Sacrifice (24 page)

There has been some speculation that if the Curburide were to be given access to a country by way of the third and most dangerous type of Calling, that their reign would not end at those sovereign borders. Such a Calling, it is said, could bring upon the earth an age of degradation so vile, so laved in blood, that all of humanity’s corpses would, at its end, lie naked and unburied for the wolves to feast upon.

Nevertheless, the ritual has been constructed and attempted, albeit unsuccessfully. The cornerstone of the ritual, which is preceded by five degradations, is the final sacrifice. This should occur in a place of spiritual power, and should involve a sacrificial victim who has already been used in the throes of possession. But the sacrifice must also involve another, who willingly engages in the mutilation and sexual conquest of the flesh…

—Chapter Nine,
The Book of the Curburide

Alex woke up with a headache. The room was still dark, but something had awoken her. Her heart pounded double time. When she rolled over to look at Joe’s bed, she felt a dull ache at the back of her skull. She laughed inwardly and cursed herself.
Lightweight.

But the hangover ache wasn’t what woke her, she knew it. Holding her breath, she squinted into the darkness. She’d been sleeping deeply, couldn’t even remember dreaming. It would have taken a good noise to wake her, and Joe was still wrapped up in blankets in the other bed. His breath came in long, slow rhythms. It hadn’t been him.

Something moved by the short hallway to the door. She tried to call out to Joe, to alert him, but her voice wouldn’t come.

In a heartbeat it was there, next to her bed.

A man. Or, at least, some
thing
that looked like a man. An old, old man. A wizened, well-lined face bent over her bed, and Alex could see the hair growing out of the moles on his forehead and cheeks. Age did not become him.

He raised a pale, gnarled finger to his lips. “Shhhhh.”

Don’t listen to him, Alex.

Malachai. He’d been strangely silent for most of the past couple days.

Who is it?
she asked in her mind.

Nobody you want to know. Or trust. You should send him away.

The old man bent to brush cool, dry lips against her forehead. With a cold hand he began to stroke her hair against the pillow. Again Alex tried to call out to Joe, but her throat seemed locked. No sound would come out.

“Who…” she finally gasped.

“Shhhhh.” The old man slid from sight, and Alex was afraid to turn, afraid to see where he’d gone. But then she felt the covers move, and she knew right where he’d gone. His hairy naked legs suddenly entwined with hers, and his liver-spotted arm slipped around her middle familiarly.

His voice rasped now in her ear. “Shhhh, my sweet. Wouldn’t want to wake the boy when a man’s here to do what a man’s gotta do.”

Alex’s eyes shot wide, and she felt something hard poking against her butt. Something cold and hard. His chest hair grated against her T-shirt, and she elbowed him, sharp, hard, in the gut.

But her elbow felt as if it had sunk in a winter pond.

Malachai!
she screamed inside.

Meet a real, dead Curburide,
the spirit whispered.
Consider it your first test.

The old man’s bony palm was now kneading her chest, slipping up and down the slope of her breasts and cupping her nipples as he rolled first one and then the other between his icy finger and thumb. While her mind screamed and cried for her body to move, her flesh would not respond. A strange blanket of lethargy weighed her into the mattress like bags of flour, and instead of screaming and throttling the old lech, she only lay there as his fingers probed her tits and then slipped beneath the waistband of her underwear to scratch and rub at the curly hair hidden there.

Help me,
she screamed, but nothing came out of her mouth.

The waistband of her pan ties was slipping down her thigh, and then his sour breath raised the hair in her nose. “So pretty, pretty,” the creature breathed across her cheek. His cool, dead flesh pressed down against her face, and she gagged on his smell. His face felt like a bowl of sticky rice that had sat out on the counter for hours. It was bumpy and wet and cold. And his fingers were touching her, touching her there and it felt good but she didn’t want to respond to it, no. It was wrong; she couldn’t let this
thing
take the only thing she had that was truly hers to give. The thing she had started to think about giving to Joe…

Help yourself,
Malachai answered.
Or turn around and go home.

Fucker,
she hissed.

Whiny, insolent brat. Are you going to just lie there and let this beast inseminate you?

Even as he said it, she could feel the prod of the old man’s penis pressing between the back of her thighs. She clenched them tight, and tried again to roll back against the thing. But its body seemed spongelike; her shoulder arched into something cold and amorphous, and for just a second she thought she felt the soft but solid touch of the mattress before the cool pocket of Curburide expanded again and gently pressed her back to her side. Then his sharp bony hands were on her shoulders, rolling her facedown on the mattress, and his legs were scissoring between hers, spreading her for him to take from behind, like an animal.

His weight eased upon her, and his hands slipped across her breasts again as he pulled himself tight to her, slipping easily now with his cock between her virginal lips, teasing at the entry she’d only plumbed up to now with her fingers.

As he kissed and licked her earlobe, he whispered, “You are mine now. I will keep you safe. From the rest.”

There was a tornado in Alex’s chest as she felt the coldness entering her and with a flash of pure, unflinching fury, she wrenched herself free from torpor.

“You…will…
not.
” She screamed. It came out as a whisper…but it came out. She closed her eyes and remembered the feeling when she had turned the lock on the door in the hotel in Phoenix. She understood now. It seemed like it was a physical thing, but this was a Curburide. A spirit. You couldn’t fight a spirit with elbows and knees. You could only fight it with soul.

Alex gathered her hate in a tight, hard ball and threw it from her heart like a steel punch. The coldness between her legs jerked back, and she felt her limbs loosen. Not missing a beat, she flung herself out of its grasp and off the bed, landing with a thud on the carpet. The floor slammed against her, jarring her tailbone like a hammer. But the pain helped; it drove the torpid spell of the Curburide from her. As the evil, hoary man reached for her from the edge of the bed, she imagined him, not in her room, but in a fiery pit of searing, burning logs. An inferno that would take that creature’s coldness and turn it inside out. For a second, the room seemed to glow with the illusion of fire, and the Curburide shrunk back to the bed. The demon shrieked.

“Get the fuck out of my room, you asshole,” she hissed.

The man slipped off the bed and backed away from her, shaking his head.

“I’m not so bad,” he said. “I would protect you. When they have their way with you…”

“Go,” she demanded, and sent another heartfelt jet of flame at his face. She wanted his white, kinked hair to burn until it was black ash on his bubbled, blistered forehead. Again he screamed, raising an arm to ward off her spectral fire. He cursed her, and in a flash, was gone from the room.

As she sat there, sweat running down the sides of her forehead, trying to catch her breath, Joe finally woke up.

“Whaddya doing down there?” he mumbled sleepily, peering over the edge of his mattress. “You fall out of bed?”

“Sort of.”

Alex thought of the unnatural cold thing that had pressed between her legs and shuddered. The rumpled covers hung half off of her empty bed. Her stomach turned over, a little late to the emotional party. She couldn’t go back to that bed, not to night.

Alex turned back to Joe and straightened her T-shirt to cover her pan ties. Then she pushed a hand on his chest.

“Move over,” she said. “I’m coming in.”

“All hands on deck,” Joe laughed, and scootched himself backwards to accommodate her. She pushed up against him and curled into a ball, hogging his pillow, and breathing in the warm smell of him on it.

“Bad dream?” he asked, stroking the hair away from her ear.

“The worst,” she whispered. And in her mind, added,
because it was real.

He reached around her, to hug her close, and Alex smiled as he struggled to keep his arm from brushing her nipples. His arm felt right wrapped around her. She slipped a hand around his wrist and pushed his arm up, so he couldn’t help but crush her breasts against his forearm as he hugged her.

She sighed and pressed his hand to her breast, enjoying the reaction she felt from behind. He struggled to shift his erection and it slipped against the thin pan ties like a warm sausage. He was exactly opposite of the Curburide; warm where it was cold, young where it was old.

“Sleep,” Joe whispered in her ear. His breath smelled rich, like life. Life with a touch of onions. Alex craned her head around just in time to plant a kiss on his lips. His eyes widened, but he returned the gesture, and then gently pressed her back to the pillow.

“It’s not the time,” he said. “Not now.” He leaned in and kissed her cheek and then slid back to the pillow, whispering again, “Sleep.”

Alex realized at that moment that she was in love with Joe Kieran.

This time, when Joe woke the next morning, Alex was still in bed with him. And still sleeping. He pressed his raging morning erection against her and buried his face in her hair.

God, did he want to fuck her.
How he had ever managed to say “not now” to her last night, he didn’t know. But something had made him hold back. And he remembered Malachai’s warning about witches and power and virginity. Sounded like an old wives’ tale, but he wasn’t taking chances at this stage in the game.

Still…he could have had her. He closed his eyes at the subtle jasmine scent of her hair and imagined her naked beneath him, eyes trained on his as he moved, gently but firmly between her legs. God, God, God. What if they didn’t make it out of this? What if he’d passed up his one chance to be with Alex?

“Is that a baseball bat on my ass, or are you happy to see me?”

Joe opened his eyes and laughed, rolling back from her, a little embarrassed. He hadn’t intended for her to feel him touching her that way, just for a moment.

She rolled over to face him, sleep still clouding her eyes. “It’s okay,” she said. “I hear all guys get that in the morning.”

“No, I really am happy to see you,” he ventured.

Her lips spread into a pale grin, and she gave him a dry peck, and then poured herself over him, in a full body hug.

“No real kisses ‘til I brush my grody teeth,” she whispered in his ear.

“No real kisses ‘til we get rid of the freakin’ psycho and her army of ghosts,” Joe answered.

“That’s how it is, huh?” She pulled back and raised one coy eyebrow.

“That’s how it is.”

She rolled off the bed. “Then we better get moving and get this little war over with.”

He did the same. “Dibs on the bathroom,” he called, and darted around the bed past her.

“Uncool,” she pouted.

“Only cuz you lost.”

When the door closed, Alex sat down on the bed, and waited for the sound of the water. Then she buried her face in his pillow. And breathed him in, one slow breath at a time.

The road twisted and turned through a maze of thick emerald forest. They had been climbing slowly for the past half hour, and Jeremy’s ears popped with the gain of altitude. According to the directions Ariana had from her e-mail, they should be coming to the old port town any minute now. All he could see were trees.

They were close though, he could taste it. Literally. The air had grown tart with the flavor of the salty ocean breeze. Ariana had popped the pain pills at the hotel, and five minutes after they got on the road, she was out cold.

He passed a rusted mailbox beside a gravel driveway that led off to the left from the road, and then shortly thereafter, a sign, half obscured by a wide weedy frond the size of an elephant ear.

TERREL 5 MILES

“At last,” he sighed. Jeremy had begun to get claustrophobic in the midst of all this dark foliage. It was as if they were driving down a one-way road to a green hell. He hadn’t seen another car in fifteen minutes.

The road took a new curve, hard to the right, and then snaked left. Jeremy realized he could see glimpses of brightness through the thick bush and tree cover on the passenger side of the car. Then he saw a longer streak of bright blue. The road cut again toward the right and suddenly the trees disappeared altogether and Jeremy found himself with an unobstructed view looking out off a high ridge over an expanse of deep blue water that stretched out in a long shadow to the pale, blue sky.

The road appeared to wind down into a valley where the spires of a church, and some other, smaller buildings poked out from between the trees. And farther down the line of the bay, the road obviously climbed out of the valley and up again. He could see the unusually high promontory of a cliff on the far side of town.
That’s gotta be the place,
he thought.
Terrel’s Peak. The place where the girl they were here to find was first possessed.

And the place where, in just four more days, she’d be sacrificed.

“We need to find the room,” Alex announced, sitting on the floor and pulling her shoes on. She hadn’t yet told Joe about the reason she’d climbed into bed with him. She wasn’t sure she was going to. It made her feel slimy and dirty just to think of it.

“Can we get breakfast first?” Joe asked. “I need coffee.”

“We can do both. I want to stay in the hotel and try to talk to some ghosts here.”

She stood up. “We’ve had good luck so far in the hotels.”

“Hmmm…you define luck differently than I do,” he grinned. “When I’m talking about getting lucky…”

“…stow it, mister. You had your chance at about two or three o’clock this morning. Luck is what you make of it.”

Joe shook his head and followed her out the door. He really
had
thought she was fifteen the first time he saw her. He sure didn’t anymore, as he watched her ass moving tightly against the pockets of her jeans down the hallway. He kicked himself, mentally, again and again. What had he been thinking then? What had he been thinking last night?

He pulled the door shut until he heard the lock catch. “Damn,” he mumbled and hurried to catch up to her.

Joe grabbed a newspaper from the lobby, and then they went downstairs to the hotel’s restaurant, Red Rojo, for breakfast.

“What’s a Rojo?” Alex asked as they stepped past the hostess podium and into a bright atrium filled with square tables. They were seated at a table near the windows, looking down at the pool, and the flagstone path along Waller Creek.

“Isn’t it a chocolate and caramel candy?”

“That’s Rolo, stupid.”

Joe flipped open the paper, and skimmed the headlines. He’d only flipped the front page when he suddenly said, “Uh-oh.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Something’s changed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hang on,” he said, and then, after reading a moment, passed her the paper. He pointed to a box on the bottom of page 4.

SUNDAY SLASHER STRIKES AGAIN

A double homicide committed in a residential neighborhood in Tallahassee, Florida has been linked to the Sunday Slasher, despite the fact that the killing apparently occurred on a Monday, rather than a Sunday.

Coroner’s reports confirm that the bodies of two victims, a male and a female, were removed from a residential section of Tallahassee late on Tuesday, after being murdered late the night before.

Austin police confirm that while this killing does not exactly match the pattern of the previous four murders linked to the elusive Sunday Slasher, the “design” of the killings has the indisputable signature of the killer who took the life of a man in the Austin Marriott Capitol two weeks ago on Halloween. The same killer is also linked to murders in Phoenix, San Francisco and New Orleans. Police sources speculate that, given the pattern of these killings, the next attempt will likely occur in an eastern seaboard city; each killing has been several hundred miles almost due east of the last. After Tallahassee, the next most likely urban areas are Jacksonville, Fla., Orlando, or Savannah, Ga.

There remain no suspects in the bizarre string of murders that began in San Francisco a month ago. For purposes of confidentiality, police remain silent on the evidence that they maintain ties each of these cases together.

“She missed a day and took two to make up for it,” Joe said when Alex laid the paper back on the table. “What do you make of that?”

“She’s getting sloppy?”

“No,” Joe shook his head. “There’s something different about this one. I wonder what’s up. And where she’s going.”

Just then, a waitress stopped and offered them menus, while pointing out the ease of the buffet. As soon as she left, Joe looked over his shoulder at the long table of eggs, bacon, oatmeal and potatoes, and said, “No.”

When Alex made a face, he explained. “I’ve never been to a hotel where any of the food on the buffet was actually ‘hot,’ except for the omelets. You do what you like, but I’m ordering off the menu.”

“Whatever you say, old man,” she said, picking up the menu.

“Take my word for it, jailbait. Or take your chances.”

Alex took his word for it, and a half hour later, sated with toast, Denver omelet, pancakes, coffee and orange juice, they waddled into the lobby.

“I don’t know what the buffet was like,” Alex said, patting a still-taut-looking tummy beneath a loose white T-shirt. “But Mom never cooked like that.”

“Hmmm,” Joe said. “It was good. But you need to eat at my place sometime.”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls,” she laughed, and skipped ahead.

“No,” he said, not sure if she could hear. “Just the ones I love.” She didn’t answer, but hopped down two stairs to the bar area.

“I want to just sit here,” Alex said, pointing at the maroon padded chairs near the registration desk and untenanted bar. “I’d feel better if we can find someone to talk to in the open, you know? Like in Phoenix. He was nice.”

“Wherever,” Joe agreed, flopping into a sofa chair next to hers. “I can barely move.”

Alex settled into the chair and stared around the lobby. It was quiet this morning; not surprising since it was a weekday and anyone here on business had probably already left. A hotel in the midst of the city like this had to be geared towards business travelers. Nevertheless, a couple people slipped back and forth through the lobby as she watched, and she could see the bellman escort one of them out the door and poise a whistle to his mouth to call a cab.

The lobby was strangely clear of ghostly presence, though she had noticed the hazy shadow of one over near the elevators, and another in the entryway to the registration desk area. They were so indistinct, that she didn’t even try to call them; such vague energy wouldn’t likely be connected to what was happening here, now.

Looking for someone?

The voice came from behind her, and Alex jumped. She turned around and he was there. Clearly. Almost physically.

Are you real?
she asked, but not out loud.

No,
he said.
Just angry.

Angry?

That you’re sitting around here. The bitch has gone. Days and days ago. Why are you here? Get on her trail and stop her before it’s too late.

Who are you?
Alex asked.

Just another dead person who doesn’t want the Curburide to suck my little slice of heaven dry. What do you care? Get out of here and stop her.

Alex looked up at him, amazed at the anger that emanated. His face was drawn, shaven jaw set in a block of tension. His eyes seemed blue in the hazy fading light he drew around himself, and his hair was tight; salt-and-pepper gray and black. He wore glasses, too; little round sit-on-the-edge-of-the-nose specs that almost seemed an affectation.

Why are you mad at me?
she asked in her mind.
We’re just here trying to find out something about her so that we CAN stop her. Give me something to go on. At least tell me where she killed here, so I can see the doorway. That might help.

The ghost looked up at the ceiling of the bar.
Can’t you feel it?
he asked.

No,
Alex admitted.
I don’t feel anything but a bit of a hangover from the beer I drank last night. Are you going to help me, or not?

Room 618,
he said.
But if you don’t know that already…maybe there’s no point in telling you.

Fuck you, asshole,
Alex said.
I don’t have to take that kind of shit from a dead guy. You want to help me find her, great. You want to dis me…fuck off.

The spirit reached out a hand to her, but it passed through her shoulder.
I’m sorry,
he said.
I just want to
…He chuckled…
rest in peace. And currently…let’s just say there’s no rest for anyone still in this realm.

So how am I supposed to stop her?
Alex asked.

The being shook its head sadly.
I’m sorry,
it said.
But if you can’t feel the pull of room 618 in this hotel, and you don’t know how to stop her…you’re not the one to do it. You should go home.

With that, the spirit faded from view, and Alex threw her hands up.

“What?” Joe asked.

“First my fuckin’ father says I’m damned for talking with the dead, and then the dead tell me I don’t do it good enough to earn the freakin’ witch scout merit badge.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She related the conversation with the ghost, and Joe shook his head.

“They want it all,” he said. “Salvation, heaven, justification. He had issues. Let’s just check out the info he gave us. Room 618. We can go there. It doesn’t matter if you can feel it or not, you’re still learning.”

“Yeah, but if I’m still learning, what’s going to happen when we actually come face-to-face with the masters?”

“You’re gonna surprise the shit out of them.”

“Why, because I can see them?”

“No, because they will fear you, knowing that you’re a redhead, even though your hair appears strangely black,” he grinned. “Chill.”

“Easy for you to say.” She pointed at an empty spot near the manager’s station. “You don’t have ghosts coming up to you to tell you that you’re not worth shit.”

“Naw,” Joe said. “I had parents for that.”

He stood up, and motioned her to precede him.

“Let’s see what’s on the sixth floor, so maybe we can get outta here.”

“You don’t like Austin?” she asked.

“I love Austin. I just know I’m not gonna get any until we stop a psycho killer. And I want some. So let’s hit the road, Jack. I mean Jill.”

Alex flashed him a thousand-dollar smile. “You’re a lot nicer than the ghosts around here.”

“You don’t even know,” he said. “Just you wait.”

“Just get me through this little war of the worlds,” she said. “And I promise, you’ll be very, very happy.”

They stepped into an open elevator and Joe punched the button that said 6.

“Happy is as happy does,” he proclaimed.

“What does that mean?”

“I was hoping you knew,” he said. “I don’t have a fucking clue. But it sounds good.”

Room 618 was closed. Not surprising…all of the rooms on the sixth floor were closed. But when Alex knocked, no answer was forthcoming. “Can you throw the lock again?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know. There’s nothing to pull from,” she said. “In Phoenix, I had Jack’s energy to draw on.”

Have you ever been anywhere that you haven’t seen a ghost nearby?
Malachai asked.

And there you are again,
Alex said in her mind.

Malachai’s voice sounded strained.
You are so close,
he said.
And so far.

“What’s the matter?” Joe asked, noticing her pause.

“Malachai’s making fun of me.”

“He likes you.”

“Got a strange way of showing it.”

“Well,” Joe said. “He barely ever talks to me anymore, and I’m the one he’s married to.”

Alex grinned. “Good point, I guess.” She pointed to the door. “He seems to think I can open this with just the random ghost energy that’s always around us.”

“Can you?”

Alex shrugged. Then closed her eyes and focused on the lock. She tried to remember the way it felt when she’d “found her center” in Phoenix. It had been a desperate bid, but she’d somehow found that special place between her head and stomach that had been able to turn the trick. And now she needed to again. Maybe in a more difficult way, since she didn’t have a ghost at her shoulder to draw power from.

She closed her eyes for a couple minutes, and imagined the lock opening. But when she put her hand on it, the knob didn’t budge.

“Shit.”

“Relax,” he said. “You’re trying too hard. You have to feel it.”

“Now you’re a psychic expert, too?”

He took the hint and shut up.

Alex stared hard at the knob and pulled from that place. She imagined she was talking to Genna and sent her desire from the place that she used to talk to ghosts with. It was like a small, warm circle in her chest, a place that was always there. She drew from it, somehow, and willed it to enter the doorknob and throw the lock.

It did just that.

Alex reached out and twisted the handle. “Here we are,” she said. Joe pushed the door and led her inside. The room was cold; someone had turned the thermostat all the way down, because the fan was humming even now in the background.

“Looks like all the others,” he said.

“Yeah, kinda,” Alex said, walking past the bathroom to the double beds. Then she pointed. “But this one has a custom-made doorway to hell in the corner. And it’s wider than the others we’ve seen.”

It was true. In the past two hotel rooms they’d seen, the fissure between here and the realm of the Curburide was thin; a faint black line like a crack in the paint. Here, it was as if someone had pulled back the wall with a crowbar. Instead of a spider-thin fissure in the drywall at the corner of the room, there was an inch-wide gap.

“Can you feel them?” His voice was low.

“Sort of,” she whispered. “I can’t really tell if the cold is because of the air conditioner, or them. But there’s a feeling of…something bad here.”

“Um, like her?”

Alex followed the point of his finger, which indicated the faint, ghostly refraction of an old crone gripping and pulling desperately to free herself from the crack in the drywall of the room.

“You can see her?”

“Yeah,” Joe said. “And call me conservative, but it seems kinda weird that she’s trying to crawl out of a wall.”

The wretched creature slipped with audible pain through the crack and then stood in the center of the room, a slow wicked grin growing on her face. “You,” she said, pointing at Alex. “Would you like to come with me now? We can save you from the others.”

“Not if I can blow them up first,” Joe mumbled.

“Why are you here?” Alex asked.

The creature laughed. “Why, to suck you, my dear,” she said, opening her mouth to expose a dazzling array of fangs. “You’ll be delicious, I’m sure.”

“Who called you?”

“I don’t answer to anyone,” the Curburide hissed. “Who called you?”