by Gilmore, RM
The train of my dress made an unsuitable sound as it dragged behind me along the floor. It sounded like running water. The whir and slap, whir and slap rhythm I created, reverberated off the walls around me.
My body jumped and jerked but didn’t stop when something banged from the other side of a closed door. With each slap of my feet, another door came to life. Whir – slap – bang. Whir – slap – bang. Scream.
I didn’t look this time. I just ran. I ran down a never-ending hallway of madness. Whir – slap – bang - scream. A song began to build as I ran. I heard my breath coming through intermittently. The rhythm built. A score composed of fear and madness. Whir – slap – bang – scream.
An end approached. A door. The exit. The grand finale to this composition. Feet away, it came faster. Whir – slap – bang – scream – SLAM. My body made it through the door and slammed it behind me.
But I was just a bystander. It was me who ran through the door, but I still stood in the hallway staring at the door. In silence. No bang. No whir. No slap. Just me. SCREAM. And that.
“Dylan?” Mike’s tone was urgent as he squeezed my arms. “Dylan.” My torso shook.
I felt my eyes twitch and flick open. It took a second longer for the scene to fill my vision.
“She’s okay,” Cyrus assured.
“Dylan?” Mike urged my attention to focus on him.
“What? Why are you squeezing me?” I shook him off and tried to right myself.
I sat up and realized I was on the carpeted floor. Squished between two rows of airplane seats. I felt fine. Why was I on the floor? My brows furrowed and I looked about my environment. My little messenger bag sat in the empty seat next to me. Mike stood over me in the row and Cyrus sat behind me in the aisle that ran through the middle. A gaggle of passengers stood gawking at me.
“She’s fine. She’s had a long day and needs some rest,” Mike told a stewardess and motioned for the passengers to move along.
A middle-aged woman leaned over the back of the seat nearest Mike. “I have a Valium in my purse if she needs it,” she whispered.
Mike smiled and I could see the thoughts forming in his head. He wanted to take it from her. He wanted me to take it and sleep. Sleep while he and Cyrus saved Tatum. Sleep while Tatum waited, while he killed Cyrus. Sleep until he had me back home and safe in his bed. None of that would happen like it was happening in his head, but I knew Mike. He was processing all the possibilities.
“No, thank you.” He smiled and shook his head. He had finally processed the most likely of all the scenarios. We all die.
The woman smiled back and moved on to her seat. She passed me and smiled sympathetically down at me, before she noticed Cyrus. Her eyes moved over him and back to Mike. Then back again. Her sympathetic smile changed to pride and she gave me a wink before moving on. In her eyes, I had two attractive well-built men looking after me. I was in a very good situation - in her eyes. What could be wrong with two hunks at your beck and call? Want to find out? I’ll trade you.
“I’m fine.” I waved Mike off.
My big body was bigger than the space I was crammed in, so getting up was something like…well…pulling your fat ass out of a small space. It took a few minutes and I cussed a lot, but I made it back into my seat. I felt my face flush and turn red with exhaustion and embarrassment.
I sat for a minute before I asked anyone who would listen, “What the holy fuck was I doing on the floor?” Judging solely by the difficulty removing myself from said conundrum, I could only imagine the flailing that had to happen to get me down there in the first place.
Both men sat as near to me as they could get, while still avoiding each other. Of course. “We were talking and you fell asleep.”
“I’m so tired,” I said mostly to myself, shaking off the sensation of sleep still floating around my head.
“It’s no wonder. You’ve been awake for nearly two days, give or take a nap or two,” Cyrus butted in.
Mike shot him a disdainful glance. “Like I was saying, we were talking and you sacked out. I knew you needed sleep so I left you alone. A few minutes ago, you just started screaming and kicking. Before we knew, it you were huddled on the floor between the seats crying.”
Crying? Me? Never.
“I had the weirdest dream.” I didn’t remember screaming in my dream, just hearing a scream coming from somewhere else.
Cyrus looked at me like my head had fallen off and rolled down the aisle. “What kind of dream?”
Nothing as fucked as the Cyrus turning into a lion dream, but fucky nonetheless. “I was watching myself walk down a hallway.”
“That’s it?” Mike asked disbelieving.
“Someone screamed so I ran and found a door. I went through the door then you guys woke me up.”
“Did you pass through the door also?” Cyrus asked, a seemingly strange question, but it made all the sense in the world to me.
“Didn’t you hear what she just said?” Mike badgered Cyrus.
“No. No, I didn’t” It was an odd question admittedly, but strangely relevant.
“What? That made sense?” This from Mike. Obviously, still the nonbeliever.
“Is that important?” I waited for him to tell me it meant my tits were going to fall off or something.
“No.” Bullshit. The look on my face must have screamed louder than I could have with my voice, because he tried that answer once more, “No, I’m not sure. Everything has relevance in one way or another.”
“How do you deal with this?” Mike asked me.
“I usually end up screaming,” I replied honestly.
It’s not easy dealing with the cryptic gang. I’ve never, in my life, wanted someone to just shut up and talk at the same time.
“It’s very obvious my mental state is teetering. Can we all please just try and help Dylan instead of making things so much more difficult?”
The fight between damsel in distress and bad mamajama tore me at the seams. My intuition forced me to stay strong and persevere, no matter the cost. Hell, my dad taught me that. The girl in me was terrified and begging for help from the nearest swinging dick. Luckily, for me, I had two at my disposal. Too bad, they were too far stuck up my ass to see the big picture.
The guys, not their actual dicks. Ouch.
Chapter Eleven
A car waited for us in the loading zone just as promised. Black and luxurious, I half expected to see the driver that drove through a vapor body a night ago, but it wasn’t. Another face, another fare, another case of the shittiest day imaginable.
What will happen on the shittiest day? If they just continued to get shitty, where is the drawing point? The head. I shudder to think.
The closer we got to House of Porte, the faster my heart beat. The last I’d seen of that place was Azelie laughing in the doorway while I ran for my life, leaving Cyrus behind. He had no clue what happened to him or her, for that matter, once I was gone. I could only assume she left when I did, to plot her revenge, leaving Cyrus to wake from his zombification. I’d believe that until I got word otherwise.
Mike watched out the window, taking it all in. The sights through New Orleans to House of Porte were the least of my worries. I let him enjoy it while it lasted. Hell, I enjoyed them when I first came here too. That was short lived to say the least.
“Are you ready for what’s ahead?” Cyrus asked.
I breathed heavily and nodded, looking at my hands in my lap. It was a rare occasion when I was left fairly speechless, but I had no words. In my head, I was cursing the name Azelie d’Entremonte, but outwardly, all I could manage was to simply not explode. Fear was seeping into my thoughts and that was never a good thing. I tried to snuff it out and shove it down. Churn it around until it became anger and rage, at which time, I would unleash it unto the world. For the time being, it would only come out as a whimper and a pout. And that, my darlings, would never happen as long as I had any control.
“Keep your faith,” Cyrus virtually de
manded.
He reminded me of the rosary I’d taken from Azelie. I dug in my bag and pulled it out. It was hers. I’d pulled it from her hands before I left her laughing at me. Although it was now in my possession, did she have some sort of link to it? The few times I’d been in contact with her, she’d been wearing it. It wasn’t until I snatched it off her hand that it left her sight. If she was linked somehow to the cross, one of two things were likely true; either it was now her link to me and I’d been walking around with a damn mystical GPS, or I could somehow use it against her. Seeing as I had no clue what I was talking about other than a childhood filled with horror movies, I was going mostly on what I’d learned from television.
I looked down at it. Twisting it in my fingers; bead by bead through my fingers. Having no clue how to use it properly, I was again going off what I’d seen on television. God didn’t only live in Catholic churches, sorry.
“Do you think…“ I looked up at Cyrus and stopped breathing.
His face, so perfect, was now covered in maggots and rotting flesh. I gasped and brought my hands up to cover my face. It wasn’t happening, Cyrus was not a decomposing thing sitting in the seat next to me. I looked again, and I was quickly proven wrong.
“What?” he said, little white wriggling larvae fell from his open mouth.
I gagged. As quickly as I could, I shoved myself back and against Mike, who sat on the other side of me. I put my feet up and as far away from Cyrus and his bug mouth as I could. I clenched my fists tightly and held them both close to my chest. The edges of the cross dug deep into my hand. “No! Stop, please!” I pleaded.
I closed my eyes tight, as tight as humanly possible. “Please,” I whispered verging on a sob. My hands squeezed, tighter and tighter. The skin on my palm popped as the corner of the crucifix pierced it. The pain brought half my thoughts away from Cyrus to focus on my hand.
“Dylan?” Cyrus grabbed my arms.
“Get your fucking hands off her!” Mike bellowed.
“What’s her problem?” The driver yelled from the front seat.
“Shut up!” Cyrus and Mike said together.
“Dylan, look at me,” Cyrus said, calm and soothing, and filled with concern.
“Uh uh.” I shook my head and protested like a child.
“What’d I say asshole?” Mike pulled me closer to him practically on his lap.
“Dylan,” Cyrus said one more time.
I let one eye crack open. I prayed it was Cyrus, my beautiful Cyrus, and not the rotting putrid meat my head told me would be there. His hands on my arms looked normal. My other eye slid open. Guarded, I let my gaze slide up his arms, normal, and to his face. Beautiful and flawless as ever, his perfect green eyes looked at me with pain in them.
“What in the fuck was that?” I asked, breathless. I didn’t move from my fetal position on Mike’s lap. My hands still clenched and in pain.
“I have no clue,” Cyrus said, still locked on to my eyes.
I left Mike’s lap to explore Cyrus’s face. I touched it with both hands; his skin was warm and smooth, no signs of decay or bugs. It was impossible. There was no way, in my normal human existence, that a man could be covered in rot and maggots one minute and perfectly fine the next. However, we weren’t in my normal human world anymore. We were in the everything-is-fucked-run-for-your-life Fuckety Fuckedville. Yeah, fuck this place.
“I don’t know what that was, but I don’t want it to happen again.” I shook my head, trying to shake off the nasty I’d just experienced. It didn’t work. I closed my eyes, but all I saw were things crawling about, so they opened right back up. “Your face…it was rotting and covered in maggots.” No need to sugar coat things.
Cyrus curled his lip in disgust and I was sure Mike did something similar behind me.
“In your head or…” Mike pushed me to explain exactly how fucking nutty I’d gone.
“No, as clear as I am sitting here right, now, you had fucking larvae squirming in and out of your rotten holes. They fell from your mouth when you opened it to talk to me.” I gagged before the last word came out. My mouth filled with saliva, but I refused to puke.
I searched his face for any signs of decay and came up flat. All I found was a dark smudge under his eye. I reached out to rub it off. It was still wet and smeared across his cheek. Spread out, it took on the color of blood.
“You’re bleeding,” I said and put my clenched fist over my mouth, secretly terrified his skin would suddenly fall off or something.
He swiped at his face, trying to fight off something he couldn’t see. Mike leaned over the top of me and took Cyrus up by the chin. He turned his face toward the rear window and into a bit more light. Seemingly dissatisfied, he turned it loose, harder and faster than necessary.
Cyrus met my eyes again and scrunched his eyebrows together. “No I’m not,” he said. “You are.”
It was his turn to manhandle my face. He, however, was much kinder than his detective counterpart. His warm hand held my chin as he wiped his other across my lips. Confused, he looked over my face and finally moved to my hands.
He held them both. One opened freely the other still held Azelie’s rosary. My head wouldn’t wrap around the fact that the blood I was seeing was real. And mine. Cyrus plucked the cross from my hand to reveal a thick blob of drying blood. The pain I’d felt when I was squeezing the damn thing to death, would likely become a beautiful scar.
“Shit!” I exclaimed and tossed the cursed thing to the floor of the car where it could fucking stay as far as I was concerned.
“Shit is right,” Cyrus agreed.
“Can someone, please, explain to me what in the fuck is happening here?” Mike, ever so skeptic, was about to get himself a nasty awakening; me too, as if I hadn’t had enough of those.
“Dylan is under attack,” Cyrus paused, dramatically or otherwise, it was annoying and Mike’s grumble proved it. “It’s not anything we can fight with guns and fists, not at the moment anyway. As of this moment, it is a spiritual attack.”
“Hasn’t it always been?” Down to the shambling dead bitches in my living room, there was not one instance of any of these gross things making physical contact. It hadn’t dawned on me before it was all in my head. Or that it was all what that bitch put in my head. Cyrus had said once you had to believe before something could take hold of you. Unfortunately for me, by the time I realized what was happening to me, I already believed. I tried not to. I told myself I didn’t. But, it was too late. My heart knew what my head refused to believe. I did that a lot. Sue me.
“Honestly…” he started, “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you ‘don’t know’?” Mike’s tone suggested an ass whipping was on the horizon.
“I mean, this isn’t something I’ve educated myself on. Magic, voodoo to be exact, is not my area of expertise. Malcolm will be able to answer your question as soon as we get to House of Porte. He has a history, of sorts, with mystics.”
“The ginger with the accent? He’s into voodoo?” Mike’s disbelief mimicked my own.
“Not exactly, but he will know more about Dylan’s situation than I do.”
“This isn’t one of those Secundus Primus butt sex secrets, is it?” He was pretty, sure, but his lack of knowledge or willingness to share made me want to punch infants. “I don’t have time for this. Every minute I’ve wasted trying to stop this bitch from executing whatever plan she has in place for me, is a foot I’ve dug deeper into my own grave. Now, get on with it, or you’ll have to deal with me, and I’ll warn you, I’m one dead thing away from killing a mother fucker.” By the time I was finished, I was on my knees and leaning over the top of Cyrus with my finger crooked and jammed into his face. I hadn’t realized I’d grown that intense. Proof – this goat was losing it.
“I can only guess and assume, and I don’t think it’s the best practice in this case,” he sighed, scooting back against the door. “Here are the facts: Azelie is a vengeful bitch. You have quite obviousl
y gotten on her bad side, and now she has successfully gotten into your head. To what purpose, I don’t know. To what end, I don’t know. You visited Lupe. You hold the only mystical protection I can provide.” He put his palms up and shrugged a hair. “I’m here with the vampires. I don’t know magic.” His eyes slid to the left and back. It was a fleeting moment, but I caught it and it said everything I needed it to say.
“Tell me about the black lion.” Mike was lost I was sure, but he wasn’t needed for this conversation. Cyrus knew about magic. He may not know voodoo and he may not be able to save me from it, but the little fucker knew magic. I dreamt about it. In my head, it was logical. If vampires, and witches, and devil worshipers were full-fledged citizens of this good old U.S. of A. then dammit, so were hot Persians who were also lions.
His jaw clenched and twitched. I stared him down. All that fear was churning inside and becoming glorious rage once again. Emotional rollercoasters were no fucking joke. Just hang on and pray you’re on the upside of things when you come out.
“What I am is of no relevance here,” he said so quietly only I could hear him.
“So, it’s true?” I asked, not really believing I’d just heard what he said. Not believing he actually admitted to it. That I dreamt it and it was true. What did that mean about him? “I dreamt that. How did I dream that?” I didn’t know who I was talking to, him or me, but I hadn’t expected his answer.
“There is so much I want you to know, so much you need to know. Perhaps your dreams are a way for your inner psychic to find its way to your consciousness.” Crazy man, say what?
“Now she’s a psychic? Jesus, Dylan, how the hell did you get yourself sucked into this bullshit? Vampires, voodoo, and psychics. I had half a mind to actually believe what you were spewing out, but now, I know you’re fucked,” Mike said. I could feel him shaking his head in shame.
“I am only suggesting Dylan knows more than she thinks she knows. Guesses, hunches, gut instincts, call it what you will, but you all have it in some form. Some are just better at listening to themselves than others, detective. You included.”