The Hollow Ones(85)

“Take me,” she said. “Embrace me. And again we will be one.”

“Yes, my dear,” said Blackwood. “Yes. But let me…allow me to look at you.” His healthy, young wife. She looked ravishing. “Give me this moment, dear.”

She tried. She angled her shoulders ever so slightly, smiling, a portrait of beauty, of youth, of health and happiness.

“Oh, Hugo,” she said, unable to hold herself back, “we must be together. Take me. I can wait no longer.”

Orleanna rushed to him, arms open. Blackwood opened his arms to receive his one true love, but at the last moment, just before she reached him, he grabbed her fine throat.

He squeezed it tightly, crushing the muscles of her neck, closing off air. Orleanna’s face contorted in pain and confusion.

Blackwood’s eyes went from soft despair to baleful anger.

Then the illusion faded, Orleanna’s face becoming that of Agent Odessa Hardwicke.

Blackwood was shocked a moment, appalled, expecting to see Earl Solomon.

And in that split second of distraction, the Hollow One broke Blackwood’s grip, using his arm to spin him into the stone wall.

Blackwood came off it dazed. Odessa came at him, her eyes wild. A demon. A Hollow.

It came at him with disorienting speed, grabbing him and throwing him with banshee strength. Blackwood landed hard against a ledge near the graves. The Hollow came at him with its arms waving, its mouth open but silent. He caught it with his shoe, a thundering blow to the midsection. With his other leg, he jettisoned it away.

Blackwood got to his feet and quickly produced his leather kit. He unfurled it and selected one of the instruments inside, a narrow-bladed steel dagger. He would eject the Hollow and hold it here with an immobilizing spell until help arrived.

The Hollow struck him bodily from the side, sending both of them flying, the kit and its contents falling from Blackwood’s hand. He fell along the stone floor, face-first, rolling over just in time to catch the Hollow in wild flight, landing atop him.

One hand gripped the Hollow’s throat, holding it at bay. Blackwood’s other hand held the dagger.

The Hollow pounded on his face and chest wildly, slowing only as Blackwood’s grip tightened around its neck. Its eyes saw the steel blade as Blackwood raised his hand behind the Hollow’s head, blade pointing down.

“I am sorry, Agent Hardwicke.”

He pressed the steel point against the base of her skull, ready to slay the unfortunate victim. But his hand held. He hesitated, and then experienced a vision. Odessa’s face appeared as Orleanna’s again. But this vision was not, he determined, the Hollow’s doing.

It meant something to Blackwood.

But again, this hesitation cost him. The Hollow slammed his head against the stone floor, disengaging from his grip. It slammed his head again, dazing Blackwood, the Hollow thrashing about. At once, it snatched the dagger from Blackwood’s hand. It turned the blade around, pointing it at its own throat, and with a crazed smile stabbed upward.

Blackwood just caught its wrist. The Hollow’s strength was prodigious, and Blackwood had been weakened in his duel with the conjurer. His hand shook as the blade tip neared Odessa Hardwicke’s neck.

He was losing her.

Then a flurry entered the crypt from the catacomb, a gust like the wind from the beating of great wings. Two big hands pulled at the Hollow, wrenching it off Blackwood, tearing the dagger from its hand.

Joachim, the tattoo artist and Hollow Ones’ jailer, watched the Hollow spin away from him, still a crazed look in its eye, getting ready to charge him.

At once Joachim flexed his chest, and his shirt ripped apart at its back seams. A pair of wings unfolded, twice as wide as they were high, the patterns of their scales painted with structural color patterns to rival that of the rarest butterfly. It was an angry flex, stunning the Hollow, freezing it in its tracks. Joachim lunged for it, grasping it by the neck, his wings retracting.

In a flash, he spun the Hollow around, one arm beneath its chin, the other atop its head. He was making to snap its neck.

“No!” yelled Blackwood.

Joachim looked up, surprised. Blackwood picked up his fallen leather kit and went before the squirming Hollow, looking past its ferocious sneer to the eyes of Odessa Hardwicke behind it.

Joachim held it tight, his arm moving back from the top of its head. Blackwood intoned the incantation, placing both hands on the sides of the Hollow’s head. His arms shook with the effort, the Hollow struggling in Joachim’s grip.

The body convulsed. As Blackwood withdrew his hands, an image of the Hollow’s head appeared between them, as though Blackwood was pulling it out. The Hollow’s large mouth howled in either pain or reluctance, but Blackwood could not yank it free. He was losing his grip on the nasty imp, until…as though the result of a great push from within Odessa Hardwicke, the Hollow was ejected, Blackwood staggering back with the foul, baying spirit in his hands.

Joachim released Odessa, letting her body sink to the floor. He grasped the Hollow One, seizing it from Blackwood, gripping the squealing, mewling imp by its throat.

Blackwood went to Odessa, kneeling before her, clearing the hair away from her face. Her skin was deathly cold to the touch, but then her eyelids fluttered, her lips moving.

She was coming around. Blackwood helped her up into a sitting position. She looked at him dumbly, wondering why he looked so happy to see her.