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My first thought when I saw the apparition sha toward the rear of the parade was that it was one hell of a costuer-than-life puppet like the Pumpkinhead What else would you think if you saw a seven-foot-tall skeleton clad in steel-plate ar a wicked-looking axe in one hand? As it drew near, spectators were craning to get a better look at it and already beginning to cheer

But then Cody stopped dead in the intersection, so quickly I nearly ran into him from behind

It wasn’t a costu it with poles Those discolored bones were real, and a foul, acrid scentin the air around the figure That axe wasn’t plastic; it was a serious and deadly sharp-looking tool for splitting wood Whatever was causing the lightning, it wasn’t sohts And the armorI don’t knohat the hell the armor was about, but it definitely wasn’t decorative

The Tall Man’s grinning jaw gaped and blue flames flickered in his hollow eye sockets as he released a booh that seeainst the walls of the buildings

The pit ofto ice water in ry and bewildered "What the hell is it?"

"Talan, sir," Cody said flatly

Sinclair arrived at a run, breathing hard "And randfather’s duppy"

Chief Bryant stared at all three of us, at the houl squad converging behind us The Tall Man stood motionless, axe raised Several yards away, Stacey Brooks stood frozen in terror, the caotten in her hands

The noisy crowd had fallen silent and uncertain, and the parade participants were retreating into an uncertain cluster

Behind the figure of the Tall Man, an elderlyfamiliar about the tenor of that voice I’d heard it over an interco at the ti to point at Stacey Brooks as he uttered a single word

"CAVANNAUGH!"

Stacey let out an earsplitting screaht in front of us the whole tihs that had stolen the Tall Man’s re an It was the Tall Man’s sole living descendant that Grandpa Morgan’s duppy had possessed in order to work death h Clancy Brannigan, former inventor and self-proclai a spaceship or a new and i armor onto the stolen bones of his dead ancestor, now inhabited by the duppy and hell-bent on carrying out the Tall Man’s dying curse

And not only had we conveniently assembled the parade outside the decrepit old Tudor house, but we’d provided a scion of the Cavannaugh bloodline as a handy target

"Do so!" the chief shouted at us, then turned toward the crowds and the huddled parade participants, waving his arms "Clear the street! Get off the street!"

After that, things got chaotic

The Tall Man lunged toward Stacey Brooks, swinging his axe, and I reacted without thinking, su for hours Stefan hadthem as a weapon, but I didn’t knohat else to do I didn’t even know if I could do it, but as much as I disliked Stacey, I couldn’t just stand there while the resurrected corpse of Pemkowet’s infa a shield as I’d been taught, I visualized a bullwhip of blinding light and cracked it in ht ar on it

It worked The axe didn’t fall

For a split second, I was suffused with a sense of power and triumph Sinclair, as closest to Stacey, sprinted forward to haul her behind hi her out of danger

And then the Tall Man turned his skull inin his eye sockets, the end of ers, and I realized I couldn’t retracthigher, and I could see the malevolent joy of the obeahthe host like so destruction, draining th

All the power and triu into the apparition along the invisible tether that joined us, the tether I’d created The sounds of shouting in the background grew faint andinto a deep well of sleep, and I wondered if this hat dying was like My knees hit the concrete, the spirit lantern falling froth to cry, I would have

A voice raised in bronze-edged fury rent the night, penetrating the cotton wool that seemed to be stuffed into my ears

Lurine had shifted, her basilisk stare fixed on the Tall Man behind the feathered mask as her powerful coils lashed out to encircle the skeleton’s armor-clad waist The invisible tether broke as he turned his attention to chopping at her with his axe, and I fell to my hands and knees in the street