Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,110

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 shirt 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 smashing 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 bastard!” 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.