Overhead the sky was a swirling maelstrom of light and
colour. Then it split asunder with a cacophonous thunder like a fog
bank parting, and a great tall ship sailed out of the very sky.
To the albino Mountie, Kit Thunder, it was a vessel unlike
any he had ever seen or heard of before, and in a chilling moment, he noted
the glimmering sheen of its hull. The ship was the colour of blood.
"You're too late, lawman!" cackled Brody.
A chill swept over him, and he turned as if a voice inside
had warned him. Slithering across the snow was the grotesque, lobster-clawed
and tentacled form of the being Brody had called Shoggantolthet, a Dark
Prince, but whom Kit knew in a somewhat different guise as Carl Mothers.
He was momentarily numb with indecision. Then he looked
up and just made out grotesquely malformed simian creatures scampering
about the vessel flying overhead. He was grateful he could not see them
clearly.
Suddenly one of the unholy things hurled one end of what
looked like a great vine downward, like casting a mooring line. The vine
spasmed, twitched, like a thing alive, then it coiled around Brenda, and
the creature above began hauling her up into the air. Brenda screamed.
Shaken from his momentary paralysis, Kit flung up his
Enfield service revolver, aimed, and squeezed off a shot.
The creature high above twitched, then tumbled from its
perch. Yet as it fell past the keel of the flying ship, it simply exploded
into shards, as though a statue shattered upon the floor.
Then Kit leaped onto Brenda and clawed at the living vine.
It curled and clenched about her, tightening twice as hard for every part
he managed to loosen.
"Kit," whispered Brenda, her eyes wide, her lips pale,
"I'm trying to be brave, but I'm really scared."
"Hold on," he said affecting confidence.
From his boot the Mountie pulled out his Bowie knife and
hacked at the vine. From somewhere overhead, he heard a shrill scream and
repressed a shudder. Viscous gell spurted from the cuts he inflicted, coating
his hands with slime. He hacked again and again...
Suddenly a great weight landed on his shoulders, knocking
him into Brenda and almost wrenching her from his grip. Brody Tate wrapped
one arm around the Mountie's neck and grabbed his head with the other,
trying to twist his neck.
"No, you don't," hissed the spiritualist.
His head being twisted back, Kit diligently kept at the
vine. Suddenly, it parted and Brenda slumped at his feet. Then he rammed
his elbow back into Brody's soft mid-section. The man grunted, and his
grip loosened. Kit twisted free, then turned and slugged him again. Kit
was still holding one end of the vine. He could feel it clutching at him,
trying to ensnare him. Clearly the thing wouldn't stop until it had claimed
someone -- either Brenda, or him, or...
"You want to see other worlds, Brody? Here's your ticket!"
He looped the vine around Brody's shoulders.
The vine did the rest.
It coiled tight. Brody's eyes went wide. "No!" he screamed.
Suddenly his feet left the ground as another creature, replacing the first,
began hauling upward. "Oh, God! Noooo!" Kicking and squirming, he
rose higher and higher, being hauled aboard the Blood Ship.
"Whu-what ha-happened--?"
Kit turned. Jesse Sears was clutching his head and looking
like he was going to throw up. Mrs. Carrington stumbled, almost falling
except for being caught by Moira Bidgood, who looked pretty unsteady herself.
Clearly, with Brody's concentraton shot, his control over his companions
had vanished, as well.
"NOOOOO!" hissed a disturbingly familiar, sibilant
voice.
Kit cut at Brenda's ropes, but spared a glance at the
creature he had known as Carl Mothers. It seemed not to be looking at him.
He looked up, and instantly understood its distress.
The Blood Ship was falling apart, like a ship caught long-side
in a bad storm.
One mast snapped. A simian creature plunged over the side
and fractured like cheap pottery on moving past the ship's mystical influence.
Then Kit remembered that the whole point of the exercise was that the spiritualists
needed to hold open the inter-dimensional portals with their mummery. Now
Brody Tate's hypnotic spell was broken, the spiritualists were no longer
chanting, and the Blood Ship was turning about, hoping to return from whence
it had come before it was crushed by the cosmic forces that had been unleashed.
He hauled Brenda to her feet. "Get them out of here,"
he hissed. "Now. Get to my dogs -- throw off all the supplies to lighten
the load so they can carry you all, and start them running."
"What about you?"
"I think I'm going to be busy with a certain Dark Prince,"
he said grimly.
"Mountie!!!" screamed the thing that had been Carl
Mothers as the other-worldly ship faded into the explosions of lights scarring
the winter sky.
Kit pulled his Enfield, vaguely aware of the sounds of
the others' footfalls as they fled.
"I told you it didn't have to come to this," hissed
the creature. "I told you that you could've lived through it. All I
needed was the girl. Why? Why demand my vengeance?" it demanded as
it undulated toward him.
"Maintien le droit," Kit said calmly, a steely
fire returning to his pink eyes. A firmness returned to his spine. After
all was said and done, he knew why he was here.
"I don't understand," growled the monster.
"I didn't think you would," he said. "It means, Maintain
the Right. It's a code I swore to live and die by when I put on this uniform."
"Then die by it!" roared the thing as it hurtled
forward.
Kit fired rapidly into the thing. Then, as it came on
like a wild bull moose, he leaped aside, his powerful leg muscles sending
him into the air, just as a claw made to snap him in two. He hit the snow,
rolled, and started running, twisting to fire off a couple more shots.
Overhead, the Northern Lights were fading, and the sky
was gradually adopting the normal dusky palour he had not seen for days.
The mystical convergence the others had mentioned was clearly coming to
an end.
As was he, he realized. The creature was gaining on him
steadily -- a creature that had torn apart three experienced hunters and
their pack of huskies. Still, he ran because there was nothing else to
do.
He emptied the last of his bullets over his shoulder,
then he threw all his concentration into making his legs go as fast as
they could. But as soon as he hit the deep snow, he knew that would not
be very fast at all.
Perhaps, because of this singularity of focus, he failed
to hear the sound of yapping huskies until they pulled up beside him. He
glanced over to see his dog team, with Brenda holding on for dear life.
"Get on!" she yelled.
Barely breaking stride, he leaped onto the back of the
runners even as she threw herself forward onto the sled itself, getting
out of his way. "I thought I told you--" he demanded.
"We got a little ways out -- then the damn dogs started
turning, heading back. I couldn't control 'em. The others jumped out, but
I figured if the dogs were going to try and rescue you, I might as well
lend a hand."
He grinned ruefully at the tail of the lead huskie, Kevin,
then the humour drained from his face as he focused on the danger.
"Go, boy, go!" he shouted, the icy wind already whipping
his face. "Faster! Faster!" He dared not even spare a glance over his shoulder.
Suddenly he heard a strangled, inarticulate scream --
a roar of fury and frustration and of despair.
The Mountie craned his head to look back. The sky was
now dark, the weird celestial lights of the last few days had completely
vanished, and with it, the mystical convergence.
The thing that was Carl Mothers had said something to
him about a curse, about "physical shackles". Kit had not known what the
being meant. Now he did.
The monstrosity lurching after them was rising up, its
soft, glistening skin turning rough, its supple muscles hardening, as the
millennia old curse it had been under once again took hold. Kit stared
in shock as, in moments, where a strange creature out of nightmare had
been, there now lurched a clumsy, heavy, stone edifice known as an inukshuk,
the kind found throughout the north.
The thing made one final leap to get him -- but that was
too much. Its renewed form of piled stones was never meant for movement,
and it fell apart, heavy rocks tumbling forward, spewing up plumes of snow
as it scattered, until it lay spread across the tundra, the snow settling
again after a moment on the still rocks.
Kit reined in his team, and jumped from the sled, staring
at the stone remains. He dragged the back of his arm across his brow. In
moments, Brenda had joined him.
They were silent for a long time, breathing hard, mists
of exhalation swirling about their heads. Then she said, quietly, "Wow."
"And you know what's really scary?"
She stared at him, as if he'd lost his mind. "Any minute
of the last day?"
He grinned and shook his head. "You can find stone figures
like that -- like that had been -- all over the north. I wonder
what the others turn into when the stars are in alignment."
She looked at him, then at the scattered stones. She hooked
her arm with his, and said, "Soldier, I just don't want to know."
"Let's get the others. It's a long way back to my post."
