Spirit And Dust Part 29

"Trouble," I whispered back. "And worse trouble if I can't figure out what to do about it. Carson had a plan, but Maguire just cut him off at the knees."

"Man, can you pick 'em."

"Shut it, Taylor. You don't even know." My eyes were on Carson, who'd gone still with leashed intensity. "If you get loose," I told Taylor, "make a run for it."

He laughed-actually laughed. "Do you know me at all?"

Okay. So none of us were runners.

I was watching Carson for signs he was about to act. I was watching the Jackal for the same thing. I should have been watching Alexis.

I should have remembered that she must wear the Jackal's mark, too.

Suddenly the air crackled with remnant energy, and Maguire was airborne. With a gesture, Alexis had slammed him into the stone wall, loosing a shower of pebbles and dust. Maguire's oak-tree body dropped to the floor with a bone-shattering crack and didn't move.

Neither did anyone else. We watched in shock as Alexis picked her way over the rubble she'd released and bent over her father, reaching into his jacket. When she stood, she held a small gla.s.s vial. In it I could sense the muted blaze of a woman's soul.

The Jackal began to laugh. Around us the brethren shuffled in confusion, not sure whom to back in this mutiny.

Alexis ignored them all. With chilling efficiency she grabbed one of the museum's mummification tools, then placed the fragile vial onto the altar and raised the ancient hammer over it.

"Yield to me, Carson," she said. "Or I let the Jackal have your mom."

"No, Alexis." His fury finally boiled to the surface, though he reined it in with clenched fists. "Let her go, and then I'll yield."

I tore my gaze away and looked at the Jackal, who watched the drama hungrily. If Alexis freed the soul, he would take it anyway.

"Stop it, both of you!" I shouted. In my family, you learn early how to deal with extreme sibling rivalry. "No one gets anything until I unbind the Jackal. So shut up and let me loose."

"Untie her," Alexis ordered the brethren. "But keep a tight hold on her buddy."

The minions weren't so confused they didn't follow orders. They wrenched the ropes off Taylor's and my wrists and hauled us both to our feet.

"Now," said Alexis, with the hammer still poised over the vial. "Release the Jackal from his bonds and complete the ritual."

I rubbed my wrists, shaking the blood back into my hands, and looked from her to Carson. Finally-finally-he met my eye. He gave an infinitesimal glance at Alexis, then the slightest hint of an It will be all right nod.

How, by Saint Peter's giant gold key, was this going to be all right?

"Enough stalling," said the Jackal, reclaiming the room. Didn't Alexis see that he'd allowed her to have her tantrum? His image glowed with power. How did she expect to control that if they were bound?

"Do your magic, witch," the Jackal said to me, and I didn't correct him. "Play your role and you will all live to serve me."

The limb I was on was shaking, and I dug in with my claws.

"Okay," I said. "Let's do this thing. Show me your tattoo."

"Why?" demanded Alexis.

To get her to set the hammer down, away from Carson's mother, of course. But aloud I said, "For a point of focus, in a place you're already bound once to the Jackal. I don't want to get this wrong."

She exhaled in irritation but pushed up her sleeve, revealing a delicate scroll of black ink on her forearm, just below her elbow. "Don't screw this up," Alexis warned. "Or both your boyfriends will wish they'd never been born."

Maybe I could still make this work. I couldn't send the Jackal through the Veil until I'd unknit him from the building. But if my timing was very, very good ...

"Stop stalling," said the Jackal. Then to the Brotherhood he said, "Give her some encouragement."

The sound Taylor made as a brethren's fist hit his kidney was all the encouragement I needed. With the Jackal to my right and the ancient altar and the Maguires to my left, I closed my eyes, braced my feet, and let the psychic hum of the building creep through its stones and into my body.

The song was so out of tune that it hurt my heart. The onceperfectly balanced orchestra of shades and remnants, of psychic echoes and resident ghosts, had skewed to a jangling garageband cacophony.

The Jackal's stolen magic had tainted it, and his struggles to pull free had made it worse, snarling the threads that held him. I picked through the tangle, loosing the ties one by one, and tried not to listen to the warnings of the building's shades.

With one knot left, I instructed them, Tell Carson to open the Veil on my signal; then I opened my eyes a crack to see if he got the message, hoping the ability he'd borrowed from me would last. His gaze flicked to mine, and I knew we were going for it.

Now. The Veil s.h.i.+mmered into being, not smoothly, but there. I snapped my last knot, then formed the threads of the bindings into an arrow and sent it with all my heart, all my strength toward the portal to eternity.

The Jackal roared, and his image stretched and distorted, pulled toward the Veil but caught-snagged on the black jackal statue that had lain with his bones. I'd forgotten the only tie I hadn't made myself.

I cut it with a thought, but the damage was done, inertia destroyed. The Jackal took control of his own path hitting Carson and knocking him to his knees.

Carson grabbed his shoulder with a cry, shuddering as if he'd been hit by a real arrow, muscles heaving as he breathed through some pain or stress and finally quieted.

"Carson?" I asked, when he still didn't move.

"Yeah," he said tightly. "I'm here."

"And the Jackal?" I whispered, almost afraid to know.

He tugged his s.h.i.+rt over his head. On the back of his shoulder, above his shoulder blade, was the jackal tattoo. Unlike Johnson's simple outline and Alexis's girly scrollwork, this ink had character, with a sense of movement and a hint of a wolfish, trickster grin.

More than a hint. In the torchlight, the eyes gleamed with victory.

Carson finally answered, "He's in here, too."

35.

"NO, no, NO!"

Alexis grabbed up the hammer and brought it down toward the glowing gla.s.s vial on the altar. Before it could land, Carson had s.n.a.t.c.hed up the tiny jar, holding it safe in his hand.

"Stop being a brat."

Who was talking? The Jackal or Carson? It sounded like Carson, except for the cavalier way he dismissed the half sister he'd broken all kinds of laws to save.

"A brat?" Alexis echoed, but she sounded back in control of herself. "I gave this to you. I did all the groundwork. I formed the Brotherhood and you left it. You don't deserve the Jackal."

"But I've got it," he said calmly. Turning to the slack-jawed brethren-they'd ditched their masks ages ago-he said to the ones holding Taylor and me, "Let them go. Now."

Whether compelled or just confused, they did. Taylor ran to Maguire, who still hadn't moved, and checked him for serious injuries. I followed, mostly to put distance between me and the henchmen. "He'll be okay until we get an ambulance," Taylor said. "We'd better not move him until the armed response team gets here."

Alexis finally did something clever, seizing the closing window of opportunity to regain the Brotherhood. She swooped over and caught Johnson by the front edge of his robe. "You don't want to wait here for the SWAT team to come in, do you?"

"Of course not," he said, looking down at her with poorly disguised adoration.

"That's what Carson would make you do," she said, sweeping them all up in a wave of charisma a lot like her father's. "All of you who don't want to go to jail, come with me."

No one wanted to go to jail, apparently. I didn't know how to stop them, and Carson seemed to be fighting his own battle.

"Here," he said, holding the vial out to me. I put out my hand, skin already s.h.i.+vering at the proximity of the imprisoned soul, and Carson dropped the tiny gla.s.s into my palm. He was leaning heavily on the altar. "Take care of that for me."

Taylor had stood, and he looked from me, to Carson, to the glow in my hand. "What is it?" he breathed, almost reverent. Maybe a soul was profound enough for even a nonpsychic to feel.

"A soul in a bottle," I said.

He was silent a moment. "You're right. This is World Series weird."

Carson laughed, but it was a shaky sound. "Get Daisy out of here before all h.e.l.l breaks loose, okay?"

"Okay," said Taylor, like they'd formed their own brotherhood. A brotherhood of jacka.s.ses.

"Are we really discussing this again?" I demanded. "Here is exactly where I need to be when h.e.l.l breaks loose."

"No," said Carson, his tone inarguable, all the shakiness gone. "You need to get out. Now."

Taylor grabbed my hand and breathed a warning. "Daisy ..."

The fear in his voice stilled my attempts to shake him off, and I followed his gaze. What he could see from his angle, but I couldn't, not until he pulled me closer to him, was the tattoo on Carson's back.

The jackal silhouette now covered his entire shoulder blade. As I watched, it moved, flexing whippet-lean muscles, and its mouth curved in mocking laughter.

I reached out to touch it, to feel how deep the connection went, to make some wild stab of a guess at how I could pull the Jackal free from Carson without irreparably damaging him. But a charge like electric needles pushed me back, even before Taylor grabbed that hand, too.

"Go," Carson said again, his voice gruff. He'd always sounded older than he was, but now he sounded ancient. "I'll take care of the Brotherhood."

He grabbed his s.h.i.+rt from the floor and shook it out as he followed Alexis and her band from the tomb. As soon as he crossed the threshold, there was a rumble, and a rain of dust that grew into a hail of rubble.

"Let's go," said Taylor. "This place is going to come down."

"What about Maguire?" I didn't think the room would collapse, just revert to how it had been. But a falling slab of hieroglyphs could crush the man all the same. Even if he deserved it.

We supported his neck and dragged him out of danger, into the corridor, which was unmarked by magic or debris. We barely made it before an almighty crash shook the walls and brought the rest of the stone in the tomb behind us smas.h.i.+ng down.

"That came from above us," I said, and ran for the stairs before Taylor could stop me.

At the top of the stairs out of the tomb, the hunting-cat screech of a lion made me stumble over my own feet. My feet and my total lack of a plan. Not that that was enough to stop me, but it slowed me down enough for Taylor to catch up.

"Daisy, stop." He grabbed me when I would have charged out into the main hall, and pulled me into the shelter of the exhibit door. "Listen. That guy-"

"Carson," I corrected. Insisted, because I couldn't let myself believe he'd become the Jackal.

"Carson," Taylor agreed. "He was barely holding on. And he's right. We need to get out of here."

"And do what?" I asked. "Let them fight to the death? Let Alexis kill Carson and take the Jackal? Or let the monster take over Carson completely?"

"How about let the armed response team come in and arrest them all?"

"Taylor!" I wrestled my voice down to a whisper. "There are three man-eating ghost lions out there! You think they can handle that?" There was another crash from the hall, making my point.

"What's the alternative?" he asked.

That was a good question. "I have to unbind the Jackal from Carson before it can totally possess him."

"You can do that?"

"Yes," I said, hoping it was true. I didn't have a plan B.

"Okay. I'll call-" He stopped, with his hand on his fatigues pocket. "My cell phone is gone."

"So's your weapon," I said, in case he hadn't noticed that already. And in case that changed his mind, I slipped through the exhibit door into the first-floor gallery.

"Daisy!" he hissed, hurrying after me from shadow to shadow. Ahead was the main hall, lit by the moonlight streaming through the skylights and amplified by the white marble. I could clearly see the two elephants, and Sue the T. rex in her eternal run. There was mummy dust everywhere, and both totem poles had fallen, like mammoth trees blocking one set of doors.

Everything else I saw with double vision, psychic and physical. Man-eating lions weren't the half of it. They prowled through ranks and ranks of hunters and soldiers from every culture represented in the museum and maybe a few that weren't. On one side of the hall were Alexis and the Brotherhood. On the other, facing them and their spirit host of animals and ancient warriors, was Carson, standing alone.

Alone, but somehow equal to all that. Even from the shadows I could feel the hum of power from him.

"Last chance to give it up, Carson!" called Alexis.

"It's not that easy, Lex," he said, his voice carrying across the hall. "The Jackal chose me. You have to convince him."

"I can do that."

She said it with conviction, and it was clear she expected something amazing to happen. But her warriors just ... stood there.

The Brotherhood must have felt something. Johnson stared at his tattoo with disbelief, but it was Alexis who screeched, "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" loud enough to rattle the rafters.

Carson raised his hand as if catching a baseball, and it took me a minute to realize what I was not seeing. The Black Jackal had sent the Brotherhood after Carson and me armed with a share of all his power. And Carson had just called it all back.

"The Jackal giveth," he said, "and the Jackal taketh away."