The miles raced by as they flew over the pavement at what Hugo assumed was well above the speed limit. He didn’t trouble himself to remember such things - not when he could enjoy the view instead. Though all the area outside the headlights was lost to the two humans accompanying him, he could see deep into the darkness on both sides of the roads.

The woods they went through were lovely of course, but especially towards the edge of the city, they were devoured by new homes springing up like weeds with increasing frequency. Though he doubted that the woods to the west of Baltimore had ever been as primeval as his beloved Forest of Compiègne, it still had its charms. Plus the drive gave him time to study his beautiful companion. He would have wanted her just for the challenge of the thing, but the traces of her enchanted Romani bloodline only made her more desirable, and so, he watched her pretending to be unafraid as his car’s tires devoured mile after mile.

The drive there was uneventful, and upon reaching the garish Bergen estate, which had all the charm of an austere protestant church, they were ushered inside, after Josephine made it very clear that the head butler actually had to invite Hugo in. The brief confusion that this caused made Hugo smile, and he was half tempted to show the servants his fangs just for the shock value, though he was fairly sure that it wouldn’t be the strangest thing that they would see tonight.

Once inside they were quickly ushered to the room of mirrors, and Hugo was surprised that he indeed felt nothing unusual, just as Josphine had said. So, throwing caution to the wind, he stepped inside and walked over to the young master that had started all this.

“Be careful,” Josephine called out, but he ignored her. If she’d been careful in the first place then he would be at home enjoying a nice ménage à trois with his lovely dancers instead of looking into things that were better left alone.

When Hugo reached the young master, the first thing he did was pick up the book the man was holding to make sure he hadn’t actually gotten his hands on some ancient grimore, and finding it to be another trashy pulp novel he tossed it casually aside.

“Harrowing Tales of Wonder, eh?” he said to himself as he moved to pick up the lad, “I could tell you some tales that would turn your hair white!”

As soon as Hugo’s hand touch the boy’s though, he felt something stirring in the ether around the two of them. It was a vague, malicious sensation like sharks circling him just below the water, or a wolf pack on his scent that hadn’t quite found him. There was something there though, and for a moment he glimpsed the boy’s shattered mind like he was looking over the shoulder of someone else in a crowded theater.

In that metaphor though, he was the only stranger. Every other seat was filled with the same shadowy outline, as the entity there with him feasted on the boy’s life with hundreds of eyeballs, slowly leeching away all the things that made Morty the person he was. The death of his father. The fact that he’d been the one to electrocute the old man. The bullying that almost broke young Morty at the boarding school he’d been forced to attend for most of his childhood. The summer nights spent watching the fireflies. Even the vaguest memories of his mother when he was a young child were being devoured on that fractured screen all at once.

That he’d been enduring this psychic vamperism for almost half a day, and he had not yet succumbed was testament to some hidden strength that the boy had, but Hugo was sure that there would be no saving him. Were he to break the hold that this creature had on Morty, he would still spend the rest of his life as a turnip. So, he released him, letting the wolves and the sharks drift away as they returned to gorging on the prey they’d found rather than pursue a new victim that didn’t quite seem to be there.

Hugo considered checking in on the mental landscape of the footman who was just as locked in place, but he decided he didn’t care enough to bother with the help. So, instead he approached Ezekiel.

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“You know,” he whispered into the old man’s ear, “I suppose I should thank you, even after all the trouble you caused me the last time, I still got to taste our sweet little strumpet thanks to your carelessness. That’s just one more sin you can try to fruitlessly pray away.”

After Hugo had finished gloating he grabbed the old man and got the same flashes as before. This time the stage of that crowded theater was not yet shattered into a hundred different images, and the colors on the film were not so bleached. The only image to be seen here was the burning orphanage that would forever haunt the man. As much as Hugo would have loved to watch that little show and learn a bit more about the irritating pastor’s haunted past, he was forced to let go almost immediately because of the fervor of faith that the old man was projecting to hold back the onslaught bent on devouring every scrap of his soul.

“How ironic,” Hugo said, walking back to rejoin Josephine and the servants standing in the hall. “I’m the only one here that can reach your friend, but he’s so busy holding off the monster assaulting him with his faith that I can barely touch him. Quite the predicament.”

“Monster?” she asked, “Do you know what it is?”

“Know? No,” he answered. “But I suspect it is Aazruth… something that is sometimes referred to as the watcher between. And if I’m right that could make what happens next a bit messy.” Hugo chastised himself. He must be getting senile if he thought that invoking the name of an old one when it was practically in the room with him to be a good idea.

“Messy? What are we going to do?” Josephine asked with fear sparkling in her eyes.

“Well, given that I once saw something like this level a manor larger than this, I should think that you should get all the servants to run for their lives, while I go fetch Johnny’s instruments,” Hugo’s smile broadened as he saw his little fortune-teller’s worry deepen. “Be right back, though, because once I start distracting this thing you’re going to need to be the one to drag Ezekiel to the car before things get really crazy.”

“But can’t Johnny—” she started to ask.

“Johnny can’t save your pastor and be ready with the engine running at the same time now, can he?” Hugo pointed out as he walked to the front door. “This thing has his hooks deep into your friend already, so even after I steal the spotlight, you are going to have to get him as far away as possible to have even a chance that this thing will lose interest.”

To her credit, Josephine didn’t ask any more stupid questions. She just ran through the house screaming that there was a fire and that everyone needed to evacuate, while he told Johnny the plan. As a ruse it wasn’t complicated, but it was effective, and a dozen servants poured out onto the nighttime gravel drive even he was pulling the twin strength brooms from the trunk of his automobile.

Hugo didn’t care much for firearms, because he preferred to use his hands to really experience the violence, but if they were good for anything, it was breaking things. So, with two hundred rounds of automatic killing power he walked back into the room to see just how angry he could make an eldritch horror of unknowable power.

With one gun in each hand, Hugo open fire for the first time since he’d been forced to leave France. The bullets didn’t seem especially fast to him as they began to spray out of the twin barrels in a flurry of tiny explosions, but it was still hard to do much aiming with both weapons at once. He didn’t worry about that though. There were only a handful of people that he had to worry about not hitting as he slowly pivoted around the room, shattering mirrors by the dozens.

After the first few gave way in a spray of silvered glass, he could feel the dark pressure starting to build as the rage sought an outlet, but by the time he’d finished making a ruin of the second wall and was moving on to the third, the gaze of the blind god was becoming truly oppressive. It couldn’t see him, but it knew where he was and what he was doing, and it was outraged that anyone would interfere with it in such a way. Any human that was the focus of such rage would have already been a coarse, gory marmalade right now, but Hugo endured.

Still, as a distraction it wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped, so when a particularly large shard of glass sprayed out from the slow motion waterfall of glass he was creating, he snatched it from the air and jabbed it into his side, ruining another suit in the process.

“There you go, Aazruthr'rhuren. Why don’t you see if you can find me now,” he grunted, tossing aside his now empty weapons as he felt the focus on him building.