Red Right Hand (29 page)

Thick hairs like splinters of volcanic glass prickled off the many-jointed legs plucking the web of darkness
he squatted on, the strands pressed tightly against his hard carapace, highlighted in crimson as the handprint on his abdomen beat like a heart. The rest of him formed an unrelieved spot of eternal darkness, a black hole eating the glare of the moon above as he drank down Daniel.

My feet pounded the grassy hillside, heels slipping in the midnight dew that coated each blade, threatening to twist my ankles, working against me, trying to trip me down the hill to crack my fragile, human skull against one of the stones.

The hill leveled as I reached the standing stones, still running with all my strength, still running to save Daniel.

Still running to save my love.

I crossed the threshold of the stone circle and
leapt
.

I pushed with all I had, all the power in my legs and all the magick inside me. The collar around my throat burned ice cold against my skin as it tightened. The ground fell away, my stomach turning over. I rose, stretching toward the hanging black tatters strung between the stones, my fingers desperately clawing out to grab something, anything I could use to pull myself up.

And knew I wasn't going to make it.

My wish sprang from desperation.

Take me there.

Etheric energy burst inside me as the wish whipped my magick into a frenzy. It pushed out under my shoulder blades in a sweep of ache, unfurling behind me.

Pull.

Drag.

Lift.

Wings of eldritch energy bore me through the air. I rose in a jerk, between the strands of the web. The tatters of it fluttered up, stretching, reaching for me, not to pull me back but to brush my skin in comfort.

The web was the coat, the still-living skin of an archangel shredded and mangled and torn to appease the will of its master.

It barely touched me as I passed through it, the tattered tips just a whisper against my skin. Even through the thrilling wonder of flight, its alien singsong broke through, making a connection.

The coat wanted me.

The song faded to an echo as I swept through the night, still lightly hollow in my head.

I had just enough time to think one discordant thought:

This is absolutely amazing.

My feet touched down on the web, and the coat latched on, wrapping my ankles in tendrils until I stabilized, standing as if on level ground.

The Spider God swung up, skittering to face me, then he spun, lowered himself, and pounced.

He fell in a blur of ebon lightning, crashing into me, spider legs clutching my body. The magick of my wings shredded and we fell to earth with a flash and a crash like a pair of meteors locked together. He drove me to the ground, and pain blasted me from heel to crown in one hardpan slap.

My eyes were locked open. I could see, but I couldn't move, every muscle clenched around my spasming diaphragm. It cramped inside me, struggling to make my abdomen move, to expand my chest, desperately trying to draw oxygen into my empty, deflated lungs.

The Spider God swayed above me, arachnid legs shoved into the ground all around me, arachnid abdomen thrusting, thrusting, thrusting toward me like a wasp trying to plant its stinger, arachnid mouth clicking and clacking and dripping greenish spider saliva across my chest, my throat, my lips.

My lungs hitched. Once. Twice. Trying to kick over, to catch, to start.

Hard-edged, brittle oxygen ripped into them as the Spider God pushed himself back, stretching upward as he transformed, transmuted, transmogrified into the Man in Black. Spider legs shortened and thickened, becoming arms; black spiky hairs pulled into the hard shell of the exoskeleton with long, creaking squeaks of glass rubbing glass. His swollen abdomen deflated like a burst bladder, collapsing into itself to hang flaccid and folded in disarray around his now-human body, before drawing up and withering into the shape of sleek muscles. His chest, his perfectly carved sternum, split like an unstitched seam and let slip out the two gemstones containing the essences of the gods we'd defeated earlier. They hung around his neck like two brightly colored nooses. The globe of his head broke, denting and creasing into the shape of a face. The skin holding his features side-slipped around, twisting into place like latex across a greased surface. Black orb eyes popped back into their sockets, and he blinked rapidly, lids fluttering.

Holding his hands out to his sides, one dusky-skinned and perfect, one skinless, red, and raw, he stood in sinister, naked glory.

My muscles broke their mortal lock, turning liquid and movable as he settled into his form.

I scrambled backward.

He opened his eyes and smiled.

 

61

“Y
OU ARE TOO
late, Acolyte. The deed is done.”

My eyes shot to Daniel. He lay as still as the flat, gray stone underneath him. Not moving. Not that I could see.

My heart stopped.

All the strength ran from my legs like water.

I stumbled.

Oh God, please no. Please don't let this be true.

Pushing from within, I sent my magick down the line between us, the connection I'd established earlier. It felt like swimming through sludge, the air thick with resistance to my magick. I shoved, the effort tearing something loose deep inside me, looking for him at the other end.

buh-bump

.

buh-bump

.

There.

Faint, nearly indistinguishable from the rush of blood in my ears, I found his heartbeat. It threaded into my hearing, a tiny pitter-pat of hope. I clutched at it, dragging it to me as I tried to push magick down the line to it, to send mystical strength from me to him. My soul breathed out:

Live.

The collar clenched, cutting into my trachea in a hard, bruising line. I ignored it, pushing.

The heartbeat grew stronger, steadier, even if it sounded hollow in my ears, as if it were trapped in an empty house.

The Man in Black stepped between me and Daniel. My magick crashed against him, breaking and spilling to the side, as ineffectual as saltwater.

I cleared my throat and lifted my face. “He's still alive.”

“For the moment.” He raised his hand, his human one, to his face. His stomach rolled and he began to retch and heave, his throat jerking in time with the hitch of his navel. A sound like flesh ripping tore itself out of his mouth, his jaw dropping to spit something hard and glistening into his hand. Rolling it across his palm, he caught it and held it between two fingers.

It was a ring. A gold circle holding a chartreuse gemstone that cast a faint lime colored highlight on the yellow metal.

He smiled. “However, I hold what truly makes him human.” He slipped the ring onto the third finger of his red right hand. “Without this essence, the substance of his …
personality
 … he will fade into the eternal night where I will wait to reap him. I will cast him into the land of Nightmare, and he will dwell in the house of this Lord forever and ever. Amen.”

“Give. That. Back.” Pain shot through my jaw, my teeth clenched hard enough to grind in my ears.

He stepped back, his arms falling wide and to his sides. “Come. Take it if you can, Acolyte.”

I stepped forward, pushing my magick to call the Aqedah to my hand. The knife slapped into my palm, flying from wherever it had landed when Nyarlathotep drove me into the ground. The connection clicked immediately, punching my magick like a closed fist. I realized the knife had a measure of magick imbedded in its ancient iron. It hummed against my Mark, and I
pulled,
drawing the magick out and into myself. Shockwaves of power rippled through me, riding on my anger. It spread inside me, settling into a flat, hard place in my mind, the same flat, hard place I had found in my training.

I knew how to fight, and for Daniel's life I would.

“I'm
not
your goddamned Acolyte.”

His lips pulled back, thinner, straighter, revealing interlocking shark teeth as he loomed over me. “Then you are food.”

“Come and choke on it, you evil bastard,” I snarled.

He fell on me.

 

62

T
HE
M
AN IN
Black descended upon me, swallowing me in his fury. His fist lashed out, and I twisted away, using all the skill learned at the hands of sensei, instructors, and masters.

His knuckles grazed my cheekbone, barely brushing along my skin. The blow knocked me off my feet.

I spun, rolling with the impact, scrambling to stay out of his circle of power. My eye began to swell, pulsing closed with each heartbeat.

He stomped forward, and the ground shook under my feet. The standing stones jittered up and down in their earthwork sockets, and it struck me what I was truly up against.

What have I done?

Daniel, I'm going to fail you.

Movement above caught my eye. I dove to the side.

A capstone the size of a truck crashed where I'd been standing, crushing the grass and weeds, narrowly
missing me. A string of black coat tore free from its moorings, snapped by the impact. It whipped through the air, slapping around my calf and latching on.

Music exploded in my head.

The coat was urgent.

Insistent.

I could feel it pushing my magick, its song inside me like a vibrato, dumping raw power into me. The song became clearer in my skull, not sung in English or any human language, but still I understood it.

It wanted me to fight. It wanted free of the Man in Black, and it would help me if only I would fight.

Driven by the song, I lunged, twisting with my hips for power, slashing at the Man in Black with the Knife of Abraham. The point caught him in the arm, gouging a chunk of flesh that flapped open like a big-lipped mouth,
thwap
ping in my direction. Dark yellow fluid ran freely from the cut, thin streamers of what could have been urine from the look and smell.

He stepped back, and I pressed forward.

My hand became a blur as I tried to slash him to pieces.

There was no art to it, no science, no training. Instinct rode my body while my mind screamed for Daniel to be okay.

Hold on. Please just hold on. I'll save you.

In the center of the stone circle, the Man in Black stopped.

Caught in my frenzy, I didn't see him draw up, didn't see his hand, his red right hand, flash out, until it clamped around my wrist, jerking me to a stop.

Viselike fingers bruised my skin, grinding the small bones of my wrist against one another. He yanked me forward, slamming me into his carved teakwood chest. His lip curled, his pinnacled teeth showing wetly.

“ENOUGH!”

Power slammed into me with bone-breaking force, battering my face like fists coated in acid. He swelled, lifting me like a child into the air. He was all-powerful. Unstoppable. He was death and doom and hot, sweaty destruction all rolled into one terrifying form.

“I have had enough of you, Charlotte Tristan Moore. Your time has drawn to an end.” A fat, blister-pink tongue lolled from between his lips. It flicked out, impossibly long, and lapped across my face from chin to cheekbone. It snapped back inside his mouth between rows of shark teeth. “Delicious.”

The Man in Black would devour me, and I hung helpless before his hunger.

His arm trapped mine between us, the knife in my hand useless, fingers going numb with no leverage to cut. He squeezed as his head reared, preparing to strike. I couldn't breathe. My head lolled loose on my neck. My free arm flopped in the air, useless.

It was over. Darkness closed in on me. I wouldn't even feel it when his elder-god teeth ended my life.

Something constricted around my calf, tightening into a circle of pain sharp enough to clear my head.

Musical language trilled through my brain.

I.

Am.

A.

Survivor.

I swung my free hand in one last effort.

I slapped the Man in Black across the face with all the magick inside me, all the magick lodged in the Aqedah, and all the magick being given by the coat.

It exploded like a shotgun blast.

He staggered, dropping me. I fell to the ground, knees banging against the hard-packed earth. I was drained, too tired to hurt, empty of everything inside me except my own hot torch of anger at him for trying to destroy me, for trying to destroy Daniel. The Man in Black looked down at me, his human hand pressed to the side of his face. Around his long, thin fingers was a vaguely hand-shaped burn. One so severe the flesh of his cheek and jaw crackled meat-pink through hard black scorch marks, bubbling and seeping from magickburn.

His hand pulled away, slick and shining with thin, runny fluid. He laughed, his basalt eyes fever-bright. “You surprise me, Charlotte Tristan Moore. I thought you a mewling, broken thing to be easily manipulated.” He smiled, and it broke the skin where I'd slapped him. “It appears I have misjudged you.”

I spat a bad taste out of my mouth. Even that effort made my head spin. I was almost done.

“You chose to hurt the wrong person.” I tried to stop them, but my eyes cut over to Daniel lying on the stone. I could still feel him, faintly, through the residue of magick left inside me.

“It matters not. In the end, my will shall be done on this earth as it is in the heavens. I will seek and find one more of my brethren and take them also, and then shall Azathoth be loosed. Then shall he be free to enjoy all his son has accomplished in his name.”

“I'll never help you again.”

“There is another. He is almost ripe for plucking.”

What?

It hit like one of the standing stones falling on me.

Jacks. He's the same bloodline as me.

“You'll kill me first,” I snarled.