

Corwin stopped and turned around.

“Come, I said.”

Milton shook his head.

“Fine,” Corwin huffed. “Stay and wait for it to come for you.”

Corwin disappeared into the whiteness, leaving Milton to ponder the situation alone. Alone, he thought. Alone.

He ran after the sheriff.

When he caught up with him, Corwin was crouched

behind a tree with his pistol held up by his chest.

“George,” Milton said.

“Quiet,” Corwin whispered sharply. “I think I see it.”

“You...You see it? W-where?”

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“Look.” Corwin pointed his gun at a grove of trees about twenty yards ahead. Something large and dark and distorted moved there.

“We...” Milton stammered. “We must go. We shall

never be able to kill it. It...is too large.”

“We must. There are no other options.”

“I should not be here,” Milton muttered. “I cannot be here. I cannot...” He ran away.

“Milton!” Corwin called, unconsciously raising his voice and alerting the creature to their whereabouts.

It took to the air and in seconds was lashing out at Milton as he ran with one arm folded over his head and the one with the pistol holding his ribs. It clawed at him and slashed his head and raked through the back of his coat, shredding it and the fl esh underneath. Milton tripped and fell.

His head throbbed. His back burned. His ribs and nose ached.

He was one big ball of pain lying there open and vulnerable in a fetal position.

He looked up.

It hovered directly over him now, its wings fl apping heavily, its belly an obscene wound of pillowy black fl aps of moist skin, which parted chronically to reveal a maw of jagged teeth and wart-like lesions. Its heat radiated down at him as its tentacles draped over him like a prison tent.

He lifted the gun off his chest and fi red into the thick black maw. The creature shuddered and screeched. Black muck gushed from the wound and tarred him to the ground. He couldn’t move. The tendrils snaked down at him, their pincers snapping mindlessly, and snipped into his chest and arms through the muck. Several of them bit into him and retreated, plowing, drilling.