The Gates (2009) Read Online Free PDF Page B

a nice cup of tea, but, thanks to the demon Graham, turns out to taste soggy and a bit dusty. Eventually, because he wouldn’t go away, and kept trying to muscle in on their operations, the five deities appealed to an aide to the Great Malevolence himself, which was how Nurd came to be occupying a not-very-interesting piece of nowhere-in-particular with not-very-much-to-do, but had decided to make the best of it by calling it his kingdom. To keep him company, his faithful servant Wormwood had been expelled along with him, an expulsion that Wormwood considered more than a bit unfair because he hadn’t done anything wrong at all, except to be careless in his choice of employer. The Great Malevolence was not entirely without mercy (or, indeed, a sense of humor), for he had seen fit to give Nurd a slightly used throne upon which to sit, and a cushion for Wormwood, as well as a box in which Nurd could keep various bits and pieces that had proved of no use whatsoever during his banishment. Thus it was that Nurd and Wormwood had been sitting in the middle of nowhere, if not for eternity, then since a few minutes past. They had never had very much to talk about. Now they had even less.
    Wormwood rubbed his head, where a new bump had been added to the already impressive collection that adorned his misshapen skull, and, not for the first time, thought that Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities, really was a bit of a sod.
    Nurd, heedless of Wormwood’s resentment, yawned once more, and promptly disappeared.
    •   •   •
    There wasn’t a name for the bundle of blue energy that had managed to escape from the Large Hadron Collider. It was part of that 96 percent of matter and energy unknown to science, and it wasn’t an intended result of the collider experiment at all. Rather, the great explosions in the collider had, very briefly, opened a portal, and on the other side of the portal the Great Malevolence had been waiting for precisely that moment. The little bundle of energy was the equivalent of a piece of wood that has been wedged beneath a door to keep it open. Now the challenge was to start putting pressure on the door in order to open it wider, because the Great Malevolence was immense. What Mrs. Abernathy had glimpsed, before she met her unfortunate end, were the gates of Hell, which had been put in place to keep the Great Malevolence within the boundaries of that awful place. The little piece of blue energy had created a small hole in those gates, large enough for some of the Great Malevolence’s agents to pass through. They were scouts, and guardians of the portal. They also represented the first step in the Great Malevolence’s plan to leave his own place of banishment, which wasn’t much better than that of Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities, but did at least have a view, and a few more chairs.
    Unfortunately, as soon as anyone or anything starts sending random bursts of energy whizzing through portals between dimensions without being sure of the consequences, there’s a good chance that some of that energy may end up in places that it shouldn’t, like the sparks from a welder’s torch as he works on a piece of metal. In an act of grave misfortune, one of thosesparks had created a small fissure between our world and the space occupied by Nurd’s throne or, more particularly, Nurd himself.
    The Great Malevolence had managed to wedge open a door, just as he had hoped.
    He had also, unintentionally, managed to open a window.
    Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities, was free.
    Nurd was feeling dizzy, and somewhat sick, as though he had just climbed off a merry-go-round. 11 He wasn’t sure what had happened, except that it had been most painful, but he knew that he was no longer occupying a throne in a dull, gray world accompanied only by a small demon who looked like a weasel with mange, which meant that this could only be a good thing. He felt air on his skin. (Nurd was vaguely human in appearance, although his ears were