MY SHREDDED EAR throbbed as the cool night air brushed over it. It pulsed on the side of my head, still not hurting, but I could feel it.
“You should lock your door. You never know what might walk in if you do not.”
I glanced at Nyarlathotep. He looked amused standing on the porch beside me, a statue carved from the night. His coat rustled around him, uneasy.
“You know your coat hates you, right?”
The Dark Man chuckled. “It has never forgiven me for filleting it off its original host.”
“What is it?”
“It was an archangel who strayed too far from his appointed territory. Now it is my coat.”
“You skinned an archangel? And you’re trying to convince me you’re the lesser of two evils?”
The Man in Black’s smile gleamed in the shadow of his face. “I never claimed to be lesser.”
I turned from the door, starting down the steps. He moved beside me, matching me step for step. My hip scraped along the handrail. I leaned as far from him as I could, desperate for his coat, the still-living skin, to not brush against me. If the dark god next to me noticed, he gave no indication.
My eyes scanned the short yard that buffered the parking lot from the row of townhouses. Once I made it past the handrails, it would be wide and open.
Hold it together. Remember what Sensei taught you. You’re almost there. Distract him, then make your move and run like hell.
“That’s my car over there.” I pointed across the narrow yard to the parking lot.
Oh, shit.
A slender male figure leaned on the hood of my car. His shoulders looked narrower than normal, with his head down and hands stuffed in pockets. A thick lock of hair curled over his forehead, shadowing his eyes. He looked up as we stepped off the stairs and onto the sidewalk, the streetlight above revealing a clean jawline and a nose slightly crooked from being broken in a wrestling match in high school.
Daniel.
I stopped short.
This was the last thing I needed. Black magick and chaos gods and skinhounds had pushed me to the edge of my ability to cope, but this? This would be too much. I couldn’t deal with Daniel and what had happened earlier, not on top of the rest.
No way.
Nyarlathotep moved on the edge of my vision, reaching for me. I twisted away, needing to not be touched, especially by him.
Daniel walked toward us.
No, dammit, no.
I stepped forward, holding my hands up, moving between Daniel and the Man in Black. “Go home.”
“Charlie,” His voice sounded husky, a raw rasp. Even in the dark I could see the fresh bruise that ran from the collar of his T-shirt and up to his jawline, wide and purple, so solid it looked like paint on his skin.
I guessed I’d gotten him good with that elbow.
He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean…”
“Get out of here. Go.” I shoved my words through clenched teeth. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave.”
I could feel the Man in Black looming behind me. I had to get Daniel away from him, away from this situation. Anger still bubbled in me about earlier, since he’d betrayed my trust, since he had tried to do what he had, but still … he didn’t need to get mixed up in whatever the hell I’d stepped into with Nyarlathotep.
Pain filled his face, concern in his green eyes. He swallowed so he could speak again. “Whatever I did that made you react like that … I didn’t mean it. You gotta believe me.”
I lunged at him. “Get. The. Hell. Away. From. Me.” My hands hit his chest, punctuating each word, shoving him backward. My mind screamed at him.
Go! Leave now, before it’s too late!
I turned away, hoping he would take the hint.
He drew in a sharp breath. “My God! Charlie! What happened to your ear?”
I’d forgotten about my shredded ear.
“It’s fine. It’s nothing.” My hand flew to the side of my face, fingers scrabbling, trying to pull too-short hair over the ruin of my ear. The hair didn’t move, shellacked in place with dried blood that broke and crumbled under my fingertips like cheap dollar-store hair gel.
The Man in Black moved closer, coat fwapping and shushing.
Daniel looked up at Nyarlathotep. His hands clenched into fists and he stepped back, bracing himself. “Who are you?” His eyes flashed in the low light. “Are you the one who hurt her?”
He’s trying to defend me. He’s going to fight for me.
Something surged inside me, the same something that had grown during the last few months with Daniel.
Something that eased the hurt from earlier.
It wrestled against the sure belief that the Man in Black could kill Daniel where he stood.
I had to get him to leave, for his own safety. There was a split second when my head turned selfish and ugly, a throwback to years of looking out for myself.
Leave him. He can be your distraction. Let him deal with the Man in Black, and you can get away, get safe.
I pushed that thought down hard, smothering it before it could take root, before I could seriously consider it. Daniel hadn’t seen what I saw in the kitchen. He thought Nyarlathotep was just human and he would try to fight him.
For me.
I couldn’t cut and run and leave him to be hurt. I just couldn’t.
Before I could do anything, the Man in Black stepped around me, his coat brushing my legs as he passed and raising gooseflesh under my jeans. He lifted his right hand toward Daniel.
The air around us came alive with energy, crackling like it does seconds before a lightning strike. Fear clenched my stomach, and the hornets inside my body began to swarm and buzz, beating inside my skin like pellets in a hailstorm. My hands shook with the magick running wild in my blood.
That awful red hand hung, skinless and raw, in the air between the two men, pointing at Daniel’s face. “Who do you think I am, Daniel Alexander Langford?”
The air split with his voice. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it like a whipcrack.
Daniel’s face changed, growing loose and slack. One second he scowled with anger, the next his features smoothed, the muscles relaxing, leaving his jaw slung open and his eyes staring at the red right hand before him.
His voice came, sluggish and drawn. “You are Lord and Master, fit to be worshiped in the night and the nightmares of men.”
“Do you wish to worship me, Daniel Alexander Langford?”
“With all my heart and soul and mind, Master.”
Daniel sounded like a drone. Horror climbed my throat. I’d listened to him talk a lot the last few months. He was quick-witted and funny, his green eyes lighting up whenever we would wordplay off each other. It was part of his charm, part of him.
Part of the reason I’d let him get close.
This … this was not him, not him at all, and it filled me with as much terror as anything else this night.
I shoved Daniel, pushing him back a step. He stumbled, loose-limbed inside his clothes, as if he’d been strung together with rubber bands. I whirled to face the Man in Black.
“What did you just do to him?”
He shrugged, making his black coat ripple from ground to shoulders. “I did nothing. Your species longs to worship my kind. Your entire existence on this plane has held nameless cults dedicated to dark and strange gods.” He indicated Daniel with his normal hand. “This one is descended from a long line of such cultists. It is writ in his bones to turn to one like me in devotion.”
“Stop it, change it, leave him alone.”
“It is too late for that, Acolyte.” He gave a flourish with his terrible right hand. “Besides, he is amusing to me. It has been too long since I’ve had a cult.” He nodded sharply, his mind made up. “He comes with us.”
“No.”
Hell no.
Nyarlathotep turned toward me slowly, dark eyes heavy-lidded like a cobra. “Make no mistake, Acolyte. He has been marked by me as surely as you have. If you abandon him here he will be meat to the very things that will seek to harm you. The only safety for him is with us until our appointed task is finished. There is still one skinhound on the loose.” He stepped closer, the edge of his coat brushing the front of my legs again. “Besides, he will be of use to us.”
Daniel stared at Nyarlathotep, his eyes wide and unblinking as though he had never seen anything so amazing.
No.
This wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t. I didn’t bring this weirdness into my life. Everything in me screamed to run, to bolt, to get as far away as possible from the Man in Black and whatever he wanted me to do.
I still could. He stood far enough away in his flappy black coat that I could be gone before he grabbed me. I’d had years of obsessive sprint training since that night, training so I could get away from people and situations. Those skills would pay off, and I would be gone.
But Daniel would still be here. Left behind. Left to the mercy of the Man in Black.
My ear throbbed at the thought.
I can’t. I just can’t.
“If I help you tonight, will you go away and leave us alone?”
The Man in Black nodded.
“Swear.”
“Do your duty tonight, Charlotte Tristan Moore, and I swear on the sanity of Azathoth that I will leave you and he unmolested for the rest of time itself.”
What does that even mean?
Did I trust him?
No.
Did I have a choice?
I couldn’t see one.
Dammit.
My father’s advice rang through my mind.
If you can’t get out, then get through.
Simple words that are hard to walk but still true.
“Get in the car. Let’s get this over with.”