Finn Fancy Necromancy (37 page)

A dalek advanced on Zeke.

The robot from Doctor Who looked like a man-size salt shaker with gold bumps all over it and a single protruding appendage. This wasn't a real dalek, of course, at least not in the sense of being an actual robot tank with a genocidal alien slug inside. It was a prop donated to the museum, and animated through thaumaturgy and possibly a bit of science. That still made it dangerous, especially since I doubted Zeke had a sonic screwdriver in his arsenal.

The dalek pointed its appendage at Zeke, and lightning began to dance along its length, building up toward another discharge.

“Crap. Oh crap. Pete, we need to hurry.” I flipped the switches and hit the white button. “Two lights flickered.”

“Okay. Now try three, four, five, and six.”

Zeke dove and rolled across the floor toward the robot as lightning arced over him. He came up and swung at the dalek. Another bright yellow flash as when Zeke struck the Plexiglas. He flew onto his back, and the baton spun across the floor.

The potion's gas had completely surrounded me now, making it increasingly difficult to see what was happening.

The dalek's arm lowered, pointing at Zeke again, the lightning building. I flipped switches as Zeke brought his knees up to his chest, then kicked out and up at the dalek.

The dalek teetered backward. The lightning swept in an arc up and across the ceiling as the robot tumbled over onto its back, revealing thaumaturgic symbols engraved all around its underside. It began rolling back and forth, trying to right itself using its appendage. Then the gas became too thick to see more.

I hit the white button.

The high-pitched wooshing sound of a vacuum filled the chamber, and the gas rapidly dissipated. The exit did not reappear, however, so I doubted the vacuum was because of anything I'd done. More likely, it was clearing the gas to allow wardens access to my dead body. Or to make way for something worse.

“Pete, two lights flickered and one lit up brightly this time.”

Zeke stood over his bag holding a bottle, and he threw it at the dalek's base. Glass shattered and liquid splashed over the thaumaturgic symbols, melting them away. The dalek's thrashing slowed to a stop.

Something tickled my ankle. I looked down.

Tribbles surrounded me. Not just the few that had been on the floor to start. They had duplicated, multiplied, until now they were several layers thick and cresting the pedestal to cover my feet.

“Bat's breath!” What killed tribbles in the series? Bright light? Radiation?

Poisoned grain.

Great. And me without a shipment of poisoned quadrotriticale in my satchel. Thankfully, the fur balls didn't seem interested in devouring me. So that was good. As was the fact that it wouldn't hurt the least bit when they crushed me, since I'd already be smothered to death by that point.

I continued running through combinations with Pete as rapidly as I could flip switches and call out how many lights flickered or glowed. Four more tries, and the tribbles were up to my chest. I had to flip the switches by feel, and dig down to the lights to see the result when I pressed the button.

“Pete, I think we're close. Two glowing, two flickering.”

A silver and crystal star floated into view outside my chamber, a softball-size core of fine crystal spikes with a dozen larger silver spikes jutting out in all directions. It took me a second to recognize it as a model of the spaceship that baby Superman rode to Earth.

There was a flash at its heart, and the lights in the room flickered. The Bluebeard thingy squealed in my ear.

Zeke jumped in front of Mort, holding his jacket open wide to provide as much protection as possible. The crystal spaceship exploded and spikes flew in all directions. I was temporarily blinded by golden flashes as several spikes struck the Plexiglas barrier. When I could see again, Zeke was down on one knee, clutching his right hand, which had a spike impaled through its center.

“Petey, what next?”

No response.

“Pete? Sammy?”

I pulled the mobile telephone out of my pocket and held it above the pile of tribbles, but the screen remained black no matter what button I pushed.

“Awesome.” I reset the switches on the chair by feel. I could do this. Pete had gotten me most of the way there.

A small pile of tribbles tumbled down from behind, spilling over my arms. I flipped the switches again, changing the order from memory, then swept tribbles clear of the arm long enough to see the result.

Again, two solids, two flickers. Damn it!

I spotted movement. Something scrambled in the shadows low to the ground. Neither Zeke nor Mort appeared to notice.

“Zeke! Mort! Look out!” I shouted.

Another flicker of movement, leaving me with the impression of a fast-moving fleshy spider.

“Zeke!” I shouted so loud it felt like I'd torn my throat. He glanced up at me, frowning. I pointed behind him, sending tribbles flying with the motion.

Zeke glanced behind him.

The spidery creature leapt out of the darkness onto Zeke's face, a snakelike tail whipping around his neck. It was a freaking face hugger from
Alien
.

“You've got to be kidding me.”

Another avalanche of tribbles settled over me, burying me up to my shoulders now. I had to tunnel my hand back down to the chair's console, wriggle and push with all my strength just to reach it through the tightly compacted fur balls. There was no way to see the lights now, but I knew which switches to flip. I just needed the right order.

And I needed it soon. Zeke stabbed at the face hugger using the spike embedded in his hand, but it had little effect. The creature wasn't made of real flesh and vital organs—thank the gods, since the last thing we needed was for Zeke to be splattered in acid blood. The thaumaturgic symbols were likely on the creature's belly, pressed tight to Zeke's face. To get it off his face, he would need to destroy the symbols. But to destroy the symbols, he needed to get it off his face.

The tribbles reached my chin now. I tilted my head back to give myself as much breathing time as possible. I reset the switches, and then flipped them in a new order, counting out their positions by feel, one by one.

Mort leaped forward and grabbed the face hugger, but he didn't appear to be pulling on it, just touching it.

The tribbles covered my mouth, filled my nostrils with the smell of dusty fake fur and tangy magic, making breathing difficult. I coughed, and on the inhale started to choke.

I hit the white button. A loud beeping sounded.

Panic scrabbled at the edges of my mind like the scratching and gnawing of a thousand tiny rats as the pressure built around my chest and head, and my lungs ached for air.

I thought of Dawn then. Dawn had the soul of a nomad artist, a bard. I could have just run away from all of this and taken her with me, gone far away and lived a life free—

Tribbles tumbled away from my face, and I sucked in a huge breath of air. The archway in the Plexiglas stood open and the tribbles spilled out, freeing my chest, my arms. The last button combination must have worked! I jumped up and half-stumbled half-waded out, pushing a small avalanche of fur before me as a blue steel door appeared in the concrete wall to the right.

Zeke and Mort stood over the face hugger, which lay unmoving on the floor. Zeke kicked it across the room.

“What happened to it?” I asked and spat out a remaining bit of fur.

“I dispelled the spirit animating it,” Mort said.

“Dude,” I said, surprised. “Good thinking. Really.”

“Yeah. You did good, Gramaraye,” Zeke said.

I swear, Mort actually blushed.

Zeke yanked the spike out of his hand, and sucked in a sharp breath. “You'd better get moving. I'll keep them fool wardens off your back long as I can.”

I shook my head. “You'll be caught. Or worse.”

“I'll be fine. But it's best if I don't have to worry about who's friend and who's foe. Make sure to close the door behind ya.”

A screeching sound like a cat being given a bath in dog drool pierced the chamber, and a demon creature jumped out of the darkness onto Zeke's back. The thing looked like a naked Crypt Keeper whose head had been sliced off from the nose up.

Zeke grabbed at the creature, but it scrambled around on his back, swiping at his hand and clawing at his cheeks and neck.

An alien, the shiny black creepy-as-crap alien from the movie
Alien,
charged out of the darkness, hissing through its protruding silver teeth.

“Go!” Zeke shouted. His face flushed red, and veins stood out in his neck and forehead. He found the demon creature's bisected head by feel, dug his fingers into the creature's exposed rubber brains, and yanked the thing from his back. With a wild man's scream he swung it like a floppy club at the alien's head.

A clank sounded to our left as a cylon robot rounded the corner and raised a blaster rifle.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Mort and shoving him toward the door as Zeke's berzerker shout rang off the walls. “Go!”

Once we were on the other side of the door, I glanced back. Three wardens were closing in on Zeke, each holding glowing batons.

Zeke flung the torn-off head of the cylon at the nearest warden. His gaze shot in my direction, but his eyes were wide, wild, and without recognition.

Mort grabbed my arm. “He said to close the door!”

“I know,” I said. But that didn't make me feel any better as I pressed the warden's ring to the square silver plate beside the doorway, and the metal slab of the door slid closed between us and Zeke.

25

Two Tribes

I turned from the door and the muffled sounds of fighting in the science fiction museum, and led Mort down what felt like several floors of stairs to the Inner Sanctum.

The Inner Sanctum below the EMP looked like a Catholic cathedral turned into an attraction at Disneyland. Pillars and arches, frescoes and candelabra gave it a sense of ornate class and great age, though I suspected they were no more than fifty years old at most.

Between these touches of fanciness stood displays of the dead. Not simple sepulchral niches, but the kind of elaborate altar displays one might expect a rabid stalker to create in their basement out of loving devotion, worship, and the hope to one day bear the child (or possibly skin suit) of their object of obsession.

“Come on, we need to find Verona,” I said.

We found Katherine Verona in between Ana Mendieta and Scatman Crothers and other arcana who had died in the eighties, wearing a wizard magus's formal red robes, her silver hair held up in a bun by two crossed wands. There were no war-related artifacts as I'd expected—no medals, war-era wands, silver-coated swords and bayonets, mana ration cards, or other items typically found surrounding a war hero. Instead, she sat in a comfortable and worn-looking armchair, surrounded by stacks of books on philosophy, ethics, history, and politics, as well as a collection of colorful knitted hats, slippers, gloves, and wine cozies in the shapes of Fey and feyblood creatures, including a Cthulhu-looking creature I suspected was a toilet roll cover.

I climbed the stairs onto the small stage to join her and pulled a crystal ball from my satchel, a grapefruit-size sphere that weighed twice what it should. I moved a stack of books, lay down at Verona's feet, and placed the crystal ball onto my stomach with my hands folded over it. The weight of the ball might help to anchor me to this world. And it would serve one other purpose.

I looked at Mort. “Remember. As soon as I stop breathing, you need to feed my body life energy, keep my brain from dying. And if you see any flickering in the crystal, you need to jolt me with as much life energy as you can. I'm, like, literally trusting you with my life here, brother.”

This was the part of our plan that had me most worried. All Mort had to do was nothing, and I'd die. And Mort had always been really good at doing nothing.

“Hey, don't worry, man,” Mort said. “I got your back.”

I tried to read any deception in his tone or manner, but couldn't. And I didn't have much choice now, except to move forward or abandon the whole plan. I lay my head back and closed my eyes. After a brief meditation, I summoned myself.

Now, there is a very good reason young necromancers are told to never try to summon themselves, and it has nothing to do with growing hair on their palms. Rather, it pretty well rips your spirit from your body. It is a bit like running over your own head with a lawnmower: extremely difficult and rather unpleasant.

Everything went white, and I felt my spirit dissipating, my energy bleeding off.

My years being disembodied in the Other Realm proved extremely helpful now. It felt natural to control my spirit by will alone, to coalesce it into human shape and regain a sense of the world around me.

I floated above my own body. Mort leaned over me, one hand on my forehead, the other on my stomach just below the crystal ball. The ball rose and fell gently as my body continued to breathe.

Well, it looked like I wouldn't have to haunt Mort for the rest of his life, at least.

I willed myself over to Verona's body, and placed my hand inside her chest over her heart. Or at least I tried. I met resistance, like trying to push two powerful opposing magnets together. “Come out come out, wherever you are,” I called. I spoke without a real mouth or lungs, so my voice was the vibration of the spirit energies in the room, my breath made of my will. Mort couldn't hear me. But I knew someone, or rather something, could. “I feel your presence, Anubis. By the bond of Gramaraye blood that bound you to this body, I call you forth. Reveal yourself.”

The air by Verona's right side wavered, the shadows coalesced like black smoke hardening into Jell-O, until a semitransparent ebon figure stood beside Verona. It had the body of a male wrestler and the head of a dog with sharp ears. Its hand gripped my spiritual wrist firmly, preventing me from reaching into Verona's chest.