Chapter 15: All These Violent Things
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I should have killed the girl.
I know I should have. Knew it the moment she stepped out of the closet where she was hiding. I didn’t notice her because I’d been so starving, so ravenous when I entered that ramshackle home. All I could think about was feeding. To find not one man, but two, and both who fit my criteria…I didn’t even realize she was there. I didn’t sense her. I was too busy reveling in my luck.
By the time I looked up from the bed, noticed her presence, it was too late. She’d watched me drain the life out of the man, watched the whole thing. With the amount of energy thrumming through me, I knew that I could be at her throat in a moment. I could make it quick. I wouldn’t let her suffer. I wouldn’t drain her—just snap her neck.
But when she spoke, I froze, one hand still pressed against my latest victim’s chest.
“Thank you.”
Our eyes met. There was a silence, and then she asked the question quietly - so quietly I could barely hear her.
“Are you going to kill me too?”
She didn’t sound frightened or angry. She just sounded tired. Resigned.
I said nothing to her. I simply left. It may bring me trouble later, but in my experience, little comes in the aftermath of my feedings. Witnesses or no. The corpses I leave behind are enough to raise questions, but they are questions that most mortals cannot answer—and the majority of those are so very eager to sweep the unexplained under the rug.
Besides. I suspect that Avidia is still watching me from the shadows. If the Archive is worried about it, she'll clean up my messes.
I receive many strange looks when I wander through the…WalMart. I do not like it. It’s too bright in the building, with far too many aisles. At least there aren’t many people - a consequence of late evening, I’m sure. I purchase a large parcel with a pentagram styled on the side. We need something to carry the book around with. I highly doubt the symbol will provide any protection as is, but with some adjustments, it may serve to blot out the book’s presence from the amalgam. Enough to help us maintain our head start.
When I have a cart full of clothing and some other essentials, I roll towards the register and fix the man behind it with a smile. He stares at me, looking me up and down from head to muddy toe, and I can tell he’s about to ask a question. But when his gaze reaches my face, all thought dissolves from his mind, and he returns my smile with empty ease.
He never breaks eye contact as he scans the items. It is, I confess, mildly annoying - but only because it takes him twice as long to complete the transaction. I consider using some of my newly acquired energy to persuade him not to charge me, but I’ve a feeling that won’t be necessary. Not with the amount of money Lucas has. Besides, I prefer to keep my reserves stocked for larger problems.
Given how things have been going, ‘larger problems’ is more of a guarantee than a possibility.
Avidia’s command has yet to begin troubling me. I suppose that is one benefit of being repeatedly attacked: few could claim I’m not at least trying to deliver my charge in a timely fashion. There is also the fact that the Sibyl’s words work differently than my version of persuasion, or Lydia’s ability to command me through our bond. I don’t quite grasp the specifics myself, but a foretelling from a Sibyl is more of a statement than an order. I am taking Lydia to the Archive because that is what Fate has decided I will do. It is not infallible - I know I’ve wormed my way out of one of Avidia’s foretellings before - but it is troublesome. Thus far I am not sufficiently motivated to attempt diverting my path.
Because, Dorothy’s voice murmurs, You don’t really want to stray from the path. You’ve always been so good at following directions, haven’t you?
I grit my teeth. Be silent, I think.
I wonder if it is a sign of madness, talking to yourself within the confines of your own head.
You’ve never been able to command me, William Doherty, she replies. What makes you think you can start now? Because I’m dead? A laugh. You of all people should know death stops nothing.
I blink. Her voice sounds so real, so very real. I look down at my hands on the steering wheel, curling my fingers against it, feeling the way the leather gives beneath my iron grip. Again I try to summon the memory of killing her. I try to paint it in my mind, to reassure myself that these same hands choked the life out of her. I know I did it. I know I did. And yet as sweet as the memory must surely be, I cannot conjure it beyond a blurred image. It’s like looking at lights through a rain-spattered window.
Oh, you won’t get rid of me so easily this time, she murmurs. I told you I would never let you go, didn’t I? You belong to me.
The questions that I’ve been avoiding for so long blossom in the back of my mind. Who stole my book from the Archive? How did Lucas Hallowsworth - an incompetent buffoon even according to Dakota Hunter - manage to summon me?
Why did the amalgam speak with Dorothy’s voice?
You still haven’t figured it out yet, she says. I hear her laughter again. Her voice is getting stronger now. Louder. Have you?
I park the car outside of the hotel and stare at the door to Room 33. My thoughts churn through the possibilities. There are things that the Archive doesn’t allow creatures such as myself to know. Forbidden knowledge, whispered about behind closed doors. Means of rebirth. Reincarnation. The subsuming of souls to restitch the existence of another. Dangerous things that often end in catastrophe, that threaten the veil that holds back the Aether.
What if. What if she…
A terrible crash wrenches me out of my thoughts. I turn my head, eyes tracking the darkness outside of the car. On the other side of the parking lot, near the entrance, I see one of the vehicles moving. Sideways. Its wheels skid across the asphalt as something pushes against it, thrusting it out of the way as though offended that its path is blocked.
Even with the darkness, I can see the bright green eyes of Mr. Darcy, staring directly at me.
I fly out of the car. The amalgam reached us faster than I’d anticipated, but it hasn’t caught me sapped of energy this time. As it charges towards me, I’m already launching towards it, strength flooding the limbs of the vessel I control. I catch a brief notion of surprise right before I connect with it, and then we’re flying backwards, skidding over the ground and out onto the street. When I pull back, I hold fistfuls of its body, writhing and wriggling in my hands.
The creature rallies, rolling back onto its feet. It fixes me with such fury in those gleaming eyes - the collective fury of all the spirits bound to the book. It occurs to me that some of the energy it’s using is mine.
With a roar, it flies at me again. I take the impact this time, and we go sailing further, out of the road and onto a patch of dry grass. Rolling, dirt churning, it kicks its hind legs and clamps its jaws down on my shoulder. I howl in pain before filtering that agony into my host. His screams are a distant echo, peripheral and unimportant. Drawing the dagger from the ritual, I raise it high and stab it repeatedly into the creature’s side, wrenching free smatterings of black matter. It bites down harder, snarling, trying to rip a chunk of flesh and bone out of me.
Through the chaos and glimmers of pain, I see flashes of something. Of a creature, bearing down from the darkness. One giant eye gleams from the darkness, fixated on something, reaching out unseen tendrils and hooking them into its prey. There is hunger, a great, relentless hunger, and something else. Something vast and incomprehensible and terrible…
Lydia. It’s chasing Lydia. She isn’t in the hotel. She’s in danger.
“Cailín damanta!” I cry. Could she not stay put for a few hours?! Could she not listen to me for one moment?!
The amalgam, oblivious to my frustrations and thoroughly apathetic otherwise, rips its head up with a roar. Blood spatters, muscle is torn from me, and the damage is so great that I sense something in Lucas’s essence fracture. I suspect his mind is beginning to splinter.
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I cannot let it go too far. I need him whole enough to interrogate.
So I embrace the pain. It floods me, but it does not subdue me. I have endured far worse than this. Still on top of me, the amalgam glares down with hatred oozing from every pore. Its jaws open wide, and I hear the whispering of voices in its bloody maw. Beyond them, louder than them, I hear Dorothy’s voice rise above the rest:
“I will consume all that you are.”
“Is that so?” I snarl. “Here, cailleach. Take a bite.”
I reel back and thrust my fist down the creature’s throat.
Its eyes widen. I thrust deeper, dagger held tight in my fingers. I lance it upwards as though spearing a fish. It wrenches backwards, trying to break free, teeth clamping down and goring into the flesh of my arm. I bare my own teeth, feeling a thrill of ecstasy. I do not know what Dorothy has done to bind herself to this creature - whether she is truly in there, or if this is just a work of illusion. But the mere thought that there is something of her lingering within - the need to obliterate it outweighs all else. I summon more of the power freshly flowing through my blood. My shoulder heals, muscle blooming red and bloody, flesh puckering and mending. I see something coming towards us down the road - a flash of white, headlights looming.
Planting my feet, I pivot my waist, muscles singing, and fling the amalgam, dagger and all, into the oncoming eighteen-wheeler.
There’s a squeal of brakes, but it’s not nearly fast enough. I’d thrown the beast with all my strength, and well-fed as I am now, that strength is far from negligible. The impact is glass-shattering, the truck’s headlights winking out as the amalgam breaks itself upon the bumper and grill. I watch as the thing is crushed beneath all of those wheels, smeared over the road by a monster of metal moving sixty miles an hour. The result is what looks like freshly laid asphalt, and one shell-shocked driver, staring open-mouthed out his window and trying to figure out what on earth just happened.
I’m moving again before he gets a chance to even look my way. He’s still there when I peel out of the parking lot in the car. I don’t know if the amalgam will try to kill him or not when it regenerates itself - I can already see the puddle of ooze twitching - but that isn’t my priority. My priority is getting that godsbedamned woman to the Archive.
I should just leave, I think. I should just keep driving. Abandon her. I have the book. I can stay ahead of the Archive.
Even as I think it, I laugh at my own optimism. The Archive is old - older than the Templars, it’s believed. Older than Avidia. Its origin is shrouded so steeply in secrecy that even I, in my centuries of servitude, know little of its true purpose. Age like that comes with eyes and ears everywhere. Acting in direct opposition of their orders again…
They will find me. They will obliterate me this time. Erase me, regardless of our contract.
And I will never find Elan in the Aether.
I veer onto the street in Ambleton, following the pull of Lydia’s fear. What is she doing in this town? How did she even get here without a vehicle?
Uber, Lucas wheezes.
Why is my host speaking German!?
I see them suddenly, turning a corner. It’s hard to miss them, really: just as I spot Lydia, a burst of flame erupts from the hands of a woman beside her. I do not recognize her, but just looking at her tells me she is not what she seems. Not possessed, no - but she’s connected to the Aether somehow. Strong. Capable.
She glances at me through the windshield of the Royce and I can tell from one look that she hates me.
I’m certain our association will be very amicable.
Then I get a look at the thing chasing them, and my mouth goes dry. Its form doesn’t tell me anything—these creatures are as vast as the void and varied as the stars. Unknowable. But I would recognize the distortion around it anywhere. The way its presence seems to warp the very fabric of reality, twisting the Veil itself.
It hears the car, turning its head to look at me with that large, terrible eye, and I veer to the side, missing Lydia and her new accomplice so I can ram it at full speed. It spins off of the car with the impact, head bouncing off the window to my left. Where it hit, a spiderweb of cracks forms, rapidly spreading over the glass.
The passenger side door opens. It isn’t Lydia that climbs in - it’s the strange woman, her arm pointed at me, the glint of something metal attached to her wrist.
“Get in,” she snaps. She’s looking at me, but she must be addressing Lydia, who opens the door and launches herself into the back seat. The door isn’t even shut before the woman shouts: “DRIVE!”
Eying the device she has pointed at me, I slam on the gas and tear away, hearing the crunching of bones beneath the wheels.
I’m beginning to think vehicles are my new favorite weapon. This is quite satisfying.
“What,” Lydia pants, breathless. “Was that thing?”
“Beyond your understanding,” the woman snaps. She keeps her eyes fixed on me. “I can see why it attached itself to you. What have you been playing with? What is this thing?”
It takes me a moment, but by thing, she must mean me. Just as I see something strange in her, she must be able to sense that I am not human.
Lydia looks flabbergasted. “I. I…”
“Do you think you can just play with this shit?” The woman asks. Her dark eyes bore into Lydia, attention drifting from me, and I admit I feel a sense of relief that her ire is pointed elsewhere. “It’s not a game. How did you get hold of this creature?” She jerks a thumb at me. “This is how that thing sniffed you out. If I’d known what you were messing with, I would have let it eat you…”
She trails off, and I see she’s staring at something else in the back seat. The book. It must have slipped out with all of my wild driving.
The woman’s eyes snap back to Lydia, narrowing in distrust. “Are you with the Archive?”
The question throws me. Few know about the Archive beyond its walls. A very precious few, and few of them are friends of the organization. Who is this woman?
“…The Archive?” Lydia echoes. The confusion in her voice is so genuine I can see it turns some of that distrust into confusion.
There’s a terrible shrieking sound of metal being torn, interrupting further questions. I glance in the rearview mirror and realize that the creature has caught up with us, its hands grasping the car’s frame, its face looming and leering in the dark. I speed up the car again and it bounces off, rolling on the street.
It stays down for less than a breath before getting right back up again.
“Okay. Come on. Somebody tell me what the FUCK this thing is!” Lydia is grabbing the seatbelt so tight her knuckles are white.
“Lydia,” I say, trying to remain calm.
Her voice is small when she answers. “…Yeah?”
“Do you remember that conversation we had in the car?”
I glance up at the rearview again to get a glimpse at her face as she starts to go pale.
“About the…” Her eyes go wide. “No. No.”
“Unfortunately yes.”
“Oh come the fuck on! I didn’t sign up to fight Cthulu!”
“Drive out of the town,” the woman interrupts, her voice full of command. “Get it away from civilization.” I flick a glance at her. She’s opening her jacket, and it’s only then that I see she has a veritable armory strapped to her chest and back. I don’t recognize the weapons, and Lucas has no helpful information on offer. She begins plucking parts out of holsters and clicking them together, and it’s only after she’s made some progress that I’m able to recognize the shape of what she’s making.
A gun.
A big gun.
Between that and the fact that she clearly knows what we’re dealing with, I don’t bother trying to argue with her. I just drive.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” She clicks another piece into place. “We’re going to get this thing away from people.” Click. “You’re going to stop the car.” Click. “And then you’re going to distract it for me so I can get a clear shot at its head.” Click.
“Are those,” Lydia breathes. “Are those incendiary rounds?”
She doesn’t bother answering her. “You’re going to use your little pet,” she continues, as if she hadn’t spoken, “To make sure it can’t get to me. Is that clear?”
I can hear the scowl in Lydia’s voice. “He’s not my…”
“I cannot even begin to express,” she interjects sharply, “How much I do not care what he is or isn’t. If we don’t kill this thing now, it’s going to start stacking bodies. It’s going to spread what it’s got like the plague. You have no idea how much blood will run in these streets. Do. You. Understand?”
Lydia draws in a shuddering breath. She meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. “William?” She says, softly. “Can you fight it?”
I sense something from her. More than uncertainty. More than fear. Something between us, stoppering the easy flow of our bond. But I do not have time to probe at it, to figure out what it is. Not now.
“I will do what I can,” I answer.
I can tell this doesn’t satisfy her, but she nods. She grasps the handle of the bag and pulls the book towards her. As we pass the last house and veer towards the highway, the woman says: “No. Go off-course. Lead it out into the field there.”
She raises a hand and points without bothering to glance up. By now her weapon looks fully formed, and she’s clicking two massive bullets into the chamber. The ‘field’ she indicates was obviously abandoned long ago, full of tall wild grass and dry brush. I whip the wheel of the car, sending us bumping off of the on-ramp and into the dirt. Thankfully the ground is hard - I doubt we could have churned through mud. Especially not fast enough to keep ahead of this beast. It’s nearly keeping pace with us, following us stride for stride as we move further and further into the open. I see flashes of it between the weeds, see the way it makes the grass ripple around us like a shark in water.
“Stop the car,” the woman says. I hit the breaks, and we come to a wrenching halt, dust kicking up around us and briefly obscuring our visibility.
When it clears, the silhouette of the eldritch creature is visible as a pale, skeletal figure two yards away, standing in the clearing made by the car’s path. It’s staring at us, and I do my best to avoid looking it in the eye. I see no sign of damage from when I hit it with the car, nor when I set it skidding onto the road. Beneath the light of the moon, there’s a strange shimmer to its skin, as though it’s beginning to grow a layer of scales.
“It’s going to be fixed on her,” the gun-wielding woman hisses, jerking her head towards Lydia. “Do what you can to keep her alive, but your priority is to keep it distracted. Got it?”
I nod, though I immediately dismiss her orders. If I let Lydia die, the Archive will no doubt deliver the same reprimand as if I’d killed her myself.
I see no need to let her know any of that, though.
“Understood.”
“Good.” She opens the door quietly, eyes now fixed on the unmoving figure of the abomination. She spares only a look towards Lydia. Considering for a moment, she merely shakes her head.
“Stay in the car.”
Lydia stares at the back of my head. Her hands are shaking, and I feel a pang of desire to soothe her.
“William?” she whispers. “…Are you sure you can do this?”
I turn briefly to look at her. I should reassure her - bolster her somehow. But I can still sense the odd rift between us, and something about the way she flinches when I meet her gaze gives me pause.
“…Stay in the car, Lydia,” I murmur. “Just stay in the car.”
Then I slip into the night. Into the cold.
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- [Gaelic:] Damn girl!
- [Gaelic:] Witch.