Our Lady Chaos, page 17
part #5 of Bloodletter Series
Or if she was around, Eddie hadn’t seen her.
It was the longest stretch without her that Eddie could remember since… Well, for a long time. Erickson said it was because Eddie was learning to deal with his “stressors” and “emotional triggers”—whatever the heck that meant. Eddie wasn’t so sure. He thought she might have just gotten bored.
“Are we sulking now, kid? I’m gonna have to toughen you up, aren’t I?”
Eddie started to shake his head but stopped himself in time. “No, sir,” he mumbled.
“Are you a mouse or a man? If you’re a man, talk like a man.”
“No, sir,” Eddie said with more volume.
“‘No, you aren’t pouting,’ or ‘no, I do not need to toughen you up?’”
Bastard sounds as if he’s having fun. Anger roiled in Eddie’s guts. “No to both.”
“Ah.” Gil switched on the radio and then punched through the presets, leaving no chance to hear what was playing on the stations. With a grunt, he snapped the radio off. “Damn radio stations never have nothing good. Too busy sucking on the corporate tit.” He shot Eddie an alligator smile. “Suppose we’ll have to chat since the radio’s a waste of time.” He swung back to watch the road. “So, what do you say to that headshrinker, anyway?”
“Doctor Erikson said I don’t have to tell anybody what we talk about.”
“Oh, ho… I guess Doctor Erikson will feed you and clothe you and raise you up from now on? I guess I’m free and clear of the boat anchor that is your life?”
“What?”
“What? What?” Gil said in a mocking tone. He cackled his mean laugh, and Eddie’s stomach fell. “Does Mister Doctor-Headshrinker get to override the fellow who puts food in your belly for nothing? The fellow who puts up with you, puts up with your moods, your bullshit? Is Mister Doctor-Headshrinker in charge of me now?”
Eddie didn’t know how to answer, so he didn’t do anything, he just stared out the window watching the scenery blur by.
“Whelp, I guess I don’t care what Mister Doctor-Headshrinker says you do or don’t have to do. Know why?”
Eddie wracked his mind, trying to come up with a plan to defuse what was turning into an ugly situation at the speed of light. Doctor Erikson always said he should try to see things from Uncle Gil’s perspective. He came up with nothing.
“I can tell by the way you’re sitting there with your thumb up your butt that you don’t have any idea why. Good thing I’m here, because I know why, and I don’t mind sharing. The reason I don’t care what that snooty college boy says is because what he thinks means absolutely nothing to this old farmhand. Counseling, psychiatry.” Gil snorted an ugly laugh. “All that’s just coddling for the weak. Nonsense. Garbage that the Libs think will solve the world’s problems, when what we need is someone willing to kick a little ass. I don’t mind telling you, they’re mistaken about all that. Well, I guess they’ve got most everything wrong.” Gil grinned to himself and nodded.
Eddie tried to disappear into the truck’s upholstery. You get that I’m nine, right, dummy?
“I’m waiting,” said Gil. “Don’t you know better than to keep me waiting?”
“We talk about the scary lady most of the time.”
“That again?” Gil sneered. “Haven’t I told you a thousand times to let go of that?” He scoffed. “I’ve heard of kids having invisible friends, but I’ve never heard another kid having an invisible…an imaginary bogeywoman or whatever she is to you. You need to just stop all that nonsense, then maybe we’ll have a few dollar bills to rub together.”
“He also says that I don’t understand you. That I should try to see things from your side.”
“I’ll be damned. College boy’s not half as stupid as I thought.” Gil leered at him from the driver’s seat.
“In fact, he said it might help if you were to come along for one of the sessions.”
Gil scoffed and spat through his open window. “So much for having one or two brain cells. What the hell do I need to see a child psychologist for?”
“It’s not for you—well, I guess it is sort of… He thinks that if we can talk in a neutral setting, that maybe we can work things out.”
Gil turned his head to stare at Eddie, his face turning to stone. “Work things out? What in the hell are you telling him?”
“What?”
“You heard me. What do you tell him about me? What are you telling him about our family?”
“Nothing! I just—”
“Didn’t I tell you that there were things you don’t say nothin’ to nobody about? Did I not?”
“I didn’t, Uncle Gil! I promise—”
Gil slapped him on the back of the head. “Maybe you need not see that headshrinker no more. Not if you can’t follow my rules, brat.”
“No, sir! I didn’t say anything! All I talked about was how I can’t do anything without making you mad. He said… He said that I was just—”
Gil slapped him again. “What do you mean you can’t do anything without making me mad? That makes me sound as though I’m as crazy as a loonie bird. Is that what you’re trying to do in there with Mister Doctor-Headshrinker? Trying to get me in trouble?” Gil’s voice had doubled in volume.
“No, Uncle Gil! I didn’t make you out to be anything! I just told him I keep making you mad, same as I did my daddy, that it…bugs me.”
“I ain’t nothing like your old man, boy. Don’t you ever compare me to him! Do I look like some damn weak-willed sack of guts?”
Should’ve kept my mouth shut. Should’ve sat there and let him rant at me. Should’ve lied, said we talked about school or something. Eddie sneered at himself. Sure, think of all that now—now that it’s too late.
Gil was still staring at him, his eyes blazing, veins over his temples throbbing with every beat of his heart.
Eddie shook his head. “No, Uncle—”
Quick as a whip, Gil hit him for the fourth time, using his fist and winging his knuckles off the back of Eddie’s skull. “I told you! I told you not to shake that head at me, you little brat! Did I not?”
Eddie winced at the volume of the shout and cringed away, pulling his hands up around his head. “I’m stupid! It’s all my fault, Uncle Gil! I said it bad! I didn’t mean to shake my head!” He snuck a peek at Uncle Gil. Why can’t I ever say the right thing? Why do I always make things worse? The man’s cheeks blazed red, and the veins in his temples throbbed to a staccato rhythm. He’d pulled his lips back in a parody of a smile, but hate and anger reigned in his eyes. Why do I make him so furious? Why did I make Daddy so mad all the time? What’s wrong with me? Eddie glanced in the rearview mirror, and his breath caught in his throat. He twisted to stare over his shoulder and out through the rear window.
The scary lady stood in the bed of Uncle Gil’s pickup, facing forward, her arms out at her sides as if she wanted to hug Eddie and Gil. For once, there were no shadows for her to hide in.
Her long black hair glinted in the afternoon sun, and for the first time, Eddie saw that her hair wasn’t black. It was a deep shade of midnight blue, with dark purple highlights…the same colors that his mother’s Tiffany lamp had adopted once the scary lady began visiting him.
As he watched, her hair started to writhe and twist, moving like a nest full of snakes. Her skin was dusky, but in the sun, it shined like gold. She wore a long, black leather dress that was slit up the side all the way to her waist.
Shadows buried her eyes. Her lipstick was dark blue or black. She met his gaze and smiled, sharing her grisly onyx fangs with anyone who cared to look. She turned her face up toward the sun, smiling as if she wasn’t some freak straight out of a horror book, and the shadows covering her eyes burned away like the morning mist. Her eyes whirled and spun like miniature Ferris wheels. In the sunlight, he could see the color of her eyes. They weren’t black, after all.
They were midnight blue, same as her hair.
At least they were until she burst into flame.
Chapter 6
2010
1
“And you are sure?” asked Brigitta in a tone that would have frozen magma.
“Yes, Mistress. Quite.” Sally tapped her snout. “Say what you will about my situational awareness—Chaz always did—but there’s no fooling this nose.”
“I can’t accept this! I can’t believe LaBouche would choose her to mother his child over me!” Brigitta’s eyes narrowed to mere slits, and her mouth curled into a grimace. “This can’t stand.”
“No, Mistress. LaBouche has always shown a lack of…” Sally shrugged. “A lack of respect.”
“Indeed. You can handle the matter without Apsu?”
“Of course, Mistress,” said Sally.
“See that it’s done as soon as possible.”
“And the mother?”
Brigitta lifted a hand to shoulder height and flapped it as if shooing away a fly.
“As you command, Mistress.”
“And Sally?” Brigitta cocked her head to the side and smirked.
“Yes, Mistress?”
“Enjoy yourself.”
Sally smiled.
“But I’m not finished with LaBouche, yet. Let him live.”
Sally ducked her head to hide her disappointment. “As you wish.”
2
Nicole rubbed her belly and smiled at LaBouche. “I’m sure, LaBouche.”
He grinned at her, eyes dancing. “Do you…”
“Know anything more? No, not yet.”
“And how long?”
“My kind quicken in a shorter span than most.”
“And will it be a single birth or a clutch?”
Nicole shrugged. “I was a single, but my mother gave birth to clutches both before and after my birth. Your genes dictate the answer.”
LaBouche nodded, a huge grin on his face. After a moment, he sobered. “This has to remain hidden.”
“We keep it secret?” Nicole couldn’t seem to resist rubbing her belly.
“Yes.” LaBouche grimaced. “Brigitta has…”
Nicole sniffed, her smile fading. “I am aware.”
“Then you understand the need for secrecy. She will view this as an affront.”
Nicole grimaced, her eyes closed to slits. “She would find me a unique adversary should she choose to act.”
LaBouche sighed. “There are things about her lineage you do not know. But she’ll send someone else first. A more mundane demon. We should prepare.”
Nicole lifted her chin. “Who?”
LaBouche shook his head. “I have no idea, but whoever it is, they will be formidable.”
“They will need to be,” said Nicole in a fierce tone of voice.
3
Sally drove home smiling for the first time in decades. She turned the radio to a station she thought of as “pop bullshit” and hummed along to a few of the tunes. She considered herself well-suited for the task Brigitta had assigned her.
Many demons given such a job would attempt a physical confrontation, but not Sally. She hadn’t survived as long as she had by being stupid.
Once home, she assembled her materials: a bit of her own blood, a few strands of sable hair she’d plucked while dealing with the unconscious Nicole Conrau, a vermillion swatch of cloth, a chunk of LaBouche’s flesh from his silly fight with Chaz in the Bertram woman’s apartment, a frog, and a fistful of ashes from Herlequin’s clearing. She brought out a clay bowl, filled it with water, then added her blood and Herlequin’s ashes to the bottom. She knelt in the middle of her kitchen floor, broke a sprig of cottonwood, a sprig of birch, and a sprig of yew and arranged them to make a small fire.
“Lilu, utukku-šū abāru,” she chanted as she held a match to the wood. A green flame erupted from the birch twig, then danced to the yew and cottonwood. Sally nodded to herself.
She added the strands of sable hair—a few to the contents of the pot, a few strands to the flames. “Nicole Conrau atmu-ša dâku.” She took up the chunk of LaBouche’s flesh and bit it in half, spitting the flesh from her maw into the bowl and adding the rest to the fire. “LaBouche atmu-šū dâku.”
The concoction in the basin began to smoke and hissed like a viper. Sally drew spit into her mouth and spat it into the bowl. She plucked up the vermillion swatch of material and rubbed the remains of her blood into it with her thumb. “Kalbatu lišānum-ša eqēqu.” She tossed the cloth into the dish with a flourish of her hand.
She stared into the pot, watching, waiting. The ash and blood mixture from the heart of the bowl swirled and bubbled up around the edges of the clay vessel, then swooped toward its center all at once. The concoction swarmed over the vermillion cloth and dragged it down to the bottom of the bowl.
Sally smirked. One more curse, she thought. Then my work is done.
She picked up the frog and gripped its body in her left hand. With her right, she took the frog’s head and twisted it until blood flowed into the bowl. “Nicole Conrau balāṭu-ša šarāqu, šagapīru gallû!” she screamed. Her voice echoed around her kitchen, sustained by the power of her spell, until the words seemed to overlap, to fight one another for dominance.
The twigs exploded, chunks of flaming wood showering over Sally, and the clay bowl cracked, its contents flashing to steam that dissipated in an instant.
LaBouche meant to dominate me, Sally thought as she climbed to her feet. He believed me petty and small. An irritant, a tool to use and discard. She paused, her right hand dripping frog blood over the knob of her back door. Chaz, too, if I’m honest. Neither of them ever knew me. Neither of them cared to look deeper than the Sally McBride visage. If they had… She shook her head. I will survive them both, like I survived Hera and all the others since then.
She grinned as she opened the door and flung the frog’s carcass out into the darkness.
4
Greg sighed and scrubbed his hands through his hair. The digital clock on his desk claimed it was one in the morning, and Greg had lost most of another night to minutiae. Running International Datawerkz had turned into much more of an executive position than he’d ever dreamed it could. He hadn’t touched the codebase in months. With one more sigh, he pushed himself away from the desk and stretched, his stiff joints crackling and popping. He threw on his jacket and flicked the lights off on his way out of his office.
He stuck his head in the development war room as he strolled by. As usual, a number of software developers and database architects had decided to work late and hash out this detail, that feature request that had filtered in from SEMPRe’s human search engine.
“Don’t stay too late,” he called.
“Goodnight, Mr. Stephens,” one of them called back.
He waved and continued down the hallway, passing the huge server room, and enjoying the blast of cold that came of the glass wall protecting the machines from dust and people. He smiled and waved at the guys manning the security desk and pushed out through the front doors.
The night air was crisp, even if it was a touch too cool. Winter was on the way, but on the whole, Greg enjoyed the weather on the shores of Lake Erie. Everyone thought he was crazy when he said he preferred the climate of the northeast over the weather of Central Florida, but that was only because they’d never been to Florida in August.
He walked toward his grandfather’s GTO—it had gotten a new identity two years before as well, but it was still the same cherry red jewel his granddad had loved so much. Greg cherished it, too, and not just because his grandfather had.
He slid his key into the door lock, but before he turned it, footsteps rang on the asphalt behind him.
“Well, hello there, Greggy.”
The voice, more than the words, froze Greg in place. Mason Harper? How?
“Denny, bring the van, would you?” asked Mason.
“Why not bleed him here?”
“Where’s the artistry in that?”
“Fuck artistry.”
“Go on, please, Denny.”
Greg turned the key in the GTO’s lock and jerked the door open.
“Now, now, Greggy. Let’s not be rash.”
Greg slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and slammed his fist down on the lock post. Mason stayed near the front of the car, smiling. Twenty steps away, another man Greg didn’t recognize stood watching.
“Denny, the van, please.”
The other man sneered and walked off.
Greg shoved the key into the ignition and turned it but nothing happened. The starter didn’t emit even a click.
Mason cocked his head to the side and grinned. “You didn’t think I’d leave this to chance, did you?”
5
A noise woke LaBouche from a deep sleep. He reached to the side where she’d been sleeping but found nothing. He sat up and the sound came again—a rhythmic knocking not unlike a beast in its death throes.
LaBouche sprang from the bed in a fluid motion and hit the ground running. He raced toward the master bathroom’s double doors. “Nicole!” he cried. He flung the doors open with enough force to rip one of them from its hinges.
White light blazed from the bathroom fixtures, reflected from the white marble counters and the white granite floor tiles. White granite tiles tinged green by Nicole’s lifeblood.
She sat, cocked against the big whirlpool tub’s enclosure, one knee up, the other splayed at an angle. Emerald green blood pooled from her crotch. It surrounded her, coating her silvery legs.
“Nicole!” he cried.
He slid to his knees beside her, gathering her into his arms. “Nicole!” Her head lolled to the side, her once-malachite eyes gray and lifeless. “Nicole!” he cried.
He lay her flat on the ground and tried to revive her, but it was no use. He scrubbed his face with his hands, smearing her blood everywhere, wishing he could cry.
Nicole Conrau was dead, and his child along with her.
6
“Guys! Guys!” Benny shouted as he ran from room to room in Toby’s big house on the cliff. He pounded on bedroom doors as he went. Shannon came behind him, bleary-eyed and disheveled.
