Red Right Hand (24 page)

As the words left, his lips rippled, exposing ink-stained teeth, wide and opalescent gray like the man in line by the alley.

Visions of the nurse guardian at the hospital flashed in my head.

I let go of Daniel's hand, reaching for the knife at my hip.

The Man in Black lifted his red right hand, reaching for the face of the maître d'. The hand pulsed with dark crimson energy, casting magenta highlights on the smooth planes of the man's face. The maître d's jaw slung down, mouth hanging lax and loose as he stared at the skinless appendage.

The Man in Black spat a word, his raw, red fingers twisting into an arcane symbol. As they rubbed together, a fat pink spark of energy popped off, arcing into the man's open mouth.

The maître d' stopped moving as though he'd been flash frozen. He didn't breathe or blink, and no tremor disturbed his skin.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“His kind do not die easily as long as they retain their heads.”

I looked around. The people in line continued to shuffle forward until they were met by another maître d' who could have been a clone of the one standing before us. He handed out menus, then turned and walked away. The people followed him into the dining area that stretched before us. The back of the room disappeared in the shadows of dull light provided by a combination of muted neon and guttering candles. The line shuffled forward, and within seconds another clone appeared to take a small group away.

I watched diners at tables in twos and threes and fours, all of them smiling and laughing and talking. Forks and chopsticks dipped and lifted morsels of sushi during breaks in conversation. It looked like any busy metropolitan restaurant full of hip diners enjoying an evening meal with friends and family.

So why did the skin creep across the back of my neck?

Realization fell on me like a ton of bricks.

It was absolutely silent.

The number of people I looked upon should have produced a dull roar of white noise: voices mingling and meshing, laughter boiling over the top of it, the underscore provided by the clink of fork on plate, the muffled thud of cup on tablecloth, the creak and breath of chairs, even the rustle of cloth as people moved and reached and lived.

There was none of that.

The only sounds in the pin-drop silence were the shuffle of feet to my left, the whisper of Nyarlathotep's coat rustling around his feet, and Daniel's rhythmic breathing beside me.

And the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears.

Daniel leaned in, his voice close to my ear. “It's like a silent movie.”

The Man in Black turned. “We have very little time before our entrance is noted. Use your Mark. Find our prey.”

I hesitated, not wanting to use my magick, not with the cost of it coming from Daniel. My eyes quickly slid over to Daniel. His hand found mine again. It felt warm. Solid.

He leaned toward me. “It's okay. I didn't feel it when you did it before. It's the teleporting that takes it out of me.”

The magick inside me buzzed to life at his touch, murmuring along the skin of my hand. I closed my eyes and let it go.

My mind slipped sideways, disjointing itself as my mind's eye opened. Prickles of pain rushed in from the edges, but I ignored it, concentrating on finding what I needed. The metal circlet around my neck crackled, its temperature plummeting until it grew so cold it frost-seared the skin underneath. The room blossomed in my mind like an unfolding flower, each person's desire a petal.

They all pointed toward a thing I could barely discern. It was close but indistinct except for its hunger to assimilate, to mate and marry and meld with each person who fell under its influence.

My stomach growled, low and angry.

My eyelids fluttered open, and the magick sloughed away, falling to a low simmer. I could still feel the pull of the thing, but now it had distance. It was fuzzy, less immediate. But I knew where it was.

“It's in the back of the restaurant.”

The Man in Black gave a slight bow and a flourish of his red right hand. “Lead the way, Charlotte Tristan Moore.”

I pulled the Knife of Abraham from my belt, holding it point down along my forearm like I'd been trained to do.

I had a bad feeling, but I stepped into the dining room anyway.

 

45

W
E CROSSED THE
room, moving quickly. Daniel was pressed close behind me, the Man in Black sweeping along behind him, both of them following me as I followed the tug of magick in my stomach. None of the diners looked up at us. They continued their silent meals and their wordless conversations, and we passed them by like wind through the grass.

My eyes kept sliding to the left and the right, staring as I passed. One lady lifted a pair of chopsticks, holding a piece of squid nigiri at its end. She drew it to her mouth, lips painted nearly neon pink parting as the morsel drew near, teeth opening to accept the bite.

It
squirmed
.

Tiny tentacles zipped out, stretching into her mouth, minuscule suckers latching on the soft flesh inside her lips and cheeks. The miniature kraken heaved and pulled, lurching off the chopsticks and into her open mouth. Her lips closed around one tiny suckered
appendage that slithered in after the rest of the creature with a slurp. Her eyelids fluttered as she chewed. Black ink trickled from the corners of her lips, running down her chin to hang in a fat droplet off her jaw. Her date lifted a finger and caught it.

I kept walking as he drew the finger to his own lips.

Daniel's voice came low behind me, but it broke the unnatural silence like a gunshot. “I didn't think we would ever find a place creepier than the last one. I underestimated us.”

At the sound of his voice the room stopped moving.

Every one of the diners froze like a movie on pause: utensils in midair, mouths open to speak.

As one they all turned in our direction.

ACOLYTE, WE NEED TO GET PAST THIS ROOM.

The Man in Black's voice rolled through my mind. I picked up my pace, stepping quicker. In front of me were two swinging doors that looked as if they would lead to the kitchen if this were a restaurant instead of a nightmare temple. The magick inside me pulled toward them, the urgency to get
out
of this room riding hard on my back.

The diners were rising from their seats as I hit the doors, shoving them apart in front of me. Daniel and I fell in. The Man in Black stepped through and turned, grabbing one door in each hand. I could see under the arm of his coat, through the doorway. The diners were all up, stalking toward us with hands full of knives, forks, and sharpened chopsticks. Eyes rolled back in their sockets, they peered out through fish-belly-white skeins, blind as glaucoma patients. Runny black liquid drooled from open mouths, smearing lips and chins. Nestled in some of their throats were tiny kraken, spindly suckered appendages waving over their hosts' blackened tongues. At their feet squirmed a carpet of the tiny tentacled creatures, dinners that had crawled from their plates and now lurched toward us on roiling, rubbery limbs.

The chaos god jerked the doors closed and held them shut with his red right hand. His head dropped, and his voice rose in a guttural mutter that burned across my eardrums.

The coat began to jerk and twitch around him.

A sizzle cut the sound of his voice, an electric buzz of nova flame on metal. Smoke curled around his red right hand where it pressed against the metal swinging doors, glowing a dull orange red like the coals of a long banked fire. He pulled it away as something thumped hard against the other side.

The door held.

Where his hand lifted away, it left behind a black scorched outline and a smooth patch of newly welded metal.

He turned in a flair of ebony coat and smiled a sharp-toothed smile. “That should be entertaining to pass through when I leave.”

“Will they go back to normal when we stop this…” I didn't know exactly what we were dealing with. A god? A monster? Both? So I went with, “… thing?”

He shook his head. “Their minds will never be the same. Madness will take them, and they will end their lives as gibbering idiots.”

“So, serving you guys has a really shitty retirement package.” Daniel shook his head. “Glad I got out of
that
rat race.” His hand found mine.

“The night is still young, Daniel Alexander Langford.”

The Knife of Abraham spun in my fingers, blade swinging around so that I held the handle in my fist, back and low, ready to rip up, to strike, to gut a chaos god. “Is that a threat?”

Nyarlathotep looked down at me, red right hand hidden in the folds of his coat. “I have no need to threaten him, Acolyte.”

“Then what the hell are you doing?”

“Telling the truth.”

“I don't believe you.”

“I always speak the truth.”

The edge of sarcasm cut into my voice. “And you wouldn't lie about that.”

“I am the Crawling Chaos. I have no need to lie.” One sleek eyebrow arched up. “Have you not found truth to be the most chaotic force in your world?”

I stopped cold.

He was right. Truth could injure. Truth could maim. Truth could
destroy
. My mind flashed backward, moving through time. Their lawyers had told the truth. I
did
have a drink that night. I had worn a skirt. I never said
no
.

They didn't care that my drink had been one mouthful of beer tried and spit out as disgusting, that my skirt hem had hit my ankles, or that I had screamed
stop
and
don't.

The Crawling Chaos was right.

Truth was absolutely destructive.

 

46

T
HE DOORS RATTLED
with a hard
THUD!
that brought me out of my head. A series of wet slaps and metallic scratches followed the loud noise as the people on the other side tried to get through.

Daniel eyed the doors suspiciously. “Are those going to hold?”

The Man in Black shrugged. “We should continue on our way.”

The magick inside me tugged, drawing me forward to follow it. We were in a dim room with enough light to see, but not enough to see well. It was narrow and bare, almost a hallway. The walls were tiled in pale greenish limestone, the cracks between them filled with some kind of dark grout that showed black in the low light. Shapes and sigils twisted across the surface, finger-painted by lunatics. They worked around clumps of luminescent fungi spilling out of damp cracks in bulbous loam and fanned ridges like dully pulsating
lamps spaced along our path. The floor was uneven under my feet, rolling slightly up and down. Thick moisture gathered in crevices and shallow pools, giving the air a musty, salty, fishy smell.

I walked carefully, knife out, ready to cut anything that might leap from the shadows.

The hallway twisted and turned, narrowing into a true tunnel. Openings appeared randomly, pitch-black gaps in the wall that blew cold, damp air across the path as we passed as if we were inside the lung of a sleeping creature. Each step increased the tension along my spine in a slowly tightening ratchet. The magick inside me pulsed harder and harder, faster and faster, like a second heartbeat that crashed and lurched inside my stomach as we moved down the hallway. A slow ache crawled across my temples.

It was maddening.

I looked over my shoulder, checking to make sure Daniel and the Man in Black were still behind me. They were, Daniel watching me closely, brows drawn together. He smiled as our gazes met, making his dimple appear. It made me feel better.

Then my eyes slid past him.

The Man in Black loomed behind him, filling the space, his Semitic features pulled into a tight sneer. Black eyes glittered in the caves of their sockets as he scowled at me. The coat fluttered around him, soaking into the gloom of the tunnel, barely a flicker to differentiate it from the shadows. The look on his face had turned predatory. Feral. It was the look a restless lion gives to a rabbit.

He winked at me.

I stumbled, my fingers tight on the handle of the knife, the ancient hardwood making me aware of each raised line that formed my Mark. Daniel's hand shot out, latching onto my arm, jerking me short. The knife moved before I caught myself and stopped it.

He pointed past me. “Careful.”

Eyes following his finger, I turned and looked. The floor dropped away into a set of stairs that led down into the gloom.

“Thanks,” I said. “I could've broken my neck.”

“I wouldn't want that. I don't mind if you're head over heels for me, but not literally.”

I smiled but didn't answer. Turning back, I looked at the stairs. The magick inside me called.

Down.

I took a deep breath and a first step and headed down the damned stairs.

 

47

T
HE STAIRS WERE
wide and too tall to walk down easily, oddly spaced and staggered as if they were carved for something other than humans to move up and down them. Daniel and I held the wall as we descended.

The Man in Black had no trouble at all, walking as if he were on flat ground.

The wall under my hand curved as we spiraled down. The limestone was porous, rough and wet under my palm like sandpaper dipped in baby oil. The stone under our feet ate the sound of our footsteps and air closed around my head, silence pressing in like a shroud. The tunnel grew darker and darker as the lumpy fungi became sparser and sparser, the clumps smaller and smaller. The dim light began playing tricks on my eyes, which were glued open, the lids spread wide and stuck to my cheeks and brow trying to see. Weird light globs and jagged shadows began to dance
across my strained retinas. Sweat trickled down my
spine despite the chill air. My nose ruffled at the heavy iron and salt smell that wafted up from below us. It climbed into my sinuses and curled there in olfactory clots.