“If you want your pet back, then for the sake of all you hold holy,” he said, “help me. I will not last much longer. The pain is more than I can bear. And I can bear much pain…”
I hesitated. “I don’t even know if I can help. What if we just took back the prism?”
“Then,” he panted, “you would have a prism with an ouroboros imprisoned in it. You need me to open it.”
The ship gave a sudden lurch, and suddenly everything was at forty-five degrees. I lost my footing on the slippery wooden floor and slammed against the wall. I rolled out of the way barely in time to avoid Lord Dogknife, who hit the same spot, only a lot harder. He groaned and pulled himself back to his feet.
Tentatively, I put out my hand and pushed into the glowing light.
Hate.
Hate filled my mind.
The desire for revenge.
Each of the spirits, and there were hundreds of them in that swarm, still roiled and reeled and writhed in pain. They were full of hate; hate for the ship, hate for HEX, hate for Lord Dogknife, hate for Lady Indigo; hate was the only thing they had to distract them from the pain.
It was horrible. All over my mind, hundreds of versions of me were screaming.
I had to stop it.
“It’s over,” I told them, hardly knowing what I was saying. “No one’s going to hurt you again. You’re free. Let go. Move on.” I tried to think of good things to back up the thoughts I was sending them. Hot summer days. Warm winter nights by the fire. Thunderstorms. After a while I ran out of commonplace touchy-feely things and concentrated on family memories. The smell of Dad’s pipe. The squid’s smile. The stone around my neck, the one that my mother gave me before I left.
The stone…
For no reason I could name, I reached in my shirt and pulled it out. It hung in my hand, reflecting the flickers and pulses of the souls. And then I noticed something peculiar: The stone wasn’t just echoing the lights; it was resonating with them, harmonizing with the flickering colors, somehow. And I could see the firefly lights were changing; beginning to pulse and flare in sync. If it had been sound instead of light, I would have been hearing two contrapuntal melodies that were slowly merging.
They were almost ready to believe me. I knew it, somehow. Almost, but not quite.
“Stop fighting them,” I told Dogknife.
“What?”
“As long as you’re fighting them, they’ll keep trying to destroy you. Just stop fighting them and they’ll let you go.”
“Why”—he gasped—“why should I trust you?”
“We’ve just been over all that. Now stop fighting them.”
And he did. He relaxed every muscle, and I could almost hear the tension fade. See? I told the sparks in my head, barely realizing I wasn’t speaking out loud. Now let it go.
The light began to glow more and more brightly, filling the room with a blinding radiance. I closed my eyes, screwed them up tightly, but the light filled my head and my mind. I thought I heard something say good-bye, but I might have just imagined it. Then the light faded, and Mom’s stone went out as well.
The whole room went dark.
“Take it,” said Lord Dogknife’s voice. Something sharp and cold was pressed into my hand.
“Thanks,” I gasped, without thinking.
Something flickered and a nearby candelabra erupted into flames. Lord Dogknife stood next to me. His breath was a pestilence, and the pure hatred gleaming from his eyes could have put the sun out. He bared his teeth, so close that I could see things, like tiny, almost microscopic maggots, crawling on them.
“Do not thank me, boy,” that ruined snout whispered. “The next time we meet, I shall chew your face from your skull. I’ll floss with your guts. You have cost me so much. So do not—ever—thank me.”
He put his head on one side, as if he were listening for something, and then he howled loudly, like a maddened wolf.
“My associates are coming,” he said.
“Open Hue’s prism,” I told him, “or I’m calling back the spirits.”
His sharp teeth glinted in the candlelight. “You are lying. You cannot do that.”
He was right, of course. I couldn’t, but he couldn’t be sure of that. I cupped the stone pendant in my free hand. “Let’s find out,” I said.
His red eyes burned into mine, but he was the first to flinch. The prism began to feel ice-cold, like the hull of a space shuttle must. “It will not open completely in my presence,” growled Lord Dogknife. He grabbed me then, lifted me off my feet. “So, sadly, you must take your leave, Walker.”
He threw me, like an Olympic javelin thrower might casually toss a twig. I flew the length of that huge room, hard enough to break half the bones in my body when I hit the far wall. Which, fortunately, didn’t happen, because Jo threw herself across my path, using her wings to slow us down. We landed softly on the deck, and an instant later the rest of my team had surrounded me. I got to my feet, and would have fallen again when the deck lurched suddenly, if Jakon hadn’t grabbed me. Everything was shuddering now. I could see rivets cracking, and sections of the hull warping.
Dogknife howled again, and the far wall erupted into wood fragments. Something was hanging in the not-space alongside the ship, something that looked like a magic carpet upgraded to a modern day life raft. I could make out Lady Indigo, Scarabus, Neville and a number of other creatures who might have been HEX bigwigs on it.
Lord Dogknife growled and leapt for the raft, landing on it hard enough to catapult a creature on the edge of the raft screaming, out into the Nowhere-at-All.
And then, like a bad memory, the raft was gone, and the Malefic was tearing itself to pieces around us.
“Where’s the portal?” shouted Jai.
I was going to tell him it was below us, but then I realized it wasn’t below us anymore. It was somewhere to my right, a few hundred yards away. “It’s somewhere over there!” I shouted back, pointing.
Around about then, the ceiling started to come down.
We ran.
“Out!” bellowed Josef. “Let’s head for the deck! It’s our only chance!”
“Less talk, more running,” said Jakon.
The prism in my hand felt colder. Then it felt wet. It was a strange feeling, familiar, but I couldn’t stop to open my hand and look at it. I was running, trying to keep up with the rest of the team.
The prism began to drip from my hand as a liquid. It was ice, I realized with a shock. Nothing more than melting ice. I hoped it hadn’t been some kind of trick on Lord Dogknife’s part.
A section of the floor started to crumble beneath us. J/O, Jakon, Jai and Jo made it across to the nearby staircase. Josef and I didn’t. Now there was a gap, easily ten feet wide, with flames erupting from it. Flames were spreading along the floor behind us.
“We’re never going to get out of here alive,” said someone. I think it was me.
The planks beneath me started tumbling away. I stepped back onto what I hoped was more solid footing. It wasn’t.
There was nothing but fire beneath me. But before I could fall into it, somebody picked me up, grabbing me by the belt as the deck vanished completely. “Hey,” said Jo. “Relax, or I might drop you.”
I relaxed. Her wings flapping, she rose above the hole and put me down on an untouched part of the deck. Then she turned back, dropping again to rescue Josef, who was hanging from a spar.
“You okay?” asked Jakon. I nodded. Then I opened my hand, where the prism had been. There was nothing there.
“He tricked me.” I said. “He lied.”
Jakon grinned. “I don’t think so.” She pointed above me.
I looked up. Hue hung in the air above me. He was faint and gray, but there nonetheless. I felt relief wash over me. “Hue! You’re back! Are you okay?”