Spirit And Dust Part 30

He stirred the air like a huge cauldron. The shades in the hall dissolved, became a fluid swirl of mist with s.n.a.t.c.hes of tooth and claw and spear. It cast a sickly light on the marble hall as it circled, catching the Brotherhood up in a whirlpool prison.

"Holy c.r.a.p," whispered Taylor. "That's all ... ghosts?"

"Spirits. Yes." It was really impressive, and utterly terrifying, the effortless way he controlled it.

Not it. Them. Remnant shades of ancient memory.

I glanced at Taylor. Something metal glinted in his hand. "No one took my backup revolver," he explained, sounding relieved. "Those henchmen aren't exactly the brain trust."

Then he gave me a serious, this-is-real-and-s.h.i.+t-is-about-to-go-down look. I knew he hadn't ever shot anyone, but I also knew he'd trained for it. "Are you aware of the biggest threat in the room? Look."

I did. Worse, I heard. The imprisoning circle of spirit was tightening around the Brotherhood with hunting-cat snarls and the escalating beat of tribal drums. There was a cry of pain as one of the brethren got too close and drew back a slashed arm, blood dripping on the tile.

"Please don't shoot Carson," I said, more plaintively than I intended. "I'm not sure that will stop the Jackal."

I was not sure what would stop the Jackal. But I had to find out.

Another scream, this one from Alexis. It was harder to see her and her minions through the circling glow.

"Let's go," said Taylor. "Get Carson to stop. I'll cover the girl and make sure she doesn't get away."

"Okay." I think he expected me to wait for a count of three, but I didn't. I charged out of the shadows and stepped between Carson and the swirling remnants. "That's enough!" I shouted. "You're just torturing them!"

He didn't look surprised to see me. He looked so normal-way more normal than he should look with that much power inside him.

"They'd do the same to you," he said, very reasonably. "Alexis would have killed you and used your soul to fuel her magic. And you're worried about a few cuts and sc.r.a.pes?"

"Not the Brotherhood," I said, though I meant them, too. "The remnants. You know what they are, and you're toying with them."

He waved a hand and the whirlwind ceased. The spirits dissolved again, this time into a fog lying low on the floor, spreading in abstract phosph.o.r.escent eddies. All except the Native Americans that Carson had first summoned an age ago. They stood guard around his half sister and the half-dozen brethren.

"Don't move," said Taylor, his gun drawn and aimed at Alexis. "None of you. Put any weapons you have on the ground."

Only the brethren looked worried. Alexis fumed and the shades of the warriors didn't react at all.

Carson strode through the spectral fog, bridging the distance between us. "Don't you think that's a little redundant, Agent Taylor?" he asked, nodding to the spear carriers, then the agent's gun.

"I'm too conventional to leave this to ghost guards," said Taylor. "And I don't trust you."

"You shouldn't," said Alexis, standing with her hands obediently in the air. "You should just stay out of this, junior G-man."

Johnson spoke up. I guess he hadn't completely lost his spine with Alexis around. "And how are you going to arrest all six of us by yourself?"

Carson made an annoyed sound. "I don't mind helping him with that, a.s.shole."

The shades of all the Native American tribesmen standing guard on the brethren simply vanished, gone without so much as a wisp of woodsmoke in the moonlight. In the same moment, Carson snapped his fingers and five guys dropped to the floor, whammied into unconsciousness from twenty feet away.

I was so stunned that it took me a second to realize Alexis was still standing there. Taylor swung around to include Carson in his sights, too, as best as he could. "Don't move, Maguire. World Series weird or not, I'm not messing around."

The siblings ignored him. "Did you really think I'd be dumb enough not to protect myself from that trick?" Alexis sneered.

"Are you dumb enough not to realize the Jackal would tell me everything you've been up to?" Carson fired back. "How could you kill Lauren? She was always nice to you."

"She was way too insightful," said Alexis, and I guessed that would be a problem when you were constantly playing everyone in your house. "But she taught me some really useful tricks of my own."

She snapped her fingers in a mockery of Carson, and there was a magic-show flash, blinding in the near dark. By the time I could see again, Alexis was gone.

"Dammit!" said Taylor, searching the hall for any trace of her.

I could see her wake in the glowing fog around our ankles, and pointed toward the Hall of African Animals. "That way."

"Don't bother," Carson growled. Two lean feline shapes rose from the mist, prowling toward us like visible shadows. "Find her," he told them, and at my inarticulate sound of horror he added, "Bring her back alive."

Then with a gesture, he sent them off like a pair of hunting dogs.

Taylor had reached his limit. "No more magic. Daisy, do something about this, or I will."

Carson looked at him, bemused. "What is it you think you're going to do, Agent Taylor? Alexis was right about one thing. You're better off staying out of this."

Then he dropped him like Sleeping Beauty.

It was just Carson and me.

No, that wasn't right. The glow of the spirit fog at our feet cast a faint but distinct shadow on columns and ceiling, towering over us both. The shadow of a jackal-headed man.

36.

"OH MY G.o.d, Carson. Stop doing that! You're going to give someone brain damage."

My flippancy was a facade. Inside, my heart pounded like a subwoofer in a dance club, but running to Taylor's unconscious body gave me an excuse to hide my horror. Showing fear would let the Jackal know I'd seen him.

"He's fine, right?" Carson wasn't careless, but his tone was casual. No damage done, so what's the harm?

He walked toward me, his shoulders loose, his gait easy. He moved like a complete stranger, and I had to force myself not to back away.

"Stop worrying," he said. "The brethren are rounded up for the police, and we'll have Alexis in a few minutes. I've taken their power back. And if she does manage to get out, we'll track her down. It's all good."

"It's all good?" I echoed, flummoxed and frightened. Forget the fact that it was not all good. It was anything but good. This was not the Carson I'd spent the past forty-eight hours with.

"Carson, you need to let me unbind the Jackal from you. Now." As illogical as it was, I whispered that last part, as if the parasitic spirit couldn't hear me. "While you still have a little bit of control."

He caught my hand and, with a grin, pulled me close. "I have complete control. Let me show you."

I held him at arm's length and powered up my deflector s.h.i.+elds. "Listen to yourself. You're trying to kiss me in a room full of shades, with six unconscious bodies on the floor. Does that seem normal to you?"

He'd kept his hands on my waist, but drew back to consider me. "And that's worth putting up the psychic force field?"

"Do you blame me?" I asked. "I've had all the whammy I can take today."

He took my hands and squeezed them in apology. "I was just trying to protect you. I had no idea what I was doing, other than that. But, Daisy, this worked out better than any plan I could have made."

"Except for the part where you're possessed by a self-proclaimed demiG.o.d!"

"But I'm not!" He squeezed my hands again and drew me away from Taylor's sprawled body. "I can feel the Jackal in the back of my head, but he's not controlling me. Maybe it's my ability to channel and convert types of energy, I don't know." He gave a disbelieving laugh. "h.e.l.l, maybe Maguire knew that when he volunteered me, though I think that's giving him too much credit."

"Carson," I said, trying to pull him back to earth. "You are not sounding like yourself."

"How do you know? I've forgotten what 'myself' feels like. I haven't felt normal since my mom died." He laughed again, with genuine humor and joy. "I can feel her. You've got her soul in your pocket. That sounds like it should be a song t.i.tle."

I didn't like buoyant Carson. It just wasn't right.

"This can be the new normal," he went on, oblivious to my tension, even when he slid his arms around my waist. He nodded to the p.r.o.ne brethren. "This can be what we do. Doing good. Stopping evil. The weird stuff that your FBI partner isn't equipped to handle. Now we are."

He was serious, and he was earnest, and he was so wrong. Some deep-down part of me wondered what I would say if he was Jackal-less, if he'd never hidden any truth from me. I had a feeling it would be the same thing, it would just hurt even more. "No, Carson."

"Why not?" He pulled me tighter against him, so I had to lean back to look at him. "Come with me, Daisy. Think of all the good we can do."

Goodnights don't run.

Some memory whispered that in my ear. Maybe even some shade. But it was the truth. I was a face-the-music kind of girl. "Or you could stay," I said, knowing I'd have to make him somehow.

"I can't." He slipped his hand around the back of my neck, pressing his forehead to mine. "So this is where we split."

Like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman at the airfield in Casablanca. Only Rick hadn't said goodbye by kissing Ilsa like there was no tomorrow.

That felt like the real Carson. Not flippant or ent.i.tled or arrogant ... Okay, maybe just the right amount of arrogant. The kiss was deep and dark and a little bit desperate, as if he had to drink all of me in or never get another taste.

It didn't last long. Long enough for the ache of loss to blossom. Long enough for the taste to turn to smoke and sand.

I pulled away in horror. Carson looked back at me in confusion turning to alarm. "What?"

My arms had gone around his waist, and I took hold of the tail of his s.h.i.+rt. Twisting out of his arms, I yanked up the fabric and got a look at his tattoo.

He was too stunned to stop me. I was too stunned to move.

The inky jackal skulked across his skin. It covered his whole back, and blue eyes glittered like gems. They winked, telling me they'd seen me. Heard me. Tasted me.

I made a noise-disgusted, terrified. I didn't plan, just reacted. I grabbed the tattoo like I could peel it from his skin. It gave some in the middle like a blistered sunburn, then snapped back. The jackal snarled, lashed at me with gleaming teeth, and a blast of magic flung me backward, where I hit the floor and kept sliding.

"Daisy!" When my eyes uncrossed, I saw that Carson looked as stunned as I was. But above him I saw the shadow of the Jackal, huge and laughing and triumphant.

I crab-walked backward from the apparition, through the swirls of spirit fog. It tingled in greeting, recognizing me from all my efforts that day. But as the Jackal's shadow condensed and fell over Carson, fell into him, soaking in the way ink soaks into paper, the mist began to scratch and nip and bite.

When Carson looked up, his eyes were brilliant blue.

This was the exact opposite of all good. What looked out of his eyes now was inhuman, alien, and merciless.

"Why couldn't you just cooperate?" said the Jackal. "I could have made the boy happy, given him what he wanted, let him keep the illusion of control. This is all your fault."

He spread his arms and the spirit mist coiled in on itself, taking a new shape. "Remember that," said the Jackal. "Though you won't have to remember it long."

I couldn't even say what the thing was, other than huge. It had the mane of a lion and the teeth of about fifty sharks, and it bristled with scales and spikes and bones. Every time my eyes focused, it s.h.i.+fted, like trying to catch the red spot on your vision after a camera flash. But it was solid enough. Talons like giant flint arrowheads threw up sparks as they sc.r.a.ped the floor.

It was nightmare given form.

I'd scrambled backward and hit something-the railing around the tyrannosaur-and I used it to pull myself to my feet. Only hours ago I'd stood in almost the same spot, listening to the symphony of spirits that saturated the museum. I reached for them now, and found the psychic s.p.a.ce where they'd been empty, like a raided tomb. What hadn't been used up by the Brotherhood or the Jackal had been pulled in and warped by the monstrosity in front of me.

Johnson and the brethren lay in a heap, not that they would help me. Taylor hadn't moved. The doors were locked. The museum was empty, and every shade in it was standing against me.

I'd never felt so alone.

Except ... I was never alone.

The nightmare beast churned the air with a semblance of breathing, and it took a lot of willpower to close my eyes and Sense it with only my psyche. I shook out my hands, rus.h.i.+ng blood through my veins and energy into my own living spirit. And I reached, harder than I'd ever reached before.

Not out. But in.

I reached into my cells, into my DNA, into the mitochondria that made me. I found that essence of myself that was Goodnight, the daughter of kitchen witches and psychic detectives and interfering busybodies. I was a guide to lost souls and the patron sinner of the recently dead.

I was part of something eternal. And the whole was present in the part.

I knit the strands into threads and the thread into a banner that called my family to aid me. The hot spirit breath of the nightmare stirred my hair and the flint-on-stone sc.r.a.pe of its talons made my teeth ache before I got an answer.

But it was definite when it came.

The giant bones above me rattled as ghostly lungs stretched skeleton ribs. Sue the Tyrannosaur shuddered awake.

37.

DINOSAURS DO NOT have ghosts, as far as I know. I mean, maybe I'll get to the great beyond and find it's like Jura.s.sic Park there. But Sue had been imbued with personality by everyone who worked on her bones, and everyone who visited, studied, and virtually lived in that museum. All of Chicago and visitors from all over the world loved her.

In that sense, she did have a spirit, and the collective of Goodnight remnants breathed life into her. The shade of Sue the Tyrannosaur took shape on the bones. Thick muscle and tough hide, gigantic teeth, and forty feet from her nose to the tip of her whipping tail. Then spirit shook free from fossil, and the shade pulled away from her skeleton with a bellowing roar.