The red eyes gleam like lasers under a thin film of water. The chrome-steel jaws are parted to show row upon row of razor teeth. The thing’s blades, barbs, and cutting edges emerge from the enfolding red curtain robe in scores of places. It does not blink. It does not appear to breathe. Now that the gliding has stopped, it is as motionless as a nightmare sculpture.

Rhadamanth Nemes is smiling at it.

Still holding the silly flashlight laser, I remember the confrontation on God’s Grove years ago.

The Nemes thing had gone silver and blurry and simply disappeared, reappearing next to twelve-year-old Aenea without warning. It had planned to cut off my friend’s head and carry it away in a burlap bag, and it would have done so had not the Shrike appeared then. The Nemes thing could do so now without hope of my reacting in time. These things moved outside of time. I know the agony of a parent watching its child step into the path of a speeding groundcar, unable to move in time to protect her.

Superimposed on this terror is the pain of a lover unable to protect his beloved. I would die in a second to protect Aenea from any of these things—including the Shrike—indeed, may die in a second, in less than a second—but my death will not protect her. I grind my molars in frustration.

Moving only my eyes, afraid that I will precipitate the slaughter if I move a hand or head or muscle, I see that the Shrike is not staring at Aenea or the primary Nemes thing—it is staring directly at John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa. The frog-faced priest must feel the weight of this bloodred gaze, for the Cardinal’s complexion has gone a pure white above the red of his robe.

Aenea moves now. Stepping to my left side, she slips her right hand in my empty left one and squeezes my fingers. It is not a child’s request for reassurance; it is a signal of reassurance to me.

“You know how it will end,” she says softly to the Cardinal, ignoring the Nemes things as they coil like cats ready to pounce.

The Grand Inquisitor licks his thick lips. “No, I do not. There are the three of…”

“You know how it will end,” interrupts Aenea, her voice still soft. “You were on Mars.”

Mars? I think. What the hell does Mars have to do with anything? Lightning flickers again through the skylight, throwing wild shadows. The faces of the hundreds of terror-frozen revelers are like white ovals painted on black velvet around us. I realize in a flash of insight as sudden and illuminating as the lightning that the metaphysical biosphere of this world—Zen-evolved or not—is riddled with Tibetan myth-inspired demons and malevolent spirits: cancerous nyen earth spirits; sadag “lords of the soil” who haunt builders who disturb their realms; tsen red spirits who live in rocks; gyelpo spirits of dead kings who have failed their vows, dead, deadly, dressed all in pale armor; dud spirits who are so malevolent that they feed only on human flesh and wear black, beetle skin; mamo female deities as ferocious as unseen riptides; matrika sorceresses of charnel grounds and cremation platforms, first sensed by a whiff of their carrion breath; grahas planetary deities that cause epilepsy and other violent, thrashing illnesses; nodjin guardians of wealth in the soil—death to diamond miners—and a score more of night things, teethed things, clawed things, and killing things. Lhomo and the others have told me the stories well and often. I look at the white faces staring in shock at the Shrike and the Nemes creatures and think—This night will not be so strange in the telling for these people. “The demon cannot vanquish all three of them,” says Cardinal Mustafa, saying the word “demon” aloud even as I think the word. I realize that he is speaking about the Shrike.

Aenea ignores the comment. “It will harvest your cruciform first,” she says softly. “I cannot stop it from doing that.”

Cardinal Mustafa’s head jerks back as if he has been slapped. His pale countenance grows visibly paler. Taking their cue from Rhadamanth Nemes, the clone-siblings coil tighter as if building energy toward some terrible transformation. Nemes has returned her black gaze to Aenea and the creature is smiling so broadly now that her rearmost teeth are visible.

“Stop!” cries Cardinal Mustafa and his shout echoes from the skylight and floor. The great horns cease rumbling. Revelers clutch one another in a rustling of fingernails on silk. Nemes flashes the Cardinal a look of malevolent loathing and near defiance.

“Stop!” screams the Pax holy man again, and I realize that he is talking to his own creatures first and foremost. “I invoke the command of Albedo and the Core, by the authority of the Three Elements I command thee!” This last desperate scream has the cadence of a shouted exorcism, some profound ritual, but even I can tell that it is not Catholic or Christian. It is not the Shrike being invoked under an iron grip of talismanic control here; it is his own demons.

Nemes and her siblings slide backward on the parquet floor as if pulled by invisible strings. The clone male and clone female move around us until they join Nemes in front of Mustafa.

The Cardinal smiles but it is a tremulous gesture. “My pets will not be unleashed until we speak again. I give my word as a prince of the Church, unholy child. Do I have your word that this”—he gestures toward the bladed Shrike in its velvet tatters—“this demon will not stalk me until then?”

Aenea appears as calm as she has through the entire incident. “I do not control it,” she says. “Your only safety is to leave this world in peace.”

The Cardinal is eyeing the Shrike. The man seems poised to leap away if the tall apparition flexes so much as a finger blade.

Nemes and her ilk continue standing between him and the Shrike. “What assurance have I,” he says, “that the thing will not follow me into space… or back to Pacem?”

“None,” says Aenea.

The Grand Inquisitor points a long finger at my friend. “We have business here that has nothing to do with you,” he says sharply, “but you will never leave this world. I swear this to you by the bowels of Christ.”

Aenea returns his gaze and says nothing.

Mustafa turns and stalks away with a swish of his red robe and a rasp of his slippers on the polished floor. The Nemes things back all the way across the floor while following him, the male and female clones holding their gazes on the Shrike, Nemes piercing Aenea with her stare.

They pass through the curtain tent of the Dalai Lama’s private portal and are gone.

The Shrike stays where it is, lifeless, its four arms frozen in front of it, finger blades catching the last drops of Oracle light before the moon moves behind the mountain and is lost.

Revelers begin moving toward the exits on a wave of whispers and exclamations.

The orchestra thumps, clangs, and whistles as instruments are packed in a hurry and dragged or carried away. Aenea continues holding my hand as a small circle remains around us.

“Buddha’s ass!” cries Lhomo Dondrub and strides over to the Shrike, testing his finger against a metallic thorn rising from the thing’s chest. I see blood on his finger in the dimming light. “Fantastic!” cries Lhomo and swigs from a goblet of rice beer. The Dorje Phamo moves to Aenea’s side. She takes my friend’s left hand, goes to one knee, and sets Aenea’s palm against her wrinkled forehead. Aenea removes her hand from mine as she takes the Thunderbolt Sow gently by the arms and helps her rise.

“No,” whispers Aenea.

“Blessed One,” whispers the Dorje Phamo. “Amata, Immortal One; Arhat, Perfected One; Sammasambuddha, Fully Awakened One; command us and teach us the dhamma.”

“No,” snaps Aenea, still gentle with the old woman as she pulls her to her feet but stern of countenance. “I will teach you what I know and share what I have when the time arrives. I can do no more. The hour for myth has passed.”