The Longest Night Vol. 1 Read online

  “Got it!” Fred exclaimed. “Oh, look—it’s awesome!” Her face was shining as she held up the completed cube, which showed a vaguely snowflakelike symbol on each side. It seemed to pick up every piece of light in the room and reflect it in triplicate, much like the way candlelight enhances the sparkle of diamonds.

  “Wow,” Cordelia said. “You’re not kidding. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful. It’s—”

  “Full of ancient Amratian symbols,” Wesley broke in.

  Gunn leaned forward, trying to see the cube better. “Ancient who?”

  “They were Egyptian, dating back to 4500 B.C.,” Wesley told him as he came closer to examine Fred’s cube. “Those aren’t snowflakes at all, but symbols of some kind, and while what we don’t know about current mysticism could fill entire libraries, imagine how little we know of what went on in the world back then, when civilization was just beginning to discover the idea of architecture and individual dwellings.” He looked horrified. “Our knowledge of them comes almost exclusively from the contents of their graves, but like the Celts, they probably relied heavily on the supernatural for protection from real and imagined enemies.”

  “Well,” Fred said, but there was a definite tremor in her voice. “It seems harmless enough….”

  “I don’t think we ought to assume—” Angel began, but something like a roaring directly in front of Fred’s chair drowned out the rest of what he was going to say.

  Fred screamed and flung the crystal away, then scrambled over the side of her upholstered chair. The cube bounced a few feet and stopped; then a spiral of white-gold light began to form around it. The center of it spun faster and faster, and it was like they were looking straight into a blender filled with gold-flecked liquid. For a long, painful moment they were nearly mesmerized, but the spiral inexplicably subsided to barely a pinpoint of harmless light. Then someone—it wasn’t clear who—screamed, “Fire!”

  They all jerked as a long, thin column of flame sprang up at Wesley’s feet. He yelped and skipped backward, still clutching the limited edition. For a moment it looked as if the fire would be sucked toward the spinning circle of light, but it jerked back and followed after Wesley, zipping along the floor at his shoes like a living lizard of heat. He leaped away, twisting this way and that around the furniture, but the fire kept following. Wesley was clearly its only target.

  “Wesley, look out!” Fred said.

  But her warning was too late; looking back over his shoulder instead of where he was running, Wesley ran full tilt into one of the lobby’s floor lamps and went down in a tangle of metal rod, lampshade, and cord. For a second they all froze, then the flames licked around his ankles. “Arghghgghghghgh!”

  “His pants are on fire!” Cordelia shrieked. Everyone tried to head toward Wesley at once, but Cordy was the closest. She’d been sitting in her own spot, thoughtfully fingering the silky feel of the Missoni sweater set; now she did the first thing that came to mind—she grabbed a double handful of the fabric and tackled Wesley at foot level, wrapping the sweater around his ankles to smother the flames. She and Wesley rolled, arms and legs flailing, as the others jumped into the fray. Wesley writhed while Cordelia struggled with his ankles and then finally let him go.

  “Thank God!” he gasped. “I thought I was grilled for sure!”

  “Are you all right?” Angel demanded. “Burned?”

  “Singed around the edges a bit, but I’ll survive.” Wesley looked around a little wildly. “Where did the fire come from?”

  “I think it came from your ‘Stephen King’ book,” Fred noted. “Look at it now—I don’t think that asbestos cover was the real deal.”

  Wesley reached over, snatched up the book, and then almost dropped it. The cover was hot. It had gone black and smoking, and there was no sign of the original title on it. When he cautiously opened the cover, the pages inside were burned and flaking at the edges, and very obviously old—older than a copy of Firestarter by more than a few centuries . Wesley swallowed when he saw what was written inside. “Apparently the cover wasn’t the only illusion,” he said. “This isn’t the text from Firestarter at all—more like some sort of spell book, or demonic journal.”

  “Well, that explains the fire,” Angel said. “You saw one thing, but when you read it aloud, it came out as what was really written there. Like you said, some kind of spell.”

  “Cordelia,” Wesley said, turning to her. “Thank you—”

  “Probably the only time in my life I’ll own a piece of Missoni clothing and I had to go and use it as a fire blanket,” she said forlornly. She held up the sweater, but it was clearly ruined, covered with soot and charred along the entire left side. She pressed her lips together, wadded it in a ball, and tossed it at the trash can next to the counter. Then she brightened. “But hey—I’ve still got the inside piece. I’m going to put it on before something horrid happens to it, too.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?” Fred asked. She looked worried. “After what happened with Wesley’s book?”

  “You were the one who said statistically speaking, we’d be fine,” Cordelia shot back. “I’m just going to slip it on over my T-shirt and see how it fits.” A quick move and a wiggle and the Missoni top went over her head and slipped into place; she tugged it down and spread her arms. She finished by adding the necklace that had formed from the box’s string of mini pearls. “Well, how does it look?”

  “Oh, that’s great,” Gunn said, but his gaze was fixed over Cordy’s shoulder, not on the textured sweater she’d pulled over her slim figure.

  “What’s the matter?” Cordy asked, looking confused. “That’s really not the reaction I was expecting—”

  “It’s back!” Gunn yelled. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her forward. “Get down!”

  That tiny pinprick of light before the fire, so easy to forget, had blossomed again—or rather, exploded. Perhaps in the back of their minds, they’d thought it was just a pretty little light show, the prize for Fred’s solving the puzzle cube. But that was clearly not the case. The swirling center was back, and now there was a roaring sound coming from it. A dank, hot wind was screaming through the hotel lobby, picking up papers and anything else light, and quickly gaining strength. Soon it would have enough muscle to pull larger objects—like people—into the dark blackness that had appeared at its center.

  “It’s a vortex!” Angel yelled. “We’ve got to close it!”

  “How?” Cordelia clawed her way backward. “And where does it go?”

  Fred was clinging to the edge of the counter, staring at the mass of whirling color with almost paralytic horror. “I think it goes to…another dimension.” Her terrified words were almost lost in the booming of the wind. “It’s come for…me.”

  “Well, it can’t have you!” Wesley shouted. He still had the burned, bogus book in one hand, holding it tightly against the pull of the vortex. “Not now, not ever!” He’d been gripping the edge of a couch with his other hand, and now he let go of it and leaped forward.

  “Wesley, don’t!” Angel grabbed for the other man and missed, but Wesley hadn’t been aiming for the vortex. Instead, he went behind it, to where Fred had flung the cube away when the first whirlpools of light had emanated from it. He rolled and came up next to the crystal cube, and for the first time, they realized that it was definitely the source for the vortex, like a mini projection box. Without hesitating, Wesley raised the heavy book and smashed it down on top of the cube.

  Bright white light instantly filled the room, nearly blinding them as it washed out everything. The roar of the vortex was replaced by something low and ominous and…dying, perhaps the closest thing to the sound of a downed elephant that any of them had ever heard.

  Then there was nothing but silence.

  “My, wasn’t that fun,” Gunn said flatly. “I just can’t wait to see what’s next.” He’d placed the kukri off to the side, and now he looked at it as if it were something covered with pond scum. He looked
at Fred and frowned. “Fred?”

  “Oh, no,” Cordelia said. She hurried over to the slender woman, who was still clutching the counter with white-knuckled fingers. Cordelia pushed Fred’s hair out of her eyes. “Hey, you in there?”

  “Vortex…” Fred’s voice was nearly a whisper. “Like on Pylea. It almost sucked us in. All of us, and it would’ve been my fault.” Fred gulped in a ragged breath, finally breaking her fixed stare. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize—”

  “Which says it all,” Angel put in. “That great light show wasn’t your doing, it was Lilah’s—face it, the woman is underhanded and nasty. These gifts”—he waved his hand at the past and present remains of Lilah’s generosity—“were never meant to be anything but—”

  “Moving!” Cordelia suddenly shrieked.

  “Pardon me?” Wesley asked automatically.

  “It’s moving!” Cordelia started skipping around in front of them, her hands pulling at the Missoni top she’d donned over her T-shirt. “It’s—it’s tight!”

  “Hey, she’s right.” Gunn tried to grab at Cordelia but she jerked out of his range, twisting in all directions as she yanked at her top. “I can see it!”

  “You guys, I can’t—” Cordelia’s voice broke off; then she managed a final, single-syllable word: “Breathe!”

  “We’ve got to get that off her!” Angel shouted as Cordelia collapsed into a knot on the carpet. “It’s alive or something!”

  They reached for her, trying to hold her down, trying to pull on the sleeveless top, trying to do anything. But the sweater and necklace were changing, re-forming into another shape that could only be described as pythonlike, swelling rapidly upward to curl around Cordelia’s neck. Above the living fabric, her face was turning an alarming shade of reddish purple.

  “Do something!” Fred cried. She was yanking frantically at the collar, but nothing was working—the harder they pulled, the more firmly the sweater-snake settled itself around Cordy’s torso. “She’ll suffocate if we don’t get her some air!”

  “Damn it!” On his knees next to her, Gunn jerked himself to his feet, then snatched up the Burmese kukri. The edge gleamed in the lobby’s light as he pushed between Angel and Wesley and slid its razor-sharp edge up the side of the undulating fabric that was now wrapped around Cordelia’s neck. The fabric parted, leaving behind a thin sheen of blood that he prayed was from the sweater and not Cordy. The sweater top writhed around her and she gasped for air, her chest heaving as a little of the pressure was released. Instinctively Gunn kept cutting as Angel, Wesley, and Fred clawed at the snake-patterned material. More blood, more agonized inhalations from Cordelia, until finally she was free and the bewitched Missoni sweater lay in a half dozen twitching and ragged pieces on the floor.

  Cordelia rolled herself into a ball next to what little was left of it, squeezing her knees protectively. “I should have known,” she half sobbed. “A Missoni—I should have known it was way too good to be true.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” Fred said soothingly.

  “Yeah,” Gunn agreed. “It was just a blouse—”

  “Sweater,” Cordelia corrected, as she uncurled and sat up. “It was a Missoni sweater set.”

  “Whatever,” Gunn said. “It was, like, cotton or something. So who could’ve expected it—”

  “Would start crawling up your wrist!” Wesley jumped forward and grabbed Gunn by the right shoulder, then used both hands to begin shaking Gunn’s arm.

  “Wesley, what the hell are you doing—hey!” Gunn’s eyes widened as he looked down and saw what lay below Wesley’s grip. The kukri he’d used to cut Cordelia free of the sweater-snake had melted, the handle flowing and sinking itself into the flesh of his palm. Gunn pushed free of Wesley’s grip and started jerking his hand up and down like he was trying to shake some particularly foul liquid off his fingers. “Whoa!”

  But it was no good, and Gunn realized that no matter what he did or where he ran he wasn’t going to be able to outrun himself. After a few seconds of scrambling around the lobby with the others trying to follow, they all simply stopped in the center. Gunn held out his right hand and they stared at it, with no clue how to stop what they were seeing. Second by second, the metal was integrating itself into Gunn’s hand, creeping upward like living silver mercury. Now it was wrapped around the thumb pad; now it was stretching the rubies and carvings up and around his wrist. “What is this?” Gunn asked, horrified. He held his hand out, trying to keep it as far away from the rest of his body as possible. “Some kind of Witchblade nightmare?”

  Angel grabbed him by the elbow. “There’s got to be some way to stop this,” he said desperately. “We can’t let it keep going—”

  “Think fast, folks. I wasn’t really looking at amputation when I rolled out of bed this morning!” Gunn’s gaze skipped around the lobby, searching for something, anything, that he could use to free himself.

  “There must be something we can use to halt its progress.” Wesley spun, searching as well.

  Suddenly Fred crouched and scooped something off the carpet. “Here—try this!” She held something out.

  Angel snatched the object from her hand. It was a piece of glass, one of the sides of the now-shattered crystal box. A piece had been broken out of the bottom, giving it a slightly angled edge, but other than that it was whole. There was no time to pause or wonder if it would work; Angel grabbed Gunn’s arm and jammed the angled piece of glass into the skin just above the crawling metal. Gunn yelped as the edge of the glass bit into his arm.

  There was a moment when it looked as if the metal might simply flow over the glass, and they all nearly panicked; then it swelled up and fell over onto itself, like water hitting a retaining wall or a dam. It started to flow backward and Angel followed it with the glass, scraping Gunn’s arm bloody as he went. Gunn groaned between his teeth but held his ground, fighting the instinctive urge to pull his arm from Angel’s grip. Down, down, down, until the mercury-like substance streamed back toward the metal tip on the handle of the kukri, drawn to itself and its origin. Still, a few tentacles of the stuff clung hungrily to Gunn’s palm, and Angel took a chance, betting that the metal wouldn’t find his own cold flesh as appetizing. Quick as a whip, he dropped the piece of crystal, grabbed the kukri by the back of its blade, and ripped it free of Gunn’s hand.

  This time, Gunn did cry out—he couldn’t help it. Blood splattered Angel and he shook his head to keep his thoughts clear, then pitched the knife to the ground. It lay there, tipped with Gunn’s blood and looking like nothing more than an everyday deadly weapon. Except now no one wanted to pick it up.

  Finally Cordelia lashed out with her foot and kicked it off to the side. “Vicious little thing, isn’t it?”

  Wesley nodded as Fred ducked behind the counter and came up with a roll of paper towels for Gunn to wrap his injured hand and wrist. “Yes, indeed. We’ll have to work out a way to either destroy it permanently, or store it where no one will accidentally pick it up. Quite interesting the way it tried to integrate itself with living flesh, by the way. I haven’t seen anything like that since—”

  “There’s still Angel’s gift,” Fred interrupted. “Every one of us has gotten some sort of awful fallout from what Lilah gave us, so this isn’t over.”

  All eyes turned toward the counter, where Angel’s mirror still lay facedown as Angel had turned it. Ignoring his arm, Gunn took a tentative step toward it. “Great,” he said. “What’s next—maybe a monster jumping out of it? Seven years of bad luck if we break the damned thing?”

  “Or another vortex,” Fred said tremulously. “A portal to another dimension, like the cube.”

  Cordelia shook her head. “No, Lilah would never be so mundane as to repeat herself in the same set of gifts. It’ll be something different, something worse—”

  “No,” Angel said softly. His friends stared at him as he walked over to the counter and lifted the mirror, then turned it upright to where they could all see the glass.
“No,” he repeated. “It’s not going to do anything, it’s not going to show me anything. It’s…nothing at all.” He slammed it back down, and the glass rippled but didn’t break. “It’s dead. Just like me.”

  Wesley looked from Angel to the mirror, his face white. “Angel—”

  “Her note said the gifts are a reflection of each of us, right?” He laughed a little bitterly. “How much more on track could she be?”

  “If the gifts reflect those who receive it, they also reflect the giver,” Wesley said. “Remember what I said earlier? That woman is stone cold, pretty on the outside but corrupt on the inside—like every one of these pretty little packages she sent.”

  “Except this one.” Angel pointed to the mirror. “It’s utterly benign. It doesn’t do anything but exactly what it’s supposed to—reflect the person who received it. Me.”

  Angel turned his gaze away from the mirror, unable to look at it anymore. When it came right down to it, in a way wasn’t he the same as Lilah? Everyone told him, and sometimes he even believed, that he was good, but wasn’t that just on the out side? Inside, he was what he was—a vampire, the undead, an animated monster. It was only by the “grace” of a Gypsy curse that he carried the only thing that kept him from being truly evil, a soul. So fragile and elusive, yet without it, he was worse than Lilah, worse than most of the creatures he fought so hard to destroy. But there was more to add to the mix—as evil as she was, Lilah still had her soul, and he had never been that much of an abomination when he was alive.

  “You are so wrong.”

  He lifted his head at Cordy’s sharp words. She marched over to the mirror and dragged it off the counter. “Come and look, guys. You, too, Angel.” Warily, Wesley, Gunn, and Fred approached her as she moved to stand at Angel’s side. “Here—stand right next to me. And we’ll all look in it together.”

  “What for?” Angel asked. He sounded almost belligerent, his usual stoicism crumbling a little in the face of the unseen wound Lilah had inflicted. “I know what I don’t look like.”