“Eat that.” Her face was calm as the whip snapped back from them. There was a horrifying eldritch scream that made Matt’s hair prickle on his scalp.

Drummond looked panicked, and the hand holding the book snapped back. “What have you done?” He looked from the creature, whose face was now a knot of massed tentacles as they pulled at the dagger’s hilt, and then back to Adira Senesh. “He will be angry.”

For the first time Adira’s lips curled up into a smile. “So, he can be hurt.” The Mossad agent spun, picking up momentum, as she crossed toward Drummond almost faster than the eye could follow. When she within three feet of him, she finished her turn, and in her hand was the long carving knife.

“Ha!” she yelled as it flashed down with blinding speed and great force across Drummond’s wrist. The limb parted and fell to the ground, the fingers still clamped around the Book.

Abrams had sprinted to retrieve the guns, and Matt leaped for the Book at the creature’s feet, a seed of confidence taking root in his chest.

But then the unthinkable happened. One of the tentacles drew forth the dagger and dropped it to the ground. Black blood oozed, but the writhing settled and the yellow eyes glared balefully at Adira. The Father seemed to inflate slightly.

Drummond grimaced in either shock or fear, clutching a wrist that spurted dark blood onto the even darker sand. “Heal me, Father, heal me.” He spun to scream at the trio. “You insects; how dare you?! When I am king, I will have you tortured for the rest of your lives. I will torture you, then heal your wounds, and then torture you again and again and again and again.”

The Father seemed to grow another foot taller. The hand started to rise again.

Abrams distributed their guns, and Adira immediately shouldered the rifle, a grim smile on her face.

“We need to get the hell out of here,” Matt yelled, backing up, but flipping through the Book hurriedly, attempting to catch up to where he had stopped trying to understand the symbols. He read quickly while keeping one eye on the creature growing before them.

The Father pointed again, this time the long boneless fingers dripped with black blood. “You will be stripped of your flesh, and boiled in the acid bath of my belly for eternity. But first, I will make you watch as I consume your world. By the time we have finished with the planet, there will be nothing left save the worms in the earth.”

Drummond half turned, his bloody stump still extended. “Except for my kingdom. There will be subjects and some servants in my kingdom: you promised.”

The yellow eyes shifted to the man, and the writhing alien face carried a look of such derision that Matt very clearly saw the moment Charles Drummond finally seemed to realize where he stood in Old One’s plans. His arms dropped to his sides and the color drained from his face.