Long Hot Summoning (28 page)

“Ah. Yes.” Comprehension dawned slowly. “You were washing them for me.” His hand trembled slightly as he reclaimed his clothing.

“You all right, Dr. Rebik? You’re looking some poorly.”

“Some poorly?” The archaeologist managed a tired smile. “It’s the waiting.

It’s hard on Meryat.”

“Looks like it’s hard on you.”

“We are as one in this.”

“Okay. Sure.” Frowning slightly, Dean watched as Dr. Rebik slipped back into his room. Meryat hadn’t moved. If he didn’t know better, he’d have to say she looked dead. As he stepped away from the door, he noticed a worn, brown leather wallet lying on the floor.

The way those sweatpants had been sagging, it had probably fallen from a pocket.

Dean bent, scooped it up, and lifted his hand to knock again.

Austin cleared his throat.

Don’t look at the cat. Just give it back.

As subtlety didn’t seem to be working, Austin sank a claw into Dean’s ankle just above his work boot.

“Son of . . .” He danced down the hall, collapsing against the wall by room one. “What’d you do that for, then?”

“Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

“About what? Tetanus?”

“About what’s in his wallet.”

“An amulet controlling his will? A note asking us to save him?” Austin speared him with a pointed gaze. “You didn’t used to be this sarcastic.”

“I didn’t used to live with you!”

“Maybe he dropped it on purpose, did you think of that? Maybe it’s a cry for help.”

“You’re reaching.”

“You’re opening it.”

And he was. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but he found he couldn’t give the wallet back unexamined. It
had
fallen some conveniently. “I can’t believe I’m after doing this.”

“I can’t believe it’s taking you so long.”

Credit cards. Health card. Driver’s license . . . His eyes widened. If forced to guess, he’d have said Dr. Rebik was in his mid to late sixties.

According to his driver’s license, he was thirty-eight.

And he looked worse than his picture.

“I was right.”

“I know.”

“You were wrong.”

“Yeah. I got that.”

“There’s a song, you know. When I’m right and you’re wrong.” Dean stopped pacing long enough to glare at the cat. “Don’t sing it.” Austin sat down on the dining room table, stuck a foot in the air, and began washing his butt.

“Very subtle.” The dining room was exactly fourteen paces long. Provided he shortened the last step. “What do we do now?”

“You mean now that you admit I’m right?”

“Yes!”

“Well, we have to stop her. She’s sucking your life force out and what’s to say she won’t get tired of waiting for Claire and start sucking harder.”

“Lance said he knew how to stop her.”

“Which would be relevant if Lance wasn’t off with Claire.”

“Can we use the elevator on her?”

Austin sat up and shook his head. “It’s a little obvious. I suspect she’d sense it. What are you doing?”

Dean paused in the middle of crumpling up a sheet of newspaper. “I’m going to clean the windows. It’s what I do when I need to think.” The two huge windows in the dining room were already spotless, but he sprayed them with a vinegar-and-water solution and began to rub.

“That’s a very annoying noise.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re not going to stop, are you?”

“No.”

When the paper was wet, he tossed it into the garbage and reached for another sheet. As he pulled it off the early edition, Austin’s paw snaked out and smacked it back down.

“There’s our answer!”

Dean scanned the headlines and frowned. “The waterfront renewal project?”

“No. The life-sized stone statue found at the mall!”

“
The
mall?”

“The very one! And you know what a life-sized stone statue means.”

“Bad garden art?”

“Basilisk! We go to the mall. We capture it. We turn Meryat to stone!”

“Claire . . .”

“You want Claire coming home to find Meryat waiting for her.” No. He didn’t. “How do we capture a basilisk without turning to stone ourselves?

Austin stared up at him in disbelief. “Do I have to think of
everything?”
TWELVE

While Keepers spent pretty much their entire lives fighting to keep the world safe, they didn’t usually get involved in
actual
fighting of the hand-to-hand, teeth-to-arm, knees-to-groin variety. And no matter how many Saturday afternoons got wasted watching badly dubbed kung fu movies, it didn’t help.

Diana realized this about ten seconds into the fight. She couldn’t reach the possibilities, she’d lost her prepared defenses, and she had no idea how to disable her opponents with a shopping cart. Not that there was a shopping cart handy.

Running, while the intelligent response, had got them exactly seven paces closer to the throne before two of the giant bugs-moving in that creepy, skittery,
fast
way that giant bugs had laid claim to since the old black-and-white movie days-had cut them off. Diving out of the way of a flailing forearm, or foreleg, or sixleg or whatever it was called on a bug, Diana smacked her head against the floor and, just for an instant, heard the voice of Ms. McBride, her last biology teacher.

“. . .
size to mass ratio
...”

Yeah. That was helpful.

Fortunately, her belief that the meat-minds were too clumsy to simultaneously walk and breathe made them an avoidable threat for the most part. The bugs were the problem. Just as the bugs had been the problem in the access corridor.

“Diana, are you listening?”

Apparently not.

She caught a quick glimpse of Kris going up and over a meat-mind, her black hightops digging into knees, thighs, hips, chest, and shoulders like they were part of her own personal jungle gym. As the mall elf leaped clear, the pursuing bug knocked the meat-mind ass over tip and got itself tangled in the sudden barricade of flailing arms and legs. Diana wasted a moment imagining what Kris could do with a shopping cart, then, at the last possible instant, dropped flat and slid under a descending carapace.

And let’s hear it for polished marble floors!
she noted as her slide put her considerably closer to the wand. She could see it, lying all pink and plastic on the steps of the throne, but she couldn’t . . . quite . . . reach . . .

The bug’s leg caught her a glancing blow, skidding her a couple of meters in the wrong direction.

“This
will
be on the final exam.”

What will?

She’d written her final biology exam only ten days ago.
You’d think I’d
remember more of it.
Which was either a scathing indictment of the public school system, or she should start worrying about her short-term memory.

Curved, swordlike mandibles cut through the back of her sweater and hoisted her onto her feet.

Mandibles. Maxillae. Labium or lower lip.

Her final exam’d had an entire section on bugs. Class Insecta. A useless spewing of information she assumed she’d never need again-her present situation having been unanticipated at the time. Evidently, a little shortsighted of her.

Insects. Nearly a million known species.

Every kind of land environment supports a flourishing insect population.

“So, Ms. McBride, if bugs are so great, how come they aren’t taking over the
world like in them old movies?”

Diana smiled and mentally thanked Daryl Mills. The bug holding her shuddered as its exoskeleton cracked in a dozen places with a sound like cheap wineglasses hitting a concrete floor. She jumped clear as it collapsed under its own weight. Most of a sperm whale’s weight was supported by water. Elephants had evolved massive bones and muscles to deal with their bulk. Size/mass ratio.

Giant bugs were impossible.

So there.

The sound of breaking glass filled the throne room and pieces of chitin buzzed around like shrapnel. The Shadowlord shrieked like a hockey mom after a bad call.

Three steps and she’d be at the dais. Up two stairs and she’d have the wand.

One moment after that, it would all be over but the fat lady singing. Whatever that meant.

Three steps and . . .

Something caught her between the shoulder blades and she went down, hard.

Epicuticle,
she thought muzzily as it bounced and landed about two centimeters from her nose.
This isn’t . . .

A booted foot pressed hard against the back of her neck.

. . .
good
.

She swung out as a hand in her hair dragged her up onto her knees but only succeeded in overbalancing and nearly scalping herself. Blinking away memories of grade school ponytails so tight she looked like Mr. Spock’s kid sister, Diana screamed

“RUN!” over the Shadowlord’s ultimatum that Kris surrender.

“What did you listen to him for?” she demanded a moment later as two meat-minds dropped Kris beside her.

The mall elf got shakily to her knees. “Like I was going to leave you here alone?”

How romantic.
Well, since you asked, not very.
“You could have gone for help!”

“As if. It’s wall to friggin‘ wall of meat-minds out there. Couldn’t get past them.”

Okay. Even less romantic.

“So I remembered something I was told, way back,” Kris continued. “If you’re going to lose anyway, surrender
before
they kick your ass-not after.”

“Arthur?”

“My mom.”

“Smart lady.”

“That time.”

“Are you two finished catching up?” the Shadowlord snarled.

“So, ‘rents still together?” Diana asked, shuffling around so that she was facing the other girl.

The mall elf stared at her for a moment, then disbelief disappeared behind a gleeful smile as she caught on. When it seems like there’s no options left, there’s
always
the option of being a pain in the ass. “Nah, my dad split about six years ago.

I’m guessin‘ you’ve got the whole happy suburban family thing going down?”

“Oh, yeah. We’re a walking, talking WASP cliché except for that whole Keeper, Cousin, cat thing.”

“Silence!” At some point the Shadowlord had retrieved his club, and he was stroking it as he loomed over them.

“You know if you think that looks threatening . . .” Diana nodded toward the club. “. . . you’re so wrong. It’s screaming, ‘hey, girls, look at my big substitute.’

She’d been a little worried she might provoke him into actually using the club, but, fortunately, he went with the personal touch. The backhand lifted her off her knees and threw her back over the steps of the dais. Moving around to face Kris had placed her at exactly the right angle-no brainer to figure he’d lash out-and she grabbed the wand as she sprawled over it, stuffing it down into the front of her pants.

Diana’d seen the same stunt on a television show once. On a seventeen-inch screen it hadn’t looked as painful as it really was. Bells and whistles were still going off inside her skull as a pair of meat-minds hauled her onto her feet and dragged her back before the Shadowlord.

“Foolish little girl. I should kill you where you stand.”

“Not actually standing here ... Ow!” The dangling she could cope with, but the shaking was a bit over the top. “Besides, you can’t kill me or you’d have already done it. And do you know why you can’t kill me?” For the same reason she hadn’t used the wand the moment her fingers closed around it. “Because you’re not the Big Bad.” She was not wasting their one chance on a flunky. “Killing me would release all sorts of energy down here. Energy you can’t control. That’s why you didn’t kill me . . . us,” she corrected, glancing over at Kris. “. . . before. That’s why you can’t kill me now.”

“I can’t, but that from where I came, can.” Diana blinked. Even her eyelashes hurt. “What?”

“I speak of the Pit. The Darkness. The . . .”

“Yeah. Okay. I get it. You can’t. Hell can. It may have split you off, and given you a personality-of sorts-but it still keeps you under its thumb.”

“That’s not . . .”

“Hey, denial; not just a river in Egypt. Face it, Hell’s just using you. In fact, there really isn’t a
you
at all. You don’t have a name, you don’t have an identity; you’re just an itty-bitty part of a greater whole. Hell doesn’t trust you with any
real
power.” As the last words left her mouth, Diana knew she’d. made a mistake. The Shadowlord had been frowning as he listened to her, clearly not liking what she had to say-possibly not liking it enough to challenge Hell and cause a distraction, allowing her to seal the hole and shut down the segue thus saving the world-but at
trust,
he smiled.

“Of course, Hell doesn’t trust me,” he said calmly. “Hell is me. And I am Hell.”

“A little-bitty part . . .”

“Enough. Your blatant attempt to drive a wedge between me and my origin might have worked were we in the sort of fairy tale where the good guys always win, but we’re . . .”

“In the subbasement of an imaginary shopping mall,” Diana finished as dryly as her current position allowed.
Oh, great, I’m starting to sound like Claire.

He stepped forward and pressed the end of his club under Diana’s chin, forcing her head back. “What part of ‘enough’ are you having difficulty understanding?”

“Well, duh; the part where I do anything you say.”

“Then perhaps you should consider this . . .” Had he been breathing, his breath would have caressed her cheek. As it was, she felt a faint frisson of fear spread out from the closest point between them, as though his proximity caused an involuntary physical reaction. “... I can’t kill you, but I can bludgeon you senseless.”

“Right. Enough; adverb. To put an end to an action.” Clearly she’d been paying more attention in English than biology, and she really
really
wished he’d back away. “As in enough taunting the Shadowlord. I should stop it. I can do that.”

“Good.”

“Is there any particular reason you asked the three-thousand-year-old, reanimated Egyptian mummy that’s been sucking out your life force if there was anything we could get her while we’re at the mall?”

“I was just being polite,” Dean protested as he turned off Sir John A.