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confined in a small body, and, mere seconds later, to be torn to pieces by an enraged
woman who’d just watched her only hope for ongoing life fall into a monster’s mouth.
The purple shadow-beast abruptly disappeared, replaced by Marla cloaked in white,
crouching amid the remains of Mutex’s body. Small golden frogs jumped all around
her, but she paid them no mind. Marla looked up at Tlaltecuhtli, who was now close to
thirty feet high and spreading in every direction, crushing bushes and bridges and
statues as he expanded. The bronze of the Buddha had changed to something closer to
green flesh, and distinct limbs were forming, expanding out from the central mass.
There was no sign yet of Mutex’s consciousness, but he was in there, B knew, and once
the monster was fully formed, he would strike with zeal and calculation, as Mutex had
in his smaller form. B could already see the vague outlines of the gargantuan monster he
and Marla had seen after their visit to the Possible Witch. Marla backed away, staring
up at the frog-monster, her face empty of emotion, but B could see that she knew, that
she understood that Mutex’s mind still lived on. But he didn’t know what, if anything,
she could do about it.
“I wish…” Cole said, looking down at the golden frogs that covered the ground between
them and Marla. He clenched his hands into fists. “I wish I could do something.”
Rondeau gazed up at the frog-monster, and for once, he didn’t look bored at all. He
looked terrified.
Ch’ang Hao was methodically stomping on the poison dart frogs and kicking their
remains aside. He went to stand beside Marla, and the two of them studied the swelling
frog-monster like surveyors looking over a bit of rocky landscape. Marla spoke to
Ch’ang Hao—B couldn’t hear the words—and the snake god shook his head, grinding
another frog under his foot as he did so.
After the alien intelligence receded, and Marla was no longer occupied by trying to
figure out the best way to kill Ch’ang Hao for his earlier threats, she said, “I’m fucked.”
She had to shout over the sounds coming from Tlaltecuhtli, the occasional moans and
the constant low sounds of meat stretching.
“I see toes,” Ch’ang Hao said, his deep voice carrying easily over the noise. “And the
beginning of fingers. There are mouths appearing on the elbows and knees. Once this
creature assumes its form, it will begin killing. And once it kills, it will grow larger.
That is the way of such gods.” He sounded completely indifferent, and she supposed he
was—he didn’t care if humankind and all its works were destroyed. He likely hoped
they would be.
“I can’t fight this thing,” Marla said. “I can’t attack it any more than I could attack the
Golden Gate Bridge, any more than I could kill the moon. In a few more minutes, we’re
going to get crushed just from the way this motherfucker is expanding. It’s Mutex in
there, too. I just ripped apart the real Tlaltecuhtli. I saw it in its eyes. Poor thing was
confused—didn’t understand what the hell was going on. I actually felt sorry for it.”
She did now anyway—she hadn’t felt much of anything when she’d killed it, or for a
little while afterward, until the cloak’s effect wore off.