At least if I die down here, she thought, I won't have to wait in line at the Styx.
The shadows were everywhere, but all their attention was focused on the Palace, and they didn't seem to notice Charlotte at all. She darted in and around groups of the great black creatures on her way to…
On her way to where?
What, was she going to run away? Run back to the park, run back home, hide under the bed, while everything here collapsed? She couldn't leave the scene. She had to see this through, whatever it was. She had to do whatever she could to stop it, because no one else was going to. And if she did not stop it, at least she would not have run away. She could say to herself that when the time came-when the fate of humanity was in the balance- she, Charlotte Ruth Mielswetzski, stayed to see it through.
(Of course, she would be saying that to herself as her soul was being tortured in the eternal hell of Tartarus. You can't have everything.)
Charlotte skirted around the chaos, out of reach of falling chunks of marble and billows of smoke. She found her way to the Palace gates, now a tumble of iron and stone. A great pile of rubble lay just beyond the outline of the gates-the remains of some once-grand building-and slowly, carefully, she climbed up to the top and looked out at the destruction around her.
The Palace was full of gaping holes, and fire licked up all around it. The smallest of the onion-shaped domes was teetering precariously. The shadows went on throwing bits of darkness; they were relentless, mindless of all the falling stone and the smoke. It did not hurt them. It did not stop them. It didn't even slow them. The Palace would be nothing but rubble in minutes, and then what would Hades do?
The Palace was emptying out. Immortal or not, the Palace staff had decided to vacate the premises, and quickly. Shadowy butlers were trotting out as fast as their dignity would carry them. An ogre cook and spritelike maids came scurrying through the doors, followed by ghoulish creatures in business suits clutching papers in their hands. Thanatos came too, holding hands with his identical twin brother, Hypnos. They, and the whole crowd of Palace denizens, followed Charlotte's tracks through the smoky trees, by the remnants of the front gate, and out into the City.
Hades, though, did not leave. Charlotte could see him, still on the balcony, shouting and waving his scepter maniacally.
It didn't take Charlotte long to see what he was yelling at.
Over to Charlotte's left, in a spot just beyond the fracas, stood Philonecron. He seemed impossibly high up in the air, but when a crowd of shadows moved, Charlotte saw he was standing on the chair of the litter, which was being held up by the four Footmen.
Philonecron was holding his arms out majestically, framing the chaos below him. His grin stretched to his ears. Every once in a while he shouted commands at the shadows. "A little to the left!" or "Yes, yes, splendid shot!" or "Oooh, how wonderfully destructive!"
The Footmen were perfectly still and stiff, proper as posts, holding up their master. Charlotte wondered if she could hurt them somehow, run over and push them into the flames-maybe that would do something. Slow everything down, maybe. But it would never work; Philonecron would call the shadows to her, and she would last a lot less long than the Palace.
And the Palace was not lasting. The small dome came crashing down, bringing with it much of the roof. Philonecron let out a cheer, and the group of shadows right in front of Charlotte turned their attention to the other two domes. A wall-size chunk fell from the back of the Palace, another from just below the balcony, and Hades fell backward inside the building.
"Bring it down!" Philonecron shouted gleefully. "Bring it all down!"
Two stories of the Palace collapsed with a gigantic crash that shook the entire Kingdom. Charlotte went tumbling off her rubble pile, scraping her hands and legs on the way down.
She crawled halfway up again, dirty and bleeding, tears and sweat streaking lines down the dust on her face. The shadows in front of her toppled another dome, and Charlotte watched, small and helpless, as the Palace of Hades began to tumble down.
As the walls fell to the earth, a cry came from deep inside her. "Stop!" she shouted weakly. "Stop!"
And suddenly the group of shadows in front of her turned to look, rocks clenched in their hands.
She froze. But they did not fire. They were looking at her, waiting, as if…
As if waiting for her to tell them what to do.
"Stop!" she said again, and a few more stopped, turned to her, and waited.
She bit her lip. Her body trembling, she crawled all the way up to the top of the pile of rubble and shouted at the top of her lungs:
"STOP!"
And that's when she heard Zee's voice in her head, as clear as day.
If I can enchant them…
I can also stop them.
If I can enchant them, I can also stop them.
That's what Zee had been trying to tell her. That's why he had gone along with Philonecron. He thought he could stop them. If they were enchanted with his blood, with his voice, he could stop them.
But he wasn't here.
She was here.
What had Mr. Metos said? The Footmen had used Zee's blood to find her and steal shadows from her friends. She and Zee were blood relatives. The shadows were enchanted with Zee's blood, with Zee's commands, so surely…
"STOP!" she called again. All around her shadows froze. Their attention was uncertain, wavering- she could feel it; she knew she could lose them at any moment. She channeled all the Zee blood inside her, all the Zee-ness, and she cupped her hands around her mouth, took the biggest breath she ever had in her life, and shouted, "STOP!"
A rush of power went through Charlotte. No one had ever listened to her at all before, and now an entire regiment of shadows was obeying her commands.
All around Charlotte the destruction had ceased, and Philonecron- shouting commands and cackling on the other side of the Palace-hadn't noticed a thing. "Find him!" he shouted. "Find him and tear him apart."
Her shadows were still, frozen, waiting-but, she realized with a sinking heart, it wasn't enough. She'd stopped a thousand, maybe two, but there were so many more. And the Palace was on its last legs, and then the shadows would go for Hades.
There was no time. She couldn't get to them all… But her regiment could.
"Go to the other shadows," she yelled at the group before her. “Make them stop! Everyone must stop!" She looked around frantically. "Quickly!" she added.
Her regiment peeled out in front of her, weaving their way in and out of the other platoons, blackness coiling around blackness. One shadow reached out and touched another, and that one stopped what it was doing and reached out and touched the one next to it, on and on down the line. One stopped, then the next, then the next-like very creepy dominoes. One regiment, then the next, then the next- they stopped in waves, putting down their fire and their smoke and their bits of shadow and looking up at Charlotte. That was enough to get Philonecron's attention.
"Shadows," she heard him cry, "what are you doing.? Don't stop! Keep going!" The shadows all twitched and rumbled, looking from one master to the other. Some picked up their weapons again uncertainly.
Philonecron looked around frantically, yelping as he saw Charlotte over the wreckage of the Palace. "You!" he screamed. "You worthless child! You can't command the shadows!" He paused and raised up his hands. "Shadows, get her!"
The squadron of shadows closest to Philonecron began to move-they rushed around their comrades, moving like raging fire. A flood of darkness swarmed toward her, a giant black wave coming to drown her, a great rush of spirits shooting through the air right toward her soul-and Charlotte froze with horror.