“Do you know so little, Greyson? Every supernatural thing is natural to me!”
Greyson spoke with more authority and volume. “You expected us to anticipate a rogue vyrm agent and a werewolf? You forget who you speak to!”
James stood straight. He towered over The Seven and seemed to grow in size as he shouted with a booming voice. “You forget who I am! I am Nitthogr, the great warlock and Herald of Sh’logath: Beast of the Tesseract!”
All members of the secret council fell speechless. James adjusted his tie in the uncomfortable silence that immediately followed. He calmed himself again. “You each live by my own good pleasure. If this council fails to live up to the title of Illuminati, then it will be replaced with new adherents of almighty Sh’logath who appear more capable.”
James paced a bit more, well aware that some of these men had begun to suspect his true loyalties. Each had been selected because of their skills and none of these men were prone to stupidity. James set the heavy tome on the table. “Lest any of you think my heart is anything but fully committed to the Awakening, I will leave here the mythic Grimmorium Nitthogr—which contains the only recorded guide to enacting the Awakening. It contains the very words spoke to me by the Voice of the Thousand Elders at the Plains of Neggath. The Seven may do their best to perform the rites in my absence.”
Following the moment of tense quiet that came after the unspoken challenge, Victor Adams leaned forward at the table. In his thick Persian accent he asked, “None dare deny the powers or position Sh’logath has bestowed upon you, but why does the almighty Nitthogr not merely snatch up this Claire Jones in the middle of the night? Why involve The Seven? It seems that we might be better served in making preparations for the Great Awakening while you are obviously close to the girl.”
James paced at the head of the table. “There is some mystic force preventing me. Mark my words, Claire Jones is the key to this all. The blood that courses through her veins is the final reagent needed to open the door and unlock the Void. The Agod of Destruction cannot be summoned without her. She must be captured prior to the completion of the next two synodic months in order to cause the Awakening this year,” he referenced the lunar calendar which had just restarted. “She is the child of prophecy: the key. She wears a certain ancient artifact on her neck that prevents any physical interference with her while I remain on this plane of existence. My extra-planar efforts are… different in nature.”
The members of The Seven nodded as he explained. “So you need human help in this matter,” Greyson pressed his point. “You need the members of the Heptobscurantum.”
“I have legions of vyrm warriors at my disposal. Human efforts or otherwise, I have many tools at my command. And all my tools are replaceable,” he narrowed his eyes at Greyson. “However, I do suspect that there may be a traitor amongst The Seven.” James scanned the room, meeting each one’s gaze in turn. “And this vyrm flame-caster concerns me; he is not one of my faction: the vyrm of The Black. If he is truly a member of the Tarkhūn, then my suspicions would be confirmed.”
“And the Lupine?” Charles Summers interjected.
“He concerns me less,” James said flatly. “I know his origins. My sources have traced him back to my own dimension. He is a discursive anomaly, although his presence does not exactly surprise me. I have plans for him. But there are not many factionless vyrm, fewer yet with any significant powers, and so this rogue takes priority.”
“Then what comes next,” asked Andrew Thornton. “How do we find Claire Jones?”
“She’s in the wind,” Thomas Chelish noted. “She will be difficult to locate unless she wants to be found.”
James noted. “The Lupine did not leave with Claire and her friend.”
“If you like,” Chelish interjected, “I can use broadcast media to locate her? Maybe a story about her failing mental health? It would certainly go viral. It might change your influence; there could be unforeseen repercussions to your public image. It is difficult to anticipate the result, but it would certainly generate leads as to her location.”
James paused and thought about it. “Do it,” he ordered. “Every day she remains at large means we risk failing our grand orders: the release of Sh’logath.” James pointed to Bruce Cannon and Jonathan Trask. “Cannon, secure another team for Claire’s acquisition… equip my team of vyrm hunters so they are capable of handling this usurper wolf. Trask, get another team of men from within the ranks of the Heptobscurantum; I want this Tarkhūn firelord caught. I want this rogue vyrm and Claire, and I want them both alive!”
Trask and Cannon each nodded. Trask interjected, “Do you really think that this vyrm is with the Tarkhūn?”
James did not dignify the question with an answer—the only reason any vyrm would openly defy Nitthogr was that they were a part of the Tarkhūn: his brother’s Vyrm faction which derived from the old ruling caste. He finished his final thoughts, instead, “Do not spare the werewolf. He must be destroyed.”
The warlock watched his puppets use a ceremonial gavel to adjourn the meeting. Sullen, he watched the seven humans depart, each a powerful lord of men in their own right; he had groomed them for a place on this council. They silently walked away, back to their own empires and lives. He grinned with an evil, deceptive smile. He needed Claire Jones and he was, thus far, true to Sh’logath… just not as any suspected.
He was James Shianan. James Shianan was Nitthogr.
Chapter 9
“Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod…” Claire’s face sank into her hands while Jackie spun a sharp corner around the freeway exit.
“This is crazy!” Jackie yelled, agreeing with her. “I believe everything you’ve ever said after this. Fire demons and unicorns? I’m drinking the Kool-Aid, too! I’m seeing whatever you’re seeing.”
“Did you see the way that Vivian just started shooting at that thing?” Jackie paused as she mentally connected the dots. “Wait! Was the thing Rob?”
Claire nodded.
“I didn’t even know Vivian had a gun!”
“Rob saved me the last time. He’s the only one who’s been trying to save me, all along.”
“But hasn’t he been terrorizing the wilderness and killing people and animals? Isn’t lycanthropy some kind of occult curse?”
Claire shrugged. “I only know that he’s saved me twice now from whatever that thing is, and Vivian tried to murder him for it… I think she and James might be trying to kill me. Or at the very least make everyone else think I’m a lunatic.”
“But why?”
Shrugging, Claire barely managed, “I don’t know.” She caught sight of the amulet that hung from her neck. “It might have something to do with this? Rob said to never take it off. He said it helped protect me.”
Jackie glanced at it. “Girl, you’re involved in some weird juju.” She cocked her head at something on the radio and turned up the volume. The signal crackled and a news report repeated itself.
An announcer read the emergency bulletin. “Claire Jones, local fiancée of Hollywood golden boy James Shianan is nowhere to be found. Witnesses report a violent, psychotic break with reality that sent her on a violent rampage which included arson and property damage. Any persons with knowledge of her whereabouts are urged to contact the authorities. She was last seen in a—”
Jackie flipped it off and pulled a hard U-turn. “I guess we’re not going to my parents. Somebody, whoever is behind this, really has it in for you.”
“Where can we go?” Claire shuddered, holding her head again, trying to blink back hot tears of anxiety. “God, I wish my father was here.”
Jackie pulled into an alley behind a decaying building where she braked hard. “I just saw a patrol car. Let’s wait here for a couple minutes.”
Claire sobbed for a few quiet moments. The tension wore on her and she searched her brain for anywhere else she could go. “I think I know someone who can help.”
. . .
&nbs
p; James paced the floor of the old basement. Lavishly appointed, yet spacious, it used to be a raucous speak-easy owned by Al Capone in the prohibition era. A negative energy lingered in the place and so it served his purposes perfectly.
His phone vibrated insistently and he turned the screen over. A wicked smile crept across his face. The sounds of a skirmish echoed within the old subterranean access tunnel.
The distinct thudding sound of fists against flesh confirmed that his hit squad had returned with a struggling prisoner. James slid the heavy, steel door open and granted them access.
Dressed in black and heavily armed, the human mercenaries dragged into James’s lair a noncompliant, hooded, bound, and gagged prisoner. The burly, mustachioed mercenary walked up to James; James handed him a sealed manila envelope stuffed with cash.
The man nodded with a grin and gave him the keys to the manacles which bound the skinny, writhing man. “Watch out for that one,” he warned. He whistled to his crew of five and they slipped out the door.
Standing resolute, yet in chains, the slender man stood at the edge of the room where he tried to get a sense of his surroundings despite the blinders. James sauntered over to him and yanked the hood from his head and leaned in to look his prey in the eyes; he put a hand over the pyromancer’s face and raked his hand in a downward motion. The caked-on flesh-tone makeup wiped away in deep streaks, revealing the concealed, scaly skin of the vyrm assassin.
“As I suspected,” James whispered. He stared deep into his enemy’s eyes. “Do you know who I am?” James’ eyes flickered as a clear lens slid sideways, revealing his own half-serpentine nature. James’s skin dried and shriveled, becoming momentarily scaled and tinted olive.
“Nitthogr,” he replied.
“And who are you?”
“Rashaka. Keeper of the flame.”
“Who sent you,” Nitthogr demanded.
Rashaka stood stoic. He refused to surrender any new information.
James waved his hands in a dismissal. “I already know who sent you,” he accused. Nitthogr caught the look in the vyrm’s eyes, noting that he had his ear. He continued, “I have known all along and planned for all possible contingencies.”
He casually approached Rashaka and slashed across his chest with a razor sharp fingernail. Blood seeped out of the wound, but the rogue vyrm barely winced, remaining indifferent and removed.
“I anticipated the possibility of Zahaben, or one of his clansmen, parting the veil and finding the Earth realm. I took precautions for their presence. I know that Princess Bithia has been interfering on the astral plane, even from her captivity, and so I’ve sent her earth doppelganger an interference dream so that she is less likely to trust him. I’ve also planted enough evidence to incriminate this would-be hero as the danger she dreamt him to be.”
Nitthogr cocked his head at the stiff-necked rogue. “But none of that matters to you,” he bragged, demonstrating his strategic prowess, “Because you are not connected to the royal line—you’re no friend to Bithia. You’re not even loyal to the old, divergent vyrm bloodline. You are an agent of my brother, Basilisk. You are one of his Tarkhūn.” He yanked down on the cut fabric at Rashaka’s chest and revealed a large tattoo: a crude octagonal shape which loosely resembled a lizard. “Funny. You’re quite small for a Tarkhūn.”
Rashaka didn’t rise to the baited insult.
“I just find it so odd,” the sorcerer continued. “I can tell by your features that you are not a genetic Tarkhūn. Perhaps you are one of The Black, but you converted? Possibly a defector to Basilisk, just like General Regorik has been to me?”
The warlock got in his captive’s face. “You sold out your heritage, your loyalties, for some kind of wrong-headed idealism? Perhaps you seek to escape your caste and rise above it, or maybe your desire is that Sh’logath slumbers forever?”
The accusation came so confidently that Rashaka turned his head to answer with his full attention. “You’re no brother to the true Herald. You are a mere pretender. The Tarkhūn have the truth! The Tarkhūn were the first adherents who called to him from Neggath! We are the true followers of Sh’logath, and Basilisk is his herald!”
Smiling, James struck the Vyrm in the mouth with his fist. “Fool. I am his chosen one. I do not understand why my brother opposes me when I act in accordance with the divine will of the great Agod.”
“Basilisk plays spoiler,” Rashaka spit a mouthful of dark blood from his lips. “You do not serve Sh’logath! You serve only Nitthogr—pretender of the apocalypse. You think no one sees you working your machinations in the shadows? Even now, you work against Sh’logath’s release, as if you could hold the apocalypse in your back pocket like some trump card to save you from boredom or failure. Your elder brother has seen all! You are nothing; you are no longer Nitthogr! You are James Shianan—an ambitious pretender and a false acolyte, flying the black flag of the vyrm army in vain.”
James merely grinned in response. It was a cocky, brutish smile as he read from his handwritten notes—a copy of the Grimmoirium Nitthogr which he’d left with The Seven. He mumbled along under his breath, making a show of how little attention he paid to Rashaka. He mixed the last couple reagents into a beaker on the nearby table and dipped his fingertips into the fizzing solution.
Next to the mixing beakers his phone buzzed with a text message from his secondary tactical team. Wolf got away, but not unscathed. Following blood trail. Expect capture soon.
James turned his gaze to the prisoner. “Are you quite finished? Because there is no power you or my brother wields which can stand against me.” He flicked the fingers from his dry hand in a horizontal motion and Rashaka’s restraints fell to the floor.
The vyrm bellowed a battle cry and his eyes flared like emblazoned coals. Fire enveloped his body and he hurled orbs of napalm-like flame.
James didn’t even look at him. He held up a hand and the attack dissolved against the shimmering force shield his dark magics erected.
The pyromancer stood in surprise at the complete ineffectiveness of the firestorm.
Mumbling a quick incantation from the forbidden book, James turned his gaze to the slender man. He flicked the liquid from the other fingers at his enemy and on contact the rogue vyrm instantly exploded, leaving behind only a vaporous wisp of smoke and a mound of bloody gore. The rest of him caked the stony basement walls of the speakeasy like wet confetti.
He taunted the festering pile of super-heated, liquefied flesh and reveled in the carnage. Nitthogr spoke as if his brother could hear him. “Your Tarkhūn are not the chosen ones, either. You pretend you are waiting for Sh’logath’s perfect timing, waiting for the revelation of the Architect King—but I know you. You will never act. You think you can balance reality like some kind of god! Even the Tarkhūn will not wait forever, brother. The Black follow me because I act!” He spat upon the molten pile and his spittle sizzled in the heat.
James smiled. He’d played this game of wills with his brother for centuries now, and this specific gambit had been decades in the making; he’d been careful enough not to tip his hand in all this time. For the first in a long while he knew that he was clearly winning this game.
. . .
Gravel crunched under the wheels of Jackie’s car. It came to a stop at the spacious home nestled in a private, wooded area in the outskirts of town. The weathered mailbox read “Jecima.”
The two girls sat in the vehicle for a long moment. “You’re sure about this,” Jackie asked.
Claire exhaled a tense breath. “Yes. He’s a friend of my father’s. I know my dad would trust him. I just hope he’s home.” She looked at the phone on her lap. It lay in pieces with the battery separated. They hoped it would help prevent being tracked.
They steeled their nerves and approached the front door. A heavy, antique style knocker adorned the door and it made an ominous boom as it struck.
Long seconds passed before the door creaked open to reveal a wizened
old man. He wore his wispy hair and gold rimmed spectacles with a sort of disheveled charm; age had shrunk him since Claire had last seen him. He asked, “Can I help you?”
“Professor Jecima? Miles Jecima?” Claire was surprised that he didn’t recognize her.
“Yes. Can I help you?”
“It’s Claire, Claire Jones. Sam Jones’s daughter.”
“Oh, right! I’m so sorry. I have a terrible way with names and faces.” He chuckled, “I can immediately identify a thousand ancient texts… but people? I’m not so good with those. If you could ask my late wife, she’d tell you that for a fact. Do come in,” he opened the door wider.
They followed him inside, watching over their shoulder as they closed it behind them. The old home bore the distinct markings of a widower; it had once been well maintained with a woman’s touch, but obviously suffered at the hands of scholastic bachelorhood in the years since… at least from the professor’s diminutive reach and downward. Stacks of books, loose papers, and maps lined the edges of the hallway.
“Right this way.” He led them to his parlor where a few sitting chairs still remained available without the prerequisite stacks of research materials piled atop. Jecima seated them and asked, “What brings you by? I’m not used to receiving many visitors. Oh dear! Is your father alright? I told him that zone was hostile.”
“Yes. Yes, he is doing well. We spoke a few days ago.” She paused for a moment, unsure of quite how to go about asking for help or explaining her situation. Claire didn’t even know what kind of help she was looking for exactly.
As she wordlessly worked her mouth for a few seconds, the old man interjected, “Goodness. I’m a terrible host. Millie would have had my hide, bless her. Let me get you girls some tea.” He rose quickly and shuffled out the door. He would clearly hear no argument on the matter.
Wolves of the Tesseract Collection Page 8