a salute to hers, as an acknowledgement only, not as an honour. Not to say that it was her I might choose, here at the end of all things. But to say that it was the world.
I said I love you, I won’t leave you. And then I left. But you should leave your enemies, goddammit; you should leave the people you hate, the ones who have wronged you, ruined you, stolen from you. You not only should but must, or else what kind of life can you live?
And yet.
I hated more than one being here. Many more. More hate, maybe. Hard to say at this point but... yes. I did hate Them more. Maybe I could make a difference. Maybe I couldn’t.
But I wasn’t sure I wanted to die not knowing.
I mean, I was going to die anyway, right.
It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even hope. It was the great uncertainty. The only thing I felt certain of was that she was still fighting. Alone.
I rolled a piece of the frankincense in my fingers for a minute, scenting my hand with it, waiting for it to soften, but it didn’t.
Then I got back into the Range Rover.
THE DRIVE BACK out to the Nineveh ruins went straight through a violent sandstorm; my headlights—expensive, powerful—penetrated a foot or two into the swirling sand and stopped, as if I were traveling with a couple of lighters attached to the grill. I slowed to twenty klicks and white-knuckled the steering wheel, glancing over again and again at the circle Johnny had drawn on the glove compartment. It was glowing blue-white in thin, piercing lines, as if it had been incised with a scalpel. Occasionally the car was buffeted by something that felt far bigger than sand—something I would have assumed was a tarp or a plastic bag until one of them briefly stuck, in the swirling vortex, and stared at me for a second before disappearing again.
It was okay. Would be okay. Just gotta... get there in one piece, not a bunch of pieces. One piece. Fine dust filtered in through the vents even though I didn’t have the air on; I eventually shut them, watching it continue to drift in and fall, softly, like baby powder, onto the upholstery.
The city looked abandoned—no lights, no cars. Maybe the sandstorm had simply knocked the power out. Occam’s Razor, Johnny would have said. I crept through the dark streets in low gear, the sand lessened here, blocked by the dark, silent buildings, towards the archaeological site.
The Rover’s powerful four-wheel drive gave out on the ramp leading into the dig, now buried in fresh sand. I reluctantly shut off the headlights—the only light for miles except for the stars and the undersides of the ugly clouds—and got out into the dark and grit, shuffling my feet. Where the hell was that huge open excavation, with its grid of planks over the top? If I fell into that, it would be all over.
The wind screamed over the sound of chanting from the other side, the Ancient Ones awakening, pushing on the door, waiting for its new thinness to bend under Their weight. No real weight but the weight of Their malevolence and magic, the weight of Their will, pushing. Everyone in the world must be able to feel it now, that terror, as if hearing something outside scratching at a door they didn’t even know existed.
My foot caught on something thick and I pitched forwards, muffling a scream; reaching down cautiously, I felt something leathery, rough, my fingers unable to make sense of it. Like a dead bat but inches thick. And then they hit something wet, cold even in the warmth of the night, and as I drew back, my shoes finding the extent and folds of the thing, I realized that it was one of Drozanoth’s wings, torn completely off. Next to it lay Johnny’s music player, the wood cracked and the interior filled with sand and molten globs of something. “That’s my girl,” I muttered reluctantly. What had it cost her? Best not to know.
I shuffled faster towards the top of the king’s mound where I could at least get a better view, hoping my eyes would adjust to the thin, greenish light. My skin stung from the sand, the grains redolent with Their stench now, or the smell of Drozanoth’s amputated wing.
All my night vision vanished in a crack of lightning that came from both up and down, meeting for a