Red Right Hand (14 page)

I lifted my hand to my mouth and licked my palm.

My tongue scraped across the rough lines and swirls incised in the skin.

Magick swirled inside me.

My Sight kicked in with a punch.

Mason went from handsome to soul-searingly beautiful.

Bathed in a golden light, every inch of him had been carved from absolute perfection. Tears ran down my cheeks, hot and quick. I couldn't bear to look upon his terrible beauty—the beauty of consumption, of assimilation, of absorption. The swift, sure beauty that would burn away everything I was and devour me whole.

He would devour me, and it would be okay. Being taken by Mason would make me cry out:
It is well, it is well with my soul.

I wanted so desperately to be consumed.

“Charlie!”

Daniel's voice. I looked over. He lay on his back, pinned to the floor by a deformed nurse above him. Her skull of teeth chomped the air inches above his face. His arms shook, jerking as the strength in them burned away. He wouldn't be able to fight her off much longer.

And his eyes were pinned to me as he called my name, trying to pull me free from the spell, worry naked on his spittle-spattered face.

Mason reached for me.

I put the stick in my moist right hand.

BURN.

Magick sparked in my chest, rolling down my arm in a hot, wet, ropy jolt. Sharp heat traced the lines incised in my palm and the metal torc around my throat hummed, tingling against my skin. The magick poured down my arm into the firebrand like thick syrup.

Fire roared from the end of the stick like a flamethrower.

It shot out in a jet, flaring at the end, dripping gobbets of liquid fire onto the floor. I felt the heat, but it was shielded, not searing me like it had before. I had control now. Power boiled through my veins like a jolt of adrenaline. My magick ignited and fed the flame. Mine. I felt it in my heart and in my head. It would do as I willed it to.

I was magick.

I was Marked.

I was an Acolyte.

Mason jerked back, nearly falling on his ass. Whipping my arm, I pushed the magick, working by feel, making it up as I went along. The flame slung around, splashing across him like a tide of molten lava. His scrubs ignited, tongues of fire licking across his body in a race to incinerate it all. He rolled away, still clutching his amulet in a burning hand. He screamed words that thrummed against my chest.

Daniel!

I spun.

Oh God, let him still be okay.

I found him, still pinned to the floor by the nurse with the wood-chipper face. She'd pressed even closer, skull clapping open and closed, teeth grinding and gnashing just above him. Quarter-sized droplets of saliva rained down on him, squirting out with each attempted chomp.

I ran, pushing to get to him. I had the flame. I had the magick. I had the power.

I could save him.

I almost made it when his arms gave out.

 

22

A
N INHUMAN SOUND
tore from my throat. A shriek, a growl, a roar that an animal would make. It ripped out of me as I lunged toward Daniel and the nurse monster, and it yanked the magick with it.

A gout of fire jolted from the end of the stick, crashing into the nurse monster like a shotgun blast, driving her off Daniel and into the wall. I kept screaming, kept pouring fire, magick rumbling through my veins in an avalanche. She curled into a ball, trying to hide, but the flame covered her, roiling against her like a blast furnace. Her skin turned black, cracking open as she wailed. Something boiled inside the cracks, bubbling out in hissing clouds of steam as her flesh turned to cinder and crumbled, leaving behind the blackened sticks of a deformed skeleton.

It took seconds. By the time I reached Daniel, the deed had been done.

I hit my knees beside him, ignoring the pain of
kneecaps on hard linoleum, ignoring the puddle of slimy monster spit he lay in. He sprawled on his back, his fingers still locked around the gnarled metal pole he'd used to fend off the nurse, drenched with sweat and saliva, his hair dark and wet with goo. Blood soaked the shoulder of his shirt, but I couldn't see a wound. His skin had gone pale, his lips blue, and even through his closed lids I could see his eyes jittering wildly back and forth. Clenching internally, I cut the magick running to the stick, and it snuffed out with an air-sucking sound. My arm went dead, feeling like a sack overfull with liquid. Shaking it to the side, I reached out to Daniel with the other.

Please let him be okay.

I pulled his head into my lap. His eyes fluttered open.

“Hey, Charlie,” he said, his voice hoarse, “you all right?”

His sweaty hair stuck to his forehead. I brushed it back, nodding. “How are you?”

“Tired. My shoulder hurts like hell, but I'm still good to go.” His eyes widened, white showing around green irises as he struggled to sit up. “Where's the Master? I have to help him if he needs it.”

Pushing him down, I looked around. The Man in Black had freed himself from the liquefied tumor and now faced the two remaining nurse monsters. He pushed off the floor, spinning into an inhuman leap across the room, flying in a swirl of bat-wing black, sword blade licking out like dark lightning. It cleaved deep in a quick line, lopping free the top halves of both monsters' skulls. A geyser of red pulp sprayed up and out, striking the ceiling, soaking into the acoustic tiles. The Crawling Chaos spun his sword in an arc, slinging gore from the edge of the blade. He turned, shark teeth smiling through a mask of runny, scarlet liquid.

“I think he's okay,” I told Daniel.

The next second he was beside us. Not kneeling. No, he stood, impossibly tall, his coat whispering around him in tattered tendrils.

I wish he would quit doing that.

“Stand, minion. I am not done yet, and I have need of thee.”

“Back off him! He's injured.” The snarl hurt my face.

Nyarlathotep's face flushed dark. Magick crackled, dripping off his red right hand. “Acolyte.”

I tensed, my body tight with anger, with the desire, the
need,
to protect Daniel. A thought sent a spark of magick down my arm. I felt it as a relief, an ease of pressure in my skin as pent-up energy gushed forward and into the firebrand. It was intuitive, as natural as breathing. My palm hurt, the torc buzzed my throat, and the stick lit like a torch, the flame an eye-searing acetylene blue.

I rose into a crouch, holding my weapon between us. “Back. Off.”

“You threaten me, Acolyte?” The Man in Black slid back, his sword held ready to swing. “Bold.” Magick dripped off his hand and ran down the sword in trickles of etheric energy, making the sticky gore on the blade sizzle. It spattered onto the ground, eating holes in the tile like acid. “But I
will
teach you your place. There is a price to pay for defiance.”

I stayed crouched, making myself a smaller target and reserving power for when I attacked. I fell back on all the years of martial arts I had taken, training relentlessly so I would never be helpless again. Kenpo, jujitsu, tae kwon do, Muay Thai, wushu; I blended all of them to give me the skill set best suited to my physical abilities. Sensei Laura always drilled home:
Run if you can, but sometimes you must fight. If you must fight, then fight to kill.

Daniel was worth fighting for, even though, deep down, an ice-cold knot of certainty said the Man in Black would kill me for trying. I could make him pay for the privilege, but he would kill me just the same.

We stared at each other. I felt the ripple of heat from the firebrand and Daniel behind me as I looked into the black-pit eyes of a chaos god. He didn't move, save for the sizzle-drop of magick from his sword and the anxious fluttering of his still-living coat. Tension stretched between us.

Who would break the stalemate?

Who would make the first move?

Who would strike first?

Maniacal laughter rang across the room, ending the standoff before we could find out.

The Man in Black looked over my head, past me. “We will finish this at a later time, Acolyte.”

I could feel something against my back, a pressure like a hot, dry wind from a gulch of death. It made the back of my scalp itch and crawl as though it were alive. The symbol cut into my palm burned fiercely.

From the corner of my eye, I watched Daniel sit up, facing behind me. He scrambled to his feet, eyes wide. “Charlie, you need to turn around.”

I rose and turned and my stomach clenched in a fist of dread.

 

23

M
ASON STOOD IN
the center of the ward.

Completely naked.

The fire had burned away his scrubs, leaving him bare-skinned and nude except for the amulet that lay on his chest. The fire had also scorched away every hair from every follicle, leaving him bald, slick looking, alien without the markers of hair and eyebrows all humans shared. I looked; I had to, my eyes drawn inexorably downward, pulled the same way they'd been with Ashtoreth.

He wasn't human between his legs.

What hung there was a maze of serpentine appendages, twisted and contorted, a balloon of intestine in the hands of a psychotic clown.

Horror congealed in the pit of my stomach.

A scalpel glittered in Mason's hand. He'd used it to carve his own skin with a sigil that looked eerily like the one on my palm. Blood sheeted down his hairless
body, pooling in the hollows and dips, running from the arcane symbol sliced into his chest. Arms out, hips and shoulders loose-jointed, he began to dance in place, eyes wild and swirling in their sockets.

Daniel spoke beside me. “Why is he acting like a marionette in the hands of an epileptic?”

I shrugged and looked over at the Man in Black.

The chaos god also shrugged. “He casts a working.”

“You're using words like we know what they mean again,” I said.

He sighed. Did I test his patience? If so, good. “The dance he performs will gather magick to power a spell.”

I thought about it. “Why can't I feel anything? Ever since you gave me this”—I held up my Mark—“whenever hoodoo voodoo happens, I can feel it inside me. I feel nothing right now.”

The Man in Black didn't answer. Instead, he thrust his sword toward Mason.

The magick running down the blade flung itself off, stretching and flying through the air. It crashed against some invisible barrier around the priest in a sputtering of electric blue sorcery. The flash washed my eyesight with the vision of writhing magick, strands of it twisting like a bed of snakes. It lasted only a split second, and then it was gone, marring my ability to see with black, spotty ghost images.

“Well, that failed spectacularly.” I didn't try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

The Man in Black shrugged. “He is warded. It will open when he finishes the ritual and releases the magick. Then he will be vulnerable once more.”

“Can't you break the ward?”

“My coat will not have the strength until it recovers.”

I felt the song of the coat tickle the edge of my brain. It felt like the whimper of a beat dog. I shook my head to clear it.

Daniel moved to my left, the side without the still-burning firebrand. He looked over at Nyarlathotep. “What do we do next?”

“We see what spell he is casting, and then we respond accordingly.”

Daniel nodded. “I'll find a weapon.”

He moved away, and I watched him. His movement had a stilted, halting quality, as if he suffered pain from an old injury. I'd watched him a lot in the last few months as we'd gotten to know each other. Normally, he moved with the grace of a former athlete who still kept in shape, every action fluid and easy. That was broken now. His movements were stiff, slower than they had been.

The rustle of Nyarlathotep's coat as he stepped close drew my eye away from Daniel.

The Man in Black's voice was low, nearly a murmur when he spoke. “I see concern in your eyes for him.”

I bristled at his intimate tone. “Yeah, so?”

“It is …
interesting
that you care so much for him.”

“One of us has to.”

One sharply sculpted eyebrow arched. “I care for those who worship me, Acolyte.”

Then you must hate me.

What I said was: “He doesn't really worship you. That's just your magick brainwashing. He's a Christian. That's why he stood up to you earlier.”

“Oh, Acolyte, you are so naive.” His mouth twitched, amusement glittering in those midnight eyes. “He does truly worship the Christ, but he risked my wrath over
you
.”

For me?

“What do you mean?”

“His feelings for you are the strength he draws from to slip my yoke.”

I said nothing, my eyes sliding over to Daniel. He pulled the bags off another IV pole.

“He will not survive whatever occurs next without my protection. He will be the lamb to this slaughter.” The Man in Black's voice slithered into my head, insidiously rubbing across my brain like rough velvet. “Stop fighting me at every turn, and I will grant that protection.”

Son of a bitch.

“Send him away, and I'll cooperate without a fuss,” I counteroffered.

He chuckled. “And lose my bargaining chip? I think not. Besides, Acolyte, you would not want me to send him anywhere I can take him. The gibbering horrors there would break his mind and flay his soul.” He shook his head. “He stays with us and fights, you behave, and he lives through this. That is the only bargain on the table.”

I felt just as trapped as I had been before. I had no choice, not really, not one that mattered. I either agreed and kept Daniel safe for now, or I left him on his own.

I felt my lip curl.

Manipulative son of a bitch.

My words came through gritted teeth. “If you let him get hurt, I will turn on you like a rabid dog.”