He exploded backward, twisting and writhing around the blade that now jutted from his ribs. Hot-pink etheric energy boiled from the gash, leaking around the magick knife. He screamed, howling in pain and anger. His red right hand scrabbled at the knife handle, trying to pull it free.
That’s when the coat fell on him.
It dropped from above us, slapping itself around the Man in Black. For one horrible second, I thought it would try to rescue him, to save its master, betraying me. Then the scrap around my leg throbbed and the song in my head roared to a crescendo and I felt, I knew, the coat was on my side.
It attacked with all the hatred and anger built over centuries of abuse at the hands of Nyarlathotep, fighting with all its strength. The chaos god ripped at it, his body transforming into anything it could, one form flowing to another, flowing to yet another, all deadly with fangs and claws and stingers. Nightmare versions of tiger, wolf, spider, scorpion, and shapes so alien my eyes couldn’t translate them.
The coat shrieked in my head as it was torn to pieces.
My head swam as the coat poured information through our connection, gifting me with knowledge as it sacrificed itself.
The Man in Black had been weakened.
He’d used a lot of power fighting the Sushi Priest and then Cthulhu. He depended on the coat to act as a battery, draining its magick to fuel his own, and now the coat in its rebellion had cut that off.
There was a chance.
A tiny, tiny chance.
I shoved myself, staggering, to my feet.
The Man in Black didn’t see me, too busy trying to shapeshift into something that could defeat the coat.
He didn’t see my hand grab the handle of the knife that still stuck from the side of his body.
But he felt it when I yanked it out and rammed it into his chest, twisting the blade as I did. The point slipped in, the blade sinking to the hilt, stopping as it hit something hard that jarred it to a stop. I felt the knife slice through one of his hearts, the main part of him, felt it as the alien, evil heart continued to convulse around the blade in my hand. Magick burst out over me in a sickly-sweet rush of power.
His scream scoured my brain, flash-burning my nerve endings, before he burst into a million tiny flying stinging shapes and disappeared.
One of the gemstones tumbled to the ground, its tether severed by the impossibly sharp iron blade.
I stumbled until I reached Daniel and fell, landing across his cold, still body. I lay there weeping atop him, the tattered fragments of an alien song in my mind as the world fell into darkness.
63
SMALL NOISES FILLED the silence of the room. The whirr and hiss of a breathing machine, the drip-drop of an IV bag, the low insect buzz of fluorescent lights, and the quiet, turned-down-to-one beep of the heart monitor. Little noises adding up to nothing. Adding up to everything.
Two knocks.
The door opened.
A nurse came in.
He wasn’t young but had a young face, eyes bright over rounded cheekbones. His name tag read LIONEL. He shuffled in, moving next to the bed, checking the equipment.
“How is he today?”
I didn’t move. “The same as yesterday.”
He looked over at me.
“How are you today?”
Lionel cared, he really did.
“The same as yesterday.” The coat rustled around me, whispering between my body and the chair. The nurse pointed at Daniel. “He looks the same. You? Not so much.”
Lionel might care, but he’s a bit of an asshole.
Daniel lay serenely on the bed, oblivious to the tubes and wires running from him, brow uncreased, muscles relaxed, in the coma he’d been in since I awoke on top of him, both of us covered in the shredded remains of the coat: him with just enough life to live, me with just enough magick to wish all three of us to this hospital.
Lionel moved around the bed, coming toward me. He stopped short when my eyes turned up at him. I didn’t know what he saw there, but he didn’t want to come too close.
Lionel might’ve been a bit of an asshole, but he was not stupid.
He held his hands up, palms out, class ring twinkling in the low light. Started to speak, stopped.
“It’s hard to talk to you when I don’t know your name.”
“It hasn’t stopped you yet.” No names was safer. Let Daniel be a John Doe, and I’d be Jane. Names had too much power in the world I now knew existed. So far the case worker for the hospital bought my lack of memory about my identity and his. It had taken a little push of magick to fuzz her mind, but for now, Daniel received treatment and I pretty much got left alone to be by his bed.
It wouldn’t last.
But while it did, Lionel could just be all right without a name to call me.
“That’s fair.” He leaned against the end of Daniel’s bed. “You should get out. Go outside and breathe non-recycled air. You don’t have to go far, but you should go somewhere.”
I didn’t say anything. We’d done this dance before.
I didn’t care about any of that. I only wanted Daniel to be healed. Even if he hated me for dragging him into the mess with the Man in Black, even if he didn’t remember me, I wanted him to be the Daniel he was before.
I stood. The coat flared around me, not healed, but healed enough.
Just like me.
Lionel jumped.
“You’re right. I have to go out.” My hands soothed the coat, its voice in my head cooing. I ran my finger under the collar around my neck, shifting it to a more comfortable place. Magick thrummed inside me, vibrating my bones as it came to life. It had grown, recharging in the last several days. “I might be gone for a while.”
“If he wakes up, I’ll tell him you’ll be right back.”
He wouldn’t wake up.
Not without my help.
There was one thing I could do for Daniel. One thing that could restore him.
I stepped to the bedside.
His life force had been locked in a ring, a talisman last seen on the skinless finger of a red right hand.
I leaned down, my lips close to Daniel’s face.
I had the magick inside me to find things.
I kissed him gently on the forehead, his skin cool under the warmth of my lips.
I was going to find that ring.
I straightened, turned, and walked out of the room without a backward glance.
And I was going to kill the Man in Black.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LEVI BLACK WRITES from the outskirts of Atlanta. Born and raised in the South, he lives there now with his wife, who is also a writer. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
RED RIGHT HAND
Copyright © 2016 by James R. Tuck
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Cliff Nielsen
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-8248-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-8760-2 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466887602
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First Edition: July 2016