A shape appeared on the horizon. It wasn’t as big or as fully realized as the creature he’d seen in his dreams, but Brendan knew it was the same entity.
The entity was Merovech. It had to be.
The shape drew closer, and Brendan made out individual tentacles holding it aloft. He made out the shape of a man, dark and backlit by the sun, hovering ten feet above the ground as the tentacles carried it toward Brendan. The figure didn’t move. It hovered, feet dangling and arms elevated. Tar reached from the ground before the figure to join the tentacles swirling around its body. As it moved, the tentacles behind grew thin and pulled free as easily as dead leaves falling from a tree.
Tar poured out of the man’s body. It drained out of his ears, streamed from his nose, and even threadlike tendrils squeezed through the corners of his eyes. A trunk of black spilled from his mouth, thick enough to stretch his lips as wide as they would go. All these tentacles split and joined with others, then split again and rejoined again, forming a constantly shifting web of black around the man.
But he wasn’t infected. His mind remained his own. Besides the tar pouring into—or out of—his body, he showed no sign of infection. He accepted the tar’s presence, rather than fighting back as so many did while the infection consumed them. His veins had not turned black. No tar darkened his eyes.
As Merovech drew closer, Brendan saw his eyes, bright and clear and gleaming with intensity. They locked onto him, this newcomer to Tir Anhrefnus, and Brendan realized Merovech saw more than a man with a gun. He saw someone who could manipulate the tar. Someone who could walk between worlds. Someone like him.
Go ahead. Try it.
Merovech’s mouth didn’t move around the thick, black arm as he spoke, but his eyes widened, gleamed brighter when Brendan lifted the shotgun.
Maybe, just maybe, one pull of the trigger would spell the end. If the Book of Memory was correct, Merovech had not been present when Ansel created that first tryfnium dagger. Maybe he wasn’t even aware of a substance poisonous to the tar. Maybe he would sing a different tune if he understood what waited inside the barrel of Samson’s shotgun.
Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. Still, Brendan had to try. This part was inevitable. It was the beginning of the dance. The music would swell soon enough, and Brendan and Merovech would begin their steps, but not before a bow, a curtsy, and an extended hand.
Pull the trigger.
Brendan obeyed.
3
The weapon recoiled with more force than any bio-powered blaster Brendan had ever wielded. The shotgun’s shortened barrel belched flame, and he staggered back, unprepared for the strength of the explosion.
Still, the bullet sailed true. As Brendan pulled the trigger, hundreds of tentacles joined in front of Merovech, creating a solid wall of black. The bullet tore through, encountering no resistance from the tar. It left a hole six inches across in its wake, through which Brendan could see a wound open in Merovech’s chest, wrenching him to one side as he hovered in the air.
Merovech’s expression didn’t change. Even as the tryfnium’s poison ate through the tar and the hole grew wider, even as Merovech sagged in his weakening support system, his eyes gleamed with hate and intelligence.
And then came his terrible, rumbling laugh.
The shield in front of Merovech shrank, but not from the rapidly expanding hole in its center. Its outside flowed away, feeding tar back into the tentacles holding Merovech aloft. When the shield was little more than a thin ring of black, held up by a sliver of a tentacle, the ring broke free just as all the tentacles behind Merovech had when he moved past them. The tiny black ring fell and disappeared before it reached the earth, destroyed by the tryfnium.
But Merovech was unfazed.
Instead of blood, more tar poured from the wound in his chest. The tar began in a single, twisting stream, but soon it branched and joined with other tentacles, feeding into the tar which rose from the ground.
Now that that’s behind us, may I show you something?
Brendan knew he had no choice, so he only watched as Merovech turned slowly until he faced away from Brendan. The tar beneath him carried him along, and all the while he held the same posture. Brendan realized with a jolt that Merovech hadn’t moved a muscle the entire time Brendan had seen him. At least, no human muscle. His body was only a shell for the tar, yet that shell housed a mind. A cold intelligence survived, completely divorced from the tar’s directionless hunger.
Brendan walked after Merovech, but he only made it a handful of steps before the tar rose from the cracks in the earth, cocooning him in tentacles. He supposed it should have scared him, but an eerie, dream-like calm had come over him since he pulled the trigger of Samson’s gun. The dance had not yet begun. Until it did, Brendan was safe.
The tar didn’t try to enter him. It only rose beneath him, bearing him up just as the black throne had in the Hotel Shalom. His platform glided across the cracked earth so smoothly that if he closed his eyes, he might believe he was stationary.
Merovech floated a few yards ahead of Brendan. He didn’t turn to face him, but once again, his voice echoed in every corner of Brendan’s consciousness.
I have been in Tir Anhrefnus for centuries, but I remember every instant of my life on the other side. The others wasted their minds on their power. The more they learned of their abilities, the more they forgot of their identities. But not me. From the moment I learned of my connection to what they call the blight, I entrusted my mind to it.
This, perhaps, is the greatest facet of my power. While Merlin and his underlings traded their memories, their very sanities, for power, I have grown in power with my mind intact. I have become so strong, and I have paid so little.
Merovech paused, but only momentarily.
I can read your thoughts, Brendan Cobb. I know you think I have paid a great cost. You think little remains of my true self, that I am more monster than man, while nothing could be farther from the truth. I have only shed that which held me back. My body and my mind are no longer prisons growing weaker with age. The power of Tir Anhrefnus has strengthened me beyond my wildest imaginings. My mind is more unfettered than ever, expanding past the limitations of human reason.
Tell me, Brendan Cobb, has this power taken from me or given to me? How can anyone say a man freed of his limits is no longer himself? No, I am free, for I can be who I truly am. My mind and body soar where they never could if they had remained trapped in a faulty vessel.
The landscape raced past them, all the black, oozing cracks blurring together in a strange, jittering pattern. Ahead of them, a shape loomed on the horizon, a mountain of dusty, gray earth. To walk there may have taken hours. But at this rate, Brendan expected to reach it in seconds.
They did, and their black vehicles didn’t even slow as they approached the rising terrain. Before long, Brendan’s platform carried him up the mountain. He rose up and up, listening to the dust crumble around him as the tar climbed the incline like a giant insect.
When they reached its peak, Merovech turned to face Brendan and fixed him with that gleaming stare.
What do you see?
Brendan looked around. He saw nothing unusual here. It was the dusty peak of a mountain. No plant life, no animals, no—
No. Below you. Below everything.
Brendan looked straight down. The platform of tar parted, allowing him a clear line of sight to the earth below. What did Merovech want? The ground beneath him was the same as the cracked expanse as everywhere else in Tir Anhrefnus.
And then, with a start, he understood.
Beneath his inky platform was only gray, cracked earth. But beneath that, hidden to anyone without the same power as Brendan and Merovech, there was tar. And not just a patch, either. This filled the entire mountain and stretched for hundreds of miles—or more. This was why Brendan felt the buzzing sensation of excitement. When he walked along the cracked
earth of Tir Anhrefnus, he was mere inches from a power that dwarfed everything his world offered. And now that he was aware of it, he knew it wasn’t simply waiting. It was moving. Throbbing. Pulsing.
The beating heart of Tir Anhrefnus.
Merovech drifted closer. At this distance, Brendan could make out the ragged cracks branching off the old wizard’s lips where the tar forced his jaw open.
It is as vast as it is powerful. This planet is thousands of times larger than the puny rock you call Earth, and it is filled with what you call tar. As long as its heart survives, no amount of war on its servants will succeed. The emissaries which have wrecked your world are but specks of dust compared to the power here, and my friends only managed a temporary and costly victory.
Merovech’s eyes widened.
And now you come into Tir Anhrefnus with your puny weapon, and you think you can save your world?
Merovech lifted one arm, wrapped in writhing tentacles, and squeezed his fingers into a fist. A section of the mountaintop disappeared, crumbling into dust and fading from view. Now Brendan saw the tar in all its glory. Now he saw the endless sea of writhing black. It continued down and down and down, so deep Brendan’s mind threatened to tear itself apart with the knowledge of its vastness.
Above the surface, thin tentacles whipped in the air, finally unrestrained by the mountaintop above. The tentacles didn’t reach for him or for Merovech. They recognized their masters.
But were they really masters? Or were they servants?
Go ahead. Try it.
Those gleaming eyes twinkled with silent laughter, Merovech repeating his challenge to a powerless opponent.
Pull the trigger. See what ripple your pebble makes in an ocean of power.
This time Brendan did not obey. This time, he recognized the situation for what it was. This was not the prelude to a dance. Brendan and Merovech were not equally matched dance partners.
They were predator and prey.
4
On an unspoken command, the platform of tar beneath Brendan split open, branching into hundreds of writhing tentacles that became a prison. They coiled around his arms, his legs, his torso, weaving in complicated patterns all around him. None tried to enter him and infect him, but neither could he free himself. He strained so hard the circuitry between his mod and his flesh burned out. The heat scorched his skin, but had no effect against the tar.
I will spare us the plea to join me, said Merovech’s non-voice as the tar lifted him high over Brendan. The black trunk distended his jaw, and his eyes flashed cruelly. I need no allies. Not now that you have opened the gate between my world and yours.
I waited centuries for this. From the moment my friends destroyed the portal and placed their puny curse on me, I have waited for the day when you came to me.
The heavy, pulsing rumble of Merovech’s laughter shook the mountain.
Whatever they did to me, it was enough to strip me of my ability to re-weave the threads of reality, and so I could not create a portal on this side. But power over mere threads pales in comparison to that of Tir Anhrefnus. They could push that power down, even cause it to go dormant, but they could never take it from me.
And so, the first day I regained control, I transferred a piece of my power to you.
Then I sent emissaries from the heart of Tir Anhrefnus, small pieces of this world to claim small pieces of yours. I knew all along those small pieces would become large pieces, so large that my friends could not ignore them. They would become so large that they would once again take up their futile quest. They would chase it all over the earth, searching out rumors of its presence until it led them to you.
Now Brendan understood. He remembered talking to Samson from the back of the old car, hearing the old wizard talk about tracking infections and killing tar. He could picture it now: In every city, Samson tracing the source of each infection until he landed in Newhaven and found Brendan and Tiger Stripe in the basement of an abandoned house.
Samson hadn’t unraveled a tangled web of mystery or hunted elusive prey. He’d followed a trail of infected breadcrumbs until he landed exactly where Merovech wanted him.
That old fool thinks only in terms of battle. To him, everything he encounters is a weapon. He was certain he could wield you against me, never imagining that you might not be a weapon, but a key—much less one I’d fashioned for my own use.
And then Merovech turned, slowly, deliberately, and descended the mountain. He grew smaller and smaller until he shrank in the distance and disappeared, but Brendan knew where he was headed. He was going to the open portal leading out of Tir Anhrefnus. Brendan pulled against the tar with all his might. All he could think of was Krystal, standing at the opening between her world and this one, a lone tear streaking down her face. He had to tell her to run, had to tell Samson and Ansel to flee the castle, but the black tentacles would not budge. They coiled around his body, trapping him in Tir Anhrefnus, binding him to its beating heart.
Though he’d glided out of eyesight, Merovech’s rumbling voice filled Brendan’s body and soul as if he were right next to him.
Now I will show them how weak they truly are.
5
Time stretched on forever atop the mountain, trapping Brendan in an endless moment of black cords writhing over him, coiling and branching and joining and separating all across his body. Some of them passed over his mouth, his nose, his ears, but they never tried to enter him. Even now, after Merovech had given the tar permission to turn against Brendan, it wouldn’t infect him. Samson may have been right when he said this power used Brendan, but Brendan was more than a simple servant. The tar respected his power.
Maybe the tar was incapable of infecting him. It certainly hadn’t infected Merovech. Merovech had kept his identity. He had thoughts and desires and memories independent of the tar’s instinctual hunger.
Or did he?
How much of Merovech’s speech was truly Merovech? How much was the tar speaking through a human vessel?
But none of that mattered now. Merovech had escaped Tir Anhrefnus, bringing with him a fresh mass of tar and all his power over it.
Brendan’s journey had reached its end. Samson had failed in his quest. Merovech had gotten what he wanted all along. And the entire planet, from Newhaven to the Hotel Shalom to Black Falls, would succumb to the tar. The little outposts of humanity that dared hope to persevere would be proved wrong, though they wouldn’t live long enough to lament their defeat.
Brendan surprised himself with a swell of emotion. He’d never held any affection toward Newhaven, but now, as he imagined it all swept away in a black tide of infection, it was too much to bear.
What could he do? He had no hope against Merovech. The old wizard had honed his powers for over two thousand years, and Brendan hadn’t even known about his a week ago. He’d come so far, only to realize how far he had to go.
Brendan closed his eyes and waited for...what? Death? It would come, he supposed, but not by infection unless something changed. Maybe once Merovech was finished with Earth, he’d return to Tir Anhrefnus and finish Brendan off. Or maybe he wanted Brendan to join him after all. Once he’d proved his power, once he’d taken away everything Brendan had to live for, he’d make his case.
Suddenly, Brendan sensed a presence, just as he’d sensed tar beneath his feet as he’d walked across the dusty earth of Tir Anhrefnus. He opened his eyes, and through the black sinews blocking his vision, he saw Alicia. The little girl from the rest station, her hair floating around her like she was underwater, flickered in and out of view as she stared down at him. She’d projected herself into Tir Anhrefnus.
“You ever think about showing up when things aren’t crazy?” Brendan asked.
Alicia only smiled. “You are not as powerless as you think.”
“Oh, really?” Brendan said. Another tendril of black wrapped around his forehead. “I’m feeling pretty powerles
s about now.”
But then, like a thunderbolt, understanding flooded his mind. Merovech’s voiceless words echoed in his memory: The emissaries which have wrecked your world are but specks of dust compared to the power here.
Unless Merovech was lying, the heart of Tir Anhrefnus held the purest concentration of power Brendan had encountered in his life. That included the power Merovech had cloaked himself in when he left Tir Anhrefnus.
But why leave the heart behind? Why abandon all that power?
As long as its heart survives, no amount of war on its servants will succeed.
That statement, so chilling when Merovech spoke it, carried an element of hope. If no war could succeed while the heart of Tir Anhrefnus remained intact, what would happen if someone destroyed it?
Maybe that was Merovech’s reasoning to leave all that power behind. He knew he’d face Ansel. Lost though the mad wizard may be, Ansel could still create a fresh tryfnium weapon—larger and more substantial than bullets with a thin coating—and destroy the heart. What would happen then?
The consequences had to be devastating. It was the only explanation for Merovech rejecting that kind of power.
But Brendan didn’t care if something happened to the heart. In fact, as he thought about it, he wanted something to happen to it. He wanted to see the black infection pierced, torn in half, ripped to shreds.
But not before he used it to kill Merovech.
There was a certain poetry to it. Merovech’s desire to preserve his own power would be the very thing that led to the loss of his power, to the loss of his very life.
“Let it in.”
Alicia’s voice sounded inches from Brendan’s ear, even though she still hovered high above him, a flickering projection from miles away.
“The Black God cannot be allowed to consume our world,” Alicia said. “We have been preparing the earth for someone else. Someone better.”
Brendan stared up at Alicia. In any other situation, her statements might have sent a chill down his spine. They might have led him to ask questions. But now, as the tar wrapped tighter around him, threatening to squeeze the air from his lungs, all other concerns took a back seat. Whatever Alicia had planned could be dealt with later, if Brendan survived.
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