Black Goat Blues

by Levi Black

  “I stayed there until I could bear no more. I rose and walked into the world seeking the thing I had been denied.

  “At first I was full of wrath. I burned and raged and tore lovers apart by their roots and sowed strife and discord and infidelity. I crushed dreams and destroyed souls until I gained the maturity to understand that the thing I sought to destroy was the thing I sought for myself. Since then, I find and foment love. Emzana bound me to the timbers of her ark, knowing I would be needed, and I hung there through the storm, baptized in the wrath of their working. I was there with Shem and Ham as they burned with desire for each other even though they were brothers. I was there to encourage ’Adataneses to seduce Sedeqetelebab and bring her to Bar-Japeth. I rode in the vessel and lived on all the love that was there. Without me your race would have died in those days. I survived the Deluge and the outing that followed because I never left.”

  One thought rolled through my mind.

  Lady, you are really fucked up.

  What I said was, “Why tell me all of this?”

  “We are friends, Charlie. Don’t friends share their pain and their secrets?”

  Something sarcastic rises up in me, the same sarcasm I use so often in defense. Not like a shield but like a bludgeon, a preemptive strike to keep me safe.

  I bite it back and say, “Yes, Ashtoreth, we are.”

  She smiles and it’s actually beautiful. “Call me Ash, if you want. I always wanted someone to call me that.”

  Her voice is … so … soft, so childlike it hurts.

  “Okay, Ash. Anything you want.”

  Goddessdamn.

  22

  JAVIER IS HOLDING the bottom hem of his shirt in his hand, forming a pouch that has weird shapes poking through the thin cloth. Tiny beads of sweat cling to the fine hairs on his arms and the back edge of his jawline. He steps to the table and drops the hem of his shirt.

  There is a jumble tumble of bright wrappers and bottles that spills out on the table making the yellowjackets buzz away.

  Snacks. He bought snacks.

  Looking at them, I realize my stomach is in a knot and my eyes won’t leave a package of peanut butter cups.

  “I was hungry. Figured you would be too.” He sits down and waves his arm over the pile. “You pick first.”

  I snatch up the candy I was looking at and begin peeling it apart. The chocolate has gone soft and sticky against the inside of the wrapper and the second I perforate the thin Mylar I smell warm peanuts.

  I can’t shove them into my mouth fast enough.

  The first cup smears the top of my tongue and glues itself to the roof of my mouth. I pick up a soda and drink, the carbonated water breaking it free so I can swallow.

  “How long were we in that truck?”

  Ashtoreth shrugs. “Long enough for the moon to hide and the sun to search for her.”

  Javier looks at me. “How long is that?”

  I shrug. “She doesn’t have a watch apparently.”

  Ashtoreth sniffs. “Time is mostly inconsequential.”

  Javier swallows some candy-coated chocolate. “Why does the moon hide from the sun?”

  “She wants to ravish him.”

  He looks at me again. “Is she serious?”

  I pick up another candy bar, something with toffee under the chocolate that is silky warm across my mouth. “Probably.”

  Ashtoreth turns and looks at him straight on. “The sun’s love is too rough for the moon. She doesn’t respect his boundaries and the pain makes him run and hide. He is wolf to her rabbit.”

  “That makes no sense, chica.”

  “I know.” The look on Ashtoreth’s face is sad. “She would do better to listen to his needs and seduce rather than chase. If she catches him she would make the effort to break him to her will and he knows this to be true. But rabbits are vicious and cannot help their nature; a wolf can only run.” Ashtoreth frowns and her eyes go all somber. “It will not end well.”

  I screw the cap on my soda. I can see Javier is going to keep chasing this conversation and after the Noah thing I just can’t listen to it. “Ash, I need your help.”

  She turns to me. “We are friends.”

  “I know.” This is so weird.

  “How can I help you?”

  “I can’t find the Man in Black.”

  “Oh, Charlie.” Her eyes go big and her mouth forms a circle. “Why would you want to?”

  “I need to.”

  She looks at me and I feel her gaze change as I watch it in her irises. They crackle and flash from burnt-honey brown to a blue so pure it hurts behind my breastbone. She’s using whatever her version of Sight is on me.

  I want to lash out, hit and scream and run, to stop her. Don’t use magick on me. Don’t fucking do it!

  Stop. Hold it together. She’s supposed to be your friend.

  Friend.

  I sit and let her Look.

  After a moment she blinks and her eyes fade back to their darker colour. “You’ve broken your connection to him.”

  “I did.”

  “And my torc does not work to find him?”

  “I’ve looked for weeks, hunting down all kinds of creatures that even smelled of him”—in sewers and alleys and deserts and even a swamp—“and I have nothing. Finally, one of them said your name to help find a hidden god.”

  “If someone as powerful as Nyarlathotep hides themselves, then even I cannot find them.”

  The edge creeps into my voice unbidden, but I don’t fight it. “That thing lied to me then and this is a waste of my time.”

  I push off the table. The coat clings to my waist, slithering with me.

  “Hold, Charlie.” Ashtoreth rises and her hand snags an edge of the coat. It makes a noise in my head that sounds as close to a bark as its alien melody can.

  “Let go.”

  She does. “There is one thing.”

  “What?”

  “If I had something of his, something of his nature still connected to him, then I could follow that link back no matter where he is.”

  I think about it and hold out my hand, showing my Mark. “He did this to me.”

  She shakes her head. “You broke that connection.”

  I reach in and pull out the black-bladed katana. Javier jumps up from the table as it slides out. “Where was that?”

  “It’s magick, Javier.”

  His eyes trace around the blade as the sunlight gleams along the razored edge. “Can I hold it?”

  The sword is hungry. It swells against my Mark like a living thing instead of a forged weapon. What would it do to an unmagicked, unMarked human who picked it up? For a dark second I am tempted to hand it over, to see what would happen. Would it drain the life from Javier? Would it make him turn the sword on himself, to commit seppuku here by the highway? Would it drive him insane and make him lash out, to use the sword to cut Ashtoreth and me down?

  “No.”

  I realize we are still in the open in a public place. This is a rest stop. People, normal people, stop here. Families on vacation, truckers just trying to make a dollar, people homeless by choice and circumstance all could be here.

  And I’m standing here in the open holding a cursed sword as if it were nothing.

  I lower the blade and look around.

  There are people in the rest area, not many and none close. Nobody is looking directly at us, but suddenly I feel like a clock is ticking and that the state patrol has been contacted and is heading here now to gun down the crazy woman with a sword.

  This pressure makes my voice come harshly from between clenched teeth. “Will this work? It was his.”

  “Oathbreaker is aptly named. They can be possessed but never owned. The Son of Azathoth held them as you do now, but they were never his.”

  Dammit.

  I drop the blade back into the coat.

  The minute my fingers let go of the handle they begin to tingle and ache in the first knuckle.

  Javier makes a smal
l noise as it sinks from sight.

  Ashtoreth bites her lip. “Do not be too casual with Oathbreaker. They are a treacherous thing.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  Do I hear sirens?

  In the distance it sounds like a wail, undulating, like sirens coming fast.

  I look around and everyone is still meandering around the area as they were. No one is driving away; no one is looking over.

  But I can’t shake the feeling.

  Would the state patrol use sirens to respond?

  “Can you think of anything else that Nyarlathotep could be connected to?” Ashtoreth asks.

  I move my mouth to answer her, but my words are trapped behind a wall in my brain. I can’t think about anything else but the impending showdown with the police.

  “Are you okay, Charlie?” Javier asks.

  Those are sirens.

  The police are coming.

  The coat rustles, drawing tight around me, binding me, and I pull against it with a snarl.

  My hand moves, rising, reaching in, and my head is full of the vision of me pulling the sword out again and standing my ground.

  The police would fall like wheat before the scythe, cut down in a spray of hot blood and a rush of intestine spilling from split-open bodies. Hearts still beating would shower me with iron-tinged life and I would drink my fill.

  The world has washed crimson across my eyes.

  I smell the insides of my prey. My mouth runs at the corners and I want and hunger and thirst for it.

  .

  .

  .

  My brain is cut in half by the sharp, clear sound of a ringing bell.

  23

  THE SOUND BANGS into the bones of my temples, vibrating along the sutures of my skull. It tumbles down the zigs and the zags of them and makes the blood-soaked sponge that is my brain itch. The chime sings into my sinuses in a vibrato that makes my eyeteeth go cold and achy. My eyes are pressed so tightly together with it that all I can see is an orange burst from the compression of my eyeball against the optic nerve. I stumble and fall against something that is soft and hard and wraps around me as I fall.

  A warm, wet sound chuffs beside my ear.

  The ringing fades, pulsing into a soft buzz in the center of the nerve bundle tucked around my top vertebra.

  I can open my eyes. I’m sitting on my ass beside the picnic table. Ashtoreth stands over me, rimmed in white sunlight.

  “You okay, Charlie?”

  The voice is near my ear.

  And male.

  I jerk and find Javier sitting behind me. My brain is too numb to jolt into panic at his nearness. His legs splay on each side of me. He must have tried to catch me when I fell backward.

  “Fine. I’m fine.” I grab the bench and pull myself up. My head is clear. “What happened?”

  Javier climbs to his feet. “She thumped that thing around your neck.”

  Ashtoreth shrugs. “I warned you to be careful with Oathbreaker.”

  “I’ve been using that sword for weeks. I’ve felt it wanting more and never wanting me to put it up, but nothing like that.” The wash of bloodthirst still lingers but just on the edges. Why did the sword affect me like that?

  Ashtoreth sits on the table, chewing her thumbnail and looking away.

  “Ash?”

  She tears a thin strip of cuticle off with her teeth and spits it away. “We are friends, Charlie.”

  Wait a minute.

  “You affected it. You made it turn on me.”

  She sighs and I feel it all the way down to my diaphragm. “I am still a goddess of desire. It’s why you want to be my friend. Oathbreaker is a creature of desire. They are nothing but want and need and thirst.” She goes back to chewing her thumbnail, talking around it. “It is my nature that made them stronger, more focused, but it is a side effect. I did not betray you with them.”

  I watch her.

  She looks small, younger than before. Like a fifteen-year-old girl not ready for the big bad world. It’s a lie. I know who she is. I know what she is. She’s one of the reasons it’s a big bad world.

  Maybe not a lie, but this version of her isn’t the truth.

  She is a lie.

  But is she lying?

  Gods, who fucking knows? All of a sudden I’m tired again. Tired of the tension of waiting to be fucked over by something not even human. Can I trust a millennium-old goddess of whores?

  Probably not.

  But here goes nothing.

  “I believe you.”

  Light explodes across her face in a smile. “We really are friends, aren’t we?”

  “We are.”

  Javier coughs.

  I sigh. “Hell, Javi, I’ll throw you in too.”

  He grins as big as Ashtoreth. When did my friendship become so damn desirable?

  “What did you think of before Oathbreaker made their move against you?” Ashtoreth asks.

  “I know someone connected to the Man in Black.”

  She looks at me expectantly.

  “Daniel.”

  “Ah, the dark-haired minion. Yes, he would do.”

  “He’s not a minion anymore,” I say. “Not the Man in Black’s anyway.”

  She smiles. “You claimed him for yourself?”

  I squirm under the presumption. “Not exactly.”

  “He would have been easy for you to woo away from the Prince of Darkness.”

  “Wait,” Javier says.

  I turn to him.

  “How many people are we hunting?”

  “One.”

  “One?” His eyebrows are touching. “He has more than one name?”

  Ashtoreth laughs. “Child, he has more names than you could speak if you said them and nothing else for the rest of your life.”

  Javier looks from her to me.

  I shrug. “I know.”

  “Who are we after?”

  “Nyarlathotep. He’s a god of chaos and destruction. I usually call him the Man in Black, but he also goes by the Crawling Chaos, the Prince of Nightmares or Darkness, and his name.”

  “Why so many nicknames?”

  “They are titles. One thing I’ve learned, the bigger the god you are up against, the more titles they go by.”

  “How do you keep up?”

  I shrug. “You just do. It just falls into a rhythm.”

  “So just roll with it?”

  “Just roll with it.”

  He nods and steps back.

  “What were you saying about Daniel?” I ask Ashtoreth.

  “Only that you could pull him from the Lord of Darkness”—from the corner of my eye I see Javier gesture as he caught the new title—“without a large struggle.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “His heart was already divided between you.”

  “What?”

  “Oh please, child”—she rolls her eyes—“that boy loved you. I know about these things.”

  Daniel met the Man in Black the same night I did and immediately fell under his sway. Daniel had become mine after I cut him free from a life force–siphoning cancer god, but in the process I discovered that my magick was using him as a battery. I ended that, but he was still magickally connected to me.

  No, that isn’t why I love him or why he loves me.

  I mean …

  Shut up.

  Ashtoreth frowns. “If he is yours he will not be connected to his old master.”

  “The Man in Black took his soul.”

  “Oh.” She taps her chin, thinking. “That may work. Take us to him.”

  The thought of wishing somewhere makes my energy drop like a stone down an empty well. “I was hoping you could do that for me.”

  “I don’t have that ability.”

  I touch the torc around my throat. “Didn’t I get that from you? I couldn’t do that before you gave me this.”

  She laughs. “You had no aim before my gift to you. I didn’t grant you travel, merely the abili
ty to choose a destination.”

  Shit.

  Ashtoreth claps her hands and smiles widely. “If I had such ability do you think I would ride in a truck driven by a worshiper? I don’t like your talk radio that much.”

  Javier says, “You shouldn’t like it at all.”

  She turns to him. “Why should you presume to tell me what I should and should not enjoy?”

  He shrugs, not looking at her. “Just full of racist homophobes, that’s all.”

  “Do you not find ignorance amusing?”

  “Nah, shit ain’t funny, senorita.”

  Ashtoreth moves over to him and climbs up on the table to sit next to him. Her body and his touch in a long line of leg, hip, and shoulder. For a brief moment I want to shift my magick and open my Sight, to See her horrific, alien true form contrasted against his humanity. It feels like something that would be in an absurd horror comedy: She’s a fallen whore goddess! He’s an angsty young human! Watch as hijinks ensue!

  But I don’t.

  I keep my magick firmly where it is and just watch them in their human forms.

  “Javier,” she says, “your species are nothing; you aren’t even a blink of eternity’s eye; you may be the impulse to blink the same way a mote of dust can cause your eye to twitch. While you are alive you spend your first decade in ignorance and your last in senility. In between you have an entire universe that you know of conspiring against you, seeking to snuff your candle. You have a body that will betray you. Now you, Javier, also know that there are things beyond the darkness that also seek your destruction.” Her arm slips around his shoulders. “In all of that there are humans, the majority of you in fact, who waste their time arguing about how some of you are different from the others because of your skin colour, where you were born, or who you want to mate with. How can you not find that utterly hilarious?”

  “She has a point,” I say.

  “Yeah”—he nods—“still feels wrong when they’re talking about you.”

  Ashtoreth frowns. “I did not consider it from that perspective.”

  Javier shrugs under her arm. “No biggie.”

  Quick as a serpent she darts in and kisses him on the cheek.

  My body goes tense.

  Javier leans away, his cheeks gone dark with blush. I watch through narrow eyes, waiting to see if anything happens, but it doesn’t.

  It appears to be just lips on skin, simply a kiss on a cheek.