Viper Moon (35 page)

I sneered at her. “What happened, bitch—get too close to the fire?”

Elise strutted up to us. Vic’s head bowed, but his face was a mask of pure, blind hatred. Mother had indeed loved one of her sons more, and it wasn’t him.

Elise raised her nose in arrogance and smiled. “Minor burns. I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye to dear Anita. My relentless guard for so many years. Victor held her while I gave her my parting gift, so I suppose he is good for something.”

A parting gift—a broken neck. Vic kept his face averted so Elise couldn’t see his expression. “My older son is not beautiful like my Michael,” she said. “But he’s useful at times.”

“Useful?” Victor hissed the words between clenched teeth. He still wouldn’t look at her. “Who came to visit you every week, Mother? Who remembered holidays and birthdays?”

Elise sneered. She held up her bandaged arms. “Who was so incompetent he had to burn the whole asylum down to get me out?”

“Why did you try to kill Michael when he was born?” I asked Elise.

Elise laughed again. This time the sound filled the room, a strident crowing, dried to the bone and completely mad. Drool ran from her mouth and she swiped at it with a bandaged arm.

I suddenly knew the answer to my questions. Abby’s words came to mind and I said them aloud before I realized I was speaking. “The power of sacrifice.”

“Yes,” Elise agreed. “I would have sacrificed him. That whore, that so-called nurse, she stopped me and took my beautiful baby away. Kathy, they called her.” She sneered. “
She
had me locked up.”

“And then they let you loose. You killed more kids, right?”

She frowned. Her eyes clouded. Did she not remember? As suddenly as she drifted away, she returned, but I doubt she remembered what she’d heard.

“He is my beautiful son,” she crooned in an ecstatic voice. “My Michael. His father is a god. Can’t you tell?”

Elise suddenly stepped forward and slapped Vic across the head. It sounded vicious, like a rock smashing a melon. “Not like this one.”

Vic kept his face down, but he snarled in rage. She hit him again. His body rocked and he almost fell off his chair.

I didn’t want to watch anymore. “A god?” I shouted the words. “What god? Elise, I know you’re seriously cracked, but even you—”

“No!” she screamed. The sound expanded to fill the room. “You stupid cow.” Elise bent over me raging, her feverish face twisted into something altogether inhuman. “I went to his world, my master’s world, and I lay with him, the wonderful creature you misname the Darkness, and conceived a child.” More drool slid from her mouth. She didn’t bother to wipe it. “When this dark moon is over, it will be different. I will stand by Michael and his father will give us power to rule this world.”

Vic growled like a dangerous mongrel backed into a corner.

Elise ignored him. She whirled and marched out of the room, dragging yards of filthy fabric behind her.

I jerked at my bonds and twisted my body, but all I received for my effort was burning pain at my wrists that compounded my other aches. I was limp as a pair of dirty jeans in the laundry basket.

Victor stared at the door where Elise exited. He licked his lips. “I’ll reward my mother for her kindness very soon. She’s needed—for now.”

“So Mom doesn’t know you sent the monsters to kill Michael.”

“I had to do it. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t let him stop me now. Why couldn’t he understand?”

I glanced at the bottles of water. Vic saw my look, retrieved one, and held my head while I drank. I didn’t spit at him this time. The water revived me some, but did nothing to stimulate my body, nothing to make me stronger. The ache in my fingers ceased to trouble me as they went numb.

Michael? The Darkness has a body? And a son? Nothing about this was good.

I had one other angle to work on. “So Mom loves pretty Michael best.”

“She’s obsessed with him.” Vic returned to his chair. He laid a hand on my arm. To comfort me? Or himself?

“Uh, is he really . . . ?”

“Yes. The Darkness has a physical shape and, apparently, that shape is male. She did go to his world and conceive Michael—and it drove her insane. She was so beautiful before. I was only a child, but I remember the night she returned. Her hair had gone completely white. Lying with a god? She smelled like she’d fucked a rotting corpse.” He sobbed and his face twisted in agony.

“Does Michael know?”

“About his father? Yes. What’s happening here and my part in it? No, he didn’t know. He bought the Reverend Victor, Lost Lamb thing like you did, though I think he was suspicious at times. I stole money from him. But when he was little, I protected him. Michael is dead now, and I loved him.”

Michael? Dead? A deep ache welled up inside me, but I pushed it aside to deal with the immediate problem—survival. “How? You control the monsters? The Bastinados?”

Vic shrugged slightly. “My master, your Darkness, talks to me and gives me great power—his power. The Barrows creatures respond to me. I bring the Bastinados here and show them his power. Then they obey me. I am what Michael could have been. The Bastinados are human. Humans will sell their souls for the simplest of things. Pericles Theron was a partner of sorts, but he seems to have disappeared.”

In all my life, I had never made such a gross misjudgment of a person as I had with Vic. “Michael’s daddy won’t be upset that you killed him?”

“Why should he be? Michael has lived his life torn between two worlds. He’s never committed himself to anything. I’ve given everything.”

I could agree with that. Michael was a neutral in many ways, both good and, if rumor was to be believed, evil. Someone who watched and waited. Waited for what? The dark moon?

“Vic, I may not be the best judge of character but, you . . .”

Vic sighed and lowered his head. “I enjoyed the Lost Lamb, helping people, and I’ll do it again when this is over. What’s lost here is a small sacrifice.”

“Fuck!” I screamed. “That’s because you’re the one holding the knife.”

“No, you don’t understand. A few lives here are nothing compared to those I can save, when I have the power. I have you to thank for that.”

“What did I do?”

“Only Michael could have stopped me. Michael fell in love with the Huntress. If he hadn’t, he’d have made a choice. You’ve seen him. The young god and his adoring followers. If he’d accepted his proper place as his father’s heir, he could rule the world. Now it will be me. I will be a kind master, Cassandra. I promise.”

Michael owned the Goblin Den, supported Pericles Theron, and was probably guilty of the criminal acts Flynn said he’d committed. But some innate humanity existed in him. At least I liked to think so. I doubt it was love for me that kept him from overwhelming evil. Michael remained a mystery, even in death. “It’s all about sacrifice, isn’t it?”

“Yes. You are one of the Earth Mother’s Huntresses. The powerful enemy. There are many, but none so attuned to this place they call the Barrows. By your own power and will, you belong. I knew it the minute I met you.” He sounded so joyful. Of course, no one was going to kill him. He twisted his hands together, as if trying to wring something from them. “This dark moon, along with the astral conjunction, weakens the barriers between worlds. We had to have you here at this particular time. Your life is going to open a door, a permanent door to his world, and allow my master inconceivable power. He will not come here. Mother wants him, too, but he would be weaker here. He will give me strength to destroy your Earth Mother and rule this world—through me.”

“Bullshit! Absolute bullshit!” I could see everything quite clearly in the face of imminent doom. “There’s only one sacrifice: yourself. Oh, you can kill me. You can kill children. But you won’t gain anything—certainly not power.

“And the kids?” I continued. “How do they fit in?”

“I’m very proud of my network of spies. They watch people for me. Flynn’s sister was taken to draw you in. Because his mother worshipped your precious Abby, we knew she’d send you for her. The others happened to be in the same place at the same time. We would have used them if we couldn’t get you.”

Whoa! Just happened to be? Nothing unintentional happens when you’re on the chessboard of two incredibly powerful supernatural entities. Something, someone put Dacardi’s son with Selene. Why? So I’d have access to his weapons?

“So you bought the guns and explosives? With money you’d embezzled.”

Vic nodded. Dirty light played across his face. He had more malfunctioning brain cells than Elise. It probably never occurred to him that he might have waited until yesterday, and hired goons to kidnap me like Dacardi did. No. Too simple and direct a plan for a sick, twisted mind. That’s the thing with prophets and, yes, fortunetellers. Everything is part of some mystical, but unarticulated, scheme. I suspected some reluctance on Vic’s part, too. Did he secretly hope it would fail? Somewhere, deep in his twisted soul, had he complicated things to the point it would all come crashing down?

“Give me a break here, Vic. A couple hundred scaly monsters who avoid sunlight and stupid, unreliable Bastinados against heavily armed soldiers? You’ve been watching too much television. If you unleashed them on the world, all you’d do is call attention to something best left alone.”

“It doesn’t matter. You destroyed too many of my weapons, at least for now. I had to burn my own guns down by the river and set detonators on the C-4.” He didn’t sound pissed, only matter-of-fact.

Vic continued to babble. “I held Anita down and Mother grabbed her head—twisted . . . the sound . . . a pencil snap . . . and she died.”

He smiled and squeezed my arm tighter. “I shot him. At the river wharf. His head came off. Did you see? The man was going to kill you on the dock. I told them not to shoot, but he didn’t listen.” He giggled and I could almost see pieces of his mind jittering and breaking apart. Reverend Victor was as cracked as his mother. “I had to save you for tonight.”

“Victor!” Elise screamed from another room. “Bring her.”

Vic’s face changed. In an instant he went from a babbling idiot to a calm, cold psychopath. He stood. “Come, Huntress. It’s time.”

I fought, but the drug I’d inhaled was coursing through my system. He released me, retied my hands behind my back with a strong nylon cord, and hauled me to my feet. The room swayed, then righted. Strength flowed back into my muscles. Not enough to break the binding on my wrists, but I stalled by pretending to be weaker, forcing him to drag me inexorably through a series of rooms out onto the main plaza, the center of the Zombie’s pentagram.

Flaming torches created a nice mystic touch and cast a hundred-foot circle of light in the plaza’s center—gas patio torches, made in China, just for ye olde ritual sacrifice. The taller building loomed over us, but open sky had appeared above. A few stars twinkled. A draft of cooler air drifted between the buildings after the droughtbreaking rain, sweeter and cleaner than I’d ever smelled in the Zombie.

We splashed through potholes in the pavement to an altar, a crude affair of stacked concrete blocks that stood in the middle of yet another pentagram drawn in—Great Mother—blood. Gallons of blood.

Elise stood grinning at me. She carried a plastic bucket that dripped red. Blood covered her hands and soaked the bandages on her arms. She flung the bucket away and it landed on the bound and stacked bodies of a woman and three men. I didn’t recognize the men, but the woman was the one who’d greeted me at the Lamb yesterday.

Vic’s breath hissed through his teeth as he struggled to propel me forward.

“You kill your own people, Vic?” I twisted hard and braced my feet. “Really sucks as an employee benefit. Makes recruiting tough, I’ll bet.”

“I had to!” Desperation and guilt filled his voice. “We needed blood. I had to bring them here last night and lock them up. They begged . . . You were supposed to come alone.
You always work alone!
”

The man was a bundle of raw, lashing emotion. I’d bet it ran around his mind like a wild animal in a cage. He heaved a great sigh. “I’m glad you freed the little ones, the children. I don’t know if I could have killed them. I do like children.”

“Fucking insane hypocrite.” I jerked and almost tore myself from his hands. “Worried about a few kids when you plan to turn monsters loose on the city?”

“Hurry up!” Elise screeched. “It’s almost time.”

She whirled and marched to the altar, gathering up the robe and taking a delicate step over the line of the pentagram drawn in blood.

A large, plastic battery-operated clock sat propped on a barrel not far from the altar. The barrel had a skull and crossbones painted in white on the side, along with the words CAUTION, POISON and a long, multisyllabic chemical name. Ancient things in a modern world, a perfect definition of the Darkness and the Earth Mother. I expected no help from the Mother. She could not enter the Barrows without breaking her own spell that kept the Darkness contained.

Vic dragged me toward the altar, where Elise stood with a knife—a relatively sharp-looking steel knife, not bronze. Apparently, they considered me easier to kill than the monsters.

“Hurry,” Elise demanded again. Her body rocked as she lifted her arm and pantomimed stabbing with the knife. She drooled in full force now and panted like a dog in midsummer heat.

Strength continued to rise in me, but not enough to break the cord holding my wrists. I thrashed my legs. Vic had to fight to get me on the altar. Grunting and straining, he finally rolled, lifted, and slammed me on my back. I outweighed him by at least thirty pounds, but it was like fighting a gorilla. My body weight jammed my hands, tied behind me, into the rough concrete. It dug in and scraped the skin like sandpaper. I barely felt it or my other pains. By now, my adrenaline level had climbed to astronomical levels.