"Which is exactly what Yeh-Rholyu wants."
#
Glass shattered.
Damon was airborne until he hit something not as hard as he was. It splintered. He landed and discovered a young branch beneath him. The tree he crashed into split down the middle and sagged in the grass.
Grass?
Damon looked up at the house he was just thrown from and the field that surrounded it. He was on Palisade Avenue, or at least he should have been. All around, grass and trees replaced the cityscape that should have greeted him.
Yeh-Rholyu peered out from the shattered window. "Don't be alarmed."
"What is this? The past?"
"Not at all." The god's writhing limbs recoiled as he dismissed the idea. "Time moves as it does anywhere else."
"Because this is the truth beneath the lie?" Damon asked with a sneer.
"Right."
"You still have your house," Damon said. Glass fell from his clothes as he stood.
"It is old and the truth has accepted it." Yeh-Rholyu climbed out of the house and examined Damon. "You killed that tree."
"The tree was in the middle of the street," Damon said. "Someone chopped it down a century ago."
"Its spirit lived on here. If it had been standing in the lie you know, it would wither and fall in days."
"So killing something there doesn't kill its spirit here, but killing something here destroys it completely?"
"In absolute."
"Then we're in the right place." Damon called on his truer form. The strength of it rushed through his veins, flooding his senses. The grass and dirt beneath his feet sunk in under his new weight.
Yeh-Rholyu stretched his tendrils out and coiled them expectantly.
The two nightmares snarled and spat at one another.
Damon pounced.
#
Chris never teased Gracie for being a terrible driver. Coming of age on the Jersey Shore gave her a prolonged adolescence, a sense of immortality that grew in proportion to her recklessness. So when she clipped a parked car on Newark Avenue, Chris said nothing about it.
"He's still not picking up," Chris said, putting the phone down on his lap.
Gracie's eyes narrowed. She pressed her foot down harder and the engine grunted in anger. "We have to get to him."
"You know how he gets when he's... determined," Chris said.
"It doesn't matter," Gracie said. "Whoever kills Yeh-Rholyu will be cursed to live out his sentence straddled between worlds. He'll be separated from her forever."
Gracie sped into the Heights and parked in front of the first fire hydrant on Palisade Avenue. She cut the engine and raced to the old stone house.
Chris hobbled behind her.
She was already halfway through a shattered window by the time he caught up to her.
He waited for her to open the door for him.
Chris walked into the living room and counted the scrapes along the wall and ceiling. "What a mess."
Gracie's voice came in from around the corner. "Over here."
Chris climbed over the broken and bloodied furniture. "That must be the symbol of Yeh-Rholyu. Did Damon do this?"
"I'm not sure," Gracie said. "It doesn't look like his blood. It's too thin."
Chris pointed to the body in the corner. "Maybe it belongs to him?"
Gracie knelt down over the man and picked through his pockets. She opened his wallet and a gold badge dropped to the floor.
Chris sighed. "He promised not to kill any more cops."
"And you were expecting him to just stop?" Gracie asked. "These are old habits."
"The world is different now," Chris said. "He can't just go one town over, change his name, and expect that people will move on."
"Well, you can relax," Gracie said, pulling her hands back from the man's neck. "He's alive."
"Even better, a cop who can write a description of his attacker," Chris huffed. "I'm guessing that this is his blood all over the floor."
"Was that a question?" Gracie asked.
"Not really," Chris said. "But if Yeh-Rholyu was behind this and he was summoned in front of Damon, why is this house still standing? Don't get me wrong, this place is a disaster, but the damage here is only a part of Damon's warm-up routine."
Gracie shrugged. "Maybe they left?"
"Yeah," Chris said looking around the room. "But where could they have gone?"
#
A black claw whistled through the air, slicing off a length of Yeh-Rholyu's tendril. It fell to the grass and twitched before going still.
The old god cried out, slinking away. "I'll tell you where she is."
Damon stalked closer. "It isn't about just that anymore."
Yeh-Rholyu's rich yellow eyes grew wide. He turned and crawled back toward the house in haste. Several lengths of his body reached into the ground and wrapped around posts to pull him faster. Two arms dragged his body across the grass while others grasped at the next holds. He moved quickly this way in spite of his injuries.
Damon smiled at the trail of slick blood and slowed his gait to match Yeh-Rholyu's speed. A pleasant trill of sadism rippled through him. Even though Damon didn't feel that he needed his gift to tell him that Yeh-Rholyu was afraid, he tapped into it anyway.
The fullness of the silence stopped him cold.
Instead of a panicked tenor or the solid low tones of planning or even a bargainer's baritone, there was the constant beat of the old god's pulse.
Unsatisfied, Damon stoked his adversary's furnace. "How long has it been since you felt fear? A century? Longer?" He added to this by digging a claw into one of Yeh-Rholyu's trailing appendages. The old god screamed.
Pain was a valuable addition to the music of terror. Like a cymbal crash, it was beautiful in concert with other instruments. Alone, it was cheap and over too quickly.
As the noise faded, however, it left behind a soft melody so high and so light it could have been overlooked. Damon listened to these faint tones of wonder for a full measure.
There was an itch of a thought. Damon pushed it away.
Yeh-Rholyu made it back into the house.
Damon followed.
In the constant glow of this world, the trails of blood that the good lieutenant left behind shone, looping and intersecting in an intricate circle. Yeh-Rholyu slid into the dining room and positioned himself in the center of the markings.
The itch grew into an annoyance. He again dismissed it and advanced on the bloodied god.
Damon raised his hand and, as he struck, his mind lurched forward. The attack at the house. Rebecca's kidnapping. The constant antagonism of the police lieutenant. Luring him to this house and crossing him over to this world.
Me, Damon thought. This was all to get me to kill Yeh-Rholyu. Damon's final thought hit before his strike landed. Yeh-Rholyu wants to die.
Just as the realization came to him, his claws glanced off of the old god's face, sparking as they connected.
"No!" Yeh-Rholyu howled. A force pulsed from him, sending Damon through the wall between the kitchen and the dining room.
Damon shook the drywall off of him and stood. He took three steps before his senses told him that they had crossed back from behind the veil. Man's lights and loudness greeted him and the air was heavy again with the burdens of his inventions.
He pushed his way through the hole he made back into the dining room and found Yeh-Rholyu sprawled on the floor, sobbing.
"Damon, don't," Gracie's voice screamed.
Damon looked over at her. "What are you two doing here? Get out!"
"We all have to leave," Gracie said. "It's a curse. If you kill him, you'll be--"
A tendril slammed her against a wall. The woman slumped to the floor.
Chris charged Yeh-Rholyu with a broken table leg. He swung and the wood splintered in his
grip. Yeh-Rholyu reached out and battered the man unconscious.
Damon swiped at him, but this time his talons broke against the old god's skin. He struck again and felt the bones in his massive fist shatter.
Yeh-Rholyu drove a tendril into Damon's chest and another two deep into each of his shoulders. He lifted Damon up and pinned him against the ceiling. Two more tendrils lifted Chris and Gracie and coiled around their throats.
"You can no longer hurt me, Dæmñrœ," Yeh-Rholyu said. "Your knowledge of my curse makes me immune to you from this point onward." He pushed harder into Damon's wounds. "None of you are of any further use to me."
Damon bit down and gritted through the pain. His strength seeped from him as his blood pooled on the floor. He was weak--changing back to his human disguise. His hands, now small and frail, scratched at Yeh-Rhoylu's many arms. "How is this possible?"
"How is anything possible? My curse is as it has been for over two hundred and fifty years," Yeh-Rholyu said. "Right here, on this spot, beneath the house. You asked when I last felt fear. Look around you. Every day I wake up and draw breath in New Jersey brings new horrors."
"You underestimate humans," Damon said. "Mankind is wholly ignorant. They are weak, but their machines are getting stronger. Soon, they'll discover us all--Near and Far God alike--and create new, more powerful devices."
"One can dream," Yeh-Rholyu said. The tension in his brow eased. "Do you really think so?"
"It is only a matter of time," Damon said. "Cherish your days, old one. They are few."
A smile crept across Yeh-Rholyu's face. "This is about her, isn't it?"
"All things are about her," Damon said. "Every death. Every promise."
Yeh-Rholyu sighed. "To have someone work so hard to please you."
The old and tired god lowered Damon to the floor and withdrew his tendrils. He then lowered Chris and Gracie down beside Damon and released them.
The end of one of Yeh-Rholyu's limbs coiled around a small latch in the floor. He lifted it and a second arm raised the trap door. He lifted Rebecca out of the cellar and placed her beside the three of them. "Take her."
She strained against the ropes that held her. Her eyes bulged and she screamed through her gag.
Gracie stirred awake and cut the ropes at Rebecca's hands and feet. "She's in shock. No broken bones. No bleeding. Just a few bruises."
Damon turned to Yeh-Rholyu. "You said you hurt her."
"I said what I had to say to get you mad." Yeh-Rholyu folded in on himself and looked again like the old man Damon saw earlier. "You failed. Take her and go. Tell no one of what you learned here, especially her. Whatever you're up to, I want to be swept up in it without her knowledge."
"I'll try," Damon said.
Gracie helped Chris to his feet and they walked out of the house.
Damon grabbed a blanket off of the living room couch and draped it over Rebecca's shoulders. They made it to the car before Rebecca gathered the strength to speak in slow stutters. "My god... what... Damon."
"It's okay now," Damon said.
Tears welled in her eyes. Her hands gripped his shirt. "What was that? Where am I?"
Damon motioned for Chris to open the car door for them. He then turned back to Rebecca. "He's not going to bother us anymore."
"I want to go home," Rebecca breathed.
"I know," Damon said. "But you can't go home."
Rebecca opened her mouth to speak but her words were cut off by a wince. She looked behind her and saw Gracie holding an empty syringe. A question formed in Rebecca's eyes before the drug took her away.
Damon caught her and guided her sleeping body into the car. "We still have a party to get to."
Chapter Ten
Damon, Gracie, and Chris stood naked in their living room as The Tome of Testaments commanded. They even had to remove all jewelry and cut off all of their bandages, which reopened Chris's leg wound from earlier.
"Do you know how loud this will be?" Gracie asked.
Damon shook his head. "The book didn't say."
"Curtains are shut," Chris said. "We're as ready as we're going to be."
A soft moan came from Rebecca as she stirred to wakefulness.
"That's our cue," Damon said. "Let's get to it."
The conversion from living space to ceremonial chamber was faster than the layout would have led you to believe at first glance. Gracie walked to the center of the room and cleared off the oak hutch's marble top, which doubled as their altar and sometimes bar. Chris and Damon pushed most of the rest of the furniture up against the walls and laid out the drop cloths. Gracie took down the last of the picture frames, revealing the full set of painted eyes where the seven frames once were.
The three of them got to work binding Rebecca to the altar. This proved more difficult than usual because she had to be standing. That rule was clear. Damon held her upright against a five-foot 4" by 4" as Gracie and Chris tied her ankles and wrists to the hutch. Then they tied her to the board.
Rebecca was still too weak to resist them, but she spoke in her moments of greater lucidity. "What are you doing? Why are you doing this to me?" These weren't pleas, Damon noted. They were requests, questions from someone who did not yet have the presence to grasp what was happening to them.
"I know, I know," he said to her. "Quiet now. It's almost time."
"For what?" Rebecca asked.
"For you to be strong." Damon watched her for a breath longer, then took a knife and carved marks in her body.
She screamed. She jerked and pulled against her bindings.
Chris and Gracie held her while Damon slid the knife in quick movements. These had to be perfect, like an address or a telephone number. One mistake would ruin all they had worked for and sacrificed.
Damon finished the last symbol and handed the knife to Chris, who took it into the kitchen to be cleaned.
"Now what?" Gracie asked.
"Now we wait," Damon said.
Chris walked in from the kitchen drying the knife with a towel.
Several tense moments passed.
A minute ticked by, marked only by Rebecca's quiet sobbing.
Then, without warning, it happened.
Like smoldering embers, a faint light appeared in the carvings on Rebecca's body.
Light filled the room, much of which only Damon could see.
A ripple of heat washed over them and the towel in Chris's hand burst into flames. He dropped it and stomped it out. "Christ! Thank god we're not wearing clothes."
"That's why we don't question the book," Damon said.
The light became oppressive, insistent. Waves of heat pushed Gracie and Chris against the walls.
Damon switched to his truer form. Only like this could he watch. Only like this could he hold his ground against the furnace of Dloigotha.
Rebecca's hair burnt away, as did her restraints and the board behind her. Her skin rippled beneath the surface. Light pulsed throughout her body before rising to her head. There, it molded and reshaped her skull into an ornate and intricate crest of bone. She screamed in a chorus of voices as her eyes grew black.
Then, the light and heat vanished.
Dloigotha stood with her head bent forward. She flexed her fingers and stared at them.
Damon made sure that Gracie and Chris were kneeling before he walked to her. "Dloigotha, Queen Goddess of the Gnilacha Realm, Keeper of Yith-Yothoath. Your return is most glorious."
Dloigotha smiled a row of sharp teeth. "Enough, Dæmñrœ. Enough."
He smirked. "I wasn't sure how much you'd remember. It's been some time."
"Four thousand years," she said. "And I hate the Yith-Yothoath title. You know that."
"I do," Damon said. He admired her for a breath. "I nearly forgot how stunning your crown is."
"Thank you." She paused for a m
oment and assessed him. "You've filled out nicely in my absence."
"Food is everywhere now."
"I see," she said, gesturing to Chris and Gracie. "You live and work with them. They are your pets, or friends? Having only watched from afar, I'm sometimes confused."
"It's not you. The whole world is crazy." He stood for a moment and let his heart sing to her a song only she could hear. "What do we do now?"
She stepped forward and embraced Damon with a kiss. "Now, lover, we finish what we started millennia ago."
Chapter Eleven
Alvaro sat in his car with binoculars at his eyes and a diner cheeseburger cooling in his lap. He parked across from the house he tracked Damon Nero to in time to watch the lights stop flashing through the thick curtains. Whatever was going on just before was over now and he'd missed it.
"Track and follow," Alvaro said to himself. "That's all they needed of you tonight."
There was a soft buzz on the seat next to him. Alvaro lowered his binoculars and picked up his phone.
STEPHANIE POWELL: Status.
ALVARO AHMAD: Transitioned Randall Sefack. Tracking Item #54326.
STEPHANIE POWELL: Transition Confirmed. Visual confirmation on Item #54326?
ALVARO AHMAD: Not yet. But I've followed Damon Nero to an address.
The "..." notification that his assigner was typing a reply came up, then went away. Alvaro waited as the pause in conversation became a full minute.
ALVARO AHMAD: This was a two-person assignment.
STEPHANIE POWELL: Two were assigned.
ALVARO AHMAD: We need more. Four should do it.
There was another pause as the "..." symbol came up, then disappeared. Alvaro started typing when the phone buzzed again.
STEPHANIE POWELL: Case 856 has been expanded. Expect a Handler to contact you within the hour.
ALVARO AHMAD: No need for a Handler.
STEPHANIE POWELL: CHC disagrees. Stand by and do not engage. Case 856 Updated.
And with that, the conversation ended.
Alvaro dropped his phone on the seat and took an angry bite from his cheeseburger. He reminded himself that it wasn't Stephanie's fault. Assigners got their orders from the Central Humanist Collective like the rest of them.