Red Right Hand Read Online Free Page B

feet under me.
    A hornet’s nest buzzed inside my body. I could feel my blood running under my skin, rushing and blasting through the veins. I felt high, charged, jolted full of some weird energy that made the world spin faster.
    â€œWhat the hell just happened?”
    Nyarlathotep smiled. “Blood touched your Mark, and your Sight activated.”
    â€œStop.” My left hand, the smooth uninjured one, flew up between us. “Stop using those words like they mean something to me.”
    I thought for a second, pulling it all together. I looked down, studying the symbol etched into my palm. My hands were shaking, vibrating and tingling like they were hooked into a live wire. The lines and swirls made grooves in my flesh, open and raw, but they weren’t bleeding anymore. My hand felt sticky, but the stickiness had the sugary tack of coffee instead of the iron-tanged texture of blood. “You’re saying my blood, on this thing you did to me, made me see … what the hell did I see?”
    His normal hand swept up and down, indicating his body. “This is merely a glamour, a skinsuit I use to walk unhindered in your world. Your Sight revealed to you my true form on this plane of reality.”
    â€œIt’s ugly as hell, just so you know,” I spat. The insult felt good. A tiny stab. It didn’t change the fact that this situation had become completely batshit crazy, but it made me feel stronger, a little more in control.
    The Man in Black shrugged.
    I wiped my shaky hand on my hoodie. The material was tissue-soft from hundreds of washings, but it still felt like sandpaper across the symbol cut in my flesh. “No more blood on this, not ever. ’Cause I never want to see that again.”
    â€œYou will need your magick, Charlotte Tristan Moore, if you are to be of service to me. I will require much of you before I am done.”
    â€œYou can require whatever you want. I’m not doing it.”
    Nyarlathotep appeared suddenly there, in front of me, looming tall, much taller than me. Dark eyes glittered as he leaned in, voice low and sinister. “When the time comes, Acolyte, you will do exactly what I need you to do.”
    That close he was overwhelming, looming like a tidal wave pausing before it devastates the shoreline. He smelled like musk and grave dirt, something primal that pulled deep inside me. In a blink he was back across the room. “When you need your magick, it can be activated by touching your Mark with any bodily fluid. Blood is the strongest, followed by sexual issue, but any secretion will spark it to life.”
    Bodily fluid? Secretion? Sexual issue? What?
    I pushed those thoughts out of the way.
    Stay focused. Work the problem.
    â€œWhy should I help you?”
    Dark eyes sparkled. “I could kill you.”
    The threat hit me like a slap. “Then do it and get it over with.” Anger bubbled at his words, boiling away the fear I’d felt since seeing the skinhounds. I was sick of being terrified. I’d worked too hard to not be terrified every day of my life. Nothing was worth being stuck in fear. Fear grinds you down to bone dust and nothing, breaking your will, making you less than human.
    Been there, done that, fuck you.
    The Man in Black sighed and chuckled.
    â€œCharlotte Tristan Moore, I am not the only one who will seek you out now that your gift has been activated. There are other things, things that crawl and slither at the edge of night, things that would find you. They will come, and they will not have the mercy I have shown.”
    â€œMercy? I haven’t seen any mercy from you.”
    â€œI spared your life from the skinhounds. I have not slaughtered your friends in their sleep, even though I could. I have not sought out everyone you love and care for and reduced them to mewling pieces of meat that cry for death as a relief from the tortures inflicted upon them.” His red right hand tapped the tabletop.