A tremor rocked the earth, knocking my feet from under me. The gym groaned, and more brick and debris rained down. Students ran for the cover of the stage, but I sat, transfixed on the sight before me.
Flames licked through the gaps beneath the doors of the gym. With a final explosion of debris, a black obelisk smashed through the gym roof, shooting a pillar of flame into the sky.
The earth beneath me rumbled. The stage tilted, and students and teachers cried and ran toward the center of the field. Ayaz grabbed me under the arms and hauled me to my feet. “We have to go.”
He wasn’t wrong. We had to get outside of the triangle formed by the three pillars. Somehow I found the strength to churn my legs, running as fast as I could over the rolling ground, flanked by my Kings who refused to leave my side.
Behind us, the building crashed and the earth rumbled as the other two pillars drew up to their full height – thirty, fifty, a hundred feet above the school. Masonry rained down on the lawn as we dived and rolled out of the way. From the top of each pillar shot a flame of pure light – light of a color I couldn’t identify – bending toward each other to create an arch of flame. Tendrils of light shot from the center, beaming across the field to stab at every Miskatonic student and teacher.
The engine of a spaceship.
“Argh!” Trey cried as the light touched his chest. He went to his knees, gasping.
“Shitfuckcunt.” Quinn rolled on his back, clutching his hands to his chest. The look of terror on his face froze me in my tracks.
All around me, students fell, alive still, but in searing pain. And that light… it shimmered with an ethereal beauty that held my eyes even as I knew we had to get to safety.
I knew what I was looking at.
The god’s voice rang in my ears.I have kept my promise. I am taking from them what is mine.
Thank you.Another voice rang in my ears. It wasn’t the god, but it had a strange accent. Old-fashioned, almost… Puritan.You have freed us.
My rats. Their bodies were being emptied of their broken souls, ready to receive the god’s new children.
Thank you,the god screamed inside my head as the ground shook and the lights retreated, focusing their beam on the gym to draw up his new children.Their souls are black with the stain of their crimes. I will gorge myself upon this feast for all my journey, and in their new bodies they will become the most beautiful children.
I bent down to help Trey to his feet. He clutched his chest and gasped for air, but he moved, he breathed. I didn’t have time to ask him how he felt. I grabbed for Quinn and Ayaz, holding them, feeling the blood still pumping in their veins.
The world stopped.
For a moment, there was silence. The earth stopped shaking. The hum and hiss of the engine stalled. A stillness that spoke volumes hung around us.
Then the ground rumbled.
The god spoke.
Chapter Forty-One
His voice rumbled across the earth, made of the screams of devoured souls, but also something else, something deeper and darker – a clap of thunder at the heart of a dying star.
And I knew this time, I wasn’t the only one who heard his words.
I have slept beneath your planet since its forming. I have supped of you and taken in your essence, your feelingsss. As I have shaped your race, so too have you shaped me. But you are many, and I am one. I have hungered, but not for food. I have hungered for that which you made me understand. For love.
With a roar, the ground tore asunder. A giant crack split the lawn. Tendrils of inky darkness crept across the grass, snatching at limbs, raking claws of ice through warm, human skin, wanting, searching.
For me.
Go home,I screamed into the void.You are not alone. Out there you will find your family again.
The ground bucked and swayed. Three men held me upright. My three pillars, mirroring the pillars of light that now beamed high above Miskatonic.
I must have my light. Otherwise, I am all in darkness.
The god’s eyes turned over all of us. And he saw me. I was a beacon of light in his eternal void.
For so long he’d been in a power exchange with humans. Just as he’d taken from us, so had we drained him. He’d seen the earth born, known the rise and fall of millions of species before he grew to know humans. He’d been alone before Parris, so terribly alone, and now he had found someone who understood him as no one ever could, as even his children would never understand.
