It was, precisely, what the birds had waited for. They swarmed for his face. Nails of pain spiked his cheeks and forehead. One bird swooped in from the side, and he turned his head just in time, as the bird’s beak laid his skin open from the corner of his right eye to his mouth.
The crow battened on his scalp was still coring the flesh of his neck, its beak driving and digging. He reached back, his fist closing over slick feathers. The crow slashed at his fingers, flaying flesh from bone. Roaring with pain, he yanked the flailing creature from his blood-soaked scalp, and then the bird was bulleting for his face, its black beak flashing right for his eye.
Gasping, he got a hand up just in time. The bird’s beak drove into the meat at the base of his thumb, a shock wave he felt all the way to his elbow. With a cry, he tumbled back as the relentless birds closed over him, ripping and pecking—
Then, as if in response to a silent signal, the birds simply stopped—a fast, abrupt hitch, like the flick of a switch—and then lifted off in a vertiginous swirl, spiraling higher and higher to mass at the ceiling.
For a second, Eric could only lie there, stunned. His body was saturated and slick. Blood ran into his eyes, coated his mouth with a taste of warm aluminum. To his right, Emma was drenched with gore. She lay on her stomach, her face hidden by the dark fan of her hair, and he thought, God, no, please. Then he saw her move, and relief surged through his body.
“YOU BITCH!” It was Casey, in the circle, bellowing in a voice that was not Rima’s or Big Earl’s or his own, but the guttural, clotted gargle that was the whisper-man’s true voice. “STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
Oh, Casey. Eric felt everything inside go dead with despair. His brother’s back bowed as if drawn by an unseen archer. Blood stained Casey’s mouth and glistened on his palms. His chest was a bib of gore. His shirt was slashed on the left; a large vermillion splash slicked his side as a crimson jet spurted from a wound right below his ribs.
“NO, STOP!” Casey shouted. “LET ME GO!”
Rima? Eric thought with stupid amazement. She was doing this? She’d called off the birds? My God, is she still inside him, too? There was no way of knowing. Rima’s body lay in a still, sodden heap where she had crumpled after the whisper-man released her. He couldn’t tell if she was still alive. But someone was fighting back. Something had saved him and Emma.
“NO, DON’T! LET ME GO!” Casey roared. “I’M NOT FINISHED!”
“Look at him.” Blood coursed from slashes on Emma’s arms and neck. A long rip, the mirror image of his, snaked down her cheek. “Eric … there’s somebody else.”
There was. Casey’s stormy eyes—eyes that could hold and be any color—were churning and changing, growing black as oil.
But now he could see that there was also another: a shadow, much larger, man-shaped, smoky and indistinct, bleeding into being, steaming from Casey himself, as if it had been hiding inside and waiting for just this moment.
The whisper-man had said it: I need someone who can carry a whisper, an energy as strong as mine, without coming apart at the seams.
There was Casey, the brother for whom Eric would give his life—and someone else, already inside his brother, fighting for him, with them. But could Casey and this other win?
We can’t take that chance. Eric got his feet under him, then grabbed Emma’s bloody hand in his. Blood binds, and I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time.
“Emma,” he said, hoarsely, “this whole room is a mirror. It’s a mirror. It can’t get completely free of the Peculiar’s energy sink for long, but you can. With the cynosure, you can go to different Nows, but you have to cross into the Dark Passages to do it, and that’s where this thing—”
“Yes.” Her eyes met his, and he read that she understood, exactly, what they had to do. “Just hang on to him long enough,” she said.
To the death, Emma. I will never let go. There was so much more to tell her, a lifetime of stories they might have written, but there was no more time. I will hold you both to my heart, across times, to the death.
Together, they charged into the circle at a dead run.
THE WHISPER-MAN
There Is Another
“YOU BITCH!” THE whisper-man raged. Somehow the girl had called off the birds, not that it should have mattered. Once taken in—once invited—the boy should have been helpless, without the strength to resist. Not like Good Old Frank, who knew a trick or two, or his brat, who was more skilled even than her father.
But something was wrong.
THERE IS ANOTHER. This couldn’t be. Casey was the perfect creation: an outline waiting for color, a sponge, a tabula rasa with even less of a history; and that which Casey possessed—abuse and cruelty, rage and betrayal—was the very kind of horror it liked best. True, the boy had been infected by his brother, who had, in his turn, been tainted by Emma. Casey had morals and scruples. He could love. Yet Casey was fresh and strong. As soon as it finished taking the boy, it would bind enough of Emma to gain the one thing it lacked: access to the cynosure, a skill Lizzie had somehow denied it and Emma hadn’t possessed until it had shown her what to do. Then it would break free, away from this place. Together, it and Casey would play across the Nows.
Slipping inside the boy had been so effortless, little more than a sigh. Just like Lizzie, the boy opened himself, a willing sacrifice for his brother and the Rima-bitch, who should be dead, but she had tricked it, tricked it. Still, time should’ve been on its side.
Suddenly, it felt the red scald of an acid-burn, so stinging and harsh, it let out a howl. What was that? Something in the boy, the boy; the boy was carrying something!
WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU? LEAVE! THE BOY IS MI—
Something axed Casey’s legs, and then it was toppling, crashing to the smooth, glassy black rock. Screeching, the whisper-man kicked and spit as Eric wrapped Casey up tight. Eric was alive; he had survived the birds as had Emma, and it knew what she meant to do. It could not fight them all, not at once. No, it would not go back; it would not be nothing again.
I WON’T BE LOST AGAIN, I WILL NOT! A great gust of fear, sour and strong, swept through it. The whisper-man gasped in terror, and Casey stiffened with it. LET ME GO! YOU CAN HAVE THE BOY IF YOU—
I don’t want him. I want you. The intruder battened down with a will that coiled itself in a muscular rope, tighter than any serpent. I was written for this purpose, this moment. I am your end, and we will grapple.