Run the Day (19 page)

"Don't get yourself killed before I get there," Swift called out.

No promises.

I could already see the shadow of the old shattered gate coming up ahead, creeping out of the darkness under the trees. It had gotten so cold it was making my nose runny, and the fog was starting to creep in around the edges of everything. If I didn't know better I'd think the whole horror movie atmosphere was being done for my benefit, but it was just another late autumn evening in Hanford. I passed through the posts of the gates and it was like walking through an invisible wall of...sludge.

Everything behind me faded away, I felt surrounded by a thick, cloying pressure. It was moist, humid and warm in defiance of the evening's chill. I caught a faint whiff of something rotten, and all the sounds of the freeway had faded away and been replaced by the sound of a distant wind howling through a tunnel. I could feel forces at work, raising my hair up like static electricity; there was power at play here, lots of power. Ahead of me, I could see lights, tiny flickering jewels of light like stars hovering in the darkness. Henry had already begun the ritual to summon forth the Sleeper. As I walked closer, I began to hear a multitude of chattering whispers, a chorus of unnerving gibberish at the edge of my hearing. I stuck to the shadows, wanting to get as close as I could, see as much as I could.

The ruins of the farm materialized before me, along with a crowd of figures. My great-grandfather had apparently been very busy.

Kneeling in a circle around the foundations of the barn were six women, an assortment of ages, sizes, colors. They were all stripped naked, and had their hands bound behind their backs with distant, glassy looks in their eyes, and they were all swaying gently like grass in a breeze. Above their heads were the lights I had seen as I approached, tiny balls of flickering blue and white flame. At the center of it all stood Sarah, still dressed in her floral scrubs, with her eyes closed and arms raised up as if she were reaching for the sky above her. Her mouth was moving, issuing forth the torrent of whispers I had heard. I hugged the tree line, inching closer, and between the ring of bound women I could see the true Libro Nihil lying at Sarah's feet with its pages fluttering in the alien wind that filled the clearing. But there was no sign of my great-grandfather, Henry.

Where the hell was he?

I was going to regret it, I knew it, but I took in a deep breath to steady myself and let my vision slide to the Other spectrum. And, of course, I regretted it. Floating in the air over the women was a thing. A great, giant, black, pulsing thing, like a cloud of ink that extended tendrils of blackness out to wrap around the heads and necks of the women, and at its center was the face of my great-grandfather. His mouth was split into a rictus of a grin, swirling black holes where his eyes should be, but as sure as I could feel the wind on my skin I could feel his gaze boring directly into me. I almost dropped my false Libro when he spoke, his voice a soul-wrenching knife I felt inside of me as much as heard.

"Now we can begin."

Chapter Eighteen

Moment of truth time.

How sad would it be if I'd had the worst day in my brief, questionable existence just to have the whole world end here? It would kind of make everything leading up to this moment incredibly pointless. No reason to wax existential about it, or to drag it out. The end of the world, that's what it finally takes to make me find what little courage I have.

And to make it worse, I was doing it for free.

"Have you come to prostrate yourself before me? To join me in my glory?" Henry's voice rose out of the black cloud, roaring like a hurricane.

I grit my teeth and stepped out of the trees and into the clearing. I hoped Swift was already somewhere nearby.

"As a matter of fact, I am. And as a gesture of good faith, I've brought you a gift." I held up my false Libro Nihil.

While Sarah continued her chanting, eyes locked shut in whatever kind of mindfuck Henry had her in, and the women continued their swaying, the face of my great-grandfather creased in an ugly frown. A ripple went through the magic fluctuating in the air.

"Impossible."

I shrugged, taking a few more steps forward and glancing furtively about as I did. The wispy tentacles of blackness that were latched onto the women pulsed with ugly, dirty energy. I risked giving the lights floating over their heads a closer look and my heart skipped a beat.

Souls. Their fragile, living souls.

"Impossible that you could have been duped?" It came out shakier than I would have hoped. "He wasn't dead when I found him you know, Flesh-Thing. Or should I say Knows-Secrets? He told me it was you who came for him, and he showed me the true Libro Nihil. He begged me to stop you with his last breath. Look at it Henry, feel it, you know it's true."

I stopped just outside of the circle still holding up the book for him to see. The cloud around his face pulsed, throbbed, and he bared his teeth in a carnivorous grin.

"So the blood of the Spear is not wasted, you're no simpering weakling after all are you?" Henry's voice washed over me with a graveyard stink. "You would damn humanity?"

"I decided it's better than the alternative." I somehow managed to match my gaze with the black holes where Henry's eyes were supposed to be.

And then he laughed.

In the center of the circle the tendril wrapped around Sarah's neck disappeared in a puff and she hit the ground like a ragdoll, crumpling into a heap.

"Then come take your place. Complete the ritual, bring forth Vorkyzzx and usher in a new age. The sacrifices are ready," Henry said. "I must thank you for delivering the last one to me."

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

The black cloud stirred, from it a figure emerged and settled onto the ground. Hack, it was Hack. With my sight shifted, I could see that the aura that usually hung around him like a thundercloud now guttered like a dying candle. A tendril of smoky darkness extended from the cloud to wrap around his throat, like with the other sacrifices. His eyes were closed, arms limp at his sides. I wanted to say something, cry out in shock or elation, but I couldn't. He just stood there, in the center of the circle next to where Sarah lay. It jarred me to see him, but I understood why Henry would have wanted him alive. Sacrificing Hack and releasing the energy contained within him would supercharge the ritual of the Libro Nihil and rip wide open the door between worlds.

I made my way past the other sacrifices, trying not to look at their faces. If I messed up, I didn't need anything else weighing on my conscience. I kept my eyes away from Sarah, and the way she lay in the center of the circle without moving; instead, my eyes were riveted to the spot where the true Libro Nihil sat with its pages fluttering. I only needed a second to make a grab for it, to disrupt the groundwork that Henry had already begun. I'd also be conveniently placed at ground zero for when he realized what was happening, and would more than likely be the first victim of his wrath when he realized I tricked him.

There was no easy way to do this. Hopefully, Swift was already nearby and watching, waiting for an opening.

I held my false book out in front of me, lying flat and open across both my palms. I could feel Henry's attention on me, watching everything I did, cracking and pulsing. I gathered energy about myself, like I was beginning the stages of working a complex ritual. The air around me inside the circle shimmered, a rippling scar in reality from where Grannok had attempted the ritual almost a century ago.

And then I dropped the book.

"Fool! What is this?" Henry boomed.

Hack and the other sacrifices stirred, the tentacles of darkness around their throats tightened. I ground my teeth and made my move, swept up the true Libro Nihil and pulled the pistol from the waist of my jeans, raising it over my head, aiming for dead center of the cloud, where Henry's face hovered.

"Swift!" I shouted and pulled the trigger, the barrel belching forth a torrent of fire.

The world exploded into a calamity of warring darkness and light, everything happened all at once. I couldn't process it all, but I did have the stupendous luck of standing smack dab in the middle of all the festivities. It started with my great-grandfather screaming, a noise like the earth was tearing itself apart, followed by a roughly humanoid shaped streak of white light slamming into the cloud. I was blown clear of the ritual circle by the tremendous force of the collision, and thankfully had enough presence of mind to clutch onto the Libro Nihil for dear life when I went sailing through the air.

And then promptly blacked out.

Consciousness came back piece by piece. It started with hearing, something like the sound of the ocean roaring in my ears and someone yelling my name over and over. My body came next, a sudden awareness of all the pains I had collected during the day flaring up all together, and something shaking me about. Vision, my eyes opened grudgingly, everything in black and white and a hazy shape in front of me, the outline of a person.

"Tommy, god damn it you get knocked out a lot!"

The figure in front of me resolved itself slowly into Hack. Color started seeping in, and I saw Hack's eyes were a very ordinary, human shade of limpid brown. I think my mouth was working, trying to say something, but it wasn't happening. There were hideous noises; stone shattering, tortured metal screaming, the wind howling furiously. Hack started yanking me to my feet and I noticed I was still holding the Libro Nihil, holding it wrapped tightly in both arms.

"Now ain't the time for spacing out," Hack shouted right next to my ear. "Your buddy Swift's working on getting himself killed."

What?

My head swiveled uncertainly in the direction of the riotous noise, and with my vision still tuned to the Other Side it was a full-blown sensory assault. There was a being of pure white light, wings burning like the sun, Swift. And then there was the monstrosity that was Henry, the seething black nightmare with his twisted grimace inside of its inky mass, so dark it was like looking into the Void. They crashed and slammed into each other, light and the absence of it smashing together and whirling. My brain screamed at me to stop looking.

I could just make out, underneath the chaos, the still shapes of the sacrifices, and Sarah in the middle of it. All of them were still, the lights of their souls snuffed out and gone. I turned to Hack and stared at him dumbly.

"We're all going to die."

"Shut your damn fool mouth with that talk," Hack growled. "I taught you better than that. It ain't over yet."

Hack turned to look at the fight, and I noticed how crooked he was. He had stood strong and straight before, bright with more than just the light that filled his eyes. Now that crackling, thriving energy was gone and he was just an old, old man, like when I'd found him bleeding in the Bastille. How?

No time.

He was right, of course he was right. What was I supposed to do? I was tapped out, there was nothing left in the tank and I didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against Henry. I scratched at the cover of the Libro Nihil anxiously and for the briefest of moments considered bolting, running, putting as much distance between me and the whole terrible situation as I could. My body even started reacting to the thought, but some small part of me unfortunately decided to speak up and remind me that was the worst possible thing to do.

It would just delay the inevitable demise. Better to face it. I had stopped Henry from using the book to bring forth the Sleeper, and the end of the world with it, didn't mean I wasn't going to get myself killed anyways.

The book?

Damn it.

"I am an unbelievable idiot."

"I could've told you that," Hack said.