We reached the main hallway, but where the mirrors had brightened the space with their reflected light as we entered, now, they were wreathed in shadow. Shapes moved in the mirrors, things that weren’t really there until you looked at them out of the corner of your eye, things that didn’t want you to see them, not until they were close enough to strike.
Those things were getting closer, lurching and halting their way toward the surface of the mirrors. I didn’t want to find out whether they would stop there or not.
I swung my leg hard against one of the shelves, trying to get rid of one of the dummies that had wrapped his arms and legs around my shin. It put me off balance, and I fell against the shelving, sending a rain of objects down from above. I threw my arms up over my head to protect myself.
Bo’s ghost was still barking up a storm, growling and snarling in the direction of the formaldehyde creatures. He hadn’t had much effect on the dummies or toys, but whatever the sloppy-wet things were, they seemed to slow their approach.
Teag had started kicking the dummies out of his way, and I remembered that he told me he played soccer in high school in addition to his martial arts training. His aim was good, and he had some serious power behind those kicks – he sent dummy after dummy skidding down through the advancing mass of wind-up toys, silencing some of the nerve-jarring racket.
Alistair looked terrified at the attack and appalled at the realization that he was going to have to damage museum property to escape. But when one of the dummies chomped its wooden jaws down on Alistair’s shoulder, he howled with pain and rammed the dummy against one of the room’s steel beam columns.
The wet, sloppy sounds were coming from the way we had entered, as well as the snap-snap-snap of flaccid suction cups drawing its long-dead owner down the tile. The smell of formaldehyde was overpowering, and I was afraid we would either pass out from the vapors or burst into flames.
“It’s flammable!” I shouted to Teag as I saw him dig in his bag for the candle and lantern. That approach was out, unless we wanted to go up in a big fireball and take the museum with us.
I couldn’t muster the concentration to focus on the spoon-athame I had up my sleeve thanks to the hordes of attacking toys and the crazed dummies that just wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
I spun around, trying to scrape another dummy from my back, and brought more things sliding and crashing down around me. Teag had grabbed something that looked like a harpoon, and I realized that it really was a harpoon, snatched from off one of the shelves. Alistair had a cast-iron frying pan, and he was setting about himself like a crazed duffer, sending the dummies flying and smashing a path through the wind-up toys.
I looked around in panic, and spotted a shelf full of old, neatly tagged axes and farm implements. I was less afraid of what visions I might see from the ax I grabbed than I was of what would happen if the dummy clinging to my back managed to head-butt me one more time. The problem was, swinging at my own back with an ax wasn’t going to help me, and the dummy already had one stiff wooden arm around my throat. A moment later, the other arm wrapped around from the opposite side, and the dummy started to squeeze, hard, all the while chattering with its hinged jaw as if it were laughing at my attempts to breathe.
With my right hand, I swung the axe around my legs as I sputtered for breath. The blade bit deeply into the large head of another dummy, and I kicked the body free, bowling down a dozen of the wind-up toys. With my left, I pressed the agate necklace against the dummy’s hard wooden hands as I tore at it to free my throat. As soon as the agate connected with the wood, the hands came free, and I shook the dummy loose, sending him flying.
“Cassidy!” Teag shouted, running toward me as best he could through the chaos. He stabbed at another dummy heading my way, sticking the sharp tip of the harpoon into the mannequin’s chest, then flinging him away.
I could tell that Bo’s barking had changed direction, but I was too busy fighting for my life to look.
“The mirrors!” Alistair yelled.
Teag and I wheeled. The shadowy figures that I had glimpsed in the background of the mirrors had gotten much, much closer. Some of them pressed up against the glass from the inside, while others ran their hands over the surface, looking for the way to open the doorway to our realm. A few of them were already slipping through the glass, climbing out to come our way.
Teag hurled his harpoon at the nearest mirror, shattering it. No shadow emerged. The doorway was closed.
I hurled my ax at the next mirror, ignoring the groan from Alistair as we smashed another precious furnishing.
“It’s those mirrors or our necks,” I yelled. Alistair stepped closer to the next mirror just as its shadow reached the glass, closed his eyes, and swung his frying pan, sending the mirrored fragments flying.
I grabbed the nearest solid object I could find and used it to smash the next mirror.
At the far end of the main corridor, opposite where we had come in, I saw the dim glow of an ‘EXIT’ sign. We’d still have to run the gauntlet of half of the mirrors, but we would be going in the opposite direction to the sloppy sloshing noises and the growing number of shadow men who were leaving their mirror portals.
I stumbled, and this time, a cascade of fabric tumbled down on me, snaring my feet and making me fall. I came up, gasping, fighting my way clear, and realized that I had brought a tangle of old quilts down on me.
The axe had been neutral, with no resonance when I touched it, but the quilts that surrounded me had strong auras, stitched through with the protectiveness and love of their long-ago makers. That gave me crazy hope as I struggled to my feet. “Come on!” I shouted to my embattled friends. “We’re going to get out of here.”
I held out the quilt. “Get under here. Now!” Teag and Alistair looked baffled, but caught between the slip-slop of the formaldehyde monsters and the silently approaching shadow men, they were ready to try anything. Bo was in full attack-dog mode, and while he was holding off the shadow men and the wet things for now, I knew it wouldn’t last for long.
Alistair anchored the quilt on one side of me while Teag caught up with us. I held the agate necklace in my left hand, and held out my right arm with the spoon-athame, palm out.
The coruscating, pearlescent light flared from my palm, wrapping us in its protective cocoon. It resonated with the energy in the quilt, and the antique bedspread took on a faint, opalescent glow. As Teag took hold of the quilt on the other side of me, I felt the power grow, as if he magnified whatever had been imbued into the fabric and embroidery.
“It’s working!” Teag cheered. “This quilt was stitched with some strong stuff, Cassidy. It’s almost militant about protecting us.”
“Keep moving toward the exit,” I said through gritted teeth.
We made it halfway down the corridor before two of the ugliest akvenon minions I’d ever seen skittered out from the gloom, blocking the doorway.
“Shit!” I muttered. Teag said something more colorful. So did Alistair, but in Latin. The gist of it all was that we were totally screwed.
The steel fire door behind the akvenon shrieked as it ripped from its hinges. A blast of white light blinded us, striking the akvenon and splitting them open like lobsters bursting over an open fire. The next blast went streaming over our heads toward the shadow men and the oozing formaldehyde creatures behind them.
“Don’t –” I managed to yell before the white fire hit the fumes and a loud flash-bang exploded behind us.
Sorren and Lucinda stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway. Lucinda had the staff from the Archive in her hands, holding it like a flame-thrower. Sorren grabbed us, dragging us out of the way as foul smelling clouds of smoke billowed toward us.