KARA COULDN’T STOP STARING AT RIGBY’S BODY. SHE FELT a twinge of guilt, shed a tear of sorrow, and then her eyes flickered with angry red lightning. “Scath!” she raged. “What did you do?”
She was answered by frantic rustling, hisses, and whispers.
“Scath, I am the master of the Shadow Key!” she cried out, the words flash-simmering like water thrown on hot coals. “I am your master! I call you to account for this. I call you to come to me and answer for yourselves. And, so help me, if your answer is displeasing, I will use the Shadow Key to end you all!”
“Nooooo!” came a myriad of cries.
“Mercy upon us!”
“It wasn’t our fault!”
“He asked us!”
“He invited us!”
“Told us it was a game!”
Kara stepped back over Rigby and confronted a cauldron of suddenly obsequious Scath. “Speak!” she demanded. “Quickly! Or you’ll regret the moment you were formed!”
In a storm of mewling, apologetic rasps, shouts, and interruptions, Kara pieced together the story. Rigby had tricked the Scath into killing him. He’d become despondent over his failures and his capture at Kara’s hands. He’d come so close to ruling as the next Nightmare Lord only to have it snatched away at the last moment. But because he was cobalt-shackled, he couldn’t use his will to end his own life, so he engaged the Scath in what he had called a game.
This was the part that made the fine hair on Kara’s arms stand on end. He’d called the game: Something Scary. The rules were simple: it had been Rigby versus the Scath. Rigby began by asking, “Do you want to see something really scary?” He turned his back on the Scath, and then spun around with the most horrific facial expressions he could manage.
When it was the Scath’s turn, they would do the same: “Does fleshling want to see something really scary?” The Scath would then whirl and writhe until, at last, becoming some fearsome sight, each more terrifying than the one that came before. According to the Scath’s rambling recollection, they had played five rounds, but on the sixth round, the Scath had revealed what they called “their inner black.”
“Did Rigby know about your inner black?” Kara demanded.
“Don’t know.”
“Rigby studied us.”
“Learned from the Lurker, maybe.”
“Don’t show me!” Kara ordered. “Explain to me. What is this inner black?”
The Scath shuffled nervously. “Inner black is what made us.”
“Nightmare flesh.”
“Pure, rotten evil.”
“Mask of death.”
Kara swallowed again. The Scath, she reminded herself gravely, still had their secrets. From their origins as Sages in the Garnet Province Libraries to their corruption by an ancient Nightmare Lord to their current subjugation under the possessor of the Shadow Key, the Scath were full of mysteries. Dangerous mysteries.
And, by Rigby’s trickery, the Scath had literally frightened Rigby to death.
She looked down on him and felt pity. Yes, the Scath had killed him, but it was no different from cowardly suicide. “Poor Rigby,” she whispered. “I thought you were made of stronger stuff than this.”
Her eyes blazing once more, she rounded on the Scath and unleashed a violent torrent of will. Like invisible hands made of hurricane winds, Kara corralled the Scath, tossed them headlong into one of the chamber’s many rooms, and slammed the door shut. Kara willed the entire room to harden into cobalt and found herself silently exulting at the Scath’s screams of agony echoing through the metal.
Kara turned, took a final look at Rigby, and marched all the way out of the Karakurian Chamber. She collapsed onto her throne seat, but she did not weep. Instead, she thought about where current events had left her. She no longer had Rigby as a resource, nor as a source of entertainment. It meant there were more things to figure out on her own, but that wasn’t a problem. After all, she’d studied Doctor Scoville’s first papers and experiments with lucid dreaming. She’d learned the techniques and even developed more effective methods.
Doctor Scoville.
Kara felt a chill at his name. Doc Scoville or, as he was known in the Dream, the Lurker, was not an opponent to be taken lightly. And Rigby had said that Doc Scoville had completed even more research. Things I know nothing about,Kara thought dismally. He might know things that could interfere.
And if Doc Scoville found out his cherished nephew had died while imprisoned by Kara, well . . . he wasn’t likely to become an ally then, was he? No,Kara reasoned with a sad laugh, no, he’d probably storm Dream Inc. Tower.Even if he couldn’t defeat Kara in her stronghold, he’d likely batter himself to death in the attempt.
No, Doc Scoville could not learn of Rigby’s death. And, just like that, all the pieces fell into place for Kara. She suddenly knew, step-by-crafty-step, what she needed to do to pull this off. She’d begin immediately.
“Scath!” Kara flexed her will to open the cobalt-encased room within the Karakurian Chamber. “Come to me!”
And this time, the Scath were more than punctual. They raced from the Karakurian Chamber as if pursued by ghosts even more frightening than themselves.
“What does master want?”
“Thank you, kind master, for releasing us.”
“Hurt room hurts us.”
“We are sorry for dead fleshling.”
“None of that,” Kara commanded. “Listen to me. I want you to take Rigby’s body. Go beneath the Veil and hide his body someplace where no one will ever find it.” The thought struck her pointedly: how quickly a living person—a he—could become inanimate matter and be called an it.
“We obeys!”
“Hide the fleshling good!”
Kara stood up from her throne and stared down at the Scath. “You listen to me: you hide his body well. Mess this up, and I won’t kill you. I’ll lock you in a cobalt prison . . . for eternity.”
Doc Scoville stood in the kitchen of his home and sipped on a steaming cup of coffee. It’s a beautiful afternoon, he thought, staring out through the window above the sink. Much warmer in January than it ought to be. The snow had mostly melted away. “What’s this?” he muttered, slowly setting his coffee cup down on the counter. He craned his neck a bit and smiled. A happy little group of bright red cardinals were playing in the backyard evergreens. They f littered from limb to limb, resting on a swaying branch for only a moment before leaping to a new perch.
Absolutely stunning day, he thought, lifting the almond-flavored coffee to his lips once more. The sun lit the yard in golden hues and caught on the already-budding branches of the ornamental cherry trees. It were as if spring had broken through the gate of winter to capture this day.
It was, Doc Scoville thought, a welcome invasion. He took his coffee to the kitchen table and sat down to ponder important decisions to come. After all, it was clearly a day for a walk.
He put down his coffee cup and began to scroll mentally through the many exotic pets he had in the basement zoo. Which one would he take on the walk?
Then, Doc Scoville heard something entirely unexpected. The front door to the house opened. There were footsteps in the foyer.
Strange,Doc Scoville thought. I wasn’t expecting a visitor today.
He started to stand, but then plopped into his seat at the sight of a young man coming around the corner into the dining room.
“Rigby?” Doc Scoville whispered. “Is that you?”
Rigby smiled and scratched at one of his long sideburns. “Of course it’s me, Uncle,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day outside. Care for a walk?”