Blue Moon (24 page)

"I think I got all the lights here,” Alex said from her bedroom. He came out and shut the door. “It looks all right."

She went back to the hole. “Lower me down?” she asked him, smiling.

He nodded and knelt on the floor. She sat down beside him on one of the least splintery sections, and he put his arms under her armpits. She slid over, and he lowered her, her arms slipping through his grasp. Her hands fell from his, and there was a little sound as she hit the floor.

"Are you okay?” he asked.

"Yep,” she said, and as if to punctuate it, he saw a blue glow down below. Her eyes, he thought, thinking how eerie it was.

For once, Libby didn't notice her eyes. She was busy looking at the box, which now sat in the middle of a perfectly clean depression of rock. The chunk of the limestone ledge where her trowel had sat was blown to smithereens, and she worried that her house might not be quite as sound as it used to be.

There didn't seem to be any real damage to the structure—a few new chips, a few new splinters. The force, thank God, had gone upwards.

She knelt in front of the box. The lid was marked, a burned circle that thankfully didn't go through. She smiled in satisfaction. Sabin's magic was no match for the makers of the box. She hugged it to her. She thought about leaving it here, for it was still hard to get to, but if she was able to make a break for it not having the Stone at hand would be a deadly mistake.

She returned to the hole and took a deep breath. Her heart trusted him, but she'd been wrong before. Still, she had little choice. “Alex?"

His face appeared over the edge immediately. She wished he would smile, but he was all seriousness. She raised the box. He took it, fumbling it as a look of pain crossed his face. He disappeared quickly, and a sound not unlike the box being dropped on the floor followed.

"Are you alright?” she heard Dashiel ask.

"Yeah. It just burned a bit, that's all,” Alex said.

He reappeared.

"What about your hands?” she asked, not wanting to grab them if he was injured.

"Fine,” he said.

She leapt and grabbed them, and he hissed. He pulled her up, and she grabbed the floor when she could, clambering onto the surface.

Rita snatched at his hand and inspected it. She tsked under her breath. “That's nothing. You are such a baby."

"Let me see,” Libby said.

A carving on the box had branded the lower part of his palm. It was in the shape of a dragon.

"That's awful!"

"It's nothing,” Alex said, standing up. “I just grabbed the wrong side of the box, that's all.” He picked it up carefully. “See? All the different peoples of the old world are represented.” He pointed at the different figures. “Elves, dwarves, unicorns.” He twisted the box so she could see one side in particular, and held his burned palm beside it. “Dragons."

Something crashed against the door. A similar sound came from the kitchen as the back door was attacked.

"Now we find out if I overpaid those workmen,” Libby whispered.

She felt cold hands on her, felt a cold forehead burn against her shoulder. Her lips still burned from the earlier touch.

"I'm so scared, Libby,” Rita said.

"I hate just sitting here.” Alex grabbed up a poker.

"I'm with you, brother,” Dashiel agreed.

"Well, what are we going to do? We're surrounded by this Shadow King's army,” Libby said. “I've put my whole plan around the hope that they can't get in.” She stopped. The bashing sounds were timed so you could count to four between them. “What is the Shadow King, anyway?"

"The People of the Shadow,” Alex explained, “if memory serves, are a type of voracious ghost that feeds on fear. They were, in short, the bad things under the bed.” He was watching the kitchen door intently. “One day, they got tired of just being the scary thing that people only believed in at night and joined together. The most powerful Shadow became their king. They can't do much, because they can't really touch things. They can move things with their thoughts, work weapons that are made specifically for them, but they needed someone to make the weapons, do things for them.

"So, the king hunted down a small creature isolated from the rest of the world and perverted them, forced them to give up the daylight. He and his kind enslaved them. They became the gremlins, servants of the Shadow. Thus armed, the People of the Shadow decided to take over the world, make it a place of horror and chaos where humans and other creatures would be in constant torment, constant fear, and the strength of the Shadow would be unstoppable."

"What happened?” Libby asked.

"They were captured by a curse,” Rita said. “A group of sorcerers and mages came up with a plan. Some of them sneaked into the caves during the night, while the Shadows and gremlins were away, and put a transport sigil in each place. Then, they waited for daylight and plugged up the entrances ... right?” She looked at Alex.

"About,” he said.

"So, they made a deal. The Shadows would use the sigils to transport away from the land and never return, and they could rule the land on the other side of the transportation sigil. They agreed, but instead of a land, they ended up at another cave, this one guarded with a huge seal."

"Which lasted until recently, until Sabin decided to be a complete idiot and free them,” Alex said. “I'd love to know how he did it."

He stared at Rita, who took shelter behind her sister again. She smiled shyly and shrugged.

"Anyway,” he continued, “as our reality thins and magic grows, the Shadow kind are able to slowly take form. If the Merlin Stone is used to rejoin or bridge the worlds, they'll be as tangible as you or I, and incredibly powerful."

The door shuddered under the impact, but held. Libby found herself praying harder than ever before. Just until morning, she thought. The doors just have to hold until morning.

Then the pounding stopped.

Sabin watched as the gremlins heaved against the doors. They were vicious-looking creatures, but the battering ram they wielded was piteously small. He looked to his left, at their king. He was inky black and nearly transparent, the days he had been free to feed upon the fear of humankind only enough to give him a semblance of form. He wore a tarnished gold crown and robe, illusions to make him look more important.

All the other Shadows were naked, save for the gleam of the swords made for them by their gremlin slaves. The swords were lightweight, part-magic and part-metal things the Shadows used much of their power to be able to hold. They had no genitals to mark their gender, but he supposed some of those gathered were female.

The king's eyes had been closed, but now they opened in gray-white slits. He looked bored. To his right, Sabin's mother stood, tightly gripping a crossbow. He could practically hear her gritting her teeth.

"Enough."

The gremlins stopped and looked to him, yellow slit-eyes and cruel, sharp-toothed grins making him fee* * * *ike they'd rather eat him than listen to him. He cleared his throat.

"Time for plan B."

"Oh, you've got one?” his mother asked nastily.

"Of course.” He smiled and took a bracelet out of his pocket. He flicked on a lighter, trying not to smile when the Shadow King hissed. Even in the dim light, he could see the rich red highlights of the braided rope of hair. He set it on fire, and the shriek that came from inside the house was infinitely satisfying.

The pounding stopped, and Libby turned in all directions to see if they'd managed to break in somewhere. A look at the clock told her they had many hours to pass before light.

Behind her, Rita screamed. Blisters formed on her thigh, and a pinkish spot no larger than a nickel seeped through her T-shirt. She continued shrieking and began to collapse, but Alex caught her and laid her down on the cool of the undamaged floor.

"Stop it!” Libby shouted, and as abruptly as Rita's screams began they stopped, replaced by small moans.

Alex was running his hands over Rita's undamaged flesh, moving just towards the burns then stopping short of them before starting again. The tense lines around her mouth and eyes relaxed slightly, although the bright green orbs were still glazed.

"Elizabeth,” Sabin whispered.

Libby crossed to the door. She didn't touch it, just stood there and listened.

"I know you can hear me, Elizabeth. Stop being so rude. I've come to parley,” he said, with the oily persuasiveness of a con artist.

"I hear you,” she said, relieved that her voice was steady.

"You know I'll kill her. Surely, you know by now I'll do anything to get what I want."

Cold settled over Libby, and she hugged herself as she shivered.

"And before you say, ‘Oh, well, she's already dead.’ I would like to point out something to you. I brought her back to life. Completely. With time, and care, the graveyard flesh will slough away, and she'll be able to live the life you, in your own way, took from her."

"I didn't kill her,” Libby said.

"Libby,” Rita whispered. “Don't. He always lies.” She took her sister's hand. “He'll destroy the world,” she said apologetically.

On cue, the invisible flames began to lick her again. Alex's hands were on her shoulders, and Libby realized he was trying to absorb some of the pain, trying to stop the flames from hurting her. He would fail. Whatever he was, he wasn't strong enough to save Rita.

She turned to the door again. The safety of the world was so much easier to uphold when the people you loved weren't being tortured.

She ripped the door open again and faced Sabin across the threshold. He held a twisted hank of hair that smoldered. He smiled when he saw her, reached up and snuffed the ends of the hair. The screams stopped.

"I knew you'd see things my way."

"I'm so happy you approve."

"But, unfortunately, it is not me you have to please."

Libby looked over his shoulder. Gathered behind him were human-shaped shadows, inky black and bearing swords, their eyes white and yellow slits in the darkness. Scattered around them were short, slimy creatures, all teeth and claws, holding sharp sticks. In front of their ranks, an elven woman stood, crossbow aimed at Libby's head.

When she'd opened the door, she still had in mind somehow saving her sister and cheating Sabin of his treasure. She swallowed convulsively, thinking now she wasn't so sure.

"Give me the box, Libby."

"Give me that thing you've been using to hurt my sister. And our freedom. And leave us alone."

"Sure, sure. Give me the box."

Alex picked up the box and met her eyes. “You're joking, right?” he whispered to her.

She looked at him and tugged the box away. He turned and helped Rita up.

Libby stepped forward. Sabin, impatient, crossed the threshold into her house. He didn't even wince because the rules against crossing the living's doorways only bound those who had been dead.

She held the box out. “Let me have that thing,” she said.

Sabin held it out, twitching it back when she reached out for it.

"Damn it, Sabin!"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alex move toward the door. She forced herself not to look, to concentrate on getting the bit of ratty hair he was using to tease her like a cat.

"Sabin, enough of this. Give it to me!"

He sighed and put a hand on the box. She reached up and snatched the knotted mess from his hand.

Alex stepped outside and, throwing his arms in the air and his head back, screamed a word that echoed in her head, waking memories of lying cold and naked and afraid, but being saved. Lightning ripped from his hands. The light and power seared through the ranks of Shadow.

Libby snatched the box back from Sabin's surprise-loosened fingers. He snarled at her and backhanded her across the mouth. She tasted blood as she ducked to avoid a second blow, to run past him.

She leapt off the porch, the sleeping autumn grass cold and slippery beneath her feet. A gremlin threw itself at her and was ripped away by Dashiel. She ran on, pushing past bodies like smoke. They had abandoned their swords—the metal made them easy targets for the lightning acting as a vanguard, forcing her a path.

She heard someone call out in pain behind her, but she didn't dare look back.

"Sierra.” Zorovin came into her office. “We must go."

"What is it?” she asked, scrambling for her jacket, her keys.

"Magic."

They drove in darkness and silence, save for Zorovin's occasional “We need to be heading toward the North” or “I think the next left would be advisable.” After awhile, she was in familiar territory, territory she'd driven very recently. Her stomach sank.

The house was not wrecked. A set of shutters were ripped open, glass lay spread out in the grass. Zorovin walked through the front door. Bookshelves had been dumped; some ivy lay in the shattered remains of its pot. There was a jagged hole in the floor, about three feet wide. Zorovin crossed to it and stared down inside, as if talking to someone in the cellar down below.

"It's gone,” he said, sadly.

"What's gone? Are we in some kind of trouble?"

"The Merlin Stone,” he answered. He left her gaping after him as he wandered the house, ending up in the bedroom.

"Should we call the police?” Sierra asked, moving to the doorway.

"There's nothing your authorities can do,” he said. There was a small box on the dresser, and he opened it.

"I'll close the shutters and doors, then, if I can."

Zorovin stirred the chains in the jewelry box with one finger. Not much of value, and no real stones. He called to the metals, more out of habit than actual interest. Something answered his call, singing with a sweetness that was almost unbearably familiar. He saw a little handle, and he pulled up on it, lifting a tray out.

Below it was a pin. He knew the person who kept this pin deemed it special, for while all the other blue velvet-lined compartments were a jammed jumble, the silver dragon pin was by itself, and had place of privilege in the center compartment. He wrapped his hand around it tightly and crushed the human reaction he felt when he saw it.