“Feckin’ mad bastards,” Kayla says. “Always the same crap with the baying at the moon and the lust for human flesh.”
I have other concerns. Like putting a bullet in the interdimensional avatar of fear and chaos on the stage whose fault this all is—Nyarlathotep.
Except the stage is empty.
“Target’s moving,” I say. “Out back. Now.”
A mass of drooling, enraged Oxonians stands between me and the stage. As one, they bay their madness.
“Lobby?” Kayla suggests.
I move. A raving student comes at me. I use both fists to club him to the floor.
The lobby is stark in its emptiness. And we’re moving now. The chase is properly on. You’re mine, you interdimensional bastard.
From nowhere, a yellow clay jar arcs through the air. I duck. It explodes against the wall behind me. Gas rushes out, a red mist. I duck, but an arm of vapor circles my head. I breathe—
A wall of flesh rises, engulfing. Jackals chase me across a desert. Water closes over my head, tentacles wrapped about my ankles, pulling, pulling—
—and crash to the lobby floor. I gasp, claw at my eyes.
Three figures in ragged yellow robes are in the doorway. They hold curved knives high. Their robes billow about them—whether it’s the air-conditioning, or just the universe deciding to add cinematic flair, I’m not sure.
To be honest, I just reach for my gun.
My gun. Beaten out of my hand. By the the charming lady with a Laura Ashley dress and a mad-on for the taste of my spleen.
I do have my own sword. A recent acquisition, and one I’m rather proud of. It’s a flaming sword, in fact. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it rocks so hard it makes Metallica look like a group of small girls. But it’s also not the most fashionable accessory for a night out at the theater, and I left it back at the office. So no go on that front either.
The robed men charge. It’s not much ground to cover. The first attacker is yards away. He stinks of decay. I catch a flash of teeth. Jaundiced skin. Black pits of eyes.
“Kayla!” My voice slides up to an octave I try to avoid hitting in public.
Her blade flies out. Yellow robes are stained with red. The leading attacker flies backwards in more parts than he entered the theater. Bits of him collide with his fellows.
I pull myself up, still blinking away the after-effects of the attacker’s gas. “We need to get out of here.”
“The Children of Nyarlathotep will stop you!” One of the yellow-robed men is pulling free of the tangled pile of his fellows. “We will come for you in your dreams. We will unseam your sanity.”
With a speed that laughs at the conventional rules of physics, Kayla crosses the room and delivers her toecap to his forehead. The man’s head slams to the ground, tongue lolling.
“Let’s go.” Kayla pushes through the door and out onto the street. I follow after her. Time to get finally get the bas—
I stop. I stare. The streets. The city.
Where has Oxford gone?
The road, once paved and straight, is a twisting roller coaster of asphalt and cobbles. Limestone storefronts have curled into blackened husks, glass bulging like blisters. Dreaming spires have stretched to the sky, points drawn out like knife blades. The citizenry scream, and caper, and cower.
The madness is spreading. It’s not just in the citizens, it’s in the city’s walls, its streets, its soul.
And seriously, even an interdimensional avatar of madness is a Tim Burton fan?
“You know,” I say to Kayla, “I cannot wait to find this bastard and shoot him.”
The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #3 :: Countdown
8:38pm. Oxford, England.
“Derrière. To Christ Church College. Five minutes or less. Otherwise you’re responsible for the end of the world.” Tabitha, my handler and MI37’s resident cheerleader, sets the ticking clock just in case my day wasn’t going badly enough.
It had been a simple plan. Go to the theater. Make sure the performer really is an interdimensional avatar of fear and chaos. Shoot him.
All in a day’s work for Agent Arthur Wallace.
Except now I’m chasing the bastard through Oxford transformed. Nyarlathotep—the aforementioned avatar—has vomited up the citizenry’s collective fears and given the place a good basting. Architecture spirals out of control. Streets twist back in recursive loops. Buildings teeter and leer.
Oh, and everybody’s gone mad. The insane cherry on the lunacy cake.
Ten minutes ago
Kayla—MI37’s superhuman swordswoman and high-functioning psychotic—passes me a plastic earbud. “Tabitha,” she says. I plug it in. Because who doesn’t want a running job evaluation from a committed misanthrope?
“Screwed that up. Big time.”
I close my eyes. “Where’s Nyarlathotep?”
“Christ Church. Potential reality rip.”
I move. Kayla follows.
Seven minutes ago
Get to Christ Church—simple enough. Run in a straight line from the playhouse.
Except every exit from this bloody traffic circle leads back to where it starts.
“What the hell?”
“Reality leakage,” Tabitha answers through the earbud. “Leaking into ours. Nyarlathotep’s home dimension is. Distorting space. When you tear through realities and summon avatars of fear and chaos, sensible to close the door behind you. Not into common sense. People who summoning avatars of fear and chaos.”
Which is all lovely to know, but, “How the hell do I get down this street?”
“Magic,” Tabitha says.
Unfortunately, MI37’s magician recently became a little less than corporeal so that could be a problem. But Tabitha says, “Our end. Already working on it.”
There is muttering. I hear someone say, “Entropic Negotiator,” and then, “No, the Phillip’s version.”
Tabitha comes back on the line. “Phone. Dial office. Then hold it up to the street.”
I comply. Tinny nonsense syllables emerge. And then the world ripples like water, and I get to go down the street I actually want to go down for once.
When did running in a straight line get this hard?
Four minutes ago
If it’s not one thing, it’s bloody cultists.
The yellow-robed man comes out of nowhere. I spin just in time to catch his fist on my chin. I fall down—not very Kurt Russell of me but typical of my brand of heroism. Fortunately Kayla is close to being superwoman. Unfortunately, somewhere around eighteen cultists have surrounded her, which means I have to do something… well, not exactly heroic…
I kick my attacker in the crotch.
That buys me enough time to get up off the floor, and be taken down by a flying tackle from a second cultist.
We roll back and forth while, in my ear, Tabitha intones, “Tick tock. Tick tock.”
It’s more sheer frustration than anything else that lends me the strength to slam my opponent’s face into the brick. Finally he stops worrying about me and just lies there, insensible.
Just enough time to put the boot in on cultist number one, watch Kayla dispatch of her final cultist with a casual backhand, and listen to Tabitha sing a line from The Final Countdown.
Now
Seriously. This is starting to get ridiculous.
The crowd is six rows deep, blocking the College gateway. Students mostly. And not enough sane thoughts among them to rub together and start a fire.
“Five minutes,” Tabitha says.
I look around desperately. Time is not on our side.
And then I smile. Because time might be the answer after all.
“Any chance you can knock that down?” I ask Kayla. I point to the grand clock tower sitting above Christ Church College’s grand entrance. It won’t slow time but it’ll disperse a crowd.
“Pope shit in the woods?” Kayla asks me.