Page 22 of Insidious Monsters
“It’s called Cnaathreth.”
“What? Who told you…You made contact?”
I grinned at him. “I did.”
“Tell me everything.”
* * *
Quentin insistedwe go straight to his room and call this information in.
I registered Genevieve’s shock as I relayed the first contact information. She recovered quickly, though, reining in her emotions and arranging her face into a neutral expression.
I finished relaying the encounter. “They know about us, about the rifts and the rift walkers, and they don’t care. They have no interest in our world.”
“How? How can they know?”
I winced. “He’s spoken to rift walkers before and then wiped their memories.”
She blanched. “Do they all have that skill?”
“I don’t know. But I can try to find out. He didn’t try to wipe mine. He made a deal.”
She pressed her lips together. “Just because he made a deal with you, and just because he says they have no interest in our world, doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“I know, but I believe him.”
“You’re young, August. You have much to learn.”
“They could have attacked us by now if they wanted to.”
“Maybe they can’t. Maybe they have the same issue we do when it comes to the atmosphere,” she said.
“The eldritch creatures seem to manage just fine.”
“Six months is the longest we know one can last,” Genevieve said. “Doesn’t mean they can last indefinitely.”
She had a valid point. There were too many unknown variables. “He said he believed one of his men had passed through the rift and he wants me to bring him back. In return, he’ll answer my questions about Cnaathreth. We do this and we could get the answers we need.”
She tapped away on her keyboard, then shook her head. “The last entry was two weeks ago. The handler in charge is Keswick. Case still unresolved.”
“That could be our target,” Quentin said.
“Work with him and his rift walker,” Genevieve ordered.
Quentin tensed. “Can’t the case be transferred to us?”
“No. If the entrant is a…person, then it might be a harder one to bag than a regular eldritch, and weneedto bag him. Two rift walkers on the case is better than one. If we find him, it’ll be the first step in building relations with this other world.”
Relations was a broad word. “What is our objective, exactly?”
She blinked sharply. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Whydo we want to build relations. We know they’re not interested in our world, and we can’t exactly take over theirs, considering we can’t survive for more than a few hours at a time.”
“Peace, August. A treaty. We can’t survive on their side, but if it turns out that they can survive on ours… Well, they might not have any interest in our world now, but the tide could turn.”
Valid point. “Okay. Understood. We’ll get to work.”
