Page 42 of Dark Stars
"Black marble," Alejo said. "Who the helldragged slabs of marble all the way out here? Sorry, but I don'tlike youthatmuch."
Bobby laughed so hard and loud he startledthe few birds lingering in the creepy space. "I don't like me thatmuch, and I have arcana to make it easier if I wanted. Marblewouldn't be my choice, which just emphasizes that I didn't haveanything to do with this."
He touched his fingertips to the very edgeof the altar, shivering as the power in it zipped through him likea low-level current. Sosweet. Soalluring. Preciousdevotion, desperate pleading, all for him. They wantedhisattention,hispower,his—
"Bobby?"
He jerked his hand away, shaking his head ashe stumbled back. "Fuck, I forgot how bad it could be."
"Bad? You looked like you had found the bestheroin on the market."
Laughing weakly, Bobby said, "You're not faroff. Worship for us is a lot like drugs for humans. Always chasingsweet, delicious worship, all that desperate offering and pleading,soeager." He shuddered and shook it off. "Blech, I feellike I need a shower now."
"Who do you think built this? Why?"
"I don't know, and we really need toinvestigate the altar and the whole area thoroughly before we doanything else, but ultimately we'll have to decide if we leave thealtar alone and use it as bait, or destroy it and see whathappens."
"I think we should break it," Alejo said."Whatever's happening, the sooner it stops happening, the better.If we use it as bait, we might encounter something beyond even yourcapabilities."
That was a terrifying idea, but given thedark itself had been hiding things from him, it was alsounfortunately a wholly reasonable idea. "Agreed."
Chapter Sixteen
They set to work exploring, but nearly anhour later, all they had turned up was a whole lot of nothing.Bobby huffed. "This is frustrating. What could possibly hidethemselves so fucking thoroughly?"
"Break the altar and see what happens?"
"Stand back," Bobby said as he turned hisfull attention to the altar.
It truly was beautiful, in a dark andtwisting way, like fresh blood reflecting moonlight, or vulturessitting in a tree waiting patiently. Black as night, shot throughwith bands of silver and gold and faintly glowing white. No earthlymarble, but drawn from a place no map would ever mark, no travelerwould ever find.
He could feel the touch of every hand toever rest on it, every prayer cast, every fallen tear, every dropof blood spilled.
So easy. It would be so very easy to takethe worship, consume it, grow more powerful, seek out more and moreand more. Grow in power like his relatives.
Leave behind all that he cared about,because it would no longer appeal to him, not like the might andpower of the Endless Dark. No more books. No more tres leche andcoffee and ice cream. No more teasing his best friends. No moremysteries to solve. No moreAlejo, not the way they werenow, and that hurt the most.
So he summoned his power, releasing much ofhis human form to do it, reaching out dark and twisting tendrils towrap around the altar andsqueezed. He screamed with theeffort, a sound that reverberated across planes, fireflies flockingto him in support, filling the black clearing with more light thanshould be possible.
Thecrackwas like a hundredthunderstorms compressed to a single sound, and the altar fell tothe ground in two large pieces, smaller bits of rubble scatteringaround them.
Bobby shrank back down to his human form andfell to his knees, hands braced in the damp earth to keep him fromface-planting entirely. His chest heaved with the effort to drawproper breaths, sweat glistening and dripping, limbs trembling withexhaustion.
And power. All the power that had remainedin the altar flowed into him, like water rushing downhill. Lovely,delicious power. Clawing at the dirt, Bobby pushed himself to hisfeet. He could hear Alejo calling his name, the fear and worry inhis voice, but he could only focus on this one thing right now.Lifting his hands, spread wide, palms up as though in supplicationor offering, he intoned, "I, Ctheldush, gift this power, rightfullymine, to Cythlla, the Secret One, as a show of my love andloyalty."
The power drained from him slowly, and for amoment he could hear his mother's voice, a cry from the deep anddark, like a flickering light at the bottom of the ocean.
Then it was gone, and he was back to beingsimply Bobby—and fell forward, exhausted and weak, into Alejo'sarms, out cold.
He stirred moments later, head on Alejo'slap, staring up at the black trees that surrounded the makeshiftshrine someone had made on his behalf. "Well, that wasinteresting."
Alejo gave a wobbly laugh. "Interesting isone word for it, you stupid jerk. You could have warned me thatbreaking the altar would cause you to collapse dramatically."
"Didn't think it would be that bad." Bobbyslowly pushed himself upright, helped by Alejo. Thankfully, otherthan the barest bit of vertigo that quickly settled, he felt fine.Well, exhausted, but that was to be expected. He looked across theclearing at the broken altar, which was already beginning to turngray. Within a few days, it would gray entirely and collapse intodust that would be scattered by the wind. Nothing would remain ofthe altar built in his name that the dark had kept hidden fromhim.
Pushing to his feet, Bobby stretched andyawned. "Did anything happen while I was out?"
"This appeared in the rubble, and there wassome music for a little while. Really faint, could barely hearit."
