One thing kept her at the angle of Fire, and that was the way Jeremy stood rocking Sean’s limp yet upright body, no hand-on-the-cradle rocking but a manic jerking that snapped the boy’s head from side to side. Then Jeremy seemed to realize what he was doing. He pulled Sean tight against him and whispered into his ear. What? What could Jeremy possibly say to drag his son back to them? It was none of her business. Her business was to help O’Conaghan, any and all the gods damn it.
Run then, but in!
Helen circled to the Servitor’s back and made a dash at it. Before she could lift Eddy’s bat, it wheeled. Raptor claws swung so close to her face that one nicked the tip of her nose. An inch closer and they’d have taken the whole nose off. That would have saved her from the sting of its heated stench, but she didn’t give it another shot. She backpedaled fast, out of range. When the Servitor rounded on O’Conaghan, she ran in low and slashed at the backs of its knees. No Achilles weakness there, but its counter swing did go over her this time.
Self-congratulations were premature. Before she could get away, it seized the back of her shirt and hoisted her into the air. Helen jammed the bat between its jaws and kicked at its midsection, but it didn’t let go until O’Conaghan redoubled the ferocity of his attack. She dropped and rolled out of the pentagram. The bat! In her fall she’d lost it, and now the Servitor snatched it up and hurled it at the Camry, shattering the windshield. If Celeste screamed, the blat of the horn drowned her out. She had to be all right, though, because the strobing of the headlights continued.
The headlights and O’Conaghan’s flash were a mixed blessing. They infuriated the Servitor. They also intermittently blinded Helen. Nor was O’Conaghan immune to the confusion—finally he dodged the wrong way. The Servitor struck the flashlight from his grip, then seized the walking stick, snapped it in two, and clubbed him with the pieces. O’Conaghan went down.
Suddenly Helen could hear Jeremy gabbling the incantation he’d learned along with Sean: The Camry’s horn had stilled, the strobing stopped. Celeste was out of the car, bag in hand, running into the pentagram. Already the Servitor reached for her.
No thought. No time. Helen sprinted to the Servitor and grabbed handfuls of the tentacles that sprouted from either side of its spine. She gave them a vicious twist. It reared, yowling. Hidden mouths opened in the wormy growths, spewing caustic ooze at her, but Helen held on. Around the convulsed bulk of the thing, she glimpsed Celeste dragging O’Conaghan to safety. As the Servitor began spinning in trapped circles, Helen let go and was herself flung out of the pentagram, where she landed atop the doused flashlight, a gouge of pain in her hip. Her elbow barely missed the tines of Jeremy’s pitchfork.
Jeremy: “To you, Lord Azathoth, who has shown me favor.”
“To you, Lord Azathoth.”
The second voice, slow and slurred, was Sean’s. Helen scrambled to a crouch and saw him writhing in Jeremy’s arms, saw him open his eyes, open his mouth. Released from the torment of light and the swatting of human flies, the Servitor bent over Sean. Sean’s eyes rolled up. His body went limp again.
O’Conaghan-Earth was out of the contest. Sean-Spirit and Jeremy-Water swayed beneath the Servitor. Only Fire was left, with the flashlight under her. Helen wrenched it free. There were no switches on the long black barrel. Well, did a wand have a switch? The thing was magical, O’Conaghan had said, but he could use it because he was a paramagician. Marvell was a paramagician. Uncle John had been one, and great-grandfather Henry, and she, Helen, could be one, too. Geldman believed it. Orne believed it. Forget Orne, but how—
She clutched the barrel in both hands and willed the flash to go on. It pulsed. She ground her teeth and willed harder, imagining the flood of light she wanted. A flicker played behind the thick lens. Another flicker. A beam! Helen shot it at the Servitor. It twisted toward her, but her beam was much weaker than the one O’Conaghan had produced, and when the Servitor saw that it gave a growl eloquent of contempt and turned back to Sean and Jeremy.
Her beam failed altogether. Helen dropped the flashlight. Eddy’s bat was in the Camry, too far away. Gus’s stick was broken. That left the pitchfork. Helen groped for it. She climbed its shaft to her feet, carried it into the pentagram, stepped between Sean and the Servitor. It bared its needle-teeth to the roots, ready for her. Was she afraid of her fear? No, her fear was pure now, her mind was clear, and so, bracing the shaft under her arm, Helen rammed the long iron tines into the monster’s belly and herself into its sucking embrace.
What more do you want? the Black Man asks.
The diatom light encloses them in a violet dome. Within the dome, Sean wants everything.
Everything, to own for yourself?
That isn’t right. Not to own, just to know.
It’s a good answer—the Black Man’s nod approves it. Then our mutual friend was right about you.
Mr. Geldman?
Geldman isn’t my friend. But Redemption Orne is.
Did you send the Reverend after me?
No. In seeking you, he meant to serve himself. However, through him, I’ve come to know you, and that’s all that matters.
Something moves in the infinite blackness outside their light-dome, perhaps the air itself: a slide and whisper of disturbed molecules. Why, though? What can I be to you?
You are one who wants to know everything. There’s a lust in the wanting that grows upon itself, always more powerful and exquisite. I can set you on the path of knowing.
The air-whisper grows louder. Violet light flares as the diatoms bunch tighter under the floor, under their feet. What will you want in return?
Everything.
That shouldn’t sound like a good bargain, but here, within the dome, it makes perfect sense.
What doesn’t make sense is how that air-whisper turns into Dad’s voice, rippling the dome and making the Black Man waver like a reflection on water: Come on. You’ve got to help me here.
The voice doesn’t touch the Black Man’s serenity. Accept me, Sean, and I’ll give you what I’ve given Redemption Orne. Life without end or age, an infinite path to travel, and I will bless your apprenticeship with Orne, my servant.
Got to pull together, Kit. You remember being Kit, don’t you? How your mom used to say it: “You’re my brave little Kit.” Remember? You’ve got to remember.
Mom used to say? Mom’s dead, or is she? Perhaps she lives a new life out there in the infinite dark—the Black Man can tell him the truth of it. Yet it’s not Mom who calls him Kit right now; it’s Dad, after a terrible long time. Dad is certainly alive, by the river with Helen Arkwright and Detective O’Conaghan and Aunt Cel. The Servitor’s there, too. It must be fighting—
Perhaps it will kill them, the Black Man says.
You can stop it. You stopped it before.
The Black Man shrugs. Light courses along the gold links and enamel scales of his harness, a cascade of winks. It served me to oblige you at that moment. I didn’t want you distracted by the deaths of your friends.
So stop it again! You can do it no problem; the Servitor’s yours.
No, it’s yours, Sean. Besides, you’re the one who cares.
The diatoms bunch and vibrate under the glass floor; their agitation becomes Sean’s, or his causes theirs, or perhaps the agitation’s mutual. You don’t care?
About your father and friends? No. They’ll rather oppose me than otherwise. However, you may care for them, if you still like. Go back to them. I won’t stop you.
If he still likes? If he still cares?
To you, Lord Azathoth, who has shown me favor. Dad’s voice. The incantation.
The incantation. The dismissing spell.
And to your Soul, Nyarlathotep.
What kind of Soul doesn’t care if people get hurt or killed? This one, gold eyed, crowned, only looking like a man because he wants to. No, because it wants to.
Kit, come back.
He reaches for the sliding air that is Dad’s voice. The extension of his arm
shatters the violet dome, and the sliding air rushes in upon the Black Man, who smiles as gently as ever, unperturbed by his own dissolution. You’ll remember me, Sean, he says.
The dome is actually a bubble in the Servitor’s mind, its prison for Sean, but now the bubble bursts, annihilating the palace, the shoggoth-sea, the black suns in the green sky. He
stood clutched against Dad’s chest, with Dad’s lips by his ear, muttering words Sean knew by heart, because he’d studied them once, long ago, tonight. He mouthed them after Dad, then said them aloud: “To you, Lord Azathoth—”
The Servitor loomed over them, blotting out the Triangled sky. Sean saw both it and, through its eyes, himself and Dad, insignificant. It tried to wrap him in another bubble of its mind. He saw his own eyes go blank. He felt the words clog in his throat.
Then he felt a terrific burst of pain, but it wasn’t his, and it knocked him free. Helen had speared the Servitor with something, and now she struggled in its forelimbs as it molded itself around her, trying to swallow her whole into its body.
“Sean! Say it now!”
He broke out of Dad’s arms and staggered. He couldn’t get the right words out; there was no magic left in him—
The reason for that was the unmarked blacktop under his feet. Dad had dragged him out of the magical circle.
Sean croaked: “Put me where I was.”
Dad hustled him forward. His feet entered the angle of Spirit, and it was like before but different, the lightning inrush of power but no fearless Sean, no cocky Sean who could do anything. If he could do this one thing—he would do this one thing!—it would be enough.
He spit the incantation out:
“To you, Lord Azathoth, who has shown me favor, and to your Soul, Nyarlathotep! Take back the creature of your sending. Let it serve you again, the masters of all.”
The Servitor shrieked, swelled, thinned, like a cloud of gas escaping from compression. Helen hung suspended in its center.
“Blood made the promise! Blood sped my petition! Blood sealed the bargain! Now end it, return!”
In one instant, the Servitor-cloud burst outward, rolling over lot and river, swamping the casting factory, towering to the Summer Triangle at the zenith of the night sky. In the next instant, it collapsed on itself, solidifying again until what had been Servitor became Master, the Black Man stepping out of the center of the pentagram with Helen in his arms. He lowered her to the ground, and with the third instant came his silent explosion into sparkling powders, gray and yellow, acrid and sulfurous, Zeph and Aghar. They drifted toward the ground, where Helen coughed and gasped.
The magical circle was too bright. A car’s headlights lit it. Outside the pentagram, Sean heard Celeste’s voice, and Detective O’Conaghan’s. So they were alive, too.
Sean step backed out of the angle of Spirit, breaking the circuit of magical energy. Dad grabbed him as he keeled over, and Sean let his eyes close, to darkness, nothing else, alone again, one, himself.
30
Like the day in Arkham when it had all started, the Sunday after the dismissing ritual was perfect, the only clouds harmless white puffs on the horizon. Sean sat with Eddy on the front steps of Celeste’s house and stealthily probed the crook of his left elbow. The witch’s teat, withered to a bump smaller than a mosquito bite, was his personal souvenir from the Servitor. He’d been lucky. Gus was still hobbling around on his sprained ankle. O’Conaghan had needed twenty stitches in his scalp. But crushed against the impaled Servitor, drenched in its corrosive ichor, Helen Arkwright had gotten the worst of the fight: third-degree burns on her chest and abdomen, her arms and hands. Celeste had been about to take her to the ER when Professor Marvell had arrived, along with an Order of Alhazred first-aid kit. One thing in it was a pot of ointment labeled “Cybele’s #1.” Helen had nodded as if she knew who Cybele was, and a couple applications of the grass-scented ointment had improved her burns so much that Celeste had canceled the ER trip.
Marvell was going to drive Helen home after Gus’s big celebration dinner. It bummed Sean to think of her leaving, but he stuck on a big smile when she came out on the porch with Marvell. “Hello, Eddy,” Marvell said. “I hope you’re coming to the dinner?”
“You bet, Professor.”
“Excellent. Do you mind if we talk to Sean alone for a few minutes?”
Eddy got up to go without protest—she’d already had a private talk with Marvell and Helen, which she’d breezily labeled half-debriefing and half-counseling session, but Sean had sensed she’d been grateful for their attention. Even so, thirty seconds after she’d run into her house Sean saw her spying from the bay window of her office. Too bad the conference convened under the porch roof, out of her sight. Helen and Marvell shared the swing. Dad came out and leaned against the railing. That left the wicker armchair for Sean. He took it, a little antsy. The armchair didn’t look like a witness stand, but somehow it felt like one.
Marvell clapped his hands on his knees. That was the gavel. But in his polo and khakis, he didn’t look like a judge. He looked like the kind of professor you’d want as your advisor, old enough for you to take him seriously, young enough to still be cool in a Dad-ish sort of way. Gray streaked the dark brown hair at his temples, which Eddy found weirdly hot, and she was a total fan girl about his voice: deep and precise, with a classy Boston accent Gus called Back Bay. “Sean,” Marvell said. “You’ve shown enormous magical potential during this Servitor business. Have you thought about what you want to do with your talent?”
Sean waited for Dad to answer for him: Sean wanted to forget all about magic.
Amazingly, Dad kept his mouth shut. He looked at Sean, as neutral as Marvell and Helen, or trying to be. All right, so that muscle in his jaw twitched—he probably couldn’t help that.
With Dad staying out of it, Sean could only tell the truth: “I’m not sure. I mean, I told the Black Man I wanted to know everything. Is it messed up, wondering about magic and other dimensions and stuff?”
“No, Sean,” Marvell said. “I’d be the last one to tell you that.”
“Plus when I did the summoning, I felt great. It was this huge buzz. But the buzz is what made me cocky enough to call the blood-spawn. I didn’t mean to, not until the last minute.”
Marvell nodded. “I believe you, Sean. And from what you’ve told us about the ritual, Nyarlathotep had a lot to do with you summoning the blood-spawn instead of the aether-newt. Like Orne said, he wanted to give you a more rigorous test. You see, Nyarlathotep’s own power appears to be enhanced by any energy captured and used by allied magicians, as if it cycles back to him through their psychic connections. So it’s to his benefit to find out who the most powerful magicians are, or might be, and to pursue them.”
Sean caught himself fingering the teat bump. He pulled his hand away. “When he wants someone, does he always get him?”
“No,” Helen said. She’d rested her bandaged forearms on her thighs; now she leaned forward on them, gingerly. “Nyarlathotep must have wanted Solomon Geldman, and Geldman doesn’t serve him. He won’t give up on you after one try, though; that’s what I’m afraid of. Orne hasn’t given up, either. His e-mail this morning proves it.”
The e-mail she meant was in Sean’s back pocket, folded as small as Geldman’s dream-fortune had been. He’d already gnawed its message into his memory: Sean, I can’t apologize enough for what’s happened. I meant you and yours no harm. In time we’ll meet face-to-face, and you’ll know me better. Remember what you are—at least you can’t doubt your nature now, or the nature of the worlds. R. Orne.
And You’ll remember me, the Black Man had said. Oh yeah. Like Sean could forget. The real question was, should he pretend to forget? If he scraped together a huge heap of “normal” stuff and shoved it in front of this new door that had opened for him, maybe he could make a barricade. How long the barricade would stand was another real question, and the third real question was whether the force that broke the barricade would come from outside the
door or inside, from him. “I’m not sure what I want to do,” he said again.
Marvell cleared his throat. “Whatever you decide, the Order will do its best to protect you and track down Orne. Detective O’Conaghan will keep an eye out here. And I’ve given your father my private number. If you have any questions, call.”
Sean saw Dad pat a back pocket, so Dad had a paper talisman, too. “Thanks a lot, Professor.”
“You can try to stay away from magic,” Marvell went on. “That won’t be easy now you’ve had a taste. Or you can develop your talent, in which case you need teachers.”
“Like the Reverend?”
Dad shifted on the railing—the loose section creaked.
“I guess we can say Orne’s applied for the job,” Marvell said dryly. “I wouldn’t recommend him. But I could help you with the basics, set up a private tutorial while you’re still in high school. Afterwards, there’s a program at MU for training magicians and paramagicians.”
“You can get a wizard degree?”
“Wizards don’t need academic credentials. This program’s under the auspices of Arcane Studies and the History Department, which confer the, ah, official degrees.”
You can’t doubt your nature now. Which was what, wanting to know everything? That wasn’t such a fun feeling anymore. It was edgy, nervous, and yet that only made it stronger. Again Sean looked at Dad, who had to say no to wizard lessons. Only Dad stayed quiet, like he’d actually let Sean make a decision like this. No way. Was there?
He turned to Helen. “You’ve got talent, too. What are you going to do?”
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