She stopped the thought before it could go further. All the plans we’ve set into motion would end in Tolenka’s death. How can I stop this from happening? How can I convince Jayewardene and the others? “Is there a way to deal with this? Can we end this somehow and stop this thing? There has to be a way. There has to be.”

At that, Baba Yaga only shook her head. “I know this: it is Tolenka that is holding back the Dark God. As long as he lives, the thing inside can’t step through completely. For there to be any hope at all, you must keep my Tolenka alive. As for the rest…” Baba Yaga shrugged.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Barbara told her.

She had no idea how they might accomplish that.

“How do we know he’s not already dead?” Franny struggled to keep his voice level. To emulate the man on the tape. Just the facts, ma’am. “I was in that hospital room in Talas. People were going crazy then and that was days ago. Nobody’s replacing the IV bags, or changing his Depends, much less feeding him. And judging from the pictures this thing has been gorging itself on pain and death and fear.”

“If Tolenka were dead we would not be having this conversation. The madness would fill the world,” Baba Yaga said. “He was a strong man. He knows what’s at stake. He will fight to the end.”

“We have no choice but to proceed as if he’s still alive,” Babel said.

“And whatever you do, you must do it quickly!”

“Then I best get to it.”

Babel left.

“She’s smart,” Baba Yaga said. “She reminds me a bit of myself. I was prettier, of course. Well, we shall see. Perhaps she is clever enough for this.”

Baba Yaga frowned at the tape player. She pushed it roughly aside. Franny felt a stir of pity.

“It must have been hard. Hearing his voice. How long has it been since you listened to those tapes?”

The cold eyes pierced him again. “You are a sentimental ass, Francis. Go away.”

Nothing had made Marcus’s case about the evil coming out of Talas like the creature Vasel’s coin had turned into body waste. After that, when Marcus pleaded for the villagers to flee they had ears for it.

Baikonur. The Cosmodrome. The names passed from mouth to mouth in fervent whispers. It seemed as good a place as any, and a much better one than a village apparently in shuffling distance from a city of horrors. The entire village packed up and prepared for the journey in a frantic rush, all of them with an eye toward the bloodred sky that made a beautiful twilight somehow sinister. Though they worked quickly and with collective purpose, there was much to be accounted for: joker bodies of all shapes and sizes, some with debilitating deformities, arguments over what could and couldn’t be brought and over how their precious few vehicles should be packed and passengers distributed. They didn’t roll out until the dead of night.