Terror followed hard on its heels. I had been paralyzed, while surrounded by monsters of resilience beyond description. In mere seconds, they would fall on me. I had fallen with my face toward the gate, and though physical movement was beyond me, I could see that everyone, everyone had also pitched over onto the ground, vulnerable to the attack while the gate remained open. Vampires, thralls, and mortal warriors alike, they had all fallen.
Guilt came next. Murphy. Carlos. I had gotten them both killed.
Useless. It had all been useless.
Marcone's stopwatch lay on the ground near his limply outstretched hand. He'd fallen next to me. The second hand was sweeping rapidly downward, and the watches on the charges of C4, the nearest of them about ten feet away, did the same.
Then I understood it. This was Vittorio Malvora's attack. This hideous, paralyzing brew of everything darkest in the moral soul was what he had poured out, as the Raith administered desire, the Malvorans gave fear, and the Skavis despair. Vitto had gone beyond them all. He had taken all the worst of the human soul and forged it into a poisonous, deadly weapon.
And I hadn't been able to do a damned thing to stop him.
I lay staring at Marcone's stopwatch, and wondered which would kill us all first: the ghouls or the explosion.
Chapter Forty-One
Between 1:34 and 1:33, the backward-running hand of the stopwatch suddenly halted. Or it seemed that way. But several moments later, the hand twitched down to the next second, and the tick sounded more like a hollow thump. I just lay there staring at it, and wondering if this was how my mind was reacting to my own imminent death.
And then I thought that I'd had enough will to wonder about something, rather than just being crushed and suffocated by despair and terror. Maybe that was how I was reacting to my imminent death: with denial and escapist self-induced hallucinations.
"Not precisely, my host," came Lasciel's voice.
I blinked, which was a lot more voluntary movement than I'd had a second before. I tried to look around.
"Don't try," Lasciel said, her voice a little alarmed. "You could harm yourself."
What the hell. Had she somehow slowed down time?
"Time does not exist," she said, her tone firm. "Not the way you consider it, at any rate. I have temporarily accelerated the processes of your mind."
The stopwatch thud-thumped again: 1:32.
Accelerating my brain. That made more sense. After all, we all use only about ten percent of our brain's capacity, anyway. There was no reason it couldn't handle a lot more activity. Well, except that...
"Yes," she said. "It is dangerous, and I cannot maintain this level of activity for very long before it begins inflicting permanent damage."
I presumed that Lasciel was about to make me an offer I couldn't refuse.
Her voice became sharp, angry. "Don't be a fool, my host. If you perish, I perish. I simply seek to give you an option that might enable us to survive."
Right. And by some odd coincidence, might that option just happen to involve the coin in my basement?
"Why do you continue to be so stubborn about this, my host?" Lasciel demanded, her voice tight with frustration. "Taking up the coin would not enslave you. It would not impede your ability to choose for yourself."
Not at first, no. But it would finish up with me enslaved to the true Lasciel, and she knew it.
"Not necessarily," she said. There was a tone of pleading to her voice. "Accommodations can be reached. Compromises made."
Sure, if I'm willing to go along with her every plan, I'm sure she'd be quite agreeable.
"But you would be alive," Lasciel cried.
It didn't matter, given that the coin was buried in the stone under my lab anyway.
"Not an obstacle, my host. I can teach you how to call it to you within a few seconds."
Thud-thump : 1:31.
A thud from behind me. Footsteps. The ghouls. They were coming. I could see part of Marcone's face, twisted in agony under Vittorio Malvora's psychic assault.
"Please," Lasciel said. "Please, let me help you. I don't want to die."
I didn't want to die, either.
I closed my eyes for another second.
Thud-thump : 1:30.
It took an effort of will, and what seemed like several moments of effort, but I managed to whisper aloud, "No."
"But you will die," Lasciel said, her voice anguished.
It was going to happen sooner or later. But it didn't have to be tonight.
"Then quickly! First, you must picture the coin in your mind. I can help you - "
Not like that. She could help me.
Silence.
Thud-thump : 1:29.
"I can't," she whispered.
I thought she could.
"I can't," she replied, her voice anguished. "She would never forgive that. Never accept me back into her... just take the coin. Harry, just take the coin. P-please."
I gritted my teeth.
Thud-thump : 1:28.
Again, I said, "No."
"I can't do this for you!"
Untrue. She'd already partially shielded me from the effects of Malvora's attack. The situation was simple, for her: She could do more of what she'd already done. Or she could stand by and do nothing. It was her choice.
Lasciel appeared in front of me for the first time, on her hands and knees. She looked... odd. Too thin, her eyes too sunken. She had always looked strong, healthy, and confident. Now, her hair was a wreck, her face twisted with pain, and...
... and she was crying. She looked blotchy, and she needed a tissue. Her hands touched either side of my face.
"It could hurt you. It could inflict brain damage. Do you understand what that could mean, Harry?"
Never can tell. It might be nice to have brain damage. I already liked Jell-O. And maybe they'd have cable TV at whatever home they wound up sticking me in. Either way, it would be better than having my brains scooped out by ghouls.
Lasciel stared at me for a moment and then let out a choking little laugh. "It's your brother. Your friends. That's why."
If frying my brain got Murphy, Ramirez, Thomas, and Justine out of the mess I'd gotten them into, it would be worth it.
She stared at me for another long moment.
Thud-thump : 1:27.
Then a look of almost childish resentment came over her face, and she looked over one shoulder before turning back to me. "I..." She shook her head and said, very softly, wonderingly, "She... doesn't deserve you."
Deserved or not, the fallen angel wasn't getting me. Not ever.
Lasciel squared her shoulders and straightened. "You're right," she said. "It is my choice. Listen to me." She leaned closer, her eyes intent. "Vittorio has been given power. That is how he can do this. He is possessed."