New Title 1

by Dru Pagliassotti

  “Power has to come from somewhere. God or Satan—there ain’t any third choice.”

  Andy sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe what he does is as unmagickal as an internal combustion engine, but we just don’t understand it.”

  Jack thought about those infernal crematoriums spewing the ashes of the damned over burnt-branch catwalks and couldn’t bring himself to agree.

  The earth jolted and something crashed somewhere in the house. Sirens began wailing again in the distance.

  “Did the university keep any of the Gudrun family’s belongings?” Todd asked, standing. He spoke as clearly as ever, as though whatever injury Amon had inflicted on him a minute ago had already healed.

  “There’s a collection up in the attic,” Jack said.

  “Let’s take a look. I’d like to know the family a little better.”

  “I’ll lead,” Andy said, pulling Jack’s lighter out of his pocket again. The three men picked their way through the rooms to the stairwell. Hands braced on the intermittently trembling walls, they headed upstairs.

  XIV

  Pastor Luther Lindgren had been working late when the first jolts had hit. By the time he’d inspected the chapel, tilting the freestanding cross back upright and picking up the candles that had been thrown off their stands, he was certain that this was no small quake. It had to be at least as strong as the Northridge jolt back in 1994.

  He walked back to his office and dug his flashlight out of the emergency equipment cabinet. Part of him wanted to leap into his car and drive home to check on his dogs, but he wasn’t sure it was safe to drive yet.

  The flashlight’s steady beam was reassuring. He headed outside.

  CHU’s chapel was tucked in the southwest corner of campus, behind the library and student union. Both buildings appeared intact, as far as he could tell, but he could hear distant shouts and screams that suggested that, elsewhere, students were panicking.

  The blue light over the emergency phone at the end of the parking lot was still glowing, powered by stored solar energy. Lindgren walked to it, stumbling when the earth shook, and lifted the receiver.

  The line was dead.

  “Dear Lord,” he prayed aloud, replacing it in its cradle, “please watch over us and protect us from danger.”

  He stood, shivering in the cold. Should he make his way across campus to see what comfort he could offer the frightened students? Or should he wait here, tending the chapel, until they came to him?

  Lindgren had been the campus pastor for fifteen years, and he knew that many students would come to the chapel pews seeking comfort and reassurance. Despite the increasing secularization of the outside world and the liberal policies of the university itself, the majority of CHU’s students still turned to their childhood faith when they were troubled. He did his best to be present for them when they did.

  “Hey! Hey, Pastor, is that you?”

  He turned, his flashlight beam flickering over the face of a young man hurrying toward him. Jarret Moore, one of his Bible study students. He lowered the beam.

  “Hi, Jarret. Do you know what’s going on?”

  “Earthquake! Feels like a really strong one, too. Maybe a 7.0?” The clean-cut young athlete reached him. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I was in the SUB with some friends. They headed back to the dorms, but I thought I’d better come out here to make sure everything was okay.”

  Lindgren smiled. Jarret was like so many other enthusiastically religious young men and women he’d tutored over the years; meticulous to a fault, but a good boy at his core. A little more life experience would temper and refine his faith.

  “I was just trying to decide whether I should stay here or head out to where all the noise is,” Lindgren admitted.

  “You should stay here,” Jarret said at once. “People are—”

  Abruptly, with a rumble like thunder, the earth leaped and rippled beneath their feet. Both Jarret and Lindgren lost their balance and fell. The flashlight rolled out of the pastor’s hand, its beam flickering and then regaining strength.

  The thunderous roar continued with a loud cracking, crashing sound. Lindgren turned his head, searching for its source.

  Across the parking lot, the library’s brick walls were collapsing.

  The ground bucked beneath them as though something were pushing it up from below. Another great mass of bricks tumbled off the library wall, revealing steel reinforcing girders that trembled like straws. More bricks collapsed, and windows cracked and shattered.

  Then the rippling beneath the earth stopped.

  Lindgren scrambled to his feet, snatching up his flashlight as he ran toward the library. This close to finals—

  Cries arose from the rubble.

  He lost track of time as he and Jarret and the students and staff who hadn’t been trapped under the collapsing walls dug through piles of brick and shelving. One of the library staff members parked all of the information services carts in a line along the buckled sidewalk and turned on their headlights. They would provide illumination until their solar-powered batteries lost their charges.

  Thank heavens, Lindgren thought as he worked, that most of the students were earthquake-wise enough to have taken refuge under the reading tables and study desks. So far everyone was alive, although several would need medical treatment.

  “The emergency lines are all busy,” reported one of the library administrators, closing her phone. She sounded grim. “And campus security isn’t answering, either.”

  “Pastor!” Jarret shouted from the sidewalk. “Come here, quick!”

  Lindgren climbed over the skittering piles of bricks and joined the three students who stood in a huddle: Jarret, a girl he recognized from services, and a young man he didn’t know.

  “Go on, Ally, tell him,” Jarret urged.

  “It’s a monster,” she said, through chattering teeth. She wasn’t dressed for the cold, and from the way she leaned on her friend, Lindgren guessed she was injured. “Peter and I saw it come out of the ground, this giant snakelike thing, and it smashed a whole bunch of people right outside Gilbert Hall.”

  Sickened, Lindgren shrugged off his wool coat and draped it around her shoulders.

  “Take her to the chapel,” he directed Jarret. They had turned the nave into a makeshift hospital for the injured students they’d dug out from the rubble. The chapel’s tiny emergency cabinet was already running out of bandages and antiseptic.

  “But, what about—”

  “Go on. She’s freezing to death.”

  “You don’t believe me,” Ally said, shivering, “because nobody ever believes when they’re told about monsters, but it’s true, you can ask Peter.”

  “I will.” Lindgren touched her shoulder. “You go inside with Jarret and get warm, and say a prayer for us all.”

  She nodded. Jarret took her arm and helped her away.

  “It is true,” said the young man she’d called Peter. He wasn’t dressed much better than the girl, and his feet were bare and covered with dirt. “I know it sounds crazy, but it looked like a giant snake, and it came out of the ground, turned, and then went back in again, on top of a bunch of RAs and people.” His face was white. “I think they’re dead.”

  “Could it have been a loose pipe, or a burst of steam?” Lindgren asked, searching for some other explanation. “The earthquake has probably broken a number of underground pipes.”

  “No. It was scaly, and it had teeth. It was alive, not a piece of metal.”

  Lindgren breathed a prayer and nodded, putting a hand on the young man’s back. “All right. I’ll go take a look. Go inside, get warmed up, and see if you can borrow some shoes and a coat from one of the injured students. We need as many able-bodied searchers out here as we can get.”

  “Do you want me to show you?”

  “You were in Gilbert Hall? I know the way. Go on.” Lindgren gently pushed him forward, and Peter nodded.

  The pastor shiv
ered, his suit jacket little defense against the cold and his fear. He walked over to the administrator with the phone.

  “There’s some trouble at Gilbert Hall,” he said. “I’m going to take a look.”

  “I’ll keep trying to raise someone on the phone,” she said, nodding. “Be careful, Pastor.”

  “You, too.” He flicked on his flashlight and began walking across Campus Park, praying that the two young students had been mistaken.

  Then he heard gunshots from north campus, and he changed course, breaking into a run.

  XV

  Clancy was being tugged forward, out of his warm bed, and he protested, but his mouth was full of dirt. He coughed and choked as he was dragged out into the open air.

  He rolled on his back. The earth was shaking and trembling, and stars swam overhead as he tried to focus.

  “You’re alive?” A calm voice with a note of surprise. “Ah, yes, I see.”

  Clancy blinked, feeling dirt fall off his face, and clenched his hand as someone tried to tug the evidence bag out of it. Alarmed, he pushed himself up to one elbow. His wrist ached where it had been grabbed.

  “What—” he coughed and spat. The white-haired provost—Penemue, that was his name—raised an elegant eyebrow. Clancy wiped his face with his arm, still holding the bag that he’d grabbed from the technician moments before the man had been engulfed in a wave of dirt. “What the hell was that?”

  An earthquake, of course. But not just an earthquake, not with those huge white things bursting out of the earth and sending dirt washing over them all. Jesus, had he really seen them?

  He rolled to his knees and looked around. The whole north campus looked like a battlefield that had been saturation-bombed. Even the generator-run spotlights had fallen over, their bright beams criss-crossing the ground in a haphazard manner.

  Huge pits and craters marred the earth, and heavy equipment was half-buried in giant ripples of dirt and shattered stone. He saw an arm without a shoulder attached to it, and somebody’s shoe, and a body that wasn’t moving.

  Jackson was sitting next to him, groaning and holding his leg. Shattered bone jutted through the flesh and his pants leg.

  Clancy licked his lips and tasted dirt.

  “You pulled me out.” He looked up at the provost. “Thanks. Did you call an ambulance?”

  Penemue regarded him with a thoughtful expression. “Not yet.”

  He seemed none the worse for wear. Dirt didn’t cover his fine wool coat and expensive suit the way it covered Clancy, and his bright white hair wasn’t even ruffled. Clancy shook his head. Some folks were born lucky.

  He pulled himself to his feet, feeling strained muscles protest.

  “Jackson? How you doing?”

  Jackson looked up, his face white with shock and his eyes glassy.

  “Think it’s broken,” he whispered, thinly.

  “Hang in there. I’ll get us some help.”

  “We’re the only survivors.” Penemue smoothed the front of his coat. “You were buried, but your head was left exposed.” He gestured to the large pile of upturned dirt from which Clancy had been drawn. Clancy shuddered.

  “Did you see those giant snakes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God. I’m not crazy.” He looked around. Where was the forensics team? Buried underground? He felt a trace of panic. “You got any idea what they were?”

  Penemue was silent. Clancy wasn’t surprised. He didn’t have any good guesses, either. Everyone dead. Jesus! He looked down at the bag in his hand, then carefully folded it around the clay medallion and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  Whatever it was, it was the only piece of evidence left from the investigation.

  “First thing we do is call an ambulance, and then report to the station,” he declared. Freaks of nature, aliens from outer space, or genetically engineered escapees from one of the local biochem labs—whatever those snakes were, they had to be reported.

  Maybe if both Jackson and Penemue supported his story, he wouldn’t be laughed out of the office.

  “Emergency services may be too busy to respond. The entire city seems to be in a state of emergency,” Penemue observed.

  Clancy took another look. The provost was right. The generator-powered lights had fooled him, but beyond them, everything was dark. And the ground was still shaking, although not as badly as before. He rubbed his wrist, then reached inside his jacket and touched the holster under his arm. He hadn’t lost his gun. That was something.

  “There’s a radio in my car. You stay here and keep an eye on Jackson. Don’t let him move.”

  “Wait.” Penemue lifted a hand. “Give me the seal before you go.”

  “The what?” Clancy stared at the man a moment before registering his meaning. “You mean, the medal thing?”

  “It’s a seal of summoning.”

  “Summoning what?” He was suddenly afraid he already knew the answer.

  “The beings in between.”

  He swallowed. If he hadn’t seen those snake-things himself, he’d say Penemue was crazy. Even now, part of him was hoping this would all turn out to be a nightmare or some kind of hallucination.

  “You think this is some kind of Satanic cult thing? Summoning demons?”

  “Satan doesn’t mean a thing to those creatures.”

  “So it’s, uh, paganism or something?” At one of the annual sensitivity and diversity training sessions, he’d had to learn the difference between pagans and Satanists.

  “The seal is part of it, Detective. If you give it to me, I may be able to learn more.”

  Penemue could be telling the truth. He was some kind of professor, after all. But he could be the head cultist, too, for all Clancy knew.

  “Tell you what,” he countered. “Come down to the station with me, and we’ll see about letting you inspect the evidence under secure conditions. Forensics, remember—wouldn’t want your fingerprints confusing the jury later.”

  “This won’t ever go to trial.”

  “That decision’s out of my hands.” He was definitely getting a bad feeling about the provost. Assuming the white-haired man even was the provost—suddenly Clancy wasn’t sure about that, either. He hadn’t asked for identification, and what the hell was a provost, anyway? “Look, you can come with me or not; it’s up to you. But people are dead—” he stopped, reminded of his missing colleagues. The panic and grief that he’d held at bay threatened to rise, and he thrust it down, swallowing hard. “—and Jackson needs medical treatment now. I’ve got to get help.”

  “I’m offering you help.” Penemue held out one finely manicured hand. “I may be your only hope.”

  Clancy took a step backward, shaking his head. Something was wrong here, and he didn’t like the fact that Penemue was resisting going to the station.

  “Sorry. Don’t move, Jackson. I’ll be right back.” He turned, thrusting one hand under his jacket and onto the grip of his pistol, and began to walk toward the street. He hoped his car was still intact.

  The earth began to jolt again. One of the dig lights shifted, its wide beam passing over Clancy as it rolled to a new position.

  He turned, pulling his pistol free, expecting to find Penemue lunging for him, but the provost’s back was turned as he stared at the field.

  Clancy followed the man’s gaze, his throat tightening.

  Something was pushing its way through the night sky—the dirt—the very light beams that crossed the ruined field. The stars spun, the earth quaked, and the air split, revealing a multitude of multicolored, pulsing, floating monsters that put the earlier snake-creatures to shame with their grotesquerie.

  “Oh, shit.” Clancy took two steps to the left, to avoid hitting Penemue, and began firing with terrified abandon.

  XVI

  The glass display cases had broken, and Todd envied Jack Langthorn his hard-soled cowboy boots and Andy Markham his sturdy running sneakers. His own Italian loafers weren’t designed for stepping on broken gla
ss. He could still feel pain. Usually pain didn’t bother him—feeling anything was better than feeling nothing—but tonight he didn’t have time for distractions. The heaviness he’d felt hanging over campus all autumn had reached its crisis point, and thousands of possible futures frothed around him, seeking a new state of equilibrium.

  “Are you looking for anything in particular?” Markham asked. He’d found a candle in the rubble, part of one of the displays, and was lighting it with Jack’s lighter.

  “I suspect those bones were buried in the Gudruns’ time,” Todd said, looking around. “I’d like to know why.”

  “I take it you don’t figure that was the family graveyard,” Jack said.

  “I think it was a sacrificial garden.”

  “Here.” Markham handed him the candle in a pewter candlestick. “Sacrifice to what, Edward?”

  “Maybe one of the old gods. The Gudruns were Norwegian?”

  “You’re not going to tell me they were sacrificing to Odin, are you?”

  Todd shrugged, leaning over a jumble of household goods and carefully moving them around. “I don’t know. We’ll have a better idea when Amon returns.”

  The fallen items seemed mundane enough: dishes and cups and knick-knacks, some of them apparently brought over from the old country. He stepped over the mess and continued looking.

  “Hand me my lighter, would you?” he heard Jack ask. The two men began a back-and-forth, something about smoking and health, and Todd tuned them out, walking deeper into the attic. His impressions of the available probabilities were growing increasingly unclear. All he was going on now was instinct.

  He didn’t even know what he was looking for. He just knew that he’d recognize it when he saw it.

  Another bookshelf had tilted over in the back of the attic, a barrister-style glass-fronted unit that hung open. Its collection of leather- and cloth-bound books had spilled onto the floor. Todd crouched, setting the candle to one side, and inspected the titles in its flickering light.