Limbo's Child (87 page)

“But Hokharty’s gone!” Lucy yelled back. They both looked at the fallen form of the ancient vampire.

Nephys yelled to her over the din of the fight, “You have to summon him back!!”

“
What?!
”

“You’re the Necromancer! You can summon back other necromancers!”

“How do I do that?!” she yelled back as the furnishings crashed around her.

“I don’t know! You’re the Necromancer!”

Lucy thought hard and looked at her knuckle. She bit down hard and a spurt of blood came out. She was oddly glad Moríro had made her do that before. It wasn’t so difficult now. She crawled over to the fallen, unassuming body of the bald man in scrubs and rubbed the bloody knuckle on his shirt, but nothing happened. Then she remembered that even the Japanese lantern had required words.

“Quick, how do I say ‘return’ in Egyptian?!”

“Um…try saying, “‘Nouy Hokharty!’”

Lucy rubbed the bloody knuckle across the shirt again, and spoke the words, but nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?!”

“Oh! His full name is Hokharty-Ra, I think.”

“Thanks for telling me!” Lucy yelled at him. She said the full name this time, but still nothing.

“Why isn’t it working?!” she screamed as a vampire came close, only to be knocked away by the dog-monster at the last second.

“I don’t know!” Nephys yelled back, “Maybe it’s another word like ‘summon’ or ‘come forth’ I just don’t know which one!”

“Great!” Lucy yelled. She was beginning to understand why Moríro was so particular about this stuff. She tried a few more of Nephys’ suggestions, but nothing was working.

The fight was worsening for their side. Miles and Hiero were fighting heroically, fending off the attacks and keeping Lucy and Nephys from harm, but the vampires were in a frenzy of bloodlust. Miles crashed to the floor right in front of them nearly unconscious after Betty landed a blow to his chest with both high heels. Hiero jumped up to defend him, and Betty retreated for fear of an amputation, but the vampires had them surrounded and were slowly gathering in for the kill.

Lucy threw her arms around her mother certain it was the end. Just then, the Impala crashed through the doors to the garden and careened into the room before getting high-centered on the dais and coming to a grinding halt. Graber was on the roof, but when the Impala came to a sudden stop he tumbled off, crashing through the room sending the vampires flying in all directions.

Tim stumbled out of the car, his arm under Sky’s armpit, dragging him from the wreck.

“Are we winning?!” Tim yelled.

“Not exactly,” groaned Miles.

“What else is new?” retorted Sky with a raspy hoarse voice from under Tim’s arm.

“Pharnt-Boooyalaarnt!” Hiero seemed to agree.

“What’s going on?!” Tim screamed in horror as he saw the vampires regrouping.

“The vampire’s have gone bloody crazy! That’s what!” Miles shouted, “And they won’t listen to anyone but Hokharty!!”

“Amanda sent Hokharty back to the underworld and I can’t summon him back because I don’t know the right words!!” Lucy screamed.

“What words?!” Tim yelled.

“WE DON”T KNOW!!” Miles, Nephys and Lucy screamed together.

“It could be ‘summon’ or ‘come forth’ or something else in Egyptian but I don’t know what!” Nephys explained frantically.

Graber was already up on the other side of the room. He looked to where they were gathered around the fallen Hokharty. If Tim thought he had seen Graber angry before, he was wrong. Graber started across the room slowly, gathering steam as he went. The other vampires, Mikhail, Betty, the five kittens and all the rest were already falling in behind him.

Tim looked down like something was dawning on him. “Oh! Oh! Um…Try ‘Hokharty-Ra Nu Peret!!’” Tim screamed.

“
New Parrot?!
” Lucy yelled back incredulous.

“It means ‘come forth’ in the old dialect!” Nephys yelled, feeling stupid he hadn’t thought of it, “Just do it!”

Lucy jabbed the knuckle one last time and said the words. There was a pause. Graber was thundering like a rhino right for them. Then the blood Lucy smeared on Hokharty’s front began to boil and bubble and turned into a thin line of red smoke like a snake. The snake rose and wriggled into the body’s nose and mouth, but it was taking an agonizingly long time.

“It’s working!” Nephys yelled and then he smiled at Lucy for a fraction of a second before the smile melted away to sheer horror. Lucy spun around. Graber was right on top of them his fists raised to smash Hiero and Miles into oblivion.

Lucy screamed and covered her head, but just then she heard something else.

“HALT!” It was Hokharty’s voice.

Lucy looked up cautiously. The Father of All Vampires was standing before Graber and the other vampires, hand outstretched. The vampires had stopped. Graber looked around, frustrated. And for a moment, Lucy was certain he was going strike anyway, but Hokharty just looked up at him more sternly and the lumbering mass with half a head finally relented.

Hokharty lowered his hand and looked at Lucy with a melancholy smile, but Lucy just let out a breath and closed her eyes, nearly fainting.

In a small opening behind some bushes, the strange boy Yo-yo emerged somewhere near the outer wall of Rivenden. He had used his powers to come this far, but something about the wall was preventing him from using them to go beyond it. He was frustrated, but surprisingly calm and detached, a detachment created from a lifetime of having to be resourceful in the face of adversity. He had just begun to consider scaling the wall when a sound came from somewhere nearby.

He didn’t crouch or hide, but waited to see what emerged from the bushes.

It was the woman in amber glasses.

She seemed a bit surprised to see him at first but then approached him rather respectfully and said simply, “Here, let me help you.”

Chapter Thirty-Six
The Burial

Miles surveyed the scene. Not thirty minutes before, it was practically the end of the world, but now an odd, though subdued, celebratory atmosphere pervaded the wrecked ballroom. Tim had set Sky down on the floor. The five kittens were cooing around him, and Sky was trying to look nonchalant despite the fact that he was obviously in horrid pain. Even Tim was getting a fair amount of attention from the five girls, recounting some of his and Sky’s heroics against Graber. It was hard to imagine that they were trying to kill them all just minutes ago. Graber was off somewhere, Miles didn’t know where, probably on Hokharty’s instructions. Hokharty was making the rounds with the rest of the skeletons and mummies that hadn’t fled, apologizing as if they had only just been invited to a really wild party that had gotten out of hand and not the end of the world. The vampires themselves were lying about lazily as usual, smug looks on their faces, not caring what side they were on as long as it was the winning one at the end of the day.

“Bloody vampires,” thought Miles.

There was only one person who didn’t seem to be enjoying the world not ending. Lucy was kneeling over her mom’s body with her back to everyone else. She was silent, but she wasn’t crying. Miles, Nephys and Hiero watched her from a ways off. She leaned over, and hugged her mother, pulling her body up into her arms. After a while Miles realized she wasn’t hugging her. She was trying to lift her. Miles tapped Nephys on the shoulder and they walked over to her cautiously.

“Are ya okay, Lucy?” Miles asked. She was struggling to lift her mother’s body.

She stopped and sighed, “I need…I need to bury my mom.”

“But…Lucy…” Nephys began.

“I just need to, okay?!” she said a bit angrily, and then more calmly, “It’s just…I can’t do it by myself.”

Miles and Nephys looked at each other. Miles walked forward as if to pick up the body, but Lucy just pulled her mother’s body closer to her.

“No,” she said adamantly, “I don’t want her touched by any more
dead
things.”

Miles retreated. He was a little hurt, but he understood. He didn’t want to have anything to do with himself or the other vampires either.

“I’ll do it.”

Miles and Nephys turned around. It was Tim. He had pulled himself away from the adulation of the quints and followed Miles over.

Lucy looked up, pulled her hair behind her ears and nodded.

Tim walked forward, and reached an arm under the knees and shoulders of Lucy’s mother. He struggled a bit. Tim was tall but lanky, and not much bigger than Maggie Miller himself, but he steadied himself and lifted her mother’s body up gently as if carrying a child to bed.

Lucy looked up at him and smiled a tense smile. Then she looked around. The whole room was looking at her, even the skeletons with their empty sockets.

Lucy turned and walked out the garden doors. Tim followed closely behind with her mother’s body. Miles, Nephys, Hiero and the whole entourage fell in behind them, though at a respectable distance; even Sky came, though he had to have two kittens under each arm to manage it. Lucy wandered out into the woods surrounding the manor. Not far from the back garden doors was an open clearing. Lucy stopped and looked up into the early morning sky, and the whole crowd stopped forty paces back. It was practically the only part of the grounds not overgrown with weeds and bushes and still open to the sky.

Lucy looked up and then said simply “Here. I think she’d like it here.”

Then she fell to her knees slowly and started digging at the ground with her own fingernails. Tim looked around anxiously, but then he gently set her mother’s body down and began digging with his own hands right beside her. The whole crowd, all the mummies, skeletons, vampires and even the meat golems and pickled fetuses, stood by and watched on in wonder from a safe distance. It went on like that for several minutes before someone managed to rummage up a couple of shovels from somewhere in the manor.

Tim and Lucy dug alone for a long while. Lucy was struggling and not making much progress, so Tim told her it was ok, he could do it. So Lucy sat down, and cradled her mom’s head in her lap. After the first hour, Tim began to fade. He paused to take a few deep breaths. Miles stepped forward and grabbed the shovel. Tim looked to Lucy for approval before letting Miles take it. Lucy simply nodded and looked down. Miles began to dig. Tim took a short breather, but before too long he started in again, as if taking a break was somehow cheating.

It took hours. By the end, Nephys was helping and even Hiero was digging away with his butcher’s knife. They dug without stopping, or even knowing where they were going to stop. When the hole was over Miles’ head but not yet over Tim’s, Lucy said, “Stop. That’s good enough.”

Miles climbed out of the hole and looked at Lucy. Lucy struggled to move the body over to the hole.

“Can I help?” Miles asked simply.

Lucy nodded and together they lifted the body into Tim’s arms who was still standing in the freshly dug grave.

Tim cradled the body in his arms and looked up at Lucy. “We don’t have a coffin, but do you want a covering, or a shroud or something?”

Lucy just shook her head no. “She was a gardener. She loved the dirt. She’d like it this way,” she said in a soft voice. Tim laid the body carefully on the floor of the grave on her back.

“No,” Lucy said quietly, “Not like that…here…help me.” She swung her legs over the edge of the grave and held out her arms. Tim lifted her down into the grave. Lucy turned her mother on her right side and drew her knees up and placed her head on her right arm like a pillow. She looked like she had just curled up to take a quick nap.

“She always slept like that,” Lucy said.

Then Lucy leaned over and stroked her mother’s hair. She whispered something into her mother’s ear and kissed her face one last time. After a moment more, she stood up.

Tim lifted her out of the grave and Nephys grabbed her hand to help her out. Last of all, Tim climbed out. The five of them stared down into the grave with Maggie Miller’s body at the bottom of it.

“Do you want to say something?” Tim asked nervously.

Lucy rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand.

“I’ve already said it,” she said simply folding her arms across her chest. “It’s nothing I want any of them to hear anyway.” She narrowed her eyes at the gathered crowd and the dead shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. Dawn was approaching and the remaining dead things were getting anxious, but they stood transfixed, somehow unable to leave.

Then Lucy grabbed a shovel, took a breath and poured the first shovel of earth into the grave herself.

Tim picked up the other shovel and started to help. Soon, the body was covered and Lucy had to quit for a moment and sit down and hold her hands over her eyes, as if to keep the tears from escaping. Miles and Nephys joined in and before long, the hole was filled.

When the last shovel of earth was dropped on the fresh grave, Lucy sat down on top of it, tucked her knees in under herself and just sat quietly. The remaining onlookers slowly filed away and left for their haunts before the dawn arrived. Tim, Miles and Nephys watched longer than the others, but eventually they left Lucy alone. Hiero was the very last one to leave.

Hokharty stood and watched Lucy from the garden doors of the old manor. Lucy sat by her mother’s grave in the clearing. She wasn’t weeping, but she was silent. Dawn was fast approaching; the sky was already growing light. Graber was marshalling the other vampires around the manor, securing the doors and windows, making Rivenden ready for the day and overseeing the departure of the last of the remaining undead, skeletons and mummies, who had left in small groups in different directions, according to Hokharty’s instructions.

Tim was standing near the Father of All Vampires, equally numb. Schuyler was just inside, gingerly laying down on the hood of the Impala, still high centered on the dais, the five now-tattered kittens lovingly tending their patient. He had even found a lollipop somewhere. This one was lime green. Miles and Nephys were hovering nearby as well. Finally, Tim cleared his throat and took a step closer to the old vampire.

As Tim approached, Hokharty spoke absent-mindedly in an airy voice, never turning to face Tim, as if speaking more to himself as much as to anyone else.

“I have brought great harm to this world. I have disobeyed the Necromancer and the Great Master. I have risked the whole world and worked for the destruction of all mankind. I have much to answer for, Timothy.”

Tim shrugged. There wasn’t much he could argue with that. As far as he was concerned, Hokharty had pretty much screwed up as much as anybody could, then turned the whole thing inside out and screwed it up again, but he didn’t feel the need to rub that in just now.

“But I feel most for this little girl,” Hokharty continued, “I believe I have done her irreparable harm.”

Tim snorted. “That’s an understatement,” he said sarcastically under his breath.

Hokharty turned to face Tim and looked at him directly. “Do not worry. I will be called to make account of my stewardship very shortly, Timothy, but in the time I have left, I must make amends where I can. I shall start with you, Mr. Riggle,” he said simply. Tim tightened a little. He still wasn’t used to Hokharty addressing him like he was an equal. “I promised you that I could either make you the most famous doctor in human history or I could return you to your ordinary life. I stand now by that promise. What is your choice?”

Tim didn’t have to think very long. After the last few days, fame had very little appeal.

“I’d like my old life back if you don’t mind, sir,” Tim said exhausted, “But I don’t know how that’s even possible.”

“How do you mean?” Hokharty asked simply.

Tim sighed. Where to begin? Tim listed the offences off on his fingers. “I’ve been caught on video stealing bodies, my car was implicated in a hit and run in Harrisburg – I’m pretty sure they got the plates – not to mention that I’m a suspect in the kidnapping of a little girl, or the trashing of a roadside diner.” Tim stuck his hands back into the pockets of his hoodie and sighed. “Forgive me sir, but I just don’t see how it’s possible to get my old life back, let alone my job.”

“I see,” said Hokharty. He rolled his fingers together close to his face for a moment and then turned to face Tim again. “Do you think your vehicle can be made operational?”

Tim looked at the high-centered Impala with Schuyler and the kittens sprawled on it and just shook his head. “Maybe…I dunno…why?” he asked cautiously.

“I believe I have a solution. I believe that the body I currently occupy, as well as the body Graber occupies, belonged to criminals before we took possession of them. We can take you and your vehicle into the city and attract the attention of the authorities. I believe we can convince them that you were our hostage and under duress and blameless for those activities associated with you and your vehicle.” Sensing Tim’s nervousness, Hokharty reassured him, “Trust me Timothy, I can be
very
persuasive.” Tim knew
that
was true at least. Hokharty went on. “After an appropriate show of force, we can allow ourselves to be killed and you will be rescued. When they examine the bodies they will discover exactly what they expect to find, corpses, and none will be the wiser.”

Tim let a breath out between his lips and scratched his head. “I dunno. They already had you two as dead in the morgue already. Do you think they will buy it?”

Hokharty smiled. “What do you think is more likely, that they will believe that they accidentally misdiagnosed two known criminals as deceased and that they escaped? Or that those bodies were possessed by a five-thousand-year-old vampire and a one-thousand-year-old zombie master involved in a conspiracy to destroy the earth?”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Tim snorted.

“Good,” Hokharty said, satisfied, “Then it’s decided, but before I go I must say, Tim, I have seen you bear up under substantial difficulty where other men would have failed. This, I believe, demonstrates that you have the makings of an excellent physician, should you choose it, of course.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to my mother.”

If Hokharty picked up on Tim’s sarcasm at all, he didn’t show it. “Perhaps I will, but before then, we must see to the others.”

Hokharty approached Lucy carefully and Tim followed not far behind.

“Necromancer,” Hokharty said to Lucy as gently as he could, “My apologies for the interruption. May I approach you?” He bowed low and waited for her to reply.

Lucy looked up, distracted. She wasn’t used to that title just yet. She stood up cautiously and faced him, looking him over uncertainly, as if she didn’t know if she could trust him.

“What do you want?” she said a little testily.

He remained bowed. “I realize I have caused you great harm that I cannot possibly make right, but before you send me away, I hope that I may be of some service to you.”

Lucy stood silently for a long while. Then she pulled her hair behind her ears and bit her lip as if thinking it over.

“All right,” she said at last, “What did you have in mind?” She tried to put her hands in her back pockets before she remembered she was still wearing those stupid pajamas and the bathrobe, so she settled for folding her arms across her chest instead.