“YOU ARE TOO late, Acolyte. The deed is done.”
My eyes shot to Daniel. He lay as still as the flat, gray stone underneath him. Not moving. Not that I could see.
My heart stopped.
All the strength ran from my legs like water.
I stumbled.
Oh God, please no. Please don’t let this be true.
Pushing from within, I sent my magick down the line between us, the connection I’d established earlier. It felt like swimming through sludge, the air thick with resistance to my magick. I shoved, the effort tearing something loose deep inside me, looking for him at the other end.
buh-bump
.
buh-bump
.
There.
Faint, nearly indistinguishable from the rush of blood in my ears, I found his heartbeat. It threaded into my hearing, a tiny pitter-pat of hope. I clutched at it, dragging it to me as I tried to push magick down the line to it, to send mystical strength from me to him. My soul breathed out:
Live.
The collar clenched, cutting into my trachea in a hard, bruising line. I ignored it, pushing.
The heartbeat grew stronger, steadier, even if it sounded hollow in my ears, as if it were trapped in an empty house.
The Man in Black stepped between me and Daniel. My magick crashed against him, breaking and spilling to the side, as ineffectual as saltwater.
I cleared my throat and lifted my face. “He’s still alive.”
“For the moment.” He raised his hand, his human one, to his face. His stomach rolled and he began to retch and heave, his throat jerking in time with the hitch of his navel. A sound like flesh ripping tore itself out of his mouth, his jaw dropping to spit something hard and glistening into his hand. Rolling it across his palm, he caught it and held it between two fingers.
It was a ring. A gold circle holding a chartreuse gemstone that cast a faint lime colored highlight on the yellow metal.
He smiled. “However, I hold what truly makes him human.” He slipped the ring onto the third finger of his red right hand. “Without this essence, the substance of his … personality … he will fade into the eternal night where I will wait to reap him. I will cast him into the land of Nightmare, and he will dwell in the house of this Lord forever and ever. Amen.”
“Give. That. Back.” Pain shot through my jaw, my teeth clenched hard enough to grind in my ears.
He stepped back, his arms falling wide and to his sides. “Come. Take it if you can, Acolyte.”
I stepped forward, pushing my magick to call the Aqedah to my hand. The knife slapped into my palm, flying from wherever it had landed when Nyarlathotep drove me into the ground. The connection clicked immediately, punching my magick like a closed fist. I realized the knife had a measure of magick imbedded in its ancient iron. It hummed against my Mark, and I pulled, drawing the magick out and into myself. Shockwaves of power rippled through me, riding on my anger. It spread inside me, settling into a flat, hard place in my mind, the same flat, hard place I had found in my training.
I knew how to fight, and for Daniel’s life I would.
“I’m not your goddamned Acolyte.”
His lips pulled back, thinner, straighter, revealing interlocking shark teeth as he loomed over me. “Then you are food.”
“Come and choke on it, you evil bastard,” I snarled.
He fell on me.