Lissandra grinned at the girl. “This is Morta. Something tells me that you've recently met her father.”
“What did they lie to you and promise you, Lissandra?” Billy felt an ache in his heart. He'd been so happy in what had seemed like mere moments ago. He and Anastasia had made a new connection. A really bizarre and crazy-town demon marriage connection, but a connection all the same. He thought that they would be sent to Lissandra and find a new ally in their fight. That they would all escape this evil together.
Lissandra pointed to the black dome rock. “I read the fortune of the world now. Once you've done something like that, nothing else matters.”
“What about friendship?” Billy looked down as his hands were cuffed behind his back. “What about love?”
Anastasia was looking into Billy's eyes when he said it. She did not share his sadness at the betrayal, but whatever was inside her that amounted to a heart and a vampire soul was breaking for him.
He didn't have the stomach for betrayal. He understood little in this world, but Anastasia knew that he understood one thing, and he could have written the dictionary entry on it if he'd have been forced to.
Loyalty.
“The time for those things was long ago with us, Billy. I felt you leave the world once already. Going off on your mission. I have already mourned your loss.”
“But I'm back.”
The soldiers had hold of Billy and Anastasia and pulled them to their feet.
“You should have stayed gone, Billy. There's no place in this world for your ghost.”
II.
There was a large four-poster bed in the center of the circular room ringed in windows. They were high above the island in the airship. The room was decorated in the intricate patterns of Persian rugs and antique furnishings. Billy looked out one of the floor to ceiling windows in the circular observation room and stared down at the black dome rock below. Some star shine and just a sliver of tropical moon only lit the hint of the dome's outline to his eyes.
He remembered Broom climbing up that rock and reading the spirals to him; then he thought about Lissandra doing the same thing. He looked back to Anastasia. Both of them still had their wrists bound at the small of their backs. The look on his face signaled to the vampire that her new husband was not having a good time with any of this.
“Billy, you have to hold it together.” She sat on the edge of the big bed and watched him pace. His skateboard and his bag were sitting in the center of a table, and she knew that if he could, he would be skating circles around this perch right now to calm his nerves.
For once, Anastasia wished he had that in his power.
“She was my friend.” He looked down.
“She's not any longer. She's chosen sides, and her path is not ours.”
“It's not fair.”
Anastasia pushed herself up from the bed to walk towards him, struggling with her bindings. Whatever cuffs they had forced her wrists into were strong. No matter how she bent, flexed, or rotated, she could not free her hands from them. “When have our lives ever been fair?”
She watched Billy. He wasn't even trying to break free.
“I'm sorry, Anastasia.”
She walked up to him, wishing she was free to embrace him. “What are you sorry for this time, Billy Purgatory?”
“I'm sorry that I got us trapped. I'm sorry that I didn't listen to you about Lissandra.” He cast his eyes down as she walked up on him. “I'm sorry that I talked you into marrying me.”
Anastasia didn't really think about what she was doing, she just realized that she kneed Billy hard in the groin and sent him falling backwards, landing in an antique chair. He looked up at her and clenched his knees together tightly as he squirmed.
“Dammit woman!” He wheezed. “You're jammin' my cannon?”
“Quit feeling sorry for yourself, Billy.” She leaned down and yelled right into his face. “You're sorry that you married me?”
“Are you gonna keep kicking me in the Nutcracker King?”
“I ought to kick you in the head. I just figured you'd pay more attention to a shot below the belt.”
Billy looked up at her helplessly. “I'm sorry.”
“Stop saying you're sorry. I never want to hear those words come out of that idiot's knot hole of yours again. I don't want your sorry, I want Billy to show back up. I want the cocksure, trash-talking, ego-inflated, dick Billy back. The one that doesn't think about the plan, he just barrels right into it and knocks it on its ass. Whoever you're being in that chair right now is not the person that I signed up to be with.”
“Really?”
“Shut up. I would claw your eyes out of your skull if I could get a hold of you right now. Quit being a baby and quit apologizing for your shit life. Nobody wants to hear that, most especially me.”
“I'm…”
“I will bite your face off.”
Billy raised himself up and somehow pushed himself out of the chair. “I wasn't going to say that.”
“You'd better not have been.”
Billy and Anastasia glared at one another. “I gotta figure a way out of this mess before you kill me.”
“You're right about that, because I'm definitely considering doing just that.”
There was clapping from the woman who was walking down the staircase. She was encased head to toe in black leather, and had two swords strapped to her back. “Bravo. Let's hear it for young love.”
Billy and Anastasia watched her walk. The hair was up on her head and framed her face and dark eyes well. She was Asian, and with every stride she took, and every resonant slap of mocking applause, Billy and Anastasia knew exactly who she must be.
“I don't remember ordering a side of bondage with my egg rolls, sister.”
Billy was sounding like himself again. Anastasia smiled at the remark.
“Billy Purgatory, it's such a pleasure to finally meet you.” Her boots hit the bottom of the stairs and she began moving their way. “I must say, your mouth is just as impressive in person as I've always heard it was.”
“I'm sure you've heard tons about this mouth. It's all true. So you're Moon, huh?”
She nodded. “Guilty as always.”
“What is it you want with me and my delicious bride?”
Anastasia looked to Billy. “Delicious?”
“Just run with it. I can't dam up the flood once it starts spilling.”
“Well, I haven't decided yet.” She broke course from the two newlyweds by the window and instead moved to the table. “First off, I think you have some things that belong to me.”
“The contents of that bag are personal and confidential, and we don't take kindly to shoplifting mallrats.”
Moon let her fingers trail over the sword scabbard that jutted from the bag. “It has been a long time since I have seen this.” Her leather fingertip traced the outline of the symbols of the five on the inlay.
“That belongs to my mother.”
“It does not belong to your mother. Your mother stole it from me. She's made a career off of lopping off heads with my sword. Those kills should not have been hers, they were rightfully mine.”
“I'm as clueless about my mom as the day I was born, chaps'n'ass. If you want your sword back, though, maybe you should take it up with her.”
“Oh, once she's located, the things I will do to her will make what I'm going to do to you seem like a baby lamb's baptism.”
“Who baptizes lambs? And lemme get this straight, you don't know where my mom is?”
“Why should I?” Moon's eyes probed into Billy. Billy didn't like the feeling.
“So, she ain't one of you Five?”
Moon made a face. “Your mother? One of us?”
Billy let his mouth stay closed — for once.
“Why would you think that?”
“Take your scabbard back and leave my bag a'tricks trickin'.”
Moon opened the bag and began to dig. “So, you've kept the coverless book you s
tole from Broom.” She put too much emphasis on the word “Broom”. It made Anastasia uneasy. “A stolen book of stolen secrets.”
Moon pulled the skateboard from the bag. Anastasia watched Billy twitch. “I'd heard the stories, but really?” What is your fascination with it?”
“Quit with the shiatsu to the board. You're creeping it out.”
“I'm going to let you watch as I dump this into the ocean.”
Billy's eyes got wide and he shook more noticeably. “That mouth of yours just popped the cork on the ass-whippin' jug.”
Moon winked to Anastasia. “I think he loves this thing more than he does you, vampire whore.”
Anastasia was standing right next to him. She watched it happen, but she couldn't say how or why it did. Moon looked up when she heard the metal of the cuffs snap and Billy's arms go free.
Moon was drawing a sword as Billy was already in the air and flying over the table at her. Anastasia stared on in complete bewilderment.
Billy punched Moon in midair as the last of his broken handcuffs flew from his body. Billy was tackling her as they crashed into the floor on the other side of the table.
“I'm gonna toss your shiny leather ass into the ocean and see how you like it.” Billy punched her again in the jaw as she cursed and kicked him off of her. She rolled left and rose up; the sound in the room was her swords being drawn and slicing into the air.
Billy didn't care about the swords and rammed Moon hard, sending her flying backwards and impacting with the steps that led into the room. “That skateboard is innocent. You hear me? You stole my friend and turned her against me. You can't have my board too.”
He lifted his skateboard from the table. “I'm gonna let it shammy the evil off ya the hard way.”
Moon sprung and landed halfway up the steps. “You killed Broom!” She screamed and hissed. “You stole my things from me!”
“I used this skateboard to do it. He was gonna shoot me. I smacked the bullet right out of the air and sent it back into his neck.”
Moon sliced her swords and ran them against each other, creating sparks as she began moving down the steps. “You will die an unimaginably painful death.”
“You mean like Broom did? Both times.”
Moon stopped slicing. “What do you mean both times?”
“I went to an alternate reality, and you know the one good thing I did over there?”
Moons swords sliced into the wooden railings as she moved. Filleting them as her eyes narrowed.
“I killed Broom again.”
“You lie.”
“He never mentioned you, Moon. He was sure into my mom, though.”
Billy could feel the rage that was building in her. It threatened to set the room ablaze. So Billy pointed his mouth right into the eye of the storm. “Guess Mom stole a lot more than your sword, huh?”
“I'm going to toss that vampire you love onto the beach and watch her burn in the sun.”
“You'd have to get past me first.”
Moon was fast. Billy wasn't prepared for just how fast she was. She sent her arm flying towards him and he watched as her sword left her grasp. He fell back onto the table as it cut the air right over his head.
Billy's face turned in slow motion; it was already too late. The sword flew across the room and sliced into Anastasia. It caught her in the left shoulder blade and sent her flying backwards with it as it continued to fly with the immense force of which it was thrown.
He watched helplessly — the look on Anastasia's face as she spit blood from her mouth, carried with the sword into the window. The glass shattered as the blade pierced it and sent her flying out of the airship.
Billy ran to the broken window and stared down as Anastasia fell through the air and slammed into the sand of the beach far below. He could barely make her body out as it landed. It was so dark. She kicked up sand as she and the sword banged the ground of the cursed beach.
He turned back to Moon as the troops stormed past her and down the stairs to rush him. “You will do as I say, Billy Purgatory, and you will answer for your crimes. If you do not, then I'll leave whatever is left of her down there for daybreak. She's mine now, not yours. Pray that I don't decide to remarry my new possession to the sun.”
Billy watched the troops circle him and felt the electrical lances pierce his flesh and subdue him once more. None of it made sense or mattered; he didn't even feel the pain as they beat him violently. He didn't care what happened to him anymore.
He thought about her falling so far through the air, landing alone on that beach with Moon's sword stabbed into her. He hoped that she wasn't in much pain, and that she wasn't cold down there. All alone with the cutting wind sailing off the water…
It made the boots and the night sticks which bludgeoned him into a dull throb.
“I'm sorry.” Then everything joined black.
III.
Billy woke up on a set of metal steps on a vast egg-shaped room of alien looking technology. Below him there was an open bay door in the floor, and the wind cut up from the island below. He could see the outline of the black dome rock through the open doors. Lissandra stared up at him from the metal railing that rimmed the opening. He knew that he must be inside the heart of great beast itself.
There were control panels of blinking lights and computer monitors. Billy let his eyes wander to the enormous metallic sphere suspended by tubes and support joists above his head. The sphere was like an engorged robotic eyeball, with a closed aperture pointing down at his head.
“You've abducted me.” Billy laughed so as not to cry as he remembered Anastasia on the beach below. “Is that what the Satanic Five really is, Lissandra, space aliens?”
She looked up to him with sad eyes. “No Billy, they're not space aliens. They're here to forge a better world.”
Billy pulled himself up to sit properly on the metal steps that led to the sphere-eye. This presented its own set of challenges. There wasn't an inch of skin on his tired bones that hadn't been blackjacked, electrified, or just downright beaten. The only part of him that didn't hurt was the scar across his face.
He found that to be really creepy.
“They're going to kill her.”
Lissandra had her back against the railing over the opening that stared directly down to the black dome rock. “You can still save her. Let Moon have what she wants and Anastasia might live.”
“Doesn't Moon want me and Anastasia dead? If I let her have that, then that doesn't sound a lot like saving her.”
“Moon wants you, Billy. She's only using your feelings for Anastasia against you. Your vampire might still walk away from this with what accounts for a life in her terms.”
“That vampire has a name. It's Anastasia Purgatory.”
He watched Lissandra's hands grip the rail tight. “What did you just say?”
“What's the matter? Didn't you see me and Anastasia getting married in that big dumb future rock you worship?”
Lissandra pushed herself from the railing and walked towards the steps. “You couldn't have married her. Even you're not that stupid.”
“We were now pronounced skateboarder and wife by the demon Brewmaster.” Billy smiled at her through his busted lip. “She may be a vampire, but she's true to her word.” His eyes narrowed. “Traitor.”
Lissandra crossed her arms as she took the first step. Billy was rubbing his wrists and watching her move — they hadn't bothered to cuff him again. “You talk to me as if you and I had some loyalty to one another, which we did not. You floated in and out of my life, and only came looking for me when you wanted something.”
“I came looking for you because I thought we were friends, and that's what friends do for one another. When you're lost, they let you float in on them, and they try and help you.”
“There was never any helping you. Crying for your mother and wandering around the world in search of answers — or that's what you claimed to be doing, anyway.” Lissandra didn't move beyond the first
step and kept her distance. “Everyone knew that you and the vampire you married were just playing cat and mouse with one another.”
“At least she didn't sign up with the enemy.”
“She was with the enemy long before I was.”
“She didn't have any control over that. They made her. She was never really with them.”
Lissandra nodded. “Right. How do you think they knew anything about you in the first place?”
“This is a lot bigger than me, or you, or Anastasia. This has to do with my parents and the gods…”
“The gods have no claim over what we are building here.”
Billy gripped the steps, tried to pull himself up as she took a step back in response. He decided it wasn't worth it. His aching body was too painful, and the thoughts he was having about settling scores were even more painful than that.
“You're talking just like them. You've pushed your Tarot cards all the way in, haven't you?”
She looked away. “You have no idea what they've offered. What it's like just to be offered something like that.”
“I know what it's like to be lied to and then backstabbed.”
Billy could hear all the boots pounding up the steps from the lower decks. Moon and her army would soon be upon him again. “Whatever it is they've promised you, Lissandra, I hope it's worth it.”
There were three sets of stairs which led into the egg-chamber and Billy watched as all the guards ran up them in their shock-troop black armor with their ray guns, or whatever it was they carried. There were hundreds of them on this ship, and they all seemed to be marching up to visit Billy Purgatory.
“Lissandra, you are a brave one, aren't you? I'm shocked that he hasn't sprung for you and clamped his hands onto your throat.” Moon crossed the railing over the open floor and made her way swiftly to Lissandra. “You are betraying him, after all.”
“It ain't worth it, Moon. A long time ago a goddess told me things. She tried to, anyhow. I didn't understand her then, but I'm starting to get it.”
“Are you sure you're just not still delirious from being beaten?”
Billy sat alone on the steps. “I'm not delirious, maybe for the first time in a long time. I think I finally understand what karma means.”
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