“Um, what?”
“The veil,” he said. “Between worlds.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “That veil. Silly me. And this is a veil that Hermes himself created.”
“Created and sealed,” he said.
“And I happen to be a descendent of Hermes,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And where is he now?” I asked. “Seems like we could use him again.”
“Hermes is gone,” said Max, and I suspected we had hit upon a sore spot for him. He misses him, I thought. Maximus held my gaze for a moment, then looked away.
“Gone where?” I asked.
“I don’t really know, Sam. There are other worlds out there. Other people who need help. You have experienced these other worlds with the creature known as Talos, who lives in such alternate worlds.”
“You’re making my head spin,” I said.
“Sorry, Sam. But such highly evolved masters as Hermes Trismegistus aren’t long for our world. They’re needed elsewhere.”
“To fight other dark masters.”
“Indeed, Sam. But he would never use words such as ‘fight.’ He saw it as maintaining balance.”
“So, he would go to worlds that were out of balance?”
“Something like that.”
“And our world is balanced now?”
“It had been, Sam. For the past five hundred years.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Now,” said Archibald Maximus, “I don’t know. But Hermes did not leave us without hope.”
“Oh?”
“He left behind his bloodline. A very powerful bloodline. I think you see where I’m going with this.”
“I do,” I said. “And I think you might see me curl up in the fetal position any moment now.”
He laughed lightly. “You are more powerful than you know, Sam. And you are not alone. Not ever.”
I was just about to tell him a fat lot of good that did me, when my son screamed bloody murder.
Chapter Twenty
What I saw shouldn’t have surprised me.
A thick book lay open on the floor, black smoke billowing up from its yellowed pages. My son was shrinking away in fear...and screaming for his mom.
I dashed through the reading room, nearly flying, and swept my son up into my arms and watched in amazement as the swirling, twisting smoke morphed into a monstrous, undulating, amorphous snake. Now it wove throughout the room, just above our heads. It moved and slithered and my son whimpered in my arms, burying his face into my shoulders.
I didn’t blame him. I found myself ducking from the flying, circling serpent, a serpent that seemed to only grow bigger and bigger, expanding exponentially. It also took on mass, shifting from something smoky and ill-defined, to sprouting actual scales and fangs, and two black eyes...and a flicking tongue.
Now I heard it, too. A harsh whisper, a sound that seemed to fill the room, or perhaps just my head.
“Yesss, yesss, yesss...”
Bigger it grew, until, I suspected, it was going to bust out of this very room. I found myself ducking with each passing, with each flicking of its forked tongue. My hair billowed in its slipstream.
Amazingly, Max stepped through it. As he did so, its slithering, coiling body exploded, then reformed again in the air above us. The young alchemist raised his hands and whispered words I could not understand—hell, words that I did not want to understand.
The flying serpent circled faster and faster. Its tongue flicked. It undulated and grew. Its black eyes were watching me, watching everything. Now its huge jaws opened wide and it struck at the alchemist’s head. I was ready to spring into action, but he didn’t need me. Indeed, he waved off the attack with a swipe of his hand, and the snake’s head momentarily exploded into smoke, and then reformed itself. Bigger than ever.
“Yesss, yesss, yesss...”
Now, Max was no longer mumbling. Indeed, he spoke loudly and rapidly and with commanding authority. I still couldn’t make out the words. I still didn’t want to make out the words.
But something was happening. The snake was slowing down. It was also shrinking. The wind in the room was decreasing, too.
“Nooo...” it hissed. “Nooo...”
A moment later, I watched the rapidly-diminishing creature return to smoke vapor...and reverse back into the book from whence it came. Its anguished cries disappeared with it.
When it was gone, the ancient book slammed shut on its own.
Chapter Twenty-one
It was much later.
Too late for a mom to be talking to her son about demons, black magic and cursed grimoires. But here I was, doing exactly that. Not to mention, my son wouldn’t let me leave his side, which was why I was now lying in bed next to him, running my fingers through his hair. Periodically, he would convulse and shake so violently that his teeth would rattle.
Each time he did so, I hated myself more and more.
We’d been lying like this for the past two hours. I kept waiting for Anthony to drift to sleep, but he hadn’t yet. Every so often, he let out a pitiful, cat-like mew that broke my heart into a thousand pieces. My son had been reduced to a frightened, shivering newborn kitten, and it had been all my fault. Not to mention, he kept apologizing, over and over, which he did again now.
“I’m so sorry, Mommy,” he said into his pillow, and the words came out hoarse and barely discernible.
“It’s not your fault, baby.”
“But I let it out, Mommy. It was all my fault.”
Again, I told him it wasn’t and patted him and quietly wiped tears from my cheeks with my free hand. It was all I could do to not cry in front of my son. I knew that it was important to be strong for him now. He needed to know that his mother could protect him...from anything.
“Mommy,” he asked after a few minutes, “what was that thing?”
I knew exactly what it was. The Librarian had filled me in, and now I considered just how much to tell my boy. I decided not too much.
“It was something that can’t hurt you, baby. Not now. Not ever.”
“It asked me for help.”
He had told me this a dozen times before, but I let him get it out again, if he needed to.
“I didn’t know what it was. I know you told me not to touch anything, and not to listen to anything, but I...”
“I know, baby.”
“I guess I wasn’t expecting something to ask me for help...and it was coming from a book.”
“I know—”
“A book, Mom. Do you know how crazy that is?”