“But will they forgive me for missing this in the first place?” Odinga tapped his plump lips with his index finger as he pondered the question. What would the gods of the land feel about the desecration they had suffered? While the Root Woman had instigated this disaster, Odinga was the shepherd, and it was his job to keep the holy root safe. He was not sure that success today would be enough to cleanse him of his failure.
The Bentley lurched to a halt in front of Odinga’s restaurant, wheels kicking up fallen leaves and chunks of gravel. The driver stayed behind the wheel, eyes fixed to the road. That driver had held the reins of wagons, the wooden wheel of a Model T, and too many other vehicles to count before he had sat in the captain’s seat of the Bentley. As long as there had been a priest for the old gods of the land, the driver had been there to carry that priest about his or her appointed rounds. Odinga wondered where the man had come from; wondered if he would ever find out.
“That’s a worry for another day,” the old priest grunted as he pushed the Bentley’s door open then eased himself down onto the gravel. He was fat, but he was still stronger and nimbler than anyone gave him credit for. The opulence of his figure hid a strong, resilient man – a fact that Odinga was more than happy to let others discover, to their chagrin.
His boys spilled out of the restaurant, white robes gliding over the damp earth, darkening where their hems soaked up the morning dew. They did not speak, but flowed around him, lending him their support and innocent courage. Their presence eased his worries and calmed his troubled mind.
Odinga rested his heavy hand on a boy’s shoulder. “Thank you, my children.”
At the door to the restaurant, Odinga’s gut lurched. The wound ached – a bad tooth throb that froze him in his tracks. He clutched his hand to the wound, and a wet warmth oozed through his fingers. Then something wriggled inside his gut.
“She’s here,” Odinga whispered.
The boys raised their voices; a choir of innocence that eased Odinga’s pain and chased the chill from his bones. The boys were filled with the spirits of the old gods, and they always knew the perfect way to help him along his often troubled path. Odinga hurried them up to the altar. “Come along, children; our time is short.”
Odinga moved his bulk toward the altar. The gnawing ache in his gut was back, despite the soothing song of his choir. Odinga limped to the makeshift altar and put his hands on its polished surface, framing the stain left by the conjured girl between his outstretched fingers.
“Earth Mother,” he began, but pain blossomed in his gut, slicing his words off as clean as a razor’s swipe. Odinga leaned on the altar. The metal groaned under his weight. His boys gathered around to lend their strength, but Odinga knew it was not enough. He could feel her coming.
The door opened, silently; slowly; revealing a chunk of blackness that flowed through the restaurant.
She floated in, stumps sizzling with black lightning that chewed chunks from the floor as she approached the altar. The wind that blew in around her was colder than winter’s breath; the kiss of the void. “Hello, druid.”
Odinga raised his eyes to the girl, struggling to catch his breath. The closer she got, the deeper the pain gnawed into his guts. The blood was not leaking from the sacrificial wound now, it was running in streams as thick as his fat thumb. “There is no place for you here,” he grunted through the pain.
“What does it feel like?” She grinned as she floated closer, filling the air with the scent of ozone and scorched wood. “To be cut off from your gods? I can’t even imagine how that must hurt.”
Odinga tried to ignore the girl. He knew the words to the prayer. A simple consecration ritual and some spilled blood would be all that it would take to reclaim this place for the old gods. His blood was already smeared across the altar and splattering onto the floor all around him; he just had to say the words.
But the words would not come. Whenever he tried to speak, pain crawled deeper into his belly. Blood stung the back of his throat, and every breath felt like it might be his last. He was losing this fight before it even started.
“My gods are with me; always.” But Odinga no longer believed that. There was an emptiness in him; a hollowness that echoed the sacrificial wound he had carved into his fat. He had failed, and the gods of the land had withdrawn from him until he could prove he was worthy of their gifts. Odinga hoped he would live long enough to earn his way back into their good graces.
The boys shifted nervously around him. They drew back from the approaching girl then raised their voices in wordless praise. They sang with the righteousness of the innocent, but the girl did not flinch in the face of their faith.
She reached out with her wreath of a dozen digits crooked in different directions. One of the boys cried out, stumbling past the altar, head bowed. He knelt before the monstrous girl, muscles trembling in protest, brown eyes welling with terrified tears. “My god enjoys a different song,” she purred.
The boy’s lovely voice rose to fill the restaurant – a pure, high tone that silenced the others. It rose high, higher still, and yet higher, before it broke. His voice shattered into a thousand tortured notes; became the discordant jangle of breaking glass and screeching vermin.
Odinga opened his mouth to say the prayer, but the words would not come. He could not take his eyes off the boy, who was changing, withering.
The boy’s spiky afro tore loose from his head, then floated in the air, borne aloft by his terrified, splintered song. His bald scalp shriveled against his skull, revealing a swollen, pulsing network of veins that writhed like blue worms.
The monstrous girl snatched the afro out of the air. She tore off a chunk then plopped it into her mouth like a piece of black cotton candy.
Odinga staggered from behind the altar, pounding his hands against his thighs, trying to force the words to come. “Pasi Amai – Earth Mother, hear me,” he began.
The withering boy’s head turned, craning to the left until his spine crackled and his body was forced to follow. He stared up at Odinga with an old man’s face atop a throttled, wrinkled neck.
The boy’s eyes rolled back until they showed only white, then rolled farther still until they were blank, black marbles that squirmed with a life of their own.
“Pasi Amai,” Odinga struggled to find his strength. Years of faith abandoned him in the face of madness. He was not strong enough to save his boy. His weakness tortured him.
The boy’s left eye unfolded, stretching out to reveal a mole rat’s ugly face. The leathery visage dripped with blood as it thrust itself from the boy’s head.
“Where’s your Bitch-God now?” The monstrous girl asked as she floated toward Odinga. She devoured the afro, then reached out, cradling Odinga’s head in her many hands as he watched raccoons and mole rats tear their way out of the boy’s face. Through it all, the child kept singing his strange, damned song. “Has she fled?”
She squeezed Odinga’s head in her hands, pressing on it from all sides. “Or was she never here at all?”
The girl laughed, then slammed Odinga’s head down onto the altar. His forehead split open, adding more of his rich blood to the rusty stain left by the conjured girl. “Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, a daddy got very, very mad with his children. So he drowned them all.”
“Th-the Christian’s story of Noah,” Odinga gasped. “Taken from the Zulu story of Amarave, last of the Red People and Odu, last of the artificially created Bjuaani.”
Mole rats and raccoons tore the boy’s head apart. His neck ended in a tattered flower of mangled flesh, from which vermin crawled by the dozens. They flicked blood from their claws then scampered off, befouling the restaurant with their cries and dung droppings.
“He did let one old man and his family live,” the conjured girl went on. “What fun is it to be a god if there’s no one to see it?”
The girl floated higher. The vermin swarmed her, running in erratic orbits up and down her body.
“You know th
is story. They sailed for forty days and forty nights, and then found themselves a little patch of land to call their own.”
I know it very well,” Odinga grunted. “A borrowed story, like I said.”
The girl sucked her teeth and waggled her many fingers in his direction. “You don’t know the whole story. While that old bastard floated on the endless ocean, waitin’ for his God to take mercy on his soul, things woke in the depths beneath him. Does your African story tell that part?”
Odinga remained silent.
“And even when the waters receded, carryin’ the great leviathans away beyond your world, they waited and watched and lusted. The Christian God and your African gods kept them at bay; kept you all to themselves. Greedy bastards.”
Odinga struggled to stand, leaning against the altar. The boys gathered close to him, pressing him against the steel counter, supporting him.
“But all things pass,” the girl went on. “Even gods. They grow old and weak. They kill their children to prove their power. But, in the end…”
The girl released Odinga then raised her hands high. She twirled in the air, her hair whipping around her head. Raccoons and mole rats swarmed around her like bees to their queen. “In the end, here we are. Where are your gods now?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
A massive talon slashed toward Savannah, looping over the dais and crashing down at her face.
Savannah threw herself to the side, leaping clear of the attack.
The claw dug into the cave’s floor, throwing up chunks of limestone.
The creature’s leg tore its way into the world.
Savannah just avoided its raking attack by throwing herself prone. She slid a few yards across the floor then came to rest behind one of the glowing stone pillars. She drew her pistols. A knot of adherents took one look at Savannah and ran the other way.
The gargantuan creature was weakened and confused by Lashey’s hold on it. Despite its overwhelming presence, the dark god had made a terrible mistake binding itself to that little girl. She was not the hapless anchor it was looking for; Lashey was a fighter.
One of the new head honcho’s claws hovered over Lashey, frozen with indecision. Savannah could see its dilemma. The girl was weakening it, but if it killed her, its connection to this world would be severed. Its confusion filled Savannah with hope.
She was not sure she could kill the creature – a Godzilla-sized, winged mole rat with a face bearded by whipping tentacles and a body that swarmed with raccoons – even with her otherworldly firearms.
But she could give Lashey time to work on it and, between the two of them, maybe they could finish this fight. Maybe.
The vermin god’s grotesque head turned as if it could feel Savannah’s thoughts. Its bulging eye swept from side to side as it tried to find her. Its breath washed across the cavern – a hot mist that stank of burning copper, honey and shit.
Savannah gagged against the stench. She beat back the sickness, swinging one of the pistols out around the stone column. She squeezed the trigger three times. Each shot found its way into the thing’s eye.
The monster shook its head, spewing saliva and boiling tears in all directions. Savannah could feel its pain, feel the power it had given her ebb for one moment before surging back. It felt pain, but it was still strong. She could sense it healing, like an itch on the top of her brain. She would have to do a lot of damage, very quickly, if she wanted to kill it before it could put itself back together.
Savannah raised the pistol again, taking aim at the beast’s throat.
The alien god’s screams of unholy rage burrowed into Savannah’s skull. The creature sent a withering ball of hate down the connection between them.
The pain was too much. It knocked Savannah’s legs out from under her before she could reach another stalactite. She landed hard on her knees.
One of the adherents lunged from the shadows then wrapped scabbed arms around Savannah’s shoulders. The Root Woman struggled against the attack, but she was dizzy, confused.
The great beast lunged, whipping the edge of its wing at Savannah’s head. A thick spike hooked the skin just above her ear, tearing her scalp open in a wide swath.
Savannah’s legs went wobbly. She hit the ground hard, one knee banging off the stone floor before she toppled onto her shoulder and then her head smacked the stone. The world swam around her, a dizzy spiral that receded as her eyes fluttered and everything turned black.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Papa Marcel hit the water so hard his skin split across his shoulders. A curtain of blood flowed from the wound like yards of unspooled red cloth, drifting up around him as his body sank. The water was dark and cool; it embraced the old bokor, and he knew his pain was almost at an end. He wished he could have done more; that he could have helped Savannah when she needed it most.
Ah, well, he thought, regrets are for the living.
He saw the man coming for him, falling from the sky like a star, top-hat tilted on a large head with a skull-like face; laughing as he descended.
Papa Marcel recognized Papa Ghede; felt the pure love of the god.
A smile cracked across Papa Ghede’s lips.
Papa Marcel let his eyes close. He was going home soon, and that was a great comfort, despite the way he had let Savannah down.
“Not yet.” The girl’s voice cracked in Papa Marcel’s head like a shattering bell. Her shredded arms hooked around him then hauled him up and out of the water with inhuman strength. She sneered at Papa Marcel. “We’re not done playing.”
She crushed the old man to her, holding him so his head hung over her shoulder like a baby’s. His ribs cracked, and he tasted blood. But Papa Ghede was still coming, falling from the sky toward the unsuspecting conjured girl.
Papa Marcel coughed against the constricting grasp. He turned his head then whispered to the girl.
She shrieked then held him at arm’s length, eyes burning holes in him. “What did you say?”
“You lose.” Papa Marcel chuckled through a mouthful of his own blood.
Papa Ghede touched Papa Marcel at last with a withered black hand.
Papa Marcel’s body was surrounded in a corona of celestial fire. Dawn arrived with a thunderclap that shook the trees and echoed across Cascade Springs.
The conjured girl tumbled back from the light, her hair afire; her skin scorched red by the heat.
Blood spilled from Papa Marcel’s wounded body, glowing with a pure, golden light. The drops of light sizzled where they hit the spring. Waves whipped the surface into a silver froth. The conjured girl screamed overhead as her corruption was cleansed from the waters.
She came apart, bones burning white hot and sizzling away into sulfurous steam as her flesh peeled off in long strips that floated toward the rising sun before charring black and disintegrating into ash.
Papa Marcel closed his eyes then fell, the light leaving his body as he landed in the center of the spring.
The conjured girl’s screams tapered away to silence. The wind carried her away, scattering her remains far and wide, leaving nothing to mark her passing.
And Papa Ghede laughed and laughed and laughed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Adherents lifted Savannah from where she fell, hoisting her into the air then draping her arms and legs over their shoulders so she hung face down. The floor scrolled beneath the Root Woman; red drops of her blood stained the stone.
Pigmeat Porter led the procession; a reminder of what Savannah’s weakness had cost her.
They carried her back to the dais and put her down before Lashey. They forced Savannah to kneel under the baleful eye of their god, who towered over the proceedings. The holes Savannah had punched through its infernal hide were gone, sealed up by whatever dark power had spawned the thing. Its dangling tentacles curled with anticipation and Savannah could feel its amusement in her head.
“Hold huh-her-er!” Its voice thundered. The adherents yanked Savannah’s arms outward. They low
ered her to the ground, but held her arms straight back from her shoulders, pulling until she could feel tendons and ligaments creak.
Pigmeat smirked at her, his eyes wet with joy as he presented his foe to the god he served.
The beast lowered its head, craning it down on a winding, serpentine neck until the drooping curtain of its wriggling tentacles brushed against Savannah’s face. Savannah could smell the eons of chaos and decay rolling out of the creature’s guts. This close to it, she could see the flesh was not solid, but a rotting lacework, layers of threads and holes, all overlapped and wound together like a million cobwebs. Through the gaps, Savannah could hear the whisper of eternity, the voices of dead millennia urging her to submit, to bow down before the inevitable and accept her fate.
“Ah-I-I offered ee-you-oo, you this world.” The words rumbled out through the air, battering against Savannah’s ears. “Yet still ee-oo fight. Now, Ah-I-I will rip my gifts from ee-your-or flesh!”
Savannah looked up into the madness of the glowering three-lobed eye. She could feel its hate; its growing power.
She could feel something else, as well, far back in her skull. Mayor Green’s presence grew stronger – a sudden flare, accompanied by a high keening sound that quickly trailed off.
The dark god threw back its head then let loose a haunting cry of pain and loss. Burning gashes appeared across its flesh, the tenuous threads of its spectral body shredding away to reveal a primal, chaotic energy that leaked from it like boiling blood.
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