Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming (16 page)

“I know.”

“And I have no doubt Cassidy and Kim feel the same way,” she said. “Wherever they are.”

I regarded her. Despite my long-cultivated preconceptions and prejudices, I found I unexpectedly had come to admire her in some ways. I valued the refreshingly clear-headed manner with which she had reacted to our obstacles thus far, despite their being, for the most part, far beyond her experience. Along with this, I respected her obvious strength and determination. The others of her crew had proven severely lacking, especially with regard to the former quality.

“Are you sure you are not better off without them?” I asked.

She faced me then, clearly angry.

“I haven’t been pressing the issue of the others because I’m entirely at your mercy, for the moment, and because I realize you are extremely constrained in what you can and cannot do right now. But don’t think for a minute that I’ve forgotten about them.”

She leaned closer, eyes flashing bright blue.

“We will find them. And we will get home. All of us.”

A deep emotion surged up within me, a fire building in my gut and roaring out along my limbs, threatening to explode into visible reaction. I could not tell if it was outrage at her impertinence or resentment at her obvious assumption that I would happily abandon the two men to whatever fate had befallen them. The fact that this was true only made it worse. I opened my mouth, forced it closed again, and looked away, exerting all of my willpower to bring my emotions back under control. Nevertheless, something of my inner reaction must have shone through to her, for she exhibited the tiniest smile, nodded once, and walked away from me.

I stood there for long moments, looking down, glaring at nothing, softly kicking the toe of my boot against the trunk of an aluminum tree, over and over. I did not trust myself to speak. Certainly I was not going to run after her, protesting her judgment. Had I not been telling anyone who would listen lately that evil was my gig? How could I deny that now?

Evelyn had wandered a considerable distance away by the time I looked up again. I could not bring myself to follow her, just yet.

“That is not a safe thing to do,” I called to her.

She ignored me.

I fumed.

I could not approach her. Not at the moment.

Idly I wondered how she had taken my words. Did she think I was referring to her wandering away, or to the manner in which she had spoken to me? And then I realized she now had me second-guessing my own words, my own intentions. Utter insanity! Yet here I was, doing just that—fretting over the possibility that I had inadvertently offended her.

The fool! In a realm such as this, she was utterly defenseless. Foolish mortal, allowing her emotions to get the better of her, to endanger her. I had to do something to protect her, whether she liked it or not.

Reaching out, I grasped the tip of the silver tree and exerted pressure. After a few seconds it snapped off, yielding a crystalline chunk of shiny stuff about the size of my fist. Holding it in both hands, I summoned the Power and channeled it into the chunk.

She turned and looked back, seeing the blue glow in my hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Providing you with some manner of protection,” I called back, “as I did in the cave.”

She watched as I continued to pump blue energy into the strange piece of—tree? Metal? Crystal? Whatever it was, it seemed to accommodate the influx easily enough.

“That’s not necessary.” She looked around. “We appear to be safe enough, for the moment.”

I merely laughed. Her pride was astounding. Surely by now she had some conception of the dangers constantly surrounding us.

She shrugged and looked away again.

When the chunk had reached the point of energy absorption I desired, I sought to staunch the flow so that I might toss the newly created battery to her.

The flow continued.

Puzzled, I tried to break the circuit again, willing the flow of energy to halt.

Still the silver metal continued to pull the Power from me. It acted like a sponge—like a vacuum—insistent and insatiable, actually causing the rate of flow to increase, even as I fought to stop it. Both my hands were glued to the object’s surface, and I could not release it.

“Now what?” Evelyn called to me.

“I—” I gasped, my breathing becoming ragged. I could hardly speak. My own personal reserves were being drawn upon, along with the energy I channeled from the aether, that which radiated out from our Fountain in the Golden City.

A sudden, sharp pain from the area of my hip cut through my senses then, and I looked down to see, with some surprise, a wisp of smoke coiling up from my pocket. A quivering tongue of lightning had arced out from the silvery chunk of tree in my hands and was playing along the folds of my coat. Even as I grimaced from the pain of the energy draining from me, I wondered what could possibly be happening—of course!

“The pistol,” I gasped.

Even as I said the words, the gun in my pocket tumbled out, falling to the sandy ground. It lay there, glowing bright orange, the tendril of energy still reaching for it, connecting it to the silver chunk. Then, with a flash and a sharp, popping sound, the tendril vanished and the gun lay cool and dark. I had my suspicions about what had just happened, and was not at all happy about it, but I was not exactly in a position to check at the moment.

No matter what I did, I could not let go. The silver object I clutched in my hands continued to draw upon my energies, draining me rapidly. It had by this point taken on a vivid incandescent glow, blazing like a blue star in my hands.

Slowly at first, Evelyn walked back towards me. Seeing that I appeared to be in dire straits, she increased her pace.

“What’s wrong?”

“I… don’t know. Stay back!”

I dropped roughly to my knees, hunching over and trying to knock the silver fragment loose by smashing my hands on the ground. No luck there, either, and the pain only further reduced what little control I had left. The rate of flow had grown tremendous. I began to worry that it would either drain me entirely or burn me out as it used me as a conduit to the source of the Power. Neither fate seemed particularly appealing.

She halted, watching with a growing look of concern on her face. Evidently she had deduced a general idea of what was happening.

“Why is it doing that?” she asked.

I did not reply. In truth, I had no idea. Clearly the substance of the silvery trees contained some property that drew the Power into it—a fact I had never had cause to discover before. Over the centuries I had found or heard reports about a number of materials, scattered across the many planes, which reacted in unusual ways to the presence or energies of the gods. This one, though, jumped pretty close to the top of the “unusual” list, as far as I was concerned, trailing only one other: the red crystals I had discovered ages ago, upon which I had pinned so many of my hopes for the future.

Meanwhile a further, more ominous fear had begun to grow inside me: Even if I somehow could halt this bizarre draining effect, a greater damage might already have been done. The prodigious amount of raw power flowing through me and into this plane could serve as a beacon, a lighthouse to any who could sense it. I might well be waving a flag, blowing a horn, and otherwise loudly proclaiming to the universe, “Hey, here I am! Look at me!”

Every method of controlling the Power I had ever mastered entered my mind then, and I essayed them one by one. Going with the flow, but subtly shaping its course. Sensing the individual threads or flavors of the Power and working with each individually. Seeking to dominate the entire mass of it with sheer willpower. I tried them all. Nothing helped.

About that time the unicorn appeared.

I could not later swear to that part. I was, obviously, rather preoccupied, and somewhat delirious. But if, as I feared, this blatantly violent display of the Power could serve as an attraction to beings capable of sensing it and finding their way to it, the possibility exists.

It was pale white, and it pranced about me in a tight circle, then tossed its head once and vanished.

So too, moments later, did the red griffon and the turquoise, three-headed serpent—though my head was spinning to such a degree by that point that all of it could have been a hallucination. Evelyn later claimed to have seen none of this; though, in my defense, she was not plugged into the flow of energy, as I was, and therefore was not operating at anything like the same level of perception.

My attempts to slow the rate of the flow had proven entirely ineffectual so far, and death—in one form or another—loomed now as a very real possibility. I resolved to try a different tack. Inhaling deeply, I pulled still more of the Power into me. Yes, more of it. More even than the insatiable silver shard was demanding. I channeled it down through my arms, actually encouraging the flow to increase even more. I sought to overload the link between the piece of metal and myself—though, if it failed, this would probably result in my incineration even sooner than before.

Out of the corner of my eye I thought I detected movement, but I could not be distracted at the moment. My hands were aflame, my arms searing hot, but somehow I had to ignore it all and work through the process in careful and deliberate fashion. Taking another breath, I bore down with all my might. The air around me crackled with blue bolts of lightning, playing over the silvery trees and across my flesh. The Power flowed into and through me like a gusher. My teeth chattered, and my arms shook uncontrollably. A single crack, like thunder, sounded. The metallic object in my hands exploded, hurling me backwards.

I slid to a stop on the smooth, gray surface, small silvery pieces raining down around me. I lay there and I watched them fall, and my brain worked.

Pieces.
Fragments of a larger whole, dropping out of the sky, falling into place.

I must have started to understand it all then—to subconsciously arrange fragments and pieces of the bigger picture within my mind. Distracted as I was by innumerable other thoughts and events, however, it would be some time yet before I came to know what I knew.

The silver object had disintegrated. I looked down at myself somewhat nervously, fearful of what damage I might see, but was relieved to find nothing visibly wrong. My hands were numb, while my arms tingled as if they had been asleep. Add to this the fact that my head was spinning, and I found I had some difficulty in getting to my feet. All in all, however, I felt I’d made out as well as I could have hoped.

As I struggled to rise, Evelyn rushed towards me, then stopped dead and stared past me, mouth opening soundlessly.

I looked back.

Something similar to one of my portals had opened, perhaps sixty yards away. Rather than glowing with one of the colors of the gods, however, its entirety was black, like a pool of ink turned on its edge; and it rippled like oil on water. What emerged from it was even more disturbing.

One after the other, they crossed over into our plane. Figures out of nightmare. I scrambled to my feet and backed away, toward Evelyn, picking up a few of the larger silvery fragments from the ground as I went. The beings advanced, clearly aware of our presence and coming our way. Coming entirely too rapidly.

Shadows they were, yet three-dimensional and quite solid in places. My first thought was of the Dark Men, but those silent stalkers had been clad in fully solid and substantial featureless suits, and had moved with robotic precision. These creatures appeared nothing like that. They flowed from point to point, shimmering in and out of visibility. At times it seemed their clothing consisted of tattered ebon rags, yet at other moments they appeared smooth and naked. And the faces: nothing that could truthfully be called features, yet in place of eyes and mouth, slashes in the black revealed sparkling depths: pinprick stars and twisted nebulae and blazing suns, as if offering a view into deepest space. Sprung from the purest chaos, these creatures were. There could be no doubt. Demons, some called them. Mindlessly they had roamed the many planes since the very dawn of time. Out of that dark breed these interlopers had sprung, though they appeared to be of a variety I never had encountered before.