MASON STOOD IN the center of the ward.
Completely naked.
The fire had burned away his scrubs, leaving him bare-skinned and nude except for the amulet that lay on his chest. The fire had also scorched away every hair from every follicle, leaving him bald, slick looking, alien without the markers of hair and eyebrows all humans shared. I looked; I had to, my eyes drawn inexorably downward, pulled the same way they’d been with Ashtoreth.
He wasn’t human between his legs.
What hung there was a maze of serpentine appendages, twisted and contorted, a balloon of intestine in the hands of a psychotic clown.
Horror congealed in the pit of my stomach.
A scalpel glittered in Mason’s hand. He’d used it to carve his own skin with a sigil that looked eerily like the one on my palm. Blood sheeted down his hairless body, pooling in the hollows and dips, running from the arcane symbol sliced into his chest. Arms out, hips and shoulders loose-jointed, he began to dance in place, eyes wild and swirling in their sockets.
Daniel spoke beside me. “Why is he acting like a marionette in the hands of an epileptic?”
I shrugged and looked over at the Man in Black.
The chaos god also shrugged. “He casts a working.”
“You’re using words like we know what they mean again,” I said.
He sighed. Did I test his patience? If so, good. “The dance he performs will gather magick to power a spell.”
I thought about it. “Why can’t I feel anything? Ever since you gave me this”—I held up my Mark—“whenever hoodoo voodoo happens, I can feel it inside me. I feel nothing right now.”
The Man in Black didn’t answer. Instead, he thrust his sword toward Mason.
The magick running down the blade flung itself off, stretching and flying through the air. It crashed against some invisible barrier around the priest in a sputtering of electric blue sorcery. The flash washed my eyesight with the vision of writhing magick, strands of it twisting like a bed of snakes. It lasted only a split second, and then it was gone, marring my ability to see with black, spotty ghost images.
“Well, that failed spectacularly.” I didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
The Man in Black shrugged. “He is warded. It will open when he finishes the ritual and releases the magick. Then he will be vulnerable once more.”
“Can’t you break the ward?”
“My coat will not have the strength until it recovers.”
I felt the song of the coat tickle the edge of my brain. It felt like the whimper of a beat dog. I shook my head to clear it.
Daniel moved to my left, the side without the still-burning firebrand. He looked over at Nyarlathotep. “What do we do next?”
“We see what spell he is casting, and then we respond accordingly.”
Daniel nodded. “I’ll find a weapon.”
He moved away, and I watched him. His movement had a stilted, halting quality, as if he suffered pain from an old injury. I’d watched him a lot in the last few months as we’d gotten to know each other. Normally, he moved with the grace of a former athlete who still kept in shape, every action fluid and easy. That was broken now. His movements were stiff, slower than they had been.
The rustle of Nyarlathotep’s coat as he stepped close drew my eye away from Daniel.
The Man in Black’s voice was low, nearly a murmur when he spoke. “I see concern in your eyes for him.”
I bristled at his intimate tone. “Yeah, so?”
“It is … interesting that you care so much for him.”
“One of us has to.”
One sharply sculpted eyebrow arched. “I care for those who worship me, Acolyte.”
Then you must hate me.
What I said was: “He doesn’t really worship you. That’s just your magick brainwashing. He’s a Christian. That’s why he stood up to you earlier.”
“Oh, Acolyte, you are so naive.” His mouth twitched, amusement glittering in those midnight eyes. “He does truly worship the Christ, but he risked my wrath over you.”
For me?
“What do you mean?”
“His feelings for you are the strength he draws from to slip my yoke.”
I said nothing, my eyes sliding over to Daniel. He pulled the bags off another IV pole.
“He will not survive whatever occurs next without my protection. He will be the lamb to this slaughter.” The Man in Black’s voice slithered into my head, insidiously rubbing across my brain like rough velvet. “Stop fighting me at every turn, and I will grant that protection.”
Son of a bitch.
“Send him away, and I’ll cooperate without a fuss,” I counteroffered.
He chuckled. “And lose my bargaining chip? I think not. Besides, Acolyte, you would not want me to send him anywhere I can take him. The gibbering horrors there would break his mind and flay his soul.” He shook his head. “He stays with us and fights, you behave, and he lives through this. That is the only bargain on the table.”
I felt just as trapped as I had been before. I had no choice, not really, not one that mattered. I either agreed and kept Daniel safe for now, or I left him on his own.
I felt my lip curl.
Manipulative son of a bitch.
My words came through gritted teeth. “If you let him get hurt, I will turn on you like a rabid dog.”
“I would expect nothing less from you, Charlotte Tristan Moore.” He smiled. “Nothing less indeed.”
“Stop using my full name.”
Daniel came back holding a four-foot section of IV pole in his hands. His color had improved, and his movements were steadier. He wasn’t back to normal, but he looked better.
His eyes slid from me to the Man in Black and back to me. “What were you two talking about?”
The Man in Black didn’t say anything.
“Strategy,” I said.
“We have a plan?”
“Not as such. Stay close, and be careful.”
He hefted the steel pole, the look on his face determined, brows drawn and his lips set in a hard line. “I’ll be right here beside you.”
“I can take care of myself. You stay near your Master.”
He shook his head, making his shaggy bangs sweep back and forth over his intense green eyes. “He can take care of himself. I’ll watch your back.”
He would get himself killed worrying about me. I needed him to stay close to the Man in Black. I didn’t like it, but it was his best chance for surviving whatever came next.
And something was coming.
Mason had stopped cutting himself and was now gesturing wildly, gore covered hands jerking through the air. The blood from his body lifted, suspended in front of him. It swirled and congealed into a ball of liquid crimson. The air inside his circle of protection crackled with magick that I could now feel like a pulse against my skin.
We didn’t have long.
I pushed Daniel, making him step sideways. “Stay. With. Him.”
Before he could protest again, the air around Mason split like a lightning strike, and a rush of magick spilled out into the room.
The spell buzzed in my eyes, and I watched it arc from the ball of blood in front of Mason. It sizzled into the bodies on the beds around the room. They began to thrash, plastic and metal restraints banging against bedrails in a cacophony. Banging and clanging, crashing metal on metal. The beds jittered, skewing sideways like slow-motion car wrecks. The air tasted metallic and sour on the back of my tongue.
I leaned toward Daniel, near shouting over the noise. “Did you see that?”
His eyes were wide. “I see the octopenis man with no clothes and the spinning disco ball of blood. Is that what you’re talking about?”
“He does not have the Sight, Acolyte. He only sees the natural.” The Man in Black’s voice rang clear over the din, more inside my head than out. “Prepare yourself. The moment is almost at hand.”
The bodies stopped thrashing as if a plug had been pulled.
An avalanche of silence fell, pulling at my eardrums like a vacuum after the assault of noise a second ago. Then a sound I had never heard before began to build. It was a … my mind groped for the right word … a groaning. The sound of something being pulled to the breaking point. The sound of birthing. It made me look at the people in the beds. They weren’t moving, but their stomachs were. Their skin pulsed, undulating like air bladders being inflated and deflated. They expanded, stretching, ripping free of the clothing over them. Each one swelled, road-mapped with throbbing dark blue veins. Every palpitation drew another groan from the body it ripped through, a horrible sound that pulsed through the room, crashing into my mind like an ocean tide. All the patients’ stomachs were now the size of young children crouching over their bodies.
Mason whipped his hands apart and stepped through the ball of enchanted blood. It broke like a bubble, splattering across the tile floor. He screamed across the ward at us. “Now you will see the coming of the glory of Yar Shogura. Bask in his presence, join his unholy flesh, and know the peace of consumption!”
The stomachs ruptured in a shower of gore that rained across the room.