by D. M. Pratt
“She’s got to be here. The goddamn car is out there,” Mac said pointing back to the entry gate.
They moved as a team and spread out along the northeast side, walking in rows searching for clues that would help them. What was left of the administration building loomed eerily above them. It watched their every move, showing its silent face in between the shadows made by the cloud cover that crept over the face of the moon and intermittently blocked its light. Without the moon’s light their task was impossibly difficult. Still, they relentlessly searched for something…anything that would help them understand why they had come out here.
“Eve?” Mac called out. “Can you hear me?”
His voice echoed off the swamp water, “Hear me…hear me…hear me…” it called back to him.
A small posse of uniformed men and women emerged from a tangle of trees.
“This whole place is ringed by water,” a hatchet-faced woman with large watery eyes and stubby fingers somewhere in her late thirties named Natch shouted back as she shook clumps of lichen and moss from her hand. She pointed the beam of her flashlight back into the ring of trees that grew around the grounds.
“Looks like some kind of fuckin’ deep ass moat too. Sergeant Duke fell in and couldn’t stand, and he’s six one. I say, between the swamp water, copperbacks and alligators, some creature got her stuffed under a rock marinating,” she said.
Her drawl was thick and laced with a hint of Cajun. Even in moonlight Mac could see the olive skin and dark straight hair that showed her Indian heritage. Natch was a good cop though and should have made detective long ago, but her radical politics and a foul mouth had gotten in her way.
“I found a body,” another voice shouted.
Hanover and Mac strode over to the voice as twenty flashlights illuminated a man.
Mac reached down and rolled him over. It was Millard Le Masters. His white hair was caked with mud, but everyone had seen him on TV or in the papers enough to know who he was. It was only then that Mac noticed his lower torso was missing.
“Guess we don’t have to worry about butting heads with this one. What do you want to do?” Mac asked Hanover.
“Get a blanket and cover him up. I need sunlight to see what the hell happened,” Hanover said.
“Rest of him’ll be gator meat by dawn,” Natch said.
“Hey, captain! I found two sets of footprints,” another officer shouted from near the administration wall.
“Guess we’ll be on body watch all night to make sure that don’t happen,” Hanover said.
“Over here!” the young officer called again.
Bannerman had a pale baby face with crooked teeth, straw-colored hair and a constellation of freckles that could be seen even in the dim light.
“Get Duke back to the cars and give him a blanket. Everybody stop trampling this crime site,” Hanover ordered.
He and Mac crossed to the freckle-faced officer holding his flashlight and standing near the west edge of the administration building’s remaining wall. They reached his side and looked down at the mud.
“See, they stood here for a while and looked at something. See the marks of where it got laid down in the mud?”
Mac used the beam of his flashlight to trace over the ground. He could see the two sets of shoe prints and the details where the burlap had been rolled out and then rolled back.
“Look at the second set of shoe prints…” Hanover said. “She’s got a dwarf with her?”
“Maybe a kid,” Mac said.
They exchanged a look as a fourth officer stepped up to them. Patrick Kane had been a pro football player in his twenties, but a torn ACL ended his career. He was a huge man, six four, weighing in at a mighty two hundred and sixty five, but fast as lightning and strong as a bull. He walked with the slightest hint of a limp. His skin was blue-black and his features reminded Mac of a Mandingo warrior. He had a round noble face, huge cheekbones, a keen nose and wide full lips. When he smiled, so did everyone else; when he was angry, people stepped out of his way.
“We got a fog bank rollin’ in,” Patrick said in a nasal voice that had the slightest hint of a harelip cleft to it.
Mac and Hanover looked up to where he was pointing. There, hanging at the edge of the grounds, just inside the cemetery fence, a strange fog bank hovered around the crypts. It looked as if it were caught in the trees unable to come past the gate. Everyone else turned to look as well.
“What the fuck is that?” Mac asked. His eyes were fixed and wide with a hint of confusion in them.
Hanover looked up at the fog and then back at Mac.
“It’s fog.”
“No, inside the fog,” he said. “The…the people.”
Hanover looked again. He and all who heard Mac’s strange comment turned back and studied the motionless bank of fog that hung just inside the cemetery.
“It’s just fog,” Hanover said.
“Why ain’t it moving in?” Natch asked.
“Wind stopped. That’s all,” Hanover added.
“There are people standing inside the fog,” Mac insisted. There was a chill in his tone that made everyone feel uneasy.
“I don’t see any people, Mac,” Patrick said.
“You feeling okay, Mac?” Hanover asked.
“I don’t have words for what I’m feelin’,” Mac said.
Mac’s eyes never left the strange bank of lingering mist. He stepped closer and stopped. He could see inside the curling mist what Hanover and the others could not. He saw people, hundreds of people, mostly women and children. They were three-dimensional people shaped from columns of gray haze. They had eyes, mouths, hair, arms and legs; ghostly humans waiting in another dimension for some signal to step through some unseen door into this one. They all stood expressionless, watching the police as Mac watched them and the police watched Mac.
“I can see them because I saw that thing at the Bouvier house,” Mac said.
“I want you to go back to the car, Mac. There’s nothing out there,” Hanover said.
“Yeah, there is. I can see them and they can see me…”
“I don’t see it, but I can feel somthin’ aint right out there,” Natch said.
“Look,” Hanover cut him off. “I’m ordering you to head back to the cars with Duke, Mac. You’ve been through a lot today.”
Hanover reached out to touch his arm.
“Mac?”
Before Hanover could grab him, Mac moved forward, heading toward the living wall of faces inside the grey mist.
Mac drew his gun. When he did, Hanover and every other officer drew theirs. They could not see what he saw, but each and every one felt something evil permeating the grounds of Thibodaux Asylum.
With his other hand, Mac pulled out his silver lighter, flicked it open. The wall of fog moved back. The eyes of the invaders went to the flame.
“Mac?” Hanover called.
Mac didn’t answer. His eyes stayed transfixed on the ghostly presences before him. He lifted the lighter and dropped it. The dead and rotting trees that had fallen over the years, covered in tuffs of dry sawgrass bloomed into tongues of orange and yellow claws of fire. The bank of fog moved forward.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Kirakin and Gathian battled with powerful viciousness. Raging fists of blue and burgundy blurred with the speed of every motion. They were both slathered with sweat and blood. Kirakin swung his fist, connecting with Gathian’s jaw and pounding his face so hard the force of the blow twisted his entire body around. Gathian recovered inside the spin, used the force of the blow to keep turning and with the agility of a dancer, spun back to face Kirakin. He threw out a solid one-two series of punches that connected so forcefully to Kirakin’s stomach and face that he buckled. His hand went protectively to his face. Gathian was about to hammer him again when Kirakin lunged forward head first and rammed Gathian back, shoving him across the room into a huge mirrored armoire. The might of their two bodies in motion shattered the armoire. A shower of gla
ss rained great jagged knife-like shards and mighty splinters of wood across the room.
Kirakin had Gathian pinned down on the floor. Gathian could feel glass stabbing into the flesh of his upper back. Kirakin raised his fist ready to pound him.
“She knows,” Gathian said.
Kirakin froze, clenched fist raised in mid blow.
“How?” Kirakin demanded, stepping away from his brother.
“I don’t know, but she knows!” Gathian said, his voice filled with fear and rage.
“I can’t feel her! Can you feel where she is?” Kirakin shouted.
“She has Beau,” Gathian said.
Both of the Nephilim were on their feet. They stood side by side, their senses searching the realms for Eve. Instantly, their wounds began to heal; gaping, bleeding sores that had hung like open mouths closed, sucking rivers of blood and light back inside that only a moment ago flowed from torn skin. Red and blue flesh alike sealed as though nothing had ever happened.
“She has to choose me,” Gathian said, pounding his chest with one fist.
“Fool! She was about to kill you,” Kirakin said. “Just find her! Maybe now that she understands who she is, she will bend.”
Gathian turned to his brother. “Why should she? She is the trilogy and unlike us needing her womb to secure this realm, she needs nothing but human seed. She has the man, Kirakin,” Gathian said, tension and fear in his tone.
“Find her!” Kirakin shouted and vanished.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
Eve was on top as she slid Beau’s cock into her again and again, firm, rhythmic and sensual. Eve writhed, undulating as she rode. His ecstasy matched hers.
“Beau, now!” she called to him. “NOW!”
He exploded, ejaculating. Beau cried out in a song of pure unadulterated ecstasy in harmony with hers. Eve and Beau culminated their passion in the perfection of mutual orgasm, their breath and bodies in perfect concord as never before. They blended their voices, his wails with her cries of pleasure. She could feel him spilling his seed and driving every one deeper inside her womb with each thrust.
She could feel his seed connect with her egg. Eve could feel the child being created at the instant of conception. A new life was growing inside of her. Eve’s eyes opened and met his. Tears of joy fell from her eyes and mingled with her sweat. Breathless, they smiled sharing the bliss that flowed between them. She breathed their pheromones in and the scent delighted and aroused her again, her body desiring more. They held onto each other, breathless, smiling, happy.
Suddenly, the acrid scent of cayenne filled her nose. Beau’s eyes turned from pleasure to panic as he was pulled off of her and thrown across the room. Eve saw his body hit the wall. In his place Kirakin appeared above her, his face twisted in rage.
“You’re mine,” he hissed at her.
His tail whipped under her and plunged inside. Eve screamed. He pounded into her harder and harder, until the pain of his huge phallus felt as if it would rip her in half.
“Stop!” She shouted.
Her fists beat against him. His massive hands grabbed her wrists and pinned her down. He never missed a thrust. Tears flowed from Eve’s eyes. She pulled one hand free and grabbed him trying to pull him out. She lifted her legs and hooked them on his hips clamping down with all her strength to push him away. He was ferocious, powerful, relentless.
Eve looked down at her feet. Through the tears and waves of pain she could see them still in her shoes, still inside the black and red lines she had drawn on the floor. She could see the tip of one point of the pentagram. She need only take one step back. She had to use the silver pin. She felt her fingernails release from the flesh of Kirakin’s back, dripping with his blood. She took her hand and reached under the lapel of her jacket. She understood that she existed between the two realms and this was her only chance. He was lost in his emotions: rage, desperation and pleasure, hungry to impregnate and control her. In that instant Eve understood that if she carried Kirakin’s child, all the children he’d created in his realm to change the Earth could come through the portal. They would do his bidding. They would be invincible.
Eve grabbed the silver pin, pulling it from her lapel, and raised it to stab him. Kirakin was wild. He pounded her with a thrust so hard and so deep it sent a shock wave of pain through her; she screamed, opened her hand and dropped the pin!
Eve looked into Kirakin’s face; he was lost in the pleasure of this violent rape. He was vulnerable. Waves of pain racked her body. She wanted to die, but she had to live. She had to get the spike. Eve left her body and returned to the tower to search for the small weapon. She saw it rolling toward a crack between the planks of wood in the floor. A wisp of smoke rose up through the crack. Eve flung herself toward the silver spike, reaching…reaching and at the last moment before it would have been lost forever, she grabbed it. Another rush of pain ripped through her body.
Eve slammed back to her second realm, the one she’d created to mate with Beau, and passed back into her body just as Kirakin ejaculated. His body stiffened, racked with the release of his seed into her womb. His head bent forward, his eyes closed, his back arched over into a contraction, his face close to hers. Eve swung her hand up to his head, slamming the silver spike deep into Kirakin’s temple.
“Potentia amoris intervebras reverti Malo. Nocto Inferno Infiniteroium,” she shouted.
Eve’s thumb pushed on the flat head of the spike and drove it in so deep that the skin of her thumb pressed through the soft flesh of his head. His eyes flew open and met hers. They were filled with horror and surprise.
“You bitch!” Kirakin screamed at her.
“And don’t you ever forget it,” she shouted. “Now get the hell off of me.”
Eve had found her true voice. The voice of the woman she’d become during this unearthly experience. The voice of the woman she had been at the beginning of time. Eve pulled herself from beneath him and struggled to her feet, stepping back into the pentagram.
Kirakin’s body was breaking apart before her eyes. He rose up from the bed and looked down in horror at his hands as they shattered into large pieces. His flesh cracked and separated first into chunks and then, with a hiss, the chunks turned into grains of red colored sand. Kirakin’s melting face looked at her. His eyes held all the pain and fury of betrayal and defeat. Kirakin screamed in anguish as he burst into flames. Eve watched, trembling as the sand turned into a flowing liquid river, melting flesh and blood burning and bubbling as it pooled on the wood floor at her feet. As the transmutation completed, his face lay looking up at her from between the tiny tongues of blue-green flame that licked up at her from the floor. Kirakin’s face faded into the depths of the bubbling abyss. Eve stared as the flames died and the blood dried hard and black, leaving only a burgundy stain to spot the area of floor that lay between the red and black circles.
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
The dead dry trees that grew in a ring around the asylum burned in a blaze of orange and red flames. The moss that draped them wore the flames like fiery shrouds, burning arms that seemed to reach up from hell into the night. The fire reflected in the mirror black of the swamp water at their feet; twin images of dancing flames and swirling smoke. Tongues of flame licked and danced, casting shadows and belching out curls of smoke that blended into the foggy gray haze.
Mac watched as the ghostly people who stood waiting by the graves of Thibodaux lifted their arms, clawing at the air, but the flames consumed them and one by one they vanished. The fog was swallowed by the smoke from the fire. It drifted back, floating away over cool water as it faded into nothing. The fire spread quickly at first, but the flames were corralled by the deep water of the moat. Hanover and a few of the cops tried to beat out the flames.
“You fucking destroyed a murder scene,” Hanover fussed at him.
“We need to get outta here,” Mac said. “Whatever’s here can stay here.”
Natch dropped the blanket she’d been using and backed away.
“He’s right. This place needs to burn,” Natch said.
Hanover stopped fighting the fire and looked around at his officers. Something in him knew Mac was right and this was a place that needed to be destroyed and forgotten.
“Stop,” he yelled out to his men. “Let it burn. Let it all fucking burn. I want all of you to get back to your vehicles. Let’s go home.”
The police dropped their burning blankets and stepped out of the flames to safety. They turned and headed down the road toward their squad cars.
Mac stood staring at the flames.
“Her car’s still here,” Hanover said. “Is she here?”
“I don’t know,” Mac replied.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
She had survived. She had killed the Nephilim who had killed Evine and Ms. Clarisse. Her body trembled, weak and pained from the attack. She looked down at her hand. In it rested the bloody silver pin. It reflected the moon, a small white spot shining in the drops of red blood that clung to the smooth silver metal spike that lay in her hand.
“You have ruined everything,” Gathian whispered.
Eve looked up. Gathian stood across the room. Beau and Cora stood on either side of him, motionless as if held by a force field, helpless. Cora’s expression was one of abject terror. The bandages from the hospital were gone and several jagged scars and purple bruises from the Nephilim’s attack marked her face. Beau had been through so much for so long, yet the only emotion his eyes held was hope: the hope that because she had defeated Kirakin she could surely do as much to Gathian. Eve saw Cora try to move, but her friend could only tremble. She was powerless to run. She could not speak or cry out, she could only stare helplessly at her friend.
“Let them come to me,” Eve said softly.
“Come and get them,” Gathian said.
Eve looked at Gathian. She felt the large pin in her hand, its weight, the wet, sticky blood that clung to the sliver of silver that had just saved her life. She looked down at her feet. In the other realm she still stood inside the pentagram. She knew she was safe inside its sanctuary. She looked up at Cora, her dearest friend who had risked her life to help her, and Beau whom she knew now more than ever she loved. She carried his child. Eve remembered the one other truth Aria and Evine had told her: there was only room for one other to stand inside the pentagram.