Tremaine and the Lightning

1

He rode into the city of Cutter Bay on an iron horse. His hat hung from a string around his neck as he tried to decide which way was the best way to go.

He finally decided to just wander until he settled somewhere that appealed to him.

He had traveled most of the country in his three lives. Following his feelings was better than running from a posse in his book, but he thought something was missing. Maybe he needed to settle somewhere permanently.

Tremaine rode the streets of the city until he saw a rundown hotel near the water. He decided that was the place for him.

He pulled into a parking slot, and looked around. He felt vibrations in the air. He knew something was going to happen. He didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

Oliver Hunt lived in Cutter Bay. Maybe he should call and let him know something was going on. He had sensed something about the man in their last meeting.

He decided not to do that. Hunt deserved some peace after the things that had been revealed to him. Calling him over a feeling seemed excessive after only meeting the man for five minutes in a graveyard.

He didn't know how long he would be in the city. He could look around on his own. If things turned into a mess, he would call around and ask Hunt for some help.

He doubted the man could help him in any way that involved taking action.

Tremaine headed into the hotel. He had enough money to stay for a few days. When that ran out, he would have to get another job to earn enough to move on to somewhere else.

Maybe he should think about setting up in a real job using his talents. Talking to dead people had to be worth something even if it hurt him mentally to do it.

Maybe he could be a finder of lost things. His ability allowed him to do that with less pain.

Tremaine checked in and paid for the few days he thought he would be staying in town. His funds were critically low. He needed to find something for more cash.

He wondered if other revenants experienced problems like this when they returned from the dead.

Were there other revenants wandering around? Was that something he should be concerned with in the future?

He wondered what people did when they first arrived in Cutter Bay and didn't have anything else to do. He supposed he could get something to eat while he waited for whatever bad thing was going to happen to happen.

He decided to shake off his mood. He couldn't change the future, and a feeling was just a feeling. He needed to get some kind of entertainment to distract his mind.

Maybe he could see a show. A big city should have a theater. It had been a while since he had seen anything like vaudeville.

Did they still have vaudeville?

He had been out of the loop for a long time. Being dead, then being a soulless monster, then coming back to life did that to a man.

Tremaine smiled. Where did the self-pity come from? He had been alive for almost a year. He had put all that aside.

Maybe he should call the sheriff. She cut out any sympathy with three words over the phone.

He decided to leave that pleasure for Friday. He didn't want to look like he was crying on her shoulder. She was too crusty for anything like that.

Tremaine decided to walk. It would conserve what gas he had left in his motorcycle until he was ready to leave town.

Maybe a walk would clear his head.

Tremaine walked across the city. He sensed the people around him, but paid them no attention. His mind was on the past. He needed something besides the wandering across the world. He needed his own patch of ground.

He wondered if that was why he felt like he did. Was it just some overdue homesickness when he never had a home?

He supposed that it was. He had missed a lot of things back then. Maybe this was all the lost paths asking him what he was going to do about it. He admitted he didn't know.

He paused when saw a cemetery appear to his right. He recognized the place. He had been here before. He walked inside.

Ghosts appeared as he looked around. Some acknowledged him with a wave. This was their last redoubt. They weren't ready to move over to the other side, and they couldn't stray too far from their resting spots.

"Hello, young fella." A man with too much mustache and not enough skin floated by. "What brings you by?"

"Just passing by." Tremaine doubted he was any younger than the ghost, but admitted it was hard to tell from a floating head. "I didn't know there were so many spirits active here. It wasn't like this the last time I was here."

"Something's in the air." The head nodded toward the ocean in the distance. "Something's throwing out some serious mojo out there."

Tremaine followed his gaze with his own. His blue eyes lit their own inner fires as he saw lines appearing in the air over the water. Something was heading for the city.

"I wished I still had my body." The head glared at the swirls as they looped through the air. "I got a feeling I'll need it."

"It could be something natural." Tremaine wished he had a higher vantage point to examine the flowing strips.

"We both know that isn't likely." The ghost shook his floating head. "Something has touched the spirit world somewhere."

"That's as good a guess as any." The stripes faded as they watched. "I guess we'll have to wait until its really close before we can try to figure out what they are."

"It's going to be bad." The ghost faded away. "I can feel it in my bones."

Tremaine couldn't disagree. The disquiet in his gut had increased. Those spectral ribbons had to be the explanation. He needed to find out the source of them and stop it.

Unfortunately, the effect seemed to be appearing at sea.

He would need a boat from somewhere and sail out there to look around. From the way the ghosts acted, the ribbons were getting stronger. Soon they would be hitting the city with whatever effect they were going to cause.

Tremaine walked out of the graveyard. He headed toward the city's shipping area. He wondered how much it would cost to rent a boat.

He didn't think it would be a good idea to let those things hit shore. He didn't know what they did, but they were agitating the dead from a distance. There was no telling what they would do when they were in touching distance.

The bare minimum was waking the dead.

He needed to do something about that. Anybody reaching across the boundaries of life and death may have good intentions, but he felt that was rare enough to be nonexistent.

And he knew the dead hated to be disturbed from their rest unless they had something to do in the living world.

He hoped the event he had witnessed had some harmless explanation. He needed to be sure before he moved on.

He started walking the docks, looking for a boat to take him out to sea.

2

There were plenty of wrecks off the shore of Cutter Bay. They didn't interest him.

The ghosts weren't solid enough for what he wanted.

It had been a good first test on what he could call forth. He expected that he should be able to do better once he was on shore. The ghosts there would give him more of their memories for fuel.

He scanned the shore with binoculars. None of the people seemed to be looking his way. His test had gone off undetected. That was the best part. They wouldn't know what was going on when the city was turned upside down.

He had one worry.

The city had a protector called the Ring. Things might get dicey if he tried to stop what was coming. It might divert some of the energy needed for the casting he was going to do.

Heroes always presented themselves at the worst time.

He decided to put back some of the energy he was trying to gather for defenses. That should keep the Ring busy until things were done.

He swept his gaze across the boats on the water with him. None of the other sailors seemed to be paying attention to him. That was fine as far as he was concerned.

When he was done, they wouldn't be able to sail without his permission.

He headed to shore. He had to rest up for the main event. If he lost his concentration, the spell would backfire. He didn't want to lose all of his life by making the wrong mark.

He couldn't be the king of ghosts if he made such an elemental mistake.

He liked that. The king of ghosts was perfect for what he planned to be after he was done with the ghosts of the city.

The living would give him power once he had enslaved the dead.

They would have to since he would drain off their energy to feed his workings.

His scheme wasn't without problems to consider.

The first in his mind was the Ring.

The hero had stopped a variety of menaces in Cutter Bay since appearing. He had the physical power to cause problems even if the Spirit King had started working his spell and draining the city's spirits.

The second were the mundane authorities. Someone would devote manpower to retake Cutter Bay. They would think he couldn't stop their armies, tanks, and airplanes. They would resort to drastic measures once they became aware they were feeding his power with their soldiers' deaths.

He supposed they might become desperate enough to drop the bomb on the city to deny his rule.

He would have to stop any such attempt.

Very few magic spells survived the absolute destruction such an event would cause.

He needed a way to divert the blast to make himself even stronger after the event. That would stop any more of those attempts when they realized their mistake. By then, his rule should cover half of the world.

A more important consideration to him was the magicians of the world.

They would not take his changing the balance of power lightly. They would try to stop him.

He needed to build up his personal power quickly so he could terminate them if they did show. He would take their personal power and add it to his own.

The problem was he would have to be able to overpower masters equal to his ability. He doubted they would band together, but he couldn't discount that. The mystical underground was a fractious with their own feuds, and strange camaraderie in the face of a common foe.

He also had no doubt some would extend the hand of friendship in the hopes of betraying him later when they were close to his source of power. That was something he could expect since it was something he would do if he involved himself in such a struggle.

Double-dealing was a magician's way of life.

He smiled when he saw his slip approaching. He only had to dock his boat and retreat behind his wards to rest up for the real work.

You couldn't take over a city without a good meal, and sleep. You could burn yourself out if you didn't take care of your body.

He let the boat coast into the dock. He tied it off and went ashore. He waved at the owner as he passed.

The man knew that he had rented the boat to a tourist, but had forgotten everything else about the man. That seemed to be driving him crazy as the Spirit King passed.

He smiled. The look on the man's face had been worth the tiny bit of energy drained by mesmerism to make him forget everything but the agreement.

He walked to his car. He drove out of the lot behind the screen it gave him. He didn't want other magicians aware that he was in the area. They seemed to be territorial sometimes.

He didn't want to fight a duel before he had gathered overwhelming force on his side.

He drove through the city, obeying the normal laws. He had no doubt he could handle any policeman who stopped him, but why attract attention. He needed to be as invisible as possible until he started his working.

When he did have it going, it would be like hanging a sign up in front of his door.

That was when he was going to be at his most vulnerable.

He needed to check on having defenders to help him in case heroes did try to interfere in his scheme. He would have to do some research.

He might be able to divert a tiny amount of energy from his working into spirits designed to protect him from harm. That should be enough to stop anyone on the physical plane.

They should also distract magicians operating on the spirit plane.

He smiled as he considered what he could build with even a tiny fraction of the energy he planned to harness.

He wondered how big he could grow his defenders even if he kept most of the energy for himself. It might be a good experiment to see as long as it didn't endanger his primary wants.

He had to assume control, then learn how far he could push his magic. He couldn't push it while he was trying to wrestle for control from the ghosts.

Something might go wrong and feed everything into his guardians. He didn't want them becoming magic sinks and wrecking everything because he wasn't careful about what he was doing.

He was good enough to avoid an amateurish mistake like that.

He reviewed his scheme in his mind as he found his temporary headquarters downtown. He saw everything as a tree branching away from his initial acts. He saw too many ways for things to blow up in his face.

He would have to do the best he could and improvise when he started working his will.

3

Tremaine found a boat that could be rented. It had just been docked by another renter who had left before he had arrived at the waterfront. He paid to rent it and headed out to sea.

The boat had some kind of residue on it. He could feel it. He realized he hadn't just picked that boat by chance. He picked it because it was involved with the ripples he had seen.

He needed to get on the trail of the previous sailor. He needed to know what the man planned to do with the display he had seen.

He doubted it was for forming an understanding between the living and the spirit worlds.

Tremaine turned the boat in a wide circle. He realized he was over some wrecks in the water. He could feel the dead twisting below.

He needed to do something about that before he went to shore. His quarry would realize what had happened, if not who. It had to be done.

He set the anchor. He took off his clothes. He jumped overboard and sank like a stone. His eyes glowed in the dark as he descended to the bottom.

Ghosts of dead sailors milled about in the water. The local fish swam at a distance. The animals didn't know what was going on, but didn't like it all the same.

He couldn't blame them for that. Ghosts put out a vibration that caused that reaction in smarter animals.

There was a thin net of lines stretching from one wreck to another. He saw that it contained the spirits that normally would be resting in their watery graves. He knew what he had to do.

He grabbed the line in both hands and pulled on it. He knew it was nothing in the real world. It was also solid to those who could touch spirits like he could. He pulled on the line until he ripped the net apart.

He kept hold of the one end of the line heading to the surface while letting the other end fade away. The sea ghosts faded back to their rest as he headed for the surface.

He had a tangible link to his new enemy now. All he had to do was follow it to the end.

The only drawback was if the magician realized he had seized the working and tried to kill him before he was ready with his own ambush.

He didn't plan to give man a fighting chance if he could help it. He had dealt with several magicians that would snuff out anyone who got in their way. He doubted this one would be any different.

He wrapped the spell around his arm as he climbed aboard the sailboat. He got dressed. He had to head back into the city and find his faceless enemy before he did more damage to the other side.

Tremaine headed into shore. He would have to get a description of the man who had rented the boat before him. That way he would know what the man looked like when they finally met.

And he planned to meet the man.

Something that reached into the spirit world had to be stopped. There was too much of a chance that things were released on the living. People would die if that happened.

Those kinds of things took everything they could, and left nothing behind.

Tremaine moored the boat to the dock as soon as he reached the slip. He dropped silently on the wooden planks. He needed to talk to the man in charge of the rentals. Then he could start his pursuit in earnest.

He hoped to avoid any excitement. He should have known better than that. He had taken on a duty to protect people from monsters. He knew better than most that monsters were everywhere.

He hoped he could stop this one before Cutter Bay was pushed into the Atlantic by vengeful spirits.

He opened the door to the office. It was cramped and full of paper from every rental since the place opened. The round-faced proprietor looked up at his visitor, pen and ledger in hand.

"Do you know who the man was that rented that boat before me?" Tremaine pushed his hat back to appear less of a threat.

"Not really." The boat renter looked down at the pile of paperwork. "He was a first timer too."

"Not a local?" Tremaine looked out on the sea. The waves reflected his thoughts.

"Never seen him before." The renter picked up one of the agreements. "I can't read the name."

"Do you remember what he looked like?" The medium could see the man didn't as soon as he asked.

"No." The man frowned. "What's this about?"

"I think he left something behind on the boat." Tremaine smiled as he opened the door. "I just want to return it to him."

He headed away from the city. The strand of the spell he had grabbed tugged on him as he moved. He had an idea where his enemy was thanks to that. He should get his motorcycle so he could move faster through the streets.

He had a feeling his quarry was moving around himself. He needed to move faster than his feet could carry him.

He started walking to his hotel. He would grab something to eat on the way. He had a feeling he wouldn't be able to do much of that until his hunt was done.

Why did magicians think they could ruin everything because they could?

Tremaine walked in a straight line toward his goal. He should have gotten his cycle when he first felt the tug toward the graveyard. Or he should have gotten it when he had decided to check things out.

Retrieving it was wasting time he needed to follow up on what he had.

The magician probably had his spell in place. The graves would give up their dead whenever he cast it.

Tremaine nodded when he saw his hotel in the distance. His bike still stood out front. He picked up his pace.

He didn't know how much time he had left. He doubted it was long.

Tremaine kickstarted his bike and pulled away from the hotel. He grabbed the strand of the spell wrapped around his arm. He let it reel him toward his unknown enemy.

He rode with the retracting line through the city. He should have called Hunt in case he failed what he was doing. The other man might know someone to take up the fight.

Cutter Bay rolled past in a series of pictures as he homed in on the other end of the line. He sensed something pulling on his thread. He held on to it.

It was his only clue to his mastermind. He couldn't let it go no matter what.

He had promised to redeem himself for ripping away the souls of others. He couldn't step back from his promise because it might be dangerous.

He had lived with danger for a long time, when he was alive and when he was reborn.

A little more meant nothing at this stage of the game.

And since he was honest with himself, he wasn't going to let Sheriff Savage be able to tell him I told you so.

He smiled at that.

That should be the least of his concerns. He decided it was as good a reason as any to stop whatever was going on.

4

Lazarus Tremaine rolled to a stop in front of a graveyard. He should have known that was the ultimate destination. He had wandered the city for what seemed like hours following the thread he had unhooked from the dead men.

He dismounted and went to the gate, pulling his hat low over his eyes.

He needed to see his enemy before the man saw him. That would give him an idea on how to approach this.

This was one of those times he wished he still carried a gun to deal with bad guys.

He doubted it would make things easier with the things he had been dealing with since his rebirth.

Most of them had been bulletproof.

He walked into the graveyard. He wondered what kind of defense the magician would have in residence. He wouldn't want anyone discovering his residence and walking inside.

A guy like Tremaine would be on his hate list.

A living dead man moving on his own was not something a puppet master of the dead wanted to see. That meant something had gone wrong with the order of the universe. He would think that someone had stumbled on his scheme and had sent a killer to do away with him.

Tremaine expected some kind of fireworks trying to kill him before too much longer. Just because he couldn't see it didn't mean it wasn't there.

The thread tugged on his arm. It pointed to a tombstone in the middle of the cemetery. He walked over and saw that the spell was anchored to the grave.

He pulled out the anchor with an effort.

The line arced in the air toward something beyond the graveyard. He smiled. Maybe he didn't know where the man was, but he was wrecking his setup.

What would the magician do when all of his spells were unplugged from their targets? What was the alternate plan when someone got in the way?

Tremaine doubted he could pull all of the spells without attracting attention. The magician would notice and try to reestablish his spell work. The extent of the web had to be bigger than the cowboy could perceive at the moment.

It would be a pleasure to ruin it.

He wound the spell work into a lasso. He walked to the exit, pulling on the thread as he went. He looped the loose rope around his bike's handlebars. He rode toward the source of the spell, winding up the line with one hand as he went.

He needed to do something to burn it up somehow. He couldn't use magic, and he didn't want to leave what he was gathering laying around for anyone to stumble over and kill themselves. He needed to figure a way to destroy spellwork to go with the fact he could manhandle it.

He should ride up to Boston and talk with the Raven about it. She would know a general spell fixer. She had already sent one of her brother magicians to another world with his help.

He rolled more of the line to the reel as he collected the web from all over the city. It led him downtown. He nodded as he saw the line go to one of the buildings.

All he needed to do was find the one office that belonged to his enemy, and have a talk with him about what he planned to do. That sounded simple compared to the amount of trouble he knew he was in for. Magicians weren't known for their social ability.

Tremaine walked into the lobby. The line of magic led upwards. He decided to use the stairs instead of the elevator.

It was harder to drop the stairs than the elevator.

He hoped it was harder to drop the stairs than the elevator.

He climbed up the building. He checked each floor as he went. The spell line went through each office until he reached the floor he thought it ended. He couldn't see it in any of the offices where he looked through the windows he passed on that floor, or the next one.

It had to be on that floor somewhere. He needed to take a closer look at things.

He walked down the hall again. One of the doors had a glow the others didn't. He suspected it was to project an air of normality. He needed to know what was behind that door.

He was suddenly glad he had left the trail of webbing tied to his bike instead of carrying it with him.

The implication that he had been carrying a weapon that could kill him if he was touching it didn't escape him as he tried to decide what to do to the door.

He needed to take hero lessons. Too many locked doors on lairs could be hazardous to his health.

He hooked the glow with a fingertip. It had a lot of briars on it. People weren't supposed to go in that office unless they had an invitation.

He snapped the light with a twist of his wrist. The windows grew dark. He smiled. They had been blacked out to hide the fact the office had something going on other than the sign on the door.

That was no surprise.

Tremaine checked for other glows before he went any further. He didn't want to be turned into a frog. He braced himself when he didn't see any other spells at work.

It was time to kick down the door.

Tremaine smashed the door open with his shoulder. He stepped inside the office. He had expected weird decorations and was not disappointed. He had faced similar surroundings when he had taken his soul back. That wasn't important.

A whip of light reaching for his head was more important.

He ducked the curling snake and dove over a statue of a sitting man. He didn't want to know what that would do to him.

"I don't know who you are, but you broke into the wrong place." The whip snapped at the cowboy again as he took cover behind a turned over couch.

"I know what you're doing." Tremaine moved down to the end of the couch. "Leave the dead alone."

"The dead are helping me take over the city." The magician stepped into view. "I plan to use them to deal with any magician that gets in my way."

Tremaine picked up a candle stick and threw it. He had to get in close if he wanted to stop this guy. He needed a gun.

He should rethink this hero thing.

"You did something to my spells." The magician looked around the room. "I don't have the energy I need."

Tremaine winced as the candlestick came apart from a whip strike. It fell in three pieces halfway between him and his enemy. He needed something sturdier to throw.

"I don't have time for this." The magician drew his whip back into his hand. "I have to redo my work."

A bolt of lightning hit the couch. That struck Tremaine before he could get out of the way. He hit the wall, furniture on top of him. Then he was falling through a hole in the wall. He looked at the street rushing up toward him.

It looked like he could stop worrying about not having a pistol to deal with his enemies.

Who was going to stop the spirit sucker now?

5

Clark Garret liked to jog around Cutter Bay. He found it relaxing. He was supposed to be relaxing since he was retired from the hero game.

He hated it enough to carry on behind the scenes.

He knew he wasn't the only one from the old days defying the government. New heroes had also appeared to help out where needed.

McCarthy couldn't stop that no matter how much he tried.

Garret smiled. At least he couldn't be stopped despite what the HUAC wanted.

He paused on his run when he saw a window blast apart above him. He frowned at the falling man dropping toward the street. Anyone else would have seen a blur heading for the ground.

It looked like pictures being flipped one by one by an old man to him.

Garret ran home and changed clothes, pulling on his helmet and goggles as he ran back to where the man was still dropping to the ground. He ran up the side of the building and launched himself into the air. He caught the cowboy on his way across the street to the side of another building. He landed and ran down that building with his burden. He put his catch on the sidewalk.

"Thanks for saving my life." The cowboy straightened his hat and pulled himself together. "I have something to finish."

"What's going on?" Garret looked up at the hole in the side of the building.

"A magician is trying to control the spirit world." The cowboy headed for the building. "He thinks he can use that to rule the world, or something."

"Let me give you a hand." Garret picked up his rescue. Then they were in the magician's lair.

"Where did he go?" The cowboy looked around.

Garret gave the place the onceover. He shook his head.

"No one here but us."

"He'll go to a graveyard." The man in black looked out the hole in the wall. "He'll want to start rebuilding his net."

"That should take a few seconds to check." Garret checked every cemetery in town. He didn't see anything that looked like a magician casting an evil spell. He returned to the office with a shake of his head. "Any other ideas?"

"The only other place I know he was at was the shipwrecks at sea." The cowboy went to the window. He leaned out the hole to look around. "There's a glow out there."

"Let's go." Garret carried the other man to the docks. He knew a lot of criminal things were centered around the shipping. It had been like that before he had got his powers and became a Guardian.

It would probably be like that long after he was dust in the ground.

"Over there." The man in black pointed out to sea. "That's where he's working."

"I don't see anything." Garret had good eyes, but they were geared for movement at inhuman speeds. Long distance was for people who could fly.

"He's throwing off light into the air." The cowboy looked around for a boat. "How do I get out there?"

"I'll carry you." Garret started across the water in the indicated direction. Hopefully the magician had a boat, or he would be treading water once he was there.

That would make him useless in a fight if he was dependent on someone else to be a spotter while he went into action.

Garret saw a boat in the distance and rushed over to it. He was not surprised to see a man in white with his hands raised.

Enemies wearing opposing colors fit into his world with some regularity.

He dropped the cowboy off so he could launch a punch to settle things until he could figure out how he was going to put a real stop to whatever was going on.

He had seen enough magic during the war that knocking out someone using it seemed the best bet.

Garret crashed into something surrounding the magician. Cold lashed through his system. He fell to the deck of the boat. His body shook despite his best efforts to get it under control.

He should have seen that coming from a mile away.

"You again?" The man in white scowled at the new arrivals. "And somehow you have summoned the Blinker."

"Leave the dead alone." The cowboy advanced across the deck. "They deserve their rest."

"I think you need to learn your place in the grand scheme of things." The magician flicked his wrist. Cold passed over Garret as he shook on the deck.

The medium stepped on the rail and jumped around the light as it cut the air. He smiled as he landed on the deck.

"I already know my place." He moved forward. "I think this your last chance to stop your scheme."

"You don't have the power to stop me." The magician wrote something on the air with invisible light. The water bubbled around the boat as it bobbed on the Atlantic.

Garret picked himself up, holding his shaking down with his will. He had a bad feeling what the bubbles meant. He didn't want to see if he was right.

He spun his arms in tight circles in front of him. Wind blasted through the cold fire around the magician. He had a moment to yelp before he hit the water.

"I hope you can swim." He stopped his arms as he looked over the rail.

"Good idea." The cowboy rushed to Garret's side. "How do we stop him from raising the dead?"

"I have no idea." The speedster spotted the shadow approaching through the water as a darker black than what was around the boat. "Get ready to jump."

The wreck surfaced under their boat. It flipped to one side as the bigger craft lifted it into the air. Both men jumped to the raised ship to avoid falling into ocean, if not being crushed under the magician's vehicle.

Garret smiled as he steadied himself on landing.

"The magic is still going." The man in black rushed to the splintered rail. "I don't see him anywhere."

"How are you with skeleton swordsmen?" Garret looked at the crew approaching them.

"I have put things down before." He looked around for a weapon he could use. He found a belaying pin. "We need to find the spirit raiser and deal with him. These guys will go back to sleep if we do that."

"Do what you can." The Blinker snatched a sword out of one of the skeleton's hands before it knew the blade was gone. "I'll run interference."

Garret took his enemies apart. His speed made his lack of skill negligible. If something came at you with the speed of a comet, you couldn't get out of the way if you couldn't match that velocity. Bone splintered to pieces as he went to town with his stolen weapon.

The exhumed sailors fell to the deck under his assault. They tried to put themselves back together to get back in the fight. High speed scattering sent them to different parts of the ocean.

That should keep them busy until their master was dealt with however they could manage that.

He looked around. He didn't see the cowboy now. Where had the man gone in the short time he had been busy with his distraction?

Magicians were a pain to deal with in his experience. Where was Mr. Destiny when he needed him?

Garret checked the sides of the ship. Maybe the cowboy had gone over the side. He was rewarded with wood falling into the ocean. They were below decks from the looks of things.

He found a ladder leading down below and headed down to lend a hand.

The man in black seemed strangely unable to cast spells compared to the other magician.

Garret found the two men dueling in what he took to be a hold. The cargo had been scattered across the sea bottom long ago from the looks of things. He decided he needed to help out but knew that a minefield was waiting for him to cross it.

He threw the sword.

6

Lazarus Tremaine saw something streak by him as he grounded threads of ectoplasm into the deck of the ship. He couldn't get close to the magician. The spells in the air were a spiny hedge he didn't want to throw himself on.

The streak became a sword. He realized it was a sword because something in the air caught it like a hand. The sword whistled experimentally at the end of the threads wrapped around its hilt.

That couldn't be good.

"Oops." Blinker appeared beside the cowboy. "I didn't think he could catch it."

The sword whipped out at them. The Blinker trapped it with a board he had grabbed in a split second from somewhere. The thread tried to pull the blade free as the magician readied some other spell to use.

Tremaine pulled the controlling leash from the weapon's hilt. He yanked on it. The Spirit King went down to his knees from the surprise move. He exerted some of his will to send the wanderer into the roof of the hold.

The Blinker began to throw wood at the magician to keep him off balance. He hoped that he could overwhelm whatever defenses the man had with his speed.

The boards collided with invisible netting and hung in the air. He should have seen that coming. The magician flung them back with a wave of his hand.

Garret disappeared for the second it took the boards to whip across at him. He reappeared across the hold as the improvised weapons smashed into the walls behind where he had stood. He smiled.

He spun his arm at the magician. A tornado of wind crashed into the invisible net. That sent his enemy skidding across the deck in front of it.

"I'm tired of you getting in my way." The Spirit King pointed at the Blinker.

"I don't see how you can stop me." Blinker watched the room in case he was wrong. "You don't have the speed."

"I don't need speed." The magician raised his hands. Invisible whips wrapped around the speedster's limbs. "I have power to spare."

The Blinker struggled against the bonds holding him still. His physical strength wasn't enough for the job.

He needed to resort to the vibrating trick and hope it got better results.

He shook in place. The plan was to keep at the magic rope with the hope of wearing it out like regular rope. He found the spell net shook with him without being harmed.

That was a waste of his time.

"It looks like I have two sacrifices to help rebuild my net." The magician grinned at the captive speedster.

"I'll have to say no." The Blinker tried to think of some other trick he could pull to get out of this mess. "I've sacrificed enough."

"There's no sacrifice too big to help me with my plans." The Spirit King grinned as he walked forward. "I'll be able to seize the city and spread to the rest of the country, then the world. My rivals will be hunted down and made into my puppets."

"We both know that isn't going to happen." Garret decided his best strategy was to keep the madman talking, "Someone will stop you."

"You can't really mean that." The magician smiled. "Once I begin channeling the spirits, no mortal magician has a chance."

"What about a dead man?" Tremaine ripped the defensive screen down with a yank of his hands on empty air.

"I thought I had taken care of you." He waved a white sleeved arm at the man in black. Tendrils of power lashed out through the air.

Tremaine smiled as he ducked the lash. He had the other man's number, and he was close enough to exploit it. All he had to do was lay one hand on the man, and the game was over.

The Spirit King spun and the Blinker flew at the cowboy at the end of his tethers. The speedster could only watch as he crossed the space.

He might saw his ally in half if he tried to shake himself out of the moving chains.

The man in black vanished in front of him as he hit the deck of the hold. He tried to grab the floor with his hands before he was yanked into the air.

He hated being a flail.

He needed an idea so he could break free and get back into the fight.

Suddenly the Blinker rolled on the deck. He used his speed to get to his feet before the roll slammed him into a wall. He rubbed his wrists as he wondered how that had happened.

Tremaine smiled as he ducked several more attacks. He knew he was scaring the other man. And a scared enemy made mistakes.

He needed to get in so he could touch his enemy. Then he could deal with the magic once and for all.

The dead deserved some rest from the waking world after deciding not to move on.

He jumped a low wall of spikes while ducking another fist made of ectoplasm. He slid through a tangle of tendrils before they could grab him. He paused as a wave rose up to wash him away. He cut it in two with the sword he had retrieved.

The Spirit King paused. It had never seen anyone do that before. No one should be able to touch spell work like this shadow man. No one had forced him to reach into his reserves like this. He might need to retreat and get away from his foes.

How could he counter his enemies long enough to escape?

Wood flew at him while he was distracted. He brushed the assault aside with a stop gesture. The Blinker wasn't the real threat.

He slid back, moving to get out of reach of the cowboy. That should buy him some time to regroup.

Suddenly the man in black was right in front of him. He swung a hand, trying for a physical connection. He could rip a man's soul away if he touched his spirit.

A gloved hand caught his arm and redirected his swing so he faced behind him. He felt something hook on the back of his brain. He tried to pull away. Something tore.

He felt his energy roar into the air as he lost his magic as he stumbled forward.

"I have had enough of you." Tremaine stepped back, aura fading from his grasp.

The Spirit King knew he was going to lose. Most of his power and control had been ripped from him. He had to do something before he lost everything.

He released the boat.

The wreck started sinking back to its place under the sea. That would have happened normally with the magician losing his power. He decided to hurry it along in the hopes of dragging his enemies with him.

The Blinker and the cowboy disappeared as water rushed into the hold. He groaned that he had failed to get rid of them before they could ruin any future plan of his.

Darkness covered the magician as the ship descended into blackness.

Tremaine resettled his hat as the shore appeared around him. He should have expected that. The Blinker had already shown his speed was second to none.

"What now?" Blinker stared at the sinking boat.

"I give you this." Tremaine handed over the sword. "Say thanks, and head out of town."

"What about your dead raising friend?" The Blinker pointed to the vanishing mast out in the distance.

"He's finished." The cowboy shook his head. "He won't be making any more trouble for the city."

"Where are you going to go from here?" Garret didn't like letting such a wild card run loose, but the man had saved the day.

"I'm thinking about going west from here." Tremaine headed into the city to get his bike. "I'm going to try and find somewhere nice and quiet."

epilogue

The ship drifted to the bottom. Its ghosts quieted with the removal of their attacker from the battlefield. The hull broke apart when it hit. Rotted wood drifted down as the current swept some of the smaller pieces along.

A man in a white suit drifted from the wreckage. He lay on the bottom in what looked like a deep slumber. The water crackled as it rotated around the sleeper.

The body drifted north as forces generated by surface events pushed on it. Fish that swam too close became bones splintering into the Atlantic.

It took a few decades for the body to reach a place that it thought it could gather more strength just by waiting for the right things to come along.

Several monsters that had been fish at first met their end when they investigated the sleeping man. Invisible tendrils took them apart in a matter of seconds. Distorted patches of skin and parts of shells drifted to the bottom when things were done.

Eventually something reasoned it was time for the sleeping man to surface and awake to see what had changed in the world above.

It was time for the king to reassert his claim on the kingdom of the dead.

The tendrils dragged the unresponsive body up the shore to the top of the water. He floated there as waves rotated around him and his protective zone.

He drifted to a beach a few feet away from where he had broke from the ocean's embrace. Sand dragged him from the sea with extended fingers.

The Spirit King opened his eyes. He smiled. His escape had relied on a lot of luck but he had gotten free without being discovered. His weakened condition would have led to an easy capture by the Blinker and his ally.

He had been severely wounded by the man in black. He had never had most of his power thrown to the wind like that. His last spell cast as he sent the boat to the bottom had been a desperation ploy.

He had not expected to wake up from his magic slumber.

He took the time to lay there on the beach to gain his bearings. He felt weak, and hungry. He wondered if his money was still good.

He didn't have the strength to hex someone.

He got to his feet. He frowned at the sand clinging to his clothes. He would have to do something about that when he had the strength. He could barely walk, much less work a cleaning spell. He brushed off what he could as he walked up to the parking lot above the beach.

How long had he been asleep? Was the Blinker and that other man still alive? Where was he?

He walked down the street toward a stop and rob. He could get what he needed from there. Then he could decide if he wanted to continue his plans, or not.

He didn't want another battle while he was trying to squeeze power from the dead to put his own plan in motion.

How had those two got on his trail in the first place?

That cowboy seemed able to see magic while unable to cast it himself. Maybe he had seen some of the spellwork across Cutter Bay. That would explain why he had shown up at the building on his own.

Then the Blinker had arrived out of nowhere.

That should have been expected. The hero had vanished from public view since the war, but there were stories around of miraculous rescues and things fixing themselves without anyone touching them. A man so fast that he was unseen would have been a reasonable explanation for things like that.

You couldn't change the past. You could only move forward.

The Spirit King went into the shop. He spotted a door for the bathroom at the back of the building. He went inside the small room and locked the door. He looked at himself in the mirror.

He didn't present a pretty picture.

If he was the clerk on duty, he would have called the police as soon he came in the door.

He could say he had been robbed on the beach. That would explain his ghastly appearance.

He smiled. He could think of better explanations than that. He had resorted to the first one that came to mind. That was what most people would think if they saw him.

Someone knocked on the door. He turned to look over his shoulder. He wasn't confident of his ability to defend himself at the moment.

"Yes?" He raised a hand. He felt a tug of power in a finger. He smiled. He wasn't totally without resources.

"Are you okay in there?" He smiled. The clerk was making sure he wasn't dying in the bathroom.

"I'm fine." The Spirit King shook his head. "I took a fall on the beach."

"Just wanted to make sure." The clerk retreated from the door.

He shook his head. He should have expected that too. He looked like a mess. He needed to fix what he could and leave.

He plugged the sink. Cold water was added. He gazed in the water as he searched his inner self. He smiled. He had some reserves waiting for him to tap. It would make it easier for him to clean his clothes at the very least.

He cupped some water in his hand. He closed his eyes. The sand and mildew in his clothes flew into the water until he had a ball of mud. He placed that in the sink and hit the lever to open the plug. The collected debris came apart as the water vanished down the drain. He washed it away with a wave of his hand.

That was better. Now all he needed to do was test if his money was still good. He needed something to build up his energy so he could recover and plan for his conquest.

He also needed to know where and when he was so he could think how he was going to move his resources to this new city, or go back to Cutter Bay.

He should see what this city had before he dismissed it as a power source. It might have better graveyards than Cutter bay.

He took one last look in the mirror. He looked tired, but better. He washed his hands and pulled off towels from the reel to dry them. He threw the paper away before stepping out of the bathroom.

He inspected the shelves as he looked around for something to buy. Everything was much higher than he remembered. He saw something that said 5 hour energy. That looked like what he needed.

He bought a bottle, found a newspaper rack outside the store, and started catching up the time he had lost.

Church Hill would be a perfect base for him to get started.

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