Serpent's Storm (38 page)

I took a few steps forward, wanting to pummel the priest in his Benjamin Button face for what he’d done to my family, but it’d taken so much energy to confront Thalia that when Frank grabbed my arm to stop me, there was nothing I could do to fight him.

“Get off me—” I growled as Frank threw me to the floor, where I had to bite my tongue not to scream in agony when I landed heavily on my bad shoulder.

“Frank, go get the little minx,” Father McGee said, pointing to Thalia, who was still cowering by the desk.

“Leave me alone,” Thalia yelled, swatting at Frank with both of her hands as she tried to climb over the desk to get away from him. Of course, he was bigger and stronger than she was, so it was no contest. He scooped her up under his arm and carried her back to where Father McGee was waiting.

“What about her?” Thalia wailed, pointing at me.

“What about me?” I rasped.

“Why don’t you kill her, too?” Thalia said, ignoring me. “She deserves to be put out of her misery.”

Selling me out even now,
I thought wryly.
What are sisters for?

“You don’t have to worry about her,” Father McGee said, smiling as Frank dropped Thalia to her knees in front of him. “She’s already been taken care of.”

Thalia closed her eyes, then opened them again, nodding.

“Let’s get it over with, then,” she said, her voice even.

“Good. I knew you would eventually see things my way,” Father McGee said, tearing open the package and presenting it to my sister.

“But I’ll only do it if you let me administer them to myself,” Thalia said quickly—and I wondered what devious plan she’d just conjured to save herself.

Father McGee motioned for Frank to release her. Frank let her go and she quickly moved away from the mutton-chopped henchman.

“Let me have the stupid nuts,” she said, holding out her hand.

Father McGee lifted his hand to drop the package into her outstretched palm, but she moved like a flash, slapping the peanuts away and driving her elbow into his gut as she pushed past him, knocking him to the ground. I had to admire her chutzpah, but I quickly saw that she’d made a serious error in judgment. As soon as she’d knocked out the priest, she should’ve taken off as fast as her little Shape-Ups could carry her, but instead, her actions fueled by her gigantic ego, she’d turned back around and lunged at Frank. Grabbing a handful of his shirt and pulling him to her, she’d kneed him in the crotch the minute he was in nut-crushing range.

I decided not to encourage Thalia by cheering. Why remind her I was there when she still had her hands full with Frank?

Speaking of Frank, Thalia’s crotch shot dropped the cowboy to his knees, his face going from milky white to scarlet in a heartbeat. I could see tears of agony forming in the corners of his eyes, but by then Thalia had turned her attention to me.

“I’m gonna kill you myself, Calliope, you dumb bitch,” she spat at me, lifting her leg to kick me in the head, but I was too transfixed by the sight of Frank—muscling through
mucho
pain to drag himself onto his feet—to really defend myself. Reaching out a large hand, he easily caught hold of the back of Thalia’s hoodie, knocking her off balance and dragging her backward so that her kick went wide, missing my head by an inch.

“Callie, help me!” Thalia cried, her eyes locking on to mine as Frank wrapped his arms around her torso, constricting her movement and forcing her back to where Father McGee was waiting, having used the opportunity to haul himself onto his feet. He looked pained by the fall, but he shook off his discomfort and lurched toward Thalia, the bag of peanuts back in his hand.

“Callie, please!” Thalia begged, her eyes full of terror—the realization that death was fast approaching, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it, blooming on her face.

After all we’d been through, after all the atrocities she’d perpetrated against me and the people I loved, after trying to kick my head in not even two minutes earlier, my sister still had the balls to ask me for my help. Jesus, the woman was unbelievable.

Whether or not I wanted to help her, there was nothing I could do. I was barely keeping myself alive,
and
deep down, if I was really being honest with myself, I knew that even if I could save her, the world would be a much better place without her in it. So I made the only reasonable choice I could: I sat on the floor and watched as Frank held my sister’s mouth open and Father McGee poured the entire contents of the aluminum peanut wrapper down her throat.

The effect was instantaneous.

Thalia’s body went rigid and then her arms and legs began to flail like a marionette puppet as Frank held one palm over her mouth to prevent her from spitting out the peanuts. Bucking like a wild animal, she rocked against his restraining arms, her face turning white then puce and then the color of boiled beets, while the whites of her eyes shifted from ochre to oxblood red. Suddenly she screamed, the sound trapped behind Frank’s hand. Her eyes began to roll wildly in their sockets, and then, without any kind of warning, her head exploded like a volcano, viscera flying everywhere as her headless corpse slid down Frank’s body and crumpled to the floor. I was far enough away that I was saved from having bits of Thalia splattered all over me, but Frank and Father McGee both got slimed, the foul miasma of offal now exposed to the air coating them like a second skin. Secretly, it filled me with glee to think my sister—no matter how evil she’d been, she’d always be my sister—had had the last word, defiling Frank and Father McGee with the nasty gore of her own dead body.

“You get what you deserve,” I said. It was directed at Father McGee and Frank, but it went for Thalia, too.

“I think that same notion can be applied to you, as well, Calliope,” Father McGee said, fishing a clean handkerchief from his back pocket and beginning to wipe the gore from his face.

“My dad trusted you and you gave his family up for what . . . immortality?”

“Better than that,” Father McGee said, handing the befouled handkerchief to Frank, who waved it away. “Eternal youth. Even now you can see the aging process being reversed, and soon, I’ll look like I did when I was twenty-five—and I will remain that way forever.”

“You may look young on the outside, but your conscience will be a black and foul thing,” I said.

“As if I care about my conscience,” he replied, laughing. “Of course, you wouldn’t know anything about my motivations. You, who’ve been immortal your whole existence, who has never had your body ache with arthritis or your vision fail from glaucoma. You, who’ve never stared down the well of life and found only death and loss-of-self curled up at the bottom, lying in wait for you. You try being a mortal for one lifetime, Calliope Reaper-Jones, and then we’ll talk.”

“I guess I’ll just have to save that for the next life,” I said, clutching my stomach as a corkscrew of fire from my gut ratcheted up into my throat.

“You’re a bright girl, Calliope,” Father McGee said. “But I hope you come back as a fly.”

“I’m gonna break you . . .” I said, crawling to my knees, my hands raised as if I were close enough to wrap them around Father McGee’s scrawny old neck and squeeze the life out of him, but then a wave of fire spread through my body, black spots dancing before my aching eyes.

The promethium had hit me full force.

“It won’t be long now, Calliope,” Father McGee said as he slammed his palms into my chest, sending me sprawling onto the floor again. “You’ve done us so many good turns—sending the Devil back to Hell, disposing of Evangeline and her Bugbears so Frank could come rescue me—it would be rude of us to let you suffer unnecessarily.”

I lay on the floor where I’d landed, unable to feel anything but the agonized burning of the promethium as it flowed through my bloodstream. My muscles gave out and I found my face pressed into the plush fibers of the oriental carpet I’d been lying on. Trying to quell the agony I felt, I pulled my feet up into my chest in a modified version of the fetal position. The relief it gave was minimal, but it was something. I was in so much pain I could hardly move, not even to lift my head up off the floor when Frank squatted down beside me, his features pinched with worry. He put a hand to my forehead, then brushed my hair back off my face.

“I’m sorry you’re suffering so much, Callie,” he said. “I’m gonna get Sumi to fix you up when he gets here. He promised I could have you.”

My eyes burning, I nodded, but I had little hope that Sumi was going to reverse the death sentence he’d already laid on me. I closed my eyes, trying to ease the ache behind my eyelids, and when I opened them again, I saw Father McGee pulling a tiny, cell phone-like device from his pocket. He pressed a numbered code into the screen and the device beeped, a wall of flickering light projecting out from inside it.

I’d thought Thalia and the Devil had blocked anyone from entering or leaving the building via wormhole, but somehow Father McGee had called up one anyway. The priest caught my questioning glance and smiled.

“Who do you think showed your sister how to shut down the wormhole system?” he purred, pleased with himself. “You really believe she was so smart? No, she was a brute, using other people’s expertise to further her own agenda—with an ego so large she could never believe anyone would ever double-cross her.”

“You’re a prick . . .” I started to say, but then the wormhole flickered between us, its gray light shimmering like static on a television set, and I watched as first Hyacinth then Sumi crossed through, entering the Hall of Death as if they owned the place. As soon as they were both safely through the wormhole, it flickered and then disappeared.

Sumi looked exactly as he had before—still wrapped in his kimono and grass skirt—while Hyacinth had slipped into something more comfortable: a pale linen and gold caftan with matching gold slippers. Her change of costume, coupled with her flaxen hair and rounded body, made her resemble a Wagnerian opera heroine.

“So good of you to hold up your end of the bargain,” Sumi said, nodding to Father McGee.

“Of course,” Father McGee replied, “the jewel you gave me is already working. My youth is returning as we speak.”

I started laughing; I couldn’t help myself, even though it hurt terribly to do it. I couldn’t believe Father McGee had done the exact thing he’d just accused my sister of doing. By accepting Sumi’s wish-fulfillment jewel, the good Father’s big fat ego had just opened itself up to a whole lot of double-crossing.

“What’s so funny?” Hyacinth roared, bending over me as I lay on the floor, giggling to myself.

“Nothing,” I moaned, hit by another wave of giggles that had me convulsing with pain and laughter.

“Tell me why you’re laughing, Calliope Reaper-Jones!” she said, kicking me in the gut with the tip of her golden slipper.

The force of Hyacinth’s blow, compounded with the nausea I’d already been marinating in, made me throw up, expelling a red foaming bile that oozed out of my mouth and poured onto the gigantic woman’s slippered feet. She backed away, kicking off her shoes as she tried to keep the stench of my vomit away from her skin, the smell assailing not only
her
nostrils, but everyone else’s, too. It was so gross I started gagging again even though I’d pretty much emptied out what was left in my stomach already.

“A jewel,” I whispered huskily, my seared throat aching. “I ate a jewel, too, Father.”

I didn’t have the energy to laugh, but Father McGee’s face blanched as he caught my meaning.

“Did you put something in my jewel?” the old man wailed, poking a bony finger into Sumi’s chest, the gesture only making the Sea God cackle.

“You think I double-crossed you?” Sumi said, pushing the priest’s hand away as he stepped in closer, so that they were now standing chest to chest.

“I don’t know,” the priest said, his lips trembling. “Did you?”

Sumi sneered at the pathetic priest, taking immense joy in the other man’s terrified countenance and wild eyes.

“Of course I double-crossed you.”

Father McGee took a step back, clutching his hands to his belly where death gestated inside him.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Father McGee whispered as he looked around wildly for an escape.

“I made it long-acting, Father,” Sumi said, enjoying Father McGee’s dismay. “It could be months before it kills you.”

Father McGee dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around Sumi’s grass skirt.

“Please, for the love of all things holy, take it out of me . . .” the priest begged.

Sumi didn’t seem at all fazed by having a grown man clutching at his legs. Instead, he leaned down, whispering into Father McGee’s ear—but just loud enough for everyone else to hear:

“Get away from me or I’ll kill you now.”

Father McGee dropped his hands and sat back on his haunches. He stared up at the old Sea God, his jaw slack with fear, then he began to scuttle backward down the hall, making his escape.

“You said I could have her when you were done,” Frank said as the priest disappeared into the shadowed hallway. “I wanna collect on that promise now. You said I’d be Death and she’d be my queen.”

Sumi shrugged. “I say a lot of things.”

Frank crossed the space between them, but Hyacinth stepped in between them, her bulk blocking Frank from getting too close to the duplicitous Sea God.

“Don’t even think about it,” Hyacinth said, her voice as calm as a snake right before it struck.

With Hyacinth holding Frank at bay, Sumi squatted down beside me, his fingers pressing into my skull.

“You a phrenologist as well as an asshole?” I rasped, my voice nearly gone. “’Cause if you’re gonna tell me my future is shot to shit, I already know.”

Sumi ignored me as his fingers continued to gauge how far gone I was. Satisfied I wasn’t going to be making a miraculous recovery, he began to chuckle, pleased with himself and with his handiwork. I curled further into myself, trying to escape from his insidious laughter, but I was trapped in my decaying body, the pain roping me to consciousness, forcing me to endure every crushing ache and deleterious physical reaction I was suffering under the effects of the promethium.