Host of Sheets (shyan)

Chp 13. Touch

"No, I need to you look, Ryan." His fingers reached out to slide along Ryan's neck, the line of his jaw, cupping his face from behind to hold him firm. 

"I need you to understand."

Ryan was shaking under his grip.

"This is our new god now. Made of building blocks of flesh and blood. Everett didn't understand before, but I think I do, now? Best as a mortal guy can, anyway. There's a thousand, million dimensions. There's bound to be a tear between two or three. And who says the tear has to be inanimate?"

And as if following his words, the tear rippled, vines parting to let bodies float to the surface, hands reaching out for them, but more this time than they had seen before. A hundred faces, a thousand eyes staring at them all clustered together in the eye of the storm. Ryan jerked, and Shane's grip tightened.

The faces sunk back into darkness, falling back all in unison to leave just one. One small frame reaching out for them. As the liquid darkness dripped away from the face, they recognized their intern, the first of the god's fallen.

"...Mariah?" Ryan whispered. The god with the intern's face watched him with blank eyes.

"No. I am all." She whispered, with something else's voice. And then she dipped back under the surface.

The tear swelled and rippled, and started flipping through its collected faces like cards, and Shane slowly began to notice they were appearing in the order they fell. One by one, through the dozens. Ryan wasn't breathing beside him. It slowed down to a trickle as it got to the last few, and Shane recognized each one. Quinta. Curly. Keith...

Shane winced inside. If they were appearing in the order of which they'd fallen, he knew then which face would come last.

And he was right; the last head dipped forward and Steven blinked dully at them. Still recognizable, even coated in mercury and stardust. Shane stared up at him, their positions of power reversed.

"We are his eyes, his ears, his hands. The god of the mountain is like every other creature that lives below the surface. Visionless, but sensitive in other ways." Shane said softly, "It needs us- his veins."

Ryan wasn't listening to his explanation, just staring at Steven.

"Steven- he was alive, I saw him-"

"He's not feeling any pain," Shane said smoothly, and it was his first real lie to Ryan. He didn't put much stock in lying; honesty was generally easier. Shane liked being blunt, and he knew Ryan appreciated that- trusted that about him, even. But judging by the struck look on Ryan's face, he figured it was something he might have wanted to hear.

And it wasn't like Shane even fucking knew what Steven was feeling at this point. Shane had never gotten this far before. The old town hadn't had enough people to wake the god even this miniscule amount-- and that was before his lovely wife had killed him and burned the mine down, trapping the ghosts inside.

He'd never seen the god react like this before. It made his heart pound with something between anticipation and dread. The Buzzfeed headquarters alone had already been so much bigger than Crestmorn- but not big enough, if the god wasn't crawling out from the walls yet.

But. There were plenty more people Shane could draw in. This was no small western town.

This was Los Angeles, and he could bring the god millions.

"You should kneel, Ryan." Shane whispered as the tendrils dripped out of the tear, slopped onto the floor, spreading outwards to reach across the room, investigating. Ryan jerked out of his grip and took a step back.