Chapter Thirty-seven

Amity Park

Dora, in her dragon form, circled high over the streets of Amity Park. No sign of her brother, so she provided cover as the humans engaged with the skeleton warriors below. Some of the humans, mostly the ones she knew, were fairly skilled and knew how to fight. The rest were largely untrained, wielding everything from axes and broadswords to crude instruments she couldn't name. These were the ones Dora watched closely.

She saw a burly blond young man in a red jacket that she vaguely remembered from the beauty contest her brother had forced her to run. He was surrounded by five skeletons, so she dove in, sweeping three of them aside with her tail so he could take on the other two.

The Ghost Boy's sister screamed some sort of battle cry as she went after a skeleton with something that resembled a cat-o-nine tails with her father's face oddly decorating the center of the talons. She seemed to be holding her own, so Dora moved on to where the paunchy bald man who'd shown up at the door just as she and the Ghost Boy's father were leaving was trying to fend off two skeleton ghosts with a baseball bat. She incinerated both skeletons, startling the bald man, but he quickly recovered and looked for new targets, so she did the same.

Down the street, the parents of the Ghost Boy's girlfriend were stationed on the hoods of cars parked on opposite sides of the street, picking off skeletons with their crossbows as they phased up through the ground near the park, while a dark-skinned man—the mayor's father, Dora thought—was running down the street pushing an older woman in a wheelchair, also holding a crossbow, as she shot at any skeleton who wasn't smart enough to get out of their way. Dora saw some skeletons that they'd passed turn around and start to go after them from behind, so she swooped down and breathed blue flame across them, charring their bones and knocking them onto their backs in the street.

She flew higher, trying to get a better perspective, just as the Ghost Hunter Girl zoomed in on her jet sled, back from her trip dropping off the Ghost Boy's father in the Far Frozen. She pulled up beside Dora. "What's the situation?"

"No sign of my brother. The humans are mostly holding their own, but new skeletons keep phasing in from underground."

"Then Tucker and Technus still haven't closed the portal. Maybe I should go help them—"

A blast of blue flame cut through the air, hitting Dora in her left flank and sending her crashing into a grove of trees in the park. She hit the trunk of a large oak with a painful crack of her wing, then slid down it to land in a heap in the grass below. Winded and her right wing screaming in pain, she couldn't move as she heard a deep, arrogant voice cry out.

"Humans of the kingdom known as Amity Park!"

Dora felt the scales along her neck prickle as she strained to lift her head to see the source of the voice. Across the street, perched on top of a lighted sign that read Nasty Burger, sat her brother in his dragon form. Skeleton warriors stopped fighting and stood at attention, letting some humans get in a few blows, but mostly they were looking up at the big, black dragon sitting on top of the fast food sign, too.

"As the Grand Vizier and governor of this kingdom under the Master of All Dimensions, Vlad Plasmius, I am granting you a choice. Throw down your arms in surrender, and you shall all live. Continue this futile fight, and your land will soon be overrun with legion upon legion of skeleton warriors, and we will burn everything under the dome to the ground. What is your answer?"

"I got your answer!" It was the old lady in the wheelchair who cried out. She aimed her crossbow and shot an arrow, which hit Aragon right between the eyes. His hide was too thick for it to be more than a stinging annoyance, but Aragon cried out in pain, message received.

Dora decided she liked the old woman.

Aragon pulled the arrow out of his forehead. "So be it!" The skeletons resumed fighting the humans while Aragon flew up into the air and circled around. "Then let your town burn!"

Realm of the Far Frozen
The Ghost Zone

Sam's teeth started to chatter almost as soon as they made it inside the caves along with the other ghosts that were trying to stay out of the fight. In the relative dryness of their shelter, the sodden fur coat clinging to her, dripping onto puddles on the cave floor, began to feel heavy and cold, but she pushed it out of her mind as she and Danielle worked on directing traffic, moving ghosts upwards to higher ground. Most of them flew over their heads, leaving Sam and Dani the only ones left to trudge up the wet, stone path to the upper levels.

"You're shivering," Danielle observed.

"I-I'm g-g-good."

"Obviously." She reached out, putting her hand on Sam's shoulder. Immediately, Sam felt the familiar tingle of intangibility pass over her, and the water that had been clinging to her hair and coat splashed to the ground around where her boots would have been if they were solid.

Jerking away from the contact, Sam became tangible again, but now she was dry. The woven fur of her coat felt warm again against now-dry skin, and her teeth stopped chattering. Dani become solid once more as well, and Sam glared at her. "You're not supposed to use your powers. Especially not with skeleton warriors nearby."

Danielle rolled her eyes. "You're getting as bad as Danny." She pointed to the walls of the cave. "There's still ice in here. Between that and the cave walls, I'm not feeling the skeletons. And I can use them for short periods. Maddie even said it was okay." As soon as she said Mrs. Fenton's name, she pressed her lips together.

Now Sam put her hand on Danielle's shoulder. "Danny and his dad will get her back. She'll be fine."

"I know." Still, she didn't look encouraged as she started walking again. "I just... I feel like it's my fault he got her. If Danny hadn't been so worried about me, he wouldn't have left her behind."

Sam followed behind. "You know what? There are altogether too many people blaming themselves for what Vlad does. He's a psychopath, Dani. No one is to blame for the horrible things he does but him."

"We should've known, that's all. Of course he wouldn't come after me. Why would he? It's not like he ever had any interest in me before."

The bitterness in her voice did not escape Sam. She'd noticed it when Mr. Fenton had first told them what happened to Mrs. Fenton, too. "That bothers you, doesn't it?"

Dani's shoulder stiffened, but she gave Sam a contemptuous snort. "Why would it bother me? I'm not exactly looking to get another ectoranium injection, thank you very much."

"It bothers you because you think of him as your father."

Her shoulder's stiffened even more, and her voice was brittle enough to refreeze the melting ice. "No, I don't. I know who my real family is."

"Dani." Sam caught up to her again. "Vlad was all you ever knew for—" She'd been about to say twelve years, but she'd really only been with Vlad for a much shorter time, maybe six months. Still, it was her whole life up until she met Danny. "Well, since you were born. It's natural that you'd think of him as your father."

Danielle stopped and turned to face her. "The last time I called him my dad, Danny got really upset. Told me that Vlad was just a crackpot with a chemistry set, not a real father, and to never call him that. And he's right."

"Well, yeah, but Danny has his own issues about you, how he fits into your life, and everything Vlad's done. That doesn't mean you're wrong to feel what you feel. Vlad brought you into the world, he raised you... sort of."

Dani closed her eyes and leaned against the cave wall. "Yeah, he brought me into the world. As part of a scheme to clone Danny. And not even an important part of the scheme, either. Just the guinea pig to test everything out for the good clone. And when I got away and he came after me, it was only because he happened to be in the neighborhood. Same thing at Dora's kingdom. He wasn't even looking for me. It was just convenient to grab me since he was already there. Danny was right. I'm nothing but a mess he isn't going to clean up. Not even worth the time and effort to get rid of."

She slammed her hands on the cave wall, then took a great shuddering breath and started to cry, sliding down the wall into a crouch. "How can I be so meaningless I'm not even worth getting rid of?"

"Oh, Dani." Sam was not the warmest, most nurturing person in the world, but she was kneeling on the wet cave floor, pulling Dani into her arms before she even had time think. "Everyone is meaningless to Vlad. You have a new life, a whole big family that loves you and thinks you're amazing, and that's something Vlad can't even wrap his warped little sad excuse for a brain around because it's not about him anymore. You're not about him. Not even a little."

Nodding, Dani pulled back, swiping at her eyes with the heel of her hand. "I am such an idiot. I'm actually upset he's not coming after me to kill me, even though I was terrified when I thought he was."

"You're not an idiot, Dani. Parents are like that. Being accepted for who you are, mattering to the people who brought you into the world, it's a big deal." Believe me, I know.

But her parents had always loved her. She'd always mattered to them, even if she would never measure up to what they wanted her to be.

Danielle took another swipe at her eyes. "Sam, please don't tell Danny about this. It would really hurt him."

She would have sooner clubbed a baby seal than told Danny something that would give him one more thing to blame himself for. "Of course I won't. This is just girl talk, okay?" Another thing Sam wasn't particularly good at, but maybe they were actually connecting. She started to get to her feet. "And thanks for the intangibility trick, by the way. I probably would've been well on my way to pneumonia if you hadn't dried me off."

She held out her hand, and Dani took it, pulling herself to her feet as well. "No big. I really can use my powers in little bursts without it hurting me, no matter what Danny thinks."

"Well, I won't tell him if you won't."

"Deal."

As they started heading uphill again, the Box Ghost flew overhead. He paused, then turned around to face them, looking a little panicked. "Have either of you seen the Lunch Lady? I can't find her, and she's got... a package that's kinda important to me."

Sam and Dani exchanged glances. "We haven't seen her," Sam told him, "but she might be up in one of the higher caves where everyone who isn't fighting the skeletons is going to stay out of the storm. We're headed up there now. Oh, and congratulations."

He frowned, confused. "For what?"

"For your 'package.' Something tells me she's gonna grow up to be just as, um... scary as her dad."

The Box Ghost puffed out his chest. "Darn right, she is." Then, for good measure, he added, "Beware!"

Sam had to avoid looking at Dani the rest of the way to the upper level caverns, sure she'd burst out laughing if she did.

At the end of the tunnel, the path leveled off, forming a sort of corridor with four or five caves branching off. They were all crowded with ghosts, maybe a hundred in all, which was only a tiny sliver of the recent population of the Far Frozen. Sam hoped that meant that the rest of the ghosts had chosen to fight.

The Box Ghost flew through the caves, poking his head in one and then the next, until he got to the third cave and Sam heard him cry out, "There you are!" An almost morbid curiosity to see the baby ghost up close drove Sam to choose that same cave, and she and Dani went inside, making their way through the crowd until Sam spotted the Lunch Lady and the Box Ghost huddled together. She started to head in that direction, but Dani stopped her.

"Sam, look."

She turned and saw that Dani was standing near the opening of the cave that looked out of the mountainside onto the village below. The storm and wind was still furious out there, but they were on the leeward side of the mountain, so it was mostly blowing away from them, keeping the cave relatively dry. Sam pushed past the ghosts to get to Dani's side and looked down, gasping at what she saw.

It was a melee. Rain and wind pelted down on thousands of ghosts fighting thousands of skeletons. Bursts of green ectoplasm mixed with flashes of white lightning, illuminating the village square.

But the fighting wasn't the worst of it. Much of the snow was already melted, and rivers of muddy water flowed all around the battle.

Sam looked up at Dani, and almost gasped again when she saw how pale she looked. "Dani, back away. You've gotta get some cave wall between you and those skeletons down there.

She nodded and backed along the wall of the cave away from the opening. "They're going to lose everything."

Sam moved beside her. "No. Skulker and the rest of the ghosts can beat back those skeletons."

"I'm not talking about the skeletons, I'm talking about the realm. I can feel it, Sam." She closed her eyes, moving her hand along the cave wall as if it were a living being and she was connecting into its life force. "The Far Frozen is dying."