WE CROSSED THE room, moving quickly. Daniel was pressed close behind me, the Man in Black sweeping along behind him, both of them following me as I followed the tug of magick in my stomach. None of the diners looked up at us. They continued their silent meals and their wordless conversations, and we passed them by like wind through the grass.
My eyes kept sliding to the left and the right, staring as I passed. One lady lifted a pair of chopsticks, holding a piece of squid nigiri at its end. She drew it to her mouth, lips painted nearly neon pink parting as the morsel drew near, teeth opening to accept the bite.
It squirmed.
Tiny tentacles zipped out, stretching into her mouth, minuscule suckers latching on the soft flesh inside her lips and cheeks. The miniature kraken heaved and pulled, lurching off the chopsticks and into her open mouth. Her lips closed around one tiny suckered appendage that slithered in after the rest of the creature with a slurp. Her eyelids fluttered as she chewed. Black ink trickled from the corners of her lips, running down her chin to hang in a fat droplet off her jaw. Her date lifted a finger and caught it.
I kept walking as he drew the finger to his own lips.
Daniel’s voice came low behind me, but it broke the unnatural silence like a gunshot. “I didn’t think we would ever find a place creepier than the last one. I underestimated us.”
At the sound of his voice the room stopped moving.
Every one of the diners froze like a movie on pause: utensils in midair, mouths open to speak.
As one they all turned in our direction.
ACOLYTE, WE NEED TO GET PAST THIS ROOM.
The Man in Black’s voice rolled through my mind. I picked up my pace, stepping quicker. In front of me were two swinging doors that looked as if they would lead to the kitchen if this were a restaurant instead of a nightmare temple. The magick inside me pulled toward them, the urgency to get out of this room riding hard on my back.
The diners were rising from their seats as I hit the doors, shoving them apart in front of me. Daniel and I fell in. The Man in Black stepped through and turned, grabbing one door in each hand. I could see under the arm of his coat, through the doorway. The diners were all up, stalking toward us with hands full of knives, forks, and sharpened chopsticks. Eyes rolled back in their sockets, they peered out through fish-belly-white skeins, blind as glaucoma patients. Runny black liquid drooled from open mouths, smearing lips and chins. Nestled in some of their throats were tiny kraken, spindly suckered appendages waving over their hosts’ blackened tongues. At their feet squirmed a carpet of the tiny tentacled creatures, dinners that had crawled from their plates and now lurched toward us on roiling, rubbery limbs.
The chaos god jerked the doors closed and held them shut with his red right hand. His head dropped, and his voice rose in a guttural mutter that burned across my eardrums.
The coat began to jerk and twitch around him.
A sizzle cut the sound of his voice, an electric buzz of nova flame on metal. Smoke curled around his red right hand where it pressed against the metal swinging doors, glowing a dull orange red like the coals of a long banked fire. He pulled it away as something thumped hard against the other side.
The door held.
Where his hand lifted away, it left behind a black scorched outline and a smooth patch of newly welded metal.
He turned in a flair of ebony coat and smiled a sharp-toothed smile. “That should be entertaining to pass through when I leave.”
“Will they go back to normal when we stop this…” I didn’t know exactly what we were dealing with. A god? A monster? Both? So I went with, “… thing?”
He shook his head. “Their minds will never be the same. Madness will take them, and they will end their lives as gibbering idiots.”
“So, serving you guys has a really shitty retirement package.” Daniel shook his head. “Glad I got out of that rat race.” His hand found mine.
“The night is still young, Daniel Alexander Langford.”
The Knife of Abraham spun in my fingers, blade swinging around so that I held the handle in my fist, back and low, ready to rip up, to strike, to gut a chaos god. “Is that a threat?”
Nyarlathotep looked down at me, red right hand hidden in the folds of his coat. “I have no need to threaten him, Acolyte.”
“Then what the hell are you doing?”
“Telling the truth.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I always speak the truth.”
The edge of sarcasm cut into my voice. “And you wouldn’t lie about that.”
“I am the Crawling Chaos. I have no need to lie.” One sleek eyebrow arched up. “Have you not found truth to be the most chaotic force in your world?”
I stopped cold.
He was right. Truth could injure. Truth could maim. Truth could destroy. My mind flashed backward, moving through time. Their lawyers had told the truth. I did have a drink that night. I had worn a skirt. I never said no.
They didn’t care that my drink had been one mouthful of beer tried and spit out as disgusting, that my skirt hem had hit my ankles, or that I had screamed stop and don’t.
The Crawling Chaos was right.
Truth was absolutely destructive.