I approached to stand by Darla. Mama stomped up as well, keeping the hot end of her poker in constant motion.
“What the hell?”
Things looked almost normal, at first. Couples were dancing, some in the decadent modern style made recently popular by a finder and his wife, some in the formal bows and turns of an Old Kingdom dance.
The casino was largely empty. The appearance of the walking dead has a tendency to clear a room. But these people danced, and danced, and from the looks of horror on their faces, and the way their jaws worked-trying to scream-it was obvious they were being compelled to dance.
“Dammit, tell the musicians to stop,” I said.
“They can’t,” said Darla. “None of them can.”
A woman twirled past, her arms raised, her feet moving in perfect time to the waltz. She should have been smiling.
She was trying to cry out.
A man rushed up to her, shouting and pleading. He stood in her way and she knocked him aside. He tried to grab her, to pick her up and carry her away, but even with her feet off the floor, she continued to spin and twirl, dragging him with her.
He kept shouting, calling her name. In desperation, he reached up and took her hands.
As soon as they joined hands, he stopped shouting. His feet began to move in time with hers. He tried to speak but couldn’t open his mouth.
His eyes lost focus.
They twirled silently away, and were gone.
“It’s a geas,” said Mama. She spat. “Damn, these here people is liable to dance ’til they’re dancin’ on nubs.”
A woman brushed past us and joined the dancers in a jerky, tortured path across the floor, her hand held up to a partner who wasn’t there.
More are being called. I cannot stop it.
I took Darla’s hand, motioned to Stitches. “Would something like this need a hexed object?”
Damned if I know.
I spied something on an empty table just beyond the range of the dancers and took a couple of steps to get a better look.
A small ornate chest, all brass and dark wood, sat on the table. Atop it, two tiny dancers spun in an endless circle.
“Stitches. Do you see that?”
Before Stitches could reply, Mama trundled past me. She brought her poker down on the music box with a wild yell.
The mechanical dancers danced on, unbroken.
Mama howled and swung her poker sideways. It struck the music box with a clang and bounced out of Mama’s hand, leaving the box intact and in place.
Mama hacked away with her cleaver, which raised sparks and left deep gouges in the table but couldn’t land a solid blow on the music box. Mama cussed and adopted a two-handed stance that probably would have decapitated Trolls but merely left her huffing and puffing as she circled the music box, swinging.
Stitches marched up beside Mama and brought her staff down hard on the clockwork dancers. There was a crack of thunder and Mama stepped back, still wheezing and puffing.
The tiny dancers danced on, unharmed.
This artifact must be summer-born. Stitches backed away from it. I advise keeping your distance.
“Markhat.” I turned, recognizing the voice and having no idea how the Regent had come to stand beside me. “The huldra. Give it to her.”
His creature oozed up, smiling at me, her right hand outstretched. It should have been covered in blood. There wasn’t a drop to be seen.
I hauled the false huldra out of my pocket and handed it to her.
She took it. We touched, just for an instant, and I had to fight not to jerk my hand back. Touching her was touching something far, far colder than the coldest winter ice.
She held the huldra in her right hand. Black talons emerged from her fingers, a tiny drop of venom glistening at the tip of each. She squeezed her hand, and one by one her talons penetrated the black wax that sealed the false huldra’s tortoise shell.
When her talons were buried in the wax, she closed her eyes, threw back her head, and howled, writhing like a devil right out of the Book.
“Damn,” said Mama, summing up my emotions quite well.
It straightened, opened its eyes, and pushed the huldra back toward me, its talons withdrawn. I thought about the venom and snatched up a discarded linen napkin and shoved the damned thing back in my pocket.
About us, men rendered mad by a walking corpse’s touch, screamed. Dancers in the grip of a deadly spell moved, pirouetting and spinning and swaying, their eyes wide with terror. Gunshots rang out sporadically-pop pop pop-and I heard wood splinter off in the dark.
“I believe I shall retire for the evening,” said the Regent. He offered his creature his arm, and she took it, still smiling that deadly small smile.
They walked through the dancers, untouched.
Stitches pulled me and Darla away from the music box.
I am unable to determine its method of selection, she began. But given time-
Screams arose from our right, and a small band of revelers who had taken refuge behind a makeshift barricade of tables and gambling machines broke into sudden panicked flight past us.
Mama cussed and raised her cleaver. Stitches spun her staff, causing it to shine a bright blood red and emit a high-pitched whine.
Evis moved to stand at my side. He held an enormous double-barreled rifle, to which a light was attached. He aimed it toward the far wall.
I squinted, but saw nothing save for shadow.
Mama Hog followed the light too, and cussed.
“Don’t look,” she shrieked. “Don’t nobody look!”
I looked. It was just a shadow in a roomful of shadows. Darker, perhaps.
Deeper.
My mother appeared, in the same threadbare apron she’d worn, I supposed, every day of her life.
She waved and smiled. I’d taken a step before I realized what I was doing, before I remembered burying Mom in a poor man’s boneyard on a rainy day in winter.
Mama stamped hard on my foot.
“Dammit, I told you not to look!”
I turned away, more angry than afraid.
Darla turned to face me, tears in her eyes. I’ve never asked who she saw. She’s never told.
Screams sounded. I glanced that way, saw a man in an old Army dress uniform being dragged into the shadow by a dozen pairs of emaciated hands.
When he reached the place where the wall should have been, his screams simply ceased, and we faced nothing but shadow once again.
An ethereal interface, said Stitches. One born of blood sacrifice.
“What the hell? I don’t see any corpses.”
I too am puzzled. But I estimate at least ten deaths would be required to commence the process.
I groaned. “Would they have to take place all at once?”
No. But we have not had ten fatalities all evening, by my count.
“The accidents during the Queen’s construction. The curse. Damned if it wasn’t a curse after all.”
Our internal investigation revealed no foul play in any of the accidents.
“We can ponder that later.” Evis motioned toward the shadow. “If it’s what I think it is, where does it lead?”
“Leads to Hell itself,” muttered Mama. She charged suddenly toward the shadow, tackling a woman in waiter’s garb before she could get close.
I joined her, dragging the woman back though she fought and begged.
Darla threw a glass of water in the woman’s face when we wrestled her back to the stage. Evis ordered a pair of halfdead to take her to her room.
“The other corpse,” I managed, winded after my struggle with the woman. “She’ll probably rise too.”
“Already has,” replied Evis, who kept his eyes on the shadow. “Guards heard her banging around in the closet where they’d stashed the body.”