THE ROOM SWIRLED, tilting and then locking into place. In my eyes it looked like two films playing at the same time, overlapping each other.
I could still see the room. All the furniture looked the same, but distorted, my new vision twisting the perspective and opening the space around me, bringing some things closer, pushing some things further away, and melding them all in a funhouse-mirror version of reality. The people in line were all glowing pockets of light, threaded through with tendrils of poison-green energy that twisted around them like mistletoe choking the life from an oak tree.
Nyarlathotep stood next to me, still tall and dark and imposing, but his true form was wrapped around him like a ghost image. I could see it dimly, superimposed over his human guise like a swirling, tentacle-laden illusion.
Movement from the bed made me turn.
The woman still lay there, still sprawled obscenely on the soiled mattress—but now, now I could see her true form.
She was grotesquely female, still long limbed, but her flesh was now tinged blue with decomposition, as if she’d been drowned and dead for days. A vertical slash of mouth ran from brow to chin, two wide yellow eyes set deep on each side. They glowed sulfurically, casting shadows down her corpulent form. Her hair writhed across the mattress under her head like a nest of trapped snakes.
My eyes traveled down Ashtoreth’s body, taking in the puckered sacks of breasts that ran down her rib cage like infected udders. Horrible fascination made me look, made me see the thatch of wriggling, twisting fibrils above a gnashing, tooth-filled cavity that nested between swaying, blubbery thighs.
I shut my eyes, scrubbing my raw, wounded palm on the front of my hoodie, trying desperately to shut off the Sight.
When I opened them, the world had slid back to normal.
Thank God.
The line of people had turned around and was silently shuffling out of the room. The body of the Asian man was gone, nothing left behind but a dark stain on the carpet. I pushed his death out of my mind.
Get through this. This right here and right now.
The Man in Black stood at the end of the bed, hands in the pockets of his rustling, restless coat. The sword was gone again. Daniel hovered near me, not touching but close enough to. Ashtoreth still lay on the bed. Flame burned blue-bright from her fingertips, touching the end of a broken glass tube held to chapped lips. She sucked hard on the crack pipe, dirty gray smoke billowing out of her mouth and swirling around her face. A sticky-sweet smell crawled through the air, rippling the back of my throat.
I had to ask. I couldn’t help myself. “What are you?”
She laughed, more smoke streaming out of her mouth. “Child, I am everything you desire. I am Ashtoreth.” She sucked on the end of the crack pipe, the rock inside flaring the dark orange of a dying sun. Her mouth on the pipe made a wet hissing noise as lip skin sizzled on butane-heated glass, and her right eye shuttered up and down and up and down in a mad twitch as the noxious smoke did its work. She exhaled her next words in a cloud of poison.
“I am the reason men kill each other and women debase themselves. I am the flicker in the night, the moment of comfort. I am the reason to live or the excuse to die. Your kind have named me the Whore of Babylon, the Scarlet Harlot, Aphrodite, Ishtar, and Lilith.” She smiled a haughty, black-gummed smile. “I am everything woman. I am the Goddess of Love.”
The arrogance of it struck me like a blow. Everything I desire? Everything woman? I lashed out. “You look like a two-bit crack whore to me.”
Ashtoreth turned to the Man in Black. “Oh, she has fire in her belly, this one does! There’s an anger inside her that will bite like a serpent if poked and prodded too much.” She wriggled, sitting up on the mattress. It squelched underneath her, and my stomach twisted. “You should give her to me. With her Sight, there are so many things I could show her.”
“She is mine. I will not share.”
Anger flared inside me at the possessive tone used by the Man in Black. Before I could protest, Ashtoreth turned her eyes toward Daniel. The look on her face hit me like a splash of ice water: a look of raw desire, of naked lust.
A look of hunger.
“Give me the boy, then, he’s ready to partake of my gifts. Ripe for the plucking, that one is. Never known a woman, and he’s long overdue.” Her hand dipped low, slithering over jutting hipbones to move between her thighs. I kept my eyes pinned to the glowing crack pipe still hovering around Ashtoreth’s angular, pock-marked face. After what I had Seen, I did not want to watch what she did with her hand.
The Man in Black shook his head. “He is also mine.”
“He’s a worshiper.” Ashtoreth’s voice was haughty, dismissive. “He can be easily replaced. You took one of mine and sent the others away. The use of yours would place us on even ground.”
Nyarlathotep shook his head. “But we are not equals. I am the Crawling Chaos, and you are a filthy, worn-out receptacle.”
Fury flashed across Ashtoreth’s face, spilling out in a snarl. “This is still my lair, still my place of power!”
“Fear drives people further than lust does.”
The Whore Goddess rose to her knees. The mattress suctioned off her back, wet linen peeling slowly from her skin. Bedsores the size of my palm were slapped across her back and buttocks. Heavy breasts swung left and right, fwapping every time they impacted against her waist, punctuating her shrill and venomous voice.
“Love drives humans to overcome fear!”
The Man in Black was beside the bed in a blink, red right hand clamped around Ashtoreth’s throat. He pulled her close, lifting her, making her dangle in front of him. Her dark eyes bulged from the pressure of that skinless right hand.
The Man in Black curled his lips into a sneer. “You have not inspired love for a very long time. You have fallen far, O mighty Ashtoreth.” He flung her on the bed. She bounced into her hollow with a wet slap. “And you would do well to remember your place.”
Ashtoreth crumpled on the soiled mattress. Locks of greasy hair hung over her face. She didn’t brush them aside as she brought the broken stem of glass she still held up to her cracked, chapped lips. She stopped, one eye squinting through her lank hair at the crack pipe. It was empty.
A tear shimmered, spilling out and tracking down the dirty cheek of the goddess.
I felt sorry for her. Even after Seeing her true form and knowing what she was … I couldn’t help it.
Pity drove through me in a quick stab, making me move forward. “You said she could point us on our way. Can we get that over with?”
The Man in Black turned. He smiled his shark-toothed smile. “Ah, Acolyte, so eager to run into the fray. Yes, let’s get this over with.” He pointed at Ashtoreth. “Do you know why I have come here?”
Ashtoreth shook her head, crack pipe clenched in her hand. “You are hunting your kind. What you have done fills the Void with screams. But as you have said, I am not of your ilk. You can’t be hunting me. I have nothing to do with you or your kind, elder god.”
The Dark Man sat on the edge of the bed. His coat rustled. Ashtoreth tensed, shying away like a dog that’s been beaten. “But, little goddess, you do have something I need.”
Her voice was a hoarse choke. “What could that be?”
“You have the ability to seek out those who desire, and my brethren desire this world more than anything. They lust after it with everything they are.”
Ashtoreth looked away. “I can feel their appetite.”
“I want that ability.”
“You know I cannot grant you my gifts, Son of Azathoth.”
“No, little goddess,” the Midnight Man said with a smile, “but you can give them to my Acolyte.”