“I prefer operating under the cover of night, but OK,” Ruby said. “We’ll just have to figure out how to get past that warden.”

  “How did you avoid her last time?” Diana had never gotten details about that.

  “I messed with her dogs,” Ruby said. “Set snares, nothing that hurt them, but they were tangled up and yelping, and when she came running to check on them, I just circled around. That trick won’t work again, though. She’ll know to be suspicious.”

  “I can distract her,” Diana said. “She knows me, and she knows I’m working with Sanford on something. She won’t suspect me of anything.”

  “That doesn’t help with the dogs, though,” Ruby said. “We need to distract them, too, in a way that won’t make the warden suspicious.”

  Diana slumped. There were rumors about how viciously the dogs treated interlopers; the nastiest rumors said some of those trespassers were buried in the back lawn. “Hmm. Maybe if we got some sleeping pills, put them in some meat…”

  “Why don’t you just walk in?” Abel said. “Diana is a member of the Lodge in good standing, and we know Sanford wants to capture Ruby. So, Diana, you pretend you captured her, and just walk her in. Say you’re supposed to put her in a holding room downstairs, and offer to stand guard over her.” He shrugged.

  “The old fake prisoner trick?” Ruby tapped her fingertip against her lips. “I guess it’s a classic for a reason. It could work, if Van Shaw doesn’t decide to cut me into little pieces first.”

  Diana nodded. That could work. “Sanford would want to deal with you directly,” she said. “He’s only mentioned you once or twice in my presence, but the fact that he mentioned you at all means you got under his skin. He doesn’t like it when people take things that belong to him. If we work fast, and get you out of the Lodge before Sanford can return, we can just say you escaped again. I might even keep my cover as a loyal Seeker intact.”

  Ruby yawned. “Good enough. We’ll work out the details later. But first, I need some sleep. I’ll take the sofa.”

  •••

  Abel insisted that Diana take her own bed again, and went downstairs. There was a divan there, for the spouses or friends of her clients to rest on while measurements were taken and samples cooed over, and that was a softer place to sleep than most he’d endured lately. He lay on his back, his feet dangling off the end of the divan, and looked at a triangle of light on the ceiling, shining in through the front windows from the streetlights.

  Something was nagging at him. Why had Cain’s thugs prevented him from making his way across the river? Cain was up to something over there, but Abel couldn’t imagine what. The Silver Twilight Lodge was over here, just a long walk to the southeast, on French Hill. There must be something integral to Cain’s plan on the north side of the city. What could it be? There were the tall buildings downtown, the train station, the newspaper offices, Independence Square, and a lot of docks and industrial buildings. Certainly nothing that would obviously help Cain get his hands on the fragment of their god.

  Abel tried to think the way Cain would think, but he’d never had the knack for that, despite the fact that, in theory, Cain was just a copy of him – or, rather, a copy of a copy. Cain had always been off, ever since Seth first made him, but it had taken a little time before Abel realized how strange the new comet was.

  “How did you end up on the outs with your brothers?” Ruby had asked. How indeed. He’d have to tell them about it, in the morning, before they made their infiltration of the Lodge.

  Abel turned over on the divan, away from the shape of light, staring instead into the darkened recesses of the shop. His mind painted the shadows with figures from memory.

  •••

  This time, Abel and the comets didn’t stay in the hotel – they still had decent funds, but they thought a set of triplets traipsing through the grand lobby might draw attention, so they rented a shack in Rivertown instead. Abel hated how much at home he felt there, with the wind blowing through the cracks in the walls and the tattered nets hung from the ceiling and the stink of old fish everywhere. They weren’t far from their target, at least: the Silver Twilight Lodge, a rambling old pile up on French Hill. The question was, how to get inside.

  “A machine gun would do the job,” the new comet said. His voice always had a peculiar rasp, like he’d been shouting himself hoarse the night before. “Three machine guns, even better. We kick in the door, kill anyone we see, and tear the place apart until we find our god.”

  “Going in hard won’t work, Enos,” Seth said. The new comet hadn’t acknowledged that name, but they had to call him something. They were all sitting around the scarred wooden table in the shack’s front room. “Someone will hear the gunfire and call the police. And anyway, we don’t know what it’s like inside there. The place is huge, and our god could be anywhere. It would take us hours to search. We’ll have to sneak in, but it won’t be easy.”

  “Perhaps we will be able to sense the Ravening Deep’s location when we draw near, as we sense one another. Perhaps the amulet will even strengthen the effect,” Enos said as he stared at Abel. He didn’t blink anywhere near enough. “That would make the search faster.”

  Abel shrugged. “Maybe. I didn’t feel anything when we walked by the Lodge. But we don’t even know if that piece of our god is still there. This Carl Sanford bought the jar, probably, but maybe he sold it to someone else, or he keeps it someplace else, or hell, maybe he didn’t know what it was, and he threw it in the trash–”

  Suddenly Enos had Abel’s shirt front bunched up in both fists. The new comet snarled, face inches from Abel’s. “Do not blaspheme. We have been led here, carried on the tides of fate by the will of Asterias. Do you not believe? How can you, our priest, lack faith?”

  Seth stood up, patting Enos on the shoulder, drawing him back, soothing him. “Take it easy, Abel is just working out the angles and the possibilities, it’s OK–”

  “You are not worthy to wear that amulet.” Enos trembled. “You are only human.”

  Abel stood up. The power of Asterias coursed through him, the amulet burning cold against his chest. Sleeping and eating were largely optional now, his strength was greater than an ordinary man’s, and his endurance was far greater than even an extraordinary one. He was chosen, and he would not be disrespected again. He’d let his grip slip once, and this snarling zealot was the result.

  “And you’re a fingernail clipping off a fingernail clipping, Enos. You’re lucky I didn’t tear your head off and throw you back into the sea for the cousins of our god to eat. I forgave Seth for making you. I understood his desperation, and he is my brother, the first of my congregation. But you.” Abel spat on the wooden floor. “If you aren’t useful to me, then you’re a problem, and problems are chum for the water.”

  Enos stormed out of the shack, and Seth sighed, slumping down in the chair. “I’m sorry, Abel. I should have talked to you more before I made him. Tried to convince you, instead of tying you down and taking the amulet.”

  Abel shrugged. They’d been over all this before. “You did what you felt Asterias called you to do. I disagree with your methods, but our goals are still the same.”

  “And we’re close to achieving them. Surely you see that?”

  “I guess. I don’t know how, though. Maybe I should try to join the Lodge, so I can at least get a look at the inside.”

  “We could just find someone who’s already a member,” Seth said. “Do what we did with the professor, make a copy.”

  Abel shuddered. “Because that worked out so well?” The professor’s comet had wept and screamed and wailed, unable to forgive himself for failing to restore Asterias when he had the chance, and the night before they came to Arkham, he’d walked into the sea, disappearing beneath the moonlit waves, and never returned. “If we go down that path again, more people will die.”

  “We’re talking about the restoration of the divine,” Seth said. “What cost could stand up against that?”

  “There’s another way,” Abel said. “People don’t have to die. One murder was too many, and I won’t preside over more. I’m going for a walk.”

  He went outside and walked toward the misty waters of the Miskatonic. He looked left, toward the Black Cave, a local landmark that swirled with dark stories. He’d like to leave Enos in that cave. He looked right, toward French Hill, toward the Lodge, toward–

  He heard the scuffle of a footstep behind him, and then something struck the back of his head, and an explosion of stars filled his vision. He shook his head a moment later, woozy and disoriented. Why am I on my knees? Then he gagged, because someone was pulling the amulet from behind, choking him on its string. He scrabbled at his throat, and then a knee pressed into his back, pushing him forward against the cutting pain of the necklace. This couldn’t be happening. He was the chosen one! He couldn’t die here, with his work unfinished, murdered by some mugger–

  “You are not worthy,” a familiar voice hissed in his ear.

  His terror turned into a colder variety of fear. Then the string snapped, and Abel fell forward into the mud. He rolled over, and looked up at Enos, who stood over him, the amulet clutched in his fist. As Abel watched, the new comet tied a knot in the string.

  “Making comets from the Lodge members was my idea,” Enos said. Abel started to rise, but the comet put a boot on his chest and pushed him back down. Then he kicked him in the ribs, once, twice, three times, until Abel curled up on himself. Enos spat into the mud beside him. “Seth said he’d talk things over, convince you to follow the right path, but I listened at the window, and you’re still so stubborn.” He held out the necklace, the amulet swaying. “You are just a human. You wear this amulet, and you take on the semblance of us, the true servants of Asterias. But you aren’t one of us.”

  “I made you,” Abel said. He tried to sit up, ribs aching, but Enos put the boot on his shoulder and shoved him back down.

  “You are the soil, but we are the trees. Seth was afraid to wear the amulet at first, did you know that? Afraid that doing so was blasphemy. He used this relic to make me, but he took it off again right away. He said it made him feel like there were oceans inside his mind. He was frightened of the vastness the amulet revealed. But I am even closer to Asterias than Seth was, more pure, and I wonder. If the amulet gave you, a pitiful human, such powers, what might it do for someone like me, a true son of the Ravening Deep?” The comet dropped the necklace over his head and put the amulet against his chest. He shivered. “I am now the head of our religion. You may call me… Cain.”

  Then the comet leaned over, and looked down at Abel. The weathered lines on his face were darker than before, and as Abel watched, they became darker still, and then – Cain’s face unfolded. The flesh peeled back, unfurling from the center point of his nose in all directions, until it formed a seven-pointed star of flesh. Cain’s head now resembled a flower, with petals made of triangular flaps of skin.

  No. Not a flower. A starfish.

  That peeling-back of the skin should have revealed muscle and blood underneath, and the shape of the skull under that, but Cain had been transformed by the amulet, and in a far more extreme way than Abel had been.

  The unfolded flesh revealed the mouth of a starfish, a ragged circle surrounded by spines, big enough for Abel to shove his fist inside, though he thought if he did so, he’d draw back the spurting stump of his wrist.

  “I am chosen now,” that rasping voice said. Cain leaned forward, and Abel stared, transfixed with horror, as tendrils wriggled inside that mouth.

  “No!” Seth shouted from behind Cain. “No, don’t kill him, please, he made us, brother.”

  Cain paused, then turned. “Kill him? No. He must see the world that is to come. He must see me succeed where he never could. But you… you are weak, too, it is harder to forgive you, since you are closer to the divine.” Cain bent and picked up an oar – probably what he’d hit Abel with – and struck Seth across the face. The other comet fell like a piece of timber. “I will make new brothers,” Cain said. “Better ones.”

  Abel scrambled to his feet and rushed away, terrified that Cain would change his mind about sparing him. He felt an aching absence within his mind where he’d been able to sense Seth before, like a tooth had been ripped from his head.

  Cain shouted after him. “Run, worm, and await the coming of Asterias with the other human meat! You have given up your place and your name! Cower in the shadows and await the rise of my god! When the Ravening Deep is reborn, we will meet again!”

  Abel fled Arkham, and over the course of the next day, hitchhiked home. He went to the bank, planning to cut off Cain’s resources, only to find that his accounts had been closed and his assets transferred away. Cain, or Seth, or both, must have planned this, to cut him out.

  His flight clarified his mind, though. He couldn’t just run away. There was a monster out there, wearing his face, and using his name. Abel wasn’t a killer, and Seth a somewhat reluctant one, but Cain would drown the world in blood to see his god resurrected. Abel had to do something.

  He sold a few things from the house and made his way back to Arkham, determined to stop Cain. He even got his hands on a pistol. But when he tried to get close, he could feel a dozen new comets, all over the city. Cain must have cut off his fingers, grown them back, cut them off, and grown them back again, or else made doubles of his own doubles – how strange and inhuman would those creatures be? Abel’s reverence and gratitude toward Asterias were gone, replaced by horror. Cain and his progeny were the true children of the Ravening Deep. Abel had only ever been a tool for the monstrous entity to use for its own ends.

  Abel watched from the shadows as Cain swanned around town, wearing new suits and smoking cigars, buddying up to the local businessmen. Abel didn’t understand how he’d attained his newfound wealth until one night when a pair of Cain’s comets appeared and grabbed Abel under the armpits, dragging him down an alley and stuffing him into the trunk of a car. He didn’t even have his pistol with him – it was stashed under the floorboards of the shack where he was staying. Abel thought he was going to die, but instead, they drove him to a house on the north side and took him into the living room, dropping him on a beautiful oriental rug.

  Cain was there, in a suit that would have done a bootlegging gangster proud, all pinstripes and diamond stickpin and mirror-shined black shoes. Cain had a sharp haircut and rings on his fingers. “Did you think we wouldn’t notice you? We can sense you, fool.”

  Abel blinked at him. “With so many of you around, I thought I’d just sort of blend in with the crowd.”

  “You have a special stink about you, being fully human. We’ve been watching you, watching us. It’s amusing. You’re so desperate, scurrying around, trying to figure out what we’re doing. I took pity on you. I decided to show you.” Cain gestured with hands clad in black gloves, probably to hide the horror-show of his fingers grown back wrong. “This is my house. Or one of them. I bought it with cash, thanks to a generous donation from a new member of the brotherhood. It’s easy to make money, for me. I just have to break into the house of a wealthy man, put the amulet on him, and cut off some fingers and toes. Dispose of the original, and the copies are happy to contribute to the cause. I have half a dozen of the most prominent people in Arkham dancing to my tune–”

  “Then why don’t you have Asterias yet?” Abel cut in. He couldn’t stand the smug arrogance of this beast. He might die here, but he would die spitting his contempt.

  Cain sat back. “Well. At first, I was just going to grab Carl Sanford, and bring him into the fold, but… he’s slippery. Seldom alone. Always watchful. Spends most of his time in the Lodge, which, it turns out, is something of a fortress, though you wouldn’t know it to look at the place from the outside. I’ve turned some of his Initiates, and they’ve given me floor plans and layouts, but they only see the surface. There’s a lot more happening underneath. Getting my hands on members of the Lodge with greater access… that’s a bit of a project. But I’m working my way up. The more access I get, the more access I can get. Eventually the Order of the Silver Twilight will have more comets than humans in its ranks. Cuckoos in the nest. Wasps in the beehive. Pick your metaphor.”

  “Why not just join up yourself, if you’re such a pillar of the community already?”

  Cain sneered, and the lines on his face darkened. For a moment, Abel was afraid he’d see that terrible face under his face again. “I could join, but it takes years to work your way up the ranks, so why bother, when I can take someone who’s already done the work for me?”

  “How many people have you killed so far?” Abel said.

  “I don’t keep track. Why would I? They’re just people. They’re nothing but food for the Ravening Deep. You stupid insect. What did you think would happen when you brought our god back to life? Didn’t you realize he would want to feed?”

  Abel had never thought that far ahead. “I didn’t care. Asterias saved me. I owed it my life. I pledged myself in service. That’s all.”

  “The Ravening Deep would have devoured you first,” Cain said. “That’s why I’m keeping you alive. Because it still can. When my god wakes, it will wake hungry, and I want you to provide the first mouthful.” Cain flicked his fingers. “Get out of my sight. We’ll find you when the time comes. We always know where you are. But stop skulking around watching us. I hate the sight of you.”

  “Because you hate being reminded of what you come from,” Abel said. “That you’re nothing but a copy of a copy.”

  “I came from you,” Cain said. “I have never denied it. But I am you with the repulsive human parts cut out. Brothers, go dump this human in an alleyway somewhere. Give him a bottle from the crate by the back door. You might as well start drinking, Abel. It will help you pass the time until the dinner bell rings.” Cain smiled, his teeth too many and too sharp. “It tolls for thee.”