Summoned (21 page)

15

Back
when he was a kid and Mom was sick, Sean had heard a hospice lady say that lots of people died at three in the morning. Four in the morning was worse, though. That was when, if he’d fallen asleep, he’d wake up afraid Mom had died an hour before and he’d missed the chance to save her, to grab her hand and not let her go.

This four in the morning he woke up in one of the third-floor bedrooms at Celeste’s house. It took him a few minutes to remember why he wasn’t in his own room downstairs: His own room smelled like Servitor. Maybe it always would now. Besides, this room had an air conditioner, so the windows could stay closed and the door locked. It also had twin beds, the one Sean lay in and the one on which Dad was curled, tight as an armadillo. That was how he’d slept on the couch in the family room, next to Mom’s hospital bed. Every night Sean would peer around the banister to make sure Dad was safely asleep before he’d tiptoe over to Mom. Awake, Dad would make him go back upstairs. Mom would let Sean sit on the hospital bed next to her. Sometimes he’d read to her in a careful whisper. Sometimes he’d just sit. She would call him Kit, and he’d let her, even though it was his long-discarded baby name.
Kit
didn’t mean a kitten. It meant a fox cub, and she’d named him that back when he was a wild, tumbling, troublemaking ball of a baby, according to her, always doing dumb-ass shit like wedging his head under the sofa or pulling a whole bowl of spaghetti down on himself. Funny, Dad hadn’t called him Kit much until after Mom had died. Then, after a couple weeks of hearing the name from his mouth, Sean had pitched such a fit Dad had never called him Kit again. And so, what with Mom dead, nobody had.

Sean shook the random memory from his head. Even with the AC on, he was sweating, and the new stitches Celeste had put in his wrist stung like bitches. He kicked off his sheet and sat up. The window beside his bed faced the backyard, dead black space. That was the problem with 4:00
A.M.
—night was old, but dawn wasn’t even a tease yet and in the airless space between realities he couldn’t fend off the memory of Dad silhouetted in the bedroom doorway, of the rubbery twist of the Servitor toward him, then its leap, so powerful that the kickback had shoved the mattress into Sean’s nuts, doubling him over for precious seconds. It could have killed Dad. It would have killed Helen if Gus hadn’t shot its ass—it had been right on top of her, too pissed off by the intrusion to care that Sean was bleeding for it. Or maybe it had already sucked enough blood. For the moment.

The only good thing was, they had all seen the Servitor, even Eddy. They were on the same page now, and maybe by this time tomorrow it would be a page in the
Necronomicon,
with the dismissing ritual on it. When Celeste had brought Sean and Dad back from her office, Helen had already been working on the disks.

But the Servitor had almost killed Dad.
It had smashed him into the wall, then stretched toward him, as expandable as a slug, its jaws gaping. If Sean had taken a couple seconds longer to get over his slammed nuts, if he hadn’t been able to grapple it away (like grappling a greased sack of snakes), if he hadn’t thought to give it what it wanted more than Dad—

He shut his eyes so tight the lids hurt. Then he groped on the nightstand for his water glass and the two pills Celeste had left for him to take if he couldn’t sleep. He had to sleep, and no dreams. He had to be ready to learn the dismissing ritual. The Servitor was his. His blood had made it. Whatever it did, he was at least partly responsible. Yet he hadn’t meant for any of this to happen, had he? Like Mom hadn’t meant to get cancer. It had been a cellular accident, nobody could blame her for it, and the summoning spell had been a
magical
accident, kind of.

Sean swallowed the pills and lay down. Twisting around to get comfortable, he ended up with his chin practically between his knees. That made him an armadillo like Dad, and what did armadillos do when they were in the middle of a road and a truck was bearing down on them? They curled up and lay there all smug, like their scaly hides were thick enough to take the crush. Trucks. He imagined one with tentacles sprouting from its grill. The armadillo that was going to survive that had better roll its butt out of the road, but before Sean could roll, or run, or grow titanium scales he sank down into sleep.

Light
leaked under Roman blinds and over the chaise longue on which Helen sprawled, one sneakered foot up, one bare foot down. That arrangement made no sense. Neither did the sunlight. At around two, she’d lain down to rest—had she slept through the night, leaving Gus to struggle with the
Necronomicon
alone? A tasseled cord hung within reach. Helen tugged on it until the blinds were all the way up. Gus wasn’t in the study, but through the French doors to the living room came a low rasp of snoring.

Stifling groans, Helen sat up. Her arms throbbed like they’d been wrenched out of the shoulder sockets, and her midriff ached where the Servitor had rammed the kitchen chair into her. The broad, ugly bruise under her sternum was the worst of her injuries. Celeste, too, had gotten off with bruises, but Jeremy was lucky to be alive. Sean had saved him by offering the Servitor the blood it craved most: its summoner’s. The utter madness of the memory made Helen feel light-headed.

Coffee. A Thermos carafe stood on the study table. She limped over and poured lukewarm dregs into her dirty mug. Disgusting, but caffeine was caffeine. After a few gulps, she was able to sift through the mental jumble of the last day, Sean’s story, the deserted pharmacy, the Servitor. Gus returning from the unsuccessful chase and Eddy describing how she’d heard a gunshot and seen the fleeing monster on her way over. Good thing her parents had been out, or they’d have called the cops for sure.

Once he’d escorted Eddy home, Gus had advised Helen to go to bed. Bless him for understanding how futile that would have been. Ironically, she hadn’t stopped shaking until they’d double-teamed the
Necronomicon;
the mental effort had focused her, and Gus’s commiserating grin had let her laugh off the scare whenever a beetle or moth had tapped on the windows behind them.

From the table, Helen could make out Gus on the living-room couch. He slept with both feet sanely bare, and even his snore had a comfortable sound to it. Yet he’d seen the Servitor, too. He’d chased it. Helen couldn’t have done that after the first shock. Right, who was she fooling? She could never do it, not if Servitors got as common as houseflies.

She slipped into the chair in front of her laptop. Since she’d meant to nap for just five minutes (ha!), she’d left the computer on. Auto-locked by her long absence, the
Necronomicon
lurked under an innocuous screensaver, pastel waves like wildflower meadows on speed, one swift summer after another.

After summer is winter, after winter summer. The Old Ones wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.

That was a prime bit of
Necronomicon
. Darkness under light, the book waited. Alone and hungry, Helen couldn’t face it. She reached under the table for her backpack and slipped a hand inside. Her fingers grazed the cool plastic of a stack of jewel cases: disks of the Redemption Orne journals that she’d requisitioned on impulse along with the
Necronomicon
. The journals might come in handy, but right now she wanted the letter stashed under them. She didn’t take it out. She just touched the lokta paper envelope, deriving flimsy comfort from the connection to Marvell, who believed she could do the job Henry and John Arkwright had done, who believed in her courage.

Well, Marvell hadn’t heard her shriek. He hadn’t seen her cowering under the Servitor or, afterwards, unable to pull herself together enough to bring Celeste some towels.

Outside, a cardinal whistled two plaintive notes over and over. Helen walked to the bay windows. The song came from a huge beech tree in the yard next door, Eddy’s yard, and there was Eddy herself, lithely climbing the fence. She saw Helen and pointed toward the back of the house.

Helen went to unlock the kitchen door. She heard footsteps on the stairs: Celeste coming down. A mighty yawn in the living room: Gus stirring.

Morning had arrived, and their forces were gathering.

A
queasy stomach and throbbing wrist greeted Sean when he woke up, but to make Dad happy he forced down a bagel and some OJ. Gus showed him an article in the
Journal,
two paragraphs in the local section: no new pet killings along the Pawtuxet, police still investigating, residents should continue to exercise caution. Except the residents of Pawtuxet Village would be all right, now that Sean had moved to the East Side. “It followed me here,” he said.

Gus nodded. “Helen and I are trying to find out how it managed that. You like to join us?”

Sean went into the study, where Helen was so intent on her laptop screen she didn’t notice him until he pulled a chair back from the table, and then she jumped. “Sorry to scare you,” he said.

Helen gave a weak laugh. “I’ve drunk so much coffee, kittens in pink and blue bows would scare me.”

“Hell, I’m terrified of kittens, even bowless,” Gus said. He sat at his PC. Dad came in from the kitchen and took the chair beside Sean’s.

Helen got right to business. “I finally collected some of the creature’s blood without melting the bag. The corrosives in it must go inert when the stuff dries. But what do we do with our samples? Find a confidential lab to analyze them?”

“Why bother with that?” Dad said. “We know the thing’s real now.”

Sean winced. Poor Dad, overnight winner of
Radical Mental Makeover
.

“Good point,” Helen said. Like Eddy déjà vu, she pulled printouts from under her laptop. “Gus and I have been reading the
Necronomicon
. There are references to Servitors and summoning spells scattered through the text. Abdul Alhazred wasn’t big on organization.”

“He was crazy, right?” Sean said.

Gus shrugged. “So they say. If so, I just wish he’d had more method to his madness.”

Another good thing was how great Gus and Helen were getting along. She smiled at his joke before reading from her top printout. “‘It is neither fitting nor wise for a wizard to consult daemons of great power, unless after long service to the Outer Gods. A wizard young in craft should call only the lesser daemons, which are still dangerous. Yet some may be useful servants when the wizard has mastered their speech, which is not of the spoken word but of the mind.’”

Speech of the mind
had to be telepathy. Monsters weren’t likely to speak English, or Arabic or Latin, either. For one thing, all their tongues would get in the way.

Helen read on: “‘The major division in familiars lies between those which are of the aether and those which are of the flesh. Those of the aether can do no bodily harm in our sphere, and thus we recommend them to the young practitioner. The commonest is called by the ancients the wind-salamander—’”

“That must be the aether-newt,” Sean said.

“In fact, that’s a better translation.” Helen corrected her printout. “‘—aether-newt, an excellent spy. However, for the seasoned wizard, the choicest familiar is the f’tragn-agl, which signifies a blood-spawn. It resembles those Servitors which surround the throne of Azathoth, though smaller. Nevertheless, it has the strength of a man when summoned, and should it grow to man-sized or beyond, its strength will be that of many men. Neither fire nor steel may destroy the f’tragn-agl; dismembered, it will flow together like the sundered wave. When properly bound it is well suited to be a guard or assassin. Unbound, it will raven on its own.’”

Helen paused. “This next part repeats Orne’s warning: ‘The wizard must heed the blood-spawn’s name. Blood secures it to the bubble of our world, and its lust for that incarnating blood is beyond all the lusts of men. Therefore, the wizard must never use his own blood to make it, for though the f’tragn-agl may not harm its summoner, yet it will desire his blood and grow the more fierce in deprivation.’”

Sean avoided Dad’s gaze. It came back too clear, how slashing his palm for blood during the ritual hadn’t hurt at all. In fact, his boner had only gotten harder, like he was some kind of S/M sicko. Who could blame Dad for looking like he wanted to puke?

Helen’s voice brought Sean back to the study: “The most important thing I get from these passages is that the Servitor can’t hurt Sean.”

“It
bit
him,” Dad said.

“Sean gave it explicit permission to bite, to drink. So, physically, he’s safe.”

Sean couldn’t stand that. “But the rest of you aren’t.”

“We’re all right,” Dad said. “And it won’t surprise us again.”

Gus shook his head. “It surprised me plenty when I shot it and it flowed ‘together like the sundered wave.’”

“Maybe we need bigger weapons,” Dad said. “An assault rifle or grenades. Splatter it into so many pieces it can’t put itself together again.”

“Or we could just call in the National Guard,” Gus said dryly.

“Well, maybe we
should
call someone. What about that detective who came over? He seemed all right.”

Dad hadn’t thought O’Conaghan was all right at the time.

“I have his card,” Gus said. “I saved it in case you changed your mind.”

“I don’t know, Gus.”

Dad’s nervous hair-habit was to grab at it like it was a possum he was trying to rip off his head. Helen was less violent. She worried one auburn lock, smoothing it straight, then curling it around two fingers. “None of us know exactly what to do,” she said. “But I don’t think we should involve anyone else if we can help it. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Dad and even Gus looked confused. Sean got her, though. “It’s like UFOs, and how people think the government’s covering them up because they’d cause a panic. But real UFOs would be minor-league compared to real Servitors.”

Helen nodded at him. “Right, because UFOs wouldn’t force you to accept the existence of something like the Outer Gods. Since yesterday, I’m starting to appreciate why the Archives are set up to keep people
out
.”