Scarabus’s victory cry was cut off. He didn’t scream—he didn’t make a sound. He just gripped the metal shaft and stared at J/O in amazement.
Then he fell to the floor—and all hell really broke loose.
His skin boiled. It was as if all the tattoos had been imprisoned there in his flesh somehow, and were released by his death. Monsters, demons, things for which I had no name—they all rose up and away from him, expanding and solidifying—
And then they shuddered and froze in mid-flight for an instant.
Then—it was like watching a film run backward. The tats were sucked back down in a whirlpool of ink and form, and in seconds were safely in his skin once more. Scarabus pushed himself up to his elbow, coughed red blood and wiped it away with one illustrated hand. “You just cost me a life,” he said to J/O. “A life! You little monster.”
From his place beside me, Jai asked calmly, “Will you accompany us to Lord Dogknife’s presence without harming us?”
“I have no choice,” said Scarabus. “I swore an oath. There’s too much raw magic in the air to go back on it now.”
Two soldiers helped him to his feet as Jai, Josef, Jakon and I joined J/O and Scarabus on the floor of the engine room.
“Good job,” I said to J/O. I meant it.
He shrugged, but his eyes shone with pleasure.
We started to run, as best we could, up a set of narrow wooden stairs. Every deck we passed showed chaos—people, and things that weren’t people, were panicking, running, screaming.
Scarabus cursed us, demanding that we slow down. He was somewhere behind us. We ignored him. The Malefic wouldn’t hold together much longer.
“More like the Titanic than the Malefic,” I said to Jo, trying to catch my breath. There were a lot of stairs.
“Titanic?”
“Big ship, from my Earth. Hit an iceberg. Went down. nineteen twelve, thereabouts.”
“Oh right,” she said. “Like the King John disaster.”
“Whatever,” I said, as a huge chunk of ship fell apart to one side of us, and went tumbling off into the Nowhere-at-All.
We kept running up steps and along corridors and up more steps. And then we were there, outside the auditorium, the place where I had seen Lord Dogknife last, an hour or so earlier.
And I stopped.
The others stopped, too. “Hey,” said Josef. “Something wrong?”
“He’s in there,” I said. “Don’t ask me how I know.”
Jai nodded. “Good enough,” he said.
Josef kicked down the door and we all went in.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE ROOM WAS DARK, the only source of light a firefly-green glow on the other side of the hall. We waited near the door, none of us willing to go farther in, letting our eyes adjust to the blackness.
And then a honeyed snarl whispered from the gloom. “Hello, children,” said Lord Dogknife. “Come to gloat, have we?”
We edged into the room. There was a black shape, outlined against the green glow.
“No,” said Jo. “We don’t gloat. We’re the good guys.”
There was a grunt. The glow light grew slightly brighter.
Now I could see what it was. The Walker souls, the ones from the jars, were hanging in the air, pressed together like an enormous swarm of bees. And facing them, with his hands plunged deep into the center of the swarm, was Lord Dogknife. He seemed to be holding the souls in place, but the effort was obviously costing him energy and effort. He was wheezing even more than usual, and he did not turn to look at us as we came closer.