ECTOPLASM, SEMISOLID AND shiny-slick, leaked from Daniel’s eye sockets, his nostrils, and his silent-screaming mouth. It curled through the moonlight, twisting upward and sashaying its way into Nyarlathotep’s open maw. Long, spindly legs worked, rolling the ethereal substance into a ball like cotton candy, feeding it between grasping pincer mandibles. The round head of this grotesque still looked like the Man in Black, his features slipped and twisted on a sphere of a head. The mandible mouth still held his shark-toothed grin, now sunken deep inside, gnashing and chewing Daniel’s essence. The black-cosmos eyes had slid around and now sat on the outside of the skin, socket-less and bulging, ringed about with replicas of themselves until they formed an all-seeing crown of unblinking, moist orbs.
Thick hairs like splinters of volcanic glass prickled off the many-jointed legs plucking the web of darkness he squatted on, the strands pressed tightly against his hard carapace, highlighted in crimson as the handprint on his abdomen beat like a heart. The rest of him formed an unrelieved spot of eternal darkness, a black hole eating the glare of the moon above as he drank down Daniel.
My feet pounded the grassy hillside, heels slipping in the midnight dew that coated each blade, threatening to twist my ankles, working against me, trying to trip me down the hill to crack my fragile, human skull against one of the stones.
The hill leveled as I reached the standing stones, still running with all my strength, still running to save Daniel.
Still running to save my love.
I crossed the threshold of the stone circle and leapt.
I pushed with all I had, all the power in my legs and all the magick inside me. The collar around my throat burned ice cold against my skin as it tightened. The ground fell away, my stomach turning over. I rose, stretching toward the hanging black tatters strung between the stones, my fingers desperately clawing out to grab something, anything I could use to pull myself up.
And knew I wasn’t going to make it.
My wish sprang from desperation.
Take me there.
Etheric energy burst inside me as the wish whipped my magick into a frenzy. It pushed out under my shoulder blades in a sweep of ache, unfurling behind me.
Pull.
Drag.
Lift.
Wings of eldritch energy bore me through the air. I rose in a jerk, between the strands of the web. The tatters of it fluttered up, stretching, reaching for me, not to pull me back but to brush my skin in comfort.
The web was the coat, the still-living skin of an archangel shredded and mangled and torn to appease the will of its master.
It barely touched me as I passed through it, the tattered tips just a whisper against my skin. Even through the thrilling wonder of flight, its alien singsong broke through, making a connection.
The coat wanted me.
The song faded to an echo as I swept through the night, still lightly hollow in my head.
I had just enough time to think one discordant thought:
This is absolutely amazing.
My feet touched down on the web, and the coat latched on, wrapping my ankles in tendrils until I stabilized, standing as if on level ground.
The Spider God swung up, skittering to face me, then he spun, lowered himself, and pounced.
He fell in a blur of ebon lightning, crashing into me, spider legs clutching my body. The magick of my wings shredded and we fell to earth with a flash and a crash like a pair of meteors locked together. He drove me to the ground, and pain blasted me from heel to crown in one hardpan slap.
My eyes were locked open. I could see, but I couldn’t move, every muscle clenched around my spasming diaphragm. It cramped inside me, struggling to make my abdomen move, to expand my chest, desperately trying to draw oxygen into my empty, deflated lungs.
The Spider God swayed above me, arachnid legs shoved into the ground all around me, arachnid abdomen thrusting, thrusting, thrusting toward me like a wasp trying to plant its stinger, arachnid mouth clicking and clacking and dripping greenish spider saliva across my chest, my throat, my lips.
My lungs hitched. Once. Twice. Trying to kick over, to catch, to start.
Hard-edged, brittle oxygen ripped into them as the Spider God pushed himself back, stretching upward as he transformed, transmuted, transmogrified into the Man in Black. Spider legs shortened and thickened, becoming arms; black spiky hairs pulled into the hard shell of the exoskeleton with long, creaking squeaks of glass rubbing glass. His swollen abdomen deflated like a burst bladder, collapsing into itself to hang flaccid and folded in disarray around his now-human body, before drawing up and withering into the shape of sleek muscles. His chest, his perfectly carved sternum, split like an unstitched seam and let slip out the two gemstones containing the essences of the gods we’d defeated earlier. They hung around his neck like two brightly colored nooses. The globe of his head broke, denting and creasing into the shape of a face. The skin holding his features side-slipped around, twisting into place like latex across a greased surface. Black orb eyes popped back into their sockets, and he blinked rapidly, lids fluttering.
Holding his hands out to his sides, one dusky-skinned and perfect, one skinless, red, and raw, he stood in sinister, naked glory.
My muscles broke their mortal lock, turning liquid and movable as he settled into his form.
I scrambled backward.
He opened his eyes and smiled.