Let your team contribute to your strength.
—PA ABNER
Keech opened his eyes to discover he was lying in a heap beside the sarcophagus. His head pounded fiercely, most likely from knocking it against the table on the way down, and something steadily throbbed in his closed hand. When he opened his fingers, he realized what he was gripping and gasped. It wasn’t Pa’s lockbox. It was the Char Stone.
“To touch the Stone is death!” Rose shouted.
The Reverend was wrong, of course. Keech had found his way back out. And in the process, released the many souls the Reverend had captured. Now the Stone was empty of all souls save one.
And Keech intended to return that soul to its body.
Pushing up to his feet, he peered over the edge of the basin. Rose had wandered away from the bridge he’d used to seal the Dead Rift. A newly created crow sat on his shoulder, its crimson eyes glowing with terrible power. Taking casual steps on bare feet, the Reverend walked toward the others. “Your friend Blackwood was foolish. And now the Stone has claimed him. But do not fret, children! Blackwood will live on inside my veins as Prime.”
Moving with the stealth he’d learned from Pa, Keech slunk out of the basin.
The Reverend continued his bothersome bravado. “Now, children, should I tear you to pieces? Or would it be a better revenge to toss you all into the chasm after Red and Coward?”
Quinn stepped away from the others, toward the chasm. The Key of Enoch dangled in his hand like a whip. He said, “Take another step, you foul devil, and I’ll launch this Key into the abyss.”
“You still think you have a card to play?” The Reverend laughed. “If you throw the Key over the edge, I’ll send a crow down to retrieve it. The pit may seem bottomless, but it isn’t. And I have closed off all means of escape.” The Reverend’s eyes flared green again and his lips peeled back, revealing a mouthful of sharp yellow teeth. “The game is over. There is naught for you to do but die.”
Keech emerged from the basin to find himself mere feet behind the Reverend. He crept forward, hoping the monster wouldn’t hear the scraping of his boots. Gripping the Char Stone, he reached out.
The Reverend spun with unearthly speed and grabbed Keech around the neck.
“Keech!” Sam shouted from across the chamber.
Pain cascaded through Keech’s body as the Reverend’s grip tightened. “No one escapes the Stone!” Rose rumbled.
“I … found … you,” Keech hissed.
“Don’t you understand, Blackwood? I can see into your mind,” Rose murmured as he squeezed Keech’s neck. It was, Keech realized, the exact way that the rage-cursed Pa Abner had ended Bill Blackwood. “You tampered with the darkness. You invited me in with the Black Verse. Nothing you do will escape my infinite gaze. ‘If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee.’ I will cast you aside, boy. I will destroy you…”
His vision fluttering, Keech listened for the voice of the man who had trained him to survive, who had loved Keech like his own son.
Don’t hesitate, Keech. Hesitation means death.
Keech rammed his knee into the Reverend’s stomach. The action did nothing to release Rose’s fingers, but it did force the fiend’s grip to slacken just enough to let Keech raise his arms. He lifted the Char Stone, and with a final mighty push, he shoved the cursed relic against Rose’s face.
The effect was instantaneous. The Reverend released Keech’s neck, and his hands flew up to seize the Stone. Screaming, he tore the relic out of Keech’s grip and away from his face and hurled it across the temple as if it were fire itself.
Keech crumbled to the floor on numbed legs, his vision a sickening blur of tears. In the distance, he could hear voices hollering his name, and he tried to turn toward them, but he couldn’t seem to move.
Then a curious warmth entered Keech’s body. His throat opened with a stinging cough, and he drew in a blissful breath. When he opened his eyes, he rolled onto his back to find Duck and Sam hunched over him. Sam was holding the Fang of Barachiel.
The Reverend staggered around the temple, doubled over and gibbering to himself, “No! This body is mine!”
“What’s happening to him?” Duck asked.
Keech pushed up to his feet, gripping his throat. “The Char Stone. When I was inside, I found Rose’s soul. But Pa Abner was there, too.”
“Pa?” muttered Sam.
“He gave me a way to bring Rose’s soul back out.”
Across the room, the Reverend stumbled to his knees and bellowed to no one, as if shrieking to someone inside his own head. “No! You can’t have it back!”
Keech smiled when he realized his plan was working. When Rose first touched the Stone all those years ago, he opened his mind and body to a demon from the Dead Rift, a demon that clearly wanted solitary possession. But by giving Rose’s soul back to his body, Keech had kicked the demon off balance.
Rose’s crow took to the air and circled above, crying Ack! Ack! Ack!
The Reverend glared up at the young riders, his blazing green eyes wild with terror and rage. “Nothing has changed! You haven’t won! I’ll find a way out yet!”
Racing in close, Strong Heart kicked at the Reverend’s leg. The demon stumbled back, but caught himself just before striking the floor. Whipping around, he lashed out with a blind swing to wallop Strong Heart, but the girl ducked beneath his knuckles and struck his other leg, this time with a fist.
The roar that emanated from the Reverend’s lungs seemed to rattle the entire Palace. “My wrath will fall upon your heads!”
Strong Heart cried, “Quinn, the Key!”
Quinn tossed the chain. Keech heard the heavy swoosh of the ancient shackle as the Key flew through the air in crooked loops. It careened toward the drop-off, where the Reverend had thrown Cutter’s knife, and for one terrifying second, Keech thought Strong Heart would miss it. But then she vaulted over the distance and caught the shackle with one hand before the chain could tumble over the edge.
As soon as she landed, Strong Heart sprinted toward the Reverend, swinging the shackle above her head like a lasso. Rose lifted his good hand as if preparing to summon a spell, but before he could unleash a dark enchantment, Strong Heart released her hold on the Key. The chain whipped around Rose’s arms and waist in a tight coil. Tumbling in front of Rose’s legs, Strong Heart snapped the dangling shackle around his wrist, then she faced the Reverend. “You are nothing but a stone in my path,” she said.
With a loud cry, Strong Heart kicked Rose squarely in the chest, her foot slamming into him so hard he tumbled head over heels and smacked against the slab that blocked the Dead Rift. But the fiend didn’t stop. Instead, the Key’s magic sent Rose careening through the barrier like a phantom through a wall. As the Reverend plunged into the Dead Rift, he shrieked a death rattle of outrage and surprise.
A second later, the voice fell silent.
The crow overhead dived blindly at the Lost Causes, screeching murderous rage as it plummeted toward them. But its flight was short-lived. The creature disintegrated into a black cloud of dust that sprinkled across the Palace floor.
The Palace was still for a moment. Even the horrible buzzing that had permeated the temple was gone.
Quinn murmured, “Is it over?”
“I think it might be,” said Sam.
But then the Palace floor trembled under their feet as a massive crack tore through the heavy slab that plugged the Dead Rift.
Strong Heart jumped back. “Hahn-kah-zhee!” she cried.
The stone barrier split down the middle as if something on the other side had smashed its way upward. Behind the gap, the living darkness of the Dead Rift roiled.
The Reverend was climbing back to the surface.
“Duck, the amulet!” Keech bellowed.
Holding the silver metal disc before her, Duck raced toward the Dead Rift. As she neared the breaking slab, sapphire sparks of energy shot from the amulet like a miniature lightning storm. The gut-wrenching sounds of a wounded animal poured out of the Dead Rift. Duck dropped to her knees in front of the cracking stone and raised the amulet high.
A monstrous face appeared in the gap, the true face of the nameless demon that had consumed Rose’s body and soul. Fangs gleamed from the thing’s open maw.
“Time to break the crocodile’s teeth!” Duck slammed the amulet against the hole.
A tremendous thunderclap rattled the Palace, and a sterling light flashed so bright that Keech threw his arms up to protect his eyes. When he blinked them open again, he saw that the slab was once again whole, a single block of stone. The silver disk lay fastened to the stone, sealed in place by the magic of the amulet.
The Lost Causes stood for a moment, waiting, expecting another terrible surprise, but all remained silent. Keech noticed the Char Stone resting near the chasm. With a swift kick, he sent the malignant relic over the edge, where it tumbled through the darkness and disappeared.
Sam asked, “Is it over now?”
Taking a deep breath, Keech closed his eyes. All the months and days and hours spent on the trail, battling Rose’s evil, fighting for justice, sloughed away from his tired bones.
“It’s over,” he said.
Duck wiped grit off her hands. “Dandy. Now how do we get out of here?”