by Lee Isserow
“Thanks,” he said. “See y'round.”
She watched him step into his house, pausing as he got on the other side, a hand coming to his gut as if to steady his unruly stomach, then he turned a corner into the living room and disappeared from view. Talika closed the door and returned to her desk, certain that he would be back. He had gone through his life with these skills and never really had a chance to use them to their full effect. He was just getting a taste of what he could do with his magicks, and she knew full well from her own experience, that taste can be addictive.
29
A little too 'Harry Potter'
As Jules walked into the living room, tiny arms wrapped around his waist.
“You're back!” Natan squealed with glee.
Akif put his book down and scoffed softly. “I've never seen him so excited to see you walk into a room...”
“Well, I have been away a...” Jules trailed off, Akif had no memory of him being gone for the best part of a day, his memories reset along with the rest of the world. “Yeah,” he said, correcting himself. He looked down to his son, knowing that the magick in his blood had protected him from the memory wipe.
“I'm going to make dinner, can you entertain this little rascal in the meantime?”
“Of course,” Jules said, embracing his husband as he got up from the couch, holding him tight in his arms.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Jules said. “It is now.”
He waited for 'Kif to leave before sitting Natan down on the couch. “You know how I've been gone for a little bit?” he whispered.
The boy nodded, with a big, goofy smile on his face.
“Well, daddy doesn't know, you know?”
Natan nodded again. “He doesn't remember.”
“It might confuse him if you say anything.”
“I know. I heard the whispers!” he said, in a hushed tone. “Told me he forgot, said not to say anything.”
“Good,” Jules said, running his hand through Natan's hair, mussing it up.
“Will you put the fire on?” Akif shouted through from the kitchen. “It's getting a bit chilly.”
Jules raised an eyebrow, Natan mirroring his expression. “Are you cold?” he asked. The boy shook his head. A chill ran down his spine, a knot tying itself in his throat. His husband wasn't cold because of the weather, it was a magickal manipulation.
Tentatively, he turned to the fireplace, there were logs and kindling already assembled, all it needed was a match to set the fire going. He looked around for the tinderbox they kept on the mantelpiece, almost reached for it, then stopped himself. A smile crept up his face, and he turned to Natan, raising a finger to his lips. He took that finger, making it dance through the air as he reached out towards the logs in the fireplace. As his finger met with the wood, they erupted into flames, a wash of warmth filling the room. Natan giggled with glee, until he caught his father's eye, and suppressed his laughter.
The smile left his lips, eyes growing wider, fixed with a glassy stare over Jules's shoulder, staring at the fire. His lips parted, jaw dropping. Jules followed his son's line of sight to the flames, a face forming from the glimmers and glows, smoke hanging above it like hair.
“You!” he said, in a hushed tone, all too aware that Akif was within earshot. Jules threw a hand over his shoulder, willing the door to close. “It was you in the villa, telling me those words...”
“It was,” said the face in the fire, words deep and crackling, as if each one was bellowing the flames with a hot breath.
“Who are you?”
“I am not sure you are ready to know... they have told you many things that are not true...”
“Shaman,” Jules said, causing the face in the fire to smirk as it smoked.
“Yes.”
“They say you betrayed them, stole things, stole the Karmec Rune and the oil lamp, let the djinn out.”
“You know their truths are not true truths.”
“Do I?”
“You could have told them of the whispers you heard, and yet you did not. You could have told them you were visited two nights prior, and yet you did not.”
“It would have been hard to explain...”
“Not that hard, if you believed them over me.”
Jules wasn't sure what to believe. And more than that, talking to a face in a fire was all a little too Harry Potter for him to take seriously. “So did you steal those things or what?”
“I stole, that is true, but not those objects. Everything I removed from the Circle was for the greater good, artefacts I believed would not be safe in their hands. The Karmec Rune and oil lamp I did not consider taking, as they were both under heavy guard day and night.”
“So who took them?”
“That, I do not know.”
“Well, it ain't my business any longer.”
“It should be your business. You know what the Circle is now, know how easily it could be corrupted by the wrong influence.”
“Way I saw it, needs a majority vote for any kind of manipulation to be allowed, one voice doesn't make a damn bit of difference.”
“The will of man is easily corrupted. You have seen that yourself, proved it as such with the ease you use magick over a match...”
Jules bit his lip, he had inadvertently made Kahgo's point for him.
“You know this is not the end. I felt your fears after you vanquished the djinn. He was controlled by a master, one that has not yet revealed themselves, who now has the power stolen by the Karmec Rune. You know as well as most, that once the first steps are taken down the road of accruing power, it is near to impossible to deviate from that path...”
This did not sit well with Jules. He knew what Kahgo was saying was true, but also knew that the speaker was himself one of the most powerful magickians in all the lands. He could be playing him, orchestrating a grand manipulation to accrue yet more magick. He wanted to shoot more questions at the face in the flames, but the fiery visage lost its form, returned to being simply fire, as a soft ringing started to chime in his head. He thought it tinnitus at first, but deep down, he knew that was not true. With a wave of his fingers, he answered the call.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Hey Jules, It's Talika. Get ready to say 'I told you so', because we've got another operation with a mystical creature on our hands... Know you said you wanted out, but we could really use your help, if you're willing...”
He swallowed over the knot in his throat, everything in his being telling him he wanted nothing to do with the Circle, let alone its missions and monsters. And yet his head was not conceding to the warning the rest of his body was adhering to. “Send a door,” he said, regretting the words as soon as they left his lips.
30
The 'demi' of it all
Jules apologised profusely to Akif for running out on dinner, using the pale excuse of a late call for a job interview as the reason for darting out the front door. Of course, it was not the front door he ended up taking, but a door back to the Epicentre. Jules walked straight into the briefing room, and straight into a glare from Comstock. He took a seat by Talika, and sunk into the chair.
“A demithulhu has crawled its way out of the Mamala Bay, and is currently making its way across Ala Moana Boulevard.”
“Wait, what?” Jules found himself saying, talking once again without intending to.
“You have a problem, Mister Nichols?”
“Demithulhu? Like, Cthulhu? Lovecraft's Cthulhu...”
“That is correct. May I continue?”
“Explain the 'demi'?”
“Cthulhu is just another creature from the outer realms,” Tali explained. “Millennia ago he crossed over, lives on the ocean floor in what's left of Atlantis, or R'lyeh, whatever you want to call it.”
“Still not explaining the 'demi' of it all...”
“Every so often the Old Ones come above ground to... make whoopee.” Comstock said, with a huff. He was not appreciative o
f his briefing being delayed by the interruptions.
“'Make Whoopee'...” Jules scoffed. “Can't you just say 'impregnate' like a normal person?”
“He does have a point,” Talika said, under her breath. “It's never particularly consensual...”
“That will be quite enough, Miss Rei.” Comstock grunted. “The point is, the being that is currently making its way across Honolulu is the first generation offspring of a creature from the outer realm and a human being. It is only the fraction of a size of its patriarch, but is just as dangerous. Especially given that it, much like the djinn, was once confined in an artefact that was stolen from our facility.”
“But a 'thulhu is not as, how would you put it, intelligent as the djinn, right?” Faith asked.
“Indeed. It has limited intellectual capacity, often following its desires to feed or breed.”
“Which it can do with both females and males...” Talika said.
“Do I want to know how...?” Jules asked, regretting the choice to do so as soon as the words left his lips.
“It impregnates anally with a phallus that is not unlike a tentacle. The, uh, seed is laid in the lining of the colon... As the offspring grow they cause a blockage to the gastrointestinal tract that are often mistaken for constipation or piles. Eventually they are defecated out, thought as nothing more than large, painful excretions and come to term in the sewage system.
“What about the impregnation? The 'parent' has no memory of the... uh... anal violation?”
“As with a lot of mystical creatures, the demithulhu has an aura that encourages those that see it to forget it instantly.”
“... a shroud...?” Jules said, recalling the term Kahgo used when he first came to him.
“Indeed.”
“So, how do we deal with this thing?”
“It's not a case of 'dealing' with it, Mister Nichols. It would take an inordinately powerful magickian to simply will the creature back into its holding place... The ruby that once encased it has been shattered, and no mere magickian can force a physical being into the confines of an object.”
“We kill it,” Faith said, resolutely.
“Can these things be killed?”
“Everything can be killed...” Faith said. “You just have to know where to hit it hard enough.”
“Talika will be guiding you in that regard,” Comstock said. “Every demithulhu had different traits of its patriarch, and thus every demithulhu has different weak points. We won't know where this one's weaknesses lie until you are out in the field.”
“Great...” Jules muttered. Given how the last operation went, he was not looking forward to facing off against yet another mystical creature. And yet he could not make himself get up and leave. Kahgo was right, he had to see this through to the end .
“If there are no further questions, please suit up, arm yourselves, and prepare for teleport to the scene.”
“Yes sir!” said the team, apart from Jules, who was still reluctant to be a part of the group mentality and hierarchy of the Circle.
He donned tactical gear with the others, but once again, would not pick up a weapon. If needs be, he had the shadows at his disposal, but even though this creature was a vicious monstrosity forged by an unholy union between man and outer god, he could not picture himself taking even its life.
Unbeknownst to Jules, all too soon he would learn that given the right impetus, and the worst of situations, he was more than capable of taking a life, let alone lives, plural.
31
They won't see this coming
Three teleported them right on to the main thoroughfare of Ala Moana Boulevard. The street was just off the beach, and at any other time, on any other day, would have been picturesque. Golden sands and azure oceans as far as the eye could see, kissing the clear blue sky on the horizon, with barely a cloud in sight. However, this was neither another time, nor another day. Turning from the vista, the regular traffic on the road had been halted by a pile-up, vehicles a mess of warped metal, shattered glass glittering the tarmac like pixie dust that glimmered under the rays of the sun hanging high in the sky. There were victims, contorted flesh and bare bones behind the wheels of a number of the cars, but the creature was nowhere in sight. A trail of thick, pulsating mucous led off the boulevard into the city. It was still close, the screams as it slithered through the streets could be heard from where the team appeared.
Cautiously, the six of them followed the trail, all too aware that despite the things size slowing its main bulk down, its tentacles, and particularly its phallus, were able to whip through the air at speed, causing massive amounts of damage. The deeper they got into the city, the thinner the path of ooze they were following became, leading them to a cross road, where it completely disappeared.
“Where'd it go?” Jules asked.
Faith knelt down, laying his fingers on the last remnants of the slime. He closed his eyes, muttered archaic words that were barely audible, and exhaled long and slow. The breath from his lips was thick and dark, a warm grey smoke that left his body and took on the form of the scene that had occurred at the cross walk in the recent past. The creature had been slithering along the street just as they assumed, but Jules had never expected the thing to be quite so large. It stood at least ten metres tall, at least eight wide at the belly, and four at the upper body. There were four appendages that looked like arms and legs, but where fingers and toes should be, it had a myriad tentacles, each at least five metres long, and thin for its size, barely thicker than a broom handle. Its head could well have been human, if it weren't for the green-grey scales, and its giant black eyes being slightly too far apart. The mouth of the fiend, if it had a mouth, was hidden under a large beard of tentacles that flowed back and forth with its movement. Jules thought it looked like some kind of hideous aquatic Santa Claus, albeit a Saint Nick that rode along the ground on a bed of tentacles that rhythmically undulated to create forward momentum.
It had been trapped in a ruby for so long, it must have got used to the ambient temperature in there, in whatever form of stasis it had been held. Returning to the Natural World must have been a shock, especially the heat of Hawaii. Jules reckoned it had skirted the sea for a time, becoming accustomed to the climate before venturing inland once it had adjusted. The longer it spent traversing the streets, the more and its natural slime had dried and began to crust. They watched the manifestation of the past laid out in the cross streets ahead of them, as the creature fell forward from the undulating mass of tentacles under its gargantuan body, its colossal arms ahead of it, tentacles folding in on themselves to form solid blocks at the end of its appendages, like massive fists, each the size of a car. It stood up on its legs, feet formed in the same manner, walking on four knotted meshes of dry, scaly tentacles. And it was not alone. Throughout this transformation from slithering to walking, it had tentacles inserted into at least fifteen men and women, operating them like ventriloquist dummies.
“I thought this thing was too dumb to be able to mesmerise people...” Jules said.
“Must be a side effect of the impregnation,” Shana said, reaching to her hips. Dangling from her belt, a holster lay at either side. She flicked the clips on the tops of them and pulled out two short sticks, each less than a foot long. She tapped them together twice, and sigils appeared across their surfaces, shining out for just a moment before vanishing in an instant.
The smokey re-enactment of the creature turned left and continued walking on all fours, the men and women attached to its tentacles walking backwards alongside it obediently, as if it were watching its six.
“It's going to see us coming from any direction...” Faith said, as the smoke dissipated.
“We've got enchantments on the tactical gear,” Leopold said, his sentence being continued by Jacobian.
“Only need a few words to make them close to invisible.”
“Close, but not close enough...” Shana said, holding the tips of her sticks together. She cast her arms
out wide in a circle, shoulders bending all the way around as the tips of the sticks met behind her back.
“Kanta, you should have asked permission before --” Faith started, but didn't get to finish, as the sticks twirled through Shana's fingers, fell, and were caught, both perfectly horizontal just an inch from the ground.
“Hold on...” she said with a smile, “This might be a little bumpy.” She slowly lifted her hands in the air, holding the sticks as straight as possible. The ground beneath them shook, as a perfect circle of the road under their feet was torn out, levitating into the air. Once the circle of tarmac was completely separated from the road, she raised her hands higher, faster, whipping them up into the air. They floated above the surrounding buildings, straight up until she deemed them at a perfect vantage point.
“They won't see this coming...” she said, lowering her right hand behind her, steering with the left to take them in the direction the demithulhu had taken.
“There!” Sabre shouted, the wind of their speed and altitude taking most of the word from her lips. She gestured wildly until the others saw it too.
“Think you can do some damage from this distance?” Faith asked her. She shook her head.
“Against something that damn big? Unlikely... but new girl here, she's got a plan, right?”
A smile came to Shana's lips. She had a plan alright, but she wasn't convinced the others were going to like it.
32
Time to strike
Jules had never done a bungee jump. He had never parachuted. He was never one for roller coasters, and when he thought about it, he didn't reckon he had ever even jumped off a particularly high wall. As the circle of road they were travelling on hurtled down through the air on to the creature below, he imagined it was a combination of all of the above. The bare concrete beneath them tore into the demithulhu's back, a fountain of thick, black ooze erupting into the air around them, as if they had struck oil. The creature reared up onto its hind legs, throwing all six of them from the surface they had only moments earlier been leisurely levitating upon. The 'thulhu was injured, but it wasn't even close to dead. It roared an almighty scream that sounded like it was half-way between the shrill wail of a man, and gargled howl of aquatic beast.