THE REAL WORLD smashed into me like the fist of God. I found myself sprawling on the linoleum of my kitchen, feeling as though someone had beaten me. My throat was raw and so was my mind; the images of what I had seen were flash-burned across the theater of my brain like the afterimages of a strobe effect. My stomach twisted, trying to tie itself into a knot, acid boiling rapidly.
I looked up. The Man in Black was on his feet, staring down at me. The coat unfurled at the bottom, slinking across the floor to lightly brush my arm. I shook it off before it could start singing in my brain.
“What. The hell. Was that?”
“That is what your world will be if we do not stop my kith and kin from crossing over.” He knelt, coat flaring out around him. “Once an elder god fully manifests in this realm, they will bring their offspring and their allies. The martial strength of the human race will be the flailing of infants before lions, and you will be destroyed.”
Pushing off the floor, I scrambled to my feet. My knees shook, and so did my hands. At least I was standing. “Why did you show me that?”
He rose in a column of ebony. “That was your gift at work. You Saw what was necessary for you to understand the enormity of the task at hand.”
“Do you have any idea what just went through my brain?” Anger flared as echoes of the images I had seen bounced behind my eyes.
“It was only a pale sliver of the horror that will be visited on this world if we do not finish our task.” He flickered, a filmstrip hitting a snag, and then he was sitting back in the chair, coffee cup in his red right hand. I didn’t see him move. One second he stood in front of me, the next he sat across the room. He indicated the empty chair with a flourish of his normal hand. “Sit, Acolyte. I have one more thing we should discuss.”
Anger hummed inside me. My hand fell to the handle of the Aqedah stuck through my belt. It felt right and natural for the handle to be in my palm. “If you try anything like that again, I’ll pull this knife and take my chances. I’m sick of you just demanding and casting spells to make me do what you want. It ends now.”
I expected him to get angry, to rise in a roll of black coat and sorcerous wrath and have it out with me there in the kitchen. I was ready for it, hand on the magick knife, body tense, my own magick pumping through my veins and riding a flash flood of adrenaline. My teeth hurt as I snarled. I was ready to fight and ready to die.
The Man in Black chuckled.
“This is why I have fallen in love with your race. Given an inkling of power, you go instantly to war. You are perfect instruments of chaos, ready to take life, the thing you hold most precious in yourself, from another. You ruin the world that gives you sustenance and believe yourselves immortal while fearing your own death every moment. I could not have created you more perfectly myself. It warms my heart.” He smiled, sharp-pointed and wide. “All of them.”
I wasn’t expecting humor. It took me by surprise, and I faltered, taking a step back.
He motioned to the chair again. “Sit. I have no threats and no incantations, simply an offer that you need to hear, Charlotte Tristan Moore.”
My fury fell away, slipping off like scales, but I wasn’t ready to simply take the chair and parley. I kept my feet, and I kept my hand on the knife. “First, tell me why you won’t let Daniel go. I need a reason.”
I loved him. I had to try.
“You are familiar with the concept that gods gain power from their worshipers.”
He didn’t phrase it as a question, but I answered anyway. “Yeah, Neil Gaiman covered that idea. A lot.”
“The concept holds true in this case. Your magick is inside you, but it needs a catalyst, an outside power source for you to use it. His feelings for you make him that catalyst.”
An image of Daniel outside the hospital earlier filled my head. He had been sick and weak. My mind flashed forward to him after teleporting to that room, the room with those animals. In my memory he was pale, his skin washed out and his hands shaking. Flash forward again to him here at the table, unable to sit up straight, looking like death warmed over.
It all fell into place, crashing inside me like Tetris played with twelve-ton stones.
“You bastard.” My voice was low and harsh. “Every time I use magick, it steals some of his life. You knew, and you waited until now to tell me?” My hand tightened on the knife.
“It is the way magick works, Acolyte.”
“Not anymore. Not him.” The knife slid out of my belt. “Let. Him. Go.”
The Man in Black set down his coffee cup, red right hand slipping under the flap of his coat. “You should hear my offer before you do something rash.”
“Let him go.”
He stood. “I can free you from the memory of what happened, Charlotte Tristan Moore. I can wipe it from your mind as if it never occurred.”
I said nothing, just stared at him. His coat rustled, but he was motionless, as if he had been carved from obsidian and sandalwood.
He continued. “You need never again flash back to that night. You can be free of the fear, the anger, the pain you have carried with you for a decade now, and it will require only one thing of you.”
We stared at each other. I didn’t know what my face looked like, but his was perfectly blank, Semitic features closed and dark.
Free.
He offered me freedom from a prison I’d been locked in for nearly half my life. Somewhere deep in my heart a yearning for that sprang up. To not spend my entire life worrying about every man I met, to not have nights when I couldn’t sleep in the bed because of the feel of the mattress underneath me. To not have every ache or pain, every headache, be an instant reminder of how I’d been hurt so long ago.
And I would only have to sacrifice Daniel for it.
…
It was too much.
I opened my mouth, not sure what I would say. Daniel’s voice cut me off before I could speak.
“Name your price, and we’ll pay it.” He stepped into the room. “Master.”
The Man in Black smiled.
Oh, Daniel, what did you just do?