by DD Barant
“Yeah. This is a very different world from yours, Jace, but synchronicity is one of those metaphysical principles that reach across universal boundaries. Not everyone in your reality has a twin here, but Roger does. He’s not an FBI agent, though—he was working as a car salesman in California. Also dealing high-grade Bane to thrope high schoolers, but that was strictly a sideline.”
I swallow a dozen obvious questions. Selkie is the answer to all of them, of course. They’ve used sorcery to spy on my world, my history, my life—and come up with a victim they think I might actually approve of.
“He has to die, Jace. Not him, specifically, but definitely a human being. That’s just how the spell works.”
“That’s what this has all been about? A spell?”
“Not just any spell. A High Power Level Craft spell, very similar to the one the Allies used to contact Shub-Niggurath. But the call I’m placing is to a very different entity.”
I shake my head. “And how is that supposed to save the human race? You planning on taking us all to another planet? Turning back time? Or am I way off-base and you’re planning some completely different kind of impossible weirdness?”
He lets go of me and moves toward the foot of the altar, where he’s got a video camera on a tripod. I don’t see the satellite broadcaster, but it has to be around someplace.
“You sound frustrated. It must seem like there are no rules here, that anything’s possible.” He adjusts the focus on the camera critically. “I wish I could do any of those things. But those are all just fantasies, Jace; I can’t undo all the evil that’s been done. All I can do . . . is make them pay.”
He doesn’t sound angry, or resigned, or determined. He sounds distracted, as if he’s not really paying attention to what he’s doing. It’s a symptom I’ve seen in schizophrenics; it happens when their own personal reality is running a movie in their heads that’s more interesting than the one playing outside.
“What are you going to do?”
He shakes his head, as if to clear it. “The Elder Gods are powerful on a scale we can barely imagine, but they have conflicts of their own. The being I’m contacting is called Ghatanothoa; it and Shub-Niggurath don’t get along. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?”
“And what’s this . . . Ghatanothoa supposed to do?”
Stoker doesn’t answer, just keeps fiddling with the camera. And after a sickening moment of thought, I realize that he doesn’t know.
That’s it. That’s the sum total of his plan. Summon an impossibly powerful alien god in the hopes that it’ll pick a fight with another impossibly powerful alien god. Hope that some remnant of Earth is still habitable when the smoke clears. What Selkie told me, that humans could reclaim the Earth, was just a lie to persuade me to join them.
Cassius was right all along. Stoker is insane.
He moves behind the altar, bends down and starts doing something there, out of my direct line of sight. He keeps talking as he works.
“Ghatanothoa is already here, you see. Sealed in an underground temple on the continent of Mu—which itself is currently at the bottom of the Pacific. For now.”
I have to get free. I try to shift my arms and think I feel a little more movement than I did before.
“See, I’m actually going to raise the continent itself—or part of it, anyway. Wake the old guy up. I figure that an Elder God physically present trumps one that actually resides in another dimension. And then the fun begins. . . .”
I see what he’s doing. He’s setting up bags of plasma on IV poles.
“Roger’s death is going to be especially unpleasant, I’m afraid. I don’t know if anyone’s told you this, but there’s no such thing as a vampire/werewolf hybrid—it’s physically impossible, it can’t be done. The two kinds of supernatural energy are like oil and water, they just don’t mix. But nobody’s ever tried this little experiment before.”
He examines a small needle critically, then plugs it into a plastic tube trailing from an IV bag. “I’m going to add thrope blood and pire blood to his body at the same time. That alone should cause convulsions as the two forces battle it out. But I’m also introducing two other elements.”
He pulls out a small glass vial. “Colloidal silver. I’m going to add it to the mix at just the right moment . . . as the sun rises.”
“Transform him and kill him all at once. Am I supposed to be impressed?” I put as much contempt into my voice as possible. “I can’t believe you’d kill one of your own. If this world’s Roger is anything like mine—and it sounds like he is—nobody’s going to miss him much. But he’s one of us.”
“Sacrifices must be made.” Stoker’s voice sounds strange again, off-kilter and a little hesitant. “That’s why they’re called sacrifices. . . .”
He puts three needles in place, two for blood and a separate one for the silver, into a vein in Roger’s leg, near the ankle. The sky is lightening already—I guess I was out for the whole night.
“All right,” I say.
“Hmmm?” Stoker doesn’t look up from what he’s doing.
“I’m in. If somebody like Roger has to die for your plan to work, okay. I don’t agree with it in principle, it’s not a choice I would make, but I can see how you’re working on the bigger picture. And that involves saving the human race, right?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Come on. You’re a smart guy, maybe the smartest human being left, so don’t tell me you haven’t thought this through. If you don’t want to share your plan, you still don’t trust me completely, fine. I’ll take it on faith. But I don’t believe for a second that you’re doing all this out of some glorified death wish.”
He finally looks up, gives me a look that makes shivers run down my spine. It’s the same sad expression he wore when I told him I’d never killed anyone before. “Oh, Jace. Of course I have a plan, and I’m glad you understand why I can’t tell you more. I am sorry Roger has to die, believe it or not. But someone does; that’s just the hard, brutal truth. You’ll understand, eventually. You’re pretty smart yourself.”
“You think you might show a little faith yourself? By, say, letting me out of the invisible mummy wrap?”
He chuckles but doesn’t move. After a moment he says, “Look. The sun is coming up.”
And it is. The far rim of the crater is now outlined in orangey pink. We’re still in shadow, but that shadow will get shorter and shorter, until it reaches the top of Roger’s head.
Stoker has a surgical clamp locked on each IV tube. He releases them simultaneously.
The reaction when the plasma hits Roger’s bloodstream is immediate and violent. His back tries to arch, his limbs try to writhe; his bonds won’t let him. I can see patches of hair sprout and then wither all over his body as the lycanthropic and vampiric energies vie for dominance. His eyes fly open; one’s bloodred, the other a feral yellow. He shrieks, a horrible half scream, half howl.
“For God’s sake!” I blurt.
“No,” Stoker says calmly. “For humanity’s.” He depresses the plunger that pushes the colloidal silver into Roger’s bloodstream, just as the first rays of the sun creep over his face.
It’s horrifying, but I can’t tear my eyes away. Roger’s hair bursts into flames, then grows back thicker and bushier as the fire consumes it. The skin on his legs goes dead white, but his veins turn black as the silver spreads. The front lines of the war in his body retreat toward each other, thrope blood running from silver, pire blood from sunshine. Stoker’s timing is a little off—they meet at around the middle of Roger’s chest.
The body chars and blackens from the heart downward, but he’s dead long before it reaches his feet. Thropes revert to human form when they die, so his upper torso and head look almost normal, other than the skin being very pale and a thin tracery of black veins barely visible on his neck. The fire went out when his fur vanished, but the harsh stink of it still hangs in the air. I feel like throwing up, but I refuse to lose control. I make a
bad joke out of sheer psychic self-defense: “Well done. Part of him, anyway.”
“You don’t have to do that, Jace. I know it’s horrible. I don’t enjoy this, believe me.”
I am not having a heart-to-heart with this man. “So this is part of a spell? I would have expected more mystical mumbo jumbo.”
He shakes his head. “The forces I’m dealing with are beyond that. To get their attention, you need more than rattles and incantations. They respond to power, pure and simple, and death—shaped death, you could say—has plenty of that.”
Stoker shuts off the camera. Then he reaches down and adjusts something on the other side of the altar—the satellite broadcaster, of course, transmitting the recording of the Montana killing.
“Why the transmissions?” I ask. “Is this supposed to inspire your followers or something?”
“Actually, this little theatrical presentation is for the enjoyment of the ones who replaced us, Jace.” He smiles. “As opposed to your performance, which was strictly for my benefit. Maureen?”
One of the boulders changes shape, flowing into the form of a seated woman with her arms clasped around her knees. She gets to her feet and says, “She lied about committing to the cause.”
Crap. Busted by the human lie detector.
The werewitch walks toward me, moving a little stiffly. “You told me you’d consider joining us, and that was the truth. One little murder and you lose your bottle? We’re better off without you.”
“I did consider your offer, Maureen. If you two had managed to convince me you actually had some kind of plan to help humanity, I might even have gone along with it. But so far, all I see is a couple of fanatics out for revenge.”
Her response unsettles me. No angry diatribe about her cause, about how justified she is in doing something terrible because of all the terrible things done to her. No, she just looks disappointed, and a little resigned. “Then we’ll have to do it without you. You were never that attractive an ally, Jace Valchek; our priority should have been simply to prevent you from hindering us. But a human being—a person—deserves the benefit of a doubt. We’ve given you that.”
“Sorry I failed the test. Does this mean I have to take Apocalypse One-oh-one again next year?”
“It means,” Stoker says, “that you’ll be our guest until our plans are complete. After that—well, after that, things will be different. I don’t think you’ll have much interest in chasing us after that.”
So they aren’t going to kill me. I’m both relieved and somehow ashamed, as if mercy from a pair of killers somehow makes them better than me. Stockholm syndrome with a side of guilt.
Stoker’s already packing up the video equipment. “I have to go, Jace. Selkie will escort you to a safe location until this is all over. Not long, I promise.”
“Oh, good. I look forward to spending a little girl time with her.”
Selkie ignores that and helps Stoker pack up. Wisps of smoke rise lazily from the corpse and through the bright early-morning sunshine. I can see the bright blue of the Pacific past the edge of the cliff and some seabirds wheeling in the air. Beautiful place for a horrific murder.
Stoker doesn’t waste time on good-byes. He and Maureen are as efficient as soldiers behind enemy lines, and in a few minutes he’s gone and I’m alone with my jailer. She studies me for a moment, then makes a pass through the air with one hand while muttering something beneath her breath. The invisible hand gripping me opens, and I take one staggering step forward before I catch myself.
“Just like a guy,” I say, rubbing my upper arms. “Throws some meat on the grill, then expects the womenfolk to clean up.”
She smiles. “I like you, Jace, truly I do. Please, don’t make me kill you.”
“You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that.”
“Do anything foolish, and you’ll never have to hear it again.”
I stretch, trying to get the stiffness out of my arms and legs. “You promised me some answers, Maureen. About how you know about my world, about how I can get back there. Is that off the table now, since I’ve decided not to join your little group? Because, frankly, I think you’d rather I go back where I came from.”
She’s kneeling and rummaging through my pack, now. I can’t imagine why—she and Stoker must have searched me thoroughly while I was out for bugging or tracking devices. I don’t have any—I was telling the truth when I said I did this on my own.
She finds what she was looking for and pulls it out: the leather case holding my eskrima scythes. She pops the latches and opens the lid. “Ah. Nice pieces of work, these.” She picks one up, hefts it. “Heavy, though. I don’t think I’d be much good, whipping these about. I’m more of a fey lass than a feral one.”
“You can keep them both, if you send me home,” I say. I know I should be asking nicely, but the fact that I have to ask at all makes it come out angry.
“Calm down. I’ve had no qualms with telling you the truth so far, have I?”
“I guess not,” I admit grudgingly.
“These are nice—but what I was about to say is that they’re no more than toys compared to that bloody great hand cannon you brought with you.” She motions to my gun, lying unattended in the dirt next to the dying remains of the camp-fire. “Have you not wondered why no one pays it any heed? Why, even when you’ve shown what it can do, how simple a machine it is, that not one of all the supposedly intelligent people you work with has given it a second thought?”
I have, actually. It’s weighed on my mind more than once, but I’ve had too many other things going on to pursue it. “Yeah, I’ve wondered.”
“It’s because they can’t. A spell to affect every pire in the world is powerful, but it’s not the first spell to travel round the planet; one such was cast in the year 1100, by a most fearsome sorcerer indeed.”
“Please don’t tell me his name was Merlin. I don’t have time to find a sword stuck in a rock.”
She laughs, that lilting sort of laugh that Irish women do so well; I wonder if it’s genetic or if they take lessons.
“He’s well known, in fact, for his connection to stones that hold swords—but not the kind you’re thinking. He was the very same mystic that disseminated the spell which brings golems to life.”
I thought about it. A.D. 1100 was around the time the Chinese were experimenting with what they called fire lances, the very first crude guns. And China was where the first golems came into being, too. . . .
“The spell is a magnificent thing,” she says. “The gun spell, I mean, though the golem-conjuring is impressive as well. It has three layers to it, and they work, not on the laws of physics, but on the mind of any thinking creature. The first layer tells the mind that using explosions to power weapons is a concept not to be taken seriously. Not that such a thing is impossible—for it’s not—and for a spell to last, it mustn’t collapse under the weight of internal contradiction. This just places a blind spot in a being’s thoughts, a prejudice more emotional than rational.
“The second layer is more insidious. It says that the first idea is perfectly fine and acceptable and thinking about it is a waste of time. It ensures that not only does no one think guns or bombs are viable weapons, but also that no one should ever question why.”
She pauses. “And the third layer?” I prompt.
“A warning system. Should the first two be breached, should someone hammer away relentlessly enough at the spell to break it in another’s mind, it would alert the caster of the spell to such an event. Presumably so they could locate the disturbance, and end it.”
“You and I don’t seem to have any trouble talking about it.”
“You are from another universe, and thus immune. I am not. To me, a gun is an absurdity, an improbability I am unable to believe in. The only way I have to counteract this effect is a spell which continually reminds me that my opinion in this matter is unreliable.” She smiles, but there’s pain in her eyes. “A disturbing sensation, to be sure. Somewha
t like being a little crazy, all the time.”
“How do you know this?”
“From spying on your world. From seeing what guns can do, and how they’ve shaped your entire society. Detecting the spell itself was much more difficult . . . but I am a powerful witch. Powerful enough to open a window onto your world, powerful enough to concoct a solution, of sorts. But even I wouldn’t risk trying to break the spell, even in myself; I have no wish to meet its creator.”
“Wait. So this sorcerer is a pire? Because if he’s still alive—”
“He is no pire, nor is he a thrope. He is . . . something else.”
“Spying on my world. Does that mean—”
“We should eat before we leave.”
She’s avoiding my question, but I suddenly realize how hungry I am. The last food I ate was a sandwich I bought in the Santiago airport, and that must have been at least twelve hours ago. “Hope you have enough for two, because I kind of forgot to bring anything to this barbecue.”
She puts aside my scythes, pulls a small pack from behind a boulder, and rummages inside. “Here.”
I catch what she throws me. Cheese sandwich, wrapped in cellophane. I tear it open and devour it; I never thought that white bread would taste so wonderful. The body reacts in primitive ways to primitive situations, and apparently witnessing a murder is one hell of an appetizer. My previous nausea has abandoned me like a blind date in a restaurant with a back door, and when I’m done Selkie tosses me an apple as well.
“Thanks,” I say, and pitch it back at her as hard as I can.
It’s a Granny Smith apple, which is good. Decent weight, solid, nice hard crunch to it. It catches her just over the left eye, producing a loud thwok and a startled yelp of pain. She stumbles backward a step in surprise, trips over a rock, and goes down on her backside.
I’m already moving. If I could get to my gun in time, this fight would be over, but it’s too far away. I dive for the scythes instead.
I have barely enough time to grab them before Selkie’s back on her feet. Right about now is when I should be toast, except—thanks to Eisfanger—I know a little more about magic than when I first arrived. Dispelling an enchantment like she did with my bonds can be done in a second, but it takes a little longer to prepare to cast it in the first place. Likewise for most magical attacks—you can’t just point your finger and zap someone with a fireball. I have no doubt she has something nasty all charged up and ready to go, but I don’t intend to give her time to use it.