by J M Guillen
We still know who you are, asshole, I snarled at Amir, even though he couldn’t hear us.
This confirms past intel. Members of the Darkened Road prefer to keep their faces hidden, even from one another, Anya interjected.
We remember, Gideon groused.
The mask fit perfectly over Amir’s face, a metallic work of horrific artistry. Scrawled, mad glyphs scrolled intricately across its surface, and it pushed his thick hair back and up.
He glanced down the hallway once more, spun on one heel, and traipsed down the stairs.
I followed. No hesitation.
Rationality stabilizing. Anya’s clipped link startled me.
The smooth stone walls shone with reflected candlelight from the few tapers that lined the room. The short passageway ended at a heavy door with an iron pull ring.
Just before the door, Amir stopped again. I jerked to a halt myself and silently prayed Gideon wouldn’t bowl me over.
“[Father of Fathers, Keeper of the Misbegotten, hear me.]” Amir pressed his palm to the wall, turned and peered back down the wide hallway toward us.
I’ll admit I felt a bit unnerved as he stared completely through me. His eyes shone behind the mask, and it had muffled his voice yet added a hollow, echoing resonance.
The readings in the upper left corner of my vision slipped from -4.1 to -4.7.
“[Keep us well, as you ever do, and hide our ways from those who would foul our works.]”
Gideon… I turned to glance behind us, though I knew he couldn’t see me change direction.
Hold position. He paused and the link felt tight. We might not get another shot, Bishop.
“[Their foolish eyes unseeing, the eldritch fire hidden.]”
Rationality dipping again, Anya warned.
He’s shutting the door, I explained. No sooner did I link than shadows blossomed around us as flickers of candlelight whipped wildly from a sourceless wind.
And the voice, that malevolent thunder, spoke again, ringing through reality itself. With one simple word, existence was made and unmade, shaped into a different form of being.
This time, I didn’t watch. I tried not to listen as well but couldn’t stop that terrible, boundless voice from vibrating into my bones.
Then it ended. The way home stood closed.
That’s swell. I couldn’t help a flash of bitterness. I’m glad we’re trapped in here with the mad cultist.
We aren’t trapped, Gideon reminded me. Not as long as you have a spare Tabula Rasa. Also, I’ve got null-materia rounds.
True enough, I conceded. It probably wouldn’t come to using Gideon’s antimatter shots. The Rasa had it covered, obliterating all matter within a certain radius.
No matter how Amir sealed the way, no wall would hold against complete eradication. Surely, it wouldn’t take more than one to get through that wall—and I had three.
Amir turned toward the door and pulled it open. Sibilant shadows awaited within, thrown by the scarcest flickers of light. I stepped forward, trying to follow squarely on his heels before he closed the door—
Except that he didn’t. He stepped into the twilight and didn’t bother with the heavy door.
Darkness enfolded him.
Wait. Gideon’s sudden warning came like a hammer in my mind.
I froze in place.
Bishop? Suspicion laced his question. Why didn’t he shut the door? Who is he leaving it open for?
Um. My invisible eyes widened at the implication. Did Amir know he we followed him? Us?
Right.
Optics. Safely behind the door, I performed the mental twitch that turned off the Wraith and another that shifted my vision from my physical eyes to my Crown system. It remained one of my favorite tools, creating a composite of night vision, infrared, and certain Facility frequencies—
A low, jolting buzz sounded from somewhere above my right ear. Only darkness lay within that room.
Or perhaps not.
Rachel, is my optic system online?
Confirmed, Bishop. 100% functionality.
Anya, I also can’t see into the room before us. Gideon furrowed his brow as he linked. Is our target still within that chamber?
Affirmative, Alpha. The Irrational signature is still approximately eight meters in front of you.
What is he waiting for? I squeezed the hilt of my disruptor pistol.
“[I hear you.]” Amir’s whisper cut through the darkness, a sharp, dangerous thing. “[Foolish, coming here.]”
I’m stepping in. I didn’t wait for my Alpha’s order but flipped on the Wraith and drifted into the shadows, then shifted to my left. Gideon could still see me on his system, but perhaps if I stood in the darkness, Amir wouldn’t be able to track us.
“[I wonder who you are.]” The words canted dreamily, almost sing-song. “[Are you here in a dreaming-shape? Are you some wanderer washed upon our world’s shores?]”
Dude loves to talk, I linked as I crept sideways.
“[It matters little what you are or where you come from. You are not welcome,]” he growled, and I could hear his wicked grin. “[Leave. I give you your life, but you must go.]”
Cocky little shitter, Gideon remarked. He truly must not know who we are.
“[There are nine blasphemies that can sunder a man’s mind,]” Amir continued conversationally. His voice was tightly controlled, as if he barely held the reins upon his own sanity. “[Nine lamentations that shatter the truths we cling to.]”
Flanking. Gideon’s blue indicator stepped in behind me and slipped around to the opposite side. He’d scarcely moved a meter before the orange reading in the corner of my vision dipped a point.
Sub-Rationality increasing. Anya paused, as she perused the long-range telemetry. Negative eight.
Bishop, Gideon warned. He’s—
Light, sharp and brilliant and furious, burst from Amir’s hand. It burned with a hateful wrath, cascading shadows against both ancient bricks and the metal door behind him. It scalded impossible shapes into my mind.
“[You who bound the very lights of Heaven, hear me!]”
The fluctuations are not focused upon the Irrat, Anya sent. It is the secondary reading. The book.
Fuck. Gideon’s link seethed. Bishop, close on him! Now!
Copy that, Alpha, I couldn’t help a feral little grin. We’d waited five and a half years to put paid to these assholes and now—
Amir gestured, and his fingers clawed at the space in front of him. He clenched his hand, and the light pulsed once, scattering shadows.
Amir hissed a word that was no word.
My mind grasped at it, but it slipped past me, like sand in a windstorm. It was a word that felt like chewing razors. It echoed in my heart, a darkness no fire could quench.
Michael! I received Anya’s link at the same moment I watched the Rationality readings spiral downward on my readout.
Negative eleven.
Shards of molten glass burst in my mind. A sharp, glittering burn clawed at my left temple, and I staggered, crying out wordlessly.
Hot!
Invisible cobwebs of flame covered my skin for a single instant.
I opened my mouth to scream and stopped as the sensation dissipated. I blinked, confused in the cooler aftermath.
Gideon stood across the room, gaping at me with stunned surprise.
Rachel? Gideon linked before I truly realized what had happened. What is the status on the Wraith?
Offline. Her puzzlement felt plain. What the hell?
Amir paid Gideon absolutely no heed. The moment the Wraith disengaged, his dark eyes fell upon me, glittering behind that horrific mask.
“Michael Bishop.” His deeply accented English held a few sharp burrs, and I heard his smile even behind the twisted metal leer. “Oh, how pleasant to meet you again.”
Obsidian, Wind, and Ictithia
“How’s this for pleasant?” Gideon drew his Maverick, cocked it, and held it steadily at Amir. “Knock off the bullshit, Amir.
We’ve got you dead to rights.”
“You do.” The words weren’t a question yet still contained traces of mockery.
“Last I recall, you’d been killed in the Yucatán.” Gideon growled. “Perhaps we should talk about what you’ve been up to since.”
“Should we?” Amir slowly turned to Gideon, pointedly not raising his hands. “As if children can comprehend the work of a man?”
“Stand down.” I had both disruptors out, aimed directly at the man’s head. “Get against the wall. I killed you once, and I can do it again.” I shrugged. “I’ll do it better this time.”
“[Death is the destiny of the unfaithful], Michael Bishop.” He paused. “Imagine I do not comply with your desires. What then?”
“You do as we ask or get put down, right here.” I couldn’t keep feral sharpness from my voice.
We need him to answer some questions, Bishop, Gideon reminded me.
“Imagine that was so.” He turned back to me, his voice grave. “Imagine you had the power to kill me, as you might an ordinary man.”
Michael, Anya interjected. Note your Rationality readings.
I had, although I appreciated her concern. As I watched, the numbers flickered down another couple of points.
“If you were to do this thing, how do you intend to survive what would follow?”
A sharpened CRACK sounded from somewhere in the shadows. Without so much as a gesture from Amir, a cleft echoed into existence within the space behind him.
I shifted one arm so I could aim at the undulating tear and kept the other disruptor pointed at his face.
“I cautioned him that we prefer you alive,” Gideon growled at Amir, “but I’m willing to change my mind, the moment some horror steps through that foolishness behind you.”
Amir chuckled before he responded to Gideon. The tone in his voice oozed calm smugness, but I didn’t hear what he said.
I was too distracted by the scent of the wind that burst from the tear in space behind Amir.
Bishop? Rachel’s worry pulsed through the link. You’ve been doing fine up until now, but your heart rate’s spiking.
I didn’t answer. Instead I gaped at the burning crevice, struck by the strangeling glow of the sickly moon on the other side. Even from where I stood, I could see the jagged obsidian landscape beyond and smell the foul, infinite wind that howled in that place.
I’d been there before.
Years earlier, as I set out on a dossier to the Mojave Desert, I’d encountered a snare of sorts. At the time, it had been believed to be part of that dossier, but—
Had it? My eyes widened. Had the Darkened Road been involved in my extradimensional airport restroom adventure somehow?
Gideon, this is a problem.
“[You have met the Arachniis before, I think.]” Amir turned to me, eyes glittering behind his mask. “Ictithia [is a creature of elemental yearnings. She is bound to the book I bear and therefore my whim, Asset. Slaughter me if you can; if you succeed, she will ravage your corpse.]”
Hunger and desire bled through that horrific, mind-rending tear in space. I remembered the awful coldness of that wind, a razor of screaming fury that cut to the bone.
“I remember her.” I returned my eyes to him. “She didn’t do as well in our realm, if I remember. I’ll roll the dice.”
Many things happened at once.
Amir ducked to one side, far faster than I would have expected.
Gideon fired, a loud RAAAKK that ripped through the air as the Maverick’s ordinance tore a basketball-sized hole into the brick wall.
Stepping sideways, I brought one disruptor to bear on Amir. I toggled the settings, part of a plan to slam a speeding pickup truck’s worth of force into his abdomen.
Like a river of thorns and spite, an invocation poured from Amir’s lips. It washed over us, a torrent of awful, cosmic complexity.
It… What? I shook my head in incomprehension.
Numbers. Nothing but twisted, horrific numbers.
Yet Amir cast them forth with the fervency of a mad poet, numerics that swirled into an equation of dire, lyrical truths. Reality around us trembled; that equation defined existence itself, shifted it.
I stumbled from the force of it, and my head swam.
Michael? Anya’s link came with a burst of static, and the readings from my Crown’s phaneric node wavered and melted away. We’ve dropped another two points.
I bet. I pushed myself back to my feet as Gideon fired at Amir. RAAAKK. RAAAKK. RAAAKK.
He missed. All three times.
Space itself melted like candlewax, and the Maverick couldn’t find its mark. Everywhere a bullet struck, the null-materia round blasted a hole larger than my head.
Yet I’d paid enough attention to see what Gideon truly intended. He’d turned his left arm to subtly aim the Huntsman wrist module at Amir. I barely heard the slight snick as a miniscule dart shot through the air and caught Amir on the thigh.
The projectile had been designed to dissolve into base elements after it discharged. Our foe didn’t even feel the hit.
“[Fool.]” Amir laughed as he spun to one side, maniacal and lost. He paid no attention to the crevice he’d opened.
Nor the loping, arachnine freaks surging from behind him.
The first one sprang through the tear in space with a feral grace.
On the far side of that transdimensional cleft, the creature was partially unreal, little more than fevered dreamings. Yet within Rationality, the twisted monstrosity took physical form.
An aberrant hybrid of scorpion and spider, the Arachniis moved like a many-legged, hunting jaguar. A wicked tail curled up behind it, covered in shadowed, night-blue hairs and chitin.
Base, chittering whispers echoed through my mind. Broken imaginings and dark urges ravaged me, reflected in the thing’s many, shiny eyes.
I’m more than food. The insidious thought bore a sharpened hunger. It will take me away to mate. I’ll die in the dark as it uses me—
One of the creatures roared aggressively. As it opened its maw, I saw that teeth ran all the way down its throat.
Amir screamed. This time, his cry held no victory. “[What are you doing?]” The misshapen arthropod had stretched one of those monstrous legs to Amir and knocked him flat. “[Where is] Ictithia?”
I had the same question. These creatures were definitely of the same species as that dread I battled in the airport men’s room but much smaller.
Its spawn, perhaps? Had I killed the original?
I grinned. Only I could accidentally kill something so awful and not even realize it.
No answer came to Amir’s query, except for waves of repulsive images and savage hunger. Horrific impressions pounded against my mind, one atop another.
It drags me away to a dark hole, and no one can find m—
It chews my clothing, my skin, my ey—
Its body is less real in this place, can shift and ben—
It somehow mounts itself upon me, straddles me with dozens of horrific, hairy legs. I am powerless; it takes m—
Its tail slices into my abdomen. I watch, powerless, as it deposits its eggs into me, dozens of yellowed blobs that smell like rancid meat and bile—
My eyes! She devours my eyes and legs. I cannot leave; I have to wait until they hatc—
The horror lunged toward Amir again, who scrabbled back across the floor, his eyes wide.
Bishop! Gideon’s link hit me like a hammer, and I turned, just in time to see a second Arachniis leap from the rift and lunge for me.
I hurled to the left, the Adept’s grace saving my life.
Another waited for me.
These perversions seemed closer to the size of Irish wolfhounds instead of the pickup truck-sized beast I’d previously met. Yet they hunted in a pack. The combined waves of their dark, lustful intentions overwhelmed me, and panic beat at the gates of my mind.
Caught! I’m caught! One of the arachnids stalked closer, and its eyes burned with male
volent intention. It’ll lay its eggs inside me, and they’ll hatch. They’ll hatch and burrow out of—
Bishop! Rachel’s link sounded far away. I’m slowing adrenaline production. Get a grip.
I scarcely heard her.
“Not today.” Gideon aimed at the Arachniis closest to him and squeezed the trigger.
RAAAKK. A scent like burnt flesh filled the air, and the freak screamed, a wail of insectine agony as it scrabbled backward.
I turned toward the one closest to me and fired the same disruptor I’d intended for Amir in three successive bursts. The force of a motorcycle at Mach three hit the beast.
It tumbled wildly through the air, screeching until it slammed into the stone wall.
“[Your treachery will be remembered,]” Amir spat as he pushed himself up. He gestured at the one closest to him and formed rigid claws with his fingers. “[The Binder of Light and Heaven remembers.]”
Burning light, just as he’d held before, shone from his hand. He thrust it forward, as if a brand of white-hot magnesium.
The creature recoiled before it.
“[Yes. You see now.]” He stepped closer to the miscreation.
It scrabbled backward, the hairs on its carapace singed, filling the air with a foul, scorched scent.
I also turned away, unable to look upon the light’s terrible beauty. That eldritch glow cast brilliance upon secret parts of myself that I did not wish to know.
He’s running, Bishop.
I heard the RAAAKK of Gideon’s Maverick and glanced up in time to see my Alpha’s null-materia blow a hole in the wall as Amir fled for the door.
Yet as I turned to fire, something struck me from the side, and I landed on the ground. My teeth clacked together, and I barely missed biting my tongue with the impact.
Slender, bristly legs pinned me to the ground and sent my disruptors skittering across the floor.
I stared up at the hairy, insectine horror as—
FUCK! It was less a link and more of a scream in my mind.
—will wail with the pleasure of our mating. Our children will number in the dozens, all hungry, all seeking mates within the realms of men—
RAAAKK!
My foe hissed in fury and agony as it toppled to one side, gravely injured from Gideon’s shot.