The Watchtower

the reverse. Somehow, some little thing Will and I had done had changed the course of events, and this time the creature had destroyed young Will. Any moment now my Will would vanish into the vortex of time, dissolved into grains no more substantial than the sands beneath our feet. And what would happen to me? Where would I be if I’d never met Will Hughes?
    But after a moment when neither of us vanished into the vortex of time, Will spoke. “He was stealing my face. Look…”
    I glanced down and saw that although the broken figure below us had Will’s face, he still had the webbed fingers and reptilian skin of Marduk. Will laughed. “I thought he was stealing my beauty. That’s what finally made me angry enough to fight back. That’s how vain I was. But he wasn’t just stealing my looks, he was stealing my identity . See? ”
    Will knelt beside the creature and lifted a limp webbed hand. Patches of human skin had grown over the scales. One of the fingers was beginning to detach from the webbing. On it was a ring. The silver ring with the swan insignia, identical to the one I was wearing.
    “I wasn’t even wearing this ring in 1602, but somehow it knew the ring was part of who I was. What kind of demon is it that can suck a man’s essence out along with his blood?”
    I shivered. “I don’t know, but I know it’s a good thing it’s dead. Look, it’s beginning to decay.” I pointed to a webbed foot. Scales were flaking off and blowing away in the wind. “We don’t have much time. You have to…”
    I couldn’t even say it. The thought of drinking from that … thing turned my stomach. What if Morgane had been lying? What if drinking from Marduk didn’t make Will human, but made him like Marduk ? I reached for Will to stop him, but he had already bared his fangs and bent his head to Marduk’s neck. An instant before Will’s teeth sank into the creature’s neck, Marduk’s eyes opened.
    I screamed.
    But it was too late. Marduk’s fangs sank into Will’s neck instead, his half-human, half-webbed fingers clamped over Will’s skull. Will flailed, unable to free himself. I kicked the creature but it was like kicking a slimy concrete wall. I looked around desperately for a weapon, but nothing was on the beach but flimsy driftwood and nothing on my person but a flouncy dress …
    … pinned with Marguerite’s brooch. I tore it off. The pin was long and sharp, but it would feel like a mosquito bite to Marduk. But maybe if I stuck it someplace vulnerable …
    I gripped the brooch in my right hand with the pin sticking out between my index and middle fingers, the way my mother had taught me do with my house keys when I was walking home alone on city streets, and drove it into Marduk’s right eye.
    He loosened his bite on Will’s neck enough to scream, giving Will just enough leverage to get out of his grip and bash his hand hard up against his nose. Cartilage splintered like a lobster’s claw in a nutcracker. Will grabbed the creature’s shoulders and slammed its head back against the rock. Another chitinous crack—but the creature still had its claws in Will. It used them to flip Will over his own head. Will’s body hit the stone base of the tower and slid down limply to the ground.
    I tore my eyes off Will and looked back at the creature. He was standing, listing to one side on one webbed flipper and one human foot. Human flesh rippled over reptilian scales like Saran wrap stretched over garbage. His face was a wreckage of scale and flesh out of which Will’s eyes—one whole, one bloody—stared at me. A human mouth stretched over razor-sharp fangs. It was smiling.
    “Well met, Watchtower,” it rasped. “I’d stay to get better acquainted, but I’m not at my best . I promise, though, that we’ll meet again.”
    He bowed stiffly at the waist, tattered seaweed and eelskin dangling from his ragged hair, then he half limped, half slithered toward the north side of the tower, where he was pulled into a waiting coach by someone inside. Lamplight flared at the coach window, revealing a coat of arms painted on the door—three rearing wolves across the top and two on the bottom flanking diagonal lines with crosses—and in the window, a pair of yellow eyes. I recognized the coat of arms and the eyes as belonging to John Dee, but that wasn’t all I recognized. A third man was in a friar’s robe, his hood pushed back to reveal a face lit up by the lamplight. Oddly enough he was much older