Mould, turning him to dust.
Samuel’s ears rang from the sound of the clashing stones. His eyes and mouth were filled with dry matter, some of it almost certainly bits of Hilary Mould. He spat them out.
There was a thumping noise in his head: the beating of a heart that was not his own. It was almost as though Mrs. Abernathy had already entered him, just as Hilary Mould had threatened. He tried to find the source of the sound. It was coming from the group of humans and nonhumans nearby.
It was coming from
The others seemed to realize it at the same time as Samuel. Slowly they moved away from one another— watching, listening—before grouping together again as they narrowed down the source, until at last a single figure was left standing alone, and the identity of Mrs. Abernathy’s host was revealed.
XXXVI
In Which Mrs. Abernathy’s Identity Is Revealed
THE ISOLATED MEMBER OF their little band said nothing. It was left to Professor Hilbert to break the silence.
“Dorothy!” he cried. “Er, and/or Reginald, of course. Can this be true?”
“Turncoat!” said the Polite Monster. “Eight letters,” it added, “?‘one who abandons one party or group to join another.’?”
“No,” said Samuel. “I don’t think Dorothy ever really existed at all.”
Professor Hilbert turned to Professor Stefan.
“I thought that you hired her,” he said.
“I thought that you did.”
“We need a more careful hiring policy,” said Professor Hilbert.
Dorothy/Reginald removed her false beard. What was revealed was a chin that had begun to blacken and decay. She tugged at her hair, and it came away from her skull in clumps until only a bald, spotted scalp remained. Her body started to swell, bursting through her clothing. Her arms and legs lengthened, and they could hear the grinding of bone against bone, and the snapping of sinews. She rose above them all as tentacles exploded from her back, their beaklike endings gulping at the air, as her black heart flooded the host body with its poison and transformed it. Her head expanded, horns sprouting from the bone, and her mouth grew larger and larger. Her human teeth were forced from her gums and replaced with row upon row of sharp incisors. She reminded Samuel of a huge black mantis, but there was a hint of Ba’al to her appearance, and more than a little of Mrs. Abernathy. Her skin was slightly translucent, and the bones and muscles were visible beneath it, as was the dark heart that beat at the core of her being, protected by a thick, hard shield of keratinized cells.
But it was the eyes that drew Samuel’s attention. They were large and still somewhat human in appearance, but any traces of real humanity were long gone: in their place was only absolute madness. Samuel thought that it was like staring into the center of a storm, a thing of pure, relentless destruction.
“Hello, Samuel,” said the beast, and the voice was Mrs. Abernathy’s, and any lingering doubts were banished.
“Hello,” said Samuel, for want of anything better to say. From somewhere near his ankles came the sound of Boswell barking. Mrs. Abernathy had once hurt the little dog badly. He had not forgotten, but he was not afraid. Instead, he seemed anxious to inflict some harm of his own upon her in return.
Above their heads, the Shadows converged, the weight of them pressing down upon the Earth. They sensed their time was near. Soon this world would be theirs, and all other worlds would follow. They would swallow every star in the universe and leave it cold and black before moving on to the rest of the Multiverse. In time they would make their way to Hell itself and put out its fires, for the Shadows wanted no lights left burning. The Shadows wanted only to spread the Darkness.
“Look at you all,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “Look how easily you were lured to me.”
She took in Dan and the dwarfs, and Sergeant Rowan and Constable Peel, and Shan and Gath, and Maria, even the Polite Monster, until finally her lunatic eyes fell on Samuel and Boswell, and Wormwood and Nurd.
“You!” she said to Nurd. “Twice you have been my ruin. Twice you sided with humanity against your own kind. There will not be a third time.”
A great forked tongue unfurled itself from behind her jaws and coiled around Nurd like a snake. Holes opened on its surface, and each hole was a tiny, sucking mouth lined with teeth. The tongue came close to Nurd, but it did not touch him, and he did not flinch, until at last it was drawn back into her mouth.
“Not yet,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “That would be too quick, too lacking in agony. Mould was right: there are greater punishments in store for you.”
“He should never have trusted you,” said Samuel. “If he’d given it even a moment’s thought, he would have known that you’d kill him in the end.”
“Kill him?” said Mrs. Abernathy. “I didn’t kill him. He was already dead. He just didn’t want to admit it. And I could feel him turning on me. He was weak, like all of your kind. The Shadows would not have been kind with him: about that, at least, you were right.”
“They won’t be kind with you either,” said Nurd. “They hate demons as much as humans. They’ll destroy you without a thought.”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Abernathy, “but they’ll have to find me first. You know, in a way you did me a favor when you scattered my atoms throughout the Multiverse. Even I had not understood how powerful I was until then, for as my being imploded, as I felt pain beyond that experienced by any being before me, I was given a glimpse of the Multiverse in its totality. For an instant I saw every universe, every dimension, because I was part of them all, and the memory of that moment was absorbed by every atom of my being. I know the Multiverse: I know where it is weakest and where it is strongest. I know the holes between universes. I can stay ahead of the Shadows for eternity, for there will always be new places to hide.”
“And the Great Malevolence?” said Nurd. “There will be no forgiveness for releasing the Shadows into the Mulitverse. You will have deprived it of its prize, of claiming the conquest of the Multiverse for itself, and the Great Malevolence will hunt you until the last star disappears from the sky.”
“I can stay ahead of our master, too,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “I have knowledge beyond that of the Great Malevolence. The old demon has lived too long in Hell. It has grown weary, and slow. It knows only its own rage, but I have knowledge of every nook and cranny of the Multiverse. Perhaps, in time, other demons will come to me, and leave the Great Malevolence to its plotting and planning, its endless hurt. There are ways to defeat the Shadows. There are universes of pure light. Their greed will eventually lead them to such places, and there I will be waiting. The wait may be long, but I have time.”
She turned once more to Samuel.
“And you will be with me, Samuel: you will keep me company in my exile, and you will live with the knowledge of the hurt that you brought upon your family, your friends, and worlds beyond number because of your meddling.”
“Then take me,” said Samuel. “I’ll go with you willingly. You can do what you want with me, but spare the others. Spare all of these worlds.”
“No,” said Mrs. Abernathy.
“You can take me, too,” said Nurd. “I’ll suffer beside him.”
“You’ll suffer anyway,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “You should have listened to Mould: you’re not offering me anything that I don’t already have in my grasp.”
“But why make them all suffer because of me?” said Samuel.
“Because I want to,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “Because it gives me pleasure.”
Samuel tried to recall what Crudford had said about playing on Mrs. Abernathy’s vanity.
“But wouldn’t it display your power more forcefully if you were to hold back the Shadows, and allow so many to go on living?” said Samuel. “Isn’t there more greatness in sparing lives than taking them?”
Mrs. Abernathy swatted away the possibility as though it were a fly, and a very small fly at that.
“No,” she said. “No, it wouldn’t.”
“Frankly,” said Jolly to Angry, “even I didn’t buy that one.”
