Midian Unmade (30 page)

At last, they arrived at the entrance to a dilapidated movie palace that dated to the Roaring Twenties. T
HE
E
LYSIAN
, its marquee announced, every bulb in its curling script either blown or broken. Skewed letters promised that the theater was only
CLOSED F R REMOD LING
. Burdock strode beyond the boarded-up ticket booth and rapped on the cinema's double doors: four quick knocks, three slow.

Hemmel jumped as a voice spoke from the vacant foyer behind them.

“Took you long enough,” it said.

Gisella rippled into visibility like a mirage.

Burdock harrumphed. “Let's see how quick
you
are after a couple more centuries.”

He and Hemmel followed her into the lobby, where Amalek squatted, solemnly devouring Vagamel's severed flank as if it were an enormous joint of raw mutton. Among some Nightbreed, consuming one's dead kin was considered far more respectful than burying them. They became part of you—remained one with you forever.

Another set of double doors led into the auditorium itself, current lair of the Enclave, one of the wandering tribes of the Midian diaspora. The theater was perversely apropos to house the Nightbreed: gilt-edged glamour gone to seed. Faux Egyptian pharaohs flanked the proscenium arch. A stage that had once hosted vaudeville performers now stood deserted except for an enormous torn film screen. Pigeons roosted in the dying galaxies of disintegrating chandeliers, and the atmosphere sagged with the musty stink of their droppings. If Midian had been a cemetery for the dead, the Elysian was a mausoleum for dreams.

The Enclave had adapted the interior to suit their needs. Sconces that once sprouted electric candles now held burning torches. Rows of folding seats had been ripped out and rearranged around cooking fires and card tables. In the cleared spaces, velvet draperies had been refashioned into Bedouin-style tents on the gum-encrusted carpet of the theater floor. For a brief time, this place had become their home.

But now, the tents were being dismantled. Even as the tiny community's children still chased each other up and down the center aisle—some on two legs, some on all fours—their parents grimly packed up their makeshift shelters.

“We need this area cleared,” Gisella explained. “For the trap.”

Having finished his meal, Amalek strode up to Gisella, eyes gleaming in anticipation. “Tell us.”

As the other Nightbreed completed their preparations, they too gathered around. Gisella held out her clawed fingers to indicate that all of them would be included in her instructions. “I've had Calay take the children away to hide them. The rest of us shall stay here, together. When
that
comes, we follow the plan.” Gisella snapped her fingers in the direction of a velvet curtain that had been tossed in a corner. “Crocus.”

The curtain undulated, rippled, and flipped back like a hood to reveal what appeared to be a girl in her late teens. “I'm here.”

Crocus had a moon-shaped face and white hair. As she stood up, freeing herself of the curtain, a roll of fat around her belly flopped over her hips, hanging downward to midthigh like a miniskirt of flesh. Under the fat roll peeked Crocus's extra leg, which grew out of her groin, its foot planted forward between the girl's two normal legs.

Gisella indicated the auditorium doors. “We will leave the center door open. Crocus, you will stand just in front of those doors. When the Pariah comes in, that monster will see you. The second it does, what will you do?”

“I'll jump!” Crocus's extra foot snapped to the floor as if spring-loaded, vaulting her whole body upward in an arc as if shot by a catapult. For a second, Hemmel lost sight of her. Then he spotted her standing on the other end of the theater.

“Good.” Gisella nodded in satisfaction. “Go straight down the center aisle, and then off into the wings with you.” She gestured to a decorative arch near the right of the stage. “The fastest you've ever gone.”

Crocus's luminescent paleness paled still more, a mixture of fear and determination. “That thing won't catch me.”

“No, it won't.” Gisella moved to the arch and faded into it as her skin matched its color. “I will be here in case. And Franchesco will know what to do. Franchesco! Are you prepared?”

A voice from overhead whooped, “You bet I am!”

Hemmel craned his neck toward the sound, which came from one of the decrepit chandeliers near the stage. The crystals clattered together musically as Franchesco shifted a little from his perch on top of the chandelier. He had the stocky build and broad shoulders of a bodybuilder, but a down of vestigial feathers plumed the skin in brilliant shades of tropical green and iridescent red. His nose dipped, sharply and cruelly, into a beaklike bend, giving him the visage of a bird of prey.

“The
monstruo
'll be chasing Crocus, right? But my friends will drive him back, just where we want him.” Franchesco let out a high, piercing cry. Suddenly the air filled with feathers: not only the pigeons that had claimed the theater before the Nightbreed had, but also crows, parrots, and even a seagull or two. Quickly falling into formation, the birds formed an arc, diving toward the arch and turning abruptly toward the orchestra pit. Franchesco gave out another cry, and the birds scattered, disappearing with such dispatch they seemed to melt into the air. “The
asesino
will fall right in!”

Burdock snorted. “And if it doesn't?”

“And if it doesn't…” From the far side of the orchestra pit, Lantana stepped forward, an ancient pixie, freakishly thin, her nightshade-purple hair spiking around her wrinkled face. “And if that doesn't, we might just cloud the issue, so to speak.”

Lantana heaved, then vomited billows of an opaque violet mist into the auditorium. Hemmel suddenly felt off-balance, no longer sure of his footing. He took a shaky step forward, then another, and another. He couldn't see anything now but the hues of the mist: tints of sunset and the promise of fine hunting in the darkest hour of night. Voices seemed to float to him from several directions at once. “Gisella? Burdock?” he called uncertainly.

His head abruptly cleared as Lantana's rough laugh pealed out and the mist evaporated like a popping soap bubble. Hemmel realized that he had unwittingly advanced to the lip of the pit. One more step, and he would tumble down into it. He saw that all the other Nightbreed stood on the orchestra pit's edge, too.

Lantana smiled wickedly. “If I can entrance you to step forth to the pit, I can lure
that
, too.”

Hemmel considered. “Okay, you get the thing in the hole. Then what?”

From deep below him, a smooth, deep voice replied, “What happens next, my friend, is also what happens last.”

Hemmel looked into the blackness of the pit. Something shuffled into better view, and Hemmel gasped in surprise. “Desai?”

“None other.”

Desai rarely showed himself. In fact, Hemmel had only met him once before. Desai preferred to live below the stage, where a decayed warren of dressing rooms, long since half buried in dust, provided the dark, cool hiding place he craved. Dozens of hands sprouted like cilia from the sides of his unclothed body, extending and retracting at will. Six of Desai's hands were out at the moment, reaching around on stubby, rubbery arms to frame his back as he slowly did a pirouette for the Enclave's benefit. He had many hands, but only two feet, and these supported him awkwardly.

“You see, my friends, I am fit as ever where it matters the most.” As he turned, the hands, deft as a game-show model's, pointed to the hard ridges running down Desai's spine. At the small of his back, a jointed tail whipped upward, its sharp stinger dangling just above Desai's head. “When our tormentor falls in here, I will give him a taste of my Sleep.”

“You're going to stun the Pariah?” Burdock asked.

“If possible. Keep in mind, I may have to use all my poison, and then I cannot guarantee that creature''s safety.”

Hemmel felt absurdly touched. Desai's mother had used all her poison in the fight at Midian, and it had killed her. Yet Desai was willing to risk his own life for other Nightbreed, with whom he seldom interacted.

Gisella flicked out her talons. “We understand. The Dark God's will be done. We appreciate your sacrifice.”

She surveyed the semicircle of Nightbreed. “Everyone, get to your places. Someone must keep watch and warn us when
that
is near.”

Burdock squinted at Hemmel. “That would be you, of course. You're practically a Natural.”

“Yeah?” Hemmel raised his shirt and let the Sickle coil forth in all its hunger.

Burdock was unimpressed. “You look a whole lot more Natural than any of the rest of us.”

Hemmel glanced around. He couldn't argue with that one. “Fine.”

“You got your cell phone?” Burdock asked.

“Of course.” Hemmel absently felt the lump in the breast pocket of his overcoat to be sure. Since leaving Midian, the Nightbreed had adopted many of the Naturals' technological conveniences.

“And you remembered to
charge
it this time?”

“Yeah! Yeah! I'm not stupid.” In fact, Hemmel had recently walked over a mile to an all-night doughnut shop to find a working outlet where he could hook up the damned phone.

“All right then. Be ready for further orders.” Burdock pivoted his head to glower at Hemmel through the hole in his stocking cap. “And keep an eye out!”

Hemmel grunted acknowledgment, and reluctantly left the auditorium to take up his post outside the theater.

Standing alone beneath the Elysian's marquee, he shifted from foot to foot and pulled his coat more tightly around himself even though he didn't feel cold. Beneath his shirt, the Sickle hissed like an asp. In all the fuss over the Pariah, everyone seemed to have forgotten about food. Everyone but Hemmel. He'd actually been tempted to ask Amalek for a bite of Vagamel's leg but thought that might be rude.

He sniffed the chill air. There was Meat nearby, no doubt about it. Hemmel glanced up and down the desolate thoroughfare until he spotted her—a plump, solitary bag lady, shambling in distraction along the opposite sidewalk.

Hemmel's mouth twisted in hesitation. She was just across the street. He could still watch the front of the theater from there, and it would only take a minute.…

The Sickle would not be denied. Hemmel unbuttoned his shirt as he moved to intercept her.

The old hag must have been demented or delirious or both. She tore at her gray hair, waggling her head, peppering the air with frantic mutters. “No, no! I can't—it mustn't. Horrible, horrible.”

Hemmel opened wide his arms. “No need to fret, Granny. You won't feel a thing.”

The Sickle sprang forth from his exposed abdomen. He pulled her against him, and the cartilaginous point of the arced proboscis pierced her threadbare clothing and penetrated her midriff. The appendage oozed a numbing, coagulant pus as the three-pronged point opened inside her, questing for an organ to harvest.

The bag lady slackened in Hemmel's embrace as she succumbed to the narcotic effect of the ooze. A casual observer would have thought they were hugging. He patted her back. “That's it. Just relax.”

There was a time when Hemmel might have treated himself to a brain or a heart or a lung. Now that he was forced to coexist with Naturals, though, he found it better to use more discretion when selecting his snacks. An appendix for an appetizer. The bonbon of a gall bladder. Half a liver—no more! Or in this case, one of a pair of nice, juicy kidneys.

“Never even know it's gone,” he whispered, as the prongs of the Sickle closed around the chosen meal. The proboscis pumped in stomach acid to digest the kidney inside the bag lady, then sucked the dissolved organ into Hemmel like soda through a straw. The coagulant would seal her wounds and keep her from bleeding to death.

Before he could finish, however, a new agitation seized the bag lady, so strong it overcame the sedation of Hemmel's pus. She flailed in his grasp, shrieking. “Oh, God! Oh, God!
That
is here! Stop
that
! Stop
that
!”

Her odd use of the pronoun chilled Hemmel. She was a Natural. She couldn't possibly know about …

He loosened his grip, and she wrenched loose from the Sickle's impalement. In the struggle, the proboscis ripped wide the wound instead of sealing it. Entrails bulged from the red maw, blood speckling the pavement as she stumbled away in a haphazard delirium.

As if forgetting to zip his fly, Hemmel stood there, dumbfounded, with the blood-smeared Sickle hanging out in plain sight. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction the old lady had gaped—toward the theater. No hideous monstrosity there. The only thing moving was a haggard-looking black man in an Army-surplus jacket limping along the sidewalk.

Yet when the man looked at him with his sorrowful eyes, Hemmel sickened with an overwhelming revulsion. A revulsion that metastasized into terror when the man turned and entered the Elysian.

Hemmel fumbled the cell phone out of his pocket, fought to steady his finger long enough to push the right contact number.

“Burdock!” he babbled before the other even had a chance to speak. “The Pariah—it
is
a shape-shifter!” He grimaced at the stunning obviousness of the statement. “The black guy that just came in—”

“Hemmel?” Burdock interrupted. “But
you
just came in. Great Baphomet—what is that smell?”

Shouts of alarm sounded in the background, and Hemmel snapped his phone shut to cut them off. His instinct was to run away, to let Gisella and the others deal with
that
. But he knew their plan was doomed, for they could never have anticipated what they were up against. They had never expected that the enemy could so easily masquerade as a friend. The Pariah was far worse than any of them had guessed.