Black Goat Blues

by Levi Black

  That hit and tug is how it feels when Oathbreaker goes for my magick but inside my skin and in the middle of my limb like it was a hollow tube of nothing but etheric energy and spacevoid. The skin of my palm itches and they begin drawing my magick into them.

  Oh, that’s not how this is going to work.

  I let the etheric energy spool into Oathbreaker and my neck tickles as their excitement grows.

  Just a little more …

  I grit my teeth against the red lust that wants to subsume me. It builds as pressure in my sinuses and it slithers through the destructive anger that is a part of me, that has been a part of me since that life-shattering night so long ago.

  The part of me that could slaughter the entire world.

  Oathbreaker vibrates in my hand as they suck in more of my magick, more of my essence.

  There.

  I clamp down and with a snap of my will turn my magick into a barbed thing.

  Spines of etheric energy sink into Oathbreaker’s power and it bucks as they realize what I have done. They fight, but I fight harder. I am an autonomous entity. They are an inanimate object. My will is stronger and I reel my magick back into myself, bringing along the essence of Oathbreaker with it. They cry out and it tingles under my skin as their essence enters me like a surge of strength.

  Next time give yourself freely to your Mistress and it won’t hurt.

  Wait. Those words aren’t mine. They are, but I wouldn’t threaten pain for compliance.

  Would I?

  The command works and Oathbreaker stops struggling against me. I pull their magick into me until I am full and then cut it off sharply.

  I feel strong. I feel good.

  I feel absolutely amazing.

  The sticky night air doesn’t bother me anymore, I can sense everything, even the molecules of oxygen and hydrogen clinging to one another in microscopic dots on my skin, and everything around me has a clarity that almost cuts my vision.

  I look down at Ashtoreth and Nyarlathotep and make a small wish.

  52

  I AM SUDDENLY beside them.

  No stinging rain inside my skin, no brick in my stomach. Just one moment there, the next here.

  Maybe it’s the short distance, but I think it’s more the boost I got from Oathbreaker. So much buzzing magick inside me that the small teleportation didn’t suck me dry. Didn’t even make a dent.

  I could get used to this.

  Ashtoreth and Nyarlathotep stand to my right, both watching the building.

  I’m about to ask, What are we waiting for? when I feel the hum in the air in front of us.

  It buzzes ever so slightly just on the edge of the gravel that lies just a few inches from the tips of my boots.

  “What is that?”

  Ashtoreth doesn’t turn when she replies. “A ward.”

  “Will it keep us out? Or just tell them we’re here?”

  The Man in Black says, “Neither.”

  “What does it do then?”

  “To you? Nothing.”

  “To you?”

  “It will keep us.”

  “It’s a trap?”

  “It is.”

  “Strong enough to hold you?” I’m not being sarcastic; I know the Crawling Chaos is powerful, insanely so. He’s a primal elder god for Christ’s sake. I don’t know if I can even truly conceive of all he is and so I don’t try. I keep him compartmentalized in my mind so I can deal with the reality of him.

  He ignores me.

  Ashtoreth answers. “It holds the Great Mother; it can hold almost any of us.”

  “Can it hold all three of you?” I ask. “That’s a lot of elder god to corral.”

  “I am not an elder god,” she replies.

  “Still”—I drop my voice into a Firefly/Captain Mal drawl, playing for a little humor toward her—“you ain’t nothing and that’s sure something.”

  She doesn’t smile. Probably not getting it. “I am not enough to tip the scales in this ward.”

  “I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad.”

  “Thank you.”

  I stare at the building with them for a long moment. “Shub Nizzle-nazzle is in there though.”

  The Man in Black growls at my mispronunciation. “Therein lies our quandary.”

  I step forward in one long stride. The ward feels about as thick as a piece of paper, just a line of magick that moves through me as I step over, vibrating the bones in my foot, then my shin, my thigh, throughout my torso, and up into my teeth, until I am on the other side of it. The fillings in my molars ache and the gravel crunches underfoot as I turn and face them. “Wait here. I’ll go see what’s what.”

  “We cannot do that, Charlotte Tristan Moore.” It’s almost a snarl coming from his mouth.

  “Why not? Let me go try to break this ward.”

  He lifts his red right hand, the fingers splayed out as it hangs before me, just skimming the edge of the ward, creating a magickal feedback loop that spikes the pain in the back of my mouth. The gold chain dangles off his wrist, swaying as he swings his hand back and forth. “I have been sent. I must go. There is no not-going.”

  I step back, moving away from the feedback, and the ache lessens, still there but not feeling like my teeth are going to crack into shards.

  “Then come on. Ashtoreth can stay here.”

  She blinks. “Whither thou goest I go.”

  “It’s okay. Stay.”

  Her energy spikes and she shifts from foot to foot as her hands rub each other like fighting cats. The white ribbons she has for clothes swing around her, opening and closing as she moves faster and faster in an anxious jitter. Tears leak from her dark eyes, sliding along her cheeks.

  She’s losing her shit.

  “Hey, hey,” I say softly, “it’s okay. It’s all right.”

  “Don’t, don’t, don’t, please…” Her voice is small, constricting on itself. “Don’t leave me alone out here.”

  I step over and reach for her. “It’s okay.”

  She falls forward into me and my arms wrap around her. The coat swoops to surround us and I’m holding a fallen love goddess like a child who had a nightmare.

  And she’s inside the ward.

  The Man in Black echoes my thoughts as if he read them. The word is shocking in its profanity as he says, “Fuck.”

  He steps across the line onto the gravel.

  Across the lot behind me a door opens, slamming into a wall with a bang!

  53

  TWO MEN AND a woman stand by the door to the building across the lot from us. The one in the center jerks his head in our direction and they all begin walking toward us in a crunch of gravel under boot heels.

  They are all carrying guns.

  This isn’t good.

  I push Ashtoreth off and behind me, turning to face the trio head-on.

  The coat trills in my head and flutters around me, pressing Oathbreaker’s hilt against my ribs so I know where to reach for it. I’m magick with a cursed sword, a living coat made of archangel skin, and two gods as my backup against three people who look like factory-issue humans with guns.

  Should be no contest.

  But this elder god chase I’ve been on has taught me that nothing is as it seems, and these three off-the-rack humans are moving with a lot of confidence.

  And I know they already have one elder god in captivity.

  I shift my stance, widening my feet for stability on the gravel, and shake my arms to loosen them up. The coat pulls its lapel up off my chest just enough that if I go for it I can get Oathbreaker out with as little loss of speed as possible.

  The crunching gets louder as they get closer. The men could be related. The one in the front is tall and rangy, with a lumberjack beard that has enough silver that I can see it in the moonlight. His hair loops around bigger ears and curls along his shoulders, not fashionably but in a lack-of-haircut way. The beard and the hair make it to where all I can really see of his face is a nose and brow that both jut
forward like the place an iceberg has sheared itself off a glacier, and a pair of eyes so deepset they glow almost white in moonlight like phosphorus in a cave. He stalks rather than walks, using an easy gait that eats distance and still looks casual, almost a swagger. He’s dressed in dark clothes, jeans and a T-shirt. The way he holds the shotgun in his hands pulls the short sleeves up over significant biceps and I can see the white skin at their edge gleaming.

  Farmer’s tan.

  The other man is the younger version of him, a little more muscular, beefy where the first man is more gristle and bone, and cooler, his hair pulled into a loose topknot and the one arm holding his pistol tattooed in a design I can’t read, but it’s big and colourful. He walks with less confidence, leaning forward like he’s pushing his way through something instead of having the I-own-this-room assurance of the first man. I’d guess son, but he might be younger brother or even nephew.

  He’s a sidekick, backup, still dangerous, but the first man is the one to watch.

  The girl is a total wild card.

  She’s short, shorter than me by a good bit, and pretty. Not just average pretty but nearly stunning, with a heart-shaped face and wide almond eyes. Her hair eats the moonlight, blending in with the shirt that binds the curves of her tightly. She’s a step or two behind the men because of her shorter stride, not because of any subservience; that is writ plainly across her face and the line of her shoulders as she marches holding some kind of stubby rifle at waist level. I don’t know what it is, but it looks like something that can spit a lot of bullets in a short amount of time. The look on her face says she may not wait for the first man to act.

  I speak to Nyarlathotep from the side of my mouth. “Be ready for anything.”

  He chuckles. “I am the Crawling Chaos; anything is the entire realm of my possibility, Charlotte Tristan Moore.”

  The three of them stop about eight feet away, far enough that their guns are effective but more than a little outside the reach of my sword if I draw it.

  The first man raises his chin. “Charlotte? That’s your name?”

  “Charlie.” I tilt my head toward the Man in Black. “Nobody calls me Charlotte but him. Who’re you?”

  “Ephraim.” I can hear a southern drawl lurking behind his pronunciation, saying “Eff-rum” with a roll on the last syllable. “You human?”

  “Mostly. Who’s with you?”

  “Caleb and Malice Wonderland.”

  “Really?” I can’t help but smile at this. I look at the woman. “Middle initial’s N, I assume.”

  Malice raises the rifle to her shoulder. “Fuck you, Charlotte.”

  She spits my name like it’s an insult.

  Ephraim smiles. “Thank you for bringing us two new gods to add to our menu.”

  I feel Ashtoreth’s hand on my back through the coat and I know she’s touching me to comfort herself, not to reassure me.

  “Nope. We’re here to take the one you have.”

  “Oh, that isn’t going to happen, girlie.”

  “Don’t call me girlie. We aren’t scared of your guns.” Not true, but you don’t ever admit fear to your opponent.

  Ephraim laughs. “Haven’t you noticed the Crawling Chaos is weirdly silent?”

  I glance over at the Man in Black. He stands, tall and angular, hands tucked into the pockets of his suit, and unnaturally still, like a thing carved of basalt in the moonlight.

  The coat rustles around me, its agitation a running murmur in my brain.

  “He knows this ain’t no ordinary shotgun, darlin’.”

  I barely have time to turn and try to protect Ashtoreth as he swings the gun up and fires at my head.

  54

  ASHTORETH GRUNTS AS I drive her to the gravel with my body. My ears close from the thunder of the shotgun blast and heat runs across my back. I push off her and roll, coming up with the help of the coat even as it cries out in my brain. I have Oathbreaker in my hand before I’m fully standing. Its hunger surges inside me and I lunge toward the closest enemy.

  I’m face-to-face with Ephraim.

  I swing Oathbreaker up, aiming to shear through his waist and spill his entrails on the gravel below. Oathbreaker wants to see what his intestines look like dipped and battered in tiny pieces of granite. Ephraim jumps away, swinging the shotgun like a bat, and the edge of the sword kerrangs off the steel barrel. Oathbreaker howls and I feel it inside my chest. Ephraim swings the shotgun toward me. I step inside his guard and twist, driving my left arm under his, knocking the gun up as he pulls the trigger.

  A gout of blue fire spews into the night air.

  What the fuck was that?

  Heavy yellow smoke falls like soot and all I can smell is rotten eggs. Sulfur.

  Did that shotgun just shoot hellfire and brimstone?

  These thoughts roll together as I pivot and swing Oathbreaker, aiming to take his leg off below the knee.

  I feel the sledgehammer punch of the bullets hitting the coat before I hear the chatter of Malice’s gun.

  The hit skews me sideways, spoiling my strike, and I go to one knee. The chatter keeps going and I keep getting punched in the back. The coat screams as it absorbs the bullets, saving my life, but it feels like someone is taking a baseball bat to my spine. All the air drives from my lungs and my diaphragm convulses, hitching my lungs up into my throat.

  Oathbreaker falls from my hand and I can’t even try to hold on to it.

  It only lasts a few seconds, but it is a few seconds that leaves me with no breath and with shards of agony lancing into my whole body.

  The coat weeps around me and I suck in air, trying to get enough to get back up, and I wait for the killing blow to fall on me while I am helpless.

  I look up and see the Man in Black has become a thing of teeth and tentacles and barbed quills. He’s a shapeshifter. I’ve seen him in a form like this, his true form through my magick, and as an arachnidesque creature. I know he can do it, but the transformation is so horror-movie-special-effects that it still makes everything in me jump. He flows across the gravel and wraps around Caleb, the son/brother/nephew, lifting him off his feet and squeezing him. Caleb’s eyes bulge and his face goes dark as he beats at the chaos god who has him like a python has a rabbit.

  What once was the Man in Black’s face rears back, jaw slewing sideways to reveal many rows of jagged enamel that gleam wetly.

  Ephraim steps up and fires a blast of hellfire into that mouth.

  The Man in Black rolls backward, carrying Caleb with him.

  Ephraim shouts something in a language that sparks turquoise from his mouth, and moves the shotgun in a pattern that feels like some kind of spell.

  I push myself up to move toward him, pain pulling tight across my kidneys, when Ashtoreth screams my name.

  I turn and find Malice putting another clip into her rifle.

  The coat drags around me, hurt. I spin on my heel and move to close the distance to the immediate threat. Malice seats the clip and racks the slide before I can take a second step. Her lovely face is a snarl as she points the rifle at me. The coat tries to wrap around me, pulling across my chest, but it’s struggling and I don’t think it will be able to save me.

  My eyes squeeze tight, waiting for the gut-tearing punch of bullets.

  Ashtoreth is there behind Malice, hands slipped around the girl’s torso, cupping her breasts as she bites Malice just over her jugular. Malice’s eyes roll back and her hands drop, gun falling from loose fingers to clatter on the ground. Ashtoreth pulls back as I step up. Teeth marks stand out on Malice’s skin, pulsing with the blood flow beneath them. Her eyes blink rapidly as she comes out of her swoon.

  “Wha—” is all she gets out before I clip her hard on her little chin with an uppercut that would make my boxing coach grin from ear to ear.

  She drops like someone teleported all the bones out of her body.

  The collar tightens around my throat and I push that thought away before my treacherous magick makes it happen.
>
  Ashtoreth’s eyes are wide. “That blow was … impressive.”

  The way she says the word makes me feel things deep in my stomach. Things warm and fluttery and uncomfortable in their pleasure.

  I turn away to help the Man in Black.

  I catch a small glimpse of him, back in his man form and wrapped in black bands of etheric energy on the ground, before the butt of Ephraim’s shotgun puts out my lights.

  55

  JESUS FUCK, MY head is killing me.

  Jesus fuck, my back is killing me.

  I hurt from my waist to the top of my head.

  My silent head. There’s no background noise and my thoughts ping around in a hollow.

  The ache is made worse for how cold I am.

  I smell iron.

  Not metal iron, but blood iron.

  And something else.

  Iron and … woodsmoke?

  I open my eyes and find I am in a large room. The floor I’m lying on is hard and slick and in a pattern of squares that used to be black and white, but the black is scratched to a weird gray and the white has gone off to the colour of cake batter. I know this; it’s linoleum. Cheap linoleum that has been kept well past its expiration date.

  “You may as well rise, Charlotte Tristan Moore. They are aware that you have woken.”

  It’s the voice of the Man in Black.

  I take his cue and sit up. Every bit of that hurts like hell. I feel bruised inside my body, as if the organs of the middle part of me are all swollen and sloshy with fluid. I shiver and it shakes the pain loose, letting it rattle around. In the short distance from the floor I move from chill into warmth.

  Ephraim is throwing wood into a pit.

  The pit is surrounded by a short brick wall that throws a wide shadow across the floor from the glowing orange light that spills from the center of it. Each time he tosses a gnarled piece of wood in, sparks flit out like gnats that have been lit afire and set free to dash and dance until they are consumed, immolated into nothingness. He looks to be arranging the wood carefully and as he adds each piece the glow intensifies and it bathes his face until he appears to be an abstract painting of himself, all sunset tones surrounded by black silhouettes where his beard and hair frame his craggy features; the light smooths him out, making his features less harsh. With the dim light, all I can see is his face and arms, the middle of him soaking in the darkness, everything else lost in shadows. It doesn’t help that the room is cast in smoke from the pit, which gives everything a surreal feeling.