The Mouth of the Dark

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The Mouth of the Dark Page 22

by Tim Waggoner


  We who are about to die salute you, Jayce thought bitterly.

  Maybe he deserved to die for what he’d done to his mother, even if it had been instinctive and in defense of his own life. And Ohio Pig had killed who knew how many Shadowers. Maybe none of his victims had been completely innocent, but that didn’t mean they had deserved to be killed by a lunatic, either. He didn’t know Nicola well enough to determine how much, if any, blood she had on her hands, but he didn’t think she deserved this fate. But the one real regret Jayce had was that he would die before he could find and free Emory. Once he was dead, there would be no one to help her, and she’d remain a prisoner of the Primogenitor, used as raw material to create Underborn for as long as her body lasted.

  Ivory began speaking once again.

  “Is everyone ready?”

  The two Therons guarding them give their mistress thumbs up, and the crowd roared its approval.

  “Then let’s begin!” she shouted.

  The Therons turned to face them. “You’re on,” they said in unison.

  Ohio Pig – or rather Owen – rose from the bench with a sigh, wincing as his injuries protested.

  “I don’t care which weapons you two use, but hands off the machete. It’s mine. And don’t get in my way. I don’t want to hurt you, but I won’t lose any sleep if I accidentally cut either one of you.”

  “Good luck to you too,” Jayce muttered.

  The Pig trudged past the Therons and out into the Pit to a chorus of cheers, boos, hisses, and shouted profanities.

  Jayce turned to Nicola. “I don’t know what to say. If you hadn’t helped me with the dog-eaters.…”

  She smiled. “Don’t get maudlin. We aren’t dead yet.”

  She gave him a quick kiss and headed toward the Pit.

  Figuring he was as ready as he was ever going to be, Jayce followed.

  He stepped into the Pit and gazed upon the Shadowers seated in the bleachers. As on the other lower levels of Crimson Splendor, the beings were more monstrous and distorted than ‘normal’ Shadowers. He imagined them – as well as those currently engaging in the dark delights of Carnality and Snuff – out in the streets instead of in here, free to sate their foul appetites however, and with whoever, they wished, and for a moment – just a moment – he wondered if Ivory really was fulfilling the role of a conservationist, protecting the herd of humanity from the predators that lurked unseen in their midst.

  Ivory was seated in her chair, a new pair of Therons standing on either side of her. The two who had brought them down remained standing by the opening, no doubt to prevent them attempting to escape that way. There was another opening on the opposite side of the Pit, guarded by yet another pair of Therons. Jayce wondered how many of them there were in total. A hundred? Two hundred? It was as if Ivory had her own private army.

  Neither Jayce nor Nicola had been given shoes to protect their feet from the rough stone floor of the Pit. He thought that both of them would end up with torn, bloody soles before this was over, and then he almost laughed. As if that was the worst of their problems right now. Aside from a lot of blood on the ground, there was no sign of the Theron that Ohio Pig had killed. He assumed other Therons had removed the body, perhaps even carted if off to Snuff where it would become the nightly special in the café. The weapons lay on the ground near the opening, and Ohio Pig had already retrieved his machete. Nicola bent down and picked up the flail. That left the big-ass knife for Jayce, and he bent down, took hold of its handle, and stood. The weapon felt good in his hand. Solid. Strong. He’d never used any kind of weapon against anyone in his life, and he wondered if he’d be able to when the time came.

  You beat the shit out of the Pig in the club, Valerie said. You’ll be fine. After all, you’ve got some monster in you, right? Time to let it out to play.

  The Therons guarding the opposite entrance made no movement, gave no signal, but three figures stepped past them, entered the Pit, and stopped. Jayce’s breath caught in his throat when he saw who they were. All three of them were Emory.

  “Surprised, Jayce?” Ivory called out. She rose from her seat and gripped the railing as she addressed the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, the three lovely women who just entered the Pit are Underborn. What’s more, all are duplicates of that man’s daughter.” Here she pointed at Jayce. “The daughter he came to the Cannery to find! Well, he’s found her now, hasn’t he?”

  The crowd burst out in cruel, mocking laughter. Ivory then held up her hands for silence, and they quieted.

  “Actually, I should correct myself.” She paused and a wide grin split her face. “Only two of these women are Underborn. One is the original!”

  The crowd went wild, and Ivory held up her hands once more to silence them.

  “And to make things even more fun, the women have been given a special pharmaceutical cocktail to send them into a homicidal rage. So all three – including the original – are going to do their damnedest to gut their father like a fucking fish. So let the bloodbath begin!”

  Ivory had whipped the crowd into a frenzy, and the Shadowers shrieked with dark delight. And as if that were their cue, the Emorys started running toward Jayce and the others, teeth bared, eyes wild and filled with hate.

  Each was dressed the same – black tank top, black yoga pants, and athletic shoes – and their long brown hair was pulled back in three identical ponytails. They carried different weapons, though. One held a meat cleaver, one a hatchet, and one wore a leather glove from which a single sharp blade protruded. Jayce’s gaze darted from one to the other as he searched for some sign that would tell him which of these women was the real Emory. But at that moment, none of them looked like his daughter. They were drug-crazed beasts whose only desire was to spill as much blood as possible.

  “Don’t hurt them!” Jayce shouted, but neither Nicola nor the Pig listened. The Pig raised his machete and ran forward to meet the Emorys’ charge. He no longer looked tired or weakened from his injuries, and he let out an enthusiastic cry that was part shout, part whoop. If Jayce had any doubt that the man had been driven insane by his exposure to Shadow, it vanished in that instant.

  Nicola didn’t move to engage the Emorys, but she spread her feet apart in a battle stance, raised her flail, and began spinning it in preparation to strike.

  Jayce held his knife at his side, unable to do anything more than stare, paralyzed, as three separate but equally murderous versions of his daughter attacked.

  Cleaver Emory headed for Ohio Pig. She raised her weapon over her head and screamed as she drew near him. Jayce could see how bloodshot her eyes were, and her face was flushed nearly beet-red. Whatever sort of drugs Ivory had used to turn the Emorys into crazed killers, it was taking its toll on their bodies. It also seemed to have speeded up their reflexes, for when the Pig swiped his machete toward Cleaver Emory’s midsection, she jumped back and the Pig’s blade swished through empty air. When he was off balance, she brought her cleaver down on the man’s right shoulder. The metal thunked into meat, blood spurted, and the Pig howled in pain.

  The crowd roared its approval.

  Hatchet Emory made for Nicola, and just as she was about to take a swing at the other woman, Nicola sidestepped and swung her flail around to strike Emory’s back. Three spiked balls slammed against her shoulder blades, tearing cloth and flesh as if both were no more substantial than tissue paper. Emory cried out in pain, stumbled, and fell to the ground, her back a scarlet ruin.

  “No!” Jayce shouted, but his voice was drowned out by a fresh chorus of cheers from the crowd.

  He started running forward to help Emory, not caring if she was the real one or not, only knowing that she looked like his daughter and that was all that mattered. But before he could reach her, the third Emory – the one with the knife-glove – came at him. Her hand was curled into a fist, and the blade projected forward a good nine inches, maybe more. I
t was more like a dagger, Jayce thought, or maybe a short sword. She thrust it toward his abdomen and he stood there, thinking that if this was his Emory, there was no way she’d hurt him, no matter how drugged she was. She would turn aside the blade at the last moment, then she’d pause, confused, and her eyes would clear. She’d look at him hesitantly, and in a soft voice say, Daddy?

  But Knife-Glove Emory didn’t slow down, didn’t pull her strike, and with a maniacal grin she jammed her blade into him.

  He didn’t feel any pain at first, which surprised him. He felt the impact of the blade, actually felt the sharp metal slide into his body, but it didn’t hurt. Emory grabbed hold of his shoulder to keep him from moving, and she shoved the blade all the way in. She held it there for a moment and looked into his eyes, her forehead pressed against his, their noses touching. He could feel how hot she was, as if gripped by a high fever. Another symptom of Ivory’s drugs, he assumed. Her furnace breath panted into his face, and he searched her eyes for any hint of the little girl he’d read bedtime stories to before tucking her in at night, but all he saw was cold, dark glee.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Sorry that he hadn’t been a better father, sorry that he hadn’t been able to protect her from a world that had turned out to be every bit as dangerous as Valerie had always warned.

  For an instant, he saw a flicker of doubt in her gaze, but then it vanished and she sneered as she yanked her blade free, giving it a twist as she did so. And that’s when the pain finally hit him.

  Fire exploded in his gut, and he dropped his knife and grabbed hold of his belly in an instinctive attempt to stop the flow of blood fountaining from his wound. But he might as well have tried to hold back Niagara Falls, for all the good it did. Blood gushed past his fingers, making them instantly slippery. He tried to keep pressure on the wound – wasn’t that what you were supposed to do? – but there was so much blood, and his hands were now so slick that he couldn’t maintain his grip.

  Sorry to tell you this, kiddo, Valerie said, but you are well and truly fucked.

  No shit, he thought.

  Emory let go of his shoulder and stepped back. She grinned as she watched blood pouring past his fingers and splattering onto the Pit’s stone floor. The crowd – which had gone silent the instant the blade had entered Jayce’s body – now went insane, clapping, cheering, stomping, and shouting things like, “Do it!” and “Cut off his fucking head!” and “Slice off his balls and feed them to him!”

  Jayce could already feel himself becoming lightheaded and weak, and he didn’t think he could hold on to consciousness much longer. But if he was going to die – and with each passing second it seemed more like a done deal – at least he would enter the darkness knowing that if Knife-Glove Emory was his true daughter, he hadn’t hurt her.

  Then Nicola was there, and she swung her flail toward Knife-Glove Emory’s face. The spiked balls rent flesh and crushed bone with sickening wet sounds, and the impact spun Emory around and she fell to the ground, motionless. Before Jayce could react – although, really, he was too busy dying to say or do anything – Nicola stepped forward and swung her flail at the back of Emory’s head, pulping it.

  The crowd went ape-shit.

  Horrified, Jayce looked to see if the other two Emorys were okay. The one Nicola had originally fought lay on the ground several yards away. Her head was also a shattered wet ruin, and Jayce guessed Nicola had performed the same maneuver on her as she had on Knife-Glove Emory. He looked for Ohio Pig and saw that he lay with Cleaver Emory on top of him. Neither was moving and both were covered with deep, bloody cuts, the ground around them splashed with crimson.

  All three Emorys were dead. Two of them had been Underborn, but one had been his daughter, his Emmy. Now she was gone, and in a few short moments, he would be joining her.

  Jayce.… Valerie began.

  Not now, he thought. Just let me die in silence. Please.

  Tears streamed down his face and he went down on his knees, barely feeling them crack against the rough stone floor. Nicola stepped toward him, blood, hair, and bits of brain matter stuck to the balls of her flail. She reached out toward him, but he waved her off with a bloody hand. He slumped onto his side, no longer bothering to attempt to staunch the blood flowing from his stomach wound. At this point, the faster he bled out, the better.

  Even though Nicola was on his side, the crowd chanted, “Finish him, finish him!” But she let her flail fall to the ground and gazed sadly down at him.

  From where Jayce lay, he could see Ivory. She stood, hands gripping the railing, grinning with delight. Glad we put on a good show for you, bitch, he thought. His vision began to dim then, and he wondered what, if anything, would come next for him. Whatever it was, he doubted it could be much worse than what he’d already experienced. He could still see Ivory, although her image was blurry now, but Nicola was closer and more clear to him. He saw both women step backward at the same instant, and although he could no longer make out Ivory’s expression, he could see Nicola’s well enough. Her eyes were wide and her mouth hung open.

  He realized then that the crowd had gone deathly silent. When he smelled rotting leaves and overturned soil, he knew why.

  He turned his head, the effort requiring almost all of his remaining strength, and he saw the Harvest Man standing there, gazing down at him with his inhuman obsidian eyes, lamprey mouth a puckered ring.

  And then he remembered.

  * * *

  The stall door opens and something – some kind of monster – stands there, looking at Jayce with large, shiny eyes filled with darkness. The creature’s skin looks something like a lizard’s, or maybe a rhino’s, and its mouth is a circular nightmare, like an anus filled with small sharp teeth. The creature raises one of its clawed hands and steps into the stall.

  Jayce is terrified beyond measure, his heart pounding so fast that he thinks it might explode any second. This is it, he thinks. This monster, whatever the hell it is and wherever it came from, is going to tear out his throat and drink his blood. Maybe it will feast on his flesh as well, devour his organs, slurp down his skin, crunch his bones and suck out the marrow. After all, that’s the sort of thing monsters do, right?

  But instead, the creature puts its hand on top of Jayce’s head, the gesture a gentle, even tender one. The moment the gray hide comes in contact with his body, Jayce’s fear vanishes, and he becomes instantly, completely, utterly calm. He looks up at the creature’s grotesquely inhuman face, but he no longer sees ugliness there. He sees beauty.

  “I know what you are,” Jayce says, voice barely a whisper.

  And I know you. I have something for you. Something that belongs to you. Will you accept it?

  Jayce answers without hesitation.

  “Yes.”

  The Harvest Man’s round mouth irises wide and he breathes forth a stream of darkness. Jayce opens his own mouth, and the darkness flows toward and into him. He inhales its coldness, and he can feel it settling into him, changing him, and it feels good. No, more than that.

  It feels wonderful.

  * * *

  Jayce’s mind returned to the present and he looked up at the Harvest Man.

  “I remember,” he said.

  Then it is time, the Harvest Man replied.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Then the Harvest Man’s body shimmered, like waves of heat rising from a summer road, and he was gone.

  Jayce, still bleeding, but no longer weak, rose to his feet, the front of his coveralls soaked with dark blood from his stomach wound. The audience, still stunned by the Harvest Man’s appearance, watched him with silent awe and perhaps more than a little fear.

  “Jayce? Are you all right?”

  Nicola looked afraid of him too, but she held her ground and didn’t move away from him.

  He gave her a grim smile. “Never better,” he said, blood still lea
king from his ravaged gut and pattering onto the stone floor.

  Ivory had been as stunned as everyone else, but she was quick to recover.

  “Kill him!” she shouted.

  Therons ran forth from the entrances on both sides of the Pit, the four that had been watching the match joined by a dozen more, some of them carrying weapons, some of them armed only with their bare hands. Jayce didn’t care. Armed or unarmed, it was all the same to him.

  He remembered the feeling of the darkness entering him for the first time, and with this memory came the knowledge of how to bring it forth again. He opened his mouth and an ebon cloud shot forth to engulf one half of the attacking Therons, and without waiting to see the results, he turned toward the second group and did the same thing. Two streams of darkness trailed from his mouth, and he inhaled, drawing them both back into him with silent ease. The Therons were all motionless ash figures now, and they quickly lost cohesion and collapsed to piles of black dust.

  The crowd sat in horrified silence for several seconds, and then pandemonium broke out. Shadowers screamed, wailed, shouted, and sobbed, and everyone tried to flee at once, pushing, shoving, hitting, kicking, clawing, and biting. If they had weapons, they used them, and if they didn’t, they improvised. If they were strong enough, they tore lengths of wood from the bleachers to use as clubs, and if they lacked strength, they employed their intelligence, pushing people down toward the Pit, using gravity as their weapon. Shadowers fell, rolled, slammed into the railing. Others weren’t so lucky and were trampled in the crowd’s mad panic to escape.

 

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