The Dire King (Jackaby #4)(73)
“I have an idea,” said Jackaby.
High atop the windswept landing, I helped Jackaby pry loose a copper panel. It came free with a loud squeak. We froze.
“Charge the mechanism for a final drain,” Arawn commanded. His voice echoed like a kettledrum. He hadn’t heard us.
“Yes, my lord,” came Alina’s voice. I gritted my teeth. She had had the audacity to accuse Charlie of turning his back on his people. “Where shall I direct the pulse?”
“Full breadth,” boomed the king. “All of them.”
“All of them?” Alina said.
“All of them.”
Jackaby eased the panel onto the ground silently. “He’s exhausted the reserves,” he whispered. “He’s going to drain his people and ours for the final push.”
“The final push—then the veil isn’t down yet?”
“Only locally. It’s unfathomable, the power that must have taken. He’s driven the wedge. Now he’s summoning the force to drive it through. The first drain, he targeted the Seelie army, but they were never going to be enough. We played right into his hands. The monsters, the undead, the occult nonsense—he was planting fear and strife. He wanted this war. He knew from the start he would need to take power from the Seelie, the Unseelie, and everyone in between.”
“But you can stop it?”
Jackaby took a deep breath. “Not exactly,” he said. “But like you said—I might be able to jam the lock.” He pulled a coin from his pocket and began using it to turn a screw inside the panel. “A full burst would almost certainly kill me, but I can siphon the flow. It should take less energy to hold the veil in place than Arawn will require to split it open.”
“You’re going to channel the energy through yourself?”
“I may be the only one who can,” said Jackaby. “That’s why Arawn needed my eyes. His noumenoneum brings into focus the imperceptible.”
“His what?”
“The lenses, here. When he was inside my head he had them in place and the veil became visible. I can see it. I can repair it. Not a perfect job, but I should be able to manage a few crude stitches—and you’re holding the needle.”
I glanced down at my hands—the black blade. “The original spear!” I said.
“Yes, with a little luck, it should help me channel power through myself, imbued with my will, into the fabric of the veil. With more luck, I might even survive the process.”
With that, he wrenched a cable from the panel and light burst out of the end of it, a thin ribbon of electric blue snapping, buzzing, and writhing up his arm as it danced along his skin and through his body.
He held out his free hand, twitching and shuddering under the strain. I fumbled to hand him the sword. As he took it, the shivering, dancing tangle of light smoothed into a single curve. It fed from the cable straight into his left arm and back out his right, crackling faintly around the hilt of the weapon. Jackaby pointed the blade, his face screwed tight in concentration.
At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then, starting with the farthest graves, the churchyard began to fade, like fog rolling in. The veil was pulling back over the earthly side. It was working—with agonizing slowness, it was working! Jackaby was mending the veil!
And then the black blade shook violently and spun out of Jackaby’s grip. He grabbed for it, but it fell, spinning down to the bottom of the tower. Jackaby cursed. He looked at me, pained, ribbons of energy dancing across his chest once more.
“Hold on!” I said, and leapt into action.
I raced down the crumbling stairway as quickly as I dared. My feet hit solid ground, and I scooped up the black blade. From ground level, the raging battle felt overwhelming. The echoing clatter of steel and the screeches and shouts of combatants were deafening. Worse still, the groaning snarls of the undead horde seemed to have coalesced into a constant, terrible drone.
Through the ruins of the wall, I could see Lydia Lee and Hank Hudson in the distance, fighting madly, back to back. Blood was streaming down Hudson’s temple. Jenny’s silvery form darted from corpse to corpse, slowing the tide, but it was little use. From all sides, Tilde’s reanimated army was closing in. We had to end this.
I gripped the blade tightly, but before I could steel myself to race back up the tower, my heart lurched. A huddle of ragged allies had pulled free of the crush and was crossing the courtyard toward the hold, right ahead of me. Commissioner Marlowe and Lieutenant Dupin, their uniforms torn and ragged, flanked Dragomir and Charlie, both of whom had slipped back into their human forms. Dragomir’s thick furs were wet with blood, although I could not tell if it was his or that of his enemies. Charlie’s ear was a red mess, and he was limping slightly, but his face was a mask of determination.
They were not twenty feet away when a streak of white fur shot across the courtyard and Dupin spun and yelped, clutching his arm. A moment later another blur of motion cut his legs out from under him. The lieutenant hit the ground with a cry of pain. Commissioner Marlowe ran to his aid.
“No, wait!” I called, but I was too late.
A pack of a dozen of Arawn’s milk white hounds materialized in front of the hold, growling and braying. Another flurry of motion, and the commissioner was on the ground beside Dupin. Dragomir howled in pain as the beasts forced him to his knees as well. They were everywhere at once. They moved like lightning.