Our Lady Chaos, page 37
part #5 of Bloodletter Series
He came back to himself with a start, with no sense of time having passed. But his feet hurt, and his knees had stiffened. “What are you doing, Eds?” A smile slipped across his lips. “Talking to myself, I guess.”
He crossed the room and turned off the lamp without looking at the colors on the wall. The song continued, but it seemed…quieter, less present. He wrinkled his nose and left the room.
He peered at the alarm clock on the nightstand. Lost a couple of hours standing there in the living room staring at the wall like a moron. With a half worried, half disgusted self-mocking grin, Eddie got dressed without showering and headed out to go shopping.
He had a bit of fun that afternoon, and he found several new treasures to add to his collections. He didn’t even remember that Amanda had said she would be home by dinner time. Not until dusk turned to dark as he was driving from one store to another.
He considered going to the store anyway, but something inside him rebelled at that idea. Amanda wasn’t his enemy, as much as Abby’s voice in his head screamed the opposite, and she didn’t deserve his contempt. He turned the car around at the next traffic light and headed home.
Amanda’s car was in the garage when he got home. He got out of the car, feeling like an asshole and headed inside. She was sitting at the kitchen table, along with the remains of her dinner and his empty plate.
“Sorry, Amanda. I just lost track of time, and it didn’t even dawn on me that it was dinner time until I realized it was dark.”
“And I suppose you were antiquing?” Her tone was mild, but her eyes never left his empty plate.
“Yeah, when I woke up, I just didn’t want to sit around here watching television.”
She inclined her head, toying with her fork. “And I suppose it didn’t cross your mind to come over to Mom and Dad’s?”
Eddie winced as he shrugged. “Ah, Amanda… My head’s bothering me today. My company would’ve brought everyone down.
“But not bothering you enough to keep you from going shopping.” Her gaze drifted from her dinner plate up his torso but stopped shy of his chin.
“Come on, Amanda. It makes me feel better.”
A wry grin spread across her lips. “Don’t I make it better anymore, Eddie? Don’t I make you happy anymore?”
“It’s not that way, honey. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ve been having a hard time lately, is all. You know, with the headaches and always worrying about Gil…”
“Gil,” she scoffed. “Dad asked about you today.”
Eddie almost sighed with relief at the change of subject. “How is he doing?”
Amanda waved it away with her fork. “His question was…more specific.”
“Oh?” There was a strange tickle in Eddie’s belly. It was almost the way he felt around Jack McGregor before…
“Yes. He wondered if he should intervene.”
Eddie’s cheeks burned with hot blood. He half-turned away from her, staring at the kitchen sink. “Intervene?” His voice sounded enervated and weak, even to him.
“Yes.” Amanda’s tone matched his own. “He wonders if it’s time to… To get you help.”
An unreasonable, irrational anger surfaced in Eddie’s mind. Why can’t people just leave me alone? He knew it was an unjust sentiment, but he couldn’t quite dispel it out of hand.
Here it comes, Eddie. What I’ve been warning you about all these years. She’ll say it’s for your own good.
Eddie sneered at Abby’s voice hissing in his head and chopped at the air with one hand.
“Eddie. Look at me.”
For a moment, Eddie didn’t move. The muscles across his shoulders and neck went rock hard. He turned but didn’t face his wife. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
“Eddie. Look at me.”
He turned his chin toward her and met her gaze. He thought anger would shine from her eyes, but instead of being hard and insistent, they were soft, confused. Worst yet, they filled with tears, and Eddie’s heart ached to see it.
“Eddie,” she said again, and this time it almost sounded like a sigh. “Is it? Is it time I let my father draw commitment papers for you?”
“Commitment papers?” He tried to keep his voice even, calm. He failed.
“Eddie. Don’t be that way. If you are…ill, then it’s for your own good.” Though her voice was flat, unemotional, her face crumpled, and tears streaked her cheeks.
Did I not tell you?
Something dark and hateful had slithered out of the hole in his belly. He fought against his rage monster but lost. “Why does it always come back to this?” he demanded. The light in the room seemed harsher, brighter, and a hot, sweaty pallor wrapped him.
“Eddie. Please—”
“Stop saying my name that way! Stop saying it like I’m a psycho!” His face ached, and he had no doubt his expression had crumpled into a gruesome mask of hatred, but he had no control. Not anymore.
Amanda closed her mouth and raised her hands in a lifeless shrug. She shook her head, and it was…mournful, hurt.
“For the last time, Amanda, I’m not crazy!”
“Okay. Okay, Eddie.” The calmness had left her voice, replaced by a glacial quality. “You don’t need our help, do you, Eddie? My help?”
“No! Not that type of help.” He snapped his head away from her, so he didn’t have to see her cry.
“Fine. I’ll make sure I tell my Dad not to worry about you. Because that’s what it is. Worry. Mom and Dad care about you, Eddie. I—” Her voice broke, and she pushed her chair back from the table. “I love you, Eddie. It doesn’t seem as if you know that anymore.”
“Amanda…” But what could he say? How could he undo the way he’d mistreated her? She didn’t deserve that. I should end it.
“What makes you happy?”
No, Eddie, said Abby. You should end her!
Eddie jumped and dropped his gaze to the floor. “What? What do you mean? I don’t know. What makes you happy?”
Amanda sighed, sounding like a scythe cutting through wheat. “You, Eddie. You used to.”
His ire stepped forward in his mind. “I used to? Oh, I see. You mean before. Before!”
“Oh, Eddie.”
“That wasn’t my fault! The doctor said so!” He looked at her askance, just in time to see her shake her head. “Don’t you shake your head at me!”
That’s it, Eddie. Show her who’s boss.
She stopped her head moving and seemed to crumple within herself. “Whatever you say.”
“Damn right. Things are going to change around here, Amanda. I’m tired having blame for every little thing that happens around here heaped on my shoulders! I’m tired of being accused of mental illness every other minute!”
Step closer to her, Eddie. It doesn’t appear she’s listening.
He stepped closer, looming over her.
Amanda nodded. “Yes. Yes, you’re right, of course, Eddie. Things need to change.”
“Oh, come off it! You’re only saying that because I just said it. Tit for tat?”
Just like the bitch she is.
She shook her head, eyes averted. “No. No, you are right.” She just stood there, slumped like a teenager, staring at the ground between them.
His heart softened a touch. “I don’t mean to be so angry, Amanda. I can’t… I used to… I had this pit…” He wound down, not knowing what to say and feeling helpless.
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m… There is something wrong with me, Amanda. My father murdered my mother. My uncle abused me, and my aunt let him.”
“Yes,” she repeated.
“My life has been hard, Amanda.”
She nodded instead of saying “yes” again. “Your childhood was hard, Eddie. You suffered terrible things at the hands of your family, and I’m so, so sorry that you did. But you’re forgetting a few things.”
Don’t let her disrespect you in this way!
“Oh, am I? What am I forgetting?” Without meaning to, his tone had gone angry again. Angry and mean, just as Gil’s had always been, and Eddie hated it. He just couldn’t seem to control it anymore.
“I mean, you’ve forgotten John and Izzy Morton. You forgot all about Melanie Fox. You’ve forgotten me, Eddie. And my family. But most of all—”
Fear and anguish swooped down on him. “You’re wrong.” Eddie swiveled to face her. “I haven’t forgotten you, Amanda. I—”
Oh, for fuck’s sake, Eddie! Don’t puss out again!
Amanda’s arm snapped up as if she were a cop directing traffic. “No. You don’t interrupt me, Eddie. Not in this. You need to listen to what I’m saying to you. You need to hear what I’m saying.”
Hit her, Eddie! Teach her to “hear” what you are saying!
Eddie closed his mouth. Here it comes.
“What I was thinking about most when I said that you’d forgotten things is this: you survived. Your childhood was miserable, horrible, but you survived it, Eddie. More than that, you thrived despite it. Despite your goddamn uncle. Despite your father, and the bastard he must’ve been. You thrived, Eddie. You grew up with great people, and John and Izzy loved you as if you were their own flesh and blood. You stood up to your uncle, got out of Cottonwood Vale, and went on. College, graduate school, marriage. Why isn’t all that enough?”
Don’t listen to this drivel, Eddie! screamed Abby in his mind.
Eddie stood there, mouth open. “What…” He swallowed hard, wincing at the way his throat ached. It seemed as though there was a lump of ice in his stomach, but fire everywhere else. “What can I do?”
YOU FUCKING PUSSY!
“Oh, Eddie.”
Oh, Eddie, sneered Abby. I think I’ll puke. You are such a disappointment.
He’d never heard Amanda’s voice like that, the sorrow, the pain, and it wrenched at him. He sank to his knees before her, head down, tears dripping on his jeans. “You…” He had to fight back a sob because if he let one out, he didn’t believe he would ever stop. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Oh, Eddie.” She sank to her knees and grabbed one of his hands. “You do, Eddie. You deserved John and Izzy. You deserved my mom and dad. You deserve me. You deserved a child—” Her voice broke, and she slumped forward.
He caught Amanda and wrapped his arms around her.
You do deserve a child, Eddie, and she can never give you one. Do you understand me? NEVER!
“You deserve to be with someone who can give you a child, Eddie. Not me. I’m…broken inside.”
See? Even she agrees!
“You’re not broken!” Eddie said. Inside him, the membrane that covered the pit of his unwanted emotions stretched and distended as if struggling to contain something that now wanted out instead of keeping him from shoving his feelings in. He looked at Amanda and knew that if he turned frosty and numb at that moment, she would walk, and he couldn’t blame her for that.
You can’t blame her? Eddie, Eddie, Eddie! Can’t you see that she’s the architect of your suffering?
SHUT UP, ABBY! My suffering started when you appeared. Eddie stood, pulling Amanda with him. “Let’s get out of here for a while, Amanda. Let’s not even pack a bag, let’s just go.”
She looked up into his face, eyes swimming in tears, and reached for his hand.
Turn your back on me at your peril, Edward James Mitchell.
Abby’s voice seethed with hatred, with the promise of pain and worse, but Eddie ignored all that as he bundled Amanda into his car. He backed into the road, put it in drive, and drove like hell.
Let it be on your shoulders, then.
They spent the next week in a honeymoon suite overlooking Niagara Falls. On their return, Eddie and Amanda boxed up the lamp and put it in the basement.
When they sold the house two months later, they left the box in the basement.
Abby never said a word.
Chapter 4
2010
1
LaBouche groaned at the fire burning in his chest and rolled to his side. He hawked and spat clotted blood from deep in his throat, wincing at the pain the motion evoked. His face throbbed and burned, and he lifted a hand to explore the damage. “Hamburger,” he mumbled. He tried to open his eyes, then let his fingers explore further. “Popped my eyes, did he?” he muttered.
“You’ll heal,” said Toby Burton. “We need to understand why, LaBouche.”
“Why? Isn’t it obvious? I’m changing sides.”
“The fuck you are!” bellowed Scott.
LaBouche shook his head and winced at the pounding in his head that accompanied the movement. “Scotty, I—”
Three quick steps approached and something cold and hard pressed under his jaw. “Call me that again,” Lewis hissed.
LaBouche sighed and let his shoulders slump. “I deserve that.”
“I don’t know what game you’re playing—”
“Is that you, Chief Richards?”
“Chief no longer.”
“Sure. Police chiefs in Oneka Falls tend to die.” He snapped his mouth shut against the heartbreak that threatened to choke him. “I… Trooper Lewis, I understand, now, what I did to you. I understand it in a way I never could have before. Brigitta… See, I mated with Nicole Conrau, and she quickened. Got pregnant. Brigitta had someone kill her, and my offspring died with her. I understand what—”
The cold, hard metal pressed into his throat. “You should stop now,” Scott said in a flat, horrible voice. “Stop or by God, Lee, I’ll splatter your brains on the grass behind you.”
LaBouche leaned forward, pressing the gun into his throat. “If only that would kill me, Scott, I’d beg you to do it.”
The meadow fell silent, but Scott pulled the gun away. LaBouche’s breath trickled out of him, and a dark depression wheezed into him.
“What do you want, LaBouche?” asked Toby.
“Same thing Scotty does.” Lewis growled, and LaBouche lifted his hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry.”
“Quit fucking around. What do you want?”
“Vengeance,” he said. “I’ll help you beat the demons in Oneka Falls. I’ll give you Brigitta gift wrapped and wearing a bow. Anything you want. All I want in return is help killing Brigitta and the one who took my Nicole from me.”
“And who would that be?” asked Mike.
“Sally McBride.”
“Sally?” That came from mousey Shannon Bertram, though by all reports, she’d outgrown her shyness.
“That’s not her real name, of course. Can’t be,” said LaBouche. He gasped as a splitting, burning pain stabbed through his left eye socket. “Christ that stings.”
“Poor baby,” sneered Scott.
“What is your real name, LaBouche,” asked a man he didn’t recognize.
“I don’t want to tell you that yet. But there’s one more promise I need from you.”
“Promise?”
“Why should we—”
“Enough!” roared LaBouche. “I will tell you my real name when the time comes. After we’ve dealt with Brigitta and McBride—probably a jinn, if the legends about Brigitta’s mother are true—then I want you to kill me.”
“Wait…jinn?” asked the unfamiliar voice.
“I’ll kill you every single day for the rest of my life, LaBouche,” growled Scott.
“That’s it?” asked Toby. “After we ‘help’ send Brigitta and this McBride home, you want us to send you home?”
“No. I want you to kill me and to make me stay dead. I know it’s possible, now. Nicole is…gone. They didn’t send her home; they gave her true death.” LaBouche shrugged against the pain in his breast and his eye socket. “And that’s what I want: true death.”
“If Sally McBride is a jinn, what is Brigitta’s true nature?”
“Who are you? I don’t recognize your voice.”
“I’m Benny Cartwright.”
“Of course you are.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
LaBouche sighed. “I don’t know for sure.”
“Guess!” snapped Scott.
“Herlequin always said Brigitta was his daughter, and that they left her mother back home. But knowing that a jinn has lived in our ranks for so long…like a fucking fox in the hen house, there’s no real telling. She has powers most among my kind don’t.” LaBouche scratched his cheek beneath his growing eye. “She turned me into a bird, you recall. She didn’t give me the appearance of a bird, mind. She made me a bird.”
“You keep saying jinn like it means something,” said Cartwright.
LaBouche frowned. “You don’t know much about us, do you?”
Scott growled deep in his throat.
“We are a hierarchical race,” said LaBouche. “We base our hierarchy on power and sometimes birthright. For example, I’m considered an alpha among the demons in Oneka Falls. All that means is that I’ve enough strength to defeat most of the others.”
“But jinn?”
“No. Jinn are…” LaBouche sighed. “Your kind remembers so little. I belong to a race called mazzikim—we live as you do. We require places to live, sustenance. The jinn live only to serve. They do not need sustenance in the same way mazzikim do. They often serve an ifrit or one of the higher castes—”
“I’m sure you’ll fill us in when we have time,” said Toby. “What do we do with these two kidnappers?”
“Leave them. They will awaken and believe Dan Delo attacked them. They will return to Brigitta and tattle like school children. It will sow discord.”
“Fine. And you?”
“I will also return to Oneka Falls, but I do so as your agent, your provocateur.”
Scott stepped forward, chest thrust out, fists clenched. “And if I ever suspect you’ve lied to us, you’d better run, Lee.”
