The Spawn of Lilith

by Dana Fredsti

  The scenery changed.

  Ibises flew overhead. The sky was bright and the air hot, thick with the fragrance of incense and the music of lyres.

  I stood atop a ziggurat, overlooking a sunbaked metropolis. A honeycomb of whitewashed buildings, porticoes, dusty unpaved streets, canals, and date palms, all surrounded by high stone walls. Alongside ran a great glittering river, trailing off to the horizon in either direction. The view took my breath away.

  I turned—or was it me?—and strode past rows of towering columns through the forecourt to the sanctuary within. I was a passenger in someone else’s flesh, with no control of my body.

  Am I dreaming?

  No, this is our memory.

  Our?

  Hers and mine. My sister Sala. When we were one.

  Harpists and vestal virgins silently bowed to me as I entered the temple sanctum, traversing with great solemnity a sacred carpet woven in an interlocking red and blue design. It led to a throne of iron worked with silver and gold, and patterned with a thousand tiny bars of alabaster and ivory, seashell, carnelian, and lapis lazuli. Beams of light from ingeniously placed windows high overhead caused it to shimmer with divine radiance.

  I took my seat.

  This was the mighty city of Uruk, six thousand years ago, along the banks of the Euphrates. Where she and I first became gods. Behold. Mirrors of polished silver lined the chamber, ringed by votive lights. My gaze turned to one of them.

  There Herman sat enthroned, bare-chested except for a pectoral of cobalt stones, wearing a kilt of the finest blue linen. His plaited beard magnificent and immaculately groomed with oils and resins. Sala was also bare-chested save for a beautiful beaded collar of blood-red carnelian, which matched her skirts of brilliant crimson. Eyes lined with kohl and lips as red as roses.

  The two of them were a single individual. Herman was the right half of the body. Sala the left. Divided down the middle with perfect precision, their flesh, clothing, and jewelry blended seamlessly. This wasn’t a cheesy circus sideshow act. This was the real thing.

  A shaven-headed priest in a white woolen kilt came forward and offered his obeisance.

  “Divine Hahriman and Salamakhis, our sacred Mother-Father. Accept our offering and so bring fertility to our land, our herds, and our children.” A double line, twelve pairs of boys and girls, approached along the sacred carpet. The first couple knelt before the throne.

  “We accept your love and sacrifice, and grant you life abundant in return.” The voice emanating from our mouth was doubled. Herman and Sala speaking as one. We stretched out both hands to bless the youths kneeling before us. Sinuous white tendrils writhed from our palms and fingertips.

  The victims were devout and well prepared for their fate. Some shuddered at our touch, but none wept or screamed even though they knew what was to come. Even as their blood streamed agonizingly out of them through a thousand tiny filaments and their flesh turned to crumpled parchment. The pathetic handful of remains was swiftly removed to make room for the next young couple… and then the next and the next, one pair after another.

  I couldn’t look away and didn’t have eyes to close as the horrific show continued. Herman’s grasp on me wasn’t just a physical absorption, but a psychic one as well.

  I was trapped in him.

  Body, mind, and soul.

  He had more to show me. His—no, their memories continued to fill my thoughts. We walked through a forest of tall dark pines, stepped out into a glade, where moonlight glistened on an artesian spring. A ring of light surrounded the waters and a chorus of androgynous figures held lit candles and sang a hymn in Greek.

  Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, Herman told me. This was our shrine. Here we were the demigod Hermaphroditus and the nymph Salmacis, whose bodies came together at the sacred fountain…

  * * *

  The sound of trumpets, cymbals, and raucous laughter echoed off gleaming white marble floors and Corinthian columns. We reclined on a silken couch, surrounded by crowds of fellow revelers and a small army of slave attendants. All around us, an orgy was in full swing. I was—we were—rolling and moaning, locked in an embrace. We couldn’t quite tell if our partner was male or female, or who was doing the penetrating.

  They loved us in Rome…

  I could sense the nostalgia in Herman’s thoughts.

  We bathed in rose petals. We were consort to sweet and terrible young Elagabalus, the lovely mad god-emperor…

  * * *

  The years and memories spun on, as Herman and Sala’s fortunes rose and fell through the ages. They hid from the forces of the Church, attended to by covens of hedge-witches in the woods of Romania and Russia…

  Were marvels of the Sun King’s court at the Palace of Versailles…

  Traveling with Roma clans in multicolored wagons…

  Performing for disreputable theater troupes in the seedy underbelly of Victorian London…

  But the world was becoming more modern, and they could no longer keep it at bay. They could no longer move through life as half man-half woman. Sala had to hide. To go below, sunken into her brother’s very flesh except for the ever increasing occasions when she needed to feed. That was the shape they took as they came at last to the new world, to Gilded Age New York, to the Wild West, to San Francisco, to Hollywood…

  Where Herman knew what he had to do.

  Sala had become insane. Weak. We were dying. But you have strength, Lee. So much strength. You are going to help make me a god again. Do you understand what I am offering you?

  You want to play with me forever and ever? I responded. No thanks.

  You will be immortal. We both will.

  Will you send the Davea back to whatever hell they came from and spare these people?

  The Davea are already gone. Their work is finished. These people will feed us. Sustain us.

  No, I thought. But this time I shielded my thoughts from him by sheer force of will, blocking his access to my mind. I sensed his surprise—and his rising displeasure.

  Lee? Don’t shut me out. Open yourself to me. I could feel his thoughts probing into my mind and his frustration that I could keep him out.

  My only chance seemed to be to keep him off balance. I could sense his rising fear as he tried fruitlessly to penetrate, like a frustrated madman beating his fists against the walls of my mind.

  What are you?

  Suddenly his emotions shifted. Rage became disbelief, then shock, which melded into fear.

  You… you are Blood of the Blood… Sweet Mother of Demons… you are of the Blood!

  His hold on me loosened, then slipped completely away.

  * * *

  My eye—eye?—opened.

  The concrete was cold where I lay on the studio floor, Sala’s pitiful corpse crumpled beside me. Herman had lost his grip on my mind and body, but how long would this freedom last?

  I tried to stand, but could only move half my body.

  Was I paralyzed?

  I looked up to see Connor standing by the 5K, staring at me in horror. I shifted my gaze to my legs and feet. Only one of them was mine, wearing my ankle boot and torn jeans. The other wore half of Herman’s expensive pants and loafer.

  We were co-joined, just as he and his sister had been for thousands of years.

  Finally we rose. Herman’s fear gave way to exultation. He—we—took in a deep breath, reveling in the raw strength that circulated through our body.

  The Blood of the Blood.

  We are one again.

  We turned to face the Tymons, who knelt and stared up at us with rapt adoration. Herman reached out with his hand, touching Breanna on the face.

  “You will be my first,” we said with affection.

  No! I screamed even as the filaments emerged from his fingers, penetrating her skin to extract her life essence. Unlike the supplicants in the vision, Breanna screamed in agony.

  The tiny ever shrinking part of me that was still just Lee acted without thought or hesitation. Twist
ing away, dragging Breanna with me, I reached down and snatched the dagger from Sala’s body. Before Herman could respond, I plunged it into his—our heart with all my might. He let go of Breanna and made a grab for my wrist, but wasn’t fast enough. Our scream echoed through the soundstage, ripping our throat raw. Until suddenly…

  I was screaming all by myself.

  The world faded to black again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The next time I opened my eyes, Sean’s concerned face was the first thing I saw. I was back in the hospital.

  Talk about déjà vu. “Hey, hon,” he said, his face breaking into a relieved smile. The difference this time around was that Seth stood right behind his father, looking as though he hadn’t slept in days. When he saw me spot him, he practically pushed Sean out of the way so he could give me a fierce hug. It hurt, but I didn’t complain.

  “The crew send their love,” Sean said. He pointed at a little table, swimming in floral arrangements, get-well cards, and several six packs of my favorite beers, bows stuck on top of each bottle. There was even an adorable wolf-cub plush toy. Sean handed it to me.

  “Randy sends his best,” Sean said. Seth scowled. Sean ignored him and continued. “He wanted to be here when you woke up, but we thought it was a good idea to just have family for now.”

  I rubbed my face against the soft fur. It smelled like Randy, all citrus and chai spices. Then I looked into its eyes and shuddered. Ice blue, like Herman and his sister.

  My chest hurt.

  A lot.

  It seemed as if there should be something to show for the pain—something along the lines of a triple bypass scar, but the skin on my chest? Smooth. Unbroken. I guess it wasn’t weirder than anything else that had happened.

  The knife cut on my calf, on the other hand, left an ugly puckered seam that might or might not fade with time and applications of Vitamin D oil.

  At least it wasn’t on my face.

  * * *

  This stay in the hospital was relatively short. Three days total, during which I talked to Detective Fitzgerald, corroborating what the rest of the survivors had told her. I guess they’d talked me up pretty big, so while I had a lot of questions to answer about Herman Dobell’s death, she never mentioned bringing charges against me.

  Since the knife buried in Herman’s chest was clutched in his own hand, the final ruling was suicide.

  Eden and Kyra visited me in the hospital, bearing a two-pound box of See’s chocolates. We made plans for a visit to Ocean’s End as soon as I was up to it. Ben and Joe stopped by, bringing a combination get well and thank you card signed by most of the remaining cast and crew. The Tymons were conspicuously absent. They’d disappeared from the studio before the Kolchak Division had arrived.

  Connor was also a no-show, which kind of hurt. I suspected the things he’d seen had been more than he could handle. He did, however, send a huge bouquet of flowers with a mini Maglite sticking out of the center of the arrangement and a note that said, “Remember, lighting is important.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, so I did both.

  * * *

  The evening after I came home from the hospital, Sean, Seth, and I sat in our usual places at the kitchen table. We were drinking RuinTen, a triple IPA from Stone. Sean had brought home a dozen bombers as “a special treat.”

  Something was up. He’d done the same thing when I was fourteen, and it was time for the facts-of-life discussion. Back then it had been hot fudge sundaes instead of beer. Sean’s uncomfortable demeanor seemed pretty much the same, though.

  “So,” I said. “How come I’m not dead?” My tone was deceptively light. Inside I was thrumming with nervous energy, my heart pounding at twice its normal speed.

  Sean took a deep breath, tapping a finger on the side of his glass.

  “Well, hon, you know how you’ve always thought you were a hundred percent human?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Well, that’s not entirely true.”

  “Ooookay.” I took a swig of very good beer, trying to absorb his words. I found myself slowly detaching from my emotions—possibly because this meant Sean had kept something from me all these years. I couldn’t deal with that right now, so I shoved it into the back of my mental closet.

  “Let’s set that aside for a moment,” I said carefully. “And deal with things one at a time, beginning with Herman and his sister. He showed me things when—” I stopped, unable to suppress a shudder as I remembered the feeling of melding with him. “What was he? What were they?”

  “Dobell and his sister were a Janus demon,” Seth answered. “The first Janus demon. Two souls trapped together in one shared body.”

  Sean nodded. “The screenwriters were helping him,” he said. “They wrote the ritual that would enable Dobell to finally separate his soul and body from his sister’s.”

  “He couldn’t do it himself?”

  “No. He needed someone else to enact the spells, summon the Davea to collect the sacrifices—”

  “Seven deaths, seven hearts,” I murmured.

  “Exactly.”

  “So he fooled Jaden into summoning the Davea by playing on Jaden’s ego. As for the Tymons…” I shook my head. “They were writers. Herman was probably the first person in Hollywood to treat them like they mattered,” I said. “No wonder they worshipped him.” He really had been too good to be true.

  Time to get to the heart of it all.

  “Herman told me I was ‘of the Blood.’ He called it ‘Blood of the Blood,’ and I’m pretty sure he was using a capital B there. What the hell does that mean?”

  Sean and Seth exchanged glances.

  Seth nodded.

  Sean heaved another sigh and drained his bomber. He cracked open another bottle and settled back in his chair.

  “The earth is old,” Sean said. “It was born out of the same chaos that created the universe, billions of years ago. The same chaos that gave birth to the Elder Gods. These old ones spawned other deities that eventually rose up, either killing or imprisoning their parents.”

  His voice deepened, taking on the formal cadence of a storyteller, or a prophet, and his expression became stony. The room seemed to grow darker—though that might have been my imagination.

  “One of these younger gods, El, created the first people. Adamu and Lilitu. Now known as Adam and Lilith. However, Lilitu wasn’t content with her mate. As history records, she left, finding happiness with Ashmedai, one of the lesser gods, and bore him children. When El, at Adamu’s behest, sent three seraphs after Lilitu, she refused to return.

  “So El cursed Lilitu, turning the children she’d borne to Ashmedai into the monsters that walk in the shadows. Pandora’s Box had been opened and could not be closed. These creatures have haunted humankind’s nightmares ever since.”

  A shiver ran up my spine. If Sean ever got tired of stunt work, he had a future of narrating spooky opening monologues in horror films.

  “Only Lilitu’s human descendants have a hope of putting the monsters back in Pandora’s Box and shutting the lid forever.” Sean stared at me. “Your mother was a direct descendent, Lee. And so are you.”

  I stared at him. Drank some more beer.

  “So you’re telling me all the stuff in the Bible, about Adam being the first man on earth, is true.” I stared, not sure what to think.

  Sean rubbed his forehead as if massaging away a headache.

  “It’s not as simple as that. The Bible is one religion’s simplistic version of a complex history that spans millennia.”

  “What about evolution? Are you saying that’s all bullshit?”

  “No. Ashmedai went to war against El and lost. He and Lilitu were imprisoned. Several of their children, however, escaped El’s curse. It is from those children that Lilith’s human line is descended. A second line came from Adamu and his second mate, Eva. These humans were Blood of the Blood. First Blood.”

  I opened my mouth to make a Rambo joke, but thought be
tter of it.

  Sean continued. “Most of the First Humans were wiped out in one of the many cataclysms that have swept over this planet, surviving only with the help and interference of their Creator. The earth, in the meantime, continued to evolve on its own. Another line of humans eventually emerged from the sea of chaos known as the primordial soup.

  “While most of the First Humans died, Lilith’s demonic offspring continued to flourish and procreate. Her descendants have been charged with hunting down these monsters, to pay off the debt their ancestress incurred against humanity, and eventually free her from her prison. They were given an amulet inscribed with ancient sigils that would bestow anything—even a simple stick—with the power to kill the demonspawn.”

  My hand went to the amulet around my neck. Sean nodded.

  I opened my mouth to speak and ended up taking a swig of beer instead. I tried to savor the richness and flavor, but ended up chugging it instead. I didn’t know what to say, so I opened another one.

  “I know it’s hard to swallow, hon, but—”

  “Actually this goes down really easily,” I said, holding up the bottle. “A lot easier than the crock of shit fairytale you just told me.”

  Seth bristled, but before he could open his mouth to slam me, his father held up a hand.

  “Give her some time to process this, Seth.”

  I made a sound that was part laugh, part sob.

  “How the hell am I supposed to process this? You’re telling me I’m a direct descendant of Lilith, the ‘Mother of Demons’—” I couldn’t resist using finger quotes there. “—and that it’s my job to kill her nasty offspring in order to pay off an ancestral debt and free her from some hell dimension. I mean, what the fuck, Sean?”

  He winced. I drank more beer, trying to calm the pounding of my heart and the raw fury running through my veins.

  Why would they lie to me like this?

  They have to be lying, right?

  “You guys are having some sort of joke here, right? You’re bored, Seth hasn’t caught any flies lately, no wings to pull off, so let’s screw with the girl who got dropped on her head. Is that it?”

  “How could you ever think we’d do that to you?” Sean stared at me with a combination of anger and hurt that made me feel both defensive and shitty at the same time.