by N. P. Martin
“Freak,” Leona said, shaking her head at the picture of Wendy Gush on the TV. “I don’t know how they could do it to themselves.” Despite not holding back during sex (with me anyhow), Leona was still something of a prude. It could have been her overly-religious upbringing, but I suspected it had more to do with her dignity and integrity at all costs way of thinking. Not that I thought there was anything particularly undignified or dishonest about what Wendy Gush did for a living, especially when she was using the sex to channel her magic. But standards of integrity were relative, especially in the occult world. I and every other adept could attest to that. I didn't bother offering any of this blinding insight to Leona because I knew she wouldn't want to hear it. Her attention was on her phone anyway, having just received a text.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Brentwood?”
She nodded. "I have to go to work. He wants updates on the Mr. Black case."
“What are you going to tell him?”
“What do you want me to tell him?”
"Not the truth. He already blames me for enough.” Just being involved with magic was enough for anyone to make it on to Brentwood’s shitlist. “Tell him I’m still chasing down leads. Not that I answer to him anyway.”
Leona shook her head. She thought my problem with authority figures was juvenile. You’d think after hearing all about my father’s domineering parental style, that it would’ve made her more sympathetic, but Leona's nothing if not stubborn and set in her ways. For the most part you either got on board, or out the way. She was military to the core. She would never understand my aversion to authority figures. “He could make your life difficult, you know. He could have you locked up in the Pen.”
"With the rest of the 'freaks', you mean?"
“Come on, Creed. You know I don’t think of you like that.”
"I know you don't. He does, though. Not that I care."
“He’s just trying to help. Same as you are. Same as I am.”
“Just different methods.” I'd heard it all before. The fact was, I would never be comfortable with Brentwood's brute force tactics. He didn't care who he hurt in the process of carrying out his directives. I did, though.
"Right, well this big bad government agent has to shower before going to work." She stood up, leant down and kissed me quick. "You can stay here if you want."
“No thanks,” I said, swallowing the last of my coffee. “I need to get back to the Sanctum and figure out what I’m going to do about…Mr. Black. Maybe your demon friend left me a clue.”
“That brutish abomination is not and never will be my friend.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You two seemed to hit it off. And with that tongue of his…”
“You’re disgusting, Creed. Get out of my apartment. I’m rescinding my invitation for you to stay.”
I laughed. “All right, I’ll go. Tell Brentwood I said hi.”
“I’ll be sure to do that. Now get your magic ass in gear and get the hell out of here.”
“I love it when you get bossy.”
She turned and walked toward the bathroom. “Bye, Creed.”
"I love you too."
She didn’t answer as she disappeared into the bathroom. I stood for another minute, until I heard the shower being turned on, and I realized I didn’t want to leave because then I would have to go home and face the awful truth that had been hanging over me since yesterday.
Which was that my father, in his post-death madness, was about to end the world.
46
Standing Tall
I didn’t go straight back to the Sanctum after leaving Leona’s because I knew that going there, meant I’d have to fully face the dire and fucked up nature of my situation, if not the whole world’s too. So I teleported to the roof of the highest building in Blackham City, which was the Moreland Building, named after Reginald Moreland, the city’s billionaire real estate mogul who wanted to leave a little something for people to remember him by when he died three decades ago. That little something became one hundred and twenty-six story's tall with a gold tipped pyramid on top. A gridiron walkway went right around the whole building at the base of the pyramid. Apparently people used to make a big deal that he liked to sit out on that walkway to meditate every morning, made easy by his penthouse suite access, suggested as one of his many supposed secrets to his incredible financial success. There was also talk that old man Moreland was an Illuminati general, which he may have been, I don’t know (I take no interest in those self-serving war mongers). I do know that he practiced magic though, and that he was good at it, even if he did mostly use it to amass a fortune. Whatever kind of man he was, I was grateful to him for constructing the Moreland Building, and especially the walkway I was standing on. I have been teleporting to this walkway for the last twenty years or so. It’s a place I like to go to clear my head. All the way up there with the wind rushing around you, it’s hard to dwell too much on your problems, and I could see why old man Moreland used to go there every morning.
Needless to say, the view is also spectacular. If you wanted, you could have a full three-sixty view of the whole city and beyond if you walked right around the building. From that height, the city looked vast. A huge conclave of stone and brick and steel and glass, criss-crossed with streets and pulsing with the life of the people inside. I stood facing east because I liked to look past all the modern skyscrapers in the Highlands, and out toward the vast expanse of sea beyond, my gaze finally settling on the horizon; that point in the distance that always seemed to promise great things, if you only made your way toward it. The promise of a place where dreams could come true and potential could be fulfilled. Or maybe that was just me. Whatever the case, as soon as I focused on that horizon with the sun rising up over the sea, my mind seemed to expand as I felt a certain release from the pressure in my head. Which didn’t make things any less dire, but it at least enabled me to escape from the quagmire of dark emotions I had been previously drowning in.
I spent a while up there before I decided to make a call that I hadn’t been looking forward to making since my meeting with my father. That’s if I even got a hold of the person I wanted to speak to, who was notoriously hard to contact. This is because he is usually away in some far flung corner of the multiverse in search of some artifact or rare text.
As it turned out, it took me six attempts to finally get through to my uncle, Raymond McCreedy. “August, my boy,” he said when he answered, the line sounding clear and not full of static the way it usually was when I called him. “It’s good to hear from my favorite nephew again. How long has it been?” His accent was still strongly Irish, despite all his traveling.
“A few days ago actually,” I said, shouting slightly to hear myself over the wind noise. “You didn’t recognize me though.”
“Yes, very strange. What was that about?”
“Long story, but that’s not why I’m phoning. Well, actually it is.” I shook my head suddenly in anger. “Fuck it, you know why I’m calling, Ray. You can’t not fucking know.” The line went silent. “Hello? Ray, you there?”
“Yes, August, I’m here.”
“Then answer me. Did you know?”
“Know what? I’ve been off-world for over year. I just got back here to Ireland a few days ago. What’s been happening?”
I took a deep breath to calm myself. “Did you know about my father, Ray? About what he did? About what he really did that night of the summoning?”
“August, why you bringing that up for?”
“You knew, didn’t you? You knew he meant for the demon to kill my family, didn’t you?”
“August, I—”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I had a right to know the kind of monster my father was.”
“I thought if you knew what he really did, that you would—”
“What Ray? I already blamed him for summoning the demon in the first place.”
“I know that. I was afraid the truth would—”
“Push me o
ver the edge? I was already there.”
“How did you find out? What has happened?”
I never answered for a moment as I stared down at the city below, feeling raw and exposed. “Just tell me if you knew, Ray.”
Ray sighed before answering. “I didn’t know what your father was going to do, August. Don’t you think if I did that I would have tried to stop him? It’s my greatest regret that I didn’t keep a close enough eye on you all, then maybe…” He trailed off into silence, a silence which lasted for close to a minute before I spoke.
“I’m not blaming you, Ray. I just wanted to know…”
“You have every right to blame me, son. I should’ve been there when you most needed me.”
“But you weren’t,” I felt like saying, but didn’t. As much as it hurt that Ray wasn’t there when I needed him most, he is my only remaining family, and I wasn’t going to push him away over something that wasn’t really his fault at the end of the day.
I therefore proceeded to tell him everything about Mr. Black, who Mr. Black really was, the murders he had committed and his crazy plan to create a portal so Rloth could come to Earth and eat it.
“Sweet Christmas,” Ray said after I’d finished. “I knew there was something going on. The Tapestry has been unsettled of late and I couldn’t figure out why. I can’t believe that bastard brother of mine managed to crawl out of the Underworld. Well, actually, I can. He was always slippery, was your father.”
“He’s not my father,” I corrected him. “He’s a monster, plain and simple.”
“I’m sorry, August. I should have told you the truth long ago. You had a right to know.”
“I did have a right to know, but I understand why you kept it from me.”
“I was trying to protect you. Your whole family had just been wiped out and—”
“When did you know the truth, Ray?”
“Not soon enough, I’m sorry to say. Shortly after, when an Underworld contact informed me. I was trying to make sure Christopher stayed down there and never got out after what he did to you’s all. Now it seems, my numerous bribes weren’t enough to keep him locked up.”
“Unfortunately not.” I paused for a moment as I watched a Kestrel land on a nearby building. “I always knew the truth anyway.”
“You did?”
“I saw his face, Ray, which told me that he had planned to sacrifice us all. I must have buried the memory.”
“I don’t blame you for that.”
“He was going to steal my body, you know? But the demon betrayed him. I’ve still no idea why the demon didn’t kill me as well though.”
“You know demons, unpredictable bastards at times. Count yourself lucky, my boy.”
“I need to know how to stop him, Ray.”
“That won’t be easy, not if he’s been getting power from a Dimension Lord.”
“But it can be done, right?”
“With the right magic, anything can be done. It’s finding the right magic though. You want me over there with you?”
“No. This is my fight, no one else’s.”
“He’ll kill you, August.”
I squinted out toward the horizon again and steeled myself against the rushing wind. “Only if I let him.”
“No, I’m coming over there. This is as much my responsibility as yours, August, probably more so.”
I shook my head. “No, Ray—“
“Yes!” he shouted. “You’re my nephew, the son I never had. I’ll be on a plane within the hour. I’ll teleport off it as soon as I can. Somewhere over the Atlantic probably.”
I sighed, knowing there would be no talking him out of it. Not that it mattered anyway. By the time he got here, it would most likely all be over and either Mr. Black or I would be dead.
“All right, Ray,” I said. “I’ll see you when you get here.”
I hoped.
47
Abandon All Hope
I teleported down off the top of the Moreland Building to an alley down below. I then hailed a taxi, not wanting to waste any magical resources by teleporting. From here on out I'd do well to conserve and build on them. A twenties-something Asian driver stopped at the curb, the car’s interior being pelted by Hindu drum-and-bass he so obviously enjoyed. "Hey man," he said cheerfully as he pulled out into traffic, causing the car behind to sound its horn, which the cab driver completely ignored. "Hope you don't mind the music. It gets me through the day, you know?"
The hectic music seemed to pummel at my skull, and I winced. “Maybe just drop the volume a little.”
"Oh sure, man." The driver turned the music to half volume and looked at me in his rearview mirror. "That okay?"
I could have done with no volume at all but decided not to argue the point. Instead, I just nodded and stared out the window at the passing traffic and the scores of people walking around in business suits. We were heading through the heart of the financial sector, where all the big banks and stock brokers resided in their intimidating skyscrapers. Everyone seemed to be engaged in animated conversations, either on the phone or with other people. I imagined they were all making deals, hammering out conditions, issuing demands, all with the sole aim of making more money, and in doing so, increasing their power and prestige.
Like any of that will matter if Mr. Black gets his way. Nothing will be around to matter if that happens.
It was a depressing thought that the world could be devoured by an ancient being so insatiable in its appetite, that it could consume every living thing until nothing was left but a barren husk of a planet that once supported life in such vast abundance. It was also frightening to think that a person's insanity could allow them to permit billions of souls and a living planet to be wiped out in the first place, to obtain more power. And what was Mr. Black intending to do with all this power when he got it? Use it to wipe out more worlds in the universe, continually chasing power for power's sake? Or did he have some other plan in mind? I didn't know. The only thing I knew was that I couldn't give Mr. Black the chance to make good on those plans. Even if it meant my own annihilation, I had to stop him.
"So hey, man, what you make of this big storm coming, huh? It's scary shit. They say it's the biggest storm to ever come out of the sky. You see that shit on the news yet?"
In my reverie, I had barely noticed that we were now on the expressway, heading toward Freetown. “What?”
“The storm that’s coming, man.” The cab driver stared at me in the mirror like he fully expected me to know what he was talking about.
“Storm? What storm?”
The cab driver shook his head. “Seriously, guy? It's all over the news."
"I saw the news earlier. There was no mention of any storm."
“That’s because it just appeared, like an hour ago.”
“Appeared? Appeared where?”
"That's the weird part. They say it came from space and it's coming down right on top of us, man. Right on fucking top of us! You believe that? As if this city hasn't got enough problems. How am I going to drive cab in a storm?" He was gesticulating madly with his hands over the wheel, barely looking at the road ahead, the drum and bass still pumping in the background. "I can't drive cab, I can't feed my family. It's that simple.”
After a quick check of the news media on my phone, I found out the cab driver was telling the truth about the storm, though I was left wondering about the precise nature of the storm itself. Storms didn’t come from space. They were born in the Earth's atmosphere. Which meant whatever was coming down over the top of us, it was no storm, but something else entirely.
Like a portal forming.
"Son a bitch," I said, shaking my head, realizing with near certainty that Mr. Black was a lot further on in his plans than I thought. If the portal was forming above the Earth already, that meant it could open at any time, and Rloth could enter this world. And once the Dimension Lord got through, that would be it. There would be no stopping an ancient, primordial being such as Rloth. The po
wers of such beings were insurmountable, and no mere mortal (or wizard) could ever hope to stand up against one. Unless, like Mr. Black, you offered up human sacrifices.
Taking out my phone, I called Leona. “Creed,” she said upon answering. “I take it you’re calling about the storm.”
“It’s not a storm,” I said, aware that the cab driver was listening in.
“Well, no one knows what else to call it here. No one has seen anything like it.”
“That’s because it’s a portal, created by you know who.”
“Shit.”
“How about we’re fucked if we don’t find a way to close it?”
“And how do we do that, Creed?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had to close a portal like this before. No one’s been fucking insane enough to open one before.”
“Creed?” It was Brentwood.
“Brentwood,” I said, sighing.
“What are you doing to resolve this situation?”
“I’m doing my best, is what I’m doing.”
“You know what this gathering mass is?”
"Gathering mass? It's a portal, but you can think of it as the end of times because that's what's gonna come through that portal once it's fully formed and open."
"What do you need to stop this, Creed?” Brentwood asked. For the first time since I’d known him, he sounded desperate. I couldn’t blame him.
“Probably the one thing I don’t have. Time.”
“Then you’d better find time, Creed, or—” He stopped short.
“You do realize I don’t work for you, right?”
“I’m just making sure you know what’s at stake here.”
“The entire human race,” I said, almost laughing, the words underscoring how unbelievably dire the situation had become. The cab driver was frowning at me in the mirror, probably thinking I was mad the way I was talking, or that he had stumbled upon a player in a giant conspiracy.