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  He exploded backward, twisting and writhing around the blade that now jutted from his ribs. Hot-pink etheric energy boiled from the gash, leaking around the magick knife. He screamed, howling in pain and anger. His red right hand scrabbled at the knife handle, trying to pull it free.

  That’s when the coat fell on him.

  It dropped from above us, slapping itself around the Man in Black. For one horrible second, I thought it would try to rescue him, to save its master, betraying me. Then the scrap around my leg throbbed and the song in my head roared to a crescendo and I felt, I knew, the coat was on my side.

  It attacked with all the hatred and anger built over centuries of abuse at the hands of Nyarlathotep, fighting with all its strength. The chaos god ripped at it, his body transforming into anything it could, one form flowing to another, flowing to yet another, all deadly with fangs and claws and stingers. Nightmare versions of tiger, wolf, spider, scorpion, and shapes so alien my eyes couldn’t translate them.

  The coat shrieked in my head as it was torn to pieces.

  My head swam as the coat poured information through our connection, gifting me with knowledge as it sacrificed itself.

  The Man in Black had been weakened.

  He’d used a lot of power fighting the Sushi Priest and then Cthulhu. He depended on the coat to act as a battery, draining its magick to fuel his own, and now the coat in its rebellion had cut that off.

  There was a chance.

  A tiny, tiny chance.

  I shoved myself, staggering, to my feet.

  The Man in Black didn’t see me, too busy trying to shapeshift into something that could defeat the coat.

  He didn’t see my hand grab the handle of the knife that still stuck from the side of his body.

  But he felt it when I yanked it out and rammed it into his chest, twisting the blade as I did. The point slipped in, the blade sinking to the hilt, stopping as it hit something hard that jarred it to a stop. I felt the knife slice through one of his hearts, the main part of him, felt it as the alien, evil heart continued to convulse around the blade in my hand. Magick burst out over me in a sickly-sweet rush of power.

  His scream scoured my brain, flash-burning my nerve endings, before he burst into a million tiny flying stinging shapes and disappeared.

  One of the gemstones tumbled to the ground, its tether severed by the impossibly sharp iron blade.

  I stumbled until I reached Daniel and fell, landing across his cold, still body. I lay there weeping atop him, the tattered fragments of an alien song in my mind as the world fell into darkness.

  63

  SMALL NOISES FILLED the silence of the room. The whirr and hiss of a breathing machine, the drip-drop of an IV bag, the low insect buzz of fluorescent lights, and the quiet, turned-down-to-one beep of the heart monitor. Little noises adding up to nothing. Adding up to everything.

  Two knocks.

  The door opened.

  A nurse came in.

  He wasn’t young but had a young face, eyes bright over rounded cheekbones. His name tag read LIONEL. He shuffled in, moving next to the bed, checking the equipment.

  “How is he today?”

  I didn’t move. “The same as yesterday.”

  He looked over at me.

  “How are you today?”

  Lionel cared, he really did.

  “The same as yesterday.” The coat rustled around me, whispering between my body and the chair. The nurse pointed at Daniel. “He looks the same. You? Not so much.”

  Lionel might care, but he’s a bit of an asshole.

  Daniel lay serenely on the bed, oblivious to the tubes and wires running from him, brow uncreased, muscles relaxed, in the coma he’d been in since I awoke on top of him, both of us covered in the shredded remains of the coat: him with just enough life to live, me with just enough magick to wish all three of us to this hospital.

  Lionel moved around the bed, coming toward me. He stopped short when my eyes turned up at him. I didn’t know what he saw there, but he didn’t want to come too close.

  Lionel might’ve been a bit of an asshole, but he was not stupid.

  He held his hands up, palms out, class ring twinkling in the low light. Started to speak, stopped.

  “It’s hard to talk to you when I don’t know your name.”

  “It hasn’t stopped you yet.” No names was safer. Let Daniel be a John Doe, and I’d be Jane. Names had too much power in the world I now knew existed. So far the case worker for the hospital bought my lack of memory about my identity and his. It had taken a little push of magick to fuzz her mind, but for now, Daniel received treatment and I pretty much got left alone to be by his bed.

  It wouldn’t last.

  But while it did, Lionel could just be all right without a name to call me.

  “That’s fair.” He leaned against the end of Daniel’s bed. “You should get out. Go outside and breathe non-recycled air. You don’t have to go far, but you should go somewhere.”

  I didn’t say anything. We’d done this dance before.

  He moved to the bed, checking Daniel’s vitals. He kept talking while he lifted Daniel’s wrist and took his pulse. I didn’t know why he did that; the machine right behind him blipped out Daniel’s heartbeat. “You’ve been here for two weeks. He appreciates it, down where he still knows what’s going on, he does, but there’s nothing you can do here. Don’t you have someone to call? A job to check in with? Wouldn’t you like to sleep in your own bed, shower in your own bathroom?”

  I didn’t care about any of that. I only wanted Daniel to be healed. Even if he hated me for dragging him into the mess with the Man in Black, even if he didn’t remember me, I wanted him to be the Daniel he was before.

  I stood. The coat flared around me, not healed, but healed enough.

  Just like me.

  Lionel jumped.

  “You’re right. I have to go out.” My hands soothed the coat, its voice in my head cooing. I ran my finger under the collar around my neck, shifting it to a more comfortable place. Magick thrummed inside me, vibrating my bones as it came to life. It had grown, recharging in the last several days. “I might be gone for a while.”

  “If he wakes up, I’ll tell him you’ll be right back.”

  He wouldn’t wake up.

  Not without my help.

  There was one thing I could do for Daniel. One thing that could restore him.

  I stepped to the bedside.

  His life force had been locked in a ring, a talisman last seen on the skinless finger of a red right hand.

  I leaned down, my lips close to Daniel’s face.

  I had the magick inside me to find things.

  I kissed him gently on the forehead, his skin cool under the warmth of my lips.

  I was going to find that ring.

  I straightened, turned, and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

  And I was going to kill the Man in Black.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LEVI BLACK WRITES from the outskirts of Atlanta. Born and raised in the South, he lives there now with his wife, who is also a writer. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

 
Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  RED RIGHT HAND

  Copyright © 2016 by James R. Tuck

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Cliff Nielsen

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8248-1 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4668-8760-2 (e-book)

  e-ISBN 9781466887602

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].

  First Edition: July 2016