Darkfall

began to quiver and strain and draw laboriously toward the others. This evilly enchanted earth was apparently trying to regain its previous forms, struggling to reconstitute the goblins.
    One small lump, lying apart from all the others, began to shape itself into a tiny, wickedly clawed foot.
    “Die, damnit,” Rebecca said. “ Die! ”
    Sprawled on the rim of the pit, certain that he was going to be pulled into it, his attention split between the void in front of him and the pain blazing in his savaged hand, Jack screamed-
    -and at that same instant the tentacle around his arm and torso abruptly whipped free of him. The second demonic appendage slithered away from his left leg a moment later.
    The hell-light dimmed.
    Now, the beast below was wailing in pain and torment of its own. Its tentacles lashed erratically at the night above the pit.
    In that moment of chaos and crisis, the gods of Rada must have visited a revelation upon Jack, for he knew-without understanding how he knew-that it was his blood that had made the beast recoil from him. In a confrontation with evil, perhaps the blood of a righteous man was (much like holy water) a substance with powerful magical qualities. And perhaps his blood could accomplish what holy water alone could not.
    The rim of the pit began to crumble again. The hole grew wider. The Gates were again rolling open. The light rising out of the earth turned from orange to crimson once more.
    Jack pushed up from his prone position and knelt at the brink. He could feel the earth slowly-and then not so slowly-coming apart beneath his knees. Blood was streaming off his torn hand, dripping from all five fingertips. He leaned out precariously, over the pit, and shook his hand, flinging scarlet droplets into the center of the seething light.
    Below, the shrieking and keening swelled to an even more ear- splitting pitch than it had when he’d tossed the holy water into the breach. The light from the devil’s furnace dimmed and flickered, and the perimeter of the pit stabilized.
    He cast more of his blood into the chasm, and the tortured cries of the damned faded but only slightly. He blinked and squinted at the pulsing, shifting, mysteriously indefinable bottom of the hole, leaned out even farther to get a better look-
    -and with a whoosh of blisteringly hot air, a huge face rose up toward him, ballooning out of the shimmering light, a face as big as a truck, filling most of the pit. It was the leering face of all evil. It was composed of slime and mold and rotting carcasses, a pebbled and cracked and lumpy and pock-marked face, dark and mottled, riddled with pustules, maggot-rich, with vile brown foam dripping from its ragged and decaying nostrils. Worms wriggled in its night- black eyes, and yet it could see, for Jack could feel the terrible weight of its hateful gaze. Its mouth broke open-a vicious, jagged slash large enough to swallow a man whole-and bile-green fluid drooled out. Its tongue was long and black and prickled with needle- sharp thorns that punctured and tore its own lips as it licked them.
    Dizzied, dispirited, and weakened by the unbearable stench of death that rose from the gaping mouth, Jack shook his wounded hand above the apparition, and a rain of blood fell away from his weeping stigmata. “Go away,” he told the thing, choking on the tomb-foul air. “Leave. Go. Now .”
    The face receded into the furnace glow as his blood fell upon it. In a moment it vanished into the bottom of the pit.
    He heard a pathetic whimpering. He realized he was listening to himself.
    And it wasn’t over yet. Below, the multitude of voices became louder again, and the light grew brighter, and dirt began to fall away from the perimeter of the hole once more.
    Sweating, gasping, squeezing his sphincter muscles to keep his bowels from loosening in terror, Jack wanted to run away from the pit. He wanted to flee into the night, into the storm and the sheltering city. But he knew that was no solution. If he didn’t stop it now, the pit would widen until it grew large enough to swallow him no matter where he hid.
    With his uninjured right hand, he pulled and squeezed and clawed at the wounds in his left hand until they had opened farther, until his blood was flowing much faster. Fear had anesthetized him; he no longer felt any pain. Like a Catholic priest swinging a sacred vessel to cast holy water or incense in a ritual of sanctification, he sprayed his blood into the yawning mouth of