“Get out of my fucking head,” I grind out, shoving off of him and getting to my feet. All around me, the mist eddies and swirls, flickering white with the intermittent lightning.
“Are you sure it was me?” he teases, climbing to his feet. The knife appears in his hand again, and he presses the tip to his thumb, drawing blood. “Maybe you’re just your own worst enemy.”
Stevie flickers through my mind again, but now she feels far away, lost on some distant ocean. Her wild curls whip around her head, her gaze reflecting fear and determination in equal measure. I squeeze my eyes shut to block out the image, but it has the opposite effect, bringing her into vivid color. Her screams echo inside my skull as a column of water swirls around her, lit with magick.
“Stevie!” I shout, frantic, helpless, but it’s too late. My mouth fills again with the briny taste of the sea, and I cough up water.
“There, there, kid.” Ford’s serpent voice is in my ear, hot and close, his hand clamped around my shoulder. “It’s over now.”
Stevie’s image shatters, the water in my mouth evaporating, leaving me alone once again with the guilty conscience and a brother whose ghost will probably haunt me for the rest of my damn life. Maybe longer.
“Did you enjoy my little show?” he asks.
“That was your doing?”
“What do you think?”
I shrug off his hand, turn my back on him. I refuse to let him see how much he’s getting to me.
“That all you got, you sick son of a bitch?” I grumble.
Ford hobbles over to stand in front of me. Folds his arms over his chest and leans back against the rock, taking the weight off his bad leg. Making sure I notice it. That I feel bad about it.
Lightning splits the sky, chased by thunder so loud I feel like I should duck.
I don’t move. Just glare at him, wishing him out of existence. Wondering if maybe, when this is all over, I’ll tell Janelle to take her dirty money and shove it up her ass, let the bastard die in that prison for all I care.
Ford turns his head, spits into the dirt. “You know what the best part of all this is?”
“That you’re just a figment of my imagination, easily obliterated by a bottle of whiskey and half a joint?” The idea buoys me. Something to look forward to later, after we find this damn sword and put this night behind us. I can almost taste the whiskey, feel the warmth of the booze hitting my gut, see the haze of smoke as it works its particular brand of memory magick on everything that happened here…
“Sorry, kid. Wrong answer.” His eyes turn cold, then coal-black. Suddenly his smile is too wide for his mouth, his limbs too long, his teeth too sharp.
I watch in awe as he transforms before my eyes, my heart lodged in my damn throat.
Nightmareis too tame a word for the vile beast standing before me.
Ford opens his mouth, and dozens of oily black scorpions scurry out, their bodies sliced to ribbons by his razor-sharp teeth. They fall dead to the ground, only to be reformed again, bigger and stronger, faster and deadlier. Like some horrible insect army, they converge on me, devouring my bare feet, stabbing, biting, their poison burning through my flesh like acid.
I’m on my knees again, gasping in pain, begging for help. For a hand. For an end.
But Ford only laughs.
My body convulses as the poison takes hold. I can feel my heartbeat slowing, my lungs giving out, my cells dying.
When my brother finally speaks again, his voice is that of a ghoul, haunted and ancient, half-dead, terrifying.
“The best part,” he hisses, “is that you actually believe I’m the worst thing you’ll have to endure here.”
Five
KIRIN
Nothing looks familiar to me here; even the spires themselves have taken on a sinister new cast, like the pale, knobby fingers of corpses clawing at the mist.
Baz and Stevie are nowhere in sight.
I’m not quite sure who decided on the wardrobe for this adventure, but I’m dressed in a black tuxedo, complete with silver bowtie and the tightest dress shoes imaginable. Not ideal for trekking to the stone cathedral and digging up the magickal sword to end all swords, but I suppose they’ll have to do.
