Monster Planet(78)

Dekalb's eyes clouded over. It was a lot of memories to process at once, evidently. 'Jack? No... no, he never had a sword. And Jack's no ghost, sweetheart.'

'What?' she asked. She was still connecting the dots in her head.

'Listen, I knew Jack pretty well. We worked together, fought together. He even killed me, after all. But now he's just another ghoul. He was chained to a wall uptown from here the last I saw of him, with a broken neck, unable to move or walk or hunt. He was as brainless as any of them. Jack was never the type to become a ghost, anyway. He would have erased himself from the network before he let that happen.'

'Listen,' Sarah said. 'I have the ability to talk to'to ghosts, and ghouls, and dead people who can't speak for themselves, but only if I have something really important to them. Like Gary's tooth or Ptolemy's heart scarab. Who does this sword belong to? It was somebody the Tsarevich wanted to talk to, they called him, what was it'the Celt?' She glanced at Ptolemy, who nodded in agreement.

'There was this one guy,' her father told her. 'He was a ghost, sure. Gary knew him better than I did but he was from Orkney, up in Scotland. He was a Druid.' Dekalb picked up the sword and looked at it, then showed it to Gary. The scuttling little skull-bug jumped up and down on his six pointy little feet in excitement. 'Gary says yes, this was his sword. His name was Mael something, I remember now. He helped me at the end, he talked to the mummies on my behalf.Mael Mag Och.Why, sweety? What does he have to do with anything?'

'Well, he's lied to me, for a start. He's lied to me for years. He told me he was somebody else. He brought me here'he's been playing me for a fool. Who knows what else he set up?' She frowned at the green sword in her father's hand. 'Right now, I am willing to believe,' she told him, 'that Mael Mag Och has been playing with us all, like checkers on a board.'

The skull-bug did a little dance it was so excited.

'Yeah,' Dekalb said, 'Gary says that sounds exactly like Mael.'

END OF PART TWO





Monster Planet





Chapter One


'Are you comfortable? Is the refreshment to your liking?'

They had found clothes for their blonde guest, a white lace dress with voluminous sleeves and a pair of flat leather shoes that looked comfortable. Nilla leaned back on her divan and lifted her snifter in silent toast. It could have been tomato juice in the glass but Ayaan doubted it. The green phantom bowed deeply, leaning on his femur staff, and moved back to one corner of the room. On her own stool Ayaan crossed her legs and wondered how long this was going to take.

They were all gathered inside of MAD-O-RAMA, where the Tsarevich was due to make an appearance at any moment. Erasmus stood behind Ayaan in a stiff posture, forced to be uncomfortable because he had failed. He was going to have to apologize. Semyon Iurevich perched on a three-legged chair near the back, his eyes very wide as if he expected to witness something monumental and didn't want to blink in case he missed it. The fiftieth mummy stood holding the brain in the jar. Nilla made a point of not looking at it. Cicatrix was with her master, the two of them hidden inside his pretzel car throne which was still turned to the wall.

Without preamble the Tsarevich's image appeared in the center of the room, facing them. He bowed deeply in Nilla's direction and spoke in fractured English'the only language Nilla had. 'My lady. What honor you give me. I have sought you for years now, to only glory you. How kind of you this is to come. May I introduce myself, I am Adrik Pavlovich Padchenko, who some too kindly call Tsarevich.'

'Enchanted to meet you,' Nilla replied. She looked sincere enough. 'I'm nobody.'

The boy lich smiled broadly as if she'd said the most intelligent thing he'd ever heard. Then he turned and faced his generals. 'With this nobody and her gracious presence, we are made ready. Most of you know what means this. We have worked so long, so hard. Tomorrow we begin!' With the exception of Ayaan, the mummy and the brain, the entire room cheered.

'There is perhaps one, though, who knows not why we celebrate today.' The image came to take Ayaan's chin in both of his small, pale hands. She gave him her best smile though she wanted to knock him away from her. 'Why, she does not know real me at all.' That elicited a few chuckles.

'My story is starting in tragedy,' he told her, walking toward the throne that hid his true body. 'Is starting with being hit by car, at tender age of nine years old. Many thought I would die. I did, yet not in right away.' More laughs.