Our Lady Chaos, page 42
part #5 of Bloodletter Series
“Come on, Benny!” said Toby, sprinting toward the ruined car. “Can you do the thing Greg does? The fire?”
Benny shook his head. “She’s made from fire. I don’t think that will work.”
Toby drew up short. “If she’s made of fire, then…”
Benny nodded. “No blood. No flesh—at least not real flesh.” He looked at Toby a moment, then turned in Shannon’s direction. “We don’t have any idea what to do with her, and we don’t have time to figure it out. Greg and Shannon can’t spare it.”
Toby glanced at the smoking heap of twisted metal, then at LaBouche, then back at Benny. “Right. Time to go. Can you get LaBouche into one of the Suburbans?”
32
It had been twenty minutes or so since Abby last appeared in the road. Amanda drove a little slower, her attention focused on the road. Eddie stared out the windscreen, wondering why the flaming bitch had let them go.
The car bucked and hitched. “Oh, no,” whispered Amanda.
“What? What is it?”
“Gas,” she said in an enervated voice. “We’re out of gas.”
Eddie pointed at the state park sign on the opposite side of the road. “Duck in here. Maybe someone has a spare can.”
“What if…”
“We’ll worry about her if she shows up again.”
“‘When,’ you mean.”
“What?”
Amanda sighed, and the hopelessness in the sound broke Eddie’s heart. “You said, ‘if she shows up again.’ That’s wrong. It’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when.’”
Eddie grimaced and gazed down at the lamp. “I suppose that’s right.” The lamp shade had turned a shade of cherry red that both sickened and scared Eddie. The orangish-brown snake with the red spots had wriggled its way from the bottom edge of the shade to its center, and a weird bird had joined it. A strange-looking sapling grew next to the bird. “What the fuck?” he muttered.
Amanda slowed and turned into the parking lot on the left. She stood on the brake with both feet, and the car screeched to a halt.
He glanced at her, then followed her gaze. A fight had raged in the parking lot. A war.
A war between guys in black uniforms and…and things that looked like…
“Are those demons?” Amanda asked in a tremulous voice. “Have I gone insane?”
Eddie dropped his gaze to the lamp. The tree grew and grew like a strange time-lapse set in stained glass.
33
Toby advanced on the car, his tranquilizer gun pointed at the sky. “Who are you, and what do you want?” he shouted.
The blonde woman driving the car looked at him as though he were crazy. She threw the car in reverse, but the man rested his hand on her arm. He rolled down his window. “I’m Eddie Mitchell, and this is my wife, Amanda.” His gaze traveled past Toby’s shoulder. “Are those…” He swallowed hard and scratched his ear. “This sounds crazy, I know, but are there strange…things in this parking lot?
Toby stared at the man. “You can see them?”
“Well, yeah. Can’t you?”
“Describe them.”
Eddie glanced at his wife. “Well, there’s a big yellow one over there on the ground. He’s got scales but looks like a big gorilla, and he’s had his ass handed to him by the look of it.” He turned his attention to the middle of the lot. “There’s something that looks like a cross between a woman and a black snake, and—”
“Enough,” said Toby. “Besides myself, you are the only person I’ve ever met who can pierce their illusions, Eddie.”
“I can see them, too,” said Amanda. “But listen, we need your help. There’s a woman made of fire who…” She stared at Eddie and frowned. “I’m not telling this right.”
“We have this lamp,” said Eddie. He held it up, staring for a moment at the red glass shade. A large tree with a huge brown snake around its base stood on the field of red, and a crazy-looking bird stood nearby, staring outward at Eddie. “It’s changed again,” he murmured.
“What’s with the lamp?”
“There’s a…a genie tied to it. Or something. Something bad.”
Toby nodded. “She said a woman made of fire. Was it red fire?”
Both of them shook their heads. “More golden. Yellowish.”
A vague tickle started in the back of Toby’s mind.
Eddie lowered the lamp. “But listen a minute. The genie is bad news—”
Amanda snorted laughter.
“Okay, she’s the fucking devil, and she’s after us. She’s been after me since I was seven. She makes people do bad things, things they’d never do.”
“Abuse,” said Amanda. “Hatred. I think…” She looked down at her lap. “She makes happy people hate each other.”
Toby grimaced. What is it about a lady made of fire… Then he remembered. His mind flashed back to the day Randy Fergusson had moved in, how he’d picked a fight with Toby and in the middle of it, Toby had thought he’d seen a woman made of fire standing in the corner and smiling. “Oh, shit,” he breathed.
“Listen, uh…” said Eddie.
“Toby.” He shook himself and focused on Eddie’s face.
“Toby, right. You look as if you’ve been through a war and all, but we can’t hang around. We’re out of gas, and Abby has—”
“Abby?”
“She says that’s her name,” said Amanda.
“She’s following us. Coming for the lamp, I guess. We’ve got to get out of here.” Eddie pointed at the row of black Suburbans. “Do you have any spare gas?”
Toby pointed to the side of the macadam lot. “Park there. You’d better come with us. We can fight them.”
Amanda’s eyes tracked to the men with guns, the bodies. “Uh…”
“We’re your best chance,” said Toby. “And now that you can see them, now that you’ve acted against this Abby out in the open, they will all be after you.”
“There are more?” asked Amanda, eyes wide.
“Lots.” Toby jerked his head to the side. “Park there. Ride with me.” He turned on his heel and jogged back toward the trucks, slowing as Benny came around the back of one. “Benny, you’re never—”
“I heard,” said Benny. “You can stay and help LaBouche if you want, but I’m getting Shannon out of here. The medic says it’s now or never.”
Toby looked at LaBouche’s slumped form. “How much do you think he weighs?”
“Are you coming?” snapped Benny. “I drive like shit, you know.”
34
They had Shannon and Greg stretched out in the back, two medics crouched back there working on each of them. Mike and Benny sat in the backseat, watching the medics with sharp eyes. Eddie and Amanda Mitchell sat wedged in the passenger bucket, the weird lamp on the floorboard at their feet. Toby put the truck in reverse and, with a last look at the men trying to get LaBouche into one of the other vehicles, backed toward the road.
“One of you get on the phone,” said the medic working on Shannon. “Tell them we need Life Flight and ask where to meet them. Then get us there about ten minutes ago.”
A woman of golden fire popped into existence next to the Mitchells’ car.
“That’s her!” yelled Amanda. “That’s Abby!”
Abby turned and looked at the Suburban, then turned her gaze on the men working with LaBouche. She said something, but they couldn’t hear what over the rumble of the Suburban’s V8.
At Eddie’s feet, the lamp lit up as if someone had plugged it into a live circuit. Evil red light bathed the interior of the Suburban. A high-pitched whine started inside the lamp. Outside, ugly storm clouds rolled in with alarming speed, blocking the sun, bringing on darkness before noon. Lightning flashed, arcing into the trees in the surrounding woods, filling the air with booming thunder.
“Toby, something’s coming!” said Benny.
The men heaving at LaBouche broke and ran when Abby was twenty yards away. She glanced at them, and each one of them fell dead.
“Go! Go! Please, go!” begged Amanda.
Abby looked down at LaBouche and sneered, then she looked at the demon with the black-scale tail instead of legs. She turned to the side and glanced at the smoking remains of the car. In three long strides, she was at its side. She flicked the heap of metal away like tissue paper and stood over Brigitta. Her shoulders rose and fell as she sighed, and she gazed up into the dark clouds overhead as though assessing the progress of the coming storm. After a moment, she turned and looked at the SUV.
“Uh, we should go,” said Eddie. “You don’t want to see her up close.”
“No, I don’t,” said Toby. He lifted his foot off the brake and backed out into the road, never taking his eyes off the woman made of golden flames. She nodded at him as if she recognized him, as though she knew he remembered her, and she approved of his fear. Then she looked up at the sky and smiled.
Toby followed her gaze. “What the hell is that?” Red and black streamers of smoke whirled and twirled downward from the clouds, like two invisible stunt planes performing barrel rolls as they dove earthward.
The smoke came to rest next to Abby and coalesced into the rough shape of a woman, the red color accumulating at the top, the black filling in the rest of the body. After a moment, the smoke became flesh and hair and leather. A woman with hair the color of cherry snow cones, with creamy white skin and dressed in shiny black leather stood there, glaring at them with orange, whirling eyes.
“What is it?” asked Benny. “What is it, Toby?”
“Is it another demon?” asked Mike. “Whatever it is, I don’t fucking like it!”
Toby shook his head. “That’s no demon.”
Eddie made a choking sound, his hands strangling each other in his lap.
“What is it, Eddie?” asked Amanda.
“Go,” he whispered. “Go! Go! GO!” He shrieked the last word loud enough to crack his voice, and Toby lifted his foot off the brake and mashed the gas pedal to the mat.
35
LaBouche’s head throbbed and throbbed, sending bolts of agony throughout his abused body. Every bit of him burned and ached and throbbed. He chuckled. As it should, fighting a jinn and an ifrit on the same day. What kind of idiot am I?
“What kind, indeed?” asked a woman’s voice. It was the voice of a million whorehouses, a million million courtesans. Pure, unmitigated sex, an electric thrill that plugged straight into his libido.
LaBouche snapped his eyes open.
She stood over him. The goddess. She wore the skin of a pale human woman, hair colored like arterial blood, black leather everything. She was as beautiful a woman as he’d ever seen, but it was her eyes that drew him, that gave her away.
Her magnetic, orange eyes.
Lilitu, daughter of the sky, sister to night and wind and storm, he thought in reverent awe. Our Lady Chaos.
She stepped forward, putting one perfect boot between his legs, the chrome spike of a heel missing his sex by a gnat’s breath. “Yes, motherfucker, and you betrayed my daughter!”
Her eyes began to spin, to whirl and twirl, orange sparks dancing into the air, spinning like whirly gigs. Her flesh began to throb, to fade in and out, in and out, as if a magical engine pulsed and pulsed, pulling her flesh out of phase for a moment, then relenting. The beautiful red-haired woman flashed and began to disappear. In her place stood something out of a nightmare, out of the worst fears LaBouche could imagine. Made of shadows and smoke, her form was ill-defined and transitory, as though wind ripped the smoke away, only to allow it to reform and recombine with her body. For a short while, her orange eyes remained, boring into LaBouche as if she could scorch his very soul with them.
“My daughter put her trust in you, chingado. She desired your seed, perhaps your partnership—though why she’d stoop so low is beyond me. She would have raised you up, as I once did with Lilu.” She glanced to the side as something hissed toward them. “As I did with Lamia.” Lilitu bent in the middle, lowering her face to stare into LaBouche’s eyes. “You betrayed her, verraeter! You betrayed her over what?”
The heat of her fury baked LaBouche’s face as though she’d slapped plasma torn from the sun onto his cheeks. He didn’t want to look at her anymore. He wanted to shrink away, to disappear, to go back home—anything but sit in the face of her fury.
“I asked you a question, puto-chulo!” she hissed.
“She… She had Lamia kill my mate. Truly kill her. Our children—”
She slapped him, and it felt as if a meteor had struck him. She dug long chrome talons into his cheek and pulled the flesh away from his bones. “Over an untouchable?”
“Yes,” Lamia hissed. “Nothing more than a trollop, a walking shit-bag.”
The orange of Lilitu’s eyes began to dim, their spinning began to slow. Darkness crept into them as though someone had poured black ink into the corners of her eyes.
LaBouche wanted to turn away, longed to turn away, but his muscles didn’t respond to his wishes.
“Oh, yes, torcok. You will look upon me. You will look upon me and reap the rewards of betraying my kin, of betraying MY ONLY DAUGHTER!” The blackness crept in and in and in, burying the orange fury.
LaBouche longed for the return of fiery fury, anything to replace the cold, soul-crushing darkness that licked at him hungrily. In her eyes, he saw every vile thing, every horrible act committed in the human world or in hell. The tortures, the rapes, the murders, the sadism, and though those very acts fed and nourished him, the images in her eyes did not. They burned him, scoured his brain with steel wool.
“Oh, yes,” she crooned in a voice like the crackling of eternal flames. “You could have become like Lamia. Instead, you will become like Lilu.” She leaned closer, and the images seemed to invade his mind. “I will eat your soul, suka, and you will feel it forever. Pain without end, suffering beyond that which you can imagine.” She laughed, and it came out broken, as though a critical piece of machinery inside her had run astray. As suddenly as it had begun, it cut off. “You thought the others dining on you hurt, chavo. You will yearn for that pain.”
The memory of Nicole’s face flashed through his mind. “Fuck you,” he spat. Something tore deep inside his body, or maybe in his soul, and pain flooded his senses. His skin began to smoke, to blister and peel.
“No,” said Lilitu in an amused voice. “Fuck you, puto!”
Her eyes pulsed and pulsed while LaBouche screamed. He screamed more than all his victims combined, he hurt more than all the emotional pain he’d dined on for so many years, more than the sum of all the torture he’d dished out.
Lilitu smiled and sucked LaBouche’s soul into the black hole at her center.
book three:
harvester
Chapter 1
Saturday
1
Power crackled in the air as bolts of electricity arced from Lilitu’s crouched form, piercing the scaled yellow mazzikim flesh she loomed over or charring the macadam. She threw back her head, laughing as she consumed the last bits of the creature that had called himself LaBouche. A betrayer, a sycophant, a fool.
A dead fool, she thought, smacking her lips. But a satisfying snack.
She rocked back on her heels and allowed the lifeless husk to fall to the macadam where it broke, then collapsed in a flurry of ash and dust. She wiped her hands and turned to take in the scene of the battle, her indolent gaze drifting around the parking lot, taking in the bent and broken forms of the dead humans, lingering on the bodies of dead demons.
In the road beyond the parking lot, the black Suburban roared and spun its rear tires. Lilitu lifted her face and narrowed her eyes at the vehicle, and the shrieking grew louder. “Is it true?” she mused. “Could they be so stupid?”
Behind her, Abyzou took a step. “Did you say something, Mistress?”
Lilitu cocked her head to the side and sniffed. “Are they all in the one vehicle?” She tittered for a breath, then snapped her head to stare to the northeast. “No,” she murmured. “Not all of them.” She stood and glanced at Abyzou and said, “You three know what to do with those I leave behind. I’m going to cut the head off this snake.” She spun, a smile on her lips, and strode toward the road.
2
Three hundred yards into the trees lining the park side of the macadam lot, Dan Delo perched high in the canopy. His camouflage wouldn’t fool anyone determined to find him, but the ifrit, the djinn, and Mother Chaos weren’t interested in the forest.
The goddess strode toward the road, her stride long and determined. She was the most beautiful being Delo had ever seen—even wrapped in the skin of a human woman. His heart twanged as she reached for the black SUV.
He wanted to go to her, to call out for her attention, but the text he’d gotten from Chaz Welsh’s phone had made him wary of Brigitta and Sally McBride—both of whom turned out to be much more than they had pretended. Not mazzikim, but an ifrit and a djinn guardian.
It would be better to have something for them—a gift with which to buy his way back into their good graces. His gaze jumped from Mother Chaos’s divine form to the SUV, and a smile flashed on his lips.
He extracted himself from the treetop. Keeping his distance from the road and skimming just above the highest branches, Dan Delo tracked the SUV.
3
The tires of the Suburban shrieked as Toby planted his foot on the accelerator. He held the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip, fighting to keep the SUV in the lane. “Are they coming?”
“Go!” shouted Eddie. “Go, and don’t stop! No matter what, don’t stop!”
“She’s coming,” said Amanda in a voice curiously devoid of emotion. “The redhead.”
Toby glanced toward the parking lot, and for a moment, his gaze locked on the eyes of the thing walking toward them. Her eyes brightened, her irises glowing, spinning. A small smile played on her lips; the kind of smile people use when they want to tell an inappropriate joke.
