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“That was before I knew how special you are.”
“Are you the Flayed One or the Hand?”
“Neither,” she says, drawing herself up. “Call me Ten Thousand Shadows. I hear all truths and lies, every whisper and secret told in the dark. There are no mysteries to me among mortals.”
“Are you all torn up because that’s all of you that can get through to this dimension or because you were always uglier than me?”
She turns her head giving me a good look at her wounds.
“The Terrible One did this to me when he threw us out of this universe and into chaos. Your God calls himself a God of love and mercy. See what his mercy looks like.”
She steps closer. I back up. Even while she’s trying to keep this form, she can’t hold entirely still. Every time she moves, for a split second she blurs into something else. A bird skeleton. A crawling patch of furred fungus. A giant treelike thing, so twisted and knotted it looks like it grew in a hurricane.
“Trust me, lady. I know all about God’s bad side. I’ve been on it most of my life.”
“You are Abomination,” she says. “As are we. You owe this God and his pitiful creations nothing.”
“Yeah, but I like donuts, so what am I going to do?”
“Join us. Summon us to this realm and we’ll raise you up to be Angra Om Ya. Stark, savior of the true rulers of the universe.”
“And here I thought you liked me for my boyish charms.”
“Call us. Bring us through and you can have anything in return.”
She undoes a clasp on her golden gown and it falls to the floor. She’s beautiful. The half of her that’s covered in skin. The rest looks like Thanksgiving leftovers a couple of days past their prime.
“Even if I wanted to help you, I don’t know how to use the Qomrama.”
She reaches out her almost meatless hand.
“Don’t worry. We’ll teach you.”
“How?”
The golden woman fades away, replaced by the swirling skeleton-fungus-tree thing.
“We’ll speak again.”
“Goody.”
She’s gone.
I hear a sound and turn to the reliquary. The rubies on the skull are gone and blood pours from the hole in the forehead. It spills onto the floor and pools in the cracks. I turn to go down the tunnel, but there’s no way out. Blood pours from the skull and the sigils on the wall, covering the floor. I climb onto the filthy gurney to get away from it. It dawns on me that this whole thing has been a trap. That the cavern is going to fill with blood and that I’m going to drown. I should have been nicer to Ten Thousand Shadows. Or maybe had less Aqua Regia with the movie last night. Either way, this is a hell of an end to a shitty day. I hold my breath and try to get as close to the ceiling as I can. In a few minutes it won’t make any difference.
I come awake to Candy shaking me.
“Wake up, goddammit,” she says.
I choke on my own spit and gasp for air.
“What’s wrong with you? You’re thrashing all over.”
It takes me a couple of minutes to get my breath.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Just weird dreams.”
“What kind?”
