Authors: Levi Black

Red Right Hand (30 page)

He stepped forward. “Oh, that I will. Disobedience must be punished.”

Come closer.

He stood before me, looking down on me as I knelt. My head weighed forty pounds as I looked up at him. Exhaustion hooked the corners of my eyes, dragging at them.

He took another step.

Just a little closer.

He bent at the waist, bringing his face low and close to mine. The two god-prison gemstones fell free, rubbing against each other. The larger one swung toward my face, and inside I saw a tiny rendition of Cthulhu. He didn't move much, but his tiny Cthulhu head turned toward me as I stared.

An echo in my head.

threeÂ â¦ to break the sealthreeÂ â¦

The Man in Black smiled, lips parting around his teeth. Ashen chunks of charcoaled skin fell from the right side of his face. His jaw slung down, unhinging and opening. His head swelled like it had in the alternate reality, eyes moving sideways as his throat flapped open, stretching into a ring-tubed trachea large enough to swallow me whole. This close, I watched the teeth slip in flesh-pink gums, sliding against each other like knives of enamel. Black ichor ran from under the gums, dripping down the thin edges of each tooth, bumping along the micro-serrations that would cut flesh like shears through lambswool.

Hot, burning saliva fell on me as his shark teeth grazed the air over my face. He would clamp those jaws shut on me, taking my head off at the shoulders. I reached up, fumbling against his chest until my fingers curled around Cthulhu's gemstone prison, knotted into the coat-scrap necklace. Using it to pull myself up and him down, I thrust the Knife of Abraham
deep
into the side of the chaos god about to eat my face off, pushing with all my strength, twisting from my hips and driving with the large muscles of my legs.

He exploded backward, twisting and writhing around the blade that now jutted from his ribs. Hot-pink etheric energy boiled from the gash, leaking around the magick knife. He screamed, howling in pain and anger. His red right hand scrabbled at the knife handle, trying to pull it free.

That's when the coat fell on him.

It dropped from above us, slapping itself around the Man in Black. For one horrible second, I thought it would try to rescue him, to save its master, betraying me. Then the scrap around my leg throbbed and the song in my head roared to a crescendo and I felt, I
knew,
the coat was on my side.

It attacked with all the hatred and anger built over centuries of abuse at the hands of Nyarlathotep, fighting with all its strength. The chaos god ripped at it, his body transforming into anything it could, one form flowing to another, flowing to yet another, all deadly with fangs and claws and stingers. Nightmare versions of tiger, wolf, spider, scorpion, and shapes so alien my eyes couldn't translate them.

The coat shrieked in my head as it was torn to pieces.

My head swam as the coat poured information through our connection, gifting me with knowledge as it sacrificed itself.

The Man in Black had been weakened.

He'd used a lot of power fighting the Sushi Priest and then Cthulhu. He depended on the coat to act as a battery, draining its magick to fuel his own, and now the coat in its rebellion had cut that off.

There was a chance.

A tiny, tiny chance.

I shoved myself, staggering, to my feet.

The Man in Black didn't see me, too busy trying to shapeshift into something that could defeat the coat.

He didn't see my hand grab the handle of the knife that still stuck from the side of his body.

But he felt it when I yanked it out and rammed it into his chest, twisting the blade as I did. The point slipped in, the blade sinking to the hilt, stopping as it hit something hard that jarred it to a stop. I felt the knife slice through one of his hearts, the main part of him, felt it as the alien, evil heart continued to convulse around the blade in my hand. Magick burst out over me in a sickly-sweet rush of power.

His scream scoured my brain, flash-burning my nerve endings, before he burst into a million tiny flying stinging shapes and disappeared.

One of the gemstones tumbled to the ground, its tether severed by the impossibly sharp iron blade.

I stumbled until I reached Daniel and fell, landing across his cold, still body. I lay there weeping atop him, the tattered fragments of an alien song in my mind as the world fell into darkness.

S
MALL NOISES FILLED
the silence of the room. The
whirr
and
hiss
of a breathing machine, the
drip-drop
of an IV bag, the low insect
buzz
of fluorescent lights, and the quiet, turned-down-to-one
beep
of the heart monitor. Little noises adding up to nothing. Adding up to everything.

Two knocks.

The door opened.

A nurse came in.

He wasn't young but had a young face, eyes bright over rounded cheekbones. His name tag read L
IONEL
. He shuffled in, moving next to the bed, checking the equipment.

“How is he today?”

I didn't move. “The same as yesterday.”

He looked over at me.

“How are
you
today?”

Lionel cared, he really did.

“The same as yesterday.” The coat rustled around me, whispering between my body and the chair. The nurse pointed at Daniel. “He looks the same. You? Not so much.”

Lionel might care, but he's a bit of an asshole.

Daniel lay serenely on the bed, oblivious to the tubes and wires running from him, brow uncreased, muscles relaxed, in the coma he'd been in since I awoke on top of him, both of us covered in the shredded remains of the coat: him with just enough life to live, me with just enough magick to wish all three of us to this hospital.

Lionel moved around the bed, coming toward me. He stopped short when my eyes turned up at him. I didn't know what he saw there, but he didn't want to come too close.

Lionel might've been a bit of an asshole, but he was
not
stupid.

He held his hands up, palms out, class ring twinkling in the low light. Started to speak, stopped.

“It's hard to talk to you when I don't know your name.”

“It hasn't stopped you yet.” No names was safer. Let Daniel be a John Doe, and I'd be Jane. Names had too much power in the world I now knew existed. So far the case worker for the hospital bought my lack of memory about my identity and his. It had taken a little push of magick to fuzz her mind, but for now, Daniel received treatment and I pretty much got left alone to be by his bed.

It wouldn't last.

But while it did, Lionel could just be all right without a name to call me.

“That's fair.” He leaned against the end of Daniel's bed. “You should get out. Go outside and breathe non-recycled air. You don't have to go far, but you
should
go somewhere.”

I didn't say anything. We'd done this dance before.

He moved to the bed, checking Daniel's vitals. He kept talking while he lifted Daniel's wrist and took his pulse. I didn't know why he did that; the machine right behind him blipped out Daniel's heartbeat. “You've been here for two weeks. He appreciates it, down where he still knows what's going on, he does, but there's nothing you can do here. Don't you have someone to call? A job to check in with? Wouldn't you like to sleep in your own bed, shower in your own bathroom?”

I didn't care about any of that. I only wanted Daniel to be healed. Even if he hated me for dragging him into the mess with the Man in Black, even if he didn't remember me, I wanted him to be the Daniel he was before.

I stood. The coat flared around me, not healed, but healed enough.

Just like me.

Lionel jumped.

“You're right. I have to go out.” My hands soothed the coat, its voice in my head cooing. I ran my finger under the collar around my neck, shifting it to a more comfortable place. Magick thrummed inside me, vibrating my bones as it came to life. It had grown, recharging in the last several days. “I might be gone for a while.”

“If he wakes up, I'll tell him you'll be right back.”

He wouldn't wake up.

Not without my help.

There was one thing I could do for Daniel. One thing that could restore him.

I stepped to the bedside.

His life force had been locked in a ring, a talisman last seen on the skinless finger of a red right hand.

I leaned down, my lips close to Daniel's face.

I had the magick inside me to find things.

I kissed him gently on the forehead, his skin cool under the warmth of my lips.

I was going to find that ring.

I straightened, turned, and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

And I was going to kill the Man in Black.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

L
EVI
B
LACK
WRITES
from the outskirts of Atlanta. Born and raised in the South, he lives there now with his wife, who is also a writer. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

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CONTENTS

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

RED RIGHT HAND

Cover art by Cliff Nielsen

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com