Sacrifice (3 page)

Austin, After Ariana

In room 618 of the Austin Marriott Capitol Hill, Jamie Gartside was also having problems sleeping. He’d had a long day, meeting with clients north of the Loop, and then a long dinner with copious margaritas at a Tex-Mex place near the arboretum. The hotel room swayed unevenly when he’d first walked in, and now the bed seemed none too stable either.

He hugged a pillow to his middle and moaned. If only Rachel were here. She could have stroked his head and whispered in his ear the way she always did when he felt just a little wonky. She would have lulled him into dreamland.

Not to night. She was 1,000 miles away at home, taking care of Dennie, their six-month-old. And she’d be none too pleased, he bet, if she knew that he was lying here bloated and buzzed after a night of “business” partying, while she was stuck home with a colicky kid. If she had been here, she probably wouldn’t have caressed his brow and whispered sweet nothings. “She would have told me to kiss her ass,” Jamie muttered.

There was a noise by the window.

A scratching, clawing kind of noise. Dull, muted, but not far away.

Jamie peeled his eyes open and struggled to sober up. The window at the left let in a faint stream of moon or streetlight that brightened the shadows in the center of the room, but did nothing for its corners. He stretched out an arm towards the light, slowly, trying not to make a sound.

But he couldn’t reach the switch. Not without hanging halfway out of bed.

Crrrraww. Crrraw. Crrreeech.

The noise grew louder, more insistent. It was here with him in the room. In his haze of inebriation, Jamie panicked. What if it was a rabid bat, stuck in the drapes of the room and just waiting to bite him? There was a whole flock of bats that came out from beneath a bridge in the center of town. The damn city actually advertised it as a tourist attraction, instead of killing the vile things. What if one of the dirty creatures was here, in the room with him? Just waiting for its moment to strike?

Slipping out of bed on the far side from the window, Jamie crawled to the edge of the bed and found one of his black hard-heeled dress shoes. The scratching continued, and it was definitely coming from the window. He crept quietly across the floor, stopping right in the middle of a wide, faint stain in the otherwise mauve carpet. But the floor was not his concern. He could see the shadow of something flickering there, right in the center of the window, blotting out the light from the street below. It shifted and moved, spread and contracted.

It was a bat. He knew it.

Damn if the thing was going to bite him in the middle of the night as he slept! He was not taking a 10-inch needle in the belly for a month to ward off rabies. No way. He’d kill the sumbitch first.

Jamie nodded. One good smack to the head, and it was good-bye bat, hello free room (he could imagine the manager’s face as he pointed out the dead animal and ranted, “How dare you put me in a room with a rabid animal!”).

Gripping the shoe tight by the toe, he tapped the heel slowly against his hand and considered. Two steps to the window, stand, and smack. Four moves, three seconds.

3-2-1.

Jamie launched himself at the gripping, waving, growing shadow in the window, and raised his arm to smash the creature hovering there.

But as he brought the arm and shoe down, he gasped.

The creature had no wings. It had no face. It wasn’t really black, but shimmery, silvery, translucent. It wasn’t a bat at all. It looked like…a ghostly hand.

And as he landed the blow of his shoe against its knuckles, it didn’t squeak or cry out or fall to the floor.

Instead it reached out and grabbed him, stretching long fingers out and bearing down hard around his neck. Jamie’s eyes bugged out and he stumbled forward, cracking his head against the glass and gasping, trying to call for help.

But the glass didn’t break, and the hand held fast. It lifted him up off the floor and dangled him there, as if to admire him head to toe. Then it pulled him into the invisible crack near the window that it had slipped to earth through. It had followed the Calling and found a chink in the armor of the universe there.

The hand disappeared back from where it had come, pulling its prize, Jamie Gartside, away from all that he’d ever known to someplace else. Someplace outside of this world entirely.

The Quarter was already alive at 8 p.m. when Ariana set boot to cement and stopped at the start of the strip. This time, she was in full dominatrix regalia, shiny black corset cinched tight at her middle, encouraging the slinky sway of the equally skintight leather that bound her ass like a vise. Ariana loved the constraints of good fetish-wear, and loved the sidelong, slack-jawed looks it brought her when she stalked down the street, all obsidian-deadly curves above her dangerously spiked boots.

Bourbon Street was a hive of human activity, with throngs of walkers moving up and down from bar to bar, restaurant to restaurant. The flesh barkers were out at the front of their clubs, hooking in the unwary with promises of skin and showgirls. Farther down the strip, she could hear the cheers from a crowd gathered around one of the clubs, probably the Cat’s Meow, she thought. The girls there would be lifting T-shirts and unbuttoning blouses to the cries of “show us your tits,” all for the reward of strands of worthless beads. Bourbon was the Mecca for the voyeur and exhibitionist, and the coin was beads—though the girls flashing and flipping their mammaries about wouldn’t have needed anything in exchange. The exchange of beads just provided a convenient, codified excuse for being bad in public.

Absentmindedly, Ariana fingered the string of turquoise and green beads around her own neck and moved forward. She’d not be earning any strands of these, to night, she thought. She’d bought this pair in a cheap souvenir shop, determined to look at least a little the part of a tourist, despite her distinctly left-of-center outfit. Hell, even if she wanted to accede to the crass call of “show us your tits” by a crowd of frat-minded males, it would take her five minutes just to uncinch and release herself from the tight hold of her outfit. Still, she swung the beads around her neck. She had to look like she was in the right mood, even if she obviously was not a bumpkin tourist from the heart of Ohio.

She wandered the strip for an hour, swaying to the sounds of raw blues and funky Dixieland from a variety of open-to-the-street bars, and downing a frozen drink from one joint that featured churning vats of alcohol Trojan-horsed in icy swirls that bled from virtually every color of the rainbow. Finally, she turned off the main drag and sidled into the Shim Sham.

The lights in the front bar of the club were low, a strand of white plastic skulls with glowing orange lights for eyes draped in low swoops across the mirror of the bar. A stocky boy in an LU jersey sat in the corner at a round table studying an economics text, while a couple chatted up the bartender, a slim twentysomething with too-black hair, and a dozen piercings in her ears and nose. Conversation at the bar stopped when Ariana walked in, but she only nodded and kept going, paying the cover at the back door and stepping through to the wider room in back reserved for live bands and their paying audiences. Another long wood plank bar took up the whole back wall here, surrounded by a mix of tables and chairs right up to the barrier of the small stage. She bought a gin and tonic and leaned against the wall at the side of the room, out of the line of traffic. The back room was already packed, and it didn’t take Ariana long to find her mark. Or, more accurately, for him to find her.

“Hey,” he said. “Nice night, huh?”

He was tall, dark-skinned, ebon-haired. Wet, brown eyes. Italian, she guessed. Carried himself well, proud. Thought he was something. She ignored him, staring straight ahead. Nothing encouraged persistence as much as being ignored.

He stood next to her quietly for a moment, sipping a Shiner Bock and stealing sideways glances. Ariana bided her time, staring straight ahead at the empty stage. The DJ was playing something industrial; the band wouldn’t be on for another hour.

“You from around here?” he finally hazarded again, staring hard at the side of her face.

She fed him her profile and concentrated on the motions of a fly spinning lazily over the clouds of smoke rising from the cigarettes burning a few tables ahead.

“I love this place,” he volunteered. “It’s so seedy, but so much fun.”

Ariana bit her tongue to keep from smiling. It was going to be a shame to slit his throat.

“I’m Ray,” he said, sticking his hand out to brush his knuckles with hers.

She had to give him one thing—he had nothing if not persistence. Maybe the old saw should say persistence killed the cat.

Ariana sighed and turned to take Ray’s hand.

“I’m Air,” she said.

“I’d like to be breathing you,” he shot back. He was fast.

“That can be arranged,” she promised.

“So, you’re a California girl, eh?” he asked on the way back to her hotel.

“Born and bred,” she said.

“I’m looking forward to breeding you myself,” he grinned, and she shot him a dirty look.

“Be nice,” she warned.

“Okay, okay,” he said, looking sheepish. “Vapid pleasantries. I can do that. Let’s see…what do you do for a living?”

Ariana grinned, and rubbed his thigh.

“These days,” she said, “I travel a lot.”

“So you’re here on business?”

“Sort of. What about you?”

“Real estate,” he said. “My company owns some buildings down here. Home is Cincinnati. I’m here ‘til Wednesday, doing management reviews, process evaluation, you know, paper-pusher stuff.”

He looked away from the road, directly at her, with clear, naked intent.

“How long are you in for?”

“I’ll be leaving in the morning,” she said, and watched his face fall a little.

“Then we’d better make to night count.”

“Oh, I intend to.”

He talked fast, but he learned slow. Ariana had him naked on the floor, wrists tied behind his back and had begun invoking the Curburide before he began to get nervous.

She hated to sacrifice this one, he was so dumb, and yet so cute. And hung. She licked a lip as she stared at the burgeoning tool between his legs, but mentally shook her head.

There would be time enough for that. Time enough to sit on all the men she could ever want.

“Um, are you some kind of voodoo queen or something?” he asked as she whispered the invocations, kissed the floor at his feet and then stared up at him through heavy lids.

“Something,” she agreed, moving closer. She could see him testing the strength of the rope around his wrists. Trying oh-so-hard to be unobtrusive.

“Baby,” she whispered in his ear, “I am
something
else. I’m your worst nightmare.”

“Ugh,” he said, a look of shocked surprise spreading across his face as the circulation suddenly changed course from his brain to his lap. He was seated in the center of her stone and bone circle, in a Sheraton this time, and with just a flick of her hand, he was suddenly bleeding all over his most prized possession.

Ariana felt a small bit of remorse over that. It
was
a fine prize to behold, though it lost a bit of its cocky pride when the warm rain of Ray’s heart began to drench its mushroom head in hot, salty blood.

His eyes bulged like poached eggs when Ray saw the dark pelt of his well-toned belly and groin suddenly painted in spurts of crimson, and felt the white-hot slit of Ariana’s razor release the veins and muscle on the other side of his neck seconds after the first cut.

He was so shocked by her attack that his first instinct wasn’t to fight, but to question.

“Why?” he gasped, but she punched him in the forehead with a balled fist and then straddled his head, holding him to the floor with her legs scissoring his gouting neck and her crotch smothering his cries for help. Her legs felt warm and slippery, and his legs kicked and thrashed behind her, trying to unseat the scissor of her thighs. But she would not release her grip, and in moments, Ray went from breathing her in to not breathing at all.

Ariana looked behind her, when the body was finally still, and her heart fell as her worst fear was realized. The night truly had turned into a downer.

Not all corpses stay stiff when their lives bleed away.

She stripped off her latex and lay down next to him, the blood pooling warm against her skin, and tried to imagine what it would have been like to ride him. Her fingers slipped easily into the wet cleft of her sex and as she looked at the slack, bloody penis lolling against the dead man’s thigh, she moaned. She’d never, ever know. Her breathing quickened and she found herself humming an old favorite as she built toward release.

“It’s a shame about Ray,” she murmured and then squeaked a gasp of pleasure as her fingers grew sloppy wet. When the tremors subsided, she bent over the corpse and kissed the cooling lips.

“I might like you better if we’d slept together,” she giggled. Then with her fingers she drew a large red X over the corpse’s chest in his blood. Then she reached for her razors and set to work.

Sagebrush and sepia can make for a lulling combination when the horizon unrolls in an endless procession of same. Especially after a night of very little sleep. Joe was an hour into Colorado on I-80, but fighting to stay awake. The sky was a sleepy gray, and the dead grasses bordering the highway trembled and shook in his wake. No Doubt was on the radio, barely rising above the static of the plains, reviving a disco groove. Joe wasn’t dancing.

Stifling a yawn, he slapped a hand on his left cheek, and then did the same to his right, a little harder. Would’ve looked funny to anyone watching, but nobody was tailgating him. The pain kept him alert.

“Damn,” he mumbled, and peeled his eyes open, staring hard at the horizon, searching for mountains.

He wanted to direct Malachai to make him stay awake, but the demon would no doubt interpret the command in a way that would ultimately be unpleasant for Joe. While the creature was bound to do his will, if there was a loophole in the commission of that will, the demon would find it. The first time Joe had tried to benefit from the powers of his “genie,” he’d been at home, thinking of how much he didn’t want to cook. Finally he’d said, “Malachai, get me a good ham for dinner.”

A moment later, he’d heard the angry release of aggressive air, and turned around just in time to avoid being gored by a wild boar in his own kitchen.

Somehow, after dodging behind table, couch and end tables, and eventually ripping open the patio door and standing aside, he’d managed to free the furious, angry beast and save his own life in the process.

“How could you do that?” he’d asked the demon afterwards. “You promised not to hurt me, and you nearly killed me.”

The demon had laughed wickedly inside his ear.

I didn’t hurt you, I gave you what you asked for. A good ham. Believe me, if you’d just killed the beast, you would have had the best ham you’ve ever tasted.

“Yeah, well, the beast almost killed me! You’re not supposed to hurt me,” he’d complained, and again the demon chuckled.

I didn’t do anything but give you what you asked. If the pig had gored you, it wouldn’t have been my doing.

Joe had quickly learned that if there was any way the demon could misinterpret his wishes in a way detrimental to Joe’s health—without actually directly causing him harm, of course—then the spirit would jump at the opportunity.

Joe was far better to Malachai dead than alive.

He thought back to the time when he’d first told Cindy about his new symbiotic relationship with her former captor and she’d questioned his veracity.

“Show her that you’re real,” he’d said to Malachai. Instead of materializing, the demon had levitated Cindy in the air, holding her by one foot and allowing her head to dangle over the bonfire they’d built on the beach. She’d screamed in pain and Joe had leapt across the fire, bowling her out of the air to land both of them in a tangle in the cold sand.

Joe didn’t ask the demon favors anymore, unless he was desperate. And had thought out his questions very, very carefully. And for the most part, the demon left him alone.

You just gonna pass by?
A familiar voice grated in his head.

“Huh?” Joe asked, and then saw a flash of yellow pass by the car on the right.

If you were paying any attention to the road, you might have noticed a kid hitchhiking back there.

“What, are you my mother now?” Joe replied, kicking his foot out at the brakes and sending the car into a slaloming skid.

I wouldn’t claim you as any bastard of mine.

“Screw you,” Joe mumbled, and looking into the rearview mirror, began to back up towards the hitchhiker behind them.

You would if you could,
Malachai promised.
You don’t seem very picky. I recall a certain mother AND daughter that you couldn’t keep your hands off of…

Joe ignored the bait, and focused on the reflection of the teenager in a yellow smiley face T-shirt and too-large blue jeans that was growing larger in his rearview mirror.

He couldn’t be sure under the baggy clothes, but he thought it was a girl. She had a navy blue knapsack over her back and a baseball cap on her head, rim facing the wrong way. He stopped the car, and rolled down the passenger window. The kid leaned over and looked inside.

“Can I hitch a ride with you, mister?” Her voice lilted above the drone of the engine, and Joe had no doubt as to her sex.

“Depends where you’re going,” Joe said, a little apprehensive about picking up a hitcher, no matter how innocent this kid may have looked. The cardinal rule of journalism was to distrust everyone—if your mother told you something, check it out. The cardinal rule of the street was trust no one if you don’t have a gun. And right now, Joe didn’t even have a rusty nail file to protect himself if he was ambushed somehow.

“Denver. Or at least a few miles closer. It’s a long walk.”

“That it is,” Joe admitted.

“You mind some company?”

Joe considered the fact that he’d almost gone off the road a couple times in his struggle to stay awake, and finally shrugged. The last road sign he’d seen still said more than 100 miles to Denver.

“Get in.”

The kid tossed her backpack in the backseat, and slid into the shotgun seat with a smile.

“Thanks, mister. I’ve been walking for days, it seems.”

“Where you coming from?”

The kid blanched.

“I don’t think I should tell you that.”

Joe shot her a glance.

“If I tell you, you can always call back there and tell people where to find me. If you don’t know, you can’t send me home.”

There was some intelligence to that. Joe let it be. For now.

“Can I at least have a name?”

“Oh, sorry,” the kid grinned, showing two buckteeth and a spread of freckles in the process. She held out her hand. “I’m Alex.”

“And why does a kid called Alex, from Somewhere, U.S.A., want to hitch to Denver?” Joe asked.

“Actually, I’m going beyond Denver,” she said. “I’m headed up into the Rockies.”

Joe looked the kid over again, taking in the pug nose and freckled skin, and the curly red hair struggling to escape its confinement beneath her hat. She looked no more than 15, and hardly seasoned enough to go hiking alone in the mountains. Maybe he could help. Or at least wheedle out some more information so that he could call someone who could.

“Buckle up, then, my girl. We’re heading to the mountains!”

Alex grinned, and settled back in the seat. After a minute, she stared at the radio, currently pumping out an old slab of Deep Purple. She reached around the seat and dug a hand inside her backpack and Joe froze, split between watching the road and watching what she was pulling on him.

“Do you like Blink-182?” she asked, and he let out a breath.

“Go for it.”

His road trip suddenly had a lot more noise to it.