The Dwarves of Whiskey Island

I begin to object, I don’t know who the adversary is. But then the mists clear, and I see a Tower hovering over the city, greater than any skyscraper.

The Devil rises from his throne, and walks toward the Tower. Moments later, after losing sight of the Devil, the Tower begins to crumble.

The image of the crumbling tower haunted me as I sat in my rented Solara, waiting for Lucas and my daughter. I was plagued with the recurring thought that I didn’t know what I was doing. Desperation was driving me to risks I never would have contemplated before.

I was playing with my daughter ’s life, and I didn’t know if I could go through with it. All I had to validate my decision was a hallucinatory vision, one that may have been open to interpretation.

Outside the car, the snow was getting worse. A blizzard moving down from Chicago, combining with lake effect, cut down visibility to about twenty yards. Occasionally, the wind would pick up and it would drop to nil.

Ahead of me, the twin cones of my headlights aimed toward the bridge, fixing on the gate. Caught in the beams, the snow moved sideways.

Slowly, a twin pair of headlamps became visible in my rearview mirror. They approached and came to a stop behind the Solara. I couldn’t even make out the outlines of the vehicle.

Bracing myself, I stepped out of the car, and walked back toward my guest. The wind bit into my exposed skin, the flying ice like an army of tiny pikemen charging my skin as if it was a fleshy Bastille.

As I walked around behind the Solara, I started to see the vehicle that had driven up behind me. A Volkswagen Beetle.

I ran to the car, sliding in the treacherous footing. I almost fell face first into the side door as I clawed through a layer of ice to find the door handle. I pulled the door open, wrenching my bandaged hand, and showering myself with fragments of snow and ice.

The clock on the dash of my Volkswagen read “11:54.” As I watched, it flipped to “11:55.”

I spun around to see Simon Lucas standing in the halo of my Volkswagen’s headlights. The snow swirled around him, but didn’t seem to touch him.

He smiled at me with a stare that burned into every organ in my body. “I decided I should provide you with an incentive to avoid any second thoughts.”

“No.” This couldn’t be falling apart on me now. “That wasn’t the deal.” I ran at Lucas, a move that beat me grabbing the zombie for dumbest move of all time.

I didn’t see him move, but there’s a good chance he didn’t. One moment I was running toward him. The next I was bouncing off the windshield of the Volkswagen. The windshield spider-webbed below me as my right elbow smashed through. Briefly all I was aware of was the pain streaking up my arm. It was so intense that somehow I missed the moments where I rolled off the hood onto the snow-covered street.

I blinked, and I was on my knees. Spitting snow as I held myself up with my left arm. My right arm, clutched to my chest, was shooting pain so bad that I still couldn’t focus on where I was, or what I was supposed to be doing.

“Do not presume. No servant is too valuable for me to destroy.” I heard footsteps walk around in front of me. A pair of shiny leather shoes stepped into my field of vision. They were unmolested by snow or salt. As were the legs of the sharply creased trousers above them. “On your feet, Mr. Maxwell.”

I pushed myself unsteadily up, one-handed. The pain in my right arm became more concentrated and localized, and I realized that something had dislocated or broken in my elbow. “Fuck.”

“You pathetic little man. You think that is the limit of pain?” Lucas walked around me, not seeming to be completely in the world. “With a thought I could place you in torment for a thousand years, focus your existence on a single eternal moment of agony.”

It was easy to see why this guy, as the Thesarch or as Simon Lucas, could command so many people. How the hell could you fight something like this?

“You offered me something I desire. You live now, your daughter lives now, only to provide this to me. Tell me.”

I glanced through the window of the Volkswagen. Snow had just started blowing in through the broken windshield. The clock on the dash read “11:57.”

“The Portal to his lair will open at midnight.” I looked up at the snow, which had near frozen in the air.

I received an inordinate amount of gratification from the surprise on Lucas’ face. It had been a strategic omission on my part, partly because I had been trying not to give much away when I thought I had some chance of Lucas bringing my daughter.

The other part is I didn’t want Old Scratch here to have too much time to prepare. The bastard might hold sway over every crevice that held mana, but if he wanted to pass through a Portal, everything I had learned told me that he had to do it in person.

The Simon Lucas who faced me, untouched by snow, was not Old Scratch. Lucas nodded at me, folded his arms across his chest, and shimmered briefly.

The unmoving snow was silent around me. I leaned back against the Volkswagen and unzipped my coat enough so I could slip my right arm in for some support. As time slowed around me, and the endless minutes crept along, I got a sick feeling that I might have lost my daughter, that I had done something to make Lucas doubt me . . .

But at “11:59” according to the Volkswagen’s dash, a shadow fell out of the sky. Something huge and bat-winged passed over me, and thudded on the roof of the Volkswagen, shaking it back on its shocks. I stumbled away from the car, turning, half expecting to see Hephaestus before me.

“Your service is rewarded,” it said from on top of the Volkswagen. It was twice as tall as a man, even seated on its haunches. It had the head of a goat—but a goat that was a carnivore. Fangs curled over its black lips, and its chin was streaked with blood. Its skin was reddish purple and bristled with black hair that became denser as it grew down from a near naked chest, to become a shaggy pelt down its hooved legs. “Few mortals are privileged to meet my flesh.”

“I desire one, so I have one.” It drew its claws across the side of my car. They effortlessly pierced the skin and tore through the quarter-panel. “Should I be confined to the proxy senses of my servants? What is my power if I cannot taste the blood of my sacrifices with my own tongue?”