Monster Planet(68)

Magic was everywhere down in that barnyard. Death magic. It pulsed around Erasmus, pinning him like a dart in a dartboard. It flickered from the windows of the farmhouse and lingered like smoke around the tarpaper roof of the barn. Deep, dark beams of it escaped through the vents of the silo. There was something bad in there, something that needed half a dozen hex signs to keep it locked away.

'That's what we're here for, isn't it?' Ayaan asked.

Aye. It's not what you think, though, lass. Don't fear it.

'Believe me, it's rather low on my list of things to be afraid of.' Ayaan leaned forward, her chin resting on her steepled fingers. 'You, on the other hand...' She fought the urge to look at him.

I'm your friend. I'm your best friend, under these circumstances.

'Friends don't hypnotize each other. They don't leave little commands buried in each other's minds.' Semyon Iurevich, the mind-reading lich back in Asbury Park, had bound her with a spell. It had been his voice she heard telling her not to kill the green phantom. No, worse than that, his voice had wiped the very idea out of her mind. He hadn't merely revoked her freedom. He had made it so it never existed.

And he had done so, she was certain, at the ghost's behest.

Is that what's worrying you? That I wouldn't let you throw your life away?

'My life. Mine,' she said. 'Do you think I like being this... this thing, this monster?' she gestured at her leathers.

I know better than anyone, dearie. Don't you come all indignant with me, when I haven't even a body to speak of.His tone softened, grew soothing and low.Listen, there's a game here, a deeper game than you know. You haven't even met all the players yet.

Ayaan let that go for a while. The ghost had power over her. She wasn't going to talk him into relinquishing it'that never worked, never in the history of the human race had anyone given up power freely once they had it. You had to take it back yourself.

Something else worried her, though. 'You want the Tsarevich dead, yet you made sure I would survive long enough to see whatever's in that silo. You want us to find it, even if it means the Tsarevich gets it. What's your scheme? At least tell me that much, tell me what you hope to gain from''

He was gone, of course. She couldn't sense him anywhere.

She went for another handful of spiders. When she came back she got a shock'something was actually happening down in the valley. A light had come on in the farmhouse. It moved from window to window, then emerged from the door, and revealed itself to be a kerosene lantern. The man holding it glowed a brighter gold than the lamp in his hand. There was no question in her mind. This was the wizard, the magician, the wadad who had enchanted Erasmus.

He wore a baseball cap low on his brow with the nameJOHN DEERE on the front. Old bloodstains decorated a white t-shirt and faded blue jeans; more recent stains discolored his tan leather work boots. His face was ringed with a fringe of beard and hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses, even though the sun had yet to rise.

His left arm was missing entirely. It had been replaced with a tree branch covered in rough gray bark. It ended in three thick twigs less like fingers than the tines of a pitchfork. Dark energy surged through the wooden arm and it twisted like a snake. The tines reached up and scratched the magician's chin. He studied Erasmus, moving around the werewolf, tapping his sternum and the back of his skull. With his human hand he plucked a hair from the paralyzed lich's cheek.

The wooden arm slapped at Erasmus' chest and tore a strip of skin away from the rigid muscles beneath. They were pink and grey and they didn't glisten at all. No blood emerged, but she could clearly see the edges of his skin where it had been torn open. In the midst of all that fur the wound looked like a sickly orifice, a new and monstrous genital.

Ayaan pushed the telescope away and stood up. It was a long way down the ridge and for all she knew there were mines planted all around the little barnyard but she couldn't wait any longer. She stumbled out of the lookout station and practically threw herself down the side of the ridge, grabbing at tree branches to slow her descent, her feet barely touching the ground. A torrent of pine needles and rustling leaves swept around her while bits and pieces of rock and soil pattered and bounced down before her like a miniature landslide. She skidded to a stop in a copse of trees near the floor of the valley and pushed the branches away from her to take a look. Nothing had changed in the barnyard. Ayaan moved forward until she was standing before a seven foot high fence of thin wooden palings, the only barrier between herself and the barnyard.