THE TWO ELDER gods stood facing each other across the severed stumps perched on the limestone altar. Blood soaked the white-green stone, turning it dark as they glared at each other. Cthulhu loomed from floor to ceiling, hunched over gigantic knees, his colossal, stone-crushing knuckles cracking the rock underneath him. He breathed through gills the size of ship sails under a tangled nest of wriggling tentacles where a mouth should have been, and it moved the air inside the entire chamber in dank, lagoon-moist drafts.
The Man in Black looked like a wisp in comparison, a tiny slip of a figure next to the massive sea god. He stood in his fluttering coat, thin blade in his red right hand.
Then he shifted, and everything changed.
The Man in Black looked the same, but suddenly he was different. His presence expanded between one eye blink and the next, growing into something that pressed against the magick under my skin. He was the Heart of Darkness, the Lord of Nightmares, the original Suicide King.
He was the Crawling Chaos in all his terrible glory.
Daniel scurried next to me. His voice was still thready with pain. “What do we do?”
“Be very, very quiet,” I whispered.
“’Cause we’re hunting wabbits?”
I shook my head. “We are the rabbits.”
“Good point.”
Cthulhu shifted, and more of the ceiling crumbled against his winged back, dust falling across shoulders like mountains, sticking to damp, sea-god skin. His voice was the sounding of cloister bells inside my head, loud but hollow, warning of danger.
NEPHEW.
“Uncle.” The Man in Black gave a small nod, lips pulled into a grin.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
“You are free from your prison, Lord of R’lyeh.”
BECAUSE OF YOUR ACOLYTE.
The Man in Black tilted his head. “You are welcome. Indebted, but welcome.”
Cthulhu shifted.
IT WAS NOT AT YOUR HAND.
“She is my hand. She bears my Mark.”
The symbol in my palm flared hotter as he said it. I bristled inside but stayed quiet.
Cthulhu shook his head, and the cavern vibrated.
HER POWER IS HER OWN. NO DEBT IS OWED TO YOU.
His massive head turned slightly, red orb of an eye looking directly at me. Under his gaze, my magick began to bubble and boil. My skin flushed fever-hot, and it took every ounce of control to not squirm, to not turn away and hide from the weight of that awful, crimson eye.
The Man in Black lunged forward, coat flaring around him with a snap, his saturnine face pulled into a snarl exposing long, jagged shark teeth. “She is my Acolyte. What is hers is mine by right of possession.”
The implication of that struck me like a fist. My hand reached back, falling on Daniel’s leg. He was mine. No one else’s.
Mine and mine alone.
Cthulhu turned toward the Man in Black.
SHE ONLY FOLLOWS YOU BECAUSE SHE DOES NOT KNOW THE TRUTH.
“My truth is her truth, Deep Dweller,” he spat.
NOT FOR LONG, PRINCE OF LIES.
Cthulhu didn’t move as his mind crashed into mine like a tsunami, sweeping me under and washing me away into a riptide of darkness.