“Why take a hostage then?” Brooks said. “And what do they need you for?”
“Me? I’m a translator, but I don’t mind helping to flay him.” He stared at Becca. “If you make me.”
“What’s in it for you?” Brooks asked.
Hanson smiled and Becca recoiled. His gums had receded and his teeth looked loose. God only knew what would grow in to replace them.
“I am becoming my reward,” Hanson hissed.
Becca's hand had drifted to the scarab pendant. She squeezed it between her thumb and the knuckle of her forefinger, glancing down at the dull red glow pulsing at the heart of the ruby in the beetle's pincers.
Hanson took a step toward Lung Crawthok and pressed the point of the dagger to Luke Philips' pale potbelly, where it hung out the bottom of his t-shirt in contrast to the rest of his skinny frame. The tip indented the flesh, not sharp enough to draw blood without the force of speed, but Luke drew a short breath nonetheless, anticipating the plunge.
"I wouldn't do that," Hanson said to Becca. "Take the beetle off and throw it into the circle."
Becca hesitated.
“I said take it off and throw it in the fucking circle!"
Becca let her shoulder bag slip to the ground. She reached under her hair and undid the necklace clasp, then caught the pooling chain and scarab in her hand. She studied it, fingers trembling from the cold, but more from the fear that she was about to do something irrevocable.
The dome of light crackled against the sky, on the brink of fracturing under the strain of the burgeoning spheres.
"Don't even think about whispering the mantra," Hanson said. "If your lips form so much as a syllable, Daddy gets gutted. Now toss it over."
Becca looked at Brooks. If he was going to shoot, he would've done it by now. She could read the frustration in his eyes, knew he didn't want her to surrender the only weapon that might stand a chance against the forces in play. She also knew that if she weren’t here, Brooks would take the gamble on her father's life. He'd shoot and test his luck. But she was here, and for her sake he was treading carefully.
Becca threw the scarab at the energy field. It soared between a pair of the standing stones, and for a moment she dared believe it might take flight, but it landed on the icy broken granite with an impotent tinkle.
The creature responded immediately. Luke Philips no longer mattered. The rows of claws released him and he fell into the gurgling black water, his temple striking a chunk of fractured rock as he collapsed.
"Dad!" Becca cried, stepping forward but stopping at the perimeter of the shield. "Pull him out of the water!" she yelled at Hanson. "I gave you what you wanted. Pull him out!"
Lung Crawthok took a lumbering step toward the scarab, raised the harpoon and drove it down. The iron flue sparked against the granite and the scarab jumped, golden wings fluttering, the ruby skimming away across the water and landing in the mud where Luke’s hair was splayed in a filthy tangle. Raindrops danced in the dark water around his body—a scattering at first, then a dance of white water as the clouds opened up.
The guardian brought the shaft down again, pinning the metal beetle to the rock and sending a segment of its shell skittering off. Becca stared in horror at the damage. Her heart ached with sympathetic pain. But it was an object. Not alive. And her father still lay unmoving at the monster’s feet.
She pulled the gun out from under the blanket, trained it on Hanson, cold fire coursing through her eyes and down the barrel when she said, “Get him out of there, you son of a bitch. Get him away from that thing or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
Hanson knelt beside Luke and rolled the body over.
“Drop the knife,” Becca said, wondering why Brooks hadn’t taken a shot yet, but not willing to risk taking her eyes off Hanson.
Hanson turned the knife over in his hand, admiring the three-sided blade, watching the rain patter off of the blackened silver alloy. He sneered at Becca. “He knows too many permutations.”
Everything seemed to happen at once after that. Time slowed to a crawl. Becca’s blood surged with adrenaline, and her vision tunneled. She sensed Hanson’s movement before he started to raise the dagger and fired, sending a spray of black blood out the back of his skull before the weapon reached its zenith above her father’s chest. Hanson fell over backward and the sky cracked, the barometric pressure plunging, the electrical tension in the atmosphere suddenly dissipating as if the earth had popped its ears. The energy dome was gone—had she done that with her bullet?
No, it was the expanding power of Yog Sothoth throwing off the feeble cage. The congress of spheres rose above the treetops, ascending toward the bruised clouds, trailing tendrils of oily vapor. She saw flashes of other forms in that roiling cloud: a goat with eyes like spiders, a black pharaoh with blue fire in his hair, a great serpent with a jeweled crown.
A flash of silver streaked past Becca’s face: the dragonfly drone. It flitted between the standing stones and perched on a shard of rock beside Luke’s face. His eyes opened, blinking at the rain.
Something bumped Becca’s shoulder and she looked into Brooks’ urgent eyes. He was shoving something into her hands—the remote—trying to trade it for the hot gun in her hand.
“Take it! Get the gem,” Brooks said. “It’s all we’ve got. I can’t do it.”
Suddenly she understood but didn’t know if she could do it either, if she had the skill to maneuver the drone with that level of precision. But then the screen was in her hands, the Fire of Cairo glowing in the glass. She thumbed the wheels of light, her fingers stiff and clumsy with fear. The dragonfly stuttered, dipped, clicked its forelegs at the ruby and missed. Becca looked up from the remote, fixed her eyes on the drone and its prize, and with a deep breath, tried again on the exhalation. She let her fingers find the sequence, banishing thought and fear from her mind for just a moment. She was one with the dragonfly, picking up the gem, clenching it in serrated silver claws.
Luke groaned and Becca looked up just in time to see the harpoon come down and run him through, pinning his frail, broken body to the muddy ground.
She screamed and dropped the remote, took two halting steps toward the horror.
Luke drew a ragged inhalation and spoke the mantra on his dying breath: “Yehi Aur.”
The dragonfly hovered over his face, and the gem blazed to life.
Becca dropped to her knees, scrambled in the dirt for the remote, and finding it, thumbed the elevation control. The drone arced into the sky, blazing a trail of phosphorous red light, a flare fired into the heart of Yog Sothoth.
The clouds trembled, then convulsed.
The monsters on the ground joined voices in a wavering howl of agony before the spheres above them reacted. Their cry died on the rain-lashed wind and for a second Becca thought she had failed. Then the world strobed red and white as a series of concussions rolled across the sky. The spheres shattered, throwing scraps of fleshy black shrapnel at the ground.
The twin guardians whirled in tatters of oily smoke, screaming against disintegration, fighting to retain coherence and failing, their remains rising to join the noxious cloud drifting over the wood toward the house on the hill.
Becca dropped the remote and ran into the circle. She knelt beside Luke and wiped his dirty gray hair from his brow, a flood of hot tears swelling under her cheeks, prickling her eyes, and spilling down her nose.
The flood of filthy water from the tunnel had abated. Brooks stepped into the circle and picked up the remote. “It’s being sucked into the chimneys,” he said. “The wreckage of the gods…sucked down the drain…you did it.”
Becca heard him, but didn’t care, not yet. She gazed into her father’s glassy blue eyes, searching for a final glimmer of waning light. Eyes that no longer blinked at the rain.
Chapter 19
Becca clung to Luke’s body as the smoke cleared, the residue sucked down cracks and fissures around her. She thought she could hear the bells ringing underground, b
ut maybe that was her imagination. A burning ember slowly fell from the sky and came to hover beside her: the dragonfly bearing the Fire of Cairo. The drone flitted from side to side, as if studying her, then darted down the tunnel in pursuit of the last remnants of the incursion. Or were they the last? Becca gazed skyward. It was almost dark now, but she glimpsed a lone scrap of translucent blackness hanging on the breeze like a flag that had escaped its tether. A crow climbing the sky flew through it as she watched. The bird shivered and plunged, a blur of charcoal smeared across the sky. It recovered at the tree line, pounded its wings hard to regain altitude, and then flew off east toward the city and the sea.
Brooks crouched beside Becca in the mud, laid his hand on her back. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Becca rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder and let herself sob. When she looked up, the rain was tapering off, and she could hear voices approaching through the woods.
“Thanks for taking me to find him,” she said.
Brooks furrowed his brow and Becca wondered if he’d expected her to be angry with him for his role in her father’s death, for entangling him in the crisis. Luke had entangled himself long ago, and had died trying to make a difference. She didn’t know if the threat was vanquished, but for now, she had to believe he had succeeded.
“He knew the incantation,” Brooks said, “for the gem.”
“Yeah. He knew more than I ever expected.”
Becca looked at the remote in Brooks’ hand. She nodded at it. “You’re not controlling it? It flew down the hole like it was on a mission.”
“I know. I think the gem is controlling it,” Brooks thumbed the display button. “It seems to have a mind of its own.”
Becca took the blanket from her shoulders and laid it over Luke’s face and upper body. Then she crawled, shivering, through the mud to the granite slab where the golden scarab lay in pieces. She gathered them in her palm and searched the ground for the section of shell that had skittered away under the harpoon blow. The weapon had vanished with its wielder, but she found the last fragment of the beetle and deposited the handful into her muddy canvas rucksack.
The voices were growing louder now. Flashlight beams bobbed at the edge of the wood. “Over here!” Brooks called. “I hope you brought coats or we’re gonna die of hypothermia before the debriefing.”
Django barked, broke away from the team he had led through the woods, and bounded over to Becca.
Brooks passed her the remote.
* * *
The dragonfly chased the receding black vapor through the tunnel. It shot out of the stone arch and traced a circle around the pool, grazing the wicks of candles and oil lamps with the flaming gem and setting them ablaze. The cellar walls and vaulted ceiling pulsed with golden light as the drone sped up the stairs to the first floor. It dipped to touch drapes and set eager flames searing up their length, burning dust, shattering glass, and inviting the wind in to feed the blaze. It swept through every room, visiting flame upon every wick and shattered globe where oil soaked the rugs and floorboards. It swooped low and scorched a trail of flame down the length of the Persian carpet runner in the central hallway. At the library, it paused for a second to give the video feed a lingering look at the bountiful fuel awaiting its kiss—crumbling paper, parchment and vellum, polished wood, and cracked leather—before winding around the turret room and, climbing in a great blazing spiral, leaving a blistering inferno in its wake as it shot out onto the second floor.
It buzzed the piano strings, setting them vibrating, then climbed the wall of the music room, charring the peeling wallpaper. Downstairs, the wood and glass of the grandfather clock popped and shattered as the fire raged. The velvet furniture cooked, and the gilt-framed mirror over the mantel imploded, sucking in smoke and swirling scraps of burning paper like moths fluttering through an open window.
* * *
At the edge of the wood, Becca could hear the wail of sirens. She walked beside Brooks, bundled in a Mylar emergency blanket. She had refused a ride on a stretcher, but had gratefully accepted a pair of wool socks. Her feet ached with blisters and what felt like the beginning of frostbite from her wet boots. Django trotted a few feet ahead of her, while the agents who had found them brought up the rear, flashlights sweeping the ground. Full night had fallen. Flashes of orange fire shone through the trees, and the smell of burning wood was thick on the cold air. Becca could see her breath mingling with the layers of smoke and fog rising from the house and the marshes, and pooling around the base of the hill.
The ground shuddered as a support beam let go and a section of roof collapsed, sending up a spray of sparks. But as she drew nearer, Becca saw that the Wade House wasn’t crumbling in the way that a burning building should. It was folding in on itself, like origami executed on a burning sheet of paper by invisible hands trying various permutations, rejecting some, embracing others, and collapsing matter into the spaces between space, leaving her with the impression that the fire was doing a more mundane kind of damage than this other process set in motion by the awakened gem.
Becca caught glimpses of stone passages as the walls fell away, a patch between the blazing timbers where she could swear she saw birds flying in a yellow sky, not ashes swirling in fire-illuminated smoke.
At the base of the hill, the flashers of fire engines rolled over the dead grass, dirty snow, and the gray arch of the hut. Raised voices cut the air, and she saw that the security officers were arguing with the fire lieutenant, denying the trucks access. Northrup strode toward the gate in his long black overcoat, a glowing phone held to his ear.
“Let it burn,” Brooks said beside her.
“Looks like they’re trying to,” she said. “Good.”
And yet, she was drawn to the house. The heat of the fire warming her face, thawing her hands, was glorious. In the woods, in the cellar, she’d thought she would never feel heat again.
Brooks put his arm around her and led her away from the blaze, toward the hut. “Come on. Let’s get some tea into you.”
Chapter 20
The crow that was no longer merely a crow, having passed through a scrap of a god floating on the wind, flew southeast at daybreak, gliding over the gray ice of Walden Pond and skirting Rt. 117 as the rising sun burned the mist off of the woodlands. In Waltham, the bird that was not a bird rested on a parapet atop the tower of Usen Castle, then swooped down over the flooded train tracks, and followed the Charles River to Cambridge, where it alighted at last on the great white sphinx facing the gothic cathedral at Mt. Auburn Cemetery.
The sphinx, a memorial to the Civil War, reminded the crow of his favorite incarnation. Commissioned by Dr. Jacob Bigelow and unveiled in 1872, the statue is one of the most unusual monuments ever crafted in tribute to that bloody chapter of New World history, intended to represent the union of African strength and Anglo intellect in the fusion of the lion’s body and the white woman’s face draped in Egyptian headdress. But to the crow, the iconography spoke of home, of riddles among the pyramids, and of a day to come when the blood-infused oceans of the world would pay tribute to all of mankind’s unity in slavery to the Great Old Ones, who would soon inherit the Earth.
The bird hopped down from its perch onto the grass, pecked at the ground for a worm, and then flapped its wings, ascending to the height of a man in the shadow of the trees, and becoming one before stepping out onto the path.
Having shed his wings, the Black Pharaoh walked, cloaked in the early dark of a January afternoon. He liked to walk when he could, and where he walked, the people of the city looked away, and the wild animals of the riverbank bowed their heads.
By 9:30 P.M. he had reached Harvard Square, where the streets still thrummed with the psychic residue of the subway massacre carried out by Darius Marlowe in the autumn of 2019. He breathed in the aura of stale suffering, the lingering overtones of primal fear, and savored the taste.
He walked among the students, tourists, and skate punks beneath strings of holiday lights.
The crowd parted and made way for him.
Around the corner of the Coop, across the street from the Old Burying Ground, the sound he sought reached his ears, and he slowed his stride. His red robes blazed, reflecting his pleasure like shivering plumage. Blue fire crackled in his knotted hair, and his kingly lips spread in a smile.
The strains of a guitar filtered through the bundled crowd and echoed off the buildings. The pharaoh drew near, and dipped his slender brown fingers into a pocket of his robe.
A musician in a black pea coat, ripped jeans, and fingerless gloves stood in front of the entrance to the T, tapping his foot on the red bricks and thumping his battered acoustic guitar with the dull determination of one whose long night in the cold has numbed his extremities. He gazed out past the crowd at the news kiosk across the street, and sang “Across the Universe” by the Beatles in a soulful, crooning voice, raspy at the edges. His features were steep and dark, his hair curly, his skin olive. He was young, probably in his early twenties, possibly of Eastern European descent.
The open guitar case that lay on the bricks beside the busker’s microphone stand was littered with a scattering of quarters and crumpled dollar bills. Beside it, a little battery powered amp worked at its upper limits to cut through the traffic and crowd noise, the chords and voice ringing from its tiny speaker laced with metallic reverb on the brink of feedback.
The Black Pharaoh bent over the guitar case, and the musician blinked his dark lashes, and swayed as if buffeted by an icy wind. The long-fingered hand emerged from the crimson robe and tossed a coin onto the balding blue velvet interior.
The song faltered, the musician gazed at the coin and shivered. Then his hands recovered and strummed a slow cadence, winding down the rhythm into a final resolving chord.
He slung his guitar across his hip, knelt beside the case, and stared at the coin. A few stray snowflakes drifted down and settled on the velvet lining. The pharaoh hovered over the busker’s shoulder only half sharing his world, a swarm of strange colors that repelled human perception, a wavering flame of should-not-exist.
Black January: A SPECTRA Files Novel Page 21
