Deadly Curiosities (31 page)

Alistair stopped between two rows, got his bearings by looking at the row numbers, and headed confidently toward a large wooden box. He lifted it down from the shelf and carried it a short distance to a large table.

“These were some of Jeremiah Abernathy’s personal items, donated after his death by the local authorities,” Alistair said. “Apparently, he was in enough trouble that no one ever came forward to claim his effects.”

I moved closer to see, and Teag looked over my shoulder. I saw a gold pair of cufflinks, a silver flask, gold-rimmed spectacles, and a knife with an antler handle. Even without touching them, I felt the same resonance as I had at the Archive’s exhibit: cold, violent, remorseless… and frightened.

“You said Abernathy was in trouble. Did his luck wane at the end?” I asked.

Alistair nodded. “Oh yes. Not long after the sinking of the
Cristobal
, in fact. Deals gone bad, associates who turned on him or turned him in, problems with the police, and with the federal government.” He shook his head. “For all the power he once had, Abernathy died violently in fire and a gun battle. Toward the end, he was hounded by his fellow criminals, the authorities, and some say the supernatural.”

Losing control of your demon will do that to you,
I thought. Something toward the bottom of the box caught my eye.

“See something, Cassidy?” Teag asked.

I noticed that there were several photographs in the bottom of the box – old tintypes with faded images. Teag reached in and pulled the pictures out, holding them for me to see.

One of the old pictures showed Jeremiah Abernathy standing next to a tall man in a hat. Corban Moran. Moran’s face and skin hadn’t withered in this photograph, and he appeared to be a man in his early forties. But I knew from Sorren that looks could be deceiving. Still, we had the link we needed.

Moran knew Abernathy, and almost certainly knew about the demon. Both Abernathy and Moran came to ruin when the
Cristobal
sank. Moran, a damaged immortal, showed back up just when Landrieu’s dive team was about to recover the
Cristobal
treasure. Moran had approached Landrieu, who turned him down. Now Landrieu and his men were missing, probably dead, along with at least half a dozen more unfortunates sacrificed to feed Abernathy’s demon. And now, I thought I had the piece that linked all the rest together.

“We should probably let you get home and have dinner,” I said, conscious of the time and the fact that Teag and I still had to get back without running afoul of a pissed off demon, the demon’s minions or Moran. Just another night in paradise.

Alistair had just replaced the box on the shelf when we heard the ‘clunk’ of an electrical breaker. Half of the lights in the collections room went out. A second later, we heard another ‘clunk’ and the other half flicked off.

Emergency lights cast a dim glow, but shadows stretched between the long corridors and their tall shelves. Alistair looked more annoyed than alarmed. “Well now, that’s unusual,” he said. “I’ll have to have a word with building maintenance. Come on, I can still see well enough to get us out of here.”

We took a few steps and halted as strange sounds carried over the gloom. From one direction, I heard the scuffing of feet, but the footsteps were light, like a small child. From the other direction, we heard the unmistakable sound of a metal key winding up a spring. And from right in front of us, hidden by shadows, came the sound of hundreds of wings flapping.

“Run,” Teag said, grabbing my arm. Alistair hesitated for just a second, and then led the way at a faster-than-dignified pace.

The emergency lights gave off just enough of a bluish glow that we weren’t completely blind, but like driving at twilight, our eyes weren’t functioning at their best, either. I glimpsed movement in the shadows to my right. Whatever was out there wasn’t much taller than our knees, but moving quickly.

“Get us back to the main hallway!” I hissed to Alistair.

From the left came the sound of dozens of music boxes, each playing a different tune, all at the same time. The buzz-click of mechanical joints moving and the shuffle of metal feet on the tile floor echoed in the huge room. I could hear the halting din of metal drums played by tin marchers, the wheeze of old springs wound too tightly, and the grinding hum of wind-up cars and tanks. Something had brought the old toys to life, and set them after us.

“Those are dummies down there,” Teag yelped, pointing to the right. “Ventriloquist dummies, and they’re moving by themselves!”

An impossible flock of birds began to dive bomb us. They flew fast enough to get up a good speed, flocking down the long aisle, intent on closing the gap with us. Passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets, birds I’d seen in the glass cases, but that no one had seen in flight for over a century because each and every one was dead, taxidermied, and extinct.

Whatever propelled them kept them flying until they reached us, then the dead birds fell from the air, pelting us with their stiff, lifeless bodies.

“The dummies are gaining on us!” Teag warned. I was too busy swatting long-dead birds away from me, getting scratched by their sharp beaks and talons.

Tinny old-time music and wind-up buzzing grew louder as the army of old toys marched and rolled toward us. Paint peeling, dented and bent, their advance was incredibly creepy, and they were moving much faster than they should have been able to go.

The dummies and the toys rounded the corner, pouring into the main cross-hallway. If there had been any doubt that some sentience was controlling them, their single-minded pursuit removed it. The hallway where we had entered was just ahead, and in the huge mirror at the end of our corridor, I could see the toys were gaining.

Something hit me from behind, scrabbling at my back, pulling my hair, kicking against my spine. Solid and hard, it rammed against my skull with enough force that I saw stars. I wheeled, slamming the ventriloquist’s dummy against one of the metal shelves, trying to scrape it off as is clamored for a hold on my clothing.

Bo’s ghostly form appeared, barking at the dummies and metal toys, running at them to draw them off or force them back. Unfortunately, his spirit mojo wasn’t a match for the very solid, scary-real attackers coming our way.

Metal toys skittered beneath my feet like rats, making it difficult to get my footing. I kicked at them, still trying to knock the dummy off of me. Teag and Alistair were doing the same thing, kicking at the wind-up trucks and bears and soldiers that rammed at their ankles as more of the ventriloquist dummies snatched at our pant legs.

I heard glass smashing, over and over again, and then the overwhelming smell of formaldehyde. Far down the corridor, lost in the gloom of the emergency lighting, things were sloshing and slurping their way toward us, those pallid, wet misshapen specimens I had glimpsed on our way in.

We reached the main hallway, but where the mirrors had brightened the space with their reflected light as we entered, now, they were wreathed in shadow. Shapes moved in the mirrors, things that weren’t really there until you looked at them out of the corner of your eye, things that didn’t want you to see them, not until they were close enough to strike.

Those things were getting closer, lurching and halting their way toward the surface of the mirrors. I didn’t want to find out whether they would stop there or not.

I swung my leg hard against one of the shelves, trying to get rid of one of the dummies that had wrapped his arms and legs around my shin. It put me off balance, and I fell against the shelving, sending a rain of objects down from above. I threw my arms up over my head to protect myself.

Bo’s ghost was still barking up a storm, growling and snarling in the direction of the formaldehyde creatures. He hadn’t had much effect on the dummies or toys, but whatever the sloppy-wet things were, they seemed to slow their approach.

Teag had started kicking the dummies out of his way, and I remembered that he told me he played soccer in high school in addition to his martial arts training. His aim was good, and he had some serious power behind those kicks – he sent dummy after dummy skidding down through the advancing mass of wind-up toys, silencing some of the nerve-jarring racket.

Alistair looked terrified at the attack and appalled at the realization that he was going to have to damage museum property to escape. But when one of the dummies chomped its wooden jaws down on Alistair’s shoulder, he howled with pain and rammed the dummy against one of the room’s steel beam columns.

The wet, sloppy sounds were coming from the way we had entered, as well as the snap-snap-snap of flaccid suction cups drawing its long-dead owner down the tile. The smell of formaldehyde was overpowering, and I was afraid we would either pass out from the vapors or burst into flames.

“It’s flammable!” I shouted to Teag as I saw him dig in his bag for the candle and lantern. That approach was out, unless we wanted to go up in a big fireball and take the museum with us.

I couldn’t muster the concentration to focus on the spoon-athame I had up my sleeve thanks to the hordes of attacking toys and the crazed dummies that just wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

I spun around, trying to scrape another dummy from my back, and brought more things sliding and crashing down around me. Teag had grabbed something that looked like a harpoon, and I realized that it really was a harpoon, snatched from off one of the shelves. Alistair had a cast-iron frying pan, and he was setting about himself like a crazed duffer, sending the dummies flying and smashing a path through the wind-up toys.

I looked around in panic, and spotted a shelf full of old, neatly tagged axes and farm implements. I was less afraid of what visions I might see from the ax I grabbed than I was of what would happen if the dummy clinging to my back managed to head-butt me one more time. The problem was, swinging at my own back with an ax wasn’t going to help me, and the dummy already had one stiff wooden arm around my throat. A moment later, the other arm wrapped around from the opposite side, and the dummy started to squeeze, hard, all the while chattering with its hinged jaw as if it were laughing at my attempts to breathe.

With my right hand, I swung the axe around my legs as I sputtered for breath. The blade bit deeply into the large head of another dummy, and I kicked the body free, bowling down a dozen of the wind-up toys. With my left, I pressed the agate necklace against the dummy’s hard wooden hands as I tore at it to free my throat. As soon as the agate connected with the wood, the hands came free, and I shook the dummy loose, sending him flying.

“Cassidy!” Teag shouted, running toward me as best he could through the chaos. He stabbed at another dummy heading my way, sticking the sharp tip of the harpoon into the mannequin’s chest, then flinging him away.

I could tell that Bo’s barking had changed direction, but I was too busy fighting for my life to look.

“The mirrors!” Alistair yelled.

Teag and I wheeled. The shadowy figures that I had glimpsed in the background of the mirrors had gotten much, much closer. Some of them pressed up against the glass from the inside, while others ran their hands over the surface, looking for the way to open the doorway to our realm. A few of them were already slipping through the glass, climbing out to come our way.

Teag hurled his harpoon at the nearest mirror, shattering it. No shadow emerged. The doorway was closed.

I hurled my ax at the next mirror, ignoring the groan from Alistair as we smashed another precious furnishing.

“It’s those mirrors or our necks,” I yelled. Alistair stepped closer to the next mirror just as its shadow reached the glass, closed his eyes, and swung his frying pan, sending the mirrored fragments flying.

I grabbed the nearest solid object I could find and used it to smash the next mirror.

At the far end of the main corridor, opposite where we had come in, I saw the dim glow of an ‘EXIT’ sign. We’d still have to run the gauntlet of half of the mirrors, but we would be going in the opposite direction to the sloppy sloshing noises and the growing number of shadow men who were leaving their mirror portals.

I stumbled, and this time, a cascade of fabric tumbled down on me, snaring my feet and making me fall. I came up, gasping, fighting my way clear, and realized that I had brought a tangle of old quilts down on me.

The axe had been neutral, with no resonance when I touched it, but the quilts that surrounded me had strong auras, stitched through with the protectiveness and love of their long-ago makers. That gave me crazy hope as I struggled to my feet. “Come on!” I shouted to my embattled friends. “We’re going to get out of here.”

I held out the quilt. “Get under here. Now!” Teag and Alistair looked baffled, but caught between the slip-slop of the formaldehyde monsters and the silently approaching shadow men, they were ready to try anything. Bo was in full attack-dog mode, and while he was holding off the shadow men and the wet things for now, I knew it wouldn’t last for long.

Alistair anchored the quilt on one side of me while Teag caught up with us. I held the agate necklace in my left hand, and held out my right arm with the spoon-athame, palm out.

The coruscating, pearlescent light flared from my palm, wrapping us in its protective cocoon. It resonated with the energy in the quilt, and the antique bedspread took on a faint, opalescent glow. As Teag took hold of the quilt on the other side of me, I felt the power grow, as if he magnified whatever had been imbued into the fabric and embroidery.

“It’s working!” Teag cheered. “This quilt was stitched with some strong stuff, Cassidy. It’s almost militant about protecting us.”

“Keep moving toward the exit,” I said through gritted teeth.

We made it halfway down the corridor before two of the ugliest
akvenon
minions I’d ever seen skittered out from the gloom, blocking the doorway.

“Shit!” I muttered. Teag said something more colorful. So did Alistair, but in Latin. The gist of it all was that we were totally screwed.

The steel fire door behind the
akvenon
shrieked as it ripped from its hinges. A blast of white light blinded us, striking the
akvenon
and splitting them open like lobsters bursting over an open fire. The next blast went streaming over our heads toward the shadow men and the oozing formaldehyde creatures behind them.