“I want the king,” I said, loud enough that my voice echoed back at me. “I want Nylarthotep.”
She wants the king.
The king.
The watcher.
The planner.
The devourer of minds.
Well, that was encouraging.
“I know you’re here!” I shouted. “Stop playing games with me.”
Games, the smoke hissed at me.
Games and riddles and ciphers.
Secrets.
Lies.
I squinted into the dust, feeling it sting my eyes. A face came into focus here and there, frozen in an expression of torment. They were like the souls and spirits I’d encountered before, but these were torn and shredded, twisted. They were just as affected by the proximity of the rifts as my Weird was.
“What happened to you?” I asked the cloud of souls. “Why are you here?”
We came.
We crossed the barrier.
We saw.
And now we wait.
“Wait for what?” I said, trying to be patient. If souls decayed even in the Deadlands, it must be exponentially faster.
For the end.
The end of Fae and man.
The end of days.
The end of the stars and planets.
The end of all things.
“I want to see Nylarthotep,” I said again. “And I want to see him now.”
I sensed a shift, and the spirits drew back. I wondered if they were like me, humans with a Weird trapped by the Gates, or if they’d been tricked by Fae into walking through hexenrings only to end up here, or simply stumbled off the edge of the page, the way people did in the old stories, the ones people furtively passed around when the Proctors couldn’t hear.
It was easy to forget there’d been a world without magic before the first Storm exploded into the human world. A world where these things were just stories for children, distilled from stories for adults, to keep the darkness beyond the campfires out there, where it belonged.
But there had been, and these people were relics of it.
“You’re a rare case,” a voice said. It was textured and cultured, a rich velvet curtain of a voice, far from the rasp or growl I’d expected. “Most men would give up their lives to avoid meeting me face to face.”
“I’m not most,” I told the voice. “And I’m not a man.”
A laugh. Low, like a warm finger dragged across skin. “Then approach, girl who is not like most. Tell me why you seek the favor of the one who waits.”
I took one step, then another. It wasn’t like I could turn around. Reality was so distorted, I wouldn’t be able to find my way back without opening a Gate, and I couldn’t imagine that, in the Deadlands, a new Gate would lead anywhere good.
The distortion grew stronger as I approached, and the rifts fell away. My stomach lurched. I’d never gotten close to another being who could manipulate reality the way Tesla or I could. There was probably a good reason for that, because this was the worst I’d ever felt and still managed to stay conscious.
“Does it bother you?” Nylarthotep asked. He sat in a simple black chair with a high back, a robe similar to the ones the Faceless wore swirling to hide his figure. He wore a cowl emblazoned with the Yellow Sign. It wasn’t embroidered or painted, though—Nylarthotep’s robe was made of the universe, and the Yellow Sign was a slice of a sun, churning and flaming upon his brow.
I felt dizzy looking at him, and it wasn’t just because the vortex of unreality had grabbed me with its iron grip and refused to let go. I’d never seen anything like Nylarthotep up close. He felt like the Old Ones.
Worse, though. The Old Ones were incredibly ancient, but they were neither good nor evil. They simply existed, in the way of planets and the universe, an existence that could no more be denied than sunlight could.
Nylarthotep pulsed with malignance. If you could describe evil and malice as a figure, as a feeling, it would be this. This nausea, this panic, my hindbrain screaming that I was close to something no human was ever meant to see.
“Of course you bother me,” I said. “I’ve been dreading meeting you ever since I decided to come here, back in San Francisco.”
“I do not know this place, San Francisco,” Nylarthotep intoned. He shifted, and the stars in his robe canted and re-sorted themselves into new constellations. “I have no knowledge of the human world. When I was sent here, the Iron Land did not yet exist.”
“I want you to release a soul from your grasp,” I said. “Just one. Surely you can spare that.” I figured getting down to business might stop him from staring at me from beneath his cowl. I could feel his eyes. They felt like a sunburn—inexorable and with the sting of permanent damage.
“That’s interesting,” Nylarthotep said. “But the answer is no. The Deadlands are my domain and the souls within are my property.”
He stood, drawing to nearly seven feet tall. I got the sense that there was something inside Nylarthotep’s physical form, something incredibly large, indescribably ancient and aching to be let free. What I was seeing was the watered-down version, and my Weird kicked and screamed at the proximity of the larger thing.
“Please,” I said. “I’m here asking. Not demanding. All I want is Dean.”
“Hmm?” Nylarthotep cocked his head. “Oh, that’s right. I forget you give each other names. Odd. Like cockroaches naming each other.”
I tried to keep calm. If my heart had a beat, it would have been thudding. “I know you rule the Deadlands. That’s why I’m here. I just want you to give me Dean.”
“Rule the Deadlands?” The laughter came again, louder this time. “Girl, I do not rule this place. When the ancients cast me out, they cast me into a void, a place where all the dead came to their own final rest, be it good or ill. There was no unity, no collecting point for souls. What you see around you? This is a manifestation of my will. Of my boredom, of my wrath. I saw the souls, some happy, and I saw that they were weak and could be controlled.”
My mouth dropped open. It was worse than I had suspected. “You don’t rule,” I repeated, letting it sink in. “You … you made the Deadlands?”
“They sprang from my hand. And when the first soul became entangled, I was curious, so I allowed it to exist rather than snuffing it out. Then another, and another. No more happy deaths or simple endings. All souls continue to exist and act as fuel for my world, my land. And I do with them as I see fit.”
I felt like I would faint. Before that, I’d vomit, and fall to the ground, because this revelation was the worst thing I’d ever heard.
“So there really was just a void before,” I said, “where souls could do as they liked.”
Nylarthotep nodded. “There was nothing of greatness. Until me.”
“Then what harm would it do?” I said. My voice was shaking, but I managed to stay upright, and decided to count that as a victory. “You have all this, by the power of your own mind. What difference would one soul make?”
“Because it would not be my will,” Nylarthotep said. “I do not grant requests. Everything that happens—the city, the Faceless, the monsters that live in the wilds beyond, even the Walkers—happens at my will. And when this place ceases to amuse me, I will crush it and make it anew, a sculptor at his clay. The void and the dead are mine to use, forever.”
I had to think fast. I could tell he was almost ready to boot me down one of the rifts and dump me into some airless vacuum.
“A bargain, then,” I said. I’d been expecting it.
Nylarthotep grinned. I saw a flash of white teeth shaped like a shark’s under his cowl. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “Sit, little human, and tell me of your so-called bargain with the Yellow King.”
I watched as another black throne materialized. The Yellow King beckoned me. “Don’t look so shocked, little human. There was a time I could create entire worlds with a flick of my wrist. I was worshipped by the primitives as a god.”
“But yo
u’re not,” I said. “You’re just drifting through the universe like the rest of us.” I didn’t know what possessed me to back-talk something like Nylarthotep. Maybe I was tired of being treated as if I were small, to be wiped off the map as he saw fit.
Nylarthotep sat forward. Where he gripped the arms of his chair, I saw long, blood-encrusted claws. I didn’t know what he’d been using them for, but I drew back as far as I could without seeming like a coward.
“I am not flotsam. I am eternal,” he snarled, and I did flinch then, as if he’d raked me with those claws.
“All right,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry. I was mistaken.”
“Tell me the terms of this bargain or leave before I make you an amusement,” Nylarthotep grumbled, slumping back.
I took a breath and said, “You can have something from me. And in return, you let Dean go. I know you said no soul would escape you, but those are my terms, take it or leave it.”
“Really.” He leaned forward and licked his lips. “Tough talk. I’m intrigued. Be more specific, dear.”
“I have a Weird. I have the gift that you need.” I couldn’t believe I was about to do this again. “I could get you a way out of here.”
Nylarthotep didn’t laugh or mock me this time. He simply tilted his head and considered my words, and that scared me more than anything.
“No, you can’t,” he said. “Tesla couldn’t, and neither can you.”
I sighed. It was my only bargaining chip, but I didn’t want to use it. If Nylarthotep thought I was useless, at least he wouldn’t imprison and torture me.
“But you do have something I want,” he said. “You are a living soul in the Deadlands, and I’ve never come across that before.”
I raised my chin, already not liking where this was going. “I’m listening.”
“I grow weary of this place,” said Nylarthotep. “I grow weary of my own creations. Let me test you. Let me see exactly what the soul of a Gateminder can endure, and then if it pleases me, I’ll let your insignificant little friend fly free.”
This was a bad bargain. I knew it, he knew it. He also knew I didn’t have a choice, and so did I. Though this way, at least I wouldn’t run the risk of setting him free. Because something like Nylarthotep could never be free, not ever. That would truly be the end of the world, the culmination of the second Storm. What I’d started was bad enough, but to let something like this monster into the Iron Land would mean the end of everything, and this time I’d be well and truly to blame.
So I nodded, and said, “I’ll do whatever it takes. I just want to go home.”
I knew now I was beneath the Deadlands, where no one could find me, not Chang’s machine, not even a Gate of my own creation.
“As do we all,” Nylarthotep said. “Come with me.”
He led me to the edge of the swirling space that he lived in, and it resolved itself into a long hallway, industrial as anything in the Iron Land, flickering bulbs caged with wire, and iron doors stretching as far as the eye could see.
I twitched reflexively, waiting for my Fae blood to react with the iron, but it wasn’t real. Nothing stirred in my blood or in my mind. That was a relief. Dealing with a bout of iron poisoning and the associated hallucinations was the last thing I needed right now.
“What’s behind these doors, only you can know,” said Nylarthotep. “Did you know that I used to slip into minds while asleep? That I used to pick apart dreams and nightmares?” He snorted. “Of course, that was before they sent me here and that foul upstart crawled out of the mud and took over the dreams, made them a refuge rather than what they should be.”
“And what’s that?” I said. Screams echoed from behind some of the doors, and even worse sounds, scratching and hissing, from behind others.
“The most terrible thing in all the universe,” the Yellow King said. “Because your own mind is the thing you should fear most. It is the originator of nightmares. Without the fear, things like me would not exist.”
He gave me a small shove forward. His touch sent shivers down my spinal cord and running through my entire body, borne on my own nerves.
“Go on,” he whispered in my ear. “This is what I found in your mind, Aoife. Let’s see what kind of fear lives there.”
I stepped into the hall. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t have a choice. If I wanted to get out of here, and with Dean, this was what I had to do.
Knowing it was my only choice didn’t make it any easier to face what was behind the doors. Nylarthotep had been right. I was terrified of what was inside my own mind.
And now I was going to meet it face to face.
14
The Dark Corridor
I USED TO PLAY in the hallway of the Lovecraft apartment that Conrad and I shared with our mother. It was a terrible place. It smelled musty and the carpet was damp no matter the season or the time of day. Roaches scuttled to and fro, and the aether feed was bad, so bulbs were constantly exploding, raining glass as fine as paper down on me and my sad excuses for dolls, which I usually constructed out of paper or shirts stuffed with packing material I found in the bins behind the building.
Terrible though it was, I had happy memories of that hallway. I’d listen to my mother singing to herself, or wait for Conrad’s footsteps as he came home from school. Usually he’d blow right past me without a word. We weren’t close then like we would be after our mother was sent to the madhouse.
Our only neighbor who wasn’t a drunk and stayed longer than a week was an elderly woman, Mrs. Loemann, who’d fled the war. She’d lost her entire family, grandchildren through husband, to the camps, and she used to come out and talk to me in German. She didn’t speak much English, and she made me hard, nutty-tasting cookies that I pretended to eat to be polite and secretly put out for the pigeons, but she was nice to me, and always patted me on the head with her knotty-fingered hand. She looked like a kind fairy-tale grandmother, like someone had carved her out of wood, put her on strings and moved her around.
She died just before we moved out, and nobody noticed until the hallway started to smell much worse than usual.
I always wondered what it would be like to be totally alone, knowing that everyone who was your blood was dead.
I had a much better idea now, as I stood in this hallway, the maze that the Yellow King had created.
At least it smelled better.
I resolved I wasn’t going to stand frozen like a scared rabbit, and took a hard left, pushing open the first door that my hand met.
Reality flickered around me, and I felt the same sick lurch as when I stepped through a Gate. Whether I’d traveled in time or space I didn’t know, but I’d definitely crossed some threshold.
This was different from when Crow had shown me my nightmares, made me face them and come through the other side. I’d crossed some other barrier this time, something that was real, as far from a dream as I was from the Iron Land right now.
Except I was in the Iron Land when I opened my eyes, in a snug cottage, all one room except for a staircase off to one side.
I tried to orient myself, and spun around as the door opened.
I was glad I was too shocked to make any sound, because the one that would have come out was a scream.
“Hey there, darlin’,” Dean said, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it on a hook by the door. “Sorry I’m home so late.”
“I …” I was sure I was staring at him like he’d sprouted a second head. This wasn’t fear, this was just cruel. Whatever game Nylarthotep was playing was worse than anything I could have imagined.
“Princess,” Dean said. He approached and put a hand on my cheek. “Are you okay?”
He was real. Real and warm and alive, looking at me with concern. I put my hand over his, reflexively.
“I am now,” I said, squeezing it.
His warm silver-gray eyes, liquid like mercury, lit with relief. “Oh, good. Thought you might be sore at me, on account of my being late.”
“No,” I said softly. “No, I could never be mad at you, Dean.”
He laughed. “Never? Well, I guess that makes me the luckiest guy in Lovecraft.”
“I … what?” I peered out the window, through the sheer curtains. We were in Lovecraft, in Uptown, on one of the side streets of small neat houses that eventually gave way to the mansions of the wealthy residents. A street that had been thoroughly destroyed when the Lovecraft Engine blew.
This was wrong. This was all wrong. I’d expected screaming and nightmares, blood and all my worst fears laid bare before my eyes. Not this. Not happiness and everything I ever wanted.
“You sure nothing’s up?” Dean said. “You’re worrying me, princess.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I … This is going to be an odd question, all right?”
Dean squeezed my hand. “What’s on your mind, Aoife?”
“What year is this?” I said.
Concern flared on Dean’s face, but he did an admirable job of hiding it. If I hadn’t spent so many hours memorizing the planes of his cheeks, the square of his chin and the tiny lines around his eyes, I never would have seen it. “It’s 1956, Aoife. Just like yesterday, and the day before that.”
He touched me on the shoulder. “Is the cure your mother gave you not working? Is the iron affecting you again?”
I jerked, and Dean, thinking I was jerking away from him, stepped back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“No!” I cried. I hadn’t even realized I wasn’t feeling the familiar prickle of iron poisoning. I was only part Fae, so the progression was slower, but when puberty hit, the iron built faster and faster, until on our sixteenth birthdays we changelings succumbed and went insane. Conrad had. I nearly had. But now …
“No,” I said in a calmer fashion. Whatever game this was, I could adapt; I could learn the rules.
I would still win Dean’s freedom. The real Dean, not whatever construct this was.
“My mother’s cure is working just fine,” I said. “I’m sorry, Dean. It was a joke, but I’m afraid it wasn’t a very good one.”
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