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.