It worked. The axe didn’t fall.
For a split second, I was suffused with a sense of power and triumph. Sinclair, who was closest to Stacey, sprinted forward to haul her behind him with one arm, breaking her paralysis and backing her out of danger.
And then the Tall Man turned his skull in my direction, gas-lamp blue flames flickering in his eye sockets, the end of my mental bullwhip wrapped around his bony fingers, and I realized I couldn’t retract my energy, realized he was drawing on it, the flames leaping higher, and I could see the malevolent joy of the obeah man’s spirit in those fiery hollows, riding the madness of Talman Brannigan’s ghost like some supernatural jockey, working death magic and sowing destruction, draining my very life essence to gain even more strength.
All the power and triumph I’d felt leached out of me, pouring into the apparition along the invisible tether that joined us, the tether I’d created. The sounds of shouting in the background grew faint and muffled. It felt like I was falling into a deep well of sleep, and I wondered if this was what dying was like. My knees hit the concrete, the spirit lantern falling from my nerveless fingers.
If I’d had the strength to cry, I would have.
A voice raised in bronze-edged fury rent the night, penetrating the cotton wool that seemed to be stuffed into my ears.
Lurine had shifted, her basilisk stare fixed on the Tall Man behind the feathered mask as her powerful coils lashed out to encircle the skeleton’s armor-clad waist. The invisible tether broke as he turned his attention to chopping at her with his axe, and I fell to my hands and knees in the street.
“God’s blood, Daisy!” Stefan’s hand jerked me partially upright, his eyes searching mine, pupils as dark as night. “I told you not to use it as a weapon!”
“I know,” I whispered. “But—”
Somewhere beyond us, Lurine snarled in ancient Greek, a note of pain mixed with the fury.
“Tend to her,” Stefan said to Cody, stepping back to draw his sword. “Kyria!” he called to Lurine. “Guard the innocents, leave the creature to me!”
“Daisy.” Cody crouched in front of me. “Are you with us?”
I managed to shift one hand to point at the spirit lantern, lying on the street a foot away. “Take it.”
Cody hesitated, then gave a grim nod, picking it up and opening the shutter. Nothing happened. He swore, gave it a shake, and tried again, to no avail. “Either it’s broken, or it has to be you, Daise.” He wrapped my limp fingers around the lantern. “Try.”
I promptly dropped the lantern, then fumbled for it on the ground. Sitting on my heels, I struggled to pry open the shutter. It seemed to take forever, the sound of steel clashing against steel ringing in my unstoppered ears as Stefan engaged the Tall Man, but at last I succeeded. Blue-white light spilled forth, illuminating the combatants’ lower legs and feet, shinbones behind steel greaves, blue jeans and motorcycle boots. Somewhere something was buzzing, a shrill voice spitting out curses.
“Daisy.” Cody’s voice was strained and urgent. I found the strength, barely, to lift my chin and look up. “Daisy, we need you.”
I looked past him. It was Jojo I’d heard, the joe-pye weed fairy darting around Stefan’s head, slingshot in hand, hurling pebbles at the Tall Man’s eye sockets. With no shield or armor, Stefan had his leather jacket wrapped around his left arm, and he was fighting for his life against an immensely tall armor-clad opponent who couldn’t be killed. Off to the side, Lurine had drawn herself to her full height, coils stirring as she stood guard over Sinclair and Stacey.
“Daisy!”
I placed my free hand on the concrete, pushing and trying to rise. My arms trembled with the effort. “Sorry,” I whispered.
“Beslubbering, addlepated apparition!” Jojo shrilled, amethyst eyes ablaze, tattered wings gone dry and brown, beating the air as she fitted another pebble into her slingshot of woven grass. “Vile, grave-ridden—”
In the heat of her furious passion, she darted too close to the Tall Man. It happened so fast, the axe rising and falling in a swift flash. One second, Jojo was there in midair, a look of terrible agony on her tiny face.
Then, gone. A flurry of glittering pollen drifted away, and a limp, ragged stalk of joe-pye weed fell to the street.
A wave of rage filled me, lifting me to my feet with an incoherent shout. I held up the spirit lantern, sending the Tall Man’s bony shadow stretching the length of the street. The concrete street, unfortunately.
“Over there!” Cody pointed toward a patch of landscaping on the corner, tall plumes of grass nodding. “Either corner, Daise!”
“Go!” I shouted, moving sideways to angle the Tall Man’s shadow toward the far corner. My arm was still trembling with the effort, but the anger burning inside me gave me strength. “Anyone who can! Go!”
Cody was already dodging past the Tall Man, but the Tall Man was pressing Stefan backward toward me, and I had to retreat. All along the sidewalks, the remaining spectators were shouting and shoving in a frantic effort to flee the scene, terrified parade participants crowding them from behind.
“Daise!” On the near corner, Jen signaled me with raised arms, waving wildly, light glinting off the hammer. Amid the chaos, she’d managed to slip down the street unseen. “Here!”
“Bingo,” I whispered, sidling to the left to send the Tall Man’s shadow in her direction. She hammered the nail into the soil with one solid thwack.
And nothing happened.
The Tall Man loosed another booming laugh, making the windows rattle all along the street. The capering figure in the leisure suit echoed it with a demented cackle.
Shit.
Hel had warned me that the spirit lantern and an iron nail might not work on Grandpa Morgan’s duppy because his spirit had never been laid to rest in the first place. And it didn’t work on the Tall Man because he wasn’t a spirit; he was flesh and bone, or at least bone and metal-plate, thanks to former inventor and insane agoraphobic Clancy Brannigan. Although I guess he wasn’t agoraphobic anymore, since he’d emerged from his lair for the first time in decades. Maybe being possessed by a duppy before it ditches you to animate your great-grandfather’s corpse has that effect.
“Man of science, my ass!” I shouted across the intersection at him.
He cackled in reply. Maybe he wasn’t agoraphobic, but whatever shreds of sanity he’d been clinging to were gone.
“Hel’s liaison,” Stefan said in a formal tone, parrying another mighty swipe of the Tall Man’s axe. “I fear my strength is not without limits. The same does not appear true of the creature.”
I winced. “Sorry!”
I knew what I had to do. I just didn’t know how the hell I was going to do it. I set down the spirit lantern. Dauda-dagr sang as I drew it, the hilt cool and reassuring against my palm. The ridge of hair along my tail prickled as I assessed the embattled Tall Man for a weakness in his armor at a vital point.
There was one—there, when he turned his skull, his spine was exposed beneath his helmet at the nape of his neck.
Only I hadn’t the faintest idea how to reach it.
There was a thrumming sound from the rooftop of one of the buildings on the intersection, one that had sat empty and for sale since the Birchwood Grill it once housed had closed. A thrumming sound followed by a splat.