Her kidnapper rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck—first one side, then the other, of course it was hard work carrying a struggling woman—and leveled his chin, gazing remotely down on Liv as her back met the altar and the pale things hauled on arm and leg to keep her trapped.The echo of Erik’s posture made bile whip at the back of her throat; familiarity did not, in this case, breed comfort.
“Miss Stellack,” Ignatius said, with his usual dry politeness.“I see your temperament has not improved.”
No Dying Allowed Tonight
“It wasn’t a bad plan,”Robert husked.
“Stay still.”Sara’s hands plunged into the bleeding mess of his abdomen before she exhaled hard; Daniel, his hand on her shoulder, closed his eyes and swayed, a bright white bandage wrapped about his head.Looked like he’d been hit with flying debris, but he was grimly determined to stay upright.
Not only had the adultshoggothchewed through bedrock with something prodding it from behind, but another of the foul things had taken wormshape and drilled up onto the temple grounds, leaving a ragged icy hole to belch forth the main attack.The creature down here had groped blindly for the Flame-mouth, and the sucking sounds as it roasted to death while attempting that nourishment—as well as the gusts of caustic black smoke and thin nauseating steam—weren’t good forlirai.
Still, none of the Sons made a move to drag them to safety.There were larger matters afoot.“Who was it?”Daniel murmured.“Tell us, Father.”
Robert coughed.Erik, temporarily frozen with Liv’soneiroscupped in one nerveless hand, stared at a dead, savaged mess—the slime-drenchedshoggoth, not to mention thenthleihounds with their crop of parasitic tendrils—had made of a fellow Son.
Casualties weren’t heavy, but that was no comfort.Especially to this poor bastard, or the ones up top.
The gem in his fist sang unhappily, a low note of strain.Of course the traitor could break a meteorite-iron chain; weaving anoneirossetting was a Son’s sorcery, after all.
Dakshi staggered, leaning heavily on another Younger’s shoulder—the one with the short braids and the slow sweet smile, sealed to Daniel.“The entire wall,” he repeated.“Just… the entirewall.”
Erik didn’t blame the Younger.Seeing a fuckingshoggothup close was enough to put a dent in anyone’s evening.The rushing in his ears wouldn’t go away, and the sick sensation under his ribcage wouldn’t either.
He eyed the hole—oval, big enough to heave a giant snout through—on one side of the vaulted room.The breach outside was a feint, but a good one.They’d been so busy responding to it nobody had thought about down here until Erik, hoping he was wrong, had battered down the door he’d insisted Robert and Dakshi bar.
He’d delivered her right into the traitor’s hands.
The body of theshoggothslumped further in the throat of the Flame-well; the golden light, burning away corruption, spilled through rents in its protoplasm.The last of thenthleidogs squealed as it died upon a Father’s blade, the lean man in a scorched jacket leaning hard to drive steel completely through, killing the tentacled parasite as well as the canine host.
Both were equally dangerous.
“One… of us,” Robert said.His eyelids drooped, and that was a bad sign.So long as he was even fractionally conscious theliraicould work wonders, but when a Son gave up, very little could be done.“Grey hair.Far gone.Corpse-eyes.”
A Father, then.A fresh shiver passed through Erik from crown to sole, and he tucked the dreamstone absently in his jacket pocket while edging soundlessly for the hole in the wall.Theshoggoth-sludge at the bottom, opalescent when there was something to eat through, was blackening in wisps as the Flame’s influence spread, soft and inexorable.Someone who guessed I’d bring her down here, knowing the usual places wouldn’t be safe.
Put that way, it was academic, wasn’t it?Like one of Liv’s lists, the shape of her thoughts lying under neat vertical rows, one item attached to the next, a daisy chain of coping mechanism.
The only question was whether or not the bastard had help.
“Stay with me,” Sara murmured.“I’m not going to lose anyone else tonight, Robert.Staywith me.”
“My… lady…” Robert’s eyelids fluttered.Theliraiswore, softly, and her fingers tensed.She pulled the last sharp, glassynthleitooth out of a mess of pulsing guts and tossed it into a small pile of similar obsidian triangles.Then her bloody fingers descended again and the Flame responded, bubbling to the lip of its enclosure, eating fully through theshoggoth’s corpse, sending tiny rainbow tendrils up through the smoke, valiantly attempting to consume and purify that pollution as well.
The pulse—liraicalling upon the cleansing fire and the heartbeat of the planet itself responding—passed through every Son crowding into the vault, the ones in the halls, even those sweeping the temple grounds and using sorcery to close the great black gash in snowy earth where the secondshoggothhad breached.
Robert gave a barking, agonized cry.Gut wounds hurt like a sonofabitch, but at least with aliraiarriving so quickly the Father had a fighting chance.
Dakshi was debriefing at high speed as he swayed, a knot of Fathers around him.Grigori, though, fell into step next to Erik.
This Father wasted no words of greeting, or of anger.“Can you track her?”
Meaning,are you sealed?
“No,” Erik said, heavily.How long ago did he turn?There was no time to think about it; the onlyhow longthat mattered was the one leading to hislirai.“And they stripped her dreamstone.But I can trackhim.”
“Right into an ambush.”Grigori glanced around the Flame-vault, and one eyebrow raised a fraction.“This was a good plan, though.It would have worked.”
Except he knows me.Knows how I think.Well, that blade cut two ways.Of course, Ignatius only had to mention Control often enough to keep suspicion pacified, and there were many ways of acquiring money—nothing was easier, especially with the Mad God’s help.
