And then she patted his knee and vanished.
The door clicked shut. From Brendan's limited perspective, the room looked like a meeting hall with all the furniture removed. Where there had likely been a conference table and swivel chairs, there was now a wide space of cracked and stained tile.
Painted on the wall to his right was a crude mural, done in thick, dripping paint. It showed a crowd of men, all lifting their hands, but Brendan couldn't tell whether the gesture indicated celebration, fear, or something else. The object of the crowd's attention was a large shape that loomed over the entire mural. It was black, but even in the dim light of the room, Brendan picked out other colors mixed in. A drop of yellow here, a streak of blue there. But they were all no match for the roiling, rippling black. Brendan imagined if he ran his hand over the painting, he’d feel layers of paint, bulging two inches from the wall. This painting had taken more than a single afternoon to complete. The artist—or artists—had returned, adding layer after layer to this element. It had been an obsession, a near-religious fixation.
In the center of the mural, the black shape plunged into the crowd, a massive pillar that narrowed to a point on top of one man’s head.
This figure was the only one not raising his hands. His stretched wide, making his body into a crucifix outlined in the same color-flecked black as the dark shape.
The door clicked open. Soft scraping echoed off the high ceiling, the sound of sandals sliding over tile. It crept until it was directly behind him, close enough that Brendan heard the rustling of silk. Robes brushed his head as a figure made its way around the chair.
Brendan held his tongue, forcing his captor to make the first move.
The figure stepped in front of Brendan. It wore a long, hooded robe, all black with intricate symbols monogrammed along its edges. It had short sleeves with wide openings to accommodate the multi-faceted mods branching off flesh elbows. Instead of a single forearm, each elbow transitioned to four mods, all flexing and pistoning in tandem.
The figure regarded him from the shadows of his robe for a moment before pulling back his hood.
“I want to tell you how happy we are you and your friends turned up,” he said. “And I want to tell you how sorry I am.”
The man’s face was creased with age and puckered with scars. Thinning gray hair hung limp against his scalp. A mixture of cool intelligence and deep sadness glimmered in his pale eyes. He held Brendan’s gaze in such a way that Brendan knew if he asked any question, he would get a straight answer. This was a man who valued truth.
“Are you Asmodeus?” Brendan asked.
The man’s lips quirked into a smile that wasn’t from amusement.
“I’m afraid not,” said the man. “You can call me Marcus.”
His voice was warm and calm, as if out of consideration for someone sleeping nearby.
“What do you want from me?”
The creases on Marcus’s face deepened.
“This gives me no pleasure,” he said. “But we do not choose the Way. When we are confronted with truth, we must accept it, regardless of our feelings. If we reject things—if we declare them untrue—simply because they make us unhappy, then we claim power over truth. We claim to shape reality only by our wills. In essence, we claim to be gods. And we most certainly are not gods. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Brendan didn’t answer. Marcus answered the silence with his enigmatic smile.
“This new age has reminded us of this fact,” Marcus continued. “It has shown us things more powerful than we are, but that isn’t so terrible, is it? All throughout history, humankind’s lowest moments have come after we convinced ourselves of our own self-sufficiency. When we told ourselves we were gods, true gods put us in our place.”
Marcus withdrew a small vial from the folds of his robe. He pulled a stopper from one end and flicked its cool, odorless contents onto Brendan’s face. The action was automatic, performed with a distracted air as he continued his monologue.
“I thought I was a god before this world fell to pieces. I never would have said those words, but I lived like I believed them.” He glanced around the room, a look of nostalgia darkening his features. “I ran this place before the plague came. Maybe it’s not as impressive as what others did in the better days, but I took pride in it. I put countless hours into it, into ensuring every guest was treated well for a fair price, while still turning a nice profit. And I was good it. Maybe it was just a hotel in the middle of nowhere, but everyone who came through our doors left refreshed and restored. This place ran like a well-oiled machine because of the control I exercised over it. Things within these four walls happened because I said so, and everything that happened was good. If that isn’t something like godhood, I don’t know what is.”
Marcus swallowed. “But then we took in someone who was sick.”
He didn’t have to explain what he meant. The pain in his eyes was explanation enough.
“I’d heard about the plague by then, but I made no preparations for it.” He shook his head, and when he smiled this time, a tear glistened in his eye. “I didn’t want to believe it could reach me. I was a god, you see? I determined what had power, and I declared the plague’s power untrue in my kingdom. And yet it walked through the front doors, late one Thursday evening. He was a young man. From the looks of it, people had already tried to kill him. There were holes in his chest, and the infection was leaking out of him.”
He put the stopper back in the vial and returned it to his robes. “I lost all of my on-duty staff in thirty minutes. Every last one, sick.”
Now Marcus fell silent. Though the tar had ruled the planet for decades, his sorrow seemed as fresh as the day his story happened.
“I ran away,” Marcus finally said. “While all of my employees got sick, I fled into the night. A god abandoning his people.”
Marcus reached into his robe again, taking out a clear jar filled with a viscous, red substance. He twisted the lid off and dipped a mechanical finger inside.
“Hold still,” he muttered as he touched the finger to Brendan’s forehead. Marcus traced slow, intricate designs across Brendan's brow. Bio-powered engines hummed with each stroke.
“I didn't return for years, not until they’d found ways of dealing with the sick,” he murmured. “I came with the government after they learned how to contain the plague. They helped me protect this place from the infection and drive out the sick who still wandered my halls, like guests waiting to check out. There was only one place where they could not help me. In one room, the plague had taken root. As you probably know, there is no moving the infection once that happens. They told me my only option was to seal the room, so the infection would never spread.
“But by then I knew what I had to do.”
He finished writing on Brendan’s forehead and tucked the jar back inside his robe. Now he knelt before Brendan. His multi-faceted arms whirred and twitched at his sides.
“I realized in that moment what I’ve already told you. I’d been living my life as a god, when I was anything but. The real god, or the closest thing to it, lived in my hotel. And these people wanted to seal it off? They literally wanted to put God in a box.” Marcus smiled ruefully. “I asked them politely to leave, and I turned my hotel into a cathedral.”
Marcus stood and circled behind Brendan. He placed a hand on Brendan's shoulder, letting his cold, metal fingers run along the fraying cloth of Brendan’s shirt. There was a mechanical clicking sound, and then the cords binding Brendan to the chair loosened and fell away. The cords around his wrists remained.
“Stand, please.”
Brendan obeyed. It would be foolish to resist Marcus now, but the time to act was coming. The instant the man lost focus, Brendan would be ready.
Something heavy and metallic rattled behind Brendan, and he looked over his shoulder. Marcus was attaching a ten-foot-long pole to the bindings around Brendan’s wrists.
Once he'd secured the pole, Marcus gave it a shove. There wasn’t much force in the gesture, but it was enough to smack into the small of Brendan’s back, knocking against his spine.
Brendan got the message loud and clear and stumbled forward. Marcus guided him with the pole, gripping it with four of his mods and keeping all the pole’s length between them.
As they walked, a line appeared in the tar-proofed wall before Brendan. It elongated and turned corners until it outlined the shape of a door.
Marcus said, “If this is a cathedral, then it needs an altar. And every altar needs an offering.”
In a flash, Brendan understood. He knew who Asmodeus was.
He’d met him. Many times.
The door opened with a mechanical hum. The pole dug deeper into Brendan’s back, and he watched helplessly as a new room appeared where before there had only been gray wall. Brendan kept himself from screaming as his suspicions were confirmed, but he could not stop from struggling against his bindings.
The humming stopped when the doorway opened, and Brendan saw what waited beyond it.
He saw Asmodeus.
He saw tar.
10
Orange light painted the room before him, flickering from two rows of candles that formed a path down the center. On either side, complicated symbols in thick black paint covered the floor.
After a few yards, the candlelit path led to a pit. Its yawning mouth revealed crumbling layers of tile, concrete, and earth. Scents of mud and decay wafted out of the pit, all mingling with the cloying scent of candles.
“I’d never dream of putting God in a box,” Marcus said, his voice strained as he pushed against Brendan’s resistance with the pole. His sentences came in short, breathy bursts. “But I found a way to put him in a pit. It wasn’t easy. I had to dig the pit first. Then I had to cut out part of the wall. The spot where Asmodeus took root. I sealed him in a cage. Dropped him down the pit.”
Brendan planted his heels at the edge of the pit, fighting against the pole in his back, even though his spine screamed in agony every time the tool pressed into the bruise. Mercifully, Marcus relaxed his pressure and spoke, determined to finish his story.
“I sent my first convert down the pit. His was the greatest mission, to open the cage where I’d placed Asmodeus, so our god could feed. In doing so, he became the first sacrifice. The minute he opened the seal, Asmodeus broke free and sucked him dry. He’s still down there today. Somewhere.”
Marcus took a lantern from the wall, swinging it over the pit. Bile rose in Brendan’s throat as he stared in horror at what the eerie, dancing light revealed.
The bottom of the pit teemed with infected. Though it was ten yards across and just as deep, the shambling creatures barely had room to move. They bumped into each other, crawled over each other, writhed beneath each other’s feet. Some remained fully intact, with blackened eyes and veins the only signs of their infection. Others bore massive wounds in their torsos, or lacked arms, legs, or even heads. Tar oozed out of every wound, pulsating tentacles that merged and flowed with the tentacles coming from their infected companions. The orange light of the lantern cast them all in gold, creating a gilded work of religious art.
And in the middle of it all, a massive patch of tar covered the floor.
Its center was thick and undulating, and though it was hard to see through the swarming infected, the patch seemed to cover most of the pit’s floor. Thin edges snaked and zigzagged up the walls of the pit like spiderweb cracks in glass.
Marcus chuckled. “To think, I believed myself a god. How could that be true when there are things like this in the world?”
A clicking sound told Brendan Marcus had detached the pole and removed the bindings around his wrists. Brendan turned to flee, but Marcus acted quickly. The pole slammed between Brendan’s shoulder blades. He tried to catch his balance, tried to keep his footing, but Marcus hit him again, and Brendan fell headfirst into the tar below.
11
It seemed like Brendan tumbled in slow motion. He descended into the sea of infected, each inch he traveled taking an eternity. Questions flashed through his mind as he neared his doom. How long had Marcus been collecting offerings to the patch of tar he’d named Asmodeus? How many infected were down there? There were no less than one hundred. Maybe more.
The tar’s hunger reached for Brendan, burning in his mind. Its wild appetite remained unsated and never would be sated. Every new offering Marcus brought only made the tar hungrier. Brendan knew all of this as instinctively as he knew his spine was bruised, because, somehow, he was connected to the tar.
And so he felt no surprise when it rose to meet him.
The edges of the infection grew thinner and flatter against the sides of the pit as the tar drew together in its center. The blackness coalesced in a column of filth, like a sick geyser. Brendan fell, the tar rose, and somewhere between the candles above and the infected below, the two met.
The top of the black column burst open. Brendan shielded his face with one arm even though it would do him no good. Black tendrils exploded in a kaleidoscope around his body, splitting in every direction before converging over him. The world grew dark, and soon the blackness enveloped him.
But that was it.
The tar did not force itself down his throat, through his nostrils, or into his ears. It didn’t seep into him, didn’t consume his blood and replace his will with its own. It simply cradled him fifteen feet above the horde of infected below.
The tar wormed through Brendan’s consciousness. Its hunger filled his mind, a sensation so powerful he nearly mistook the desire for his own. And yet, despite their connection, he didn’t understand why the tar hadn’t consumed him. It needed to feed, but refused to touch Brendan.
And so he rotated slowly in the black no-space of the tar.
Until he heard a voice.
“You have power.”
Brendan recognized this voice, but he couldn’t place it. He didn’t respond. Not yet. Though the tar seemed uninterested in him, he feared opening his mouth. That might tempt the blackness. That might invite the blackness in.
“That’s why the Black God won’t kill you. It knows how powerful you are.”
The Black God.
He’d heard that term before, and recently. But those words, like the voice speaking them, were distant memories. As he reached for them, they ran away. Any time he grabbed hold, they lost their solidity, changed to mist in his mind.
Brendan’s world remained silent a while longer. He almost believed he hadn’t heard the voice at all, that he’d only imagined the sound. But as he rotated further in the endless black, a girl came into view. She floated in the dark, as if they weren’t inside a massive patch of tar, but soaring together through an unlit night sky. Her arms hung at her sides, and her bare feet dangled below her.
He knew this girl.
Brendan’s own voice echoed in his memory. Two soft, whispered words.
Find me.
This was the girl he’d met at the rest stop. What was her name? Alicia? Trying to uncover the memory was like digging through sand, but Krystal and Samson had told him what happened. Brendan had saved her from the tar after she showed him how to go to Tir Anhrefnus.
And she’d done what he asked her to do. She’d found him. Of all the places on Earth, she’d found him in the belly of the tar.
“The Black God will bow to you if you only speak to it,” said Alicia.
As he hung in the black, Brendan tried to part the tar that surrounded him, but nothing happened. He tried to remember the other times he’d directed the tar. He felt the same connection as before, but the tar remained immobile. It was the difference between picking up a stone and lifting a boulder. This patch of tar put up more resistance than anything he’d ever confronted.
And then Alicia smiled. It was a sweet, innocent smile, beaming with affection. She lifted one hand,
and for the first time, Brendan saw her image flicker. She wasn’t really here. The body floating before him was a projection. Myra had told them about this ability. Alicia used this same power to find Ansel.
Alicia’s hand hovered between Brendan’s eyes. If she were more than a flashing projection, he might feel her flesh on his.
Something profound was happening. Passages twisted in his mind. Doorways opened. Things he never realized he’d known became plain as day. He stared into Alicia’s flickering eyes, and she held his gaze. That pure smile remained in place.
And then she vanished.
Brendan waited for her to return. He barely even breathed, but the empty dark remained. He was alone in the black.
But now he knew so much more.
Something changed in the tar. Just as Brendan sensed its hunger, he now sensed it preparing to bend to his will. It was clear where he’d gone wrong. He’d been trying too hard. He hadn’t known what he was doing.
But Alicia changed that. She’d opened his mind, and the tar knew it. It practically spoke to him, practically called him its master. Only the tiniest bit of reluctance colored its tone.
Brendan’s fingers flicked at his side, mirroring activity in his mind. In response, the blackness dripped away, forming a square opening in front of Brendan. Another thought, another flick of the wrist, and the entire column of tar changed. Tentacles spun around Brendan, unwove and rewove, ebbed and flowed, grew and shrank. The cocoon transformed into a throne in a matter of seconds. The blackness formed a seat beneath him and a back behind him. Tendrils swirled above him, writhing with Brendan’s fresh power.
His gaze traveled upward, and the tar followed his leading. The oozing throne rose, carrying Brendan through the pit’s mouth until he hovered near the ceiling of the candlelit room. Marcus still stood at the edge of the pit. He’d likely waited there, expecting his god to consume its latest offering.
But now, as Marcus had done years ago, his god had discovered something it could only bow before.
Tar Page 15