Awakening XIV

I jerk at a sudden pain in my right shoulder. My right stump. A water bottle is pressed against my lips, and I drink eagerly. My eyes adjust to the darkness; Rebecca's kneeling over me, blocking out the light, holding the water bottle for me. My shoulder jerks as I try to hold it for her; I decide against trying with my left arm, weak as I feel. There's a blood-flecked gun at Rebecca's hip. Presumably she took it from the Freemasons. She pulls me to my feet, saying "You lost a lot of blood, but the tourniquet should hold until we get to the hospital. They should be able to re-attach your arm, if we get there within the next twenty minutes." I take her at her word; she's in pre-med: she knows these things.

Wobbly-kneed, I walk out of the throne room, Roshan and Rebecca supporting me at first. I ask as we walk, "Where are the prisoners? And how did you get here?"

Roshan replies, "We saw the prisoners safely to the exit, before the screaming started and we decided to come back for you. We were nearly to the throne room when the monster emerged and, instead of turning at the corner, ripped apart the wall and went straight onwards. It didn't even notice us. We just walked right in." He's frowning. He doesn't look too happy with the attention Rebecca's paying to me; but he's an intelligent guy. I'm an intelligent guy. He's dealing with it.

We walk through the hole the daimone tore in the wall (through two feet of cinderblocks) and, a hundred feet past it, out into the open air. It's night-time. I take a deep breath of fresh (well, city) air for the first time in days. My ribs decide they don't like that, and I start coughing. When I stop, the asphalt in front of me is speckled with red.

Rebecca and Roshan look a little worried. I can hear screams in the distance; the daimone is loose and, from the sounds of it, slaughtering innocents just as wantonly as it did its captors. Horrific, but not really surprising. We walk out to the street, from the alley that the daimone decided to make its exit on, and find my car. My car! I'd forgotten that I'd parked it here; Roshan and Rebecca, still not fully recovered from the amnesia induced by the heart, don't even recognize it. I don't know what happened to the keys (they aren't in the clothes either of us are wearing, or we'd have found them by now), but the giant's key opens the car lock as effectively as it did every other lock I've encountered. (A most useful device, to be certain.) Roshan, saying "Oops,", reaches in and takes the keys out of the ignition.

Roshan drives; I'm in no shape to. The drive to the hospital, which I direct (having picked Rebecca up there twice on dates), takes us closer to the daimone. Sirens rise as we approach, mixing to form a sort of cacophonous symphony of wails.

As we get closer, some of them fall silent. And the human screams continue.

Ten minutes later, with just five minutes to reach the hospital before, by Rebecca's estimate, my arm will have deteriorated too severely to reattach, we see the daimone. It's truly monstrous now; six arms, ten feet tall, scaly skin and that same inhuman speed and strength. As we pass, the daimone tears a policeman in half as his partner desperately fires at the daimone, which dodges with agility belying its size, even as it devours a small boy with two of its right arms.

At that, I know what I have to do. There's no more time; no time for me to go to the hospital and heal while the daimone wreaks this gruesome carnage. I grab Roshan's arm and gasp, "Stop." He's already stopping; he's not quite me, anymore, but he's close enough to count sometimes. I tell them as I climb out of the backseat, "I'll stop it. I'm the only one who can. I'm the only one who knows the rituals that bound it. And I'm the one who... released it." They look at me as though I'm crazy; but Rebecca nods and says, "We'll help."

I walk towards the daimone. It turns toward me suddenly, and, in exactly the same voice it used while it tried to seduce me, says, "Why, my savior! You've come back for me!" Tossing its victims aside like rag dolls, it charges towards me, closing half of the eighty yards separating us in seconds.

I have time enough.