“Karma is a fool's explanation of retribution and justice. You understand nothing, but you will understand both of those things.”
Billy nodded. “I've done bad things. I probably deserve it. That's not all the goddess told me about, though.”
One of her troopers carried Billy's bag, and Moon pulled the sword scabbard from it. “What is this realization you've come to? Spit it out.”
“I've got the blood of the old gods in me. I'm not supposed to exist, and she said that I can't die.”
“I did say all of those things.” Billy saw the antlers first, and then the rest of the goddess rose up the steps following them. Her dress was new and green, and her eyes were dark and filled with judgment. “Your path is not death.”
Billy raised up as best he could. What was she doing here? “Artemis…?”
Lissandra turned from facing Billy when she heard the words, and watched the goddess Artemis follow the path that Moon had. “Goddess…?”
Artemis smiled, and it wasn't a pleasant smile. “Lissandra, here's where you ran off to.”
“Moon.” Lissandra looked back to her. “Why is she here?”
“You made the decision that our path was the place to be, Lissandra.” Moon crossed to Lissandra. “Don't be so surprised that your former goddess has as well.”
“Liars and tricks.” Billy laughed. “There's more double-cross going on than an octopus crochet party.”
“Don't look so disheartened, Lissandra.” Moon stood with the goddess and glared at the girl. “Or is there some new betrayal in that head of yours that I should know about?”
Lissandra gave Moon a defeated look. Nothing in it spoke of the defiance she normally projected fiercely into the world.
“Such a slave to the big rock of fortunes.” Moon smiled and turned towards the wall. “Light up the big screen.” She raised her arms. Billy saw static, then the face of Anastasia. Someone had a camera pointed on her and was projecting her image on the wall. Billy reached his hand into the air towards her face. There was sand in her hair and blood on her chin.
The image widened. The demon girl with the pigtails, Morta, had hold of the sword that pressed into Anastasia's shoulder and kept her pinned to the beach below.
“Anastasia.” Billy hoped she could hear him. The demon pulled at the sword and Anastasia's face twisted up and filled with pain. “Make that demon stop, Moon.”
Anastasia's eyes opened and stared into the camera. “Billy, what is the plan?” She coughed out her words and there was a new trickle of blood at the corner of her lips.
“Anastasia, I love you.”
“Shut up, Billy. Answer my question.”
Billy stared into the open pit in the floor that led down the black dome rock below. He was formulating a plan.
“Answer her, Billy.” Moon called up to him. “The sun will be up soon.”
Billy looked into her face projected on the big screen, her pain magnified to his eyes a thousand-fold. He had to save her.
“Morta, pull the sword out and drive it into her other shoulder.” Moon smiled at Billy's horrified face.
“No!” Billy stood on shaking legs. “No, don't hurt her anymore.”
Anastasia's voice boomed from the screen. “What is the plan? Billy?”
Billy plotted the jump in his head. “Kill ‘em all.”
Anastasia laughed as Morta grabbed the sword to pull it out so she might drive in new wounds. “That's right. That's the plan.”
Moon had his mother's stolen sword scabbard pointed at Billy. “Whatever stupid plan is swimming around in that rock quarry atop your neck, consider something first.” She walked towards Billy, brandishing the scabbard. “Artemis wishes her as her new disciple. You accept the inevitable sacrifice you are to become, and I let the Olympian take her.”
Seventeen steps and then jump. He might even be able to get his bag on the way down.
“Billy, do we have an agreement?” Moon had the scabbard pointing at him like a mocking finger.
“Yes.” Billy looked away from Anastasia's face on the screen. “Let her go with the goddess.”
He heard Anastasia's voice, even though he tried to block out the words. “That's not the plan.”
Billy smiled at the screen when he leapt. Anastasia was right, that wasn't the plan. Now it was six steps and into the air, as one hundred laser sights painted every inch of his body. He watched Moon swinging fully in his direction and brandishing the scabbard stolen from her long ago.
Billy thought about his mother — not about the living breathing form he had seen with his own eyes and held in his own arms, but the images of her he had watched on an 8MM film projector in his house. He focused on the mother that he only knew from moving silent pictures, and from dreams given him over many restless nights. He locked his mind on the image of her moving through the back yard of the house he'd lived in as a boy. Her pregnant belly shifting in the morning light, and her strong arms brandishing the sword before he'd ever been born, were his only thoughts.
It was harder to slide down the center railing of the steps with just his boots, but he did it as they began to fire their guns at the behest of the angry scabbard Moon pointed his way. He dodged low first, and the body armor took care of the impact to the shoulder. When he went up, he could feel the bullets breezing past his temples and whistling a hateful song.
He was too fast for them, and he knew they could do him no harm when he heard Pop's voice in his head. “I'm proud of you, boy. Now take every last one of ‘em down.” He grabbed the scabbard right out of Moon's hand, and he heard her screaming orders below him as he flew higher and truer than he had off the mountain in Africa.
“Silly man, only birds can be as Billy Purgatory.”
He landed right in the center of them all, and none of them knew what to do. They were shooting each other more than they were him. Billy was being shot at too, and close-range gunfire stung like no pain he had ever felt before. The armor took some of it, but bullets tore into his flesh. It didn't seem to matter, because no matter how bad the pain got, multiplying with every wave, it didn't hurt near as much as betrayal, or lies, or watching Anastasia lying on that beach, waiting to die in the sun.
He swung the sword like Pop had taught him to swing a baseball bat, and he was knocking them down ten at a time as he swiped. He heard their bones crack and he saw the looks of surprise and mercy on the faces of trained killers when he knocked their helmets off. He never swung so hard as to take off a head; those were his mother's prizes. He aimed like she would have told him to, though. He went for heads, he snapped necks, and he decided he was never going to stop.
At that moment, he hoped they'd never stop either. He hoped there were a thousand of them down below, waiting to run up the stairs after he'd knocked all their buddies into the grates of the floor. He spun amongst them quickly, laying into them before they could get a bead. More of them were backing up than were running at him. Then he turned.
Moon was standing behind him with one hand in Lissandra's hair and the other wrapped tightly around her sword handle. She pushed Lissandra forward, and Billy watched the blade of Moon's sword press against the gypsy's neck.
“Enough.” Moon had a look of insanity in her eyes that Billy had never witnessed in any other creature. No vampire had ever stared at him like that. Mira, in her worst zombie moments, hadn't looked so hungered or depraved for blood. Moon's face was more devoid of soul, logic, or emotion than the demon's had been. The dark eyes and the smiling mouth were a more fitting representation of everything wretched that can overtake a creature and twist it to shadowed paths than Billy had ever seen crawl over the Time Zombie's face.
Billy finally understood what it all meant, and why it was so important not to let himself become such a thing. Surely nothing starts their life so empty and damned. It had to be that you make the wrong sacrifices, the easy sacrifices, and there comes a point when there is nothing left in you that means anything to the world, or anyone in it.r />
You reach a place where the only offering you have for the pyre is yourself, but what's left of you is too petrified to burn.
Billy finally understood the plan. “Evil.”
He felt the scabbard slip from his fingers and heard it bang into the floor at his feet. “Let her go. Here I am, Moon.”
Moon nodded to Billy and Billy nodded back. “Yes, Billy Purgatory, there you finally are.”
He watched as the sword in Moon's hand dance away from her neck and plunged into Lissandra's back. Lissandra spasmed and let out a scream. Moon still had hold of Lissandra's hair and pulled the girl by it onto the sword. Billy couldn't look away fast enough as the tip of the weapon pierced all the way through the gypsy and pointed right at him.
Moon tossed her backwards like a broken doll at the railing around the open bay doors of the ship. Lissandra spit blood over the railing to sail down to the black dome rock far below. Moon walked to her and took hold of the sword in her back once more, as many guns pressed into Billy and many arms grabbed at him. Moon held Lissandra close once again as she twisted the blade.
“Why?” Lissandra cried out and Billy couldn't tell if there were more tears than blood being spilled. “Moon, what about the spiral? You need me to read the spirals.”
“I have Morta for that. I also have Broom's notes again. You've served your purpose to me and The Five. Such a pretty, nostalgic distraction.” Moon looked back to Billy as she spoke the words.
Billy looked to the goddess Artemis from the crowd of thugs that surrounded him. She watched with no hint of remorse as Moon held the sword in Lissandra's back. The blood that spilled from the gypsy's body was of no consequence to her.
“You play with gods here, Lissandra, old and new. What we build is not for you to understand, and was never for you to truly manipulate. What use have any of us for a gypsy who is too bedazzled with power that she cannot foresee her own death?”
Moon pulled her sword from Lissandra's back and kicked the gypsy with her boot. Lissandra's hand slipped from the railing, and the girl fell out the opening at the bottom of the airship.
Billy was composed of nothing but pain. He had no voice to cry out as she fell.
Moon turned to Billy and pointed her sword painted with Lissandra's blood back at him. She tossed the Tarot cards over her shoulder to crash with Lissandra far below.
“Throw me the trash.” Moon pointed her sword to the metal floor at the railing where Lissandra had just fallen.
There were more hands on Billy's body than he could count. They hoisted him up and over them, crowd surfing his torn and blood soaked body. Then they tossed him into the air, past where Moon had just been standing. She was walking away as Billy slammed into the grated floor at the great bay doors that overlooked the rock of black fortunes below.
Billy could barely focus on her boots crossing the floor. She opened her arms wide into the air and began herding the troops that had not fallen at Billy's hands down the steps.
“Open the eye!” Her voice boomed, but it wasn't a scream. It was a military command. It was a victory cry.
Billy looked up the steps to see the great eye of the sphere open and the darkness contained within. The force of the opening of the eye pulled him from the floor and into the air like someone had just turned on a vacuum and he was an ant hiding in the carpet. Billy grasped for the railing but missed. He sailed over the open doors of the ship's deck and slammed into the steps that led to the opening iris.
Billy's hands latched desperately onto the metal steps.
He had never felt a pull as he did from the great eye in the center of Moon's ship. He looked away from the swirling darkness contained within the eye to find Moon's gleeful decadence, laughing at him.
“What is that thing?” Billy gripped the steps and felt his body lifted from them as he held on for all he was worth.
“It's the power-core of my ship, Billy. Your scientists call it a black hole.”
“You've got a black hole in the center of this thing?” Billy could barely hear the words leave his mouth. The eye pulled and took the words from him and cast them back up into it. It pulled at his flesh, and he felt as if the hairs were about to be ripped from his head.
Moon and those on the lower deck were unaffected by its pull. How this was so, Billy couldn't say. Moon, the goddess Artemis, and the assembled army all looked on in intrigued wonder as they all backed away.
“It's going to tear you to nothing. Anything left of you will be banished to the other side of the darkness.”
Billy strained to look across the room. He could see Anastasia's face on the big viewscreen, and her eyes opened lazily and her mouth formed the words, “Kill them all.” He reached his hand out for her. He reached for her tears and her pleading face, filled with pain and regret.
“This is not the plan.”
The army began to back defensively down the stairs and away from the power of the great eye of the black hole. Billy was holding on with one hand to the metal stairs. His body was aloft, his feet pointed straight into the open mouth that led into the power of darkness incarnate.
Billy strained to keep his eyes open. He felt a finger slip. He had been pulled many strange places in his life, but none any stranger than this. Never had he been pulled anywhere with such unbridled force and awe-inspired intensity.
Getting to Moon and to Anastasia had become many more steps than he thought he could take. When he felt he could hold on for no longer, he saw it move. His bag slid across the floor towards the steps.
“Do you know what's on the other side of my black hole, Billy Purgatory?” Moon screamed it straight into his face, and her words trickled over him and were sucked into the eye.
“Hell is on the other side.”
Billy watched Lissandra's blood pulled from Moon's sword and fly past his face to be sucked into the black hole at his feet. Billy's pack hit the steps and he could see the wheels spinning.
He looked into the face of Anastasia on the video screen one last time. Another finger slipped as his skateboard flew into the air from his bag and headed right towards him.
“It's better than murdering you.”
Billy let go of the step and he flew up and into the air. He caught his skateboard squarely in his chest and wrapped his arms around it.
He watched the smile on Moon's face turn to a scowl as he flew backwards into the great oculus of the event horizon. All that Billy Purgatory would know from that instant on would be the unyielding caress of the darkness as the great eye closed.
~42~
EPILOGUE
THE GODDESS ARTEMIS SAILED DOWN from the opening at the bottom of Moon's airship, over the black dome rock, as the sun was just beginning to break the horizon. She cast her eyes down on the broken body of Lissandra, her former disciple. The fall had not done her human body well, yet even the goddess herself could not say whether or not the girl had already been dead before she crashed into the rock.
Artemis didn't spend much time looking over the spiral glyphs of the fortunes of the people of the world. This place, and the affairs of those who lived here, were no longer hers. Truthfully, they hadn't been concerns of hers for a very long time. Lissandra's Tarot blew about her body in the wind that cascaded over the dome of fortunes. Floating atop a pool of her blood there was a card.
The Lovers.
The goddess let her sandals touch lightly to the sand and found the soldiers that Moon had dispatched to oversee the torture of Anastasia. The demon girl, Morta, rose from Anastasia's near lifeless form and took hold of the hilt of the sword Moon had sent flying into her.
With a stout pull and a labored scream from Anastasia, the sword was retrieved by the girl. As Artemis passed Morta, the girl said to her simply and without emotion, “She is all yours, goddess.”
Anastasia was bleeding, shivering, and weeping as the goddess scooped her up from the sand and began walking with her towards the jungle, away from the first rays of the morning sun. Anastasia held tig
htly to her and wept against her divine shoulder.
“There, child. You've already lost so many blood-soaked tears. Why cry for him? He is gone, and not coming back.”
The fight seemed to be gone and not coming back to Anastasia either. “Leave me in the sun and let me die.”
“Never. I'll not have one with such promise as you for a sacrifice.” The goddess touched Anastasia's cheek with a mother's love and did not strain at all in carrying her towards the exotic trees of the island. “We are leaving this place behind for all time. There will be nothing left for you to mourn soon. You will forget that loud-mouthed boy, and I will teach you the ways of the old country.”
Anastasia looked over the shoulder of the goddess and her eyes burned as the sun rose. She could see the outline of the black stone and the horrible ship that belonged to the most cursed woman alive.
Not a woman at all, though. For she had no compassion in her soul to be able to have done the things she had done with such revelry. The thing that paraded itself about as a woman was nothing of the sort.
She was an it, and it was a monster.
“Did you love her?”
The goddess looked down, doing her best to shield Anastasia's face from the encroaching sun. “Did I love Lissandra?”
“Yes.” Anastasia said this quietly and distantly.
“I did love her, as I have loved many. For a time, and in my own way.”
“It didn't help her much in the end.”
“Lissandra made her own choices; ultimately they were weak choices, and wrong ones.”
Walking into the palms, Anastasia marveled as the colors began to change. There was light in this place, yet it was not of the sun — or no sun that Anastasia had ever known. She was feeling as she had when she had let herself go natively human and walk among them in their world.
Everything about her was suddenly new and different. She felt the goddess set her right and Anastasia's cowboy boots were upon the ground. She turned her face from the goddess and stared at the scene before her.
Anastasia was not on an island, nor in a jungle. She was on the high cliffs of a great mountain. The space she occupied fought the clouds themselves for relevance. Ahead, on the high peaks, there was a great city of ancient stone. Palaces that were once grand and trimmed in gold were now crumbling ruins — but the majesty of the height and the grandeur of what had once been upon these peaks still remained, in their own special way.
Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five Page 39