Revels: A Halloween Novella

  But Peter was gone, and there was no sense in wishing he weren’t when we needed to marshal all our forces. Whatever idea we came up with, Cheswick’s best chance was to stay out of the way. I just hoped he wouldn’t do something stupid and make things worse for the rest of us.

  Arnold the rockhound was the last to arrive. He was carrying rocks, too, but not enough to make up any kind of arsenal. I hoped he wasn’t going to turn out to be as useless as Cheswick.

  We were assembled outside the restaurant’s main doors. The walkway leading to the parking lot was littered with the bodies of people who’d tried to escape. One of them was the Mayor.

  “Nothing around here’s ever going to be the same again,” Cheswick said.

  “Thanks for the pep talk, Ches,” Chrissie said, giving him a solid poke with her elbow.

  “Well, it’s true,” he pouted, rubbing his sore ribs.

  Arnold talked over him. “At least there’s a way to keep this from spreading.” We all looked at him, eager to hear some kind of plan. “If we can confine those…those creatures of the night to Hattie’s, we might be able to get rid of them all.”

  “Confine?” Becca asked. “Like keep them all inside?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I don’t think there’s much we can do about whatever’s already out here—”

  “Like the werewolf,” Chrissie said.

  “The werewolf’s gone,” Amanda assured us. “The other animals took her out.”

  “Okay, that’s a plus for us,” Arnold said. “We can put up a barrier to keep in everything that’s inside the restaurant.”

  “A barrier of what?” Chrissie asked skeptically.

  Arnold smiled. “Obsidian,” he said, holding up the two rocks in his hands. “It’s a volcanic rock found mostly in the south Pacific, but for some reason, there’s a lot of it around here.”

  “That’s strange,” Bryce said.

  Arnold shrugged. “Not really. Whitfield was founded by witches. Witches know that rocks have magical properties. My guess is that the obsidian was brought here by magic centuries ago, for protection.”

  “Protection?” Cheswick asked. “Protection against what?”

  “It keeps out evil,” Arnold said. Everyone was silent for a moment. “Of course, there’ll be a problem actually getting it here, finding it in the dark, carrying it—”

  “That won’t be a problem,” I said. Arnold didn’t know I was a telekinetic. “Give me those rocks.”

  I hefted them in my hands. They were heavy, like black glass, with circular cleave marks. When I closed my eyes, I could feel them, old, strong, protective. These were stones that absorbed everything. Negativity eaters.

  “The ancient Egyptians used obsidian to ward off bad spirits,” Arnold said.

  I nodded. “Yes, I see,” I said, turning back to the group. “This will work.”

  “But as I said—”

  “Let Katy do what she does.” Becca touched his arm. “We should move closer to the building, out of her way.”

  They all backed away from me.

  Alone in the night, I held the two stones up to the moon and called to their kind. “Obsidian,” I murmured, and the very earth seemed to rumble as black glass rose out of the ground. Obsidian groaned as it split away from other rock. It leaped into the air, bursting like popcorn. It whistled like the wind as pebbles sped from all points of the compass, so many of them flying at once that they obscured the very moon.

  Verity gave a little shriek as the first boulders crashed into the earth around us. Then came a hail of fist-sized rocks like the ones Arnold had found, followed by sheets of falling pebbles. When at last all the rocks were in place, Hattie’s was surrounded by a wall of black glass twenty feet tall, an impenetrable fortress.

  I returned the rocks in my hands to Arnold. “Are we ready?” I asked.

  Becca nodded. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  If I’d thought the situation at Hattie’s was bad before, it had become much worse. One wall was charred black, no doubt a souvenir from our friend the fire belcher. Several skeletons, their flesh completely burned off, were melted into the plasterwork in a grisly tableau as a sea of fat spiders crawled among them.

  The pixies were back, giggling as they flitted among the bodies hanging upside down from the ceiling rafters, their arms swinging like seaweed. The guests were nearly all dead. Those who weren’t moaned in agony as they crawled toward the doors toward us, begging for us to help them. The only beings who weren’t expiring were the ghouls Lolille had summoned.

  The zombie I’d seen through the window wasn’t the only one in the room. There were three of them now, and they seemed to be the top of the food chain. Bloody corpses were everywhere, their bellies torn out, their intestines draped like sausages over the floor.

  I gasped when I saw one of the victims, a woman in black, wearing a tall witch’s hat. Half her face had been torn off, and one of her legs had been ripped away. It lay next to her in a corner of the room.

  “Aunt Agnes,” I squealed, feeling my knees buckle.

  Hold it together, Katy, Becca warned somewhere inside my head. We can’t afford to panic.

  The others nodded, so I knew they’d heard her too, even though her lips had never moved. Verity looked as if she were about to faint or throw up, but finally she made a sign that she understood. Bryce shifted the scythe in his hands, eager to get into action.

  “Bryce, you take the zombies,” Becca said in her real voice, although she kept it low. “Their heads have to be cut off. That’s the only way to destroy them. Can you do that?”

  “With pleasure,” he said.

  “What do we do about the flying pixies?” Valerie asked, trembling with fear.

  “I’ll take care of them,” Chrissie said.

  Becca’s nose twitched. The whole place suddenly smelled like smoke and burned rubber. “The firebreather’s here somewhere,” she said. “Look out for him.”

  “No worries,” Cheswick said, fingering the rope he carried. It came unraveled and thumped onto the floor. I guess he was feeling confident, but I still had plenty of worries. I think we all did.

  “I’ll keep an eye out, and warn you if I can,” Becca said. “Now spread out.”

  We scattered.

  Bryce didn’t waste any time. With a commando yell, he charged across the room and, swinging his scythe, leaped on a table. The zombie he was after was just turning his head to see what was happening when Bryce lopped it off cleanly. Another came at him, but as the creature was stretching out his arms to get him, Bryce disappeared.

  He was a teleporter, able to wink in and out of places at will. My Aunt Agnes had possessed the same ability. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been as quick. Or as lucky.

  In another instant, Bryce appeared again, behind the second zombie, his scythe moving so fast it was a blur. The zombie’s head flew through the air, landing near my feet.

  At that, the pixies took notice. With a quick glance at one another, they aimed themselves at me and, grinning evilly, divebombed.

  Katy! Ten o’clock! Becca warned telepathically, so I saw them coming. I levitated all the silverware that was still on the tables and sent every fork, knife, and spoon in the place flying toward the pixies. For all the good it did, though, I might as well have sent feathers. The pixies knocked the tableware out of their way with their sturdy little wings as if my stainless steel projectiles were gnats.

  As they took a moment to regroup, I cast about for some other weapon I could use against them.

  “I’ve got your back,” Chrissie said, briefly slapping me on the shoulder before disappearing.

  Disappearing? I thought Chrissie was a shape-shifter, not a teleporter. But seeing as the pixie twins were about to kamikaze into my face, I put Chrissie out of my mind and tried to concentrate on finding a weapon.

  Plates. That was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment. These were also still on the tables, most of them containing the congea
ling remnants of the diners’ last meals. With a clatter, they bolted off the tables and shot toward the pixie sisters, leaving a rain of gravy and pumpkin pie in their wake.

  At first the pixies had no trouble dodging them, and even seemed to find it fun to smash them in mid-air, but then after a minute or two, their wings were growing a little gluey. Flecks of mashed potato dotted their heretofore shimmering gossamer gowns. They began to buzz—a sign of pixie fatigue? I wondered—and then they looped around one another like drunken bees.

  A pouty pink tongue lolled out of one mouth; the other twin blinked slowly and moaned. Neither was paying any attention to my flying plates, so I let them fall as the pixies, now covered in food, slowly descended to the floor, coughing and shivering.

  I took a step back, thinking this might be some kind of trick to catch me off guard. A mosquito buzzed around me, and I swatted at it absently.

  “Hey!” The mosquito transmogrified into Chrissie. “Ingrate.”

  “Oh, Chrissie!” I said, ‘I’m so sorry! I thought—”

  “That we had mosquitoes in October? In Massachusetts?” She rubbed her arm crankily.

  “So was that you who…” I looked at the downed pixies. “They look as if…”

  “Malaria,” Chrissie said, regaining some of her former good cheer. “I shape-shifted into an anopheles mosquito. Pixies are particularly sensitive to their sting.”

  Arnold needs help, Becca’s voice boomed somewhere inside my head. On the far side of the dining room, what looked like an army of toadstools were crawling all over Arnold. He was smashing a number of them with rocks, but there were too many of them, and he was clearly overpowered.

  “On my way, Chief!” Chrissie called, picking up a greasy dinner plate off the floor and tossing it like a Frisbee in Arnold’s direction. It found its mark, sending the cap off one of the marching mushrooms. I was running over to help when the fire demon crashed through the ceiling in a circle of ten-foot-tall flames.

  “WHY CAN’T I GET OUT?” he bellowed.

  Arnold’s head bobbed up from the midst of the mushroom people. “See? Obsidian!” he panted before turning back to his battle.

  The fire demon—who still had the face of a teenager on an all-Mickey Dee diet—directed a tongue of flame toward Arnold. He missed, inadvertently roasting most of the homicidal toadstools.

  This seemed to madden the fire demon. He spun around, looking for a target. Unfortunately, the person standing closest to him at the time was Verity. He started loping toward her, the anger in his eyes a dim shadow of what was to come.

  Verity needs help—fire demon! Becca telepathized as she started running. I ran, too, as did Arnold, who was now relatively free of his fungal attackers, and Chrissie, but the demon was too close. The only other person near Verity was Cheswick, who was trying to do something with his rope—lasso the demon, maybe. When that didn’t work, he tried to whip the demon with the rope, as if it were a cat-o-nine-tails. This only served to irritate Fireboy, who whirled around and blasted Cheswick with a ball of flame that left his rope—luckily coiled and held in front of Cheswick’s face like a shield—singed and smoking. Cheswick could only blink vacantly in response, but the attack sent Verity into a rage.

  “That’s my boyfriend, you craphead!” she screamed. Whatever she meant, it was the first time I’d ever heard Verity come close to swearing. Then, as the fire demon approached, grinning, as if he were actually looking forward to killing her, Verity ran over to the fire extinguisher on the wall, kicked out the protective glass panel Chuck Norris style, and blasted the demon just as he was spewing a flaming projectile at her. The fire and the foam of the extinguisher met in the middle for a second, and then the extinguisher won. The demon staggered backward, white foam filling his oversized mouth, his eyes panicked as he fell over backward.

  “Ass donkey,” Verity said triumphantly, and shot a couple of floating ghosts into oblivion for good measure. As they disintegrated, they emitted a couple of feeble moans and a puff of ectoplasm.

  To cap off Verity’s performance, Bryce finally cornered the third zombie and sliced off its head with a flourish. That was the last of them.

  “Yeah, ass donkey!” Cheswick shouted, one arm fist-pumping as he hugged Verity with the other.

  “Get the bugs,” Becca ordered in her real voice, since we were all clustered together. Obediently, Cheswick took the fire extinguisher from Verity and went after the spiders on the wall. I think he was happy just to have something to do.

  I was staring with dread at the windows in the double doors leading to the kitchen. The light show that had been going on while Hattie and Lolille were battling each other with magic was over. In fact, there was no light at all coming from the kitchen. And no sound. It was as still as death.

  Taking a deep breath, I walked past my friends, who stepped aside for me as I made my way into the kitchen.

  Please be all right, I silently begged Hattie, although I knew that wasn’t likely. If she’d been all right—if she’d beaten Lolille—she would have come into the dining room to help us. Hattie was a rock for all of us, and the closest thing to a mother I’d ever had.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I moaned as soon as I opened the door. Hattie lay in a heap by the stove. There was a hole in her chest where her heart had once been. Her face was frozen into an expression of agony.

  A few feet away lay Lolille, holding Hattie’s bloody heart in her hand. As I stood over her, I saw her fingers twitch. One blackened eye slitted open. Blood trickled out the side of her mouth. Her lips curved into a ghoulish smile. “Guess I won’t be using my cousin’s body, after all,” she mumbled.

  There was nothing I could say. This evil beast had killed the three people in my life who had meant the most to me. With my mind, I jerked Lolille into the air, where she bounced like a marionette on a string.

  “Quit it, girl,” she complained, her voice a thin rasp. “Quit your meddling before I got to come get you—”

  “Katy, no,” Becca called behind me. I barely heard her. I sent Lolille shooting up to the ceiling, where she hung suspended, her fat little legs dangling. Hattie’s heart fell from her hand and landed on the floor with a wet splat. I sent a rolling pin against Lolille’s neck—not with the force of a baseball bat, not hard enough to break the bones there, but firmly, pressing against her throat. And then slowly, I pushed it closer until Lolille’s eyes rolled upward and she gasped in little choked grunting sobs.

  “Stop it!” Becca screamed.

  I turned around, suddenly conscious that I wasn’t alone in the room. Lolille dropped to the floor, her feet slipping in the blood from Hattie’s heart.

  “Don’t you see?” Becca was crying. “On some level, she’s still my mother.”

  My head swiveled back slowly toward Lolille, who lay dying on the kitchen floor. I’d forgotten that her body had once belonged to Livia Fowler. Becca walked over to her cautiously and knelt beside her.

  I left, running out of the kitchen, out of the restaurant.

  Outside, the obsidian wall obscured everything except the full moon above. In a fury, I raised my arms, and the rocks exploded outward with a thunderous crash, flying wildly through the air, going back where they came from.

  When the debris settled, it was dead quiet, the silence broken only by the chiming of the bell tower. Four o’clock. Two hours until dawn.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I heard the lapping of waves before I saw the bay. In the woods, the werewolf’s body hay against a tree, its teeth bared in rictus.

  So much death, I thought numbly. So much senseless death.

  I walked to the spot where I’d left Peter. He wasn’t there. A realization shot through me like hot fire: It was high tide. Had the water risen and carried Peter’s body out to sea? With a moan, I leaned against an outcropping of rock. All I could think was, How could this have happened?

  I missed him. Behind the horror and the pain and the sense of injustice that screamed through ever
y molecule of my body, I missed Peter. I missed his soft lips and kind eyes and his honey-blonde hair. I missed his sense of humor, his reasonableness, the way he peeled potatoes with me at Hattie’s, his overdeveloped sense of responsibility, his fairness, his easy forgiveness. I missed his lanky stride, the sound his feet made walking though the dry leaves of autumn, the way snow stuck to his eyelashes because they were so long. I missed his old parka that I used to wrap up in when I needed to feel safe. I missed his smell, warm as bread, the sound of his heart beating, the comfort of his voice.

  “Oh, Peter,” I whispered.

  “Katy.”

  With a gasp, I looked up. He was standing in front of me.

  “Peter?” My voice sounded childish, hysterical. For a moment I thought I might be dreaming, or crazy, but I reached out, and he was there, there at the end of my fingers, real, solid, alive. His throat was healed. There was no blood. No scars.

  I wanted to burst out laughing, so filled with relief I thought I could jump to the moon. “How…how…”

  “Shh. None of that matters now,” he said. He took me in his arms, and I melted there.

  In the distance, I heard Becca and the others calling to me, but I didn’t care. They didn’t matter. Like Peter said, none of it mattered anymore.

  “Kiss me, Katy.”

  “Katy!” they called. “Katy! Katy! Katy!”

  None of it mattered.

  He tilted my chin up. “I love you,” I whispered.

  “I love you, too.” Then, as I moved to touch him with my mouth, Peter’s lips drew back to reveal two long fangs.

  A sound like the cry of a trapped animal escaped from me.

  “I have to,” Peter said. “It’s what I am now.”

  “No,” I breathed, panting with shock and heartache. “No, no…”

  Then someone was beside me, knocking me out of Peter’s grasp. It was Verity, of all people, facing Peter alone, holding a tiny gold cross that hung from a chain around her neck.

  Peter grabbed it, and in a second his hand had wound around her throat like a snake.

  “Pete,” Cheswick said, sounding astonished. “Dude, don’t…”

  Peter snapped Verity’s neck as if it were a twig. Then he fell on her like a wild animal, grunting and sucking. When he finally cast her away, her neck had been ripped open. Part of Verity’s windpipe hung out of Peter’s mouth, dripping frothy pink blood.