Why was Julie chained here anyway? Why did they keep her alive? They had their sacrifice. But I knew the answer, and to deny it was to lie to myself. I remembered the Cursed One's promise when he had invaded Mordechai's dream world. I remembered his offer in the ashen rows of the blasted church. He was going to hurt her as punishment against me, and after he destroyed her, he was going to give her to her mother to be turned and enslaved. She was doomed. My Julie was doomed to a fate literally worse than death.
But it wasn't just her. If the Cursed One completed his ceremony tonight, then everyone was doomed. Every person that I had ever loved. Every person that I had ever met. Every person in the world. That might not be what Lord Machado's goals were, but I had seen the ugly truth. The real evil was out there, just waiting for the beachhead to be established. In the world of the Old Ones, there would be no room for puny, sentient mammals, other than entertainment or, if they were lucky, food.
They were out there waiting. And once and for all, it was going to be finished tonight.
"Julie…" I interrupted her desperate scheming. "I promise that I'll stop them."
"He must have hit you harder than I thought. Is your brain swelling?"
"Don't worry. It'll be okay."
IT IS TIME.
"He's coming," I said. "Whatever happens… I love you, Julie."
"I know," she replied. "Owen, it's the vampire. Get away from him, you son of a bitch! Leave him alone!"
I could sense the presence of the Master vampire. The already winter temperature dropped a few degrees. I hated that precise German accent. "Such flame. Lord Machado will enjoy breaking you. Now silence, Fraulein Shackleford. You will get your turn." I felt cold hands encircle my neck and pull me painfully to my feet. If I had been able to, I would have screamed.
"HerrPitt. Your time has come. It is a great honor to serve in such a fashion."
I tried to spit in his face. I failed miserably, it was more of a sputtering noise through my swollen lips, and the bloody saliva dripped uselessly down my broken face. He laughed and dragged me away from Julie. She shouted after me.
"Don't give up, Owen! Don't give up!"
I felt the cold snow drifting over my legs as the vampire pulled me along. I began to feel a humming in the air. It was the artifact. I had never been so physically close before. It was a tangible thing, the power. It called to me.
We stopped. I could no longer hear Julie. "I've waited so long for this," the vampire said with obvious pride. "I ended my mortal life in shame when the ceremony failed last time. Little did I realize the blessings I would receive for my dedication… the opportunity to live and serve once more. I took great pleasure in cutting the heart out of your Juden friend, and I will greatly enjoy seeing Lord Machado take yours. Such a remarkable time, indeed… Look upon your end, Hunter," the vampire crowed.
"Can't see… dumb ass," I croaked.
"That just won't do." I felt something cold and wet drag across my eyes, moistening the blood. Then Jaeger brutally cracked my eyelids open with his long thumbnails. "Hmm… your blood is delicious. I will feast on your corpse once the ritual has been completed. I need to regain my strength. I will admit, you put up a good fight. You should be commended."
It even hurt to blink. I was able to see again, out of one eye at least. My right eye must have been blinded, put out in the beating. We stood at the base of a small pyramidal structure. Snow was thick in every direction, coating what appeared to be an alpine forest. The entire world seemed to be small. The horizon visibly lifted only a short distance away, as if we were in a small valley, and the sky seemed bowed. When I had first been tugged into the pocket dimension, I had fallen down what I had thought was a hill; rather, it was just the curved boundary of this small place. It was almost as if we were the occupants of a snow globe.
The ruins were in the center of the dimension-obviously the focal point. Jaeger dragged me up the stairs, my legs thumping up each stone step. I left a small trail of blood in the snow.
I tried to move my arms. Nothing. They were too badly broken to do anything other than quiver and hurt. One of my legs responded a bit. I was still wearing my armor, but I could not tell if I still had any of my weapons. I had lost all of my firearms, but maybe I still had a grenade on me. If I could get the pin out of a frag, that might put a kink in their ceremony. From what I had seen, it might not work if they had to scrape up the sacrifice with a spatula.
"My Lord Machado. I present the sacrifice."
PREPARE HIM FOR HIS FATE.
I was hoisted up and tossed violently onto the frozen block of stone. I lay on my back, looking up at the shallow gray sky. Jaeger broke the buckles on my armor and ripped through the Kevlar covering my chest. I heard a clatter as the vampire tossed aside the tool that he had used. I looked over. Bastard had used my own knife. My wrists were shackled and chained to the stone. Not that I could have done anything anyway.
The Cursed One stood hulking a few feet away. He was a massive shambling thing. The helmet and armor had been polished to a mirror shine. The flowing robes were opulent red silks, but under them the flesh was a twisting mass of oily darkness. He just oozed evil.
"You will fail," I said calmly. "Just like you failed sixty years ago."
NOT NOW, BRAVE HUNTER. FOR THIS IS THE TIME.
His thoughts stabbed into my brain, causing mental pain equal to the physical. What had Mordechai said? He had told me to remember the things that he had shown me. I had to think of something. I tried to recall the hazy memories. I was grasping at straws. The Old Man surely couldn't have foreseen a way for me to get out of this.
"You don't know how to finish the ceremony. Thrall killed your priestess. You don't know what to do. You'll fail again."
The black thing shook. Trembling beneath his robes, bubbles rising through the space that should have been his face, splattering congealed fluids onto the snow-he was laughing at me. I had amused him.
BUT IN THIS PLACE, MY LOVE RETURNS TO ME TONIGHT.
The helmet dipped, nodding toward Jaeger. The vampire bowed, always subservient, and placed a rolled-up bundle of cloth on the ground at the base of the altar. The vampire untied the rope that encircled the package, and unrolled it on the snow.
It was a skeleton. An ancient, dried and brittle heap of broken bones, still chipped from where an ax blade had been used to peel the flesh away to ease Lord Machado's burden.
"Koriniha," I gasped. "No freaking way."
DO NOT TAINT HER NAME WITH YOUR FOUL MORTAL LIPS. IN THIS PLACE, WITH MY POWER, WITH THE ARTIFACT OFKUMARESH YAR,SHE SHALL RETURN TO ME.
The artifact was removed from under his robes, coated in black goo He kept it inside his body for safekeeping. As it was revealed, a jolt of power surged through the pocket dimension. I felt it down to the core of my being. I had seen the artifact in my visions. When I had died in Natchy Bottom, I had touched it with my spirit. It had shown me things, things which no human should have seen. It was not of this world. It did not belong here, in our time, in our space, in our plane. It was a token of the evil of the others. The Old Ones. The forgotten trespassers.
The artifact called to me.
The Cursed One gently set the box down amongst the bones. The pyramid began to shake. The stone beneath started to radiate heat. Water formed as the edges of the snow started to recede, revealing the structure's construction. Within seconds, rivulets of water were running off, snow swept away. The pyramid was not made of stone at all, but blocks of organic ivory. Each stone was larger than a man, carved from the tusks or horns of some impossibly ancient thing. Truly this was the Place of Power.
The bones started to shake by themselves. One by one, they rotated and moved, pulling into position, organizing the bits from chaos, taking form. The skull rolled a few times, righting itself as individual vertebrae formed a chain beneath. The jaw opened and closed. The finger bones curled together, clenched spasmodically, and scratched tears in the fabric of the ancient cloth.
"And the knee bones connected to the leg bone, and the leg bones connected to the hip bone," I sang stupidly. Jaeger cracked me alongside my face for interrupting their sacred moment.
The skeleton was whole. Lying on its back, twitching and rattling. Everything in place, but without ligament or tissue to hold it together. The Cursed One glided until he stood over the skeleton.
MY BELOVED, I GIVE TO YOU OF MYSELF. SURELY MY LOVE WILL SATISFY THE PROPHECY OF YOUR MASTERS.
His back was toward me. Almost gingerly, the withering base of tentacles covered the bones. The red cloak was flared wide, covering them as the Cursed One slowly lowered his form to the floor. The cloak settled, concealing the huge lump of oily tissue. There was a horrible squelching noise, like a plunger dislodging a clog. There was a heavy smell of sulfur. The vampire looked on in rapture. The winter air hummed with the power of the artifact. Finally the shape was still.
Man, what I would have given right about then for the use of my arms and a hundred pounds of C4.
Two separate shapes moved under the robe. Jaeger fell to his knees and prostrated himself on the floor, crying out to his master in joy. The Cursed One rose. He did not seem as massive as before. The red cloak was loose, and he was now not much larger than a man. One tentacle reached downward, almost gently, to be offered to another thing. It sat up from the puddle of gore, one arm extended. The tentacle encircled it and pulled upwards. The priestess had returned.
She stood shakily, wobbling slightly, not used to having a physical form. The bones had been coated in the black ichor of the Cursed One, flesh, tendon, and organs replaced by the unnatural mass. She was a human female in shape and structure, but not in texture or material. I could even almost recognize her from the visions, the memory of her flesh had been so perfectly replaced. The cloth that had held her bones stuck to her back, splattered and stained. She tore it away with one hand, then realizing what she had done, brought the hand up in front of her face, slowly opening and closing the fingers, turning it at the wrist to examine herself. Her eyes were crimson pits. She ran her hands over her body, the gelatinous mass twitching and moving.
The Cursed One encircled her in a horrible embrace, their faces melding together in what had to be their version of an impassioned reunion. Tentacles withered and slapped wetly against the ground, splattering me with oily droplets. He pulled away, her arms leaving black stains on his robe, his armor no longer gleaming, but now coated in slime. She stroked her fingers through the front of his face, his tissues parting as she touched the teeth of his yellow skull.
The dead flirt ugly.
MY PRIESTESS. I HAVE DONE AS YOU ASKED. I HAVE CROSSED THE IMPOSSIBLE GAP TO RETURN YOU TO THIS WORLD.
Surprisingly the priestess spoke aloud. Her voice was horrific, bubbling up from fluid-filled sacks, sounding like pouring tar. "My lord, you have done the impossible. Truly the prophecy has been fulfilled."
The conquistador helmet dipped toward Jaeger. The vampire moved in a blur and appeared before its Lord, presenting the ancient battle-ax. The monster took it, wrapping it tightly in its tentacles, and glided closer to me. The artifact was placed on the altar near my head. This was the closest I had been to the device, and I could hear it whispering. Deep inside I could sense the trapped souls, the Old Man, and hundreds-no, thousands-of other trapped sacrifices.
A sound came from the priestess, a horrible noise. It turned into a gurgling chant. The words were familiar and I recognized them from the memory. The concave hills began to quake and the curved sky began to shimmer. The moon was fat and bright overhead. The device rose until it was floating above the altar. It began to slowly rotate. Ancient runes could now be seen on the simple stone as they took on a black light of their own, detaching and floating in air. They formed a sphere of energy that began to grow, approaching my head. I could feel the electricity licking my scalp as the priestess continued her chant. The words made my remaining ear burn, and it felt like somebody was pushing an ice pick into my skull and twisting it.
"Machado. They're using you. You're just a pawn. The Old Ones are just waiting for you to open the path," I shouted. His crimson eyes looked down upon me, but he ignored my feeble attempts to prevent my death.
Koriniha stuttered briefly in her chant, but continued.
"They're going to come through and take over."
The Cursed One readied himself, the blade was lifted, held awkwardly in the tentacles. I screamed in pain as the black energy of the artifact crackled over my skull.
Now remember things you have seen. Remember things I have show you. Is up to you, many things which I not could tell, I have show you. Remember them, and all will be fine.
The words of the Old Man. I focused on them, trying to blot out the pain, the visions, the flashing cruel energy, the upraised blade.
Yet every five hundred years, a man will be born, a mortal with the power to use this device and bend it to his will. You are this man, you are the one who has been prophesied by the Old Ones. The words of Koriniha. In the vision she had looked into Lord Machado's eyes as she had spoken, but had she been speaking to him, or was it a message for me five hundred years later? The thought disappeared as a black whip of energy wracked across my body.