The Fourth Whore, page 31
“Perhaps it is not Kenzi you came for, but me. Have you come to end me once and for all?” Lilith took the talisman off her neck and held it up to him. “Will I be going back in here or are you over me completely?”
“Lilith, you know this is wrong. I was wrong too—” Sariel began.
“Am I too strong for you?” She sliced her palm open with the rabbit’s foot. “Should I play the helpless victim to gain your pity again?” Blood dripped down her wrist and Kenzi felt the familiar itch.
“Please don’t Lilith. This isn’t worth it, I’m not worth it.” Sariel pleaded. He was soft and clueless. Kenzi didn’t like it, the way he gave in to Lilith’s manipulations. “You know what I came for. This has to end…”
Before he could say more or Kenzi could wrap her brain around her own feelings, Lilith slashed his chest using the whole foot. It left three vertical lines and three horizontal, forming a large letter ‘L’ on his skin. She put her bloodied palm on top of the cuts.
“Well then you better take all these deaths back,” she said.
Sariel’s skin began to break and invisible forces began cutting names of all the lives Lilith had taken of her own accord into his flesh. Every exposed inch of him ripped open. Dead tissue hung in strips and pieces. Some fell to the floor where names intersected. Enoch launched off its master’s shoulder and hovered above him. Sariel fell into a fetal position as he bore the pain of every life Lilith took before its time.
“Enoch, if you are going to join Kenzi, you must prove your loyalty as well. Remove his talisman.”
Enoch hesitated, snapping its beak in protest.
“It’s OK, E. Just do it,” Kenzi said.
She heard herself give the order but had no idea what she was doing. But it was as if all this was meant to happen this way.
The bird dipped its beak deep into Death, its only companion for the last four thousand years. Out of Sariel’s forehead, Enoch returned with a silver coin.
“Give it to your new mistress,” Lilith ordered.
Enoch obeyed, dropping the irregularly shaped disc into Kenzi’s hand. One side was embossed with a skull and the other, the head of a raven. She turned it around. It was warm. There was an energy within. It hummed in her hand.
“Swallow it,” Lilith ordered.
“What?” Kenzi asked.
“Swallow it. By taking his soul into your body, you will gain his abilities, his immortality. Go on,” she said.
Kenzi followed orders. It went down easily enough, dissolving as it traveled into her system. Her arm burned like fire. A thousand bees stung her at once, and their stingers were pumping lava instead of poison.
“Oww,” she said, turning it to see a red welt raising and then cutting into her flesh, spelling out a single word: Sariel. “Oh no.”
“You are Death now, and you must end this poor body’s suffering, Kenzi.”
“But I already took his soul. That’s all that Death does. You said. No murdering.”
“Death’s body does not age, does not die. It can only be ended by Death or The Creator. You are Death now. He is nothing more than an ancient, tired, used-up hull.” Lilith touched the angry red script on Kenzi’s forearm. “As your Goddess, I have called upon you to end his presence on this earth.”
Lilith grinned but there was no joy in her eyes, only rage. She found her pleasure in pain.
Don’t ever let me become that kind of person. There was no peace in a life like that. Not much peace in the life of The Reaper either and that’s who you are now.
“No, it’s not,” she whispered
Kenzi stared at Sariel’s filleted body curled up on the floor only five feet from the dead body of Lilith’s third “whore.” Kenzi knew now without question that if she opened the doors to the closet, she’d find the second whore’s body. Death was a lonely state, for both dying mortals and the shrouded escort they feared. No wonder he’d sought out a vivacious child full of life and too young to have learned to be afraid of Death.
“Here you go, my love. We don’t need your gifts or The Creator’s blessing,” Lilith said.
She tossed the rabbit’s foot onto his chest. It rolled over twice before wedging itself into a bone-deep crevice where a nipple once sat. Kenzi bent down and put her palm on top of it. His weak respirations were barely palpable. This man, The Scribble Man, once a giant porcelain-skinned god to the child he had saved, now lay broken and feeble at the feet of the women he’d loved.
It was Kenzi’s turn to save him from himself.
“End him, Kenzi. End his suffering if nothing else. We have a world to conquer.” Lilith’s voice was high with an almost sexual excitement.
She picked up the bloodied knife used to kill Tituba and handed it to Kenzi..
She’s no different than my mom—always the victim. A crack whore who uses her body to get what she wants, and then cries about how her body was used and abused. And, to get revenge, she stoops lower than the ones she accused. She’ll use and discard anyone. I’m done. I’d rather stand with idiots like Henry and Sariel and die for something than to live life on a hamster wheel of hypocrisy.
“Of course.” She bent her head over his ruined body concentrating, listening, laying out the position of everything and everyone in the room. Tucking the bloodied foot in her right palm, she raised both arms up over her head as if planning to plunge the knife into Sariel.
Instead, she leaped. Dropping the knife, she slashed out with the foot and cut deep into Lilith’s pregnant belly. With her free hand, she punched through the skin and underlying tissues. The smell of rotted, necrotic flesh coupled with the rice-pudding-like consistency of an infected womb brought an olfactory memory to the surface. A dead thing in the sewer grate beneath a car where she once had hidden from men trying to kill her. The memory was filled with fear yet all she felt was anger.
“I think these souls belong to me now,” she said ripping out a fistful of wriggling, silky filaments. The rest oozed out onto the floor in an iridescent puddle. Devoid of souls, Lilith’s empty body fell beside them. Kenzi bent over her. “And don’t worry, I’ll be sure to see that your soul is ended and not trapped in a little girl’s plaything ever again. Even you deserve your peace.”
Once she and Enoch gathered all the souls and collected them in the hour glass, Kenzi dragged Daisy’s body out of the closet. She laid the three women together and put Henry’s body beneath the window far removed from his murderers. The candles were still burning in the closet and she put them beside Henry.
“I’ll see you soon, babe.”
She pulled the foot out of her pocket.
Just like old times. She smiled.
“Hey, E,” she said cutting her name into her flesh over the scar she’d made so many years ago. The bird waddled over hesitantly, never taking its eyes off her. “I’m not gonna hurt you, I need you to help me.”
Her arm was numb at this point, the sting of Sariel’s name had overwhelmed her mortal pain sensors. Numbness was good though. She hoped the anesthesia extended elsewhere on her body as well. The blade she’d used to end Tituba was lying on the floor. She put the foot away and picked up the knife. Enoch hopped backwards and clacked.
“I told you, I would never hurt you,” she said and plunged the dagger into her stomach.
The pain was deep and nauseating like a cold ache rather than the searing sting of cutting skin. Before she lost her nerve, she yanked it to the side cutting a wide gap into herself. Heaving, she let her knees give and slowly went down on them.
“Get the coin,” she coughed the words out of a mouth that only wanted to vomit.
Enoch wasted no time, flying straight at her, it grabbed her pants with its feet and held onto them. Plunging its head into the gash with wet, sucking sounds, the bird pushed deeper into Kenzi’s body.
“Ugh,” she heaved again.
The pressure was intense. She needed to stay conscious only a little longer. Every little movement of the bird was magnified by her body. She gulped for air and let the excess saliva fall out her mouth rather than swallow it which might make Enoch’s search even more difficult.
Stay awake, stay awake, just a little longer. She repeated the mantra in her head concentrating on it instead of the pain.
Kenzi couldn’t imagine anything worse than what she was currently experiencing but then the bird reversed and pulled itself out. Feathers protested being rubbed in the wrong direction and popped up catching the edges of her wound. Screaming hurt worse than the heaving so she whimpered instead. The cold she’d gotten used to dropped at least twenty degrees and she began shivering again.
“T-t-take it over t-t-to Lil-lith’s-s-s b-blood,” she instructed. She didn’t even have the strength to pull her hoodie around her. The bird, as if trained to do all these death tricks did so. It looked like a sick parody of a fantasy tea party. An animal dipping its cracker into tea. It turned back to Kenzi for the next step. There was no way she could muster up the energy to speak again plus she was so cold she could barely move.
She had to, though, all this could not be for nothing. With the last of her reserves, she mimed putting it into her mouth and then pointed to Sariel. The last thing she saw as she closed her eyes on this life, was Enoch pushing its beak into its master’s mouth in a life-giving kiss.
Chapter 55: Book of Genesis 2
Warmth rolled over Sariel like waves lapping at his wounds. As each one crashed upon him, his skin healed, scarred, and numbed. He was conscious again but kept his eyes closed. Letting whatever spell was upon him work its magic. He listened. Silence. Clicking of talons on hardwood, clacking of a big black beak, but no breathing of mortal bodies. When most of the pain had subsided and the tide returned to the sea, he opened his eyes and sat up.
Bodies lay neatly arranged on the blood covered floor. Enoch stood an arm’s length away from him. The bird’s feathers were awry, sticking out in all directions and clumped together in clotted blood. He had only a short time to ponder his familiar’s current condition before seeing the body lying behind him. Kenzi.
“Enoch,” he said, his voice was strained, his mouth felt dry and ancient. “Did Lilith—” he began and then saw her body with its tell-tale snake tattoo.
A bloody gash tore through the snake just below her belly button. The center of the cut looked as if she’d taken a shotgun blast. The only one who could have done it was also dead.
“She sacrificed herself, didn’t she?”
Enoch clacked its beak and cawed softly.
“For me.” It was not a question. “Oh, Kenzi. All I can offer you now is peace. Come Enoch, we have a job to finish.”
He lifted her body, still warm, blood slowed but seeping, onto his lap. He caressed her hair, tucking it behind her ears. Her eyes were closed but, in his mind, he saw the deep blue one and the white one that matched his bird’s. She was ethereal, and his heart ached. He’d never mourned a death before, but it would be hard to let her go. There was something clutched in her right hand. He fished it out. The foot dangled from a leather thong. Even blood-stained and hairless, there was no doubt that it was the one that had started this whole mess. For a moment he considered it, watching it swing to-and-fro in his hand.
Enoch hopped onto his arm, making him drop the foot. The bird gave him no time to make another fatal mistake. It dipped its beak deep into Kenzi’s forehead and pulled out an iridescent opal colored ribbon. Rainbows glittered in the flickering lights of the hanging talisman, but the soul seemed to give off its own glow. He held his hand out beneath Enoch’s beak. He wanted to hold it, to feel its weight in his palm. Perhaps he would hold onto it the entire way to her afterlife.
Instead the raven tilted its head back and snapped its jaws, swallowing the soul in two quick gulps.
“Enoch NO!” Sariel shouted but it was too late, she was gone. “Why, you stupid bird? Why would you do that to her?”
His familiar used its wings to make the long jump from Sariel’s arm to Kenzi’s shoulder. The bird nuzzled its face into hers. Clacking its beak quietly against her ear as if whispering its own goodbye.
Enoch pushed Kenzi’s head gently with its beak. Her lips parted as her head turned away. The bird, ever ready, dipped its beak into her mouth. Sariel let go of her in surprise as Enoch’s belly and throat bulged, regurgitating life back into her. Just like a mother bird. She gasped, sat up, coughed, and retched. The bird steadied itself on her shoulder, talons digging into her flesh. She didn’t seem to notice. She stood slowly on wobbly legs like a toddler just learning to walk. Sariel waited quietly for her to get her bearings.
When Kenzi faced him, he jumped back. Her eyes were both colorless white orbs. Gone was the heterochromia, the single white eye, and the beautiful blue one. Stunned and unsure of what had happened he looked up to Enoch for answers. Enoch cawed and clacked as if in explanation that she—the damn thing had been a female after all—had given the girl life. They belonged together as a pair now. The bird nuzzled down onto the shoulder of her immortal child.
Epilogue: Genesis 3
Sariel smiled. He reached into his belt and retrieved her journal. Handing it to his newest companion, he whispered. “I think you have some stories to tell.”
About the Author
EV Knight is an American author of horror and dark fantasy stories filled with bad-ass females. She has just released her first novel, The Fourth Whore, the story of a young woman’s fight to find the truth in time to save her world after she accidentally releases an ancient demoness who has a vendetta against God Himself. EV is currently working on her second novel which takes place in her beloved home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Raised on Grimm’s Fairy Tales in a country home near the woods, EV inevitably developed a whimsical imagination and lifelong interest in the macabre.
These days, when not writing something spooky, EV spends her time taking long walks through graveyards and visiting haunted houses. She collects skull art and death-related oddities. When she is feeling adventurous, she enjoys road trips to unusual roadside attractions. Yes, she has, in fact, been to see the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota.
EV is inspired by mythology, fairy tales, and history such that there are often kernels of truth in her fiction. No scary thing is off limits. And she doesn’t shy away from gore. Like Frankenstein, she likes to experiment and piece things together until her creation breathes on its own. EV hopes you’ll love her monsters as much as she loves making them.
EV Knight, The Fourth Whore
