Ghostly Echoes (Jackaby #3)(66)
The enormous elemental moaned—a sound like the echoing rumble of a rock slide—but he obliged, his arm swinging toward the gate. At the same moment, Finstern activated the machine.
I felt a pressure at my back, and then I was suddenly across the threshold.
Time held still.
An unseen force pulled me toward my body. I drifted past Jackaby, who was still pinned in the monster’s grip, unable to stop himself from plunging toward the threshold as I left it. I drifted past Finstern, lit by the unearthly glow emanating from his device, and past Morwen, her expression furious and frantic.
I spun as I drifted into my own sorely abused body, a new perspective snapping abruptly into place before me. The world burst back to life in the same instant. The bead in Morwen’s hand exploded, fracturing in a burst of gray shards right in front of me. She cried out in alarm and nearly dropped her wicked black blade. At the same moment, Alloch’s forearm broke free from the rest of his body, carrying Jackaby with it to land with an earthshaking thud just shy of the shadow’s edge. Finstern’s machine pulsed with a blinding white-blue beam of light for several seconds, and then it sparked and went dark again. Finstern doubled over on the ground. I was looking through my own eyes again, watching the madness around me, but I could not move.
I felt a flood of fear and fury bubbling out of control inside my skull. I could barely hear myself think. I focused. “Jenny,” I thought. “I’m here. You’re not alone.”
The storm of emotions softened. “I’m afraid,” she thought. “I’m so sorry. I tried. I can’t move.”
“Let’s try again,” I thought. “Together.”
Alloch clutched the stump of his arm, which stuck out at a gruesome angle from his broad torso, charred and broken. He shook his head and roared, loud and deep. The sound echoed through the forest, and then the colossus stalked away, shaking the ground with each step.
Owen Finstern staggered and fell sideways as he attempted to pick himself up off the ground.
“Brother?” asked Morwen, sheathing the blade at her hip. “Did it work?”
Owen stood. “Yes.” he said. “No!” He twitched and clutched at his temples. The inventor’s legs betrayed him and he toppled to the ground again.
“The sight, brother—do you have the sight?” Morwen demanded.
“No! No—he’s in my head! It hurts! Help me!” Forces within Finstern were working at cross purposes. With each frantic step he seemed to be pulling himself against his own will closer and closer to the underworld.
With tremendous effort I felt my fingers flex. My hand clenched into a fist. I could sense the magic of the hex beginning to splinter.
“Keep pushing.” The thought echoed in my head, though I don’t know if it was mine or Jenny’s. “Keep pushing.” I poured every ounce of will I had into the effort, and from somewhere inside me I felt Jenny’s energy building, resonating like an orchestral crescendo. And then we were suddenly pushing against nothing.
The hex broke. We were free. I felt Jenny’s presence leave me and I fell to my knees, once more alone in my own head. The world spun and I fought against the dizziness. My eyes tried to focus on a glittering shape that lay on the ground before me. When it had slowed to a gradual spin, I reached out and picked up the silver knife.
“Impossible!” Morwen wrapped the fingers of her good hand around the remaining bead on her necklace. “Autoch. Get back here. Now!” From within her grasp, the second bead cracked audibly.
I have had to piece together the events that had been taking place beyond my sight on the edge of Rosemary’s Green that day. What follows is my best interpretation of Charlie’s account of his experience, with his modesty and brevity removed.
Charlie had maintained his position as promised, safeguarding our veil-gate atop the grassy mound. The first creature to approach him was a jackrabbit with a little pair of antlers affixed atop its head. Charlie shooed the timid creature back into the forest with little difficulty, but there were more to come. A silvery owl as tall as a man coasted down out of the leaves to investigate the portal with suspicious eyes before flapping away. Three stocky fairies with wings like moths chose that moment to make a break for it, but Charlie batted them away. Next came a sort of scaly chicken, which startled easily and hurried off, and then a tawny stag with antlers of polished gold. Charlie had stomped, snarled, and swatted back a dozen strange species by the time the forest shook and a flurry of leaves spun to the ground.
The oreborn, Autoch, was twenty feet tall if he was an inch, his skin made of living, dusty brown rock. The boulders that made up his knee joints ground together with a rough, grating scrape as he stalked toward Charlie.
Charlie took a deep breath. “We don’t have to do this,” he said evenly.
“GRRAAAAAUGH!” countered Autoch with all the eloquence of an avalanche.
“Or perhaps we do.” Charlie slipped his suspenders down from his shoulders and kicked off his shoes as the oreborn pounded closer. The window into the Annwyn filled with megalithic muscles and the forest shuddered with each heavy footfall, but by the time the behemoth was upon him, Charlie had changed. He met the rock monster in his canine form, muscles rippling beneath a coat of chocolate brown and black.
A heavy fist slammed down where Charlie had been standing, flattening nothing but empty clothes as the hound whipped aside. Charlie’s instincts, although always keen, were sharpest when he was on all fours. He wasted no time vaulting atop the craggy arm, his eyes hunting for a weakness of any kind. He bounded to Autoch’s shoulder in one leap and went straight for the brute’s eyes, which glistened like jet marbles in the shadow of his heavy brow. Autoch did not even flinch as Charlie’s claws glanced off of the polished obsidian orbs. The attack left not so much as a scratch on the great elemental.