NINE

Cool Air

“THIS SQUEAKY FROMME IS one crazy bitch.”

Special Agent Diane Masterton stifled a sigh. She knew that Olivetti had pitched his voice louder than usual just to make sure she heard him. Fine. If he wanted a fight . . .

“Agent Olivetti, while no one can doubt your brilliant assessment of Ms. Fromme’s state of mind, is it really good practice for an agent of the Human Protection League to use a term that’s derogatory to all women?”

Olivetti looked up from the manuscript pages littering his desk. A predatory grin spread across his wide face; for a second Masterton regretted taking his bait, but she was increasingly tired of the man’s constant jibes against her gender. “What’sa matter, honey—you on the rag?”

Masterton felt her face flush and was instantly furious with herself. She wouldn’t let Olivetti see her lose her composure. It was what he wanted, what he needed, to confirm his obsolete, Hoover-era opinion that women were unfit to serve in the bureau.

She mustered her most withering glare and turned it full on him. “Agent Olivetti, may I remind you that it’s 1975, the Equal Rights Amendment is about to pass, women are now officially admitted to the FBI, and the time machine to take you back to your Neanderthal tribe is out of order this week.”

Whether it was her expression or her words that hit home, Masterton didn’t know; she was just pleased to see Olivetti’s smile vanish as his jaw flexed beneath a stubbled jowl. “We both know you don’t belong here,” Olivetti said, now in full attack mode. “Working for the HPL isn’t like sitting in some Podunk field office drinking coffee and listening in on tapped phone calls. It gets rough here, and when I’m out in the field wrestling with something from another goddamn dimension that’s trying to kill me, I want to know my backup is strong enough to take it out, capisce?”

“I passed the same tests at Quantico that you did,” Masterton reminded him.

Olivetti turned away, tired of the game. “Yeah, I know what tests you passed,” he said, with a whopping dose of sarcasm, before returning to the manuscript.

Masterton had to push down a wave of outrage and humiliation. The worst part was that Olivetti was right—she knew she had been drafted into the Human Protection League because of those tests. Not the ones that tested intelligence or knowledge or skill or strength; no, the ones that tested ESP and second sight. They said she’d scored higher on those tests than anyone they’d ever seen.

The irony was that she didn’t even believe in the existence of such things.

Yes, she’d always known that she could do things others couldn’t—sense things about people, like when they were lying. Guess what they were thinking. Know who was in a room before she entered it, or who was on the other end of the phone. But by the time she’d entered college and was studying psychology, she’d decided to just file her traits away as intuition, hunches, empathy.

And, yes, she knew those test scores were why she was one of the few female agents in the HPL. Not because she’d demonstrated other gifts in the field, or passed at the top of her graduating class at Quantico. No, she was here because she could tell right now that Olivetti was thinking she’d look pretty good in a black leather corset and stiletto heels.

She tried to focus on the work before her. She had a copy of the same manuscript that Olivetti had. It was Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme’s 600-page “history” of the West Coast group known as “The Family.” The cult’s leader, Charles Manson, was currently (thankfully) locked away, along with several key followers who’d participated in the 1968 Tate-Labianca murders. But “Squeaky” hadn’t been directly involved, and so hadn’t been indicted. In the seven years since, she’d led a nomadic existence, always living on the periphery of others’ crimes without taking part in the commission.

The League had always suspected that The Family was more than just a cult of personality, but it had taken Squeaky’s book to confirm that. They’d received a copy of the manuscript after Squeaky had sent it to various publishers—a contact at one New York house had read it and promptly passed it on to them. Most of it was gibberish, the pages filled with bad grammar and childish drawings. But it also described The Family as an offshoot (although an unofficial one) of the Armies of the Night, and made it clear that their murders had actually been sacrifices (although Squeaky believed that the Elder Gods would return to “save the flowers and trees”). The manuscript also suggested that Squeaky and the other Family members who had escaped incarceration were planning something big, some sacrifice that they apparently believed would open the Grande Portall and let the GREAT OLD 1 thru.

Something tingled at the back of Masterton’s consciousness. She wasn’t surprised when her intercom buzzed and she heard the voice of Deputy Director Herbert Jefferson. “Agent Masterton, may I see you in my office, please?”

She stabbed at the response button. “Right away, sir.” As she rose and walked from the room, she tried to ignore Olivetti’s smirk.

She liked the deputy director. It wasn’t just that he’d been the HPL’s first black agent; she also liked the brusque, no-nonsense manner that she knew others found abrasive. As she entered his office and took a chair, he barely looked up. “Agent Masterton. Are you finding anything of value in the Fromme manuscript?”

Masterton wasn’t sure how to answer, especially since she knew that wasn’t why she was here. She shrugged and said, “Nothing really useful, although she has made some vague threats against the president.”

That was Gerald Ford, who a year earlier had succeeded to the presidency following the resignation of Richard Nixon. The release of the Pentagram Papers and the exposing of Water Gate—albeit dressed-up by the League’s friends at the Post in a manner that the electorate would understand—had put paid to his predecessor’s plans with the Deep Ones. The current incumbent of the White House was known to be a Freemason, and at least he was human.

“Given her past history, I’d recommend increased surveillance of Miss Fromme.”

Jefferson nodded and leveled his gaze squarely on her. “I agree. But I really called you here to talk about Randolph Carter.”

Pushing back a small jolt of concern—mention of Carter made everyone in the HPL uncomfortable, even if they had never met him—Masterton asked, “Carter, sir?”

“Since his . . . disappearance . . . some years ago, our dreamers have been picking up increasingly worrying vibrations emanating from within the Dreamscape. They think it may have something to do with Carter and have concerns about our safety. And by ‘our,’ I mean the world’s, not the just the League’s.”

“I see.”

“Have you felt anything . . . strange lately?”

“Sir,” she said, answering slowly, “you know I don’t . . . night-travel.”

“I understand that, Agent Masterton, but that’s not what I’m asking.”

Masterton inhaled, thought, and after a few seconds answered, “Yes, but I can’t quite describe it. It’s like something that’s sitting behind us—we know it’s there, but we can’t turn to look at it.”

Jefferson mulled that over before asking, “Have you ever wondered why the Human Protection League’s offices aren’t with the rest of the FBI in the Department of Justice building?”

“I have, sir, but I just assumed it was . . . convenient.”

Jefferson smiled slightly. “Perhaps, but not for any obvious reason. Agent Masterton, do you foresee yourself staying with us? Are you satisfied here?”

The question took Masterton aback. Why was he asking? Was this really somehow about Olivetti and the other male agents who she knew she made uncomfortable? “Yes, sir. The answer is yes to both questions.”

“Good. I thought as much. I’m going to upgrade your security clearance, then, because I think you need to know some things. What I’m about to reveal is highly classified, Agent Masterton. Do not discuss this information with anyone but me or Director Brady. Not even your fellow agents.”

“Yes, sir.”

He took a breath, and then said, “Washington’s layout wasn’t an accident. It was designed to serve as a sort of nexus of occult powers. The HPL’s headquarters are beneath the Washington Monument because it’s at the center of that nexus. At the center of it . . . and above it.”

“Above it, sir?”

Jefferson considered, but after a few seconds said, “Let me take care of the bureaucratic details on your upgrade first. When that’s cleared, I’ll have Director Brady meet us and we’ll give you the ten-cent tour.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jefferson dismissed her. She left his office trying to ignore an inexplicable dread that had settled into her gut.

Masterton was jolted awake at just after 3:00 A.M. Her sleep had been uneasy, punctuated by vivid dreams of shadows with eyes descending on her, of inhuman screams in darkness, of cities spread before her consumed by black fires.

When she snapped awake, breathing hard, those senses that had tested so well at Quantico were all humming like electrified cattle prods. She knew there was always a night-crew at the League’s headquarters, so she grabbed her bedside phone and punched in the classified number for the office. Ever since the Esoteric Order’s recent incursions in New York City, the HPL’s defenses had been on high alert. But still . . .

“Agent Boyer speaking.”

Good—she knew Boyer and liked him. “Agent Boyer, this is Agent Masterton.”

“Oh, good morning, Agent Masterton. You’re up late. What can I do for you?”

Now that she heard Boyer’s calm, pleasant voice, her fears began to recede. “I just . . . wanted to—”

Boyer cut her off. “Hang on just a moment . . .” She heard Boyer speak, his voice now a short distance from the phone. “What was that?”

Another voice—she thought it was an agent named Shakman—said, “I don’t know—”

A huge BOOM exploded into her earpiece. Masterton’s heart doubled its pace as she heard Shakman scream. Boyer shouted instructions and a clunk told her the phone had been dropped. She heard gunfire, voices yelling, shrieking—and something that was not a human voice also shrieking.

“Boyer . . . Boyer!” She didn’t expect a response, and none came. She listened, stunned, for a few more seconds.

The line went dead.

Masterton sat on the bed in disbelief at what she’d just heard. She stared at the phone before hanging up.

Almost immediately she retrieved the handset and keyed in Jefferson’s home number from memory. After three rings, she heard his voice still slurred from sleep. “Hello?”

“Sir, it’s Diane Masterton. Agent Masterton. I believe that headquarters is under attack. I was just on the phone with Agent Boyer, but we were interrupted by the sound of rapid gunfire and . . . screaming.”

Jefferson’s voice was no longer slurred. “Agent Masterton, I need to have you contact Olivetti and Reyes, have you all meet me at the Washington Monument Lodge in exactly a half hour.”

“Yes, sir.” She was already pulling out the directory of HPL agents that she had hidden within the pages of a cheap paperback novel in her bedside table.

“And, Masterton—if you’ve got flashlights and extra arms stashed at home, bring them.”

Jefferson hung up.

Masterton made the calls to Olivetti and Reyes, and then went to her closet, where a few seconds of digging behind jackets and boxes revealed the shotgun her father had given her after she’d graduated Quantico. At the time it had seemed like a strange gift, but now she thought it was the finest graduation present in the world.

Precisely a half hour later, Masterton stood with the other agents outside the squat white brick building known as the Washington Monument Lodge. Behind it, the Washington Monument towered like a skeletal finger in the predawn glow. In just a few hours, tourists would be stopping by here to pick up their tickets to the obelisk’s interior. From here they’d walk the short distance to the Monument, file into the interior and, after a brief wait, enter the elevator that would carry them five hundred feet up to an observation deck.

Some of the visitors might wonder about the small elevator at the side of the ground floor that was fronted by an OUT OF ORDER sign. They might grouse about the wait while eyeing that elevator longingly. The most observant might be curious about the janitor mopping the floor in that area, even though the floor was already spotless. They might think he was too well-built to be a janitor.

Masterton remembered the first time she’d been taken that way. She’d been with two other new agents assigned to the HPL, Acker and Doughty, with Director Brady himself taking the lead. They’d met outside the Monument’s closed doors an hour before it opened to the public. Brady had knocked on the door—three rapid beats followed by two spaced apart—and the door had been opened by the Janitor. “Good morning, Director Brady,” he’d said, holding the door open as they all entered.

“’Morning, Janitor.” Brady had walked around the OUT OF ORDER sign to insert a key into the call-panel of the elevator, which instantly opened for him.

The Janitor had smiled at her as she’d walked toward the elevator. Now he was likely dead.

As the three rookies followed Brady in, one of them—a wiry young man named Acker, who’d left the job the day after his first field assignment—looked around in perplexity. “Where are the buttons?”

Brady smiled, amused and patient, and Masterton knew he’d answered this question many times before. “This elevator doesn’t need buttons because it only goes to one place.” At that, the elevator started to move—down, instead of up. Acker’s eyes widened at that, but he kept silent.

When the doors opened, they stepped into the large, open control room that served as the Human Protection League’s hub. The culmination of J. Edgar Hoover’s paranoid vision nearly four decades earlier. It had been functioning efficiently that day, with experienced agents seated at desks poring over reports or banging out their own on electric typewriters. Agents greeted Brady as he passed; some threw knowing smiles at the new arrivals. It’d been a place of quiet professionalism.

Masterton knew they wouldn’t find that today.

Because they believed that the League’s headquarters had been compromised, they wouldn’t be using the main elevator now. What the tourists didn’t know was that a small storage closet in the Lodge covered a secret doorway that led to an emergency staircase going down to the underground headquarters of the Human Protection League.

Masterton shivered in the early morning chill, using her free hand to pull her coat tighter around her throat. In the other hand she held a cloth bag with her shotgun; its weight was reassuring. Her semi-automatic MI911 handgun rested in its shoulder holster under her coat.

Just then, a black sedan pulled up and Jefferson got out with two more agents—Petrushka and Wyatt, both big, muscled men who openly carried MP5 submachine guns and backpacks that she guessed were full of extra ammo.

Jefferson stopped before them. “Okay, listen up, agents. Here’s what we know. At just after oh-three-hundred hours this morning, headquarters was apparently attacked by forces unknown. Agents Boyer, Shakman, and Doughty were on duty at the time—all have failed to respond to telephone calls or radio contact. Also, you should be aware that I’ve been unable to contact Director Brady, and it’s not impossible that he was in the offices during the attack. His daughter, Professor Miracle Brady, has been informed and is helping to coordinate the response from one of our satellite installations. Field offices around the world are on standby.

“Gentlemen—and lady—until we can positively identify the threat and the occult nature of what we may be facing, we’re on our own. Don’t expect the cavalry to come riding in to rescue us. If any of you want to back out, you better do it now.”

Reyes—a husky, 45-year-old Puerto Rican who Masterton had always thought a fine agent—stepped forward. “I’m with you, sir.” Reyes hefted the M16 rifle he’d become attached to since serving in Vietnam before transferring to the League. “Me and mi cachorro.”

Olivetti—who Masterton knew would much rather have been home in bed sleeping off his late-night helping of lasagna beside his wife—surprised her by adding, “We all are, sir.” Olivetti carried his preferred Remington 870 Mark 1 shotgun.

Masterton joined the rest in muttering assent. Jefferson nodded. “Right. But we do this as much by the book as possible, understood? There may still be survivors in there.”

They all agreed. And then it was time.

Jefferson used a key similar to the one she had seen Brady use to open the main door to the empty Lodge. They filed in, using flashlights to move past the dark racks of books and souvenirs. In the rear of the store they opened a door marked STAFF ONLY. Inside was a small storage room, lined with janitorial equipment on one side and metal shelving racks on the other.

Jefferson pulled on one rack and it swung smoothly out, revealing that it was on hinges and covered a steel door marked NO ENTRY. He slid a card through an electronic lock, the door buzzed, and he pushed it open an inch. He held up a hand, indicating silence. Petrushka and Wyatt stepped forward, taking flanking positions on either side of the doorway, the submachine guns held ready. Jefferson gestured, silent, tense. Masterton, Olivetti, and Reyes waited in the Lodge, ready.

Jefferson pushed the door inward and nodded to Petrushka and Wyatt, who quickly stepped through. Masterton heard footsteps on metal. As they waited, she pulled her shotgun from its case, cracked it open, and loaded two cartridges.

“Try not to let your fingers sweat on the trigger of that thing,” Olivetti muttered. Masterton bit back a response, focusing on the job before them.

After a few seconds, they heard the call—“Clear!”—and Jefferson moved forward, while the rest of them followed.

Past the hidden door was a narrow staircase lit by low-watt sodium bulbs. They descended seven flights before reaching the bottom, where another metal door stood open. Just beyond it she saw Petrushka and Wyatt, standing guard.

They were entering the League’s headquarters through a side hallway. Fortunately the lights were still on, and she saw a short corridor lined with rooms leading to the central hub and the main control room. Petrushka and Wyatt led the way, checking each office before moving on. As they passed Jefferson’s office, Masterton had to swallow back a chill—it had been just hours ago that she’d been in that office, conferring with her superior, a conversation that had held praise and promise. Now she saw only a dark space full of dread. She fought to hold down the panic as her senses hummed with warning signals.

When they reached the central control room, Petrushka cursed.

Her Quantico courses hadn’t prepared Masterton for the smell. There were hints of indefinable, noxious scents—brimstone crossed with the sour fumes of rot, scents that only agents of the Lovecraft Squad would encounter—but other smells were distinctly human. The thick, coppery aroma of blood. The meaty odors of eviscerations.

Surrounded by the other agents, Masterton stepped out of the side hallway into the control room, where the agents’ desks cluttered a large open space.

“Watch it,” Reyes said to her. She looked down and saw that she’d nearly stepped in a wide pool of blood. It came from Shakman—or what was left of him. She saw a severed arm, cast aside. A hand, the stump chewed. And, worst of all, his head, the eyes still open, looking as if they might blink at any second.

“Masterton?” That was Deputy Director Jefferson. She pulled herself upright, swallowed down the lump that had found its way into her throat.

“Sir,” she answered, hating the way her voice cracked slightly at the end.

Jefferson, his dark eyes fixed on her, said, “What do you make of this?”

“I don’t see any signs of bullet wounds in the remains. Some of the . . . pieces . . . look scratched or chewed on the ends—”

Jefferson cut her off. “I’m asking what your special senses are telling you.”

“Oh.” She turned her awareness inward for a moment, concentrating. Every primeval cell, every nerve ending, was now telling her to flee, hide, get away from the overwhelming sensation of destruction permeating the air. “Our protections failed, sir. Not the ones designed for humans, I mean.”

The other agents cocked eyebrows or turned to Jefferson, who only nodded. “Our enemies found a way in at last.”

They tensed, looked around, ears straining for sound, eyes searching out every shadow . . . but there was nothing. Jefferson moved among them, examining remains. “I’ve got Doughty here . . . and I think this is Boyer, but . . . it’s hard to tell . . .”

From a corner, Wyatt called out, “You should see this, sir.”

Masterton trailed Jefferson as he joined the other man. They stood, covering their noses, over a three-foot-wide pool of thick, green fluid that exuded an odor Masterton could only identify as “putrid.” In low tones, turning his face aside, Jefferson said, “At least whatever did this took some damage.”

Nauseated, Masterton turned and headed away. She came to another hallway—this one led to the labs that housed Professor Brady’s Dream Division.

There was a body sprawled on the floor a few yards from the professor’s door. The trail of blood behind it gave violent testimony to a failed escape attempt.

Shotgun held ready, Masterton made her way down the hallway. The body on the floor was male, facedown, one leg chewed to the bone, the right arm outstretched. Masterton scanned her surroundings a last time before kneeling for a look at the face.

It was Dr. Orme Appleton, Randolph Carter’s former assistant.

If people had never been comfortable around Carter, they had felt the opposite way about his companion. Before Carter’s last journey to the Dreamlands, Appleton had taken care of his health and well-being, and he had always believed that one day his old friend would return from whichever plane he had disappeared into.

When Masterton had signed on, Dr. Appleton had been gracious, providing her with insights into the workings of the Lovecraft Squad that had made her new job tolerable. She had always sensed that he was a somewhat lonely figure without Carter.

Hearing footsteps behind her, Masterton closed down her sorrow. She rose and turned as Jefferson joined her. “It’s Dr. Appleton, sir.”

Jefferson’s eyes went wide. “Jesus. The dreamers . . .”

The door to the lab was open. Jefferson didn’t wait for one of his agents; instead he pushed into the lab as Masterton waited. He returned a few seconds later. “They’re not there. No sign of them.”

Olivetti said, “They probably let in whatever did this.”

Jefferson replied, “We don’t know that, Agent Olivetti.”

Petrushka said, “Olivetti may be right, sir. How else could they have gotten in? I never did trust Carter’s handpicked freaks.”

“That’s enough of that, Agent,” Jefferson snapped. He looked back down at the doctor’s corpse, his face a grim mask. “Appleton. Damn it. I don’t know how Carter will ever manage without him. If he ever returns, that is.”

Masterton gestured at a scarlet splash on the floor beyond the doctor’s outflung right arm. “What’s that just beyond his hand?”

Jefferson bent down to look. “It’s something he drew there, in his own blood. Some kind of symbol . . .”

Masterton saw a curved line, an upside-down “U,” with circles on each of the ends. Behind her, Olivetti said, “I’ve seen that goddamn thing in some of the rituals we’ve broken up.”

“Do you know what it means?”

Olivetti looked at Jefferson, shaking his head. “I thought maybe it was a sign for the Elder Gods.”

“Maybe . . .” Jefferson pulled a small pad and pen from a pocket and sketched the symbol. When he was finished, he said, “Wyatt and Masterton, you’re with me. The rest of you, finish searching this area and the cells below. We haven’t found any sign of Director Brady yet.”

Wyatt, MP5 held ready, led the way out of corridor and back down the other hallway to Jefferson’s office. Once there, Jefferson stationed Wyatt outside, brought Masterton into the office, and closed the door. As he turned to the bookcase behind him, he said, “Agent Masterton, are you familiar with something called the Necronomicon?”

“Yes, sir. I recall seeing that name in the debriefing files. It’s a reference commonly used by the followers of the Old Ones, isn’t it?”

Jefferson pulled a book from the case. It looked like a sheaf of modern copies that had been velobound—it could have been a project record or a payroll report. The deputy director spoke as he set the document on his desk and riffled through it. “It is, but it’s much more than that. It’s the guide for the dark practices of the Olde Fellowes and the other cults dedicated to the worship of the Elder Gods.” As the pages turned, Masterton caught quick glimpses of runic writing, arcane symbols, engravings of crouched winged things with human feet trailing from their open, fanged maws. “This, of course, is just a copy—there are only a handful of originals remaining, and Miss Peaslee keeps our copy firmly behind lock and key in The Library.” He paused at a page and bent down close. “Ahh, there it is.”

Masterton also leaned in. There, on the open page, was the symbol that Orme Appleton had drawn in his own blood; beside it was the same symbol reversed, with the open mouth of the “U” pointing up. “What does it mean?” Masterton asked.

Jefferson had already retrieved a second velobound document and was scanning the contents. “This is an incomplete translation by the late Professor Vilier of Miskatonic University. Let’s find out . . .” He found the page—and his dark skin turned ashen gray.

“It’s the Dragon’s Head.”

Masterton had never seen the deputy director unnerved before. She forced herself to wait until he was ready to talk. “I know what did this—what killed our men. And I know where it’s gone.”

“Where, sir?”

He looked up at her. “It’s still here, but beneath us. Below the cells that used to hold the mad dreamers, there’s a cave system that runs under Washington. There aren’t many ways to access it, but one of those ways is here, through this complex.” He pointed at the symbol. “The Dragon’s Head is part of a ritual for resurrection. According to the Necronomicon, if a creature’s ‘essential salts’ are preserved, it can be recalled by a formula accompanying this symbol. In this form, it’s known as the ‘ascending node’; if the symbol is reversed, it’s the ‘descending node.’”

“So Appleton was trying to tell us that something’s been called up . . . But what? And by who?”

“Agent Masterton . . .” Jefferson trailed off, choosing his words carefully before continuing. “The architects of Washington were well-versed in occult practices. They knew of the Necronomicon, and in their researches they engaged in certain of the practices laid out in that book. Specifically, they engaged in those practices here, beneath our feet, in the catacombs of the city.”

“I don’t understand, sir,” Masterton said as her mind raced through possibilities, “those men are long dead . . .”

“They are, but their acolytes continue to exist to this day, and the fruits of their experiments are still down there, including the ‘essential salts.’”

“So someone went down there and performed the Dragon’s Head ritual?”

Jefferson said, “Which means that either there are persons we don’t know about accessing those areas—or we’ve got a traitor on the inside.”

Masterton considered this for a few seconds. “Well, we know it wasn’t Orme Appleton.”

“Or Boyer, Shakman, or Doughty. And I think we can rule Randolph Carter out . . . If he’s still alive. But that still leaves a great many of us.”

“Sir . . .” Masterton weighed her words, before admitting her suspicion. “I think we should keep an eye on Agent Olivetti.”

“Is it that you don’t trust him—or that you just don’t like him?” Jefferson smiled briefly.

“Both, sir.”

“Does Olivetti seem capable to you of resurrecting the dead?”

Put that way, Masterton felt her suspicions crumble into dust. “I know, but . . . if you’re using capabilities as a measure, then you might as well suspect me.”

The deputy director peered at her, not speaking, and Masterton felt her world fall away. “Sir—if I’d done this, why would I have called you to report it?”

“Maybe to cover your tracks?”

She gaped for a second, and Jefferson relented. “Look, Agent Masterton, I really don’t have any undue suspicion of you, but I have to consider all possibilities right now.”

“I understand,” Masterton said, but she still stung from her superior’s few seconds of mistrust.

Jefferson pulled two sheets of blank paper from a drawer, grabbed a pen, turned to the Necronomicon, and began copying lines. “This,” he said, as he wrote carefully, not rushing, “is the incantation for ‘descending node,’ or laying to rest the things that have been called up. Two of us should have this.” He finished, and handed a sheet to Masterton, who stared at the strange words.

OGTHROD AI’F

GEB’L-EE’H

YOG-SOTHOTH

’NGAH’NG AI’Y

ZHRO!

They stirred something at the back of her consciousness—a sense of terrible power, power that no sane person should ever possess. Uncertain, she looked up from the paper to Jefferson.

“Why me?”

“The other agents are more heavily armed. They’ll cover us while we recite this against whatever we encounter.”

“This underground system—that’s where they’ve retreated to?”

“Or where they’re trying to lure us.”

They locked glances for a second, and Masterton knew in that instant that Jefferson trusted her fully and completely. She offered a fleeting, grateful smile before turning back to the sheet. “Do I have time to memorize this? It’ll only take a few moments.”

“Yes, but I warn you—one wrong syllable could be fatal.”

Ten minutes later the other agents had returned from searching the complex and reported no further fatalities. Since then, the small exploratory squad—Jefferson, Petrushka, Wyatt, Reyes, Olivetti, and Masterton—had finished assembling supply packs of extra batteries for the flashlights and additional ammo, and were waiting for orders.

The spell Masterton had committed to memory swam in her mind like an unknown, luminescent deep-sea creature. The folded paper with the words on it was in her pants’ pocket.

Jefferson checked his own pack and then addressed his team. “Listen up—I’m granting all of you extra security clearance for what we’re about to do. Some of you already know that there’s a cave system beneath Washington, a system which in the past was used for certain occult practices, but what none of you knew previously was that we have one of the few entrances to that system here, below headquarters. We will shortly be using that entrance to access those caves.”

Petrushka asked, “What are we looking for, sir?”

“We’re looking for Director Nathan Brady, who may or may not be in the tunnels. Beyond that . . . we won’t have to look, because whatever’s down there will find us.”

Wyatt hefted his MP5 with less confidence. “Do we know that guns will kill these things?”

Jefferson answered, “It’s unlikely that gunfire will kill them. However, Agent Masterton and I are each prepared to perform an incantation that will put them down. We need the guns to hold them back until we finish.”

Olivetti barked a single harsh laugh. “You’re talkin’ about words. Sir, do you really believe that words are going to save us from whatever tore these men apart?” He nodded at the gruesome remains of Boyer, Shakman, and Doughty.

“Yes, Agent Olivetti, I do believe in the power of these words.”

Olivetti shut up, but Masterton saw the effect his question had had on the other agents—they all looked more anxious than they had thirty seconds ago. Jefferson saw it too, and softened his tone. “We all signed onto this with the understanding that we might one day be asked to engage with things that were not human. This is one of those days. If we can’t stop whatever is down there, it will find its way into the world and spread. So, let’s go send it back to where it came from.”

Jefferson turned and purposefully walked out of the control room. Masterton saw how Wyatt and Petrushka exchanged glances before following, how Reyes shrugged his big shoulders as he headed out, and how Olivetti cursed under his breath but went along.

They made their way down to the subterranean level, which Masterton had never visited before today. A series of intermittent light bulbs cast a sickly yellow glow that barely offered any relief from the encroaching darkness. She had heard stories that this was where Randolph Carter had incarcerated his original dreamers—his “mad squad.” Down here, they preferred the darkness, where they could no longer look upon their own reflections and see how their dreaming had changed them. Since joining the HPL, she had heard whispers about this and other, even more terrible, events connected with this twilight world hidden away beneath the headquarters above.

At the end of a dim corridor lined with empty cells and storage rooms was a metal door with a sign on it reading: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. A heavy deadbolt lock supported that dictate.

The lock was broken now, the metal around the frame buckled and torn, the door hanging slightly ajar. Jefferson motioned them to silence, waved Petrushka and Wyatt forward. They raised the MP5s, nodded to each other, and kicked the door open.

Beyond was a small room, like an airlock or an antechamber, adorned only with two overhead bulbs, a pair of security cameras (now shattered), and, on the far side of the room, another door. Like the first, this door had also been battered open. As he passed through the first door, Reyes leaned down and examined the shredded metal around the remains of the lock. After a few seconds, he rose, his expression grim. “Whatever destroyed this came from down there,” he said, gesturing at whatever was beyond the second door. “This thing was battered out from the inside.”

No one answered. Jefferson, his own pistol held ready, toed the second door open and risked a look. After a moment, he pushed the door wide and once again had Petrushka and Wyatt take the lead.

Masterton was second to last, with Olivetti bringing up the rear. She didn’t like having him behind her, but she wasn’t in command. Beyond the second doorway was a stairwell with concrete walls, metal steps, and railings. It could have been in any normal building, contemporary and utilitarian.

When they reached the landing, that sense of this being a normal structure vanished, as the concrete and steel were replaced by dank stone, steps worn slightly concave from centuries of use. Their flashlight beams bounced back from moisture coating the granite, a visceral reminder that Washington had been built on a swamp. Masterton shivered as the temperature suddenly dropped—she wished she’d worn thermals beneath her work chinos, blouse, and coat.

The bottom of this flight brought them into a corridor, unlit except for their flashlight beams. To Masterton, it felt less like a tunnel than a cave system, but as she passed through it she could see where the rock had been worked by human effort. The tunnel was narrow, requiring that they go single file. She was wedged in between Reyes and Olivetti, the shotgun her father had gifted her with giving her a small measure of comfort as she gripped it in one hand, flashlight in the other.

After perhaps a hundred yards the tunnel broadened, and they found themselves in a large central space (a cavern, thought Masterton). Overhead, their flashlight beams picked out a natural ceiling studded with stalactites; the floor was rough rock, stalagmites thrusting up into the darkness. The space was circular, maybe twenty yards in diameter, and punctuated with three other openings. Somewhere nearby, an underground river could be heard gurgling through subterranean channels, probably emptying eventually into the Potomac through hidden tributaries.

They moved silently, tense, listening. Jefferson shrugged off his own pack, reached into it, produced chalk, and drew an arrow beside the opening they’d come from. He put the chalk in a pocket, pulled the pack back into place, and studied the other tunnel mouths.

“Madre de Dios,” Reyes whispered, “what’s that smell?”

Masterton’s stomach roiled when she got a whiff. It was like week-old roadkill on the hottest day of summer, but with something else behind it, something almost sulfurous. She heard Olivetti gag—and then she heard something else: an echoing, scraping sound, like bone on rock, that made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck quiver.

The others heard it too. Petrushka and Wyatt raised their heavy MP5s, turning. “Where’s that coming from?” one of them whispered.

They saw it, then, as it crawled out of the left-hand tunnel before them. They all trained their flashlight beams, trying to comprehend the legless, skinless thing. It possessed a torso, two arms, hands, a head, but nothing below a trailing spinal cord that dragged on the ground like an ossified tail. It pulled itself along toward them, its jaws clacking together with each movement. A gelatinous mass that might have been an eye swiveled, fixing on them.

“What the hell,” somebody said.

Wyatt brought the assault rifle up to his shoulder, about to fire when Jefferson saw the motion and threw out a hand. “Wait,” he whispered.

Wyatt looked at him, incredulous.

The crawling monstrosity lurched forward and snapped at Jefferson’s feet as he leapt back. His fingers were trembling, but still moved rapidly as he plucked a folded sheet from a pocket, opened it, raised his flashlight and began to read. “Ogthrod ai’f . . .”

He broke off as the crawling thing screamed, a sound of such piercing agony that Masterton wasn’t the only agent who staggered. Jefferson quickly recovered, and raised his voice to shout over that uncanny, nerve-rending shriek: “Geb’l-ee’h . . .”

The scream became a choked gasp as the thing began to smoke. Emboldened, Jefferson read faster. “Yog-Sothoth . . . ’ngah’ng ai’y . . .”

Now the creature was almost piteous, as it writhed in the thick cloud of glowing, green vapor gushing from it. Jefferson cried out: “. . . ZHRO!”

The monstrosity vanished in a final geyser of luminescent smoke. Within a few seconds, only a steaming mound of bluish-gray dust was left.

The agents released a collective breath. As Jefferson lowered the page, Wyatt said, “Maybe this won’t be so hard after all.”

Jefferson turned on him, stern. “Do you think that thing could have torn apart Shakman, or Boyer, or Doughty?”

Wyatt looked away. “No, sir.”

“We can’t afford to get overconfident. Got me, agent?”

“Yes, sir.”

Jefferson stepped around the smoldering remains to the mouth of the tunnel the half-thing had slithered from. “It came from here, so we go this way. Wyatt, Petrushka . . .”

They stepped in, leading with the MP5s. Jefferson, Reyes, Masterton, and Olivetti followed.

Because they moved cautiously, Masterton had time to examine the walls more closely. Interwoven with the cold, chipped, gray stone were darker patches in streaks running several feet. It took her a few seconds to recognize these striations as ancient, long-dried blood, left by something mangled that had dragged itself—or been dragged by others—through these caverns.

She looked up as they slowed, still several yards from where this tunnel spilled into another large space. Petrushka, at the front, had stopped and raised a hand. At first, she didn’t know why—and then she heard it too: a horrible keening, from not one but many inhuman throats. The sound was distant, plainly before them, terrifyingly agonized, and alien.

After a few, nerveless seconds they began to move forward again. They left the tunnel and entered a space that was far larger than the last. The walls weren’t curved, but jutted out at odd angles; entrances to other tunnels dotted the perimeter. Their flashlight beams couldn’t find the ceiling, but the floor was rife with openings, each about six feet in diameter. Despite the chill, a thick odor infested the place—that smell of decay and sulfur.

Some of the wailing sounds came from the tunnels spilling out into the chamber, but some also echoed up from the openings in the ground.

“What is this?” Wyatt muttered.

Jefferson half-whispered, “This was once used as a sort of holding area. It was said to have been designed by a man named Joseph Curwen, who advised the original Washington architects on some of the occult functions.” Jefferson turned to make a chalk mark beside the tunnel they’d exited from before returning his attention to the floor.

Petrushka asked, “What are the holes for?”

As he inched toward the edge of one, Jefferson said, “Keeping things that’ve been called up.” Leaning forward, he used his flashlight beam to peer warily into the nearest pit.

Something howled as the light hit it. Jefferson fell back, shaken. “Dear God.”

“What is it?” Petrushka said.

“Whatever it is, it’s not finished.”

Masterton found a pile of fungus-covered wood against one wall, but there was something else there as well, something large and bound in vellum. She used her boot to push the spongy wood aside—which she realized must have once been a bench—and retrieved a large book. She let it fall open at random and saw it was some sort of journal, the pages covered with fading handwritten script. She read:

1 Dec. ’76. Latest assay of Dragon’s Head more successful, but I do fear I’m working with damaged materials, since that which has been resurrected is not whole. The essential saltes provided by Moreby are either contaminated or were not gained in whole. However, brought W. down to view the results, and he is most intrigued by the possible militaristic uses of this research.

3 Dec. ’76. Today W. himself visited and spoke the words of the ascending node, being then most astonished with the results. The thing thusly raised was a minion of the great Yog-Sothoth, an abomination of considerable size and strength. However, W. could not control it and so it was up to me to speak the words for returning it to its saltes. W. left distressed; I know that after his defeat at New York, he’d hoped to find some way to strengthen his troops. I do hope he will not despair and see that this research does indeed offer much to the fight against the British dogs.

Masterton looked up from the book as realization sunk in. The year must have been 1776, and was it possible that “W.” was . . . dear God . . .

Gunfire. The rapid small explosions of an MP5, amplified by the rock walls. Shouts. Screams, some human.

Something with tentacles lunged at Masterton from the side, and she dropped the book and her flashlight to pump buckshot into it. It fell back, parts of it blown away, but then it came at her again. A second blast reduced it to pieces—which continued to crawl along the stone floor toward her. She staggered back, cracking the shotgun open to remove the spent casings. She was inserting fresh cartridges when she heard, over the cacophony surrounding her, a clear, strong voice reading out: “Ogthrod ai’f . . .”

Of course. She found her flashlight nearby, snatched it up, risked a look around the chamber.

Petrushka was surrounded by shambling, staggering things. Some had once been human; others had been human nightmares, impossible conglomerations of wings and claws and mass that should never have been seen outside of a dream. The MP5 was hurting them, but not stopping them. Petrushka kept firing, thirty rounds—until the trigger clicked on an empty chamber. As he tried to slam in a new magazine, he didn’t see the thing behind him that sprang out from one of the side tunnels, snagged his ankle, and pulled him off-balance. Screaming, he vanished into the gaping blackness.

Wyatt and Reyes had taken up defensive positions on either side of Jefferson, as he read from the incantation. The sound of the MP5 and Reyes’s M16 rifle nearly drowned out the words, but Jefferson kept on. “Yog-Sothoth . . . ’ngah’ng ai’y . . . zhro!”

The shuffling, grasping monstrosities all dissolved into piles of dust littering the floor of the chamber. For a moment there was silence . . .

And then the next wave emerged from the tunnels and the pits.

Masterton felt something on her shoulder, stumbled off, and spun to see a long, gelatinous limb extending up from the nearest pit. She forced herself to focus on the memorized words, and began to recite.

Her tongue tripped when she saw Wyatt impaled by a talon extending down from a bulbous, many-eyed behemoth floating above him. She forced herself to finish the recitation, and as she called out the final word—“Zhro!”—she waited to watch the resurrected horrors collapse.

Nothing happened.

She’d made a mistake somewhere.

Hands shaking badly, she yanked the folded sheet from a pocket, snapped it open, and read. She tried to block out the sounds coming from ten yards away, sounds of Reyes’s rifle and Jefferson’s strong voice breaking off in a choked gasp.

She read the words quickly, her back against rock. When something curled around her right ankle, she ignored it and kept reading. When she caught a glimpse of a face before her, peeling and buckling like old leather, incongruously surmounted by an 18th-century powdered wig, she looked back at the paper. When the specter in the wig reached for her and she looked up at the dusty, tattered military uniform, she had a terrible suspicion about who this monstrosity might have once been. She looked back down and finished the words.

“ZHRO!”

This time they worked. Everything in the chamber that wasn’t human fell to dust. When nothing new burst forth from the tunnels and pits, Masterton risked a glance to the side.

Jefferson had fallen back against a rock wall fifty feet away; he bled from wounds in his left thigh, left shoulder, and scalp above his left ear. Reyes was crouched by him, holding out his rifle defensively.

The others had vanished.

Masterton picked up her flashlight and rushed to the fallen Jefferson. “Sir, how badly are you hurt?”

Jefferson winced, but kept his voice calm. “There’s a first aid kit in my pack. Can you get that?” He leaned forward so Masterton could reach his backpack.

Masterton grabbed it, opened it, found the first aid kit, yanked it apart, and retrieved anti-bacterial spray and bandages. She worked as quickly as her own trembling would allow, relieved to see that Jefferson’s injuries weren’t as severe as she’d first feared. As she wound gauze around his shoulder, Jefferson asked, “What happened to the others?”

Reyes shook his head, his gaze following the flashlight beam he swung back and forth. “Something grabbed Wyatt from overhead, but I don’t know where it took him. I don’t know what happened to Petrushka or Olivetti.”

“Petrushka got pulled into the tunnel at ten o’clock,” Masterton said, swinging her own light toward the dark mouth of the tunnel. “I didn’t see Olivetti.”

She finished with Jefferson’s wounds and he staggered to his feet. “Are you two willing to proceed with the mission?”

Reyes and Masterton exchanged a concerned look, and then Reyes turned to the deputy director. “Sir, we need to get you medical assistance—”

“Thank you for your concern, Agent Reyes, but the bleeding has mostly stopped.” Jefferson hesitated, choosing his next words carefully. After a few seconds, he continued, “I need to level with you both—there’s another reason for our being here. Yes, we need to put down the things that attacked us and we need to search for Director Brady, but the real purpose of this mission is to check on an asset that’s hidden away down here.”

Masterton and Reyes shared a quick, questioning glance before the latter turned to Jefferson and asked, “What’s the asset, sir?”

“I’ll fill you in as we move.”

They helped the deputy director to his feet. He gingerly tested his injured leg, grimaced . . . but then started walking away from them, skirting the pits in the floor as he headed toward a tunnel opening on the far side. “It’s this way.”

The tunnel was too narrow to allow them to move two abreast, so Reyes jogged in front of Jefferson, brandishing the M16. “Let me lead, sir.”

Jefferson nodded. Masterton took up the rear position. She was about to follow the others into the tunnel when she caught a glimpse of something glistening nearby. She stepped backward and saw crimson glints—fresh blood stained the lip of the nearest pit. “Hold on.”

Reyes and Jefferson paused, looking back as she sidled up to the hole and craned forward to aim her flashlight into the bottom—where she saw the mangled body of Wyatt, his torso ripped apart, intestines spilled, legs bent, broken beneath him. She wished she could retrieve the MP5 that lay alongside his corpse, but it was impossible. “It’s Wyatt. He’s dead.” She joined Reyes and Jefferson in the tunnel.

Reyes said, “That leaves Petrushka and Olivetti.”

Jefferson and Masterton exchanged a hard stare before she spoke. “Sir, Olivetti—”

Jefferson cut her off. “I’ve worked with Olivetti for seven years, Agent Masterton.”

“I understand that, but he’s the likeliest candidate if we’re looking for who sold us out.”

Reyes growled, “My money’s on Carter’s freaks.”

“We need,” Jefferson said with a hint of soft anger, “to table this discussion for now and keep moving.”

They made their way into the side-tunnel again. Jefferson limped; behind him, Masterton could see how each step cost him, could hear the tiny puffs that hid pain, but she admired the man’s resolve. “You were going to tell us about the asset,” she reminded him.

“Yes. Thank you, Agent Masterton. As you may know, our nation’s Capitol was built upon occult plans provided by Freemasons. Those Masons—who included many of our founding fathers—were sort of an early version of the Lovecraft Squad, fighting the Armies of the Night and their forces as we do.”

“We’re talking two hundred years ago?” Reyes asked, risking a quick glance away from the dark path in front of him.

“Yes,” said Jefferson. “Some of these caves were natural, but the plans expanded and refined them.

“The man responsible for the layout of the city was a Frenchman named Pierre Charles L’Enfant. He was skilled in more areas than creating buildings—he was also a follower of certain occult practices. He could night-travel, like Randolph Carter, or summon extra-dimensional entities.”

Masterton asked, “So was he an acolyte of the Great Old Ones?”

“No. L’Enfant was a true iconoclast—he wasn’t interested in being part of any group. He even left the Masons after one meeting. All of which is why he set up his practices here, underground, away from prying eyes.”

Ahead of Reyes, the tunnel broadened out. He motioned them to a stop, but Jefferson moved past him. Masterton got a glimpse of a furnished open space.

They were in a room that might once have been a primitive laboratory. On a worktable in the center was a collection of low metal pots, crusted over with ancient residue, and notebooks full of brittle pages covered in the spiky, ornate script of the 18th century. The walls were lined with wooden shelves holding small leaden containers, each with a metal stopper. In some places the shelves had rotted away, spilling contents onto the rough floor, where battered canisters tilted among mounds of bluish dust.

“This,” Jefferson said, turning to address the two agents, “was one of L’Enfant’s workshops.”

Masterton moved up to examine the jars—they were shaped like old Grecian urns, with handles, round bodies, and flat bases. They extended along two of the walls, hundreds of them. It took Masterton a few more seconds to realize that the urns on the two facing walls were actually slightly different in design.

“Yes,” Jefferson said, seeing her take in the differences, “they are two different types. In his journals, L’Enfant refers to one as ‘custodes’ and the other as ‘materia.’”

“Take a look at this.” Reyes stood in a doorway opposite the one they’d entered through, playing his flashlight over something in the next room. Masterton joined him to see stacks of coffins, some of old wood, others of metal. Curious, she stepped up to the nearest one, wrenched the lid aside, and saw that it held nothing.

“Empty,” she murmured, looking back curiously at Jefferson.

“L’Enfant had sources around the world for getting him materials to work with.”

Masterton said, “Grave robbers, in other words.”

Jefferson gave her a weary half-smile. “In as many words . . . yes. He experimented on the bodies, reducing them to what he called ‘essential salts,’ then restoring them.”

“So,” Reyes said, “the things that attacked us . . .”

“Yes, Agent Reyes. Likely resurrected from . . .” Jefferson toed a pile of dust that had spilled from a cracked urn on the floor, “. . . this.”

Masterton said, “But those things haven’t been down here for two hundred years, or they would’ve attacked before.”

Jefferson answered, “Correct. Which means that someone—our traitor—has been coming down here recently and enacting the spell associated with ‘Dragon Ascending,’ preparing the force that was set loose early this morning.”

Masterton considered the possibilities. Olivetti still stood out for her, but Jefferson was right—he’d been a loyal agent for years. Petrushka was missing and was a newer member of the League, but Masterton’s gut told her he was dead, killed by whatever had pulled him into a tunnel earlier. Reyes was right about Carter—a man who’d become something both more and less than human—and whose motivations were never clear . . . but Masterton had always trusted Orme Appleton and didn’t believe that he, or Dorothy Williams before him, would have knowingly worked for a traitor. But their director, Nathan Brady, was also missing. The thought of their own director betraying them made Masterton shiver more than the chill subterranean air ever could.

Jefferson spoke again as he gestured at another door leading out of the workshop. “We need to keep moving. The asset is that way, not far now . . .”

He broke off as Petrushka appeared in the indicated doorway. He looked dazed, expressionless, and his chest was soaked in blood. He still carried the MP5, although it hung down at his side.

Jefferson started forward. “Agent Petrushka—”

Masterton’s gut cinched in sudden alarm. Acting on pure reflex, she shouted, “Get down!”

Petrushka lifted the MP5.

The other agents dived for cover as he raised the submachine gun and fired. But his aim was clumsy, doing little more than destroying dozens of the urns. Masterton pulled her jacket up around her face, trying not to breathe in any of the remains spraying out around her.

Reyes waited, timing a leap up until Petrushka stopped firing. He sprayed the other agent with bullets, driving him back against the wall beside the doorway. Reyes charged, using his rifle butt against Petrushka’s head as he kicked the MP5 aside. Petrushka went down.

Masterton ran up to join Reyes, and together they stared down in disbelief at the thing that had been their trusted fellow agent.

Reyes’s shots had shredded the cloth and skin over Petrushka’s torso, revealing a glistening mess of entrails. He’d taken several bullets to the face—they could see the muscles and bones on the right side of his jaw working, as his one remaining eye swiveled in its socket. But he wasn’t dead. He didn’t moan in pain or shock, didn’t grunt or try to form words through his shattered mouth. Instead, he attempted to rise again, his efforts awkward and useless.

“Madre de Dios,” Reyes muttered.

Jefferson lifted the paper with the “Dragon Descending” spell and read it aloud as Reyes and Masterton backed away from the dead, weakened thing that grasped at them. As Jefferson finished, Petrushka’s form dissolved into a mass of thick dust, the rifle clattering to the stone floor beside the remains.

A few stunned seconds followed. When Reyes found his voice again, he said, “I don’t get it—Petrushka was fine not thirty minutes ago . . .”

Masterton answered, “And in those minutes, something grabbed him, killed him, turned him into ‘salts,’ and then reconstituted him with the directive to attack us.”

Jefferson nodded. “I think that’s an accurate assessment, agent. We need to redouble our alert status. Masterton, take Petrushka’s MP5.”

Nodding, Masterton stowed her shotgun in its case, slung it over a shoulder, bent down, and reached for the submachine gun. She found herself hesitating before she grasped it, whispering to the pile of rubble, “Sorry, Petrushka.”

Jefferson moved cautiously up to the doorway Petrushka had appeared in, examined it in his flashlight beam, and gestured to Reyes. “Agent Reyes, you’re on point again.”

Reyes gulped, but stepped into place.

As they all three entered the new tunnel, Masterton asked, “Sir, you didn’t finish telling us what the asset is. It would be helpful if Reyes and I knew what we were looking for.”

“Yes, you’re quite right. The asset is not a what, but a who. Someone who is well-versed in the things that inhabit the astral realms and other dimensions. Someone who, like Randolph Carter, we believe is not entirely human. But there’s a key difference—whereas Carter acquired his inhuman qualities, the asset was born with them.”

“And it is down here?” Reyes asked, his eyes sweeping the darkness.

“They are—protected by extraordinarily powerful forces.” Jefferson stopped walking, calling out, “Reyes . . .”

When Reyes turned to face him, Jefferson addressed both agents. “There’s another reason we don’t bring agents down to this area—the forces I’ve spoken of can be . . . difficult for us to process.”

Masterton saw Reyes’s perplexed expression and said, “I’m not sure that we understand, sir.”

“The asset is perhaps fifty yards ahead of us, and I want you both to be prepared. My suggestion will be not to look at the area surrounding it.”

Both agents were uncertain, but murmured agreement. They moved forward again, more slowly now, cautiously.

The cave jogged to the right ahead; strangely colored light shimmered on the walls. A vibration filled the air around them—Masterton felt it in every cell, like an electrical current. It stirred primeval fears, anxieties as old as evolution. It bled into her consciousness, obliterating every other thought. It was as cold as the space between stars, as mindless as ice, as uncaring as any god. Masterton struggled to hang onto a shred of her self, but it had filled her and there was no room left. She felt herself shrinking, growing smaller, invisible, infinitesimal . . .

“Masterton!”

She pushed through the vacuum surrounding her, seeking out the source of the sound, even if the syllables sounded like gibberish, with no meaning, no relation to her.

“Agent Masterton!”

Now there was a physical sensation as well, a pressure on part of her, and she pushed toward it, through layers of inertia, the hardest thing she’d ever done but she pushed, pushed until she knew what the pressure was—a hand on her arm, on her arm, and she was Diane Masterton, yes, that was her name, and she was an agent of the Human Protection League, and . . .

Her eyes focused. She saw Jefferson’s face first, realized he’d been the one calling her name. But the angle was strange, how was he between her and the roof of the cave . . .?

She was on her back. She sat up, her head throbbing with the energy that had invaded her, but now she’d learned to push it down and keep it under. “Are you with us?” Jefferson asked.

She nodded and stood, wobbly at first. “I don’t know what happened.”

“I think it’s because you’re sensitive to psychic phenomena.”

“Such as . . . ?”

Jefferson stepped aside so she could see past him. She hadn’t even realized they’d moved out of the cave into another large, open space, this one almost empty except for the great coldness that sat at the chamber’s center. More than any of the other corridors they had traveled through so far, the air in this cavern was frigid, and this unbearable cold emanated from a machine that rested at its heart.

Almost eight feet long and made of some kind of metal that seemed to pulsate with colors that matched no Earthly spectrum, the device resembled nothing less than an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus—an appropriate comparison, thought Masterton, given that the air in the cave smelled like one of the ancient, moldering coffins they’d found next to L’Enfant’s workshop. A pump in a glass sphere appeared to be recycling some kind of gaseous agent through intricate piping, while gauges set into the surface of the machine monitored its unknown functions.

Scattered on the ground, surrounding the base of the apparatus, were hundreds of stones of varying sizes with a symbol that resembled a swastika carved into them.

Masterton had to struggle to keep the basic wrongness of this place from overwhelming her again.

“What is that?”

She noticed that Jefferson couldn’t meet her eyes. “The asset,” he said, “is stored in a special refrigerating unit that keeps it in a state of permanent cryopreservation. It was created in the 1920s by a reclusive Spanish physician named Dr. Muñoz, who designed the mechanism for his own use. The pipes circulate an ammonia gas that keeps the temperature inside at a constant minus-321ºF.

Masterton moved closer, pulling her coat tighter around her, and stared down at the curved top—the lid—of the machine. A glass faceplate was covered with thick ice, completely obscuring whatever was contained inside.

“And all these stones?” Although she realized that the terrible coldness was coming from the receptacle in front of her, she also knew that whatever the psychic power was that had briefly affected her was concentrated in the stones lying scattered at their feet.

“Those are inscribed with the Elder Sign,” answered Jefferson. “They are for protection from occult forces, making this cave virtually impossible to find, or the machine to be opened if it is located.”

Masterton suppressed a shudder as she asked, “Can it be opened?”

“Only two people know the secret to getting into it. One is—”

Jefferson broke off with a small gasp. Masterton risked a look and saw what had caused him to stop.

A figure was staggering out of one of the tunnels on the opposite side of the cave. She immediately recognized the bruised face of Nathan Brady, director of the Human Protection League.

“Deputy Director Jefferson, I’m pleased to see that you’ve survived. Where do we stand?”

The normally stoic Jefferson took a second to recover before gesturing at Reyes and Masterton. “We’re about it, sir. Everybody upstairs is dead. All our other local agents are outside the complex, monitoring the situation, until they hear from us that we’ve dealt with the incursion. Your daughter is among them.”

“Thank God.”

Reyes stared, said, “I . . . I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”

Jefferson answered. “As I was saying, Agent Reyes, there are two people who hold the secret of opening the cryopreservation machine. One is Director Nathan Brady. The other is the asset itself.”

Brady looked old and disheveled—his forehead was bruised, blood had caked beneath one ear, and he still clutched a Smith & Wesson Model 10 pistol in one hand, but as always he was self-possessed, calm, in command. “Fortunately I was working in my office late when the attack occurred. My orders are quite specific—in the unlikely event of a successful incursion, I’m to personally protect the asset. At all costs. Boyer and Shakman covered for me so I could make my way down here. You’re quite sure they didn’t make it . . . ?”

Jefferson shook his head. “None of the agents in headquarters did. We also found Dr. Appleton dead.”

“Damn. Orme was a good man.” Brady looked away for a moment, and Masterton realized his anguish was too genuine for him to have been involved with any deception.

Reyes abruptly turned toward the tunnel they’d come through.

“Agent Reyes?” Jefferson asked.

“I thought I heard—”

The deafening sound of a shotgun blast rang out. Reyes’s chest exploded as he flew backward, his M16 flying from his hand.

Masterton instinctively positioned herself in front of Director Brady, as did Jefferson. Olivetti stepped from the tunnel, smoke still wafting from the barrels of his Remington shotgun. “Masterton, Jefferson . . . move away from the director.”

Jefferson blurted out, “What are you doing, Olivetti?”

Masterton’s finger tightened on the MP5’s trigger. She’d been right about Olivetti all along. She’d been right, and yet no one had listened. Now they’d die at Olivetti’s hands, but maybe she could squeeze off a round before he killed them all, at least hurt him . . .

Unexpectedly, Olivetti lowered the shotgun. He grinned.

Masterton fired the MP5. She emptied the clip into him. Six rounds had remained.

He stumbled back as the bullets hit him. Then he regained his balance.

What oozed out of him wasn’t human blood. It was green, thick, foul-smelling, like what they’d found in the control room upstairs.

Olivetti wasn’t human.

“Oh my god . . . ,” Jefferson muttered.

One round of the MP5 had blown apart Olivetti’s right hand. Now, as they watched, stunned, a long insectile limb with what appeared to be a mouth at the end sprouted from the stump. When Olivetti spoke again, his voice was tinged with an inhuman buzz. “Like earlier this morning, I didn’t come alone,” he said.

The stone walls on either side of him faded, replaced by a glimpse of night skies, constellations unknown, in colors no stars should emit. And there were things there, coming through . . . things that Masterton had never seen mentioned in any classified files. Things without faces, with segments and exoskeletons and claws and bulbs. Things that hissed and clacked and wailed.

Things that wanted the asset hidden away in the machine, and the secret to opening it that Brady held. The whole attack on headquarters had been a trap to get the director down here, Masterton now realized.

“I won’t give you what you want!” Brady shouted.

“Oh,” the Olivetti-thing answered, “not willingly. But once we’ve removed your brain and pulled it apart, we’ll find what we need.”

The things began to advance.

Masterton pulled out her shotgun, the gift from her father. That, and her pistol, were all she had left. She knew neither would be enough. She could only hope that she’d die here for good, not be resurrected as a disembodied mind or a shambling monstrosity missing pieces.

She braced herself, raised the shotgun . . .

Suddenly the machine behind her began emitting a high-pitched whirring sound. Clouds of ammonia gas were being vented from outlets set along the length of the device, as the needles of all the gauges slowly dropped back to zero.

Her other sense—the one that had given her an inclination of Olivetti’s real nature—was sparking in her head like a burning log spitting embers. Whatever was happening with the machine, it was like something she had never experienced before, something full of arcane energies.

All movement in the cavern had stopped, as eyes—human and otherwise—stared at what was happening to the mechanism at its center.

Once all the gas was expelled, the pump contained in the glass globe slowed and stopped. A heartbeat later there was a series of clicks and whirls, like the sound of multiple dead bolts being drawn back. Then, very slowly, the curved lid of the device—again Masterton was reminded of an Egyptian sarcophagus—began to rise on soundless hinges.

Around her, she sensed the things drawing back.

As the lid came to a halt in the upright position, a very human hand appeared and grasped the top edge of the machine. Another joined it on the other side of the aperture, as a figure slowly raised itself up from a reclining position.

Despite what Jefferson had told them earlier, and with her senses now humming like an electrical current, Masterton fully expected to see the deformed body of Randolph Carter rise from the refrigeration device of Dr. Muñoz.

She was wrong. The figure that emerged from the opening was thinner, taller, wearing a good quality if somewhat antique suit in brown. Thin nose, wide forehead, and lips that hinted at habitual tight pursing. Most definitely not Randolph Carter.

The man swung his legs over the side of the machine; his worn shoes hit the ground with a sigh. He blinked at the three people staring at him. He licked his lips, croaked, swallowed, tried again. “Hello. Oh, my.”

Then he looked beyond them, to the massed monstrosities that filled the cavern, noticing them for the first time. The man walked purposefully around the three agents. He held up both hands as he moved confidently toward the Olivetti-thing and the eldritch nightmares that surrounded it.

He muttered something under his breath, something Masterton couldn’t make out, but she had the sense that his eyes were closed as he concentrated. She felt waves of force rippling around them, waves somehow coming from him. The force moved both within Masterton and throughout the entire world, connecting her with events simultaneously happening thousands of miles away—in Marrakesh, worshippers of Dagon watched as their idol was obliterated; in Berlin, members of the Armies of the Night found their tongues frozen halfway through an invocation; and in Sacramento, Squeaky Fromme’s finger refused to pull the trigger of the gun she pointed at President Gerald Ford.

Masterton’s consciousness returned to the here-and-now in the caverns beneath Washington, as the outer shell of the Olivetti-thing fell away, leaving a creature that was no longer even remotely human. It was made up of fleshy, pinkish rings, with clawed legs; where a head should have been, it was instead surmounted by antennae. Small wings sprouted from the back. Masterton did recognize this monstrosity from her official files—it was a Mi-go, a monster that flew between stars and was highly intelligent.

Now it was shrieking, in that high, buzzing voice. One of the legs was ripped away, the socket spraying more of the greenish ichor. It was being pulled apart by whatever the man before her was directing at it, and the dimensional portals it had opened were closing, irising shut, driving the abominations back to their own outer realms.

Within a few seconds it was done. Where the Olivetti-thing had stood, there was nothing but a dropped shotgun and a fuming mound of remains the color of mushrooms. The stone walls of the chamber were solid again.

The man was bent, gasping for breath. After a few seconds he composed himself and turned toward them.

“It is done,” he said. Putting a hand to his forehead, he turned to Brady. “How much time has elapsed?”

Brady smiled. “You’ve been asleep for too long . . .”

“Not asleep, no, not really,” the man said. “I’ve traveled. I’ve been to realms you can’t imagine—there are still places in the universe where the darkness has not yet encroached, where beauty is still untouched and transcendent. I’ve dwelt in those places for a very long time now, and I’ve been . . . happy.”

“I understand,” said Brady, “but . . . what if the Great Old Ones win here? Do you really think they’ll never find those places, or that they’ll leave them unscarred if they do?”

Shaking his head, looking down, the newcomer said, softly, “No. They won’t.”

Masterton wanted to follow every second of this—she had the sense that this was a turning point in history, and she was a part of it—but something distracted her, something biting at the edge of her consciousness like a memory trying to claw its way back into her mind.

“That is why I carry a message from Randolph Carter.”

“Carter?” said Jefferson. “But Randolph Carter has been missing, presumed lost in the Dreamscape. Nobody has heard from him in years.”

“There’s an ill wind coming,” the man continued, calmly. “Such a wind as never blew across this planet before. It will come down from the stars, and from beneath the seas, and from between the worlds. And it will be cold and bitter, and a good many of us may perish before its blast. But, if we stand united against it, if we persevere against all the odds, then there is a chance that a greener, better, stronger Earth will be bathed in light when the storm is cleared.”

Masterton inhaled in sharp surprise. Now she remembered. She knew this man—she’d seen him, in both internal documents of the Human Protection League and on book jackets for sale across the country. His long jaw, high forehead, and large eyes were instantly recognizable.

“You’re Howard Phillips Lovecraft!” she exclaimed.