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I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I

The Soul Sepulcher

-By Sholay

I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I-I¤I

Chapter 24 — Infernal Waltz

Last time…

Inarticulate cries of anger followed him at every turn. Sometimes he saw a flash of teeth or a glinting eye. He didn't know how the creatures were able to move so fast.

He swerved and yelled when he came face to face with a lipless, grinning visage. Danny couldn't stop; he went right through the creature with a pained cry and kept going.

Finally he arrived at the long hallway and that was when rational thought caught up to him.

'Straight up,' was Danny's revelation as he headed upward. Relief flooded him as he gained the advantage of altitude.

A triumphant squeal and the scraping of nails behind him made Danny's head snap around. The creature was scampering sideways along the wall. Danny's eyes widened and he was about to speed through the ceiling when a sudden chill made him double over in surprise.

He gasped. Then he coughed.

Incredulous green eyes stared at the blue smoke curling from his mouth.

Now…

'A ghost? Here? I thought they all ran away to avoid Legion…'

The creature scampering across the wall leaped at Danny, who yelped and dove out of the way to avoid the flailing claws, Sam and Tucker swinging like ragdolls from his hands.

He gasped again; and again his breath fogged blue.

'Unless the ghost got caught. Then Legion might be sucking it dry right now…'

More creatures were beginning to climb the walls. Like bugs they swarmed the place. More and more, they came until Danny could not count their numbers.

He had to make a decision now.

Like a bullet from a gun, Danny was off toward an area of the ground not crawling with monsters. He dropped Sam and Tucker gracelessly to the ground, mentally wincing and telling himself he'd make it up to them later, and reached into the belt pouch attached to his hip.

Some of the mad spirits had already changed course and were laughing gleefully as they loped towards Danny with alarming speed.

"CLOCKWORK!" He screamed, thrusting the medallion into the air and displaying the golden CW relief to the world.

An emaciated figure of gnarled limbs and pasty skin leapt at Danny's face. One clawed hand drew back to strike, lips split to reveal a triumphant cry.

And then time stopped.

Danny stood, frozen in shock as he goggled at the disfigured body before him. The hybrid's chest rose and fell dramatically. He panted as though he had just run a marathon, his mouth hung open and his eyes were wide.

Scant inches separated Danny from his pursuer. Frozen in mid air, the creature had stopped bare milliseconds away from disembowelling the teen. Danny could see the saliva glistening on the monster's teeth. From this vantage point, he could see that there was absolutely nothing human-like about his pursuers: what human features they had where twisted and eroded by feral insanity.

Danny stumbled backward in the air and had to stifle a yelp when he bashed into another undead creature. Just then, a pair of purple clock hands spun into view, opening a blessedly familiar green portal. When Clockwork stepped out of the Ghost Zone, Danny's relief was great enough that he could have hugged the Time Master.

"Thank you, Clockwork." He gasped, putting a hand to his chest and grinning. "I know you like a timely entrance and everything; but next time, could you show up a few seconds faster? I'm gonna have a heart attack at this rate." Receiving nothing for his weak sarcasm except an insipid stare, Danny shook his head, straightened, and moved on. "Please, take them somewhere safe." He said, gesturing to Sam and Tucker.

Clockwork had appeared in the form of a child and gradually aged before Danny's eyes into a youth. "And yourself?" The ghost murmured blandly.

"There's a ghost here. I have to help them." At Clockwork's searching look, Danny clarified. "They might be my enemies, but that doesn't mean I'll let them get wasted. I have to do something!"

"Very well." Clockwork bent over his staff, tangled beard growing as he shrivelled with age. Reaching out with knobbly fingers, he lifted the CW medallion out of Danny's hands. "But know this, child: from here on in, you will face these trials alone. I cannot always come to your rescue."

Danny let out a puff of breath that blew up his bangs "Why not?" He whined.

Clockwork sent the teen a benign smile and did not answer. Sam and Tucker were abruptly encased in a sphere of glowing green ectoplasm and lifted into the air. Clockwork pointed his staff into the air.

Danny, realizing Clockwork's imminent departure, was suddenly much more preoccupied with mapping out an escape route among the hordes of frozen monsters.

"Beware the eyes of Legion, Phantom." Clockwork warned as ghost portal swirled into existence behind him. "They induce nightmarish hallucinations. They will tear your soul apart."

Danny knew. He knew all too well. Seeing Sam and Tucker safe in the hands of his trusted friend took a large weight off his mind, at least.

"Thank you!" He called.

"TIME IN!"

Screams and howls echoing in his ears, Danny didn't even wait to see if he was being followed, he just leapt into the air and took off through a wall, following the innate pull of his ghost sense. Without his mother's headlamp, the tunnels were pitch black. But Danny no longer cared—could not afford to care. He flew blind and intangible. Invisibility seemed to do nothing to deter these creatures who could sense him with unnerving ease. Occasionally he would pass through a spot of numbing cold—memories that weren't his seared his mind: memories of suffering, of death—but he didn't dare stop, didn't dare slow down. Instead he careened off in another direction and kept flying.

The blood was pounding so loudly in his ears that he didn't even realize he'd left behind the mad cries and scrapping of claws until he'd flown through his third room without anything loud and disfigured leaping out at him.

Tense and jumpy, Danny forced himself to slow down. He'd be no good to the ghost or himself if he was panicking before he even saw Legion.

Danny flexed his fingers and turned his eyes to the darkness around him as both hands were surrounded by ghostly fire.

The problem with his ectoplasmic energy was that it made all the darkness around him seem even blacker. Not to mention bathing everything in a freaky phosphorescent glow. It did, however, give him an idea of where he was. The room he was floating in was tall and wide, with metal scaffolding and wooden shelves arranged in tight rows. Crates and rolls of paper were piled on every shelf. Danny's breath misted blue and he turned to his left, looking down a narrow corridor between the shelves.

He floated forward, cautious, hands poised to meet any conflict.

It was quiet, the silence pressed in on his ears.

His ghost sense led him straight to another concrete, grey wall. Putting his palms flat on the wall. Already invisible, he simply made his head intangible and phased it through.

For a long moment Danny could only stare incomprehensively at what he was seeing.

There were hundreds of them. Figures glowing with ethereal light: bodies cloaked in long robes that swept the floor and hid their faces under wide brims. They knelt: hands raised in supplication and in their hands Danny could see tiny blue flames. As one, they murmured low words, voices melding and undulating like some unholy choir.

The main event, Legion paced in the centre of the room. Every bit as fearsome as the first time Danny had encountered him, the wolf-like monstrosity huffed and snarled as it walked. The light was sparing, but even still, Danny could see how the darkness writhed dizzyingly around Legion's form.

From the spot in the wall where Danny had stuck his head out, he was already a couple of stories above the floor; but still, the ceiling arced even farther and higher above his head. He wondered how it was even possible that this palatial labyrinth could all be concealed beneath the museum.

There were pillars, and fancy murals, but Danny wasn't paying attention to the scenery. Bulging out of one wall was a massive dome of gold. In front of that dome Legion paced fitfully. And in front of Legion…

'Youngblood?' Invisible nephrite eyes widened.

The child-ghost looked worse than Danny had ever seen him. Floating on his back, Youngblood's face was a pasty shadow of its usual vibrant green and his form fuzzed and grew foggy around the edges, like it couldn't hold itself together.

Then Legion stopped. There was a lull in the chant from the faceless choir.

The beast stooped, leaned down and placed its nose over Youngblood's chest. It inhaled.

Youngblood's back arched. He convulsed and shuddered in what looked to be horrible agony. A shimmer of blue mist wafted from the childish body and was pulled, forcibly into Legion. And yet, not a single sound escaped the little ghost.

The robed figures were chanting again and now their words were raised frantically. Eagerly.

Danny was frozen. He was very much conscious of he was witnessing, but while half of his mind was trying to convince him to fly down and save Youngblood, the other half was busy supplying vivid imagery of how badly that plan could go.

Legion's terrible maw opened and that was when the screaming began. Shrill, bloodcurdling cries pierced Danny's eardrums. The sounds didn't just come from Youngblood but also from Legion's mouth. The monster's eyes, the same sickly yellow that had been plaguing Danny's dreams for weeks, glinted in vile satisfaction as its teeth descended.

And then Danny could not stand it any longer.

At 120 miles an hour, Danny was faster than a lot of cars; not even Vlad could catch him on a good day. So it was with very little resistance that he shot across the room, ducked under Legion's muzzle and turned tangible only long enough to scoop up Youngblood and then angle up toward the ceiling.

An inhuman bellow deafened his sensitive ears and Danny saw Legion's paw rise up to meet him. Confident that it would pass through him, Danny was completely unprepared when the appendage connected solidly with his side and slapped him right out of the air.

'But I was intangible!' was the hybrid's only thought as a wall rushed up to meet him. Closing his eyes, Danny and his unwitting ally passed harmlessly through the thick wall of concrete before landing hard on the ground. The halfling's body connected solidly with the floor, forcing the breath out of his lungs in whoosh. He bounced, rolling over himself.

No sooner had he gained control over his limbs was he gathering his feet under him. Rising to his full height, he wobbled from the vertigo but nonetheless kept a firm hold on the little ghost in his arms. A quick glance confirmed that Youngblood was very unhelpfully unconscious and would probably stay that was for a while. In a moment of brilliance, he remembered the Fenton thermos strapped to his back and quickly shrugged it off.

One brief and noisy lightshow later, Youngblood was vacuumed up into the thermos. Danny had just finished adjusting the soup can's strap back around his torso when a roar of fury deafened him.

BOOM

Danny yelped and swivelled around, watching wide-eyed as the wall shuddered and buckled. A sheaf of dirt and grim was knocked loose and rained down on Danny, coating him in dusty sepia.

Another roar came, followed by a thunderous bang that made the wall visibly crack—the very floor shudder.

'Fly! Fly AWAY! FLY AWAY NOW!' The thought screamed through Danny's mind. Panic closed over his heart like a fist of ice. He lifted into the air—

BOOM

The force with which Legion struck the wall was so strong that it sent shards of concrete spitting outward, right through the intangible Danny. He looked back and saw that a hole, just large enough to fit Legion's massive muzzle, had been punched through the wall. Like a rabid wolf, the beast snarled and snapped at the wall, shoving its face at the hole but not able to get more than it's mouth and nose through it.

'It can't go intangible…' Danny's relief at this realization was bittersweet. After all, who needed intangibility when they could just beat through five feet thick walls of concrete?

And then, quite abruptly, Legion stopped his attack on the wall. The muzzle withdrew and all Danny could see was a dark hole in the wall. A hush fell over the room. Not a whisper of air, just the distant dripping of water, Danny's ears practically rung at the lack of sound.

What happened? Did it give up?' Unconsciously, Danny drifted closer.

The flash of light nearly blinded him. The explosion nearly knocked him out of the air. Reduced to ash and rumble, the wall was blown completely out of existence. Danny only had to glimpse Legion's demonic silhouette standing triumphant against the mushrooming plume of smoke. He bolted.

He could hear it behind him: heavy loping bounds that shook the ground, deep growling and giant teeth that snapped shut inches away from Danny's spectral tail.

Frantically, Danny weaved left and right, he passed through another wall but that was soon demolished by Legion and the chase continued.

Suddenly, Danny found himself in a room filled with walls of plastic. Looking up, he saw that the thick, cloudy sheets were actually covering what looked like huge whale bones that hung suspended from thick chains attached to the ceiling.

'Why the heck—' Danny didn't have the luxury of finishing this thought as Legion burst through the wall, skidding into the plastic sheets and bellowing its rage as it got caught on the chains.

And then, inspiration struck.

Legion could touch Danny while he was intangible, but the beast still could not go through solid objects. Suddenly, this observation had become a whole lot more useful.

Danny rose high into the air and passed right through both bone and plastic. He smirked. Legion would get tangled in the sheets and then maybe he could use his thermos to—

A stab of pain in his right shoulder cut off Danny's thoughts and he gasped, doubling over and flickering back to tangibility. His foot caught on a chain, throwing him off course. He tumbled out of the air, and nearly faceplanted into a nearby bone.

He was dimly aware of Legion howling somewhere behind him, but was more focused on the electric pain sparking through his body. He curled in on himself, fisting his hands against the pain. A few agonizing seconds later, the burning stopped, the ache faded but still something felt wrong.

Shaking the incident off, he adjusted the thermos holding Youngblood on his shoulder and lifted into the air, prepared to continue with his plan.

And that was when he realized what was wrong.

'I can't go intangible!' He stared at his hands in horror, trying unsuccessfully to call upon a power that refused to come. In his mind he thought he could hear the sound of dark laughter—But how? How was it possible?

'No intangibility.'

A chorus of throaty growling behind him made Danny stiffen. Slowly, he turned, dread tracking its way down his spine like an icy finger.

Where once Legion had stood, there were now about half a dozen beasts of writhing smoke and shadow. They were smaller—each about the size and shape of a fully-grown lion—but this did nothing to diminish Danny's alarm as they each began clawing and bounding up the bones in rapid pursuit.

In the time it took him to process this new danger, one of the beasts had climbed high enough to jump at his head, teeth bared and claws slashing. Danny screamed and ducked, the black form passed over his so closely the claws took off a few hairs. With a yell, he threw himself into the air and sped away from his pursuers.

It was madness: without the power of intangibility, Danny couldn't speed up and was forced to manoeuvre through the maze of plastic sheets. It was so dark he could barely see a foot in front of himself and the only way he was able to pinpoint where Legion's copies were was by the sound of growling or a flash of yellow eyes.

But even still, at least he wasn't gravity bound. All he had to do was keep dodging.

'Now that's no fun. No more flying.' Danny had barely a second to wonder at this odd thought in his head when a sharp pain in his shoulder stopped him dead in mid air. And then the light buoyancy that he usually felt in his ghost form abruptly fled from him. His heart plummeted and then his body followed.

Screaming while he fell, Danny only barely managed to grab the edge of a protruding set of bones. As a human, he would never have been able to pull himself up, but in his ghost form he managed it. Limbs shaking from combined fear and adrenaline, he got his feet under him and then realized he was standing on what seemed to be a hand 'Whales have hands?' Danny wondered randomly and then he was regretting the delay as one of Legion's shadow lions came leaping at him. The creature tackled him and they both fell, curtains of plastic rippling and flapping around them.

Danny struggled with the monster in midair, trying to keep the snapping jaws from closing around his neck. And then, he felt his back connect hard on something. Instinct took over and he curled, tucked his feet under and then kicked up and hard. With a howl, Legion went flying and Danny used the momentum to flip himself to his feet.

He was standing on a skull. Looking down, he could just spot a set of long bristles and in a weird moment he remembered from Mr. Snyderman's 5th period science class in elementary school that those were a whale's version of teeth. A snarl somewhere to his left had his head swinging around, another sound, this time to his right, made his head swivel in the opposite direction. He could barely see anything. The lack of proper lighting was bad enough, but the maze of plastic sheets and bones that hung from the ceiling made everything worse. Danny's hands were both alight with ghostly fire and still he could only see as far as the nearest plastic sheet. Taking a few shaky steps backward, he touched something and jumped—but sighed when he saw it was just a long chain that his back had hit.

Wait… his back?

Danny threw a hand over his shoulder and with a gasp, realized he'd dropped the thermos holding Youngblood. The very ghost he was trying to rescue. He didn't have time to look for the thermos though as something large and heavy landed behind him, making the skeleton sway dangerously. Danny looked behind him, saw the sinister yellow eyes and bolted.

He sprinted along the skull, leaped—limbs wheeling in the air—to the ridged backbone and kept going. He could feel the Hound behind him, roaring and snapping at his heels, but without flight or intangibility Danny could go no faster. Ahead, he saw a gap in the plastic sheets and another, flatter bone. Judging the distance, Danny sucked in his breath and jumped as far as he could.

Mid air, he twisted around and saw Legion leaning back on its haunches. The moment it pounced, Danny let fly a well-aimed ecto blast that hit the creature directly in the chest. It howled as it flew out of view.

Danny landed on the sloping, ivory surface in a summersault, scrambling to his feet a little dizzily, amazed at himself for pulling that stunt off.

Abruptly, the sheet of plastic near his head burst into black flames and he yelped, scrambling backward just in time to avoid having his head taken off as another one of Legion's duplicates jumped through the burning hole.

He jumped, barely even registering where he was going. After a few heart stopping moments in the air it was only sheer luck that he managed to belly flop onto another bone: a long spinal column. His feet hung in the air, and he began to slide backward over the smooth surface. Panicking, he dug his nails in, kicking with his feet, he gripped the plastic in his hands and somehow managed to haul himself up onto the surface.

The Hound, glowing eyes and teeth like daggers set in a halo of scorching black, snarled as it leapt toward the spine. It landed with much more agility than Danny had, its claws steadying its weight and digging into the bone with painful scratching nose.

"You dare interrupt our feeding." There was no movement from the beast's mouth, yet Legion's voice resonated deeply in the teen's mind and ears. The voice was low, almost hypnotic, and it shot straight through Danny's heart.

Danny fisted his hands, gathering himself against the power of that voice. "You won't get him!" He announced, rather hollowly, since he didn't even know where Youngblood was.

Again, he tried to access his ability of flight, of intangibility and mentally cursed when he hit against a wall in his mind.

Why—Why—hadn't he flew through the ceiling and escaped when he'd had the chance?

Another beast, identical to the one in front of him, landed a few paces behind him and Danny looked between the frothing, growling creatures with growing anxiety.

"You come uninvited into our home." The beast before him growled.

"You unduly desecrate ceremony." The one behind him intoned.

"You steal from us with impertinence."

"Yet you remain unrepentant?"

Danny couldn't help it: the teenage rebelliousness bubbled up. He grinned cheekily, shrugged. "Yep. Unrepentant, that's me. Unrepentant, unapologetic, unreasonable and unavoidably in your way; is it that unbelievable?"

"You are a fool, and you will join the ghost in his fate!" The beast in front of him broke into a loping run and jumped at him.

Danny didn't think. He lashed out with ice. The blue power left sprinkles of snow in the air as it slammed into the Hound. The creature shrieked as it was blown to the side into a sheet of plastic. The duplicate behind him took advantage of Danny's distraction and charged. Feeling the creature coming at him, Danny tried to turn and ice that one too. But the plastic beneath his feet slipped. In a moment of obtuse clumsiness, his feet tangled in each other and he toppled over the side of the slender bone. A snapping jaw just grazed his shoulder as he fell.

Ivory flashing before his eyes and Danny's hand snapped out—grabbed. He lifted himself up and realized he was standing in a ribcage.

For a moment, all he could hear was his own breathing. His ears tingled in the silence. Where was Legion? Where—

The beast came exploding out of the sheets behind him with an infuriated roar. It blew through the bone and Danny screamed as he was suddenly underneath the monster and falling to the ground.

Teeth half the size of his face snapped down millimetres from his nose and Danny arched his neck backward, using one glowing palm to hold the creature's maw away from him while he planted the other flat against the monster's midsection and let ectoplasm and ice explode outward.

He managed to throw Legion away from him, but not before gaining three gashes along his side to accompany the ones curling around his neck.

He impacted the ground hard and groaned; it felt like he'd just realigned his spine with the floor. Picking himself up from a Danny-shaped imprint in the ground, he shook off the coating of frost left on his hand after that last attack.

Barely on his hands and knees, Danny didn't have time to prepare as one of Legion's hounds came barrelling into his side, knocking him clear off his feet.

He rolled to a stop and before he could push himself to his feet, another duplicate pounced on him. Danny grit his teeth as the hound placed its full weight—that of a fully-grown feline king—into the forepaws digging into his shoulders.

"Look into my eyes, Halfling."

Piercing yellow eyes. Eyes that lied. Eyes that violated. Danny ripped his gaze away and squeezed his eyes shut.

"NO!" He screamed and lashed out with ice. It didn't freeze the beast, but pushed it back far enough for Danny to stumble to his feet.

Panting and clutching his bleeding wounds, Danny tried to think of a plan. The only thing coming to mind was his Ghostly Wail. But if it failed then he'd be human and then he'd be wasted. So yeah, not such a great plan.

The sound of nails screeching over stone made Danny cringe and he glanced over at Legion. Now that he was on the ground he could see four—no five pairs of glowing yellow eyes. Two were closer, and from the light of his glowing hands Danny could make out their shifting bodies. But three were farther away, clustered together.

Five duplicates—five!—and if they all recombined Danny wouldn't stand a chance.

Danny's breath was speeding up, and his mind was beginning to give mixed advice.

'Give in.' A part of his brain urged.

'No!' Danny shook his hear with the fierceness of his refusal. He'd never give up; why would he even think of it?

'Why not?' The dissenting voice whispered. 'There's no light at the end of this tunnel for you. Just give in.'

And then, inspiration slapped Danny over the head.

Reaching down to his mother's utility belt, Danny patted down the pockets until he found what he was looking for. With a grin, he reached into the pocket and pulled out the Lunch Lady's memento.

Iridescent and star-like, Danny had to make a conscious effort to look away from the beautiful stone. Legion had fallen silent and Danny saw that they—all five of them—were staring greedily at the gem.

"Give it to us." As one, they murmured. The five duplicates stalked forward, stopping barely three paces in front of Danny. They bared their teeth and pawed the ground impatiently. "Give it to us and we will spare your soul and that of your ghostly friend."

Danny closed his fist around the stone "No." He refused.

The shadows converged. A source-less wind picked up and then Danny yelled, throwing his arms over his head when the breeze turned into a gale storm. His hair was tossed into his eyes and dust got into his mouth and nose. Feeling his feet being pulled out from underneath him, he dropped to his knees.

Danny felt more than saw the giant shadow that enveloped him. The hairs on the back of his neck pricked up. Slowly, he turned, and looked; up… up…

"Then I will rend it from your bloodless fingers!" Legion, singular now and several stories tall, bellowed and its maw bore down on Danny.

He shook as he waited, waited until he could hear the shrieking of the souls in side the monster's mouth, waited until his head and shoulders were inside the maw and he could see the madness gleaming in the eyes of the souls within. And then, when he could bear the wait no longer, Danny opened his palms, directed them at the Hound through the stone, and let loose with the strongest energy blast he could—screaming as he did it—tearing straight through the back of the beast's throat.

White filled the room—bright, merciless, cleansing light—and was split by a yowl of agony. Danny had closed his eyes, anticipated the light, but even then the backs of his eyelids lit up blindingly with the resulting explosion. Cutting off his power, Danny curled his fist around the stone, raised both forearms to protect his face, and cracked his eyes open.

Legion lay panting on its side, maw gaping, sharp teeth gnashing at the air. Its eyes regarded Danny hatefully but their power was diminished. The darkness shivered around its dog-like form, but already the demon was finding its feet. Its pants were turning into deep growls.

Danny did not wait to find out if the monster would attack him again. He outright turned his back to Legion and ran. By some miracle, Youngblood, still unconscious but apparently unhurt, was floating on his back not far away, the battered shreds of a ruined Fenton Thermos beneath him. Danny didn't pause, and simply snatched up the child ghost by the waist as he flew by. Somehow, along the way, his feet had left the ground and he nearly whopped with glee over the return of his powers.

"This is far from the end, Halfling."

With those parting words, Legion disappeared in a swirl of converging black energies. Danny didn't question his luck; he simply turned his head upward and sped toward the ceiling, phasing through it with an ease that he swore he'd never again take for granted.

Danny appeared over ground in the middle of a grassy lawn. A green dome swirled above his head, but beyond that, the rising sun was bleaching the word in pink hues. Like an agitated bird, his head snapped back and forth as wide eyes scanned his surroundings. He needed to get out of the museum before Legion changed its mind and came after him. In the distance, he spotted the break in the ghost shield where Jazz would be waiting for him and he raced over to it.

"Danny, my god—!" Jazz's hand went to her mouth when she saw him.

He supposed he must look a sight: bleeding from a dozen different wounds, hair wild and covered from head to toe in dust and grime, but Danny didn't feel any of his wounds. He supposed he had yet to come down from his adrenaline high.

"Here, Jazz!" He said, dumping Youngblood on the ground and shoving the ghost partly through the space in the ghost shield that the Fenton Jack was holding open. "Grab his shoulders!"

"Whose?" Jazz asked quizzically. "Whose shoulders? And where're Sam and Tucker?"

This last statement made a thrill of fear run through Danny. Hadn't Clockwork brought Sam and Tucker back? What if he'd failed?

No. Clockwork couldn't have failed. Danny trusted the elder ghost with his life. Clockwork said he'd take Tucker and Sam somewhere safe so maybe he took them to FentonWorks. He soothed himself with this thought and came back to the matter at hand.

"Sam and Tucker are safe. Just help me—It's that ghost which adults can't see, Jazz! Just reach down and grab. He's right here." Following Danny's lead, Jazz managed to find Youngblood's head and shoulders, grasping the material of his clothes and pulling the ghost through.

Youngblood had nearly cleared the shield when Jazz looked up past Danny's shoulder and screamed.

"Danny!"

He didn't even have time to look around when a large hand clamped down on his shoulder and spun him to the side, slamming him up against the shield. Sparks leapt up around his body and Danny yelped. His cry was abruptly cut off when the hand came up to his neck, clamping down cruelly on his windpipe.

"DANNY!"

Choking, he reached up to try and dislodge the arm. But his fingers curled uselessly around corded muscles that were like steel cables. His eyes came up to meet orbs of coal. The man holding him grinned maliciously as he lifted the gasping halfa higher, making Danny's legs dangle.

Danny grit his teeth and brought up his right arm, intent to use the spirit crystal in his hand to blow the creature away. But before he could fully raise his arm, the man, realizing Danny's intentions, dug his free hand into Danny's wrist, then pulled his hand up and bit down brutally on the fleshy part between Danny's index finger and thumb.

The stone fell from Danny's hand and the last breath in his lungs was released in a high-pitched scream.

"DANNY! LEAVE HIM ALONE!"

Between Danny's squinting eyes, he saw a flash of green then the pressure around his neck was gone. Danny fell onto his hands and knees gasping wildly for air and had to concentrate very hard not to give in to the darkness and turn human.

"DANNY! COME ON! THIS WAY! HURRY!"

Danny saw that Jazz had managed to squirm halfway through the gap in the shield to shoot his attacker and was now shoving her way back through. Heeding her words, Danny used his hands to scramble forwards, not even pausing as he roughly scooped up the stone from the ground, tearing out some soil and grass as he did so. Sparing one glance back, he would have laughed at the sight of the giant man tangled in the Jack-O'-Ninetails, if he wasn't still gasping to regain his breath.

Jazz had cleared the shield and Danny dove at the hole, squirming through as fast as he could.

There was a yell behind him, then he felt a hand latch onto his ankle and begin to pull him back. Loosing purchase, Danny slipped onto his side and yelled out. He reached outward with his hand and Jazz was there, pulling him as hard as she could.

It was a vicious tug of war, but the creature at Danny's feet had the advantage of superhuman strength. Looking down, Danny aimed a finger and shot the man with a ghost ray. Immediately, his ankles were released and Danny flew through the hole.

Curling up, he threw himself onto his stomach and swiped the Fenton Jack out of the hole. The ghost-human shield closed and Danny breathed a sigh of true relief.

He lay there, staring up at the man before him—a misshapen monster, a soul stolen and enslaved by Legion—a pitiable creature who hissed and spat at Danny loathingly. It didn't bother trying to pass the glowing shield though. Instead it took a few steps back then abruptly melted into the ground.

They were gone. He was safe. They were all safe.

He had done it.

"Ahhnn…" From his throat came a wordless sound of relief as he flopped onto his back. It seemed that his exhaustion was finally catching up to him. He ready to pass out right there on the grass…

"Danny! Danny, please, don't go to sleep. Come on…" A hand gently shook his shoulder and Danny grimaced as it aggravated some of his wounds.

"I'm sorry, Danny, but I can't let you go to sleep. You could have a head injury."

Danny groaned, cracking open an eye to look at his sister. "Ah dinna ge' hi' onna hea'." He slurred. At her confused look, he swallowed, sucking on a tongue which suddenly felt swollen in his mouth. "I didn't get hit on the head. I'm fine." He repeated more coherently.

"I'm sure you're fine." Came her sarcastic answer. Her fingers carded through his hair, feeling his scalp, and he couldn't quite bite back the hum of sleepy content that sensation caused. "Okay, I trust you. I'll let you sleep. But first, where are Sam and Tucker?"

In an instant, Danny had shot up, panic shooting him into false awareness. "That's right! We gotta get home! I think Sam and Tucker are there, but I'm not sure. Clockwork said he'd take them somewhere safe."

"Clockwork?" Jazz asked from her kneeling position at his side. But Danny wasn't listening, he'd already pushed himself to his feet.

"Uhg…" He put a hand to his head and swayed as the word abruptly tilted 90 degrees to the left.

A hand slipped under his arms and Danny smiled thankfully at Jazz, who supported him against her side.

"Are you sure you're well enough to fly us back?" She asked worriedly.

"Sure, sure. Yeah…" He nodded and looked up to the sky.

There was a flash of blue-white energy and suddenly Danny was human.

"Huh…" He said vaguely. "Didn't mean for that to happen." He tried to take a step forward, and his legs buckled. Jazz gasped as his full weight suddenly dropped on her. It was all she could do to lower him slowly to the grass.

"That's it, I'm calling a taxi. You rest there." Jazz pulled out her cell phone and dialed.

On his bed of grass and stones, Danny was already out like a light.

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End Chapter 24

To Be Continued…

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