lost track, because they came at me.
I stumbled away, horror wrenching a sandpaper shriek from my throat. It wasn’t their grasping arms or leathery flesh that terrified me. I didn’t dread the touch of dust and ancient bodies but the touch of the spirits trapped inside these abominations that warped everything I believed in.
The undead circled me, and I could feel the shredded souls trapped in the magic that animated them. They’d been rent apart, chewed up, and spit out. Snatched from any hope of the eternity they’d awaited for thousands of years. Transformed by Oosterhouse into a consumable power source.
No—not Oosterhouse. The Black Jackal.
He had Oosterhouse’s face, but the eyes burning with power were alien and frightening. He wasn’t a god, but he wasn’t any remnant of human anymore, either.
“I will give you one more chance,” he said as the undead held me bound with bones as strong as oak. “Bow, Daisy Goodnight, and become one of my brethren. I would rather have you freely than enslave your spirit.”
Carson fought against the undead that held him immobile with a bony arm across his throat. “Don’t you dare, you son of a bitch. Let her go. I’ll do whatever—”
He broke off with a wheeze, and for a horrible moment I thought he was broken—his neck, his windpipe, or some other vital, fragile thing. But Johnson, stepping forward, had cut off Carson’s words with nothing but a gesture.
“Quiet,” he said. “You’ve done your part, Maguire. We don’t need anything else from you.”
Carson was turning purple from the relentless bony hold on his throat. He tore at the dried flesh and it crumbled under his clawing nails, but the ancient undead wouldn’t let go.
How do you fight something that just won’t stop?
Use us, Daisy.
I shuddered at the hum that ran through me—the perfectly tuned collective spirit of the place. A century of scientists, academics, archivists, their psychic traces permeating stone and steel and glass until the building itself sang its offer to me. The unified remnant was as fresh as a wellspring amid the muddy magic in the room. I reached for it and it infused me, not with a swelling rush but with a slow seep of support and bracing, ghostly cold that reminded me who I was.
I was Daisy Goodnight. And no lame-ass mummy-raising Boris Karloff knockoff was going to get the better of me.
My Sight found the lines of power that connected the Jackal to the undead that held me. With my new strength, I broke the ties like fragile thread and the mummies collapsed into piles of chunky ash. Magic cut off, the fragile remains could not stand the physical strain.
Johnson turned as if to stop me, but he was startled and I was quicker and shoved him into the wall with only a gesture. A push at the undead that held Carson and they flew apart like piles of leaves in a gust of frigid wind.
Carson sagged, gasping for breath—only for a nanosecond, though, before he charged Johnson, picked him up, and slammed him again into the exhibit wall in a hail of grunts and plaster.
“Where is Alexis?” he demanded, giving him a shake. Johnson fought back, but it was kind of an unfair match.
The Brotherhood goons seemed uncertain whether to rescue Johnson from Carson. As for the rest of the mummies, the only signs of them were the screams from beyond the exhibit.
The Black Jackal just laughed at our struggles. He glowed with power, stolen from the spirits, from the upheaval of terror. “Grab the girl,” he told the dithering minions. “And meet me in the place you’ve prepared.”
I couldn’t let him vanish. He was still just a spirit, an über-ghost created by the re-joining of remnants and soul. I was responsible for that, and worse, I’d untethered the piece from the stone jackal. I could not let him escape to wreak havoc on all of Chicago or beyond.
With all my strength I grabbed the fabric of Oosterhouse’s soul, clutched the shreds of the human being that had made the Black Jackal. I didn’t know how to fight a self-proclaimed god, but I knew how to handle pieces of a spirit. By binding the remnants of Oosterhouse to this place, I could leash the creature he’d become.
He seemed to realize what I was about to do. “Stop her,” he told his minions. They didn’t move, maybe because I didn’t look like I was doing anything, and the Jackal snapped, “Idiots! Grab her! Knock her out!”
They rushed