“It’s not the Gates Tesla was afraid of,” the figure said. “He was afraid of them.” He pointed out at the storm, which billowed across all the skies now, blanketing us in iron-gray violence and bright white lightning. Rain began, spattering patterns across the glass, and every time the lightning flashed, I caught a glimpse of things with blind eyes and long tentacles, writhing and racing and fighting among the clouds, growing closer and closer with every heartbeat, every boom of thunder. I drew back, even though, exposed inside a glass dome, there was nowhere to hide.
“What are they?” I whispered, feeling my shoulder begin to throb with a vengeance the closer the great creatures came. “Who are you?”
“I’m nothing,” the figure said. “I’m everything. Depends on how you look at dreams.” He looked back at me, silhouetted in the lightning. His face was handsome, not young and not old, taut skin over sharp bones, a hawkish nose and those blind eyes that nevertheless stabbed me with a visceral feeling of vulnerability when he turned them on me.
“I think dreams can be real,” I said softly. “In part.”
“Then if I’m real, and they’re real, at least in part, I’m the one who looks after them,” he said. “The king, the keeper, the weaver and the destroyer. There are a lot of names that spin out all across the skies. Some say I’m a trickster and some that I’m a demon. Depends on who you ask.”
“What should I call you?” I said, unable to stare at the skies outside any longer without giving in to the urge to scream. “You know my name. I need yours.” Names had a lot of power, at least with the sort of people I dealt with. It would make me feel a tiny bit more in control if I could name the dream figure, give the darkness substance.
“I don’t have one. I’m just a shadow,” he said. “A shape on your wall, when a little light comes under your door at night. You can call me whatever you like.”
“You remind me of the crows,” I said. “They followed me from place to place, back home. My friend Dean says they’re clever watchers. They see everything. Like you.”
“They’re psychopomps,” said the figure, the same thing Dean had said to me when I’d been frightened of the crows following me in Arkham. “Not agents of mine.” When I cocked my head in confusion, he elaborated. “Psychopomps are the heralds of the dead. They go to and from the Deadlands with souls that have escaped the notice of both Death and the living.” He tilted his face up and frowned in concern as raindrops worked their way through the cracked glass at the apex of the dome. I watched as well, but the glass appeared to hold, so I looked away rather than watch the writhing black shadows beyond.
“I’ll take that name you want to give me,” the figure said. “It’s as good as any.”
“Crow,” I agreed. “You’re bad tempered and squawk like one, anyway.”
Above us, again the great figures clashed and retreated. This storm wasn’t moving, despite the rapid pace at which everything moved here, the endless sunsets, sunrises, storms and clear skies of all the worlds that spun around this place. The thunderheads, and the shadows, were staying still, right overhead. It wasn’t normal, and I looked at the dream figure for confirmation. Crow rubbed his left hand over his right, and I noticed for the first time, in the stark relief of the lightning, that a network of white scars, whiter than the dead-colored skin underneath, webbed his entire body, his face and his eyelids, up to his hairline and down to his fingernails.
“What are they?” I repeated, and pointed upward. I had an idea, but it seemed so fantastical. I’d never believed in the stories of great alien beings who drifted endlessly through space. Worshipped by some, they were forecasted to return someday and restore the wisdom of the cosmos.
I was part Fae, and even I could recognize a fairy tale when I heard one.
“You know what they are,” Crow said, and my heart dropped. He continued, “They travel through space and time, from star to star. They create, they send magic and madness and the spark of invention into the primitive beings they encounter.” He sighed. “But sometimes, they also devour. They can be the beginning of a golden age or the end of everything.” He touched one of the great spiked gears protruding from the floor. The nightmare clock, in the flesh. “The power of my gears keeps them close to me, because I’m protected. I keep them occupied and prevent them from visiting one world too often. There’s always the possibility that it will be a visit of destruction. But you see their children everywhere, in what you call the Iron Land. You have ghouls and things like the Erlkin, yes, but some of those abominations that feed on your flesh don’t come from Thorn and they don’t come from the Erlkin. They creep and crawl and pretend all they’re interested in is food, and little by little they’re paving the way for a return visit from those creatures out there beyond the glass. They journeyed to your world once before, left behind the sort of magic in the human blood that leads to things like the Gates, but this time, this return, I couldn’t guess their motives.”
Crow turned and looked at me full on, and even though his eyes lacked pupils his stare was penetrating. “It takes millions of years for a dead star to send its last light across the cosmos. It’ll take them millions of years to devour the universe, but I believe they’ll do it eventually, Aoife. They came from another place, another wheel and spoke of a world much like ours, where they’ve done the same.” He rubbed his scars harder, the white lines standing out like brands and gradually fading to pink under his nails, as if he were having a reaction to the very idea of the creatures outside.
“Those …” My mouth dropped open, and the confirmation of my fears made me sick and dizzy all over again. “Those are the Great Old Ones. They’re real.”
“Perhaps the realest things in the universe,” said Crow. “And the most unreal as well. They bring a vortex of madness and creation with them, and to power it, they expend enormous energy. So they are always hungry.”
He came to me and offered his hand. I took it with trepidation and then gasped when he yanked me against him. His chest was hard, unyielding as granite. He was warm, though. I was surprised—I expected that a being such as him would be not warm, but cold as outer space. Crow didn’t look as if he should have any blood in him at all, but I stopped struggling when I felt the warmth of his skin. It calmed me, and I had the strangest urge to cling to him.
“I know why you’re here,” he said, lips nearly against my ear. It didn’t feel like a violation, though—it felt as if he was trying to keep me safe. “The same reason Nikola came.” Crow grabbed the back of my neck with his other hand and drew us together so that we shared breath. “You both came here because you both lost something,” he whispered. “And you’re going to use the clock to turn it back and make it right. Nikola tried to turn it back to the time when he was young, before he ever conceived of bending reality to his whim. Before the Gates were even a spark. To avoid the Storm, and all the destruction it caused. I think you’re here for very similar reasons.”
“I have to use it,” I whispered back. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need it, Crow.” I felt tears slip down my cheeks, warm and wet and alive. “I need it,” I repeated, unable to articulate all the reasons why over my sobbing.
“The clock is what keeps them at bay,” said Crow, turning me to face the writhing shapes outside the glass. “The gears hold power that even they covet, and they’re wise creatures. They fear it a little too. Only the clock. Nothing else.” He let go of me. “That’s how it is.”
“But you don’t know,” I told him. “They could be coming not to devour. You said it yourself.” The Great Old Ones could create as easily as destroy, according to Crow. Who was he to decide that they were only on a mission to end the Iron world?