More terrifying was the way the mirror started to expand. Not the surface itself, but the entire thing, frame and all, growing wider and taller. Its surface writhed just as it had in the graveyard, but this time it was worse. This time was more threatening, because the power in that mirror wasn’t the beast’s—it didn’t have anything to do with it. The power came from Fallerstein, from the circle, from the beings lurking beyond the silvery-black waves between the mirror’s expanding frame. Those beings were coming. Something was coming. He felt it, the beast felt it, and obviously Fallerstein and Ingram and the rest of their men felt it, because they all started looking at each other with expressions whose happiness only barely covered their fear.
They were going to be a lot more scared in a minute, because the beast was starting to take over. Maybe it wouldn’t be able to escape those cuffs, but it was coming out just the same. He wasn’t going to be able to hold it back much longer.
The theater outside the circle was full of shadows, and so much power thrummed in the air that it blurred his vision a little, but he still managed to find Ardeth. She’d moved a few feet from where she’d originally stood; Erik the knife enthusiast still lurked at her side, but when she noticed Speare looking at her she turned slightly, just enough so he could see her right hand dart to her hip and back, free. Uncuffed.
“Get out,” he mouthed in reply.
Her brows drew together. Not like she didn’t understand, but like she did, and wasn’t happy.
“Get out,” he mouthed again.
She gave her head a subtle shake and tipped it toward Erik and then to her left, which he figured must mean Majowski was over there.
Damn it, this was not the time to argue. He tried to think of some way to indicate to her what was going to happen, that the beast was going to come after her, but the best he could do was to glare and bare his teeth and then nod at her.
Her chin lifted in a half nod and her eyes widened just a touch, enough that he knew she understood. Good. At least there was that. At least he could stop worrying about that.
And start worrying about those cuffs, because Fallerstein was at his side suddenly, Fallerstein with the demon-sword in his hand. His proximity, its proximity, made the beast scream with rage loud enough to hurt, but Speare ignored the pain and focused on that glowing black blade, a blade made of shadow, as it rose above him. One last try. He had to make at least one last try to stop it. “I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”
Fallerstein’s lips curled. He didn’t listen—they never listened. He just kept chanting, raising the sword, and then he’d raised it as high as it could go and was bringing it back down hard and fast right over Speare’s neck.
One second of fleeting fear was all Speare felt before the blade hit. It was the only emotion he had time to feel before the beast, spurred by both the threat of death and the immense rush of power it received the second the sword touched his skin, burst forth in a blinding rush of hatred and searing pain. His nerve endings shrieked from the violence of it as they split and tore; his vision went red; his body lurched forward so hard the table fell on its side.
And those fucking cuffs held.
The beast was not deterred. It flipped itself so its feet hit the ground, and leaped upward, slamming the edge of the table into Fallerstein’s face.
The theater had been silent except for the low chant of Fallerstein’s men. Now it erupted into a chaos of shouts and footsteps, and Speare realized too late what he hadn’t seen before, hadn’t thought of. Fallerstein’s men ran for their weapons—maybe ran to escape—and in doing so they broke the circle. They broke the circle, and the mirror grew.
The mirror would keep growing, unbound by a closed ring of magic to hold it back. Anything could come through that mirror, and whatever came through wouldn’t be held in place by an intact circle. It could go wherever it wanted. Fallerstein’s men—and he himself—had managed to create a portal to hell that wouldn’t close.
The beast lurched sideways, swiping Ingram and another man with the edge of the table. The first bullet drove into its chest—his chest—but it barely registered. It would fall back out anyway; the wound would heal.
What the beast did feel, what it did care about, were those damned cuffs. Its hands longed to hit, its claws to tear. Everywhere around it blood thrummed beneath thin, delicate human skin and it wanted to feel that blood hot and slick on its body, to taste it. It wanted to rip apart the bodies of those who’d taken its mirror and trapped it in this room, and then visit their souls in hell when it finally got home.
But it couldn’t do any of that with its hands locked to a slab of steel. Its frustrated howl burned his throat. It spun around again and slammed the edge of the table into the wall in an attempt to break the cuffs or the table or both, but all it managed to gain was a fresh jolt of agony up its arms.
Speare felt the same agony, thankfully dulled a little but still bad enough to make it hard to think. Not great, considering it was hard to think anyway when the beast took over, that being unable to control his body seemed to detach his mind from it. He was a spectator, that was all. He could feel the beast’s thoughts, see its fantasies and memories—and it could see his. Shit, it could see his, and before he managed to shut it out it plundered his head. Goddamn it, the thing was getting ready to leave him and it couldn’t resist those parting shots, the chance to take a few memories of Ardeth—of that day—and twist them, use them to add verisimilitude to its sick fucking taunts. Her pale skin smeared with blood, her naked body white and cold, the beast’s claws slitting her open…unspeakable things, things he didn’t want to see but was forced to. His stomach would have lurched if it had belonged to him.
It was so bad that when Ardeth appeared beside him he thought she was an illusion. He thought he’d finally gone insane and she was a figment of his imagination.
Then he realized she wasn’t. What the fuck was she doing there? Why the hell hadn’t she listened to him? He’d told her to get out of there, he’d warned her what the beast would do, and yet there she was, her fingers quick and cool at his wrists. Uncuffing him—uncuffing the beast.
Relief had barely blossomed on one side when she ducked around him and went to work on his other side. Her nervous glances told him she was waiting for the beast to attack, but it knew what it was doing. It waited until the cuffs popped open—the pain disappeared, fuck that felt good—and then it swiped at her.
It missed—barely. Another bullet didn’t. The beast smelled her blood almost before it saw the red blossom spreading on her upper arm. The fear and pain on her face made it laugh.
And there was nothing he could do.
At least seeing her wounded—because of him, because she’d set the beast loose to save him—reassured the beast that she’d still be around to play with after it was done.
First it had to start. Now its hands were free, it was free, and its triumphant smile widened as it sauntered over to Fallerstein and took his head off with one casual swipe of its claws.
Blood sprayed everywhere, shiny red in the glittering light from the chandelier. The smell of it fed the beast’s frenzy even more. It started running. Joy exploded in its chest—his chest. A bright, glorious joy at being in control of Speare’s body, at the feel of the air against his skin, the scent of the blood. A joy he tried not to share but couldn’t help feeling anyway; it was impossible not to, when it was his body that felt it.
Partly his body, at least. Those weren’t his claws now burying themselves in another man’s gut, heedless of the bullets being pumped into his chest and kicked back out just as quickly. His body healed fast when he had control of it, but its speed when the beast was in charge put that to shame. It was a machine, a machine that felt nothing but wickedness and delight in the pain it caused. The blood in the air, the violence and anger, the death and terror around him, made it want to sing with glee.
Another man in his way became another torn body devoid of life on the floor before him, and another. The
beast could feel Fallerstein’s men circling him, hear their hearts racing. It laughed. They were terrified, and they were right to be terrified. It was so easy to kill them, easy and fun, watching the pitiful light leave their eyes as it yanked out their hearts or slit open their throats. It danced across the floor and left corpses in its wake.
All Speare could do was watch and try not to be sick.
Ingram was running up the center aisle of the theater. Trying to leave, the bastard. No way was the beast allowing that. It tore after him, taking the steps three or four at a time, until it tackled him and ripped his spine from his back. Its joy at this, the glee filling it, only got worse when Speare looked through its eyes and realized Ingram had been the last of them. Wherever Majowski was—he tried not to think of Majowski too much lest the beast decide to hunt for him, too—he must have escaped, and that left only one person. Ardeth.
She’d tried to run. He had to give her credit, she’d tried to run. But it was so easy to track her. Even without the smell of her blood there was everything else, the scent of her skin and hair, the soap she used. The beast had ravaged his brain for every memory, every sensation, every thought. Those flashed over and over in its head as it followed the trail, so clear it was almost visibly luminous, through to the backstage area. It was going to find her. It was going to play with her like a toy.
And he couldn’t stop it. It was so cranked up, so stuffed with blood and sin and dark, wicked energy, that he could barely tell he was still in his body at all, much less exert the kind of strength he needed to take it back. He was as helpless as Ardeth was going to be in another minute or two, because the trail was getting stronger—he was getting closer.
The beast’s red-tinged vision obscured some details of the narrow, rabbit-warren-like halls down which he turned, but he still saw the tattered posters on the walls, the occasional faded candy wrapper or broken comb on the dusty floor. Cracks in the plaster were like scrawny arms, desperate skeletons trying to crawl to freedom.
“Ardeth,” the beast said, its voice somehow oily and husky all at once, its cooing tone repulsive as it trailed its palm along the wall and left a streak of blood there. “You’re easy to follow, aren’t you? Just come out.”
Silence. Of course she wasn’t going to fall for that. He’d hoped she had found an exit and escaped, but he knew she hadn’t. The scent of her skin, of her blood, of her fear, was too strong; it overrode the other smells, the old sweat and smoke and damp.
A rustling noise somewhere in the distance up ahead, near the doorway that separated the backstage area from the maintenance corridor. The beast—it knew the damned layout as well as he did, whether it stole it from his memory or it had been there lurking in his head all those years before—started to trot toward it. Past the old costume room that still housed a few lonely scraps of fabric and broken sequins, past the solo dressing room reserved for headliners, around the corner—where it stopped.
It stood there for a long moment, thinking, its claws tapping on the weak plaster, leaving tiny blood-smeared scars. It didn’t bother to hide its thoughts from him, either. Why should it? He couldn’t do anything to stop it, not really. He could yell at it, struggle against it, and he did—but it made no difference. He couldn’t stop the beast from speaking again.
In his voice. “Ardeth? Are you back here? It’s okay, it’s me.”
Nothing. No reply. Please God let her be gone, or at least let her understand that it couldn’t be him trying to find her. She was too smart for that, right? She’d know he wouldn’t seek her out, that if he was really okay he would have waited outside or called some other people to come collect her—he would have found Majowski to do it, or called Felix.
He turned a corner, dreading what he was about to see: the dressing room, lined on all four walls with cracked mirrors and broken lights, the long vanity countertop still dingy from decades of makeup and sweaty hands. When he was nine that room had always been full of women, beautiful women with bright faces whose entire bodies had seemed to sparkle. Beautiful women who’d smiled at him and hugged him and forgotten he was there while they talked about their boyfriends—he’d learned a lot from those women.
His mother had always taken a spot at the far end of the room, back in the corner where she could gather the others around her like sunrays. He wanted to look at it, but the beast didn’t. It just scanned the empty room, saw nothing of interest, and headed back into the hall toward the maintenance door.
“Come on,” the beast said in his voice again. He wanted to kill it so bad. He wanted to watch it die more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life, more than he’d ever wanted it to die before—and he’d wanted it to die an awful lot. It just chuckled at him in his head. “Let’s go, okay? I don’t really want to be here when the cops arrive, and I bet they will.”
No reply.
But she was close. The beast knew it. Anticipation made it smile and lick its lips—his lips—that tasted like blood and magic. “Seriously, Ardeth. It’s me. I’m really fine. Let’s call somebody to come get us.”
It reached out to try the maintenance door. Locked. Its irritated grunt almost drowned out his mental sigh of relief. The sound of the doorknob breaking did drown it out.
But she hadn’t gone down that way. The hall, when the beast stuck its head through the doorway, didn’t smell like her at all.
Then it heard her. It heard her heart pounding so loud. So close. It turned, coiling itself to leap for her.
Whatever it was she threw on him hurt almost as bad as those cuffs had; a hard, dark pain across the side of his face that turned almost instantly to what felt like a thousand burning needles in his skin. Something holy. She’d hit him with something holy, something blessed. It was worth the pain to hear her footsteps racing away down the hall, to catch a glimpse of her hair flying behind her as she went.
Except she wasn’t fast enough. She couldn’t be. The holy water she’d splashed him with was enough to make the beast retreat for a second and let him take over his body, but it wasn’t enough. Even as his hands instinctively rose to wipe his eyes he could feel it gathering itself up to push him out again. The water’s purity wouldn’t last, not after it had come in contact with something as foul as the beast. He could only hold it there by the door for a few seconds. Just a few…
His stomach churned and his body shook with the effort. He couldn’t tell now if the moisture beading down his temple was holy water or sweat, and it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the beast already pushing back at him, assaulting him with pictures it took from his memories and turned into something filthy, assaulting him with its hideous laugh. He braced himself against the wall and tightened all his muscles, gritted his teeth so hard he thought they might break. He had to hold it, had to keep it locked down until she’d had enough time to get away.
Her footsteps faded. She’d turned a corner. Maybe she was hiding again, or maybe she’d decided to slow down and move quietly. She hadn’t reached the stage was all he knew. The stage, where the mirror still sat pumping evil into the close air.
Evil that gave the beast strength enough to burst forth again. At least it didn’t hurt so much this time. At least his skin was already torn, his muscles already screaming. It didn’t hurt as much as it usually did.
But it was still worse, because the beast took off after her—he wasn’t sure its feet actually touched the ground until it was at the end of the hall making the turn toward the wings—and it was going to catch her.
She was on the stage, her hair a crimson banner waving in the dim light, her body limned by the flickering black-light glow emanating from the mirror. The beast’s heart raced faster, but whether it was from that light, the power, or the thought of catching Ardeth, Speare couldn’t tell.
The beast hit the edge of the broken circle and leaped for her. They fell together onto the wooden floor sticky with blood and grime. Ingram’s head lay only a few feet away, still attached to his spine like a gruesome lollipop. The b
east noticed this but didn’t pay attention. It was too interested in Ardeth, who was trapped beneath it. Its joy, and his rage at that joy, blotted out everything else for a moment, blotted out even her face and the feel of her body against his.
“Kyrie eleison,” she said—the Litany of the Saints again—but the beast just laughed. It used its own voice to reply.
“That won’t work this time.” It smiled at her. “It’s too late for that.”
That was a lie. He knew that was a lie. But he didn’t have any way to tell her that it was a lie, so it didn’t matter.
Maybe she knew already. The beast rose, intending to flip her over, but she started moving the second it did. Her hand flew up toward its face; her hand, and the crucifix she held in it.
That was too much. It could pretend the prayer didn’t hurt, but it couldn’t pretend the silver figure on the cross in her hand didn’t burn its skin, not when even Speare could feel the blisters rising on its cheek. He saw the mirror, too, the flash of bright red light from it; how had that happened? Had the beast become connected to the thing, or was it simply that any holy energy in that enormous theater, as pumped full of evil as it was, would cause a reaction?
The beast jerked back. Its left hand swung out and caught her cheek, hard. The impact sent her skidding across the scarred wood beneath them, but not far enough. The beast lunged again, grabbed her, hauled her up off the floor. Her cry of pain delighted it. This time when she tried to hit it with the crucifix, it was ready and ducked out of the way. Its claw closed around her forearm and twisted until the cross clattered on the boards at their feet. Shit, was she defenseless now? If she didn’t have any other holy item on her she was fucked, especially in that room. The power was so thick, flowing from the mirror like a slow, heavy river. More shapes shifted and bulged against the membrane of its surface, more creatures ready to ride the tide into the room when the floodgate finally opened—when the beast finally opened it.