Bride of Death (Marla Mason)

by T. A. Pratt

  When I materialized in the office and sauntered to the door of the cell, he tried to kill me straight away – leapt up, threw his phone aside, and just flew straight for me, hands extended and already twisting into claws. He passed right through me and rolled in a somersault on the dirty ground before springing to his feet. “Illusion,” he spat.

  I shrugged in my undisclosed location, and my image standing before him did the same. “Projection, anyway.” One of my photos was in a corner of the room, covered with a layer of dirt, allowing me to spy and to project a remote presence into the room. My illusory body only had a range of ten yards or so, but that was more than sufficient for my purposes. “I like how you came straight at me, no posturing, no chit-chat – I’d heard you were a pro. Not like that poser Orias.”

  Sarlat’s hands were just hands again, and he brushed dirt off his body. He looked like a weird cross between a dom and a hipster – motorcycle boots, leather pants, leather vest over a white shirt, and thick leather bracelets on each wrist, but he had absurd facial hair that included a mustache with waxed ends, and his glasses were old-school with big chunky frames. Sarlat might have been handsome, but it was hard to tell under all the clichés he was wearing. “You killed someone I was sworn to protect, bitch.”

  “Bitch? I’m not one of your litter-mates, wolfman. All human here.” (That was true, for the moment. I had three weeks before I’d be a goddess again.) “Which reminds me – what kind of werewolf are you, Sarlat? Are you more like a Basque, or more like a leper, or more like a Tasmanian devil?”

  Sarlat circled around my illusion, clenching and unclenching his hands. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I mean, are you a human who just happens to turn into a wolf, with your own werewolf cultural traditions and shit – werewolf as ethnicity? Or are you a human who got bitten by a filthy animal and caught a nasty disease that makes you sprout hair in even more places than usual – werewolf as disease, like a leper? Or are you a totally different species, and you just happen to look human sometimes, even though you’re really no more human than a Tasmanian devil?”

  He drew himself up to his full height, which was probably only about five-foot-eight absent the motorcycle boots. “I am le loup-garou. My sins were so extravagant that I became heir to an ancient evil, which allows me to transform – and not just into a wolf. I can be an owl, stalking the skies, or a cat, slinking through the shadows –”

  “Huh, right,” I said. “And a cow, too, right? Sometimes a pig?”

  He bared his teeth, which were noticeably yellow, especially the oversized canines. “A bull, and a boar.”

  “Sure, sure. My French-Canadian folklore is a little rusty, but I thought that curse of the loup-garou thing only lasted for 100 days or something, and the transformation was involuntary? Why do I get the sense you’re just a dude with some shapeshifting magic who decided to come up with a soaked-in-evil backstory to impress the chumps?”

  “I will sniff you out,” he said. “I will open your belly, feast on your organs, and shit in your empty body cavities.”

  “Straight-ahead attacking, and weirdly specific scatological threats! I gotta admit, Sarlat, you keep impressing me. I mean that sincerely. How about you and me work something out? Killing your tentacled friend at Sunlight Shores, that was strictly self-defense on my part. I respect the right of a monster to do his monster shit, but I draw the line at letting myself get eaten. You have to cut me a little slack there.”

  “Absolutely,” Sarlat said. “All is forgiven. Come over in person and we’ll have a drink to celebrate our new friendship.”

  “Now, now, no need for sarcasm. My point is, I didn’t go picking a fight with your people, I just did what was necessary to keep myself alive. I did kill Orias’s advisor with malice aforethought, though – when he came to congratulate me on killing the beast and to ask if I’d help wipe out your whole gang, since I’d made such a good start.”

  Now I had his attention. He walked through me like I wasn’t even there – which, okay, technically I wasn’t – and sat back down on his chair in the cell. “I assumed Orias hired you... until I heard you killed the spore-lord. He’s not dead, by the way. His body was a temporary thing made of shit and fungus, mashed up into a man-shape. He’s just motes of thinking dust, really.”

  “Drat. Next time I’ll bring a tank of herbicide and put him down for good. Listen – how much do you know about me?”

  His shrug was elegant. “Enough. You used to be chief sorcerer of some rust-belt city out East. You fucked up somehow – details are sketchy – and the other sorcerers ran you out of town on a rail. You lived in Hawaii for a while, until some trouble there sent you packing again. You popped up in Vegas a couple of days ago and then proceeded to start fucking with my people for no reason.”

  “Any such fucking was inadvertent, I assure you. Did you hear why I left Hawaii?”

  He frowned. “What I heard was that you killed Elsie Jarrow.”

  “You heard right.” Technically I hadn’t killed her – I wasn’t sure someone as powerful as Jarrow could be killed – but I’d sure as shit neutralized her. “You sure you still want to fuck with me, knowing that?”

  “You killed the Elsie Jarrow. Most powerful chaos witch in history. I didn’t believe it, but then I heard it from three different sources, two of which I even trust. You really did her in?”

  “With these little hands. If I could do that, don’t you think I could take out Orias?”

  “You’ve got my attention. What exactly are you saying?”

  “I’ve got some business to do in the Southwest, and I’d rather not have your bruisers bothering me. I can handle them, of course, but I don’t want to spend all my time scraping your thugs off the bottom of my boots. I killed one of yours – I’ll acknowledged that. Party foul. You’ve got a need for blood vengeance and all, you can’t let anybody fuck with your cohort, I get that. But how about I pay restitution for my crime instead? I’ll take out Orias, and you and your gang call it even and leave me be.”

  He stroked his chin, thinking about it. A normal crook would have just agreed, waited to see if I managed to kill Orias, and then murdered me anyway. You can promise anything when you’re a lying piece of shit. But such casual double-crosses are a lot harder in the world of sorcerers – there are ways to make agreements that stick in my world, to make deals you can’t break any more easily than you could eat your own brain – so if he said yes, he had to mean yes, assuming I’d insist on supernatural compulsion to make the terms firm. “So that’s it, you kill Orias, and we’d be square?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind having access to some materiel and personnel while I’m in your neighborhood. Give me a few favors to call in, and sure, I’ll kill Orias for you, and I’ll even help you mop up the remnants of her forces and make sure to take out any of her lieutenants you’re especially worried about.”

  He spat. “None of them worry me, they’re just annoyances... but life would be more pleasant with a few of them dead, I’ll give you that. Okay, Mason. You’ve got a deal.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t just take your word on that?”

  He snorted. “Of course not. Give me an hour to set up a circle of compulsion and we’ll finalize things formally.”

  “I’ll send my astral proxy then,” I said. “You won’t blame me if I choose not to come in person.”

  “I like doing business with cautious people,” Sarlat said, which was funny, coming from a wolfman who clearly enjoyed solving problems by tearing out their throats.

  I let my illusion wink out of sight, though I still had eyes on him, of course, as he called for his contract sorcerers to set up a circle of binding.

  An hour. That was probably enough time.

  •

  Orias wasn’t alone. She was with her spore-lord, who’d made a new body, just as ugly as the last one. They were using a patch of ground beside a dry well for their base of operations, and she’d had her underling
s set up a big tent of dark silk, full of pillows and antique-looking furniture. There was even a full liquor cabinet. Ghost town decadence.

  I caused an image of myself to appear. “Boo,” I said.

  Orias didn’t leap up and attack me, though the spore-lord snarled. She arched one drawn-on eyebrow and said, “An illusory body, I see. Afraid to come calling in person?”

  She was more perceptive and less prone to leaping without thinking than Sarlat. Good to know. “Oh, I’ll be along,” I said. “You know, you’re not what I expected. I figured, madam of a supernatural brothel, you’d go for the slutty-enchantress look, black lace and red accents, push-up bra and spiked heels.” She was dressed more like a weekend warrior on a paintball course, all desert camouflage and black boots, but exceedingly well-tailored.

  “There’s a time and a place for such sartorial choices. Since I came here to kill you, not seduce you, I dressed appropriately. Your own fashion sense, though... Is that coat made of buffalo leather? Planning to take part in a Wild West show? I can’t think of any of my customers who have a dead cowgirl fetish, or I’d offer you a position in one of my houses after I’m done killing you.”

  “Tempting, but I’ve got a full-time job and lots of hobbies. Just out of curiosity, how did you know I was an illusion? I thought I faked this up pretty well.”

  Orias shrugged and tapped the side of her nose. “No smell.”

  Interesting. You’d think Sarlat, having the nose of a dog, would have noticed my lack of smell before trying to kill me, but I guess he’s a “murder now, sniff crotches later” sort of animal. “You’re missing out. I smell wonderful.”

  “Did you want to say anything of substance before my people slaughter you in your hidey-hole?” Orias said.

  “Oh, I just wanted to give you a chance to make a counteroffer.”

  “Triangulating,” the spore-lord said, walking around my illusory body in a small circle, motes of black nastiness drifting up from his spongy body. “I’ll have her location shortly.”

  I snorted. “Right. Good luck with that. And ‘triangulating’ means pinning down a location by finding the position where three lines intersect. Whatever you’re doing, you’re not doing that. Now shut up, Mr. Thrush, the grown-ups are talking –”

  “Mr. Thrush?” Orias said, amused.

  “Because he’s a fungal infection,” I said. “I came to talk to the gardener, not the plant life. Here’s the thing, Orias: Sarlat has offered me three wishes, pretty much, if I’ll bring him your head.”

  “Ha. I thought you were formidable, but clearly you’re an idiot. You’d trust a deal he offered? Sarlat is a cur.”

  I shrugged. “He’s setting up a circle of binding now, so we can make our obligations and responsibilities clear. But I’m not bound yet, so you can step in and save yourself. I don’t much like Sarlat, to be honest. I went to him first because he seemed to have the stronger crew, and I like to bet on winners, but I think I see a way you can wipe him out instead of going down in a blaze of blood and suffering yourself.”

  “I am not here to wipe him out,” Orias said. “I am here to wipe you out.”

  I shook my head, impatient. “You’re living in the past, lady. Circumstances change. The current situation is, I behead you, then I lead Sarlat’s forces in an all-out offensive against the remnants of your forces here. Now, most of them are hired mercenaries who’ll flee in the face of Sarlat’s more passionate and personally-invested murderers, and your lieutenants will be utterly overwhelmed. That’s the reality you need to be grappling with, not some imaginary scenario where you kill me.”

  “This is absurd. You can’t possibly threaten me, I have a hundred –”

  Boring. Deep in my undisclosed location, I snapped a twig in half.

  The polaroids weren’t the only things I’d scattered around the town. I habitually traveled with satchels full of nastiness, and I’d made sure to sprinkle some of my best liberally across Tolerance. There was a sound like a tree growing at ten-thousand-times normal speed – not a sound most people find familiar, but unmistakable once you’ve heard it once – and the spore-lord was lifted (or more like flung) upward by fifteen or twenty gnarled, thorny spikes that shot forth from the ground all around my illusory form. Seven of the spikes penetrated his body, impaling him through his neck, thigh, and chest, leaving him hanging a good eight feet in the air, up close to the pavilion’s ceiling.

  My illusory body stepped through the spike garden and strolled toward Orias, who was standing – not cowering, more’s the pity – near the far wall of the pavilion. “That could’ve been you,” I said. “You idiots came to ground I’d prepared. You let me choose the site of our confrontation, thinking mere numbers would make that advantage moot. Bad plan. I had the best part of a day to get ready here before any of you arrived. Maybe you’re used to dealing with idiots, but you’re in a whole different kind of fight here.”

  “Ow,” the spore-lord said, dangling on the thorn tree. “This is very tedious.”

  “You’re Marla Mason.” Orias hmmmed. “They say you killed Elsie Jarrow.”

  “That’s what they say, and they would know. If you knew about that, you should have known better than to come after me.”

  “Yes, Marla, I knew you were formidable – that’s why I brought a hundred fucking people to kill you. Or should I have ignored a deliberate provocation, like stomping my advisor to bits? Would you have just let that pass?”

  “Nah. But I’d plan my reaction a little better. Really, the whole big-crowd-of-mercenaries brute force angle? I expect that kind of thinking from Sarlat, but you’re better than that.”

  “Some say you bested a death-god in single combat, and banished another god somewhere in California, before it could fully rise.”

  “They’re easier to kill when they’re babies,” I said.

  “I didn’t really believe it,” Orias said. “I’m cautious, so I came prepared for a real fight, but in truth, I thought you were some drifter, using a moderately famous name to try and frighten people away.”

  “And now you know better. Do you want to be on my side, or under my boot?”

  “Hmm. I could send for reinforcements. I have favors I can call in, from people who might even make you tremble.”

  “By all means! Call for help, or hell, just run away. But you should know, I prepared the border, too – or a border, anyway, or call it a perimeter. Anyone who tries to enter or leave Tolerance before I turn off the wards won’t leave behind enough mortal remains to fill a bucket.” That was pure bluff, unfortunately. A working like that wasn’t within my powers, not given my current resources and time constraints. Sealing off an area gets exponentially more difficult the bigger the area is. Could I ring a room, or a small cottage, with death? Totally. But a whole town? Not without help. Serious perimeter control was never one of my strengths. I’m better in one-on-one fights. But if Orias believed it...

  “Why?” Orias said. “Why bait us into this confrontation at all? Why kill the beast of Sunlight Shores, and why on Earth did you stomp my spore-lord to pieces, deliberately insulting me? None of us had even heard of you before this, some of us would have respected you, even worked with you, given the chance –”

  “My new hobby is killing monsters,” I said. “You’re lucky, because your bunch isn’t quite as monstrous as Sarlat’s, so I’d rather kill his gang than yours.” Not true, really. Sarlat’s guys were more violent, but I found Orias and her affection for human (and inhuman) trafficking more offensive than Sarlat’s honest thuggery. “Look, I came here to give you a way out, but if you don’t want it, I’ll just crank up the murder-engines –”

  “What do you propose?” Orias said.

  “I promised Sarlat I’d bring him your head. I propose to do just that. Or, at least, to bring him a head that looks like yours.”

  “You’d need an actual head, to make a convincing illusion,” she said thoughtfully.

  I grinned. “I’ve got the head covered.”
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  “Even so, he’s likely to see through a glamour, or smell through it –”

  “I’ll need a strand of your hair and a drop of your blood to make a really convincing illusion.”

  She shuddered. “To give you those things... they’d allow you to enact terrible sympathetic magics...”

  I was tempted to tell her to suck it up, take the deal or leave it, but I had a whole elegant thing planned out, so I decided to give a little. “Fair enough. Luckily you’ve got an attorney present. Have the fungal infection up there lay down a circle of binding and we’ll make an agreement right now that I’ll only use your precious DNA to concoct an illusion, and not for any more nefarious purposes.”

  “Very well,” she said. She glanced at the creature on the tree. “Are you functional?”

  “Of course,” he answered querulously. “Nothing essential was harmed.” He writhed on the thorns a bit, and a fine snow of black flecks drifted down, like we were underneath the world’s largest pepper grinder. The flecks fell in a neat circle about twelve feet around, surrounding both Orias and my illusory body – which was good enough, since I was animating and controlling it directly. For ritual purposes, my illusion was me.

  “I heard a name from the thing I killed at Sunlight Shores,” I said as we waited for the circle to form. “The Eater. Is that what they call Sarlat?”

  Orias shook her head. “No. The Eater... I heard Sarlat mention someone by that name, back when we were friendly. The Eater is a business associate, perhaps, or a kind of mentor? Sarlat can be paranoid, and he never told me much about anything, if he could avoid it.” She frowned. “He did say the Eater advised him, though, and I must admit – someone is giving Sarlat good advice. I am vastly more intelligent than he is – this I know from intimate experience – but he somehow always seems a step ahead of me, a step ahead of everyone, as if there’s nothing he doesn’t see coming, no eventuality he can’t plan for in advance.”

  I grunted. “Doesn’t look like he saw me coming.”