The Hollow Ones(84)

She kicked herself over, throwing him off her and scrambling away. Separated from him again, she responded to the image of Earl Solomon, a man she respected, a person she liked. “No!” she implored him.

But it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Earl Solomon.

The Hollow One sprang to its feet, preternaturally agile for an elderly body, and ran at her wildly, arms waving over its head. Odessa got up but stayed low, using her weight to duck him and throw him off her hip. The Hollow One went sprawling over the bare stone ground with an ugly scraping noise.

Odessa was crying, tears of anger, tears of despair. “Don’t,” she said, pleading with it as it got up from the ground and started back at her. “Don’t make me do this!” she said, but it came at her in a run, and she couldn’t sidestep it cleanly. Their bodies collided, both of them falling away.

“Stop!” she screamed.

It wouldn’t. She saw that. It was rabid dog and psychopath and Terminator all in one. It got to its stocking feet—and Odessa saw the pile of loose boards and tools beyond it.

The Hollow One came flailing at her, one hand catching her face, fingers digging deep into her cheek and temple, trying to blind her. Odessa let it spin her around, then kicked out at its knee, pulling free and staggering backward, landing on the boards.

She felt around for a weapon, unable to take her eyes from the Hollow One. She gripped the handle of a hammer. She rose to her knees as the Hollow One came at her, low—kicking the hammer from her arm. She rocked backward, grasping at the toolbox as the Hollow One grasped at her, feeling a familiar bulbous wooden handle in her fingers.

It rolled her around and bared its teeth, trying to get at the soft tissue of her face. Like a mad dog, it snapped at her, and Odessa dug her left forearm up under its chin, into its throat, to no avail. It bore down on her.

Through gritted teeth, Odessa said, “God forgive me.” And then: “Solomon…forgive me—”

Her right hand dug the steel end of the awl into the base of the Hollow One’s skull and drove it downward. With all her strength, she pierced the muscle of the upper neck, finding the brain.

The Hollow One’s eyes went wide. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth, swelling, inches from her face. With a yell and a heave, she shoved it off her and crabbed away from the twitching form.

She watched in misery and relief. Her face and hip and kidneys and knee all hurt. She slumped to the stone floor for a moment, dizzy from hyperventilating, catching her breath.

She pulled herself up to a sitting position, then got to her feet. In the weird gloom of the chamber, she saw the shape of the thing lying still at last.

As she watched, a wavy emanation arose from it, like a trick of the shadows. A tinge of burnt solder reached her nostrils before she remembered about the Hollow Ones. She threw up both arms to shield her face, backing away—but then was gripped mid-step by a spasm, her body going taut, spine arched, head thrown back. An excruciating seizure of pain…and then her muscles ceased quivering, and her limbs and her mind relaxed.



Blackwood’s body and soul were racked with the agony of the arisen slave spirits. By not resisting them and embracing their distress, he neutralized the conjurer’s hostile intent.

Juanita, the priestess, the mayombero, grew enraged. As she fought to regain control over her risen ghosts, the dark being that inhabited her appeared. Out of her form arose the white-gowned, black-haired figure of Orleanna Blackwood, projected spectrally. Hugo Blackwood faced his depraved love, her fierce, dark eyes boring into him from within the burial chamber. A tug-of-war for the souls of the woken slave spirits.

Blackwood had allowed them to envelop him, and now he grew stronger in spirit, while his body weakened.

Return, he implored. Return.

Blackwood’s body quaked as the hazy violet beings began to swim back into the chamber.

The ghastly image of his long-lost wife emitted a harrowing scream.

Let them sleep, commanded Blackwood. Give them peace.

She would not release them. She fought their spirits, one final attempt to excite their vengeful natures, wanting the powerful energy of their timeless suffering for herself.

The violet haze swam to her, overcoming her, staining her flowing nightdress purple, then darkening to black. The haze grew dense and suffocating, pulling her down into the aged soil with it, settling into the ground.

Blackwood’s knees gave out and he collapsed onto one hip. He watched weakly as the last of the oily mist returned to the earth.

Blackwood regained his equilibrium, pushing himself up onto his feet. His body was like a hive that had just been evacuated of a thousand angry bees. But the underground vault was quiet once again.

“My darling.”

The voice froze Hugo Blackwood. Over the past 450 years, very few things had made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, but her voice did. Trembling, Blackwood turned away from the crypt to the catacomb behind him.

Out of the darkness walked Orleanna Blackwood. Not as a demon. Not as an evil spirit. But as she had been in marriage, her skin fair, her eyes lively, her gossamer nightdress flowing.

“Orleanna,” whispered Hugo Blackwood.

“You saved me,” she said. Her smile was beatific, her arms open, waiting to be received by him. “Finally, my love. We can be together once again.”

“My dearest love,” said Blackwood, the words catching in his throat like a sob.