Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [28]
We pull onto the highway.
I fumble with the shoulder strap to put the Arm in my pocket. “So how do I activate it?”
“Activation is easy and can be learned in a jiffy. Once you go into Tch’muchgar’s world, all you have to do is touch each one of those four symbols around the edge in turn and say, ‘Light, I invoke you.’ Do you have that?”
“‘Light, I invoke you’?”
“Yes. You’ve got it. You say that four times, touching one rune symbol each time. Then you can just drop the Arm. Is that clear?”
“But how do I know how to get into Tch’muchgar’s world?”
“Ah!” says Chet, holding up a finger. “Ah! Here I have been particularly resourceful. I have approached the vampires, shown them that I am a being of great power, and convinced them that I am a demon in the service of one of Tch’muchgar’s old friends, sent to help them.”
“So you’ll be with me?”
“Christopher, I’ll be with you all the way,” he reassures me warmly. “You don’t have a thing to worry about. I’ll introduce you to some of the vampires. They know me as Chet, too. We’ll talk. Then we’ll ask them to take us to the portal into Tch’muchgar’s world. Then I’ll stand by while you go into that world and activate the Arm. I’ll be right there for you the whole time.”
“But you aren’t going in with me?”
“No. Tch’muchgar would recognize me immediately. I’ll be waiting just outside. I’ll use that sign on your arm to track you. After about two minutes, I’ll pull you back out into this world.”
We are spinning along the highway, passing the glowering taillights of trucks.
I urge nervously, “You’ll be protecting me in there? I mean, all the time?”
Chet looks over at me, obviously concerned. “Hey, hey, of course, Christopher.” He puts his hand on my wrist and gives it a firm squeeze. “I don’t want you to worry about anything. You’ll be perfect for this. I’ve told you. I’ll protect you.”
There is a certain feeling of adventure in the air. Chet tells me that I will not encounter much resistance, because he has thought it all out so cleverly. Being a vampire, I will just walk in through the assembly of vampires.
And now we are driving on the moonlit road toward the meeting place of vampires, and I am stunned that here I am and that a celestial being is at the wheel, glancing in the side mirrors to see what objects might be closer than they appear.
We are driving, and the great cliffs that were blasted out of quiet hills to make a way in the wilderness loom around us, striped with the smooth tracks of dynamite core. We drive, and I am sorry that my friends are asleep in the back and can’t help, but at the same time, I am proud to be saving the world alone, with a sigil on my arm to ward off evil and a magic disk in my palm — and I look out the window and drink in the pines perched on a cliff edge, and the swoop of the hills, and the moon sailing over like the wise eye of the carp.
And we are turning off the highway and onto rambling back roads. And Chet sounds drunk with excitement, but quietly, as he says, “You should brace yourself for what you see. The first time I went, the vampires had bodies under tarpaulins. I fear they enjoy grotesqueries in that general vein.”
And he says to me, to buck me up, “Hey. I just made a pun.”
And I say, “Yeah. That was a great pun you made there, Chet.”
And he says, “Christopher, I’m beholden to you for mentioning it.”
And we’re driving on dark roads, past unknowing neighborhoods, and we’re pulling up in front of a rundown church, where cars line the road beneath the pines — dark cars with license plates from many states — and now Chet is putting the black Cadillac into neutral, and park, and turning it off.
And I say to him, “Well, where to now?”
And he grins wolfishly and answers, “To hell and back.”
We get out of the black Cadillac. The trees cluster thickly about us by the side of the road. The pavement is crumbling, and grass pokes through it.
Chet locks the doors, even though