F Wilson - The Dark at the End

“Here’s the sigil as we know it. Check the outer border-the rows of boxes running between the points. Each row has seven boxes.” She looked at Glaeken. “Didn’t you tell me that each of the Seven’s Other Names had seven characters?”

Glaeken nodded. “As do their taken, worldly names-like Rasalom. The original sigil belonged to the Seven. Seven points for the seven agents of the Otherness, interwoven to show a unity of purpose. Each of their public names was carved into the boxes of the great sigil that overlooked the hall where they would meet to draw up their plans for rule by the Otherness. After the Cataclysm, when the Seven and their schemes and their armies were no more, the Order adopted the sigil, but without the names.”

“The great sigil is mentioned here,” Weezy said, tapping the Compendium. “But so is another sigil-seven of them, in fact-all engraved with the Other Name of each of the Seven.”

“I’d heard rumors of that back in the First Age,” Glaeken said. “But I thought it was just wishful thinking on our part.”

“Why?” Jack said.

“Knowing their Other Names would give us power over them.”

Jack didn’t get it. “What are we talking about here? It’s just a name.”

Glaeken shook his head. “The Conflict was out in the open back then. The laws of nature were different and could be bent in ways no longer possible. The things we could do in the First Age would be called magic now.”

“Okay. I’ll take your word for that. But that makes it all the less likely that they’d share this Other Name with anyone.”

Glaeken gave a wry smile. “The Otherness did not cull the Seven from the cream of humanity. They were vicious and ruthless and without honor. Those of us fighting for the Ally were flawed in many ways-some fatally-but compared to the Seven, we were the First Age equivalent of choirboys.”

“All the more reason not to let the Hank Thompsons and Ernst Drexlers of their day in on your closest secret.”

“Ever hear of mutually assured destruction?” Weezy said.

Of course he had. “With nuclear weapons, yeah, but names?”

Glaeken was nodding. “It does make a sort of sense. If one of them or even a pair of them went rogue, the others had the means to bring them into line or wipe them off the face of the Earth.”

Weezy started erasing parts of her drawing.

“Okay, what if I told you we came upon a sigil, six feet high or so, and certain parts of it were missing?” She held up the edited drawing. “What if it looked like this.”

“See?” she said. “Six of the seven borders have been removed. Only one remains-and that’s got a name on it.”

Glaeken leaned forward, keen interest sparking in his blue eyes. “What name?”

She leaned back. “I don’t know. That’s why I put little X’s in the boxes.”

Jack couldn’t hide his shock. “You mean you forgot? You never forget anything.”

“I doubt I ever knew, Jack.” She closed her eyes. “I can see it there, leaning against the wall of the tunnel. It’s covered with dust. You even rubbed off some of the dust to show me how it was made of the same black material as the pyramid. I can see that six of the borders are missing, and I have an impression of seven symbols on the remaining border, but for the life of me I can’t remember what they are.”

“That photographic memory of yours never failed before. Why now? Try.”

Her eyes opened and flashed at him. “What do you think I’m doing right now? It’s simply not there. You remember what it was like that night. We thought that door opened into some kind of floor safe but it was much bigger than that. It was dark down there, we had crummy little flashlights, I was nervous, and we were looking for a lost kid. So excuse me if I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to a dusty old sigil. I can’t remember something if it never registered.”

He realized he’d ticked her off. He hadn’t meant to. He couldn’t remember ever being so impatient. He also realized she was ticked at herself for not being able to remember it.

“Okay. Sorry. If that’s the way it is, we’ll just have to resign ourselves to not knowing.”

“But we can find out,” she said. “I mean, assuming the sigil is still there.”

“If it is, it’s got to be buried under a ton of mud from when the lake flooded in.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I think we should go see.”

“Where? Back to Johnson? What for?” He nodded to the Lady. “If no one’s going to perform the ceremony, why bother?”

“We can worry about ceremonies later. Just knowing Rasalom’s Other Name could be important. Don’t you want to know it? Aren’t you curious, even a little?”

“Not a bit.”

“You won’t go back?”

“No.”

No way he was leaving for the wilds of New Jersey while Rasalom’s heart was still ticking up here. If an opportunity arose to finish the job, Jack wanted to be ready to jump on it.

Where was that son of a bitch?

With the cow’s help, Rasalom had struggled his way to the couch. She’d draped it with a sheet-the first step toward making him a bed, she promised-and he now sat upon it, wrapped in a blanket.

The effort had exhausted him. He hadn’t felt this weak since Glaeken had trapped him in that wretched little castle in Romania. His lids felt heavy, and kept drifting closed, but he forced them open to concentrate on the television on the far side of the small room.

The woman had a satellite feed; she’d turned it on first thing this morning and left it running. He had a feeling she kept it on all day. Her only company besides her dog. Rasalom would have ignored it except the channel was updating what it called “the nightmare in Nuckateague.” The mention of a triple murder associated with the “blitzkrieg assault” on the mansion had galvanized his attention.

Triple murder?

He assumed two of the dead to be Georges and Gilda, but who was the third? And then it struck him-the baby.

Oh, no… not the baby.

Despairing, he listened carefully, but the identities of the dead were being withheld pending notification of their families.

He had to get off this island…

Then again, what was the hurry? With the baby gone, he’d have to come up with a new plan.

Another concern arose: Did Glaeken know he had survived? The Glaeken of old could sense his presence in the world, just as Rasalom could always sense his. Had he lost that ability along with his immortality? If not, he knew that his scheme had failed. He might try another strike to finish the job. Rasalom’s weakness and injuries left him painfully vulnerable out here.

He lifted the blanket and examined his naked body. The burns were still oozing, and that concerned him. Certainly his skin was further along in the healing process than an everyday human’s, but he felt he should be doing better. The injuries had seriously weakened him.

He raised his left arm and stared at the stump of his wrist. More than weakened: maimed and mutilated. He could recover from the weakness, he could heal his wounds, but his left hand was gone forever.

Who did this to him?

Glaeken? Not personally, that was certain. Too old and feeble. How he had reveled in seeing him like that. He had not expected so bold a move-had not expected any move.

Killing Georges and Gilda and the baby… that was not like the old Glaeken. Rasalom had used his concern for “innocent” lives against him countless times. Perhaps the mortal Glaeken, with his clock winding down, had realized, like Rasalom, that no one was innocent.

And no one was supposed to know about the Nuckateague house. How had Glaeken found out? Did he have a source in the Order? That was the only answer. But who?