New Title 1

by Dru Pagliassotti

  “Jack, Edward, this is Pastor Lindgren.”

  “We’ve met,” Todd said, nodding cordially to the minister. Jack held out a hand and shook.

  “Do you have any idea what those things are?” Markham asked. Lindgren looked back at the field.

  “It’s the Gudrun curse.”

  “Well, thank God for that,” Jack said, with feeling. “Curses I can do something about. How about them weirdlings? You know anything about them?”

  Lindgren shook his head again. “They were never mentioned in the stories. But—”

  The ground jerked and they all froze, feeling the tremors running beneath them.

  “They gutted one of my men,” the police officer said, abruptly. “They made his skin and bones vanish and left his guts hanging in midair. Then they threw the rest of him away, too. There.” He pointed.

  Todd looked, but all he could see was a crumpled shape on the ground. He started to step forward for a closer look, but then Lindgren began to speak again, and he decided to stay and listen.

  “My grandfather was a pastor, too, one of the men who investigated the Gudruns’ disappearance,” Lindgren said. “He told me there’d been rumors about vagrants and migrant workers vanishing in the area, but nobody’d paid much attention to them. Sixty years ago, this was all ranchland and countryside, and the police didn’t worry if a Mexican migrant or two went missing.”

  The shaking had become a constant, distant tremble. Wherever the snakes were, Todd thought, they had left the north campus.

  “One day the Gudruns didn’t come to church. My grandfather stopped by on his way home to check up on them. He didn’t find them, but he did see a deep, blood-edged hole in one of their fields.” Lindgren gestured out to the broken ground beyond them. “Grandpa called some neighbors over to make sure the Gudruns hadn’t fallen into the hole—he thought maybe an old cave had collapsed—but the hole went down so deep that the searchers finally gave up. The ground around the top was saturated with blood. If the Gudruns had fallen down the hole, they had to be dead.”

  “What frightened the Gudruns’ nephew?” Todd asked, remembering the terse passage in the history book. “He seemed to be in a hurry to sell the ranch.”

  “Yes, and he sold it for much less than he could have gotten if he’d waited. You see, when Grandpa found the bloody hole, he also found some other things: an old horn bowl, a bone dagger, and a long wooden stick. They were covered with runes and blood. He hid them away because he didn’t want to get the Gudruns in trouble until he’d had a chance to talk to them himself, and when the Gudruns never showed up, he waited to show them to their nephew. Well, the nephew didn’t know what they were, either, so the two of them searched the house for clues. Down in the basement they found a trunk full of books—terrible things, apparently, full of horrible illustrations. Grandpa said they were in Latin and Norwegian and some languages he didn’t recognize.” Lindgren sighed, looking haunted. “He’d always thought the Gudruns were good Lutherans, but it seems they’d been dabbling in the occult.”

  Todd smiled to himself as Jack and Markham exchanged guilty glances.

  “Do you still have the books?” he asked.

  “No. Grandpa burned them. He told me the flames turned blue and smelled like burning flesh.”

  “Well, burning them probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but it don’t help us much now.” Jack rubbed his chin. “I don’t suppose he remembered any titles?”

  “Apocalypses Apocryphae. I remember that one. I looked it up online once. It was printed in Leipzig in the 1800s and would be worth quite a bit now.”

  Jack turned to Todd. “Apocalypses sounds like your department.”

  “Serpents, dragons, worms, and similar creatures are common in apocryphal writings,” Todd said, gazing back out at the field. It was a stark palette of black and white to his eyes. “They were adopted into Biblical lore from older religions. Then again, I’ve heard some fringe elements argue that dragons are universal archetypes because humans share a racial memory of dinosaurs. That’s a historical impossibility, of course, unless one’s a young-Earth creationist.”

  “Or them snake-things were the original dragons,” Jack suggested.

  “It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Dragons are no stranger than mal'akhim.”

  “Fuck dragons,” the policeman said, turning suddenly. “I don’t care about dragons. What the hell were those floating things? Did you see what they did to Jackson? They gutted him, just like that. I shot them, but it didn’t make any difference. Bullets don’t hurt them.”

  “Easy, now,” Jack said. Todd watched as the lanky man took a step forward and laid a friendly hand on the policeman’s shoulder. He expected the policeman to object, but instead he fell still, meeting Jack’s eyes. “We don’t know what them weirdlings were, either, but we’re gonna find out. You musta been the first to see them.”

  Todd noticed that Jack’s usually negligible accent became more pronounced as he spoke to the officer. The man pulled on his country-boy persona like a second skin, virtually radiating American sincerity.

  The policeman shivered and drew in a deep breath.

  “I’m Walt. Walt Clancy. Detective.”

  Jack dropped his hand and smiled.

  “Nice to meet you, Detective Clancy. I’m Jack. Maybe you can help us figure out what’s going on here. You were at the dig when the quake hit, right?”

  Clancy turned and looked across the field.

  “There was someone else here. He said he was the provost.”

  “Gregory Penemue,” Todd said. He followed Clancy’s gaze, but that part of the field was lost in a darkness too deep for his handicapped eyes to pierce. “He is the provost.”

  “Did they—did they kill him?”

  “I doubt it,” Todd said dryly. He could open a portal to Penemue’s most likely position, but he was reluctant to do so in front of the pastor and the detective. Revealing his nature to Markham and Langthorn was risky enough.

  “We’ll catch up with him later,” Jack said, still gazing mildly at Clancy. “So, what happened?”

  The detective related his side of the story, his voice steadying as he spoke. Todd straightened as he heard the details of Jackson’s death. Suddenly, the pieces slid into place and the nagging sense of recognition that had been bothering him vanished.

  He half-turned, searching past the surface reality for the sliding jigsaw probabilities that surrounded them.

  The probabilities were moving swiftly, flickering and changing through iterations that traced an infinity pattern across the numberscape, twisting and revolving around a set of all-too-familiar attractors: himself, Andrew Markham, and Jack Langthorn.

  Todd lifted a hand and ran his forefinger across his bottom lip, searching for something more definitive.

  Nothing. The formula was discernable, but its end point—its end point could be any one of a wave of points stretched across the infinite.

  He drew his gaze back. The detective had pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and was handing it to Jack. “We found two of these at the scene,” he said. “One was broken. Do they have something to do with all of this?”

  “Sonofagun, Andy, look what we have here,” Jack said, sliding a clay disk out of the bag and tilting it toward the remaining spotlight.

  “A goetic seal,” Todd said, reaching out to run a finger over the marked surface. “Blood-imbued earth.”

  “Andromalius,” Jack read aloud. “I don’t know that one.”

  “Neither do I. This would be a lot easier with my library.” Markham already had his phone out, fingers working the touchscreen. “Next month’s bill is going to kill me. All right, here we are. Legemeton. Andromalius. Seventy-second spirit, earl, form of a man holding a great serpent in his hand. Brings back thieves and goods that that were stolen, discovers wickedness, blah blah, treasures that be hid, rules thirty-six legions of spirits.”

  “The bit about a serpent sounds like our Leviathan link
,” Jack said.

  “And the part about treasure,” Todd added. Everyone looked at him, so he felt compelled to elaborate. “There are several mythical motifs associated with dragons and serpents. First, they live in caves or under ground. Second, they guard treasure. In the earliest stories, they guarded the passage to the afterlife, or wisdom of some kind. Later, their treasure became secularized as mere gold and jewels.”

  “But what does it mean?” Lindgren asked, worried. “What did the seals do?”

  “I expect they kept those things quiet. Perhaps the Gudruns’ nephew knew more about the occult than he admitted to your grandfather.” Todd shot a look at the two occultists. “Pastor, I recommend you and Detective Clancy tell the authorities about these creatures. You don’t need to say anything about goetic seals and dragons. Just show them the holes and suggest they bring in as much heavy weaponry as they can.”

  “I’m good with that,” Clancy said, sounding relieved. Lindgren looked puzzled.

  “I agree, but—I don’t quite understand what’s going on,” he said. “My family was involved in this from the start, but who are you? Two adjunct religion professors and a stranger? How did you get involved in all this?”

  Todd felt a flash of impatience, but his two companions didn’t seem bothered by the question.

  “Oh, fighting black magick’s kind of a hobby of ours,” Jack said, affably. “Dr. Todd’s acting as our special consultant tonight.”

  Todd kept his expression stony.

  Markham clapped Lindgren on the back, deftly guiding him forward. “You two deal with the authorities, and we’ll see what we can do about snakes and black magick. But hurry, please. A lot of people have been hurt already.”

  Lindgren hesitated, then nodded.

  “All right. But when this is over, I expect an explanation, Andrew.”

  “Detective—heavy weaponry,” Todd emphasized. Clancy nodded. The two men headed across the field, toward the side road where the police cars had been parked.

  “Did you rush them off for a reason?” Jack asked him, his down-home accent all but gone again. His amiable air had evaporated, too.

  “Which one of you is better at high magick?” Todd asked.

  “Me.” Jack folded the plastic bag back over the seal and tucked it into his jacket pocket. “Why?”

  “The floating creatures—we weren’t seeing them in their true forms. All we were seeing were...their corners. The next time they appear, you need to constrain them to reveal themselves to us in their entirety.”

  Jack cocked his head.

  “I can try. Do you know who they are? Magick works better when you have a name.”

  “I don’t even know if they have names. But if you can drag them all the way into our reality, we’ll have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”

  “Okay.” He looked reflective a moment. “You think they were mal'akhim?”

  “No. I think our elusive Leviathan has nothing to do with heaven and hell at all. But my abilities won’t affect it, so all we can hope is that whatever energy your invocations give off will be sufficient.”

  “Should do. The goetic seal worked.”

  “It worked against the serpents.”

  “I thought Leviathan was the serpents.”

  “I’m rather afraid Leviathan may turn out to be all of the creatures at once.”

  “Well, I can think of two potential routes of investigation,” Markham said, after they digested that for a moment. “First, we could see if Edward can track one of the tunnels back to wherever those serpents were living before they were called here. Second, we could find Penemue. If he’s a Watcher, he might be able to help.”

  “Chasing snakes seems like a waste of time if we can’t take them down,” Jack said. “I say we get—” He broke off abruptly, his hand rising to clutch a medallion around his neck. “Something’s coming.”

  Space shifted and Todd threw out his hands, ready to mend it or rend it as necessary. Amon burst from the netherworld in a shower of sharp iron nails, throwing itself at him. Its eight legs clutched at Todd’s chest and the infernal nails caught between their bodies, driving into their flesh as if to affix them together.

  Todd closed his arms around Amon’s bulk, staggering. His heel caught a clod of dirt and he tumbled. The nails drove themselves into his chest as he hit the ground.

  “Wh—”

  Before he could get a word out, Amon clawed a strip of flesh off its face and grabbed it between its teeth, ramming the charred ribbon into Todd’s mouth. Todd choked, tasting flesh and ammonia. Then Amon twisted, its talons tearing his wool sweater and poking holes through the silk shirt underneath, and clamped its teeth and beak onto his wrist.

  The sharp pain of its nursing made Todd suck in ash and Amon’s flesh. He choked, gagged, and then clenched his teeth on the strip of demonic skin to keep himself from spitting it out.

  Above them, Jack was swearing. Todd felt the conjurer tugging at Amon, but the demon’s mass was much greater than its appearance suggested. For a moment he felt Markham grab his head and heard him say something—

  —and then he swallowed the freezing scrap of skin and heard Amon whisper:

  רוקניא

  XXIII

  Alison slid out of the SUV and stared at the deep pit revealed by the truck’s headlights. Dark, moist stains covered one wall.

  A motorcycle roared to a stop next to them.

  “Same as before,” the rider said wearily. “We’re trapped.”

  They’d circled the campus, inspecting the broken roads and upturned trees, the deep cuts and collapsed walls that the monsters had left behind. None of the deep trenches were impassable, but the bloodstains and severed limbs scattered inside them discouraged further exploration.

  “It doesn’t seem as wide here?” Alison asked.

  “No.” The motorcyclist twisted in his seat, looking behind him. “I wouldn’t want to try jumping it, though. The ground’s pretty rough, and this isn’t a dirt bike.”

  “So, what now?” Peter asked from the front seat. “Do we try it?”

  Ally bit her lip and shook her head.

  “I think...snake-monsters track by vibration,” she said. “They could be stationed all around campus, waiting for vibrations to alert them.”

  “So, how do we get across?” The motorcycle rider looked up. “There aren’t any trees nearby, or we could pull a Tarzan.”

  “We could try moving really slowly,” Jarret suggested from the SUV’s back seat.

  “You first,” Peter muttered.

  “Maybe...maybe we could distract them,” Alison suggested. She jammed her hands into the pockets of Pastor Lindgren’s coat. “Like, if you and the other cyclists circled around and around on the opposite side to get the snakes’ attention, we might be able to sneak through here?”

  “Lots of vibrations,” the biker said, catching her drift. “Then we should split the noise up. A bunch of people shaking things up in several places would be more distracting.”

  “Do you want to try it?” Alison looked at Peter and Jarret. “It’ll be dangerous.”

  “What worries me,” Peter said grimly, “is that even if we get across, we might find out the snakes are out there, too.” He slapped the dashboard. “You heard the radio. Everything’s gone crazy.”

  Alison nodded. The earthquakes and the blackout and the loss of land lines and cell towers had caused a lot of trouble in Vista Hills. Fires had started, looters had broken into the local mall, and reports were starting to trickle in of collapsed buildings and trapped occupants. So many people were trying to call out that the cell phone satellite system was overloaded and most calls were getting busy signals. Emergency workers from the neighboring counties were being assembled to help, but right now Vista Hills was in a state of chaos.

  And nobody in town had thought to head out to check on little California Hills University.

  She leaned against the SUV, trying to think.

  “Okay, li
sten,” she said, looking at the motorcyclist. “I think we need to get the fastest runners we can—like, track-team fast—and send them out while three or four groups of cyclists and motorists make as much noise and vibration as possible. If everyone, you know, synchronizes watches and chooses a time to start, the runners could probably get through without being detected. Then they gotta go to the police and tell ’em about the giant snakes.” She was no longer certain that her idea about luring the snakes away with food would work. If the things were intelligent, they might detect a trick. But the police would know what to do, right?

  Not that the police were ever much good in the movies, but maybe they were more efficient in real life.

  “Yeah, that might work.” The biker nodded. “What about you? You aren’t going to run?”

  “I hurt my foot.” She turned and looked up at Peter and Jarret. “You could go, though. You’re both athletes.”

  “I’m not going to leave you alone,” Peter said. She smiled at him. It was a stupid answer, but it made her feel good, anyway.

  “Water polo, not track,” Jarret said. “I’m better off staying here and praying.”

  “So you’ve got to arrange it,” Alison said, turning to the biker. “Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He shifted, then leaned over the handlebars and held out a hand. “It’s a good plan.”

  “Thanks.” She shook hands with him, flattered. He waved, manhandled his cycle around, and roared away.

  “So, what about us?” Peter asked, looking at her. “Back to chapel?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked at the bloodstains again, troubled. “You know, they’ve probably got a hideout someplace. Maybe where they’re taking all the bodies.”

  “I think they’re eating all the bodies.”

  She made a face, disgusted, then shook her head.

  “I don’t know. Snakes, like, get real fat when they swallow something? And just lie there, digesting?” She remembered seeing a gross image on the Discovery Channel, a python or something that had just swallowed a monkey, which she’d thought was pretty awful to show on TV, even if it was educational.