by C. T. Phipps
“Can we stop setting the undead on fire?” Gerald asked.
“Does that include you?” Nancy asked.
“Yes?” Gerald asked.
The four of us found ourselves backed against the wall before we headed through the glass doors to the exterior of the compound. Rather than keep it as a weapon, I used Mike’s knife to jam the door handles to the interior. It wouldn’t do a damn thing against creatures who could smash glass without being harmed but it made me feel better even as I heard revenants shattering windows to escape the rapidly burning mansion.
“I don’t suppose you have any solutions to the enormous army of the undead chasing us, do you?” I asked.
“I could use the Necronomicon—” Carrie started to say, holding the cursed book under one arm.
“No,” I replied.
“But—” Carrie began again.
“No!” Nancy asked, breathing heavily. “We’ll let the local authorities deal with it. I am done tonight.”
“Those were the local authorities,” Gerald replied.
“Then the army!” Nancy snapped. “If I’m going to take down anyone else, it’s going to be Mike.”
“Nancy—” I started to say.
“He killed my mom!” Nancy snapped. “After all the years of fearing for him, preparing for me, and losing to her a dozen times, he killed her! I want to finish him off and that’s going to happen somehow.”
It was moments like this that reminded me that mine was not the only story going on here. Indeed, it was something that made me ashamed because Nancy had managed to put down her hatred for her mother’s killer long enough to deal with Lamia. Now I could sense her frustration and anger. Not only had she been denied her revenge on Mike, her initial attack on him had failed miserably and it had been me who’d ripped his head off. I could tell she was furious at me for denying her revenge and not even successfully putting down Mike forever.
“I’ll help you,” I said, whispering. That was when a pair of flaming undead arms smashed through the glass door behind us only for me to kick the revenant back. “I really hate these things.”
Nancy, Gerald, Carrie, and I proceeded to run down the marble stairs into the estate around the mansion. Cujo followed up behind us, barking along, looking very much like a normal dog except for its broken back. We’d escaped from the heart of the compound but now were in the place the billionaires had created to hunt their prey.
The mansion was going up in flames behind us, but I found my attention going to the elaborate sports arena before us. I saw a summer camp, lake, a miniature recreation of a suburb block, and a cornfield stretching out in front of us. There was a bunch of towers spread throughout the place with cameras mounted on wires between them. I’d seen it from a distance before, but the whole thing was still a surreal sight. The Fraternity of Orion had created their own little gladiator arena and it was a ridiculous waste of money.
Nancy stared at the sight and shook her head. “This is where I died.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied. “At least you died a hero. The first time I died, I brought a knife to a gun fight.”
“I always liked that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Nancy replied before blinking. “Uh, no offense.”
“Some taken,” I replied, hearing more of the revenants escape through windows as well as shattering the door behind us. Their flaming bodies hit the ground and stumbled over while the fire spread throughout the mansion. The heat radiating out from the place was more than just that of burning wood, plaster, flesh, and alcohol. No, it felt like the fires of hell had been unleashed on the place as the flames absorbed the magic unleashed by all the evil rites that had been performed in this place.
“Can we find the immortal serial killer later?” Gerald begged. “There’s a bunch of cars right over in the parking lot! Nice ones! We can just get one and drive away!”
“Do you have the keys for any?” Carrie asked, dryly.
Gerald blinked, having not considered that. “Maybe they did valet parking.”
That was when I sensed Mike. The evil presence that had been so overwhelming before was diminished now. Since I’d smashed his mask and delivered quite a beating, I could tell that he wasn’t able to perfectly embody the power of his Red God patrons. He was a shell of his former self—still more powerful than me—but not nearly as strong as he was before. It was a small comfort, but one that I drew from that ripping someone’s head off was still enough to hurt a slasher.
Hell is not one big happy family, Bloody Mary whispered. We are all fighting over scraps. Every soul is a fragment of the Creator and the only warmth or light that we can experience in our darkened prison. Lamia stole the power of my brothers and sisters until they were utterly dependent on the scraps she threw them. The slashers like Mike and Lucky have all but replaced them.
Why are you telling me this? I asked.
Because I want you to destroy them all, Bloody Mary said. Then I will make you a god. We will transcend our existence and form a new family. You can be the new Commerce to go with Plague, War, and myself.
Pass, I replied.
Then I will give you back Nancy’s soul, Bloody Mary said. She said the words in front of my mirror and called forth my power. I own her.
I didn’t respond.
I’ll keep in touch, Bloody Mary said. Be seeing you.
“Aw, hell. Mike’s nearby,” Carrie muttered, looking around. “I guess we are going to have to do some revenge with Nancy now.”
Nancy looked at her and rolled her eyes. “If you don’t mind.”
“I just wish we’d had a bit more preparation,” Carrie said, “Some more weapons would be nice, or any weapons at all. A hockey stick would be in theme for me. Maybe we could get some more nerd glasses for William. He’s not even wearing a suit anymore. I mean, are you converting from the Accountant to the Janitor full time or is this a one-time gig? I mean, mops and bleach are lethal weapons, but I think you could do better as a theme.”
“We can leave!” Gerald pointed at the side of the mansion where someone had apparently opened the enormous metal gate leading to the outside. “The exit is right there!”
“You can leave if you want,” I said.
“I can?” Gerald asked.
“Yes, sure,” Carrie said. “Ours is a love that was never meant to be.”
Gerald blinked and looked down at her. “Okay, now I just feel bad.”
That was when Nancy pointed behind me and my attention turned. There, standing in front of the burning mansion with a few burning zombies shambling around or crawling on the grass, was Mike. He’d recovered his knife and was wearing half of the plaster mask I’d shattered. The other half of his face was, well, unpleasant to look at. Nancy’s battle ax was still buried in his back and he looked totally singed from where Carrie had set him on fire.
“Your sequels suck, man!” Carrie said, pointing at him. “They made us watch the entirety of the series in the asylum and they were all terrible except for the first! The third one wasn’t even about you.”
“Carrie, don’t taunt the monster,” Nancy said, her voice empty of emotion.
“Why?” Carrie asked.
“That’s my job,” Nancy said.
“Oh,” Carrie said.
Mike started to advance, lifting his knife. I could see blood pouring out from the area around his neck where I’d ripped his head off. I wondered if he’d just put it back on his shoulders, channeling the power of the Red Gods to keep himself going. That was when I heard Motley Crew’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” start to play behind us at full blast.
“What the hell—” I started to say.
Nancy pushed me to one side as Carrie grabbed Gerald and the four of us hit the ground. Driving past us, out of the gate, was our church van with all the TAA sisters inside it. The vehicle slammed into Mike and sent him flying into a pile of zombies behind him as they were knocked over like bowling pins. The van’s passenger side rolled down, and Summer looked past Jenna to
us.
“Need a lift?” Summer asked. “I mean, after we kill this jackass?”
Summer wasn’t reacting to Mike like he’d killed their mother. Instead, she was acting like he was any other slasher. I mentally filed that away for future reference because, bluntly, we had bigger things to worry about now.
“Sure,” Nancy said, getting up and walking over to Mike. He was lying face down and she pulled out the battle ax, only to knock his head off again. It took a lot less force to re-decapitate him—a word that I wasn’t sure existed before now—than it did to take his head off in the first place.
This time, she dismembered the monster and kicked his various pieces towards the zombies around him. They ignored her and immediately went to town on the slasher.
I wondered how many of the revenants wanted revenge on the slashers who’d led them to their doom versus those who just were full of an insane hunger for meat. None of them approached Nancy or made any move to come after us. In that moment, it was obvious that she was untouchable. None of them made any effort to put out the fire consuming them either, making me think that they would eventually all return to the true death by morning.
I looked at her for a long time. “Are you...okay?”
Nancy turned back to me and walked up with her battle ax over one shoulder. “Yeah, I am. You wanna go out for pizza?”
“Burgers please,” I said. “Cheese doesn’t agree with me.”
Nancy kissed me.
I kissed her back, Bloody Mary’s deal in the back of my mind.
Epilogue
Nancy and I lay in bed, my girlfriend (for lack of a better term) snoring soundly with a smile on her face. Neither of us were wearing clothes underneath the white sheet and we had just finished another round of lovemaking. It was a pleasant enough activity and I hadn’t disliked it as much as I’d expected. Indeed, after a few initial missteps, Nancy seemed to enjoy what we did a great deal and that made me happy. It seemed the super-strength and vigor of being a slasher with inhuman blood helped me get past the learning curve of newcomers to sexual activity.
The room was quiet, with the lights off and television on but muted. A rainstorm was going on outside with the sounds of raindrops soothing my troubles. Light flickered in from beneath the curtains as I saw the neon of the Wendy’s sign across the street next to the modern Pantheon Gas Station.
We were in a Hestia Hotel located alongside the highway to Kansas City, with my sister inside the next room. Summer and the TAA girls had departed for their normal lives, such as they were, while we tried to figure out where we would go next. There were a lot of questions as to what the fallout would be, if any, from the Fraternity of Orion’s destruction.
The television was turned to CNN and they were discussing the election of my cousin to the Presidency despite some controversy over the votes being counted. I personally didn’t know if he would do a job, and it wasn’t like we were particularly close relatives either. Announcements had been made about the death of Aiden Cassidy and several other celebrities, but none of them had been linked to the fire in Butcher County.
Indeed, the primary bit of news after the Presidential election was the Cinderella-esque wedding of Cassandra Cassidy to billionaire’s son Derek Hawthorne. They’d been married in Disneyland and it was all the rage. I had no idea how she’d managed to pull it off in the short amount of time since events here, but it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d encountered in the past week. Cassandra had a plastic smile on her face and a look of happiness that didn’t reach her eyes. The media believed it was due to her father suffering a massive stroke and now being confined to a hospital bed. Cassandra would, in the next few months, be taking over the enormous empire of her father and uncle with the help of her cousin Roland.
I wasn’t a man who believed in conspiracy theories, despite the fact I’d just gotten finished dealing with an evil cult, but it was easy to believe that there were other powers at work here than the Fraternity of Orion or the Cassidy family. People had moved in to sweep up the debris left over from Lamia’s massacre. The existence of the supernatural was something that people in the government and industry covered up, perhaps other institutions too. I suspected it was because you could never truly control a society if the public believed you couldn’t protect them from all the predators among them. But if no one believed in the Big Bad Wolf then you could pretend that everything was fine and going into the forest was okay. It’s how the economy kept functioning, I supposed.
I had no idea whether Cassandra would attempt to retaliate against us with her newfound infinite wealth and power. I also had no idea whether the people who’d covered all of this up would want to deal with us as loose ends. Someone had to have known about what sort of sick games the Fraternity of Orion had been up to. They’d done nothing to stop them, which meant they must have approved. We might have made more enemies than we knew what to do with.
Getting out of the bed, I headed to the television and turned it off. For a brief second, I saw some of the people I’d seen dead on the floor of the Fraternity of Orion’s compound in the crowds of wedding guests. I shook away that thought and assumed I’d hallucinated it before heading into the bathroom.
Running some hot water in the sink, I splashed my face before looking at myself in the mirror. It had taken several hours, but my face was now fully recovered except for a few minor scars where the flames had bit particularly deep. It was a minor benefit, I wasn’t vain, but at least it meant I wouldn’t be instantly identifiable while traveling across the United States. I was still a wanted fugitive even if none of the enemies I’d made this week came after me. My hair was jet black, the dyed hair having burned away, and it was close to my shoulders.
That was when I saw Bloody Mary appear beside me in my reflection. She was changed, wearing a pink dress and holding a basket of flowers. Her red hair was tied in braids and there was no blood covering her. Indeed, she almost looked sweet, which made me suspicious that something terrible was about to happen. Turning around, I saw she wasn’t present behind me, but only in the mirror.
“Have you had an enjoyable evening?” Bloody Mary asked, smiling.
“It’s good to be beside someone you care for,” I said. “A friend who you would protect, be protected by, and die for. Kill for you, too, if I am perfectly honest.”
Bloody Mary rolled her eyes. “That’s not friendship, that’s love.”
“It’s a bit premature for that,” I replied, dryly.
“Love appears when people are willing to give it and receive it,” Bloody Mary replied. “Humans are just not very good at finding people who are willing to sacrifice for each other. Usually, it’s a one-way street or a tug of war.”
“What do you know of love?” I said, sneering.
Bloody Mary furrowed her brow. “Yes, I too can love. You yourselves can tell it from the past. Dracula said that in the Irishman’s novel. He was one of the few beings I ever loved. I will love in the future as well and have already set my eyes on another. I cannot help it. A hellborn angel is still an angel, and it is in humanity or the Creator we find meaning. Whether it is giving adoration or torturing. Hate is, after all, the only emotion as powerful as love.”
I felt very tired and wasn’t interested in her games. “Why are you telling me this?”
Bloody Mary lifted one of her flowers, sniffed it, and handed it over to me. I blinked and picked it up, holding it in my hands in the reflection, but not in reality. Yet, I could feel it and smell it. “You might have been my next lover, but your heart is already too full. I’m very old, though, and will live forever. Nancy, however, will not.”
I stared at her. “Don’t.”
Bloody Mary shrugged. “I’m still willing to help you, though. We made a deal. You want me to release my hold on Nancy’s heart? You will pay the toll.”
I stared at her. “What toll?”
“Slashers,” Bloody Mary said. “Across the United States and globe, they’re everywhere. The sad rem
nants of your bloodline dating back to Cain and his children with Lamia.”
“I thought you said they were champions of the gods,” I said. “Ones you corrupted.”
“A good campfire story is never bound by the truth,” Bloody Mary said. “I want you to destroy all the ones who prey on weak innocent blood. You’re not the first slashers to prey solely, or at least mostly, on the evil doer. You aren’t even the hundredth to believe that if they must prey upon the blood of the living then said prey should be the ones who are guilty, those who deserve to die.”
“How many of those degenerated into killing drug users and premarital sex practicing teens?” I asked. “What qualifies as guilty? Who decides who deserves to die?”
“You do,” Bloody Mary said, taking the flower in my hands away. “Prune your race and let people like Nancy, Summer, and your sister thrive where Mike or Lucky once did.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why would you want me to destroy your followers?”
“Because I am sick of fast food,” Bloody Mary said. “I enjoy being the Spirit of the Hunt more than the Spirit of Murder. A goddess is shaped by her worshiper’s prayers. So, if you don’t like yourself, kill the ones who pray to you wrong.”
Strangely, I believed her. “And the other Red Gods?”
“Will die,” Bloody Mary said. “There’s six of them. They’re very cross with you.”
“I’ll bet,” I replied. “What happens to Nancy if I do this for you?”
“I can speak for myself, William,” Nancy’s voice came from the door. She was wrapped up in a bedsheet and had an unhappy look on her face.
“You can hear her,” I said, surprised.
“Yeah,” Nancy said, sighing. “I also don’t need you protecting me. I knew what I was doing when I called on her power.”
“Did you?” Bloody Mary asked, looking over at her. “I very much doubt that.”