Page 597 of Flirting with Darkness

THE STORM

The clock’s face glowed much more brightly now. Its glow grew so intense, it illuminated the space inside the circle even more than the fire itself.

Ghost could scarcely look at it now.

Truthfully, he had nearly forgotten about the magick clock in the strangeness of the smoke’s behavior, and that essence he’d seen his father pulling from the fire. Now he gazed at the clock’s face, which stood directly in front of his father, between him and the black stone archway.

Ghost realized the clock had changed in other ways.

Not only the glowing thing.

Less-explicable ways.

It had changed in ways Ghost almost could not believe, ways even less explainable than the burning blood, or his father’s ability to drink thick clouds of smoke through his bare skin.

The clock’s face appeared smaller now.

The large disc, which had been the size of an old Viking shield before, when Ghost first came across it down here, now appeared less than half that size.

Moreover, it was still shrinking.

It still balanced on the metal stand where Ghost first found it.

Now it looked closer to the size of a grandfather clock.

It shrank down more.

Now it was the size of a clock on a fireplace mantle.

It continued to grow smaller… then smaller again… until now it was the size of a clock in a drawing room… then a smaller clock on a smaller table in that drawing room…

Then it was smaller still.

And smaller still.

Until finally…

…it shrank down to the size of a small pocket watch.

It balanced there, perfectly, on one gold end, its blue face shining like a small searchlight, throwing out star-like patterns in the air in front of it.

That air began to swirl around it in a clockwise pattern, forming a small, lazy tornado.

Ghost realized something else.

His father’s chanting had stopped.

He fought to breathe, gripping the sword he again held in both hands, trying to make sense of everything in front of him.

The fire burned lower now.

Its green and red flames were almost entirely gone.

The remaining smoke still permeated the room. If anything, it smelled even more vile now. Ghost found himself thinking the life had gone from it entirely, that it burned off the last of its biological matter, but it was already dead.

Then he realized something else.

That shield he’d felt, the thing that raised the hair on his arms and the back of his neck…

---