Red Right Hand Read online

  Seconds stretched to minutes and felt as if they had stretched to hours by the time he finished. When the last tether had been cut the man on the bed slumped, spindly limbs falling loose beside him. His breathing stopped mid-inhale, dying stillborn in lungs that no longer worked.

  “You killed him.”

  The Man in Black didn’t look up at me. “I told you he was dead before we arrived.” He waved the knife at the machines around us. “None of these measures were taken to keep him alive.” With a jerk of his shoulder he lifted the thing free from its place inside the man. “They were meant to preserve this.”

  The mass throbbed, wriggling in his grip. Fluid dripped off it, splashing into the puddle inside the empty shell of the man.

  Ploop!

  Ploop!

  Pah-loop!

  Realization dawned on me. “Wait. Are you saying that each of these people has one of those things growing inside them?”

  He stepped away, coat swirling around his legs. “They will be different pieces of the whole, but yes, they all have something similar incubating in their bodies.”

  “Can we save them?”

  His dark, impassive face stared down at me. “We can only save your world.” The knife swept around in his red right hand, indicating the rest of the beds. “These souls are lost.”

  “You don’t sound upset.”

  He shrugged, holding the tumor with its blinking, rolling eye casually in his hand. “Your kind die, Acolyte. You are fragile, delicate, easily broken, and the entire universe is set against you. The only reason you haven’t been snuffed from existence itself is your species’s tenacious ability to cling to the merest flicker of life wherever you find it.”

  “You make that sound like a bad thing.”

  “Not bad. Merely annoying at times.”

  “Why do you keep trying then? Why are you doing all of this if it’s futile?”

  He shook his head. “I never called your existence futile. Weak as you are, your kind succeeded in locking mine on the other side of the universe. Your ancestors survived the Deluge in a boat made of gopher wood and pitch built by a drunkard who had never seen the ocean! You have walked away from the seduction of nuclear annihilation and conquered the edge of space outside your world.”

  He shook the tumor, droplets of fluid spattering the already-wet floor. Leaning over, his voice shifted, rising an octave as he held the tumor like an illustration. “Your kind constantly fouls the plans of beings such as this, a creature so terrible you should wither before it like flowers in a furnace. You fight and you fuck and you carry on with your little lives like a virus the universe cannot shake. You are the purest example of chaos I have found in unspeakable eons.” The smile that parted his face was so white it was a shock, gleaming jaggedly under his hawkish nose. His voice held the fervent rasp of a believer. “I am the Crawling Chaos. I claim you as my own, and none will have you but me.”

  Daniel fell to his knees, hands in the air, his face beatific.

  The conviction of the chaos god echoed over the rhythmic pulse of machinery. I stared at him, looked into those sinister black eyes, and in that moment I had only one thought.

  This is our savior?

  We are totally screwed.

  That’s when the overhead lights flickered then flared, breaking my stare and crucifying my eyesight.

  20

  BLINKING AGAINST THE sensation of ground glass in my eyes I dropped to a crouch, following my training, making myself the smallest target possible. A noise, a crash, the shuffle and thud of many feet spun me on my heel. Things were blurry, my eyes watering as my shocked pupils fought to catch up to the onslaught of now harsh fluorescent light. I found Daniel beside me, feet wide, his hands clenched by his hips. The Man in Black stood where he had before, impassive in his agitated coat.

  At the end of the room the two doors had been thrown wide. Four figures stalked toward us. Three of them were nurses, dressed like the guardian who had tried to stop us. They shuddered as they moved, each of them a white shimmy through harsh light that bounced off polished tile and chrome bedrails.

  They followed a man dressed in pale green scrubs.

  “And so we are welcomed, victims of hospitality and prey of reception standing meekly in the lair of the beast,” the Man in Black said. I could hear the smile on his face even though I wasn’t watching him.

  No, my clearing eyeballs were locked on the leader of the procession toward us.

  He was handsome.

  Stunning.

  Gorgeous.

  Lithe and golden, he moved in a circle of graceful masculinity. Locks of hair flattered a face of planes and angles sculpted by a master. The look in his eyes said he knew my darkest secrets and would gladly help me indulge the most wicked of them. (Only if I wanted to, and, oh God, did I want.) He was temptation personified—no, that wasn’t right, he was sin personified.

  And he took my breath away.

  His voice rolled through the room, through me, and something low and deep inside tightened with a trill of pleasure that nearly made me moan. I bit it back, held it in. The energy, the magick in my belly curled around itself. The golden man’s steps slowed as he spoke. “Lord of Chaos, what has brought you here inside these warded walls?”

  The Man in Black blinked into the space in front of me, long coat trailing behind him. He appeared without moving, red right hand held back and low, stark scarlet against unrelieved black. Its skinless fingers still casually held the knife point down. The other hand still held the mass, which had stopped wriggling and now hung from his grip, unmoving. I could see the eye, glazed under slack lids. “My power has brought me here, Priest of Yar Shogura.”

  The golden doctor-priest’s eyes slid slowly over to me. (Blue, they were blue, the blue of every peaceful day dream I’d ever had.) “I don’t think it was your power that brought you this far. It appears you have a very”—he paused, as if looking for just the right word—“lovely assistant.”

  That place deep inside me purred.

  The Man in Black stuttered through space, suddenly between me and the golden doctor-priest. The connection between us was cut like a fire dashed with ice water. That deep, low spot inside me went cold and empty, hollow. The magick in me uncurled, flipping from seductive to the low burn of anger it had embodied before.

  My head cleared along with the ache behind my navel.

  The golden man had made me feel something I’d never felt before, something stolen and destroyed on that night so many years ago. Something that years of therapy and living had only let me feel the slightest glimmer of recently.

  I looked over at Daniel.

  I looked away.

  I wasn’t ready for this, not yet. Having felt it so real and warm and delicious only for it to be torn away so savagely left me devastated.

  Despair clawed at my mind, scrabbling, trying to worm its way in. I wanted to sink into it, to let the black wash over me and take me under. I could drop down, fall away, fall apart.

  It would be easy.

  That was one choice.

  If this had happened even a year ago I would have given up; I wouldn’t have had the strength to do otherwise.

  Now? Here, today?

  I had to hold it together.

  Things were happening. People needed me.

  Daniel needed me.

  I stood, shaky, but still upright, using my anger as a fuel. Enough of being along for the ride. All night, things had happened to me.

  No more.

  Now, things would happen because of me. Right now, I would hold onto the anger.

  I could fall apart later.

  If I lived through this.

  21

  TIME HAD PASSED.

  Whether seconds or minutes, I didn’t know. Trapped in my own emotions, my own trauma, I looked up and saw that everything had changed.

  Daniel fought on the other side of the room, an IV stand in his hands, shoving it into the razor-toothed maw of a transformed nurse.
The stainless-steel pole clanged against the spinning, slicing, whirlpool of jagged enamel with a horrible racket. The nurse-thing lunged at him, the top of her now-deformed head flapping up and down, bouncing off what used to be shoulders but were now a misshapen hump. Daniel held her off, but she drove him back step by step, closing the distance between them.

  Tightening my grip on the charred stick Nyarlathotep had given me earlier, I started moving toward Daniel. I didn’t know what I would do when I got there, but I had to do something.

  The Man in Black crouched on the floor, coat swirling around him like dragon wings. The black-bladed sword thrust from his red right hand and the Knife of Abraham from the other. A cut across his cheekbone yawned open, trickling something that wasn’t blood. The other two nurses were sprawled away from him, pulling themselves up from the floor at the doctor-priest’s feet.

  He stood over them, finger pointed at the Man in Black. “You have come here to die, Haunter of the Dark. I am Mason, High Priest of Yar Shogura the Unquenchable, Whoremonger of the Flesh, Masticate of Iniquity, and he shall give me the power of your destruction.”

  The Man in Black rose. “I hope Yar Shogura’s next priest is not so talkative.”

  “You won’t have to listen much longer, Spider God, not after I use your eldritch energy to fuel the transition of my lord into this world.”

  Nyarlathotep snarled. “Come and try, fool.”

  Mason pulled an amulet from inside his shirt, a gnarl of thorns on a rope that swirled around something oddly shaped and ivory colored. I couldn’t tell what it was from my angle and distance. His mouth moved, and sound came from his throat, but it wasn’t words and he didn’t speak in a human voice. It blatted across the room and I felt it in my chest, like bass at a rock concert. When the sound ended his hand jerked in a gesture and a bolt of hot-pink energy crackled off his fingers.

  The Man in Black spun to the left to avoid the blast.

  It wasn’t aimed at him.

  The magick struck the mass, which he’d dropped to the floor at some point. The lump of flesh began to smoke and hiss. It bubbled, gas stretching flesh to thin blisters that burst in plumes of foulness. Its skin pulled like taffy, puddling and lurching. Drawing into itself, it shrank into a protoplasmic knot that lay on the floor, jittering.

  It sat like that for a long, drawn-out second.

  Then it exploded.

  Strings of flesh were flung through the air, slapping across the Man in Black, a net of stretchy, melted cancer. He jumped, trying to get away, but it caught him, the gooey web sticking to him, clogging his movement like a sheet of tar. He fought and struggled, the tumor-trap tightening around him, wrapping him in liquid shackles. It dragged him to the floor. The two deformed nurses descended on him with gnashing teeth, jackals to a fallen lion.

  I stopped, torn for a split second between moving toward Daniel or trying to help the Man in Black.

  A sharp tingle started at the base of my skull, an itch of warning.

  I turned to find Mason, the doctor-priest, stalking toward me.

  “Stay back.” I pointed the stick at him.

  “Now why in the world would I do that?” His smile pulled inside me again. “I would love to get to know you better.”

  I kept backing away. “I don’t think so.”

  “You are an Acolyte. I need an Acolyte.” His eyes smoldered. He winked at me. “I swear you would find my yoke so much more … pleasurable than the one you wear now.”

  The word pleasurable echoed off the hollow below my navel, making me want to stop evading and start squirming.

  He had screwed with my head.

  I shoved the stick in my hand toward him. “Back off. Or I’ll use this.”

  He kept coming.

  I tightened my hand around the firebrand. My mind raced, trying to think of how to make it work.

  Ignite! Fire! Combust! Flame on! Incendio!

  My back hit the wall.

  Mason hopped from one foot to the other, capering toward me. “Nowhere else to go, kitten. I shall have you in just a moment.”

  I shook the stick frantically.

  Work, damn you! Come on!

  A thought crashed through my panic. It wasn’t my thought; it belonged to the Man in Black, his voice strained but crystal clear in my mind.

  Use your Mark.

  My Mark? Mason stood only feet away. He’d be on me in a few steps. A dark, cruel look burned in his eyes. I had seen that look before. It didn’t matter that it had been on other faces; it was the same, forever burned in my memory. It was the look of a predator who has just found helpless prey.

  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

  AN 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 a
n 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.