Rogue (27 page)

Lex had to restrain herself from lunging forward, but whether it was to grab the Wrong Book or smack him, she wasn’t sure.

“You really think you can destroy the portal?” Norwood continued in a mocking tone. “Wait, wait, not just the one—all of them?”

“I
know
I can destroy the portal,” Uncle Mort corrected him.

Norwood snorted. “Well, I hope you can do it from the Hole, because that’s where you’re going to be in about five minutes.”

Uncle Mort decided to ignore him. “Knell, this is
going
to happen,” he said, addressing her instead. “With or without your permission. We don’t want to hurt you, but we will if we have to. I don’t blame you for not heeding my previous warnings; I know that my actions in the past have not earned me your trust. But things are bad.” He stood up and took a step toward her. “They’re at their breaking point. If we don’t do something to stop this erosion, the Afterlife will disappear.”

“Bullshit,” Norwood spat, getting angrier. “The Afterlife is fine. You’re just using all this doomsday crap as an excuse!”

He’s losing it
, Lex thought, staring at his reddening hands.

“Tell her, Lex—tell her how many people you’ve Damned! How you’re a threat to this world and everyone in it!” Norwood was yelling so hard, flecks of spit were flying out of his mouth.

But she couldn’t take her eyes off his hands. “Uncle Mort—”

“How you Damned my wife! My men!” He inhaled deeply. “The president!”

Lex blinked. “What?”

“What?” said Knell.

It happened so fast, and he was standing so close to her, no one could have stopped him. The moment Norwood’s finger touched the president’s arm, she burst into flame.

When the darkness cleared and Knell was nothing more than a crispy mass on the floor, no one moved. No one spoke until Uncle Mort let out a groan, sounding more exasperated than anything. “Oh, Woody,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “You stupid son of a bitch.”

Norwood grinned. “Not as stupid as the band of criminals who so blatantly stormed the president’s office and Damned her in cold blood. And without your loyal contingent of tontd grownspeople here to defend you, it’s your word against mine.” He pulled a gun out from his waistband and aimed it at them, his eyes even more demented than they’d been at the battle in Grave. “Who do you think they’ll believe?”

A million things were running through Lex’s mind. And yet somewhere amid the fog of what just happened, one thought above all came to the surface. She glanced at Uncle Mort, who was looking at Pandora and seemed to be thinking the same thing. According to Grimsphere law, if Knell was dead . . . 

Then Uncle Mort was now president of the Grimsphere. Right?

“You sniveling snollygoster!” Pandora shouted at Norwood, stomping up to the desk. “What the hell is the matter with you? Did a team of rats gnaw out the contents of your head and refill it with their own droppings? Because YOU, sir, are the biggest shit-for-brains I’ve
EVER
—”

Exhaling impatiently, Norwood shot her in the chest.

The Juniors screamed as she fell to the floor, but Uncle Mort stood his ground, his face growing paler by the second.

Norwood took aim at Uncle Mort next, his face exuding a confidence that everything was going exactly according to plan. Well, his plan, at least. Obviously not Knell’s. “Now, it occurs to me—and Mort, I’m sure you’ll agree—that the good people of the Grimsphere will be looking for some strong leadership now, in the wake of this tragic upheaval. Of course, I haven’t served as many years as you have, but I
do
have some experience with taking troubled and corrupt governments under my wing. So who better to serve them than—”

With another happy ding, the second elevator opened. But to the Croakers’ dismay, Skyla wasn’t in it. Stepping out instead was a handful of masked guards led by Boulder, who was clutching—

“Elysia!” Lex shouted. Elysia looked scared and small, but otherwise unharmed. She took one glance at Ferbus’s injury and started to cry out, but Boulder held her tightly, one massive hand on her shoulder and the other over her mouth. Driggs swooped in behind her, stifling a yell when he spotted Dora’s lifeless body.

Norwood slapped on a look of horror and immediately lowered his gun. “They Damned the president!” he shouted in mock fear, rushing out from behind the desk to the guards. “Arrest them!”

The guards were stunned into inaction for a moment, but they soon unholstered their weapons and trained them on the Croakers. Uncle Mort and company swiveled around to face them, backs to the desk. Both sides were now in neat little lines; if everyone hadn’t wanted to kill one another, they could have started a nice game of red rover.

Norwood pretended to cower behind the big guard, but his jeers kept coming. “You’re outnumbered, Mort. You’re outranked. You’re done. Cooperate, and we’ll go easy on you. I mean, you’ll all get life in the Hole—like you were supposed to in the
first
place—but if you go quietly, we won’t have to get violent.”

Lex looked from Ferbus’s dripping wrist to Dora’s still body on the floor. “Yeah,” she growled under her breath. “Can’t have that, can we?”

“Hands on your head,” Boulder ordered the Croakers. “Now!”

Uncle Mort started to raise his arms, but at the last second he gave Lex and Ferbus a shove. “Behind the desk!” he shouted. They flung themselves over the top of the president’s huge stone desk and took shelter under it, queasily shoving Knell’s scorched body out of the way to make room.

Lex peeked out over the top. Elysia had just elbowed Boulder in the groin, wriggled out of his arms, and was running toward the desk to join them. Boulder grunted and shouted for his team to spread out and shoot—which they did, with real guns instead of stun guns this tin gveled ame. Panicked, Uncle Mort pulled out his own gun and started shooting back.

But Lex was the only one to notice the empty elevator door close.

Ignoring that for now, she ducked back down behind the desk and gave Elysia a quick hug. “Are you okay?”

Elysia let out a cry when she saw Pandora, then turned to Ferbus. “I’m fine. What happened to him?” He was sitting against the back of the desk with his head drooping, eyes closed. “Ferbus! Wake up!”

Ferbus groaned and opened one eye. “Hey, beautiful,” he slurred, holding up his mangled hand. “Gimme five.” He let out a gurgled laugh. “No, really, gimme. I need the fingers.”

“He lost a lot of blood,” Lex explained. “I think he’s getting loopy.”

Driggs popped in next to her, his face white. “Oh shit, Ferb.” Then, even more horror dawning, he looked around the room, spotting Bang alone in the elevator. “Where’s Pip?” he asked Lex.

She shook her head. Driggs’s face fell, and Elysia burst into a fresh batch of tears.

Uncle Mort nudged Lex. With a friggin’ gun. “Here. Point that way, pull the trigger.”

Lex flinched. She tried not to look at Pandora, whom Driggs had moved on to, hovering over her in shock. “I can’t shoot anyone!”

Even in the midst of a shootout, Uncle Mort found the time to roll his eyes. “Lex, in your short but sinful life you’ve lied, cheated, stolen, Damned scads of people, and started a war. Now is not the time to develop a conscience.”

Lex swallowed. Heart in her throat, she peeked her head up, held the gun out in front of her, and started shooting.

“To the left,” Driggs whispered in her ear. He’d materialized right next to her and was watching the room. “Right. No—left. You’re a terrible shot, Lex.”

“Sorry. Forgot to make time for target practice.”

Ding
.

Lex held her breath. The guards kept shooting; no one else seemed to have heard it or to notice as one more guard emerged from the elevator.

It wasn’t until that guard yanked a scythe out of her pocket and grabbed Norwood around the neck that she caught their attention.

“Hold your fire!” Skyla shouted, holding the blade to Norwood’s throat. Taken completely by surprise, he dropped both his gun and his scythe.

“Shoot, and I’ll kill him,” she said.

The room went silent. Guns were aimed, but none were fired.

“Drop your weapon,” the big guard told her.

Skyla let out a short laugh. “Come on, Boulder,” she said. “You know as well as I do that you could fill me to the brim with bullets and I’d still have time to slit his throat on the way down.”

Boulder gripped his weapon, but didn’t answer.

“Lex, your Lifeglass,” Uncle Mort whispered in her ear, urgent. “Give it to me.”

Confused, Lex pulled it out and handed it to him. Images started to flash through the glass as he shook it, trying to look for something.

“What’s the matter with you?” Norwood was yelling at Boulder, gasping for air. “Shoot her!”

“Do it, and we’re both dead,” Skyla warned.

The guards looked highly uncomfortable with this situation, Boulder in particular. Until today Skyla had been their superior, their mayor. He obviously trusted her in some capacity or had a history with her, but the president had given Norwood a fair amount of authority since he arrived. Plus he was still the mayor of Croak—Boulder was obligated to protect him. “Hold your fire,” he instructed the other guards, his mind churning.

“You idiot!” Norwood was trying to tear Skyla’s arm away from his neck, but the necHold yowoman was stronger than she looked. It barely seemed to take any effort to restrain him.
“SHOOT HER!”
His face was getting redder and redder. His hands opened and closed.

Lex tensed. She knew that look.

She knew that feeling.

“Hurry up!” she told Uncle Mort, who was still peering into the Lifeglass. “He’s going to Damn her too!”

The Lifeglass flickered once more, and Uncle Mort smiled.

“I’m gonna go ahead and call a time-out,” he announced, standing up from behind the desk, “while we go to the instant replay.”

He held up the Lifeglass, and there it was, plain for all to see: President Knell being Damned—by Norwood.

The guards shifted their aim as Skyla dropped Norwood to the floor. He looked stunned; even he realized how much he had just doomed himself.

Mayor or not, he’d assassinated the president.

He looked up at the sloped ceiling as if hoping to receive further instructions from on high, but found only a pair of guards closing in on him. “I—I just came here to transport a prisoner, and—the president asked me to stay on as an advisor,” he rambled. “I had nothing to do with this, I swear! They’re tricking you!”

But just as they were about to grab him, his expression went hard again. “I’ll Damn you too!” He stood up and held his hands out in front of him. The guards froze.

“Why aren’t they shooting?” Lex said to Uncle Mort. “He can’t Damn them from a distance; he has to touch them!”

“Yeah, but
they
don’t know that,” Uncle Mort said.

Lex opened her mouth to enlighten them, but Uncle Mort hissed “No!” and pulled her closer to him. “He’s doing a marvelous job of distracting them.” Skyla appeared over the top of the desk and dropped down beside them. “Now we can seal the portal.”

“With what?” Lex asked. She eyed Uncle Mort’s bag, dying to find out what was the one thing in the world that could destroy a portal.

But instead of going for his bag, Uncle Mort reached over the top of the desk and grabbed the computer keyboard. “Here,” he said, giving it to Skyla. “Do your thing.”

Handing off her scythe to Elysia, Skyla took the keyboard from him and started to type. Lex noticed that her hands were shaking. Uncle Mort noticed too, because he put his hand on her knee.

Skyla hit enter, then looked at the vault door. When nothing happened, she frowned. “That was the code!”

“Shhh,” Uncle Mort said. He took her face in his hands and spoke in a calm voice. “Try it again.”

Skyla took a deep breath and slowly retyped. This time when she hit enter, the vault door swung out into the open sky.

Lex grinned. The tricked-out windows of the office may have blocked the souls, but a door was still a door. She looked back at Uncle Mort. He was still trying to calm Skyla down, so Lex stepped inside the Afterlife—just for a minute, for one last look.

Unlike in Croak, there were no wrestling presidents to greet her. In fact, the space was deserted, which wasn’t surprising; with the entire structure of Necropolis acting as its atrium, there was no need for souls to hang around the main entrance.

“Hey, douchenozzle.”

“Gah!” The Afterlife wasn’t as deserted as Lex thought. “Stop doing that!”

Cordy peered into the office. “Are we winning?”

“I think we’re currently at a standoff,” Lex whispered. “What are you doing here?” She spotted Kloo approaching in the distance, followed by Tut. What was this, a party in her honor?

And then it hit her. The portals were closing. Forever.

They were coming to say com followgoodbye.

Lex gripped the bottom of her hoodie. She needed something to hold on to. “No,” she whispered to Cordy. “I’m not ready yet. When we go back to Croak to deal with the vault there, I’ll meet up with you then!”

Cordy shook her head. “You heard Uncle Mort. Once this portal-closing party gets started, we’re all going to be running around like undead chickens with our undead heads cut off, trying to keep the Afterlife together.”

“But—”

“Lex,” Cordy said in a firm voice. “Do what you have to do. Stop whining, find Mom and Dad, and fix up this increasingly crappy craphole of an Afterlife. You feel me, bro?”

“No,
bro
, I don’t—”

“Hi, Lex!” Kloo jumped in. “They’re closing up the Afterlife, huh?”

Lex bit back the rest of her argument with Cordy. “Yeah. Looks that way.”

“Hope it works.”

“Me too.” Lex paused. Kloo was one of the souls who’d suffered from memory loss, and they’d always been cautious about upsetting her. But if this really was the last time Lex would ever see her . . . 

“Hey, Kloo? His name was Ayjay.”

Cordy shot her a displeased look, but Lex was defiant. Kloo, meanwhile, frowned. “Ayjay?” She thought about it harder, and Lex kept watching her face until the tiniest hint of something sparked in her eye. Kloo shook her head, and it was gone—