David Baldacci - The Finisher

I yelled at Quentin to run faster, faster, but no Wug could outrun a frek. Then he turned and looked toward me.

He had both his eyes!

If this image was real then what Thansius had told us at Steeples had been a lie. Although I already knew that to be the case, it was nice to have confirmation. Even Thansius had seemingly admitted it when he had told me on the pitch earlier that while we in Wormwood had many things to fear, Outliers were not among their number. But was the image I was seeing now real?

An instant later the glass went back to being just a looking glass. I saw my reflection in it and gasped as I whirled around, thinking I was now trapped inside there and a frek might be just behind me. But I was alone in the room.

Poor Quentin. I saw no way for him to survive. This made my heart sink. And then I stiffened.

There it was, in the glass, barely inches from my hand. The Adder Stone!

The dazzling white rock was simply resting on the marble floor. I whirled around again because I thought what I was seeing was a real reflection of it in this room and the Stone was just behind me on the floor. But there was nothing there. I turned back. I suspected some sort of trap because Stacks had been none too kind to me in that regard.

Still, I thought of Delph hovering over his terribly injured dad, waiting for the legs to come off. I could not go back and face Delph unless I had tried everything Wugly possible to save Duf’s limbs.

I reached out tentatively, my fingers lightly touching the glass. I jerked them back, although nothing had happened. I decided I was just being a git. I touched the glass again. It was hard, like glass should be, and impenetrable, unless I smashed it. I wondered if I should use my Elemental to do so. But what if the Elemental also smashed the Stone? I couldn’t take that chance.

Then I recalled what I had done in fixing the window in my house. I wasn’t sure how I’d done it exactly, but I looked at the glass and imagined that it was simply a wall of water. I focused all my thoughts on transforming glass to water.

I reached out again and my hand passed through the glass. A satisfied smile filled my face. I had done it! Maybe I was becoming like that sorceress thing Eon had mentioned being in the Adder Stone.

As my fingers closed around the rock, hard and cool in my palm, my smile was immense. Until something seized upon my wrist and pulled me off my feet and headfirst through the looking glass. I landed on something rough and warm to the touch. Momentarily stunned, I quickly picked myself up and stood ready to defend myself. The darkness was all around me, quite a change from the well-lighted room I’d just vacated.

I thrust the Stone in my pocket and stiffened when I heard something coming toward me from out of the black. I took out the Elemental and willed it to full size. Yet, for the first time ever, nothing happened. When I glanced down at my gloved hand, the Elemental remained as small as a long splinter of wood. I thrust it back into my pocket and tried to take to the air. But Destin seemed as powerless as the Elemental inside the glass and I fell back to the floor. I pushed down the lump in my throat and faced what was coming with none of my special tools.

A vague silhouette a shade lighter than the darkness around it emerged into my line of sight. As it drew closer and I could see it better, I gapsed in shock.

It was a very young, only it wasn’t a Wug, or at least none I had seen before. It was dressed only in a cloth diaper. It had a few hairs on its head, and its skin was as pearl white as the Adder Stone in my pocket. Its features were as angelic as any I’d ever seen. But I was still on my guard, for sweetness could quickly transform to wickedness. The image of Morrigone appeared in my mind.

It closed to within a yard of me and then stopped. It looked up at me and I looked down at it. I felt my heart go out to the tiny creature because its mouth drooped and its eyes narrowed and tears dribbled out from them. Then it gave a little bit of a cry and then something truly remarkable took place.

Its features softened and turned Wug-like. When it was done, I could only stare transfixed. It was my brother, John, at age three sessions. He started to cry once more. When I instinctively put out my hand, he immediately drew back.

“It’s okay, John,” I said in a hushed voice. “I’m going to get you out of here.” I knew none of this made any sense. John could not be here, and he certainly couldn’t be three sessions old. But my mind wasn’t working very well in here. I put out my hand once more, and once more he shrank back. His distrust eased my suspicions and I lunged forward and gripped his hand tightly.

John looked up at me, his tears now stopped. “Vega?”

I nodded. “It’ll be okay. I’ll get you out of here.”

I could only think that Morrigone had somehow imprisoned John here to get back at me. As I turned to look around for a way out, I let go of his hand. Or at least I tried to. I looked down at my hand and what I saw made me more than slightly sick. His fingers were now part of my fingers. They had somehow grown together. I jerked my arm back, but all that did was lift John off the floor. His other arm reached out and gripped my shoulder.

Instantly, I felt a weird, invasive sensation. I looked down and his hand and arm were now growing into my shoulder, right through my cloak. And when next I looked at his face, John was no longer there. What was there was the most odious, foul creature I had ever seen. It was like a moldering skeleton with bits of skin dangling in odd spots. And there were no eyes in the sockets, only ripples of black flame. With each dark flicker I felt pain course through my body. Its teeth were black and grinned at me like some savage demon that had just triumphed over its prey.

I screamed, turned and ran. All this did was allow the thing to wrap its small legs around my waist. I felt the invasive feeling again but I kept running. I just wanted to go back through the looking glass, yet I had no idea how. I could feel the thing melding onto my back. And then the most extraordinary thing happened. I suddenly felt like I weighed a thousand pounds. I couldn’t remain standing. My legs buckled. I fell to my knees, and then forward onto my face. I felt my nose shatter and my already injured eye swell even more. A dislodged tooth fell out of my mouth. I spit up blood.

The thing was on my head now. I could feel fingers like tentacles encircling my skull. And if I thought this was the worst it could possibly get, I was about to be proved wrong. In my mind grew darkness so profound, so overwhelming, that I felt paralyzed. I thought I had been struck blind and moaned in anguish. And then something vanquished the darkness. What I saw next made me wish the darkness would return.

It was every nightmare I had ever had times a factor of a thousand. From my earliest memories to seemingly the last sliver of my life, every painful fragment of memory I had ever experienced exploded onto my consciousness with the force of a million colossals crashing on top of me.

And then, even surpassing those horrible visions, were images I had never seen before, but which now flooded my brain.

Everyone I had ever loved — my parents, Virgil, Calliope, John — was running away from me. When I tried to go after them, a serpent came out of a dark hole in the dirt, wrapped itself around my ankle and started pulling me down. I cried out for help, but my family simply ran away from me faster. In another nightmare, Krone was lifting the ax high above his head and when it came down, two heads rolled off the block — mine and Delph’s. Our heads lay there staring lifelessly at each other.

And then I was reaching out to my parents on their cots in the Care. But in my hand was an open flame. When I touched them with it, they burst afire. They screamed at me, tried to escape, but couldn’t. Their flesh turned black and then fell away until there was only bone left and then that too vanished. Their screams, however, continued to ring in my ears, each burst like a knife between my ribs.