Marius gestured to the fellow in the bowler. “This is Monty, a fellow enthusiast of the esoteric.” Monty nodded. Marius turned and pointed. “There in the bathroom, preparing for the demonstration, we have the lovely Glenda, who has forgotten more about sailing than I ever learned, and I’ve spent most of my life on boats.”

  “A pleasure to meet your… associates,” Sanford said. “May I examine the amulet you told me about?”

  Marius touched his chest, massaging something beneath his shirt. “It’s an astonishing item. This amulet changed my life, and it will change yours, too, Mr Sanford.”

  “My life is pleasant just the way it is.” Sanford tapped his sword cane on the carpet. “Let me see it now, please.”

  Marius reached into his shirt and drew out the amulet, but made no move to remove the chain from around his neck. He held the medallion up, tilting it to catch the light, and Sanford leaned forward to examine it. The amulet was round and silver, decorated with the raised shape of a seven-pointed star, with a round circle in the center full of inward-pointing triangles – a toothy maw?

  “I don’t recognize this iconography,” Sanford said. “But the starfish is a symbol of regeneration…” He thought of the way some starfish reproduced by dividing themselves, creating doubles of the original, and developed a terrible suspicion. Could these people be involved with what happened to the Berglunds? Best for now to pretend he suspected nothing, and see what developed. He straightened. “What do you propose in the way of a demonstration?”

  Marius spread his hands and smiled like a salesman. “The simplest thing would be to chop off someone’s finger, put the amulet on them, and immerse them in that tub of salt water Glenda has prepared. Soaking in brine isn’t strictly necessary, but it accelerates the process – if you’re submerged, a new finger will grow back within minutes, instead of hours or days. Perhaps we might use Mr Altman as a test subject?”

  Altman snorted.

  Sanford shook his head. “Mr Altman has given up enough pieces of himself to the cause over the years. I believe one of your own compatriots, or you yourself, would be a more suitable choice.”

  “Ah, but I’ve done this so many times already. You see?” Marius tugged off one of his gloves, and held up a hand to Sanford’s face with a flourish. He frowned when Sanford leaned in for a closer look.

  “You expected me to recoil?” Sanford said. “I’ve seen worse than this and then eaten a hearty breakfast.” The hand was grotesque, though. Marius had six fingers, or perhaps five and a half – his index finger had another half-length digit emerging from the second knuckle, sticking off at an angle. His other fingers appeared functional enough, but no longer resembled those of a human, or any primate: the middle finger had tiny suckers, like an octopus tentacle, while the ring finger was green and pebbled like starfish flesh, and the pinky resembled the pincer of a crab. “I must say, the healing properties of your amulet were oversold in your letter. You have not been healed – you’ve been transformed into the appetizer platter at a seafood restaurant.”

  Marius scowled, the lines on his face deepening. “The first time, the fingers grew back normally enough, but after subsequent severances, they started to go strange. I like them, though. They make me feel closer to my god – marked, you see.”

  Closer to which god? Sanford abhorred zealots. They could be useful idiots at best, and deadly ones at worst.

  Marius turned toward Altman and wiggled his fingers. “Even if you lack my particular perspective, you must admit, these are better than no fingers at all, aren’t they?”

  “I would have to think about that for a while, to be honest,” Altman said.

  “You two are hard to impress,” Marius said. “But the amulet possesses other powers. It bestows visions upon its wearer, for one thing.”

  “So do mushrooms that grow from cow patties.” Sanford was, of course, interested in acquiring the amulet despite the undisclosed quirks of its operation, but part of negotiating was hiding any unseemly eagerness.

  “You’re such a jaded old sorcerer! I haven’t told you the most remarkable power of the amulet yet, though.” Marius cocked his head for a moment, fixing Sanford’s gaze with his own.

  Then he lunged past Sanford, toward Altman. Something was happening to Marius’s head. Sanford couldn’t quite make out what, since the man was turned away from him, but fleshy protuberances appeared to unfurl from the sides of his face.

  Marius seized Altman by the shoulders and leaned forward, pressing his altered face close to Altman’s own. Altman screamed – a sound that seemed to come from the bottom of a well – and a horrible, wet crunching followed. Blood poured down Altman’s shoulders and chest. He fumbled for his kukri, drawing it from its hidden sheath at the small of his back, but then he dropped the blade on the floor and went limp. Marius lifted Altman’s body off the floor as the horrible sounds of mastication continued.

  All this happened in an instant, and in that same instant, Sanford took a step back and tried to draw his sword from the cane. He had seen many dreadful things over the course of his long life, but it had been ages since he’d watched someone eaten right in front of him! There would be time to feel horror later. The most pressing matter was to stab and slash his way free of this place before he got eaten himself.

  Monty was ready for him, though, and kicked the stick out of Sanford’s hand before he could draw it. Sanford reached into his jacket, where he’d secreted a derringer revolver, but the woman from the bathroom – Glenda – wrapped her arms around him from behind in a bear hug, pinning his arms against his sides. She was inhumanly strong… which made sense. Whatever this Marius or Davenport was, he was not human, and there was no reason to think his associates would be either.

  Marius let Altman’s body drop to the floor. Altman’s nose was gone, and his eyes, and most of his cheeks, with his teeth visible through the remaining flesh.

  Marius then turned toward Sanford. The open petals of meat around his head folded inward as he moved, so Sanford caught only a glimpse of his horrible secret face: a red and green ruin of raw flesh, with a round maw at the center, lined with sharp and tiny teeth, just like the depiction on the amulet. The folds of skin flattened out, restoring the creature’s human face, though not seamlessly – those deep wrinkles on Marius’s face were the seams.

  “I fear you’ve brought me here under false pretenses,” Sanford said. There was no point in showing fear, or letting them believe they had the upper hand. The loss of Altman stung deeply, though. Sanford didn’t have friends in the conventional sense, but Altman had been something close.

  Monty picked up the axe by the door and gave it a twirl. “I suppose I should begin screaming and alert the other hotel guests to the presence of deranged murderers,” Sanford said, in the tone of one musing aloud.

  “This floor and the ones below and above are occupied by my people.” Marius dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief, though that mouth had eaten nothing.

  Such a fool, giving away information when there was no advantage in doing so. Sanford was troubled to hear the cult was so numerous, however. “I don’t think they’re really people, though, are they? What is the point of all this, Marius? I don’t understand what you think you have to gain by seizing me this way.”

  Marius dropped into a chair and crossed one leg over the other. He caressed the amulet as he spoke. “Have you ever heard of Asterias?”

  Sanford examined the vast storehouse of knowledge in his mind, and could only come up with a footnote from a history of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. “Some sort of dead sea monster, wasn’t it? A minor adversary of the Deep Ones?”

  Marius leaned forward, clenching his misshapen hands into fists. “Not minor.”

  “I see,” Sanford said. “I was misinformed. Please don’t allow the gap in my education to delay you from getting to the point.”

  “The point is, you are holding the body of our god hostage in your Silver Twilight Lodge!”

  Sanford frowned. “Am I?”

  Marius stood and paced back and forth in front of Sanford. “The ignorance, the insult, the degradation! The last surviving fragment of the Lord of the Depths is rotting away in one of your storerooms, and you don’t even know!”

  “We’re talking about some sort of… specimen, then? A holy relic, like the fingerbone of a saint? Something sacred to your order?” Sanford rolled his eyes. “All of this was hardly necessary. You could have simply offered to buy the specimen from me, or worked out a trade. You zealots always make things so complicated.” Not that Sanford would have consented to give up something so valuable, once he knew its worth, but he wanted to keep them off balance and second-guessing themselves. An enemy’s doubts were always an opportunity.

  Marius frowned. “You mean to say you would have parted with the last piece of our god willingly?”

  “I didn’t even realize I had the cursed thing!” Sanford thought for a moment, then nodded. “It came from that estate, didn’t it, the Innsmouther in exile. I recall now, a jar with a bit of pebbled nastiness floating inside. My archivist catalogued it as ‘a preserved sample of a sea monster, likely apocryphal’, as I recall.” Sanford shook his head. “Really, what a waste of time this has all been. Let’s go to the Lodge, and I’ll have someone fetch the jar for you. We can discuss a fair price on the way.” He nodded toward his dead associate. “Plus restitution for poor Altman.” Sanford wasn’t about to make a deal with this monster, but it was worth a try to escape this slaughtering ground.

  “You think I am a fool?” Marius said.

  “You are demonstrably a fool,” Sanford said. “But there is still time for you to change your ways.”

  “You will give us the body of our god,” Marius said. “Freely, and without cost. Only, it won’t be you, exactly.” He laughed – but it was really more of a titter.

  A suspicion in the back of Sanford’s mind moved closer to certainty, but it was best to be sure. “Being cryptic? Tut-tut. How tiresome. Why can’t you simply say what you mean, Mr Davenport?”

  Marius moved faster than even Sanford’s eyes could follow, until his nose was an inch from Sanford’s own. The flesh of his face rippled, as if he was considering opening his secret maw again, and if he did that, Sanford would have to act quickly, and give up any hope of gathering more information. “You think you know me. But I am not Abel Davenport. He was my progenitor, but I am–”

  “Cain,” Sanford said. This must be the patron of the Berglunds, the monstrous duplicator of men. Sanford had allowed himself to be baited into a trap, but he had no intention of remaining in its jaws.

  “Yes. I took a new name to signal devotion to my god, and became Cain Marius – Cain of the Deeps.” Cain’s breath was hot and stank of salt and rotten fish.

  The world was full of fools, but most weren’t as dangerous as this one. Sanford refused to show even a flicker of fear, and instead chose to display his contempt. “Marius is Latin and means ‘of Mars’ – manly, warlike – not ‘of the deeps’. You’re thinking of the word ‘mare’, I presume, for ‘the sea’. But I suppose you didn’t want to name yourself after a female horse–”

  “You find all this amusing, Mr Sanford? We’ll see how amused you are after I chop off your finger and drop it in that bathtub and grow a copy of you, one with all your memories and your clever mind intact, but loyal to our god, Asterias.”

  “Is that how it works, then?” Sanford whistled. He saw no reason to reveal his knowledge of the duplicated Berglunds… or his part in their deaths. “You were grown from a chopped off finger from the real Abel Davenport? That is a rather potent ability. I could be persuaded to pay a pretty penny for an amulet that makes duplicates of people, even if they do have webbed toes. It’s unfortunate that these copies are loyal to a sea monster, but since said sea monster is dead, I don’t suppose it matters in practical terms–”

  “Asterias will live again!” Cain shouted. Zealots were so predictable. They were humorless, and they liked to sermonize. “We will recover the stolen body of our god, and take it to the temple, and restore it to life! Asterias will multiply, and fill the seas, and the world will become nothing but meat for the Ravening Deep!” Cain pulled the chain off his head and placed it and the amulet around Sanford’s neck–

  Visions exploded in Sanford’s mind. He saw chanting figures, a pool of brine and blood, torchlight, raking claws, a vast mouth that seemed to stretch for acres, the coral spire of a temple illuminated by moonlight, surrounded by stars–

  Sanford decided he’d learned enough. He snapped his head back as hard as he could, driving his skull into Glenda’s nose. She squawked and loosened her grip, and a hard stomp on her instep made her loosen it further – she was barefoot, too, fortunately.

  Sanford ducked before Monty’s axe swung through the air, and then Cain was yelling at his acolyte: “Be careful, fool, we need him alive to make a comet!”

  Sanford snatched up his sword cane from the floor and swept Monty’s legs out from under him, sending the man sprawling into Cain, axe flying. Sanford raced past them and flung open the door–

  To a hallway filled with a dozen people, blocking the way. Some of them were people he recognized, prominent citizens of Arkham and members of his own Order, though none higher than the level of Initiate. These zealots had infiltrated the Lodge, just as he’d feared. Still, it was gratifying to know his instincts were correct, and further gratifying to see that none of these imposters were of sufficient rank to reach the basement where their dead god floated in preserving fluid. Their failure to turn anyone higher had doubtless led to their efforts to arrange this meeting, and capture him.

  Sanford did not wish to be captured. He spun on his heel and ran back into the room, past a startled Cain and Monty, still disentangling themselves on the floor. Glenda, however, was alert enough to grab Sanford’s ankle and send him sprawling forward himself. He kicked backward at her, but she climbed up his back, grabbed the chain of the amulet, and began choking him.

  Fortunately, the chain was just a thin length of silver, and it snapped under pressure. Glenda was pulling it so hard she fell backward with a squawk. The medallion fell from his neck and bounced on the carpet and rolled under a chair. He considered trying to retrieve it, but time was of the essence. Sanford had hoped to escape with the medallion, but at this point, escaping with his life was more important.

  He scrambled back to his feet and rushed for the largest window in the suite. When he got close, he swung his cane as hard as he could at the glass, shattering it. Without pause – to pause was to invite doubt – he launched himself through the opening, and proceeded to plummet toward the pavement several stories below. People on the street screamed and pointed. That was less than ideal.

  He could not banish the specter of terror from his mind as he fell, even knowing he would not die – his mind knew, but his body did not, and his body was a panicked animal. He wore a ring, liberated from a temple in the desert dedicated to the Unspeakable One. He had used that ring to undertake certain rites, lengthy and complex ones, that required a willing and fully informed collaborator. One of those had been hard to find, but some people had so many debts that they would eagerly accept the possibility of ruin to avert the certainty of it, and in the end, Sanford had his volunteer, and his insurance policy.

  Doubt crept in as the pavement approached. What if the rite hadn’t worked? The problem was, with something like this, there was no way to test the effects beforehand. Worse, he realized that if he landed feet first, he might merely shatter his legs and pelvis – the ring’s power would only activate if his wounds were mortal! Sanford flailed about, attempting to change his orientation, to make sure he’d hit headfirst, but it was damnably hard to do, and there was no time–

  He closed his eyes in the moment before impact.

  Sanford hit the pavement with his shoulder and rolled. It hurt no worse than falling out of bed. He got to his feet, brushing bits of glass off his lapels, and looked up. Cain and his adherents were gazing down at him from the broken window above. Sanford looked at his right hand, where the delicate ivory ring had nestled, and watched it crumble to dust and sift away on the breeze. Sanford knew that at that moment, most likely in a little bungalow on the coast of Vermont, a man was lying dead, and when the authorities found him, they would be baffled: why did he have injuries consistent with a fall from a great height, when he was in his own living room?

  Sanford had no other immediate safeguards against certain death, which meant he’d better be going. The keys to the car were on Altman’s corpse upstairs, so he’d have to walk. He hurried away, avoiding the wide-eyed onlookers and their exclamations of shock and disbelief. Would any of them recognize him? Well, if so, he’d simply deny all knowledge of such an event, and let the sighting add to the general air of mystique that surrounded him.

  He hurried along for a few blocks, until he was satisfied he wasn’t being followed, then found a pay phone and dialed the Lodge. His latest Initiate assistant answered, sounding distracted, and he snapped, “Put Van Shaw on.”

  “She, ah, yes, right away.” The phone clattered down, and after too long a wait, the warden picked up.

  Before Sanford could say anything, she spoke: “We have Ruby Standish.”

  That gave him a moment’s pause. The thief was supposed to meet with Berglund, which meant she might have been compromised by Cain’s cult, and they might well have sent her in to steal the artifact while he was distracted by the meeting with Cain. That premise didn’t ring entirely true in his mind – that business at the hotel had been more than a mere distraction – but it was still too strange for him to chalk it up to coincidence. Standish might, at the very least, know something about this cult. “Is she secured?”

  “We’ve got her locked up tight and waiting for your tender attentions.”

  “Good. Come and pick me up.” He told her the closest intersection. He’d have to hide in an alleyway like a common mugger until she arrived. The indignity!