Nylarthotep sat forward. Where he gripped the arms of his chair, I saw long, blood-encrusted claws. I didn’t know what he’d been using them for, but I drew back as far as I could without seeming like a coward.
“I am not flotsam. I am eternal,” he snarled, and I did flinch then, as if he’d raked me with those claws.
“All right,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry. I was mistaken.”
“Tell me the terms of this bargain or leave before I make you an amusement,” Nylarthotep grumbled, slumping back.
I took a breath and said, “You can have something from me. And in return, you let Dean go. I know you said no soul would escape you, but those are my terms, take it or leave it.”
“Really.” He leaned forward and licked his lips. “Tough talk. I’m intrigued. Be more specific, dear.”
“I have a Weird. I have the gift that you need.” I couldn’t believe I was about to do this again. “I could get you a way out of here.”
Nylarthotep didn’t laugh or mock me this time. He simply tilted his head and considered my words, and that scared me more than anything.
“No, you can’t,” he said. “Tesla couldn’t, and neither can you.”
I sighed. It was my only bargaining chip, but I didn’t want to use it. If Nylarthotep thought I was useless, at least he wouldn’t imprison and torture me.
“But you do have something I want,” he said. “You are a living soul in the Deadlands, and I’ve never come across that before.”
I raised my chin, already not liking where this was going. “I’m listening.”
“I grow weary of this place,” said Nylarthotep. “I grow weary of my own creations. Let me test you. Let me see exactly what the soul of a Gateminder can endure, and then if it pleases me, I’ll let your insignificant little friend fly free.”
This was a bad bargain. I knew it, he knew it. He also knew I didn’t have a choice, and so did I. Though this way, at least I wouldn’t run the risk of setting him free. Because something like Nylarthotep could never be free, not ever. That would truly be the end of the world, the culmination of the second Storm. What I’d started was bad enough, but to let something like this monster into the Iron Land would mean the end of everything, and this time I’d be well and truly to blame.
So I nodded, and said, “I’ll do whatever it takes. I just want to go home.”
I knew now I was beneath the Deadlands, where no one could find me, not Chang’s machine, not even a Gate of my own creation.
“As do we all,” Nylarthotep said. “Come with me.”
He led me to the edge of the swirling space that he lived in, and it resolved itself into a long hallway, industrial as anything in the Iron Land, flickering bulbs caged with wire, and iron doors stretching as far as the eye could see.
I twitched reflexively, waiting for my Fae blood to react with the iron, but it wasn’t real. Nothing stirred in my blood or in my mind. That was a relief. Dealing with a bout of iron poisoning and the associated hallucinations was the last thing I needed right now.
“What’s behind these doors, only you can know,” said Nylarthotep. “Did you know that I used to slip into minds while asleep? That I used to pick apart dreams and nightmares?” He snorted. “Of course, that was before they sent me here and that foul upstart crawled out of the mud and took over the dreams, made them a refuge rather than what they should be.”
“And what’s that?” I said. Screams echoed from behind some of the doors, and even worse sounds, scratching and hissing, from behind others.
“The most terrible thing in all the universe,” the Yellow King said. “Because your own mind is the thing you should fear most. It is the originator of nightmares. Without the fear, things like me would not exist.”
He gave me a small shove forward. His touch sent shivers down my spinal cord and running through my entire body, borne on my own nerves.
“Go on,” he whispered in my ear. “This is what I found in your mind, Aoife. Let’s see what kind of fear lives there.”
I stepped into the hall. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t have a choice. If I wanted to get out of here, and with Dean, this was what I had to do.
Knowing it was my only choice didn’t make it any easier to face what was behind the doors. Nylarthotep had been right. I was terrified of what was inside my own mind.
And now I was going to meet it face to face.
14
The Dark Corridor
I USED TO PLAY in the hallway of the Lovecraft apartment that Conrad and I shared with our mother. It was a terrible place. It smelled musty and the carpet was damp no matter the season or the time of day. Roaches scuttled to and fro, and the aether feed was bad, so bulbs were constantly exploding, raining glass as fine as paper down on me and my sad excuses for dolls, which I usually constructed out of paper or shirts stuffed with packing material I found in the bins behind the building.
Terrible though it was, I had happy memories of that hallway. I’d listen to my mother singing to herself, or wait for Conrad’s footsteps as he came home from school. Usually he’d blow right past me without a word. We weren’t close then like we would be after our mother was sent to the madhouse.
Our only neighbor who wasn’t a drunk and stayed longer than a week was an elderly woman, Mrs. Loemann, who’d fled the war. She’d lost her entire family, grandchildren through husband, to the camps, and she used to come out and talk to me in German. She didn’t speak much English, and she made me hard, nutty-tasting cookies that I pretended to eat to be polite and secretly put out for the pigeons, but she was nice to me, and always patted me on the head with her knotty-fingered hand. She looked like a kind fairy-tale grandmother, like someone had carved her out of wood, put her on strings and moved her around.
She died just before we moved out, and nobody noticed until the hallway started to smell much worse than usual.
I always wondered what it would be like to be totally alone, knowing that everyone who was your blood was dead.
I had a much better idea now, as I stood in this hallway, the maze that the Yellow King had created.
At least it smelled better.
I resolved I wasn’t going to stand frozen like a scared rabbit, and took a hard left, pushing open the first door that my hand met.
Reality flickered around me, and I felt the same sick lurch as when I stepped through a Gate. Whether I’d traveled in time or space I didn’t know, but I’d definitely crossed some threshold.
This was different from when Crow had shown me my nightmares, made me face them and come through the other side. I’d crossed some other barrier this time, something that was real, as far from a dream as I was from the Iron Land right now.
Except I was in the Iron Land when I opened my eyes, in a snug cottage, all one room except for a staircase off to one side.
I tried to orient myself, and spun around as the door opened.
I was glad I was too shocked to make any sound, because the one that would have come out was a scream.
“Hey there, darlin’,” Dean said, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it on a hook by the door. “Sorry I’m home so late.”
“I …” I was sure I was staring at him like he’d sprouted a second head. This wasn’t fear, this was just cruel. Whatever game Nylarthotep was playing was worse than anything I could have imagined.
“Princess,” Dean said. He approached and put a hand on my cheek. “Are you okay?”
He was real. Real and warm and alive, looking at me with concern. I put my hand over his, reflexively.
“I am now,” I said, squeezing it.