But I wouldn’t give everything.
“I’m sorry, Leander,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough then. And I’m sorry I’m not weak enough now.”
Blackbyrne wasn’t the only one who had read the Arcanorum, after all. Drawing a deep breath, I said: “Take back what has been given, Yog-Sothoth; let him descend.”
Leander staggered, his eyes going wide in uncomprehending fear, but it hadn’t been enough. My throat tried to close around the words, but this moment, before he had fed, before he was solidly a part of the world again, was my only chance. “Take back what has been given, Yog-Sothoth; let him descend!”
Blackbyrne let out a cry of rage. God, I had no time, only moments before he reached me, but I couldn’t force myself to speak, not again.
There came the thunder of a rifle, and a bullet hit the altar, forcing Blackbyrne to take cover behind one of the standing stones. “Damn it, Whyborne, hurry!” Christine shouted.
But I couldn’t. Staring into Leander’s wide, frightened eyes, I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
“Whyborne!” Griffin called from somewhere behind me. “Hold on—I’m coming!”
At the sound of his voice, the constriction around my throat eased. Drawing all of my breath into my lungs, I shouted: “Take back what has been given, Yog-Sothoth; let him descend!”
Leander screamed. His flawless body arched, hands reaching out to me. Then he crumbled into fine, bluish-gray dust and blew away on the wind.
~ * ~
Addison howled and lunged forward, grasping frantically at the fine dust which was all that remained of Leander Somerby. I stared at Addison in a daze, even as he clutched at his chest with one hand, then slumped slowly against the altar. The life drained from his eyes, but the look he turned on me was one of such uncomprehending anguish as to haunt me for the rest of my life.
Which probably wasn’t going to be very long. Another member of the Brotherhood let out a shriek of incoherent rage. I turned, but not fast enough: he’d pulled a pistol from within his robes and leveled it at my face.
The rifle fired a second time. The man jerked, his expression one of surprise and horror, before he fell down dead.
Christine stood behind him, dressed in the concealing robes of the Brotherhood, her hood flung back and her rifle in her hands. “You were one of the ‘men’ who met us at the docks!” I exclaimed.
“It seemed too good an opportunity to pass up,” she said, snapping a shell into the chamber just as one of the Guardians rushed her. Her shot took it through the heart, and it crumbled into dust.
Like Leander.
I couldn’t think about him now. All was chaos: men in robes fleeing from gunshots, wailing Guardians, and what sounded like a muffled howl coming from the still-open gateway.
Why was it still open? “Give to them a man; send him through the gate; they will accept the sacrifice; they will close the door.” I had sent Leander back into death; according to the papyrus, the gate should be closed.
Griffin was free; either he’d worked his bonds loose, or Christine had freed him while the ritual distracted everyone else. At the moment, he held off a pair of Guardians with a stout branch. Pulling the revolver from the hand of the man Christine had shot, I shouted, “Griffin!” and tossed the weapon as close to him as I dared.
Only after I threw it did it occur to me the gun might go off when it hit the ground. Fortunately, it didn’t. Griffin dove for it, rolled, and came up firing.
Christine slapped another shell into the rifle, tried to rack it into the chamber, then swore as the shell jammed. The Guardians were beyond all control, savaging their erstwhile masters as readily as us. They keened and howled in time to the horrific sounds coming from the gateway, and the hair on the back of my neck rose.
One of the creatures, a parody of the human form with the misshapen head and taloned feet of a vulture, came at me. The stench of death soaked the useless, greasy feathers covering its overlong arms, and its beak split open to reveal blunt, human teeth inside. I flung up my arm in a feeble effort to protect myself.
The report of a gun sounded almost in my ear. The Guardian let out a shriek, which ended as it crumbled into dust. I turned, expecting Griffin. But it was my father who stood there, a smoking revolver in his hand.
“Devil take you, Percival!” he shouted, his face flushed crimson with rage. “What are you doing? Don’t you care anything for your mother?”
The words shouldn’t have hurt. “Blackbyrne was going to destroy the world, you fool!” I shouted back. “Or at least, he meant to remake it in his image, by putting some abomination in Leander’s body. The world would have burned. What good does it do to heal Mother only to have her die screaming in the dark along with the rest of us?”
I didn’t expect him to believe me. His lips pressed together, and he calmly shot another Guardian. “Why didn’t you tell me beforehand? Don’t you trust me?”
“Why should I? You never trusted me.”
A Guardian emerged from behind one of the dolmens, snarling through a mouth of ill-fitting fangs. “Shoot it, Fath—”
A long-nailed hand closed around the back of my neck and wrenched me to the side.
I struck the edge of the stone altar, cracking my right elbow, the pain spangling my vision with pinpricks of light. Blackbyrne stood over me, his visage so twisted by rage it no longer seemed human.
“You dare to defy me,” he snarled. Seizing the front of my robes, he yanked me to him, his putrid breath washing over my face.
“You were right,” I said, even as my mind raced. There had to be something I could do against him, against his power. “We are alike. As alike as the reversed reflection of a mirror.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Christine swing her jammed rifle at his head. Somehow, Blackbyrne knew she was there. He flung me from him and turned, catching the rifle in his hand. With a savage growl, he ripped it free from her grasp, then cracked the barrel hard across her temple. She fell to the ground and lay there moaning.
“Idiots,” Blackbyrne spat. I’d struggled to my feet while he was occupied with Christine, but it did me no good. The rifle caught me only a glancing blow, but it was enough to send me sprawling against the dolmen at my back. Agony jolted through my abused elbow as I slid to the ground.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” Blackbyrne demanded as he loomed over me. “The gateway is still open! Those from Outside have already been summoned! One will come through, but thanks to you, there is no vessel for me to force it into.”
He had to be lying. “I sent Leander back! The gateway will close.” Except it hadn’t.
Blackbyrne’s mouth twisted into an incredulous sneer. “Fool. You merely returned him to the dust from which he was raised. The portal is open, and there is no container to receive what is clawing its way out even now.”
Fear rose up to choke me. “Without a human host, you won’t be able to make it do your bidding.”
“That’s right.” He bared his teeth at me like a maddened animal. “Which means it will do as it wishes, rampaging across the earth as a force of nature, killing everything in its path. You’ve doomed all of humanity.”
His expression twisted into something like a grin as he saw the horror blooming across my face. “So be it,” he said, raising the rifle high to bash my head in against the stone. “Let the world burn.”
Burn.
My first spell—the stupid trick of summoning flame, the one written in the Arcanorum only as a childish fancy—burst from my lips.
The powder in the jammed shell ignited, and with a tremendous bang, the rifle exploded in Blackbyrne’s hands. I flung my arm up instinctively, even as I rolled to one side. Something hot and wet hit the back of my hand, reeking of blood and scorched meat.
Blinking against the dazzling after-image, I sat up slowly. Blackbyrne lay unmoving on the ground near the altar, the alien light from the gateway playing over his still figure.
The gateway, which
would let through something humanity had no hope against. I’d failed. Despite all of my knowledge, I’d failed to understand.
The world was doomed, and at my hand.
~ * ~
Silence descended over the ring of stones. The Brotherhood and Guardians were either dead or fled into the dark. Only Christine, Griffin, and—to my unutterable surprise—Father remained. Above the altar, the gateway continued to grow in size and strength, as if something from Outside forced gigantic hands through a rip in reality itself, slowly tearing it wider. The howling grew louder, and an icy wind blew out, reeking of lightning and slime.
“Give to them a man; send him through the gate; they will accept the sacrifice; they will close the door.”
I understood now what the words meant. A sacrifice was required. One life, in trade for all the lives in the world.
“Whyborne.”
I turned at the sound of Griffin’s voice. Grime and Guardian dust coated his skin, and his hair was stiff with gore, where a gash across his scalp bled freely. I wanted nothing more than to take him in my arms, to hold him tight and never let go.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I’ll live. Assuming we can close the gateway.” He nodded at it as Father and Christine approached. “You’re our magic expert. How do we end this?”
His misplaced confidence in me nearly broke my heart. I gave Christine a plaintive glance; she caught Father’s sleeve, holding him back to give us a few moments of whatever privacy could be had.
A few last moments, and, God, I wanted more time. A fortnight hadn’t been enough. A lifetime wouldn’t have been enough.
I took his hands in mine, heedless of our small audience. His brows quirked together sharply, but he twined his strong fingers with mine. “Whyborne?”
“I just wanted to say I’m glad to have known you,” I said quietly. The howls of the thing dragging itself through the portal hid my words from anyone but him. “Despite everything.”
He looked even more worried. Gripping my hands harder, he said, “I didn’t mean for you to see those notes—”
“Hush. It doesn’t matter now.” I drew in a breath through the constriction in my throat and ignored the burning behind my eyelids. “The gateway is like a door which only opens in one direction. If you push hard enough instead of pulling, you’ll break it. The analogy isn’t perfect, but…I believe if a living body passes through from this side, the energies will be disrupted, and the gateway will collapse. Only…the Outside…well, it isn’t a place hospitable to earthly life.”
Griffin closed his eyes and took a quick sip of breath. He bowed his head a moment, as if in prayer, before his shoulders took on their usual, determined set.
I stepped closer to him, letting go of his hands and putting my arms around him. Leaning my forehead against his, I whispered, “I love you, Griffin Flaherty.”
With all the strength I possessed, I shoved him to one side. Taken utterly by surprise, he stumbled and fell heavily against Father, who caught him.
Then I turned and ran straight for the gateway.
~ * ~
“Ival!” Griffin screamed, raw and broken, and if I’d ever doubted he loved me, I doubted it no longer.
I ran as fast as I could, arms and legs pumping, my heart pounding in my chest, every beat measuring the seconds before the last. The gateway loomed ahead of me, widened almost to a circle, its alien energies snaking out into the world.
Would it hurt when I died?
I was almost at the altar. I gathered myself, preparing to leap. This was it; I was going to cease to exist, and please let Griffin be all right, and Mother, and everyone else I’d ever loved—
Something dark and heavy cannoned into me, knocking me to the ground.
The impact struck the breath from my lungs and sent splinters of agony through my elbow. For a moment I could only flail helplessly, gasping until my lungs unfroze and drew a breath. Gathering my legs under me, I surged up and threw off my attacker.
It was Blackbyrne. His hands and face were mangled from shrapnel and burns, but he was still fiendishly strong as he grappled with me anew. His lips drew back from his teeth in an insane snarl, and his single remaining eye glowed with rage. Behind him, something like an enormous pseudopod slipped gelatinously through the portal and quested blindly in the air.
“No!” Blackbyrne growled. “If I must die again, then the world itself will die with me!”
“Whyborne!” Griffin shouted. “Get down!”
I went instantly limp, as if my nerves were wired to his. A shot rang out; blood arced from Blackbyrne’s shoulder, and the impact spun him to the side and toward the gateway.
His outstretched hands touched the groping pseudopod. Like the feeding reflex of any mindless animal, it wrapped around him—and yanked him back through the gateway toward whatever passed for its mouth.
The colors of the portal heaved through a nauseous spectrum, before it abruptly shrank inwards, imploding on itself. The howl of some terrible thing vibrated in my bones, accompanied by Blackbyrne’s final scream as the monsters he’d sought to command devoured him body, mind, and soul.
Then, with a soft pop like the opening of a champagne bottle, the gateway vanished. The wound in the universe had closed.
I blinked slowly, not entirely certain of the evidence of my own eyes. I’d expected to die. Instead, I sat on the grass, alive, while the gray light of dawn crept over the horizon.
The thud of sturdy boots against the ground broke me out of my confusion. Griffin fell to his knees and pulled me tight against him, his face pressed into my hair, tears hot against my scalp. A moment later, Christine was there was well, her arms around Griffin and me. “Damn it, Whyborne,” she muttered thickly. “I’m not crying, do you hear?”
I couldn’t reply, my throat too tight or my heart too big, and simply clung to them both.
After a few minutes, Father loudly cleared his throat. Christine let go of me, and Griffin drew away—but his hand still rested on my back, as if he couldn’t bear not to touch me, to prove to himself I was real and alive.
Father loomed over me, but his expression was one of chagrin. He held out his hand; after a moment’s surprise, I took it, and he hauled me to me feet.
“Good work, son,” he said stiffly. He nodded at the space the gateway had occupied. “I think you’re right. Your mother would never have approved.”
“Stanford—”
“I told him to take one of the boats and leave, as soon as the trouble started.”
I nodded, more relieved at his escape than I would have expected. Christine retrieved the papyrus from the altar; it at least had taken no damage. Together, the four of us limped to the dock. The sun was rising, and the first rays touched the gray waters, turning them to gold.
“Well, Whyborne,” Christine said, “I think retrieving the scroll will be quite enough to salvage both our reputations, don’t you?”
Chapter 29
“We must all pull together,” Dr. Hart said, when I shoved the door open and walked into the all-department meeting with Christine at my back.
Every eye turned to us, and Dr. Hart fell silent. Indeed, the entire museum staff might have been struck dumb at the sight of us. We had come directly to the museum from Somerby Estate: filthy, bloody, and exhausted.
I walked very deliberately down the long aisle, conscious of every gaze glued to me. Bradley’s mouth worked comically as we passed, but even he didn’t seem to know what to say.
“Dr. Hart,” I announced, “we have successfully retrieved the stolen scroll.”
Christine set it down on the table in front of the director. Dr. Hart stared at it, then at us, then back at it. “I am taking the rest of the day off,” I told him. “I’ll be in tomorrow to answer any questions.”
“And I’m bound for the docks,” Christine said, “where I intend to book passage as quickly as I may. I will see you all on my return from the field.”
Griffin and Father a
waited us on the sidewalk in front of the museum. They had not exchanged a single word on the way here, and I doubted that had changed while Christine and I were inside. Griffin’s clothing was in a state, covered with blood and grime, and people gave him a wide berth as they passed by.
“Was the director suitably impressed?” he asked as we approached.
“I believe so,” Christine said. “At least, I’ve never before seen him at a loss for words.” She turned to me, hand extended. “And with that, I’m away. Do send me word, Whyborne, as to what story you decide to use so our accounts will match up.”
I shook her hand warmly. “Of course. Thank you, Christine. For everything.”
She shook hands with Griffin as well. “Goodbye, Griffin. Do try not to require rescuing before I return.”
“I shall do my best.”
“See that you do. Gentlemen.” With a brief nod, she strode off, having not so much glanced at my father. Given some of the things he had been party to, I supposed it was just as well.
As for Father, he looked rather nonplussed; he was not used to being so soundly ignored. After a moment, though, he simply shook his head and turned to me. “We should return home and make certain Stanford is all right.”
“Give my regards to Mother.”
“Percival—”
“No.” Gathering my courage, I met his startled gaze. “People are dead, Father, and I don’t just mean your friends who perished last night. Philip Rice, Madam Rosa, the innocents Blackbyrne set upon, Addison’s servants…I’m sure there are more I don’t know about. Dear lord, Griffin was kidnapped with the intent to feed him to whatever horror Blackbyrne conjured up.”
“I’ll see that the police drop the charges,” he said, with a quick glance at Griffin.
“Do so.”
We stared at one another in silence for several moments. No doubt he expected me to give in, to say I understood why he’d gone along with the rest of the Brotherhood and Blackbyrne’s plan. And truly, a part of me did understand, all too well.
His nerve broke first. “Yes, well,” he said, tugging up the collar of his coat, as if he’d taken a sudden chill. “I’ll send a check by the museum this afternoon, shall I?”
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