But Earl Roy kept talking about the Eternal Champion like he was another person. Was the Champion a hallucination, like the glowing swords he saw inside the children? Or a voice in his head?
The magpie chattered, and Earl Roy glared at Sarah. “Don’t whisper your lies to the bird. It obeys the Eternal Champion, and it will transport the child’s soul to the next life, where it can find peace.” The lunatic was getting more agitated by the second. “Then I will bury the vessel’s body in a place of honor.”
Earl Roy pounded his fists against his temples—over and over. “Stay out of my head, Stormbringer, or I’ll sing the song. ‘As Chaos lays me down to sleep, I beg the Law my soul to keep.…’”
“Is that why you killed the adults? The ‘sinners’ whose bones you took? Like the slumlord and the psychiatrist? Did you kill them so you could feed Stormbringer their souls? I would understand if you did,” Mulder lied. “The demon told you to do it, right? And they were bad people anyway.”
“True. But that’s not my job, and I could never do it anyway.”
“Then who killed them?” Mulder asked.
“Law chooses the sinners.” Earl Roy tilted his head and gave Mulder a curious look. “The next person he picks could be anyone. Even you.”
Mulder pictured the Major’s map. He kept coming back to the distance between this house and the locations where the adult murder victims were discovered. Some of the crime scene locations, like the waterfront in DC, were a trek. Would a serial killer leave the kids alone for that long?
Mulder’s gut feeling kicked in, and he realized there was another possibility.…
Maybe we’ve had this all wrong.
He searched the killer’s empty eyes. “Are you the Eternal Champion?”
Earl Roy shook his head. “No.”
“But you kept talking about the Eternal Champion … and you have Stormbringer, his sword.” Mulder sounded crazy, but he couldn’t stop himself. “What about your skin? You painted it white like Elric’s. Why would you do that if you’re not the Eternal Champion?”
“Because I’m his protector.”
CHAPTER 22
Earl Roy’s Residence
10:27 P.M.
Mulder remembered that detail from the novel. “Right. The Eternal Champion always has a companion—a protector.”
“It’s my job to destroy Stormbringer before the demon becomes too powerful to control. The sword can’t be trusted. It will betray the Eternal Champion and kill him. But I figured out how to change the story.”
“How?” Mulder coaxed.
“The Eternal Champion never wields Stormbringer. The sword and the vessel stay with me.” Earl Roy dragged a hand over his face, smearing white paint down his cheek. “Until midnight on the eighth day, when I destroy it. But Stormbringer always comes back. It finds another vessel, and the Eternal Champion makes me retrieve it.”
“In the books, the Eternal Champion gets power from Stormbringer in exchange for feeding the sword souls,” Mulder pointed out. “If Stormbringer stays with you, then how does the Eternal Champion get the power he needs to restore the balance between Chaos and Law?”
“The Eternal Champion gives me the bones of the sinners, and I deliver them to Stormbringer.”
“But that’s not how it works in the books,” Mulder argued. “You can’t just rewrite the story. It’s already been written.”
“Shut up!” Earl Roy whipped around as if someone had called his name, rage flashing in his eyes. “You don’t know anything about the way things work. You shouldn’t even be here. Whatever happens isn’t my fault.” He walked over to the creepy throne and stopped in front of Sarah. He nodded as if she were speaking to him. “If I do it, you have to leave me alone. Just for a little while,” Earl Roy pleaded.
Mulder’s stomach bottomed out. A deranged serial killer was bargaining with the psychotic voice in his head, and from what Mulder could tell, his soul was the bargaining chip.
Earl Roy slid on a pair of yellow rubber gloves and picked up a wide paintbrush like the kind Mulder’s mom used to paint their kitchen, and a glass container. He opened the container carefully and scooped out a brush full of brownish green pulp.
Aconite. The poison that killed Billy Christian.
Earl Roy must have mashed up the leaves.
“‘As Chaos lays me down to sleep, I beg the Law my soul to keep.…’”
“What are you doing?” Mulder squeezed himself into the back corner of the cage and desperately felt around for a rough piece of metal he could saw the ropes against. Logic told him he’d never have time to cut through even an inch, but it was a Hail Mary.
“It’s not my fault,” Earl Roy said as he walked toward the cage. “Stormbringer wants a soul. You weren’t supposed to be here.”
Mulder looked over at the little girl as he worked the ropes against the cage. He had failed again. Maybe Phoebe and Gimble would make it back here in time to save her.
Earl Roy bent down in front of the cage and unlocked it with one hand, holding the paintbrush in his other hand.
This is it.