Nineteen
12 August, 2000, 8 miles South of Kladno, Czech
“It’s coming! It’s coming to kill us!” Oris shouted.
Oris and Ryalk dashed down the candle lit corridor. They had attempted to salvage what relics they could from this monastery. Too many centuries of hiding and it had come to this. Ryalk looked behind him as the Beast stalked them. He dropped a censer of incense. Bending to pick it up, Oris took his arm and pulled him forward into the sanctum. Brother Vlad was already there, preparing the ritual.
Tomáš, thank God, had already left for America. As fate would have it, he had taken the sphere with him, having assumed the creature would be hot on his tail. Some sort of fortune had delayed his capture by a few days more, at the expense of themselves, thought Oris as he knelt in the triangle with Vladislav and Ryalk.
“Concentrate,” Vlad urged as the three took up the chant. All was now prepared. All would be well. Oris winced, his voice wavering as the Abomination pounded on the door. At least, all would be well with the Key. As for themselves...
A bright light pulsed up from the floor as the entity was expelled from the ether, sending it to its final destination. World and child were about to meet for the first time, and neither would be the wiser.
The door exploded inward, scattering dust and debris everywhere. The Beast had come.
12 August, 2000, 60 miles West of Chamdo, Tibet
Loki held the cloth across his mouth and nose. The stench was absolutely putrid. Even with the cloth, dipped generously in incense, it was all he could do not to gag. His eyes were watering, only partially from the air, as he stepped over the bodies. Some were a week old and rotting on the cobbles, gnawed consistently by rats. Others were fresh, having starved to death over the past week in their delirium, unable to feed themselves.
There was one particular corpse Loki was searching for. As he looked, sometimes only for an instant at those who were quite obviously not Haargan, and sometimes for several long moments when the identity was unclear, Loki was assaulted by the familiar feeling. Survivor guilt was a close friend of his. It had followed him everywhere he had gone, greeting his friends and introducing them to his other companion, death.
If it hadn’t been for Whistler —for the demon’s suggestion that he close the book on his past— he would have been here when the Beast had passed through. A small part of him was resentful; confident that he could have stopped whatever it was, hellgod or not. The rest of him was in silent shame. Shame for having fought so desperately against the Powers That Be which had again saved his life. Saved it for something.
Loki swallowed as he entered the chamber of the Key. Upon the pedestal, out of reach of the tiny jaws of the rats, Haargan looked up at him, his eyes sunken and dried. He blinked.
Loki jumped. Of course it was an illusion. The flickering of the torchlight cast a moving shadow across the poor man’s face. Loki shook his head to clear himself of the delusions. But that was it. Haargan was dead. The monastery was abandoned.
Loki quickly turned, slamming the door closed behind him. He hurried down the corridor, moving from passageway to passageway, looking for the room. He shouldered the door and it gave easily. Someone had been in here, trying to protect the relics. Foolish effort.
Loki walked slowly into the center of the room as he had months ago, less reverently now than greedily, hungrily, his attention fixed completely on the shattered glass case and the objects beneath it. He drove his hand blindly through the broken surface, ignoring the hot lance of pain as he lacerated the back of his right hand. The warmth of his own blood was a surreal reminder that he was actually here. Actually now. He held now in his bloodied hand, the smokey red sphere of the Order of Dagon lifting easily off the black velvet.
As his blood rolled down his pinkie finger and ran across the glassy surface of the angry red ball, the conjurer gazed into it for the second time. The blood is the life, Bram Stoker had written. His blood dripped onto the glass, onto the velvet.
Logan Kilpatrick looked back at himself from inside the surface of the convergence of future and past. He was mesmerized by the rolling, boiling red clouds behind his own reflection, swirling and churning about some central point. The monks had no idea what kind of power they had had at their disposal. Paradox be damned, Loki thought, it was time for some serious damage control.
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