Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 06 (1942-07).djvu/24

“The door opens,” the others intoned.

It was more like a wall, dark and gloom-clotted, that showed itself in the center of the star-circle diagram. From it rose, lazily, a thin little veil of vapor.

“Enough,” decreed the Flying Horned One, and suddenly shot out his two upper talons to seize the shoulders of the magician.

I heard a thin choking squeal for mercy. The Flying Horned One lowered his wings about the man he had grasped, and I could only guess what happened to that man under their jagged shadow. It was sufficiently horrible, I make no doubt. Lifting the revolver, I fired my first shot.

It missed its mark, for I heard it strike a tree-trunk beyond. The three companions of the magician heard my shot and turned toward its sound. Not so the monster who ruled them, for he extended his wings and with a single beat of them rose into air. In all four of his talons he gripped the limp form of the magician. I am sure that I saw blood on that form—dark wetness, anyway. Two great flops carried the victim above the diagram and its inner opening. The talons let go, and the body fell into the hole, away from sight.

“Ohhh!” intoned the others, as if it were part of the ritual. Probably they were entranced, half delirious, unable to see their peril. Their lord flew back at and among them.

“In after him,” he grunted, and seized two of them by their necks.

I fired a second shot, more carefully. It tore a hole through one of those wing membranes. For a moment I saw the tear, quite large and ragged, and moonlight through it. Then the Flying Horned One had dashed his two captives at the hole, one after the other. They vanished. I could swear that the hole gulped at and seized them, like a hungry, knowing mouth.

I came into the open, firing twice more. But my hand trembled, and both bullets went wide. This revolver, with which Jaeger had killed so coolly and capably at our earlier fight, was doing very little for me. Then I ran close. The Flying Horned One had seized the last of his worshippers, the fat woman, and twitched her in front of him as I fired a fifth time.

She caught my bullet, and whether it inflicted a slight or serious wound I cannot say. The Flying Horned One whinnied, and tossed her after the others. She, too, was vanished. I faced the dark winged silhouette, with not a dozen yards between us.

“You, too, have power,” the inhuman voice addressed me levelly. “Power, but not wit. Do not use the weapon again, it is empty.”

That much was truth. Jaeger had loaded it with five charges, the hammer being down on an empty chamber. I poised the gun to use as a club, and came slowly forward. The winged form moved to meet me.

“You have escaped,” and the voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “Nothing that I said, or my slaves did, harmed you. Man, have you lived in more worlds than one, like me?”

I made no reply. I could think of none. Two talons reached out to clutch at me.

Then we struggled and fought. He tore at my face and at my chest, as though he would rend my flesh away. I struck with my fists and the clubbed revolver, but made no impression. His substance did not seem to have any true resistance, yet I knew that he had strength and weight.

“At my leisure, in another place—I will examine you,” he told me, and heaved me toward the glowing diagram.

I grabbed him close to the elbow-joints, and we both fell heavily toward the black hole.

I struck the ground first, and there was a flash of fire, real or imaginary. Too, there was a little breathless shriek, out of the