Broken Crescent by S. Andrew Swann

skin, and after thirty seconds, Nate was convinced that the fabric was host to some insect colony that found him rather tasty.
    Scarface picked up everything Nate had worn, and piled it next to the pouch the officer had given him. Then he walked around the sarcophagus/altar and bent down. When he straightened up, he held a red mask in his hands. Facing away from them, Scarface lowered the hood of his robe and placed the mask on his face.
    Scarface had white hair that was thinning enough that Nate could see the rectilinear patterns carved into the skin of his scalp as well as his face. The mask had its own hood of black fabric that covered the back of Scarface’s head, so Nate only had a glimpse.
    Scarface turned around and faced them.
    The mask was blood red and decorated with inlaid gold and ivory. It had bulging eyes and a gaping, fanged mouth. The nose was long and hooked, the chin pointed. Nate noticed a change in the room when the mask was on. The guards around him, straightened somewhat. Scarface’s posture was more formal, his body language lost the characteristics of annoyance and disgust—and if anything, the loss of those human characteristics made Scarface seem much more intimidating.
    Scarface spoke something in a language that Nate swore was not the tongue he had heard everyone speak until now. Scarface didn’t speak above a conversational tone, but something in the words made Nate feel sick. The liquid vowels reminded him too much of the thing that had occupied the darkness between the Case campus and the world he was in now.
    As Scarface spoke, Nate saw him gesture with his hands. The motions were almost too quick to see, made, arms lowered, with the first three fingers of each hand. Almost typing in the air.
    The words themselves were odd, monosyllabic, spoken with no emphasis or inflection. As if someone was sounding out a random string of letters, or chanting from memory.
    Scarface spoke that way for less than ten seconds, but the words seemed to add a physical weight to the air around Nate. Nate looked around and saw that the guards had backed all the way to the entrance to the chamber.
    This can’t be good. . . .
    Nate didn’t want to be left with Scarface. With the guards he at least had some clue as to what was going on. Scarface was frightening and alien. . . .
    Nate saw lights flicker in the rear of the long chamber, on the other side of the columns. The lights soon resolved into torches carried by other robed, masked figures. In a few minutes Nate was faced by a semicircle of brown-robed men and women. All wore masks, though none as elaborate as Scarface’s. Their masks were blocked out in basic primary colors, mostly red and yellow. All had prominent noses and chins, some had fangs, some had beards, some had long tongues. All variants on the devil face that Scarface wore.
    “Okay, guys,” Nate whispered, “If we’re doing a virgin sacrifice, I have bad news for you. . . .”
    Scarface barked something. Unlike before, his tone wasn’t bitchy and irritated. The tone was one of command. Nate turned to see the guards back away, closing a set of massive doors behind them. When the doors slammed home, Nate felt the impact in his chest.
    Oh, fuck. . . .
    He considered running, but there was the problem of where, exactly he’d run to. The masked congregation might not be carrying obvious weapons, but there were a dozen of them, half with torches. He couldn’t outrun all of them, and he didn’t think it would be fun being beaten with a flaming club.
    Two of Scarface’s followers carried in a heavy wooden trunk where they placed Nate’s possessions. Scarface shut the box solemnly. They closed it with an elaborately carved padlock. Nate could see hints of the patterns that he had seen carved in Scarface’s skin.
    They really got happy with that motif.
    Scarface spoke some more of that other language when he closed the padlock. To Nate’s eyes, the lock closed seamlessly and had no obvious