A Haunted House Appears

Part Seven of "North of Midnight," a Spell Weaver Novella

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Where we left off: Alexandra and the others were just beginning to get the upper hand against Dracula and the remaining Formorians when Elatha returned from Erebus—with Umbra’s head.

It wasn’t easy to shake me. I’d fought vampires since I was a kid. And tonight had already offered its share of unpleasant surprises. But seeing the severed head of someone I’d just been fighting side by side with a few minutes ago was very nearly too much for me.

I froze, feeling the way superstitious folks insisted people felt when someone stepped on their future grave—cold, fearful, and disoriented. As far as I could tell, the others felt the same.

The exception was Antonio, caught among his own innate magic, a faerie death curse, and the presence of vampire blood in his system. He looked at the head of Umbra, whom he had known better than I had, and his eyes reddened almost as a vampire’s might. He threw back his head and screamed in a way that sounded neither vampiric nor human. The vampires backed away even further than they had from the sunlight radiated by the blade I was holding. Even Elatha, who would make a skillful poker player, betrayed his shock. He didn’t know what to think of Antonio.

Not really understanding the situation, the former Formorian king shoved the head closer to Antonio, as if to frighten him into submission. But it had the opposite effect. Antonio’s love magic, which had been merely a protective barrier. flared in Elatha’s direction, forcing him back.

Elatha’s move also gave me exactly what I didn’t want—a closer view of the head. It looked a little fuzzy, and not a single drop of blood fell from the severed neck.

The head was an illusion, which meant that Umbra might still be alive. But I wasn’t sure whether to tell Antonio or not. Would he stay more aggressive, or would he fall back into a more passive pattern? There was no easy way to know—and we needed him aggressive right now.

“Stay back, or I’ll break his neck!” yelled Dracula, who was once again gripping Jimmie’s throat.

“Break his neck, and I’ll break you,” said Antonio—his first articulate words since entering the cemetery. The tone was more like that of a movie villain than like Antonio’s normal voice, but at this point, I’d take whatever sign I could get that there was still a functioning mind in his body.

“I’m faster,” said Elatha, though it was hard for any of us to miss the fact that Dracula was dragging Jimmie further away or that the purple fog concealing the Formorian women was drifting away from us.

The bad guys were retreating—but if we let them, we’d lose Jimmie, and maybe Umbra. She was apparently still alive, but she hadn’t popped out of the nearest shadow yet. Perhaps she couldn’t.

Elatha dropped the head and braced to charge, sword ready to swing in mid-run if needed. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to parry his sword stroke. Nor could any of us, but Khalid was firing arrows before Elatha got any further, forcing him to use his best sword work to knock them out of the air. He couldn’t evade the four blasts of different kinds of energy from each one, though. Each burst made him wince, even though none of the energies were specifically anti-Formorian.

Lucas and I returned to the strategy we’d used against earlier against Dracula—approaching from two different sides, forcing Elatha to divide is attention at a point when he had little to spare.

With his allies fast disappearing, Elatha flew up into the air. Khalid followed, but he clearly wasn’t used to shooting in midair while flying. Elatha laughed and sped away. Khalid, knowing the dangers of separating from us, landed nearby.

The former Formorian king was gone. The vampires who had cowered at the edge of the sunlight left with Dracula. The purple fog was just a memory. Only the two goat-headed Formorian archers, immobilized if not killed by Umbra’s venomous dagger, remained.

But we were down two people and no closer to recovering the other two.

“Umbra’s still alive,” I said. “The head was an illusion.”

“It figures,” said Khalid. “It’s gone now. But that leaves us the question of where she is.”

“We need to go after Jimmie,” said Lucas.

“I can help with that,” said Antonio. His eyes were no longer red, but he still didn’t sound like himself. I wondered if he ever would.

Out of him oozed a silvery light that resolved itself into a vaguely human form. It had to be the ghost Jimmie had sent into Antonio to try to fool the death curse. I had no sheath for the sword, but I put it behind my back so that the sunlight wouldn’t dispel the fragile manifestation.

“Is it safe to let him out of you?” asked Lucas.

Antonio didn’t even look in his direction, but from what I could see, the death curse was being held back by Antonio’s own magic—at least for now.

“Show us where Jimmie’s been taken,” said Antonio. The ghost pointed with a misty figure in the general direction our enemies had retreated. I could have guessed that much. But Antonio nodded as if the ghost had said something to him.

“Dracula and the others are in an old house on the far end of the cemetery,” he said.

“Just one problem,” said Khalid. “There is no old house at the far end of the cemetery, just a small building that used to be an office of some kind when the cemetery was still open.”

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on Jimmie. There’s…there’s a large structure in the direction the ghost pointed.” I opened my eyes, and Khalid was staring at me. “It may not have been there before—but it’s there now.”

“Or it’s very convincing illusion,” said Jimmie. “A really well-crafted one is more likely to fool even someone with magic perception, especially from a distance.”

Antonio, who may or may not have been listening to our conversation, took off running in the direction of the alleged old house. I saw the silver glint of the ghost as he led the way, swirling just ahead of Antonio.

“Well, I guess we’re going to find out,” said Lucas, who ran after him. I joined the race. Khalid flew above, his bow drawn and arrow nocked, just in case.

Now that the ghost was some distance away, I kept the Apollo-blessed blade out in front of me. Antonio was too far ahead to be protected by the glow, but it should keep any stray vampires away from the rest of us.

“That clump of trees wasn’t there before,” said Khalid, much too loudly for my taste. Not that it would have mattered. I wasn’t sure about Formorians, but vampires had far sharper senses than humans. They could see us in the dark, hear our feet pounding on the cemetery dirt and our labored breathing, smell our sweat. Hell, they could probably sense our heartbeats, even if they couldn’t hear them. There was no sneaking up on such creatures.

The trees ahead had a hint of magic in them, but their edges were distinct—not like illusions at all. The moment we passed between their trunks, we could see the house—also distinctly outlined, though still with a touch of magic in it.

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Though the cemetery looked somewhat disheveled, the house, despite being intact, radiated a feeling of much greater age, as if it had stood there for centuries. I knew that was impossible, of course. The house was neither Spanish colonial nor Native American. It looked more like last Nineteenth Century Carpenter Gothic, though the roof should have come to a sharper point to be a classic example. The use of pointed arches on the second floor balcony and the elaborate gingerbread woodwork on the railings was characteristic of Carpenter Gothic, though.

Whoever created the place had done a great imitation of faded paint, dyed a faint drab green by the misty moonlight. The windows still had their glass but stared at us like dark, empty eyes. The door gaped open like a mouth waiting to devour us. The attic level had the look of a mouth, too, with fangs created by two pointed arches. Above them, two windows seemed like vacant eyes, and the woodwork between them could have passed for a nose. The upward sweeping roof could have been a hat.

Of course, the air above the roof was filled with bats. The scene looked like Hollywood CGI, but unlike Umbra’s head, it was all too real.

Antonio had paused a for a moment at the bottom of the steps leading to the front door. That gave us a moment or two to figure out what was going on.

“How could someone have built something like this without anyone noticing?” asked Khalid. “It has to have taken a huge amount of magic. And why bother?”

“It’s inside the area that’s under heavy concealment,” said Lucas. “A better question might be how so many miscreants got this far without setting off any alarms. As to the question of why, I’d say it’s a trap, wouldn’t you?”

“There’s some magic but not much,” I said.

“That can be deceptive,” said Khalid. “Some magic traps aren’t that visible until triggered. And yeah, it does look pretty much like an attempt to trap us. But it’s also the only logical place for the captives to be. What do you think?”

I closed my eyes. “I can see the magic in the outer walls, but I can’t see beyond it.”

“Figures,” said Khalid. “Particularly if it’s a trap. We should—”

But at that moment, Antonio and his ghostly escort surged up the steps, leaving us only two choices—abandon him or follow him in.

We were all in motion even though no one had said a word. But I knew what the others were thinking—we would not lose another person tonight.

The stairs creaked under our feet in an disturbed way, but they didn’t give way beneath us. I had to remind myself that they were really brand new, however old and weathered they might appear.

As soon as we were all inside. The door slammed shut behind us, and magic surged, just as Khalid had predicted.

I wasn’t sure how much of what Antonio was doing was conscious thought and how much was reflex or instinct, but he folded his love magic around us, blocking for the moment the flood of magic that sought to drown us.

His light, clear and bright though it was, seemed faint against the surrounding darkness. So did the glow from Jimmie’s sword.

It was like waving around two small candles in an infinite abyss. How much could that light reveal, and how long could it last?

From somewhere in the darkness, I heard a blood-chilling laugh, soon echoed by many voices.

“North of Midnight” is related to the Spell Weaver series.