Chapter 72

December Twenty-fifth 10:00 p.m.

Woodard didn't mind being left behind at the farmhouse In fact, he preferred it. He had little stomach for the atrocities that so delighted Arthur, especially when they were being perpetrated on his own countrymen.

Bored, he went to check again on his charge. Tracing a finger along the line of Lei's cold jaw, he imagined what it would be like to talk to her. He had always been an avid student of military history and here in front of him was a person who had lived through the sacking of Troy by the Greeks, the conquests of Cyrus the Elder, the campaigns of Alexander the Great, the destruction of Carthage, and the Crusades. Even if she had not been personally present for these events, she had possibly known the generals or soldiers who had. Unfortunately, he would probably never know: he had been expressly ordered to make certain that the stake in her chest stayed in place.

Suddenly his body lurched to the side and began to move with herky-jerky starts and stops as though under the control of a puppet master with advanced Parkinsons. He could feel an alien intelligence inside of him, all of him, not just his head, but it paid his consciousness no more notice than he would the buzzing of a fly.

Unmindful of the agony that the involuntary disobedience was causing the part of it that was still Woodard, a hand reached shakily towards the stake and pulled it free.

Woodard fell to his side, his body rigid and trembling from the pain caused by the direct disobedience of Arthur's commands, an act which should have been impossible. The being inside him then left as abruptly as it had come.

Lei sat up. Her skin color rapidly shifted from its usual rich almond hues to the pasty gray of the corpse of a drowning victim. Her flesh then ran like melting wax. Her legs fused and then split into three long tentacles, each bordered by hundreds of sharp black claws like the legs of a monstrous centipede. Her head oozed down to merge with her torso which became thick and cylindrical. Bubbles formed at seemingly random locations all around the circumference and split open to reveal black, faceted, lidless eyes. Her arms were absorbed by her body and replaced by seven smaller tentacles, which, like the eyes, sprouted randomly from the thick torso. Near their tips, each of these tentacles divided into six smaller digits, each edged by claws that, while smaller than those on its long, ropy legs, appeared to be no less sharp. It had no front or back, there was no way to divide it into sides. In the world of its birth, evolution had not gone down the path of bilateral symmetry.

Woodard gaped at the dozens of reflections of himself that he could see in the nearest eye. He was still trembling, but now it was from fear as much as pain. Two of the smaller tentacles reached out to run their pseudo-fingers caressingly down his sides. Their touch was cool and dry, almost reptilian. He didn't even have time to scream as the cruel, sharp claws tore into his flesh, and the Outsider reclaimed its own.

Dorothy burst through the door to investigate the strange noises. She squeaked in surprise as a tentacle found entrance through her eye. Streams of vitreous humor ran down her cheek like gelatinous tears as the Outsider again took what rightfully belonged to it.