“Good luck with that. I’m not sure your guns are going to do much against Outer Gods.”
He didn’t have much to say to that.
Hayden continued following the car with everyone else in it and Roma once again found herself thinking about the Crimsonata. Audrey Darrow was not what she had expected. She was so utterly normal. A short, relatively attractive blonde girl, a few years younger than her. Kind of skittish, somewhat weird, overall average. Roma had expected some kind of Amazonian goddess. That first time in the motel, she was convinced they had the wrong person. The girl had looked so terrified. Not what you pictured in a metaphysical super being.
She was glad Audrey had agreed to go along with the plan. She didn’t want to have to force her, that just felt wrong. Plus, Hayden would have just made the whole thing a violent debacle. Also, it really was the right thing to do, saving the universe and all. But now with this third option proposed by the guy in the suit, Roma wondered how things were going to play out.
“You think the mage really has a viable plan?” asked Roma.
“I don’t care.”
“Well, you need to have an opinion, Hayden.”
“It either works or it doesn’t. Either way, the Crimsonata flows.”
“Fair enough. And then this is over.”
“If the plan doesn’t work, we take the Crimsonata into custody. We hold her until she can procreate and continue on the bloodline. If it does work, then I can kill it before it ever becomes a threat again.”
Roma gaped at him. “Are you listening to yourself?”
“What must be done.”
“Those are not your orders, I guarantee that.”
“Orders are irrelevant. This is bigger than the Wall and their short-sightedness.”
Roma leaned back in her seat and came to a cold revelation.
She was going to have to kill Alec Hayden.
* * *
High above, the Ovessa bucked and throbbed, spilling its cold light down. Its voices on this plane, the Spittle and the Sigh, felt the shifting need of their Most Holy and left the repurposing chamber. The stairs creaked under the weight of their bodies, the gristle, bone, and tooth combined and animated for a greater will. Black cloaks dyed with ichor rested upon their shoulders, the edges trailing behind them. Long had the two watched the earth from their prison in the lower realm, watched and learned and seethed. For countless eons, they had been the only two entities of their entire world with independent thought, and only given these forms when the barriers had grown weak.
They were tasked to prepare the way for the Ovessa, the Serpentine Star of Glistening Light. A demi-god of its own particular corner of one of the gutter realms, it held sway over all of its creation. And like all hungry tyrants, it wanted more. Earth was so free, so diverse, it was indeed enticing with its blasphemous existence.
While other things from myriad quarters of the gutter realms found the earth a curiosity and may have used the weakening of the barriers to explore it, the Ovessa orchestrated a full-scale invasion. It considered it a right. It considered the earth’s very existence as justification.
And so the Spittle and the Sigh went to the top floor of the hotel, to the room that used to be a ballroom. There, in the ceiling, where reality was ripping itself apart, the cold light was brightest. There, flesh heaved and undulated, slick with pus. Coiled muscle, pink and hairless, prepared to bend. Only part of that other realm was visible through the portal, only part of a sky made of viscera. Through that hole to another realm, the light gleamed down, bathing its Voices, filling them with its need.
“The Crimsonata has arrived,” said the Sigh.
“Let us see an end to this,” said the Spittle.
“All in honor of the Ovessa,” said the Sigh.
CHAPTER 38
Car doors slammed and echoed through the empty town. Elliot parked in front of a library at random, not sure where else to go. The place was empty, no people anywhere. Everyone had noticed the effect of the light in Eldridge, grey and soft. It washed out all the colors, like a filter app for pictures on your phone. It made everyone as uneasy as did the silence.
Hayden and Roma geared up like they were ready for war. Each had a gun belt holding two pistols, and a row of extra clips, along with a pouch of bullets. They had a string of shells to go with the shotguns over their shoulders, accompanying the machete. That was in addition to the various other small knives concealed all over them, along with collapsible batons, handcuffs, and brass knuckles.
“Where are we supposed to go?” asked Elliot.
“I honestly don’t know,” replied Binici. “Timothy never got back to me. He’s here somewhere, hopefully.”
That answer didn’t sit well with Elliot. None of this did. He was trying his hardest to support Audrey, to believe in her, but it was taking a lot.
The five of them walked up the middle of the street, taking it all in. A paint store with displays in the window sat next to a bank with tall stone pillars. A placard sat outside on the sidewalk announcing a financing plan. There was a small café called Doc’s that looked to serve mostly sandwiches. Elliot noticed what appeared to be blood on the windows and smears on the floor. He pointed it out to Roma who frowned.
He hadn’t noticed it at first, until they had started walking, but the air felt strange. Oily, and thick. Like it was leaving behind a residue. He wiped two fingers against his skin and rubbed them together. Nothing came off, but he could still feel if there.
“Maybe we should knock on some of these doors?” Elliot mused out loud.
“Go right ahead,” said Roma. “I don’t think you’re going to get an answer.”
Elliot pounded on the door of a lawyer’s office and waited for a moment before trying again. It was the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, people should be there. People should be everywhere.
“They’re all hiding,” said Binici.
“They’re all dead,” said Hayden.
“Or worse,” added Audrey.
They came to another bank and Elliot tried the door. It was unlocked. He walked inside, Audrey calling out his name behind him. Ignoring her, he kept moving through the second set of double doors into the interior of the bank. It was completely open, just like a normal business day, except it was free from customers or workers. No one. Roma and Audrey came in behind him, looking around.
“Anybody ever want to rob a bank, because this is your chance.”
“We shouldn’t be confined like this,” said Roma.
“Let me just look real quick,” said Elliot.
He swept through the bank, going behind the tellers’ windows and back into the offices. He even peeked into the vault, its door standing wide open. No signs of anyone, not a drop of blood. Nothing even knocked over. It was like they had simply got up and walked away.
“Okay,” he said, returning to them. “Let’s go.”
“What were you looking for?” asked Audrey.
“I don’t know, clues?”
“We’re not the Scooby Gang, Elliot.”
He frowned and walked away from her. Audrey seemed to think that she had to carry this all on herself, but she was wrong. He was here to shoulder some of the burden; that was part of being a sibling. He wanted to help and wanted to prove it.
More blocks passed.
Elliot was staring up at a clinic window when a shape darted across the road, someone bundled up in a long brown jacket.
“Hey!” Roma yelled, before giving chase.
Everyone followed, turning down a side street. The jacket was discarded on the ground, a member of the Invocated standing there.
Without hesitation, Hayden pulled his gun and fired into the thing three times. It fell, and he fired twice more into its head. He immediately ejected his clip and began to reload it from his pouch. He didn’t finish in time, as two more crawled out from behind the dumpster.
“Back out onto the main road!” yelled Roma, firing on the other two.
They ran
back out onto the street only to find hundreds of the Invocated waiting for them. Hayden kept firing, trying to take as many of them as he could. His eyes were wild, wide, and glazed over. Shot after shot, death and death. The blackest blood sprayed everywhere around them. Mindlessly, pointlessly. There were still hundreds more. Finally, Roma reached over and grabbed his hand while he was clicking on empty and lowered it.
“They’re not even attacking, Alec.”
“They must all die!” he snarled.
“And they will,” she said quietly. “But not that way.”
Encircled by the Invocated, they simply stood there and stared at them. In the bizarre light, Elliot was really able to examine them. Stripped of identifying features, they all looked nearly identical in their hideousness. The white rags hung from their bodies in tatters, showing enough sickening flesh to reveal where some may have once been male or female. They were neither now, inhuman creatures forged in some aberrant flame. Swaying back and forth, they began to part, making way for the five to move forward.
“What’s happening?” asked Binici, clutching onto Audrey’s arm.
“They’re herding us,” said Roma.
“Where?” asked Elliot.
“We’ll find out,” said the member of the Wall.
CHAPTER 39
The Wiltshire Hotel. It rose up, squat and dark, like a blot on the skyline. The brick exterior had taken on a perpetual dampness, one that left it discolored and looking bruised. The windows were covered with a grime collected from elsewhere, clinging in random, abstract patterns. The awnings and gutters were beginning to rust, flaking off in particles. The painted trim peeled and curled, revealing rotting wood beneath.
The Wiltshire was being consumed by the Ovessa as it made its way further into the earth realm, a first stop on its way toward the rest of the world.
Audrey could feel the disease permeating the building. It was apparent. She could tell the others felt it, too. The looks on their faces said it all. This was the epicenter of the invasion, the madness. The infection had taken root here.
Still, the Invocated had not attacked. They stood almost ten paces away from her and the others, swaying. Audrey stood on the sidewalk before the stairs to the hotel, staring up at it. She didn’t know what to do. Were her secret magic powers supposed to kick in now? Nothing was happening besides her being terrified.
Two figured stepped out of the shadows above them, coming from the doors of the hotel. Dressed in black cloaks, she couldn’t make much of them out. Then they flung back their robes and Audrey wished they hadn’t. Fully formed humanoids, they looked built from pieces of bone, talon, and gristle. Ink flowed from their head instead of hair.
“Little interlopers, the end to your adventure has come,” said the male.
“He is the Spittle as I am the Sigh. We are the voices of the Most Holy, your new divine, the Ovessa.”
“Uh, what?” said Elliot.
“Your understanding is irrelevant, only your obliteration. Obliteration or supplication are the only avenues, but you have not the latter choice.”
“Option C,” growled Hayden, reaching for his guns.
“So predictable,” said the Spittle. “So be it. Allow us to grant you an audience with our latest creation. You may find oblivion through it, knowing your battle was mighty, yet still pointless.”
As the Spittle and the Sigh parted at the top of the stairs, Audrey began to lose her cool. This wasn’t how she saw things playing out. She didn’t even have a weapon with which to battle a monster.
“Inanis!” she hissed under her breath.
“It is the way of things in this realm for objects to have names. We are still growing accustomed to that and have not named our newest spawn yet,” said the Spittle.
The Sigh smiled. “However, we believe ‘The Sanctified’ is appropriate.”
An enormous man walked out of the hotel doors. Audrey did a double take and realized it was no man. Over seven feet of rippling muscle, with blistered pink skin, it only had three fingers on each hand and hoofed feet. A scar ran down the center of its chest, separating two rows of nipples. An abomination blossomed at its groin. By far the worst was its head, or where its head should be. A shuddering, shifting, melting maw of chaos. Something like a choking roar came out of that semi-corporeal mass.
“That was Timothy Faure, by the way,” said Mr. Inanis, appearing behind Audrey and making her scream.
“Oh Timothy, no!” wailed Binici.
The Sigh waved her hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter how many of you there are, you will all die by the Ovessa’s will.”
As the Sanctified made its way down the steps, Hayden and Roma readied their weapons. Binici clutched onto Audrey and Elliot looked around for a weapon. Audrey turned to look up at Inanis, who appeared bored.
“You said you had a plan!”
“I do. Give it a second.”
Audrey wondered how she had made it to this point in her life. Part of her wasn’t surprised, in a way. Her life hadn’t exactly been normal. She had been a lot of things, made a lot of mistakes, but at least when she went out, she could say she tried. Maybe she didn’t battle monsters like her favorite super heroes, but she could play her role.
Roma started firing at the thing that had been Faure. The Sanctified. Audrey wished she could be more like Roma. Self-confident and driven. A badass. She had never even fired a gun in her life, not that she really wanted to. Still, it was the idea of it. The idea of being the protector. Ellen Ripley and Buffy Summers and Wonder Woman. The heroines of movies, books, and comics had always been her inspiration and here was one in real life.
Her life had been lived through a computer screen. Lived vicariously through the exploits of fictional characters. Anything that came too close to the real world had made her nervous, anxious, paranoid. Sometimes causing bouts of agoraphobia. Audrey didn’t feel like any of that had really changed, but damn if she didn’t have a different perspective now. Life had always been loud and messy and cruel, but watching Roma take a step back to reload, it could also be just as noble and bold and epic.
As much as it scared her, that’s what she wanted. No more hiding, no more playing it safe.
“Inanis!” she yelled at him.
“Yep, you’re ready. Let’s go.”
And time stopped.
CHAPTER 40
“What just happened?” asked Audrey, glancing around.
Binici still held onto to her, looking equally startled. Everything was frozen in place except for them and Inanis.
“A sort of ‘time snap,’ but it won’t last for long and will begin to break down once we’re inside the building. We need to go now,” he said.
He made his way around the Sanctified and toward the steps. Binici went to reach out a hand toward the thing that used to be Faure, then thought better of it. They hurried to catch up with the man in the suit. He stood between the two cloaked voices of the Ovessa on the landing, waiting for them. Nodding at them, he led them inside.
A few more of the Invocated stood immobile inside, staring off into nothingness. the Ovessa’s taint had affected the interior of the building more rapidly, signs of degradation more apparent. The walls bowed, the paint discolored in large splotches. The trim splintered in places, rotting out. Patches of the ceiling had collapsed, littering the floor with debris. Parts of the floor looked ready to fall in, too. The thick, oily feel to the air was worse here, like you were swimming through it. It smelled of burnt motor oil and spent sex. Too pungent to ignore.
“We need to make it to the fourth floor,” whispered Inanis.
Audrey nodded. She wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but it was better than facing down monsters while defenseless outside. She started to take the steps up when she realized that Binici had let go of her hand. Turning to look for the old woman, she spied her peering into a back room.
“What are you doing?” hissed Audrey. “Let’s go.”
“It’s some kind of a
ssembly line, I think. And the creatures in here defy reason!”
“That’s great, worry about it later.”
“I’m sorry,” said Binici. “This is all just…”
Her sentence was cut short by a tentacle whipping out from beyond the doorway and piercing through her lower abdomen.
“No!” screamed Audrey, rushing down the steps.
“We don’t have time for this,” remarked Inanis, throwing out a gesture and burning the squid-like creature who had come lurching out of the room.
Audrey skidded down next to where Binici had collapsed. A chunk of the tentacle was still squirming inside, staunching most of the blood leak. She was in terrible pain. Her hands reached down to the wound and came away trembling.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Binici kept saying over and over again.
“It’s okay, Inanis can help you, right?”
“They’re alerted to our presence now. I can either save her or take us to the Ovessa so you can save us all, Audrey,” he said.
“God damn it,” said Audrey, hugging onto the professor.
“Audrey, this was always about you. Go, please.”
“I won’t leave you here.”
“She doesn’t have to stay here,” said Inanis. “Stealth isn’t a factor anymore.”
With his index finger held high above him, he motioned in a circle and then clapped his hands. Audrey felt weightless and saw colors bleed together. Everything jumbled for a moment. Space realigned and they were in another room, somewhere large. Audrey made the mistake of looking up.
Reality was shattering, a septic hole seeping light out into the room. Up in the ceiling, something luminous and fleshy throbbed against our world. Serpentine yet bulbous, its almost reflective surface glistened with diseased intent. Emanating malevolence. Audrey could feel it trying to coat her psyche, could feel it whispering to her, seducing her.
Oh, how the Ovessa needs! Needs to gather its children and make them whole, make them unified. Doesn’t Audrey feel the constant burden of doubt, the burden of choice? Only those plagued by identity must suffer like that. Only those shackled with free will must be forced to endure. The Ovessa offers bliss, offers sanctuary in its light. Here there is but one will, one purpose. All is one.
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