by Bryan Smith
“Your what?”
Bathory rubbed the ball of a thumb over the surface of the jewel. “It’s a diamond mined from the Blackened Mountains in hell. Lucifer imbued it with a spark of hellfire, a fearsome force I am able to tap any time I touch it.
She tapped the jewel with the ball of her thumb.
It glowed brightly again.
Kayla swallowed. “Okay. That’s really impressive. No shit. But what about that condition you were telling me about?”
Bathory smiled. “It’s simple. Lucifer allows me some leeway in dealing with transgressions of this sort. I am willing to allow you to continue as if the conditions of your contract with Lucifer had not been violated. The condition is that you must enter into a secondary contract directly with me.”
Kayla grimaced. “Seriously?”
“Oh, yes. Absolutely.”
Kayla couldn’t believe it. Just when she’d assumed things had gotten as bad as they could get, fate laughed in her face and said, Guess what, Kayla? You’re wrong, you stupid ho.
“And what would the terms of this new contract be?”
Another smile from Bathory. “My terms are simple. If you fulfill the terms of your contract with Lucifer, you will have the long life of plenty you were originally promised. However, once your mortal life ends and you come to hell, you will become my property. You will work for me and serve me in any way I see fit.”
Kayla shivered. “Wow. That’s just so very not tempting at all.”
Bathory touched the hellfire diamond and it flickered. “Are you saying no to my offer?”
Kayla shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Lee touched her arm. “Kayla. Listen to your instincts. If--”
“Oh, butt out.” Bathory swept her hand toward the ground and Lee abruptly dropped to his knees. She then made a slicing motion with her hand and his mouth disappeared. The space where it had been was just smooth flesh. She flashed a wicked grin at Kayla. “Men just don’t know when to mind their own business at times. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Kayla stared in wide-eyed horror at Lee. The desperate, beseeching look in his eyes tore at her heart. He was powerless to do anything about his situation. He couldn’t move. And even if he could, what could he have done in the face of a power as awful as the one wielded by Bathory?
Kayla looked at Bathory. “Fix him. Now.”
“No.”
“What?”
Bathory chuckled. “You heard me. Although I am willing to consider it if you agree to my terms without further delay.”
You bitch. You total fucking bitch.
There was nothing else she could do. Bathory had her cornered and they both knew it. “All right.”
“All right…what?”
Kayla glared at her. “All right, as in I agree to your terms.”
“Excellent.”
Bathory extended a hand toward her.
Kayla just stared at it.
Bathory’s expression hardened. “Step over here and shake my hand, girl. It’s necessary to seal the deal.”
Touching this evil thing from hell was the last thing Kayla wanted to do, but she had no choice. She approached Bathory and clasped hands with her. Bathory clamped down tight on her hand and pulled her close to whisper into her ear. “I look forward to corrupting you utterly, Kayla.” Her tongue flicked at Kayla’s earlobe. Her voice dropped to an almost inaudible level. “And to seducing you, of course.”
She abruptly relinquished her grip on Kayla’s hand and stepped away from her. “It’s done. The deal is sealed.” She waved a hand almost absently at Lee and his mouth reappeared. He clutched at his throat and sucked in a great, gasping breath. “The two of you should leave now. This one…” She indicated Lee with a tilt of her chin. “He should especially make haste while I am feeling merciful. I do not approve of your interference here, young man. No, not at all.”
She touched the hellfire diamond.
Kayla grabbed one of Lee’s hands and yanked him to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Lee glanced at Brett, who was looking woozier now from the blow he’d taken. “But what about--”
“Mr. Adams is no longer of any concern to you. And never will be again.” There was something ugly in Bathory’s smile now. “I can’t help noticing that you’re still here, even after I’ve told you in no uncertain terms that you should leave. How foolish of you.”
She lifted a hand again, pointed it at Lee.
Fuck this.
Kayla used every bit of strength she had and dragged Lee to the door. He stumbled along after her, no longer resisting her but unable to resist a last glance back at his friend. Kayla wanted to scream at him for being so stupid. By some miracle, she got Lee through the empty doorway intact. She kept dragging him along until they reached the car, where she ripped the keys from the hip pocket of his jeans and dove behind the steering wheel after she got the door opened. Lee ceded command of his car without argument, which was a damn good thing. Kayla desperately needed to feel in control of something. Of anything at all. After Lee got settled in the shotgun seat, she tore out of the short driveway and drove away from the rotting little house at high speed.
She barely slowed down all the way to Nashville.
32.
The boozing started shortly after they got back to town. Lee joined Kayla for a few drinks at the Villager Tavern. It was where she’d met Red Nose, a fact that did nothing to lighten her mood. She could feel his ghost there with her the whole time. Lee soon suggested they go somewhere not tainted by memories of a dead serial killer, but Kayla resisted. She was in a mood to wallow in the darkness engulfing her life. There was little doubt darkness of some form would shape the remainder of her mortal existence, so why not embrace it now?
Eventually they did leave and headed a block south on 21st to a sports bar, where Kayla started throwing back shots of tequila. Lee tried to be the voice of reason. The steadying hand. But her mood grew fouler with each drink and she was having none of it. Eventually there was a boozy spat and they parted company, Lee heading back to campus while she continued the quest to annihilate her liver.
She didn’t remember much beyond that when she woke up the next morning on the floor of her dorm room. Sheila was there and helped her tend to her hangover, which was epic. She told her roommate it felt like a thousand tiny construction workers were trying to jackhammer their way out of her skull. A fistful of painkillers and several big glasses of water helped beat the pain back after a while.
After that level of overindulgence, it was typical for her to lay off the booze a few days. This time was an exception. The black mood from the day before had not departed. It didn’t help any that Lee wouldn’t answer her calls. She wanted to apologize. She had reverted to raging bitch mode during their fight, insulting him and treating him worse than ever, which was really saying something. Early in the day she left him several deeply contrite voicemails. She left a few more messages after she started drinking again. These were less humble. She felt terrible about it, but she seemed unable to help herself. A self-destructive impulse was making her say the exact wrong thing every time she opened her mouth. She considered throwing her phone away as a last resort attempt at damage control, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She needed it in case Lee ever decided to stop being a baby and called her back.
She caught a glimpse of Summer that afternoon as she crossed West End en route to a bar on Elliston Place, another strip of bars and restaurants popular with the Vanderbilt crowd. Dressed all in black, as usual, the girl was a couple blocks further down the street. Kayla called out to her, but she was too far away and the stream of pedestrian traffic was too thick. A tall asshole in a cowboy hat walked in front of her, blocking her view for a moment, and by the time she could see past him, Summer had disappeared.
After that, she detoured into the parking lot of an F.Y.E. store and pulled out her phone. She found Summer’s number and hit the call button. She’d been too rattled t
o deal with the issue the previous day, but now she was determined to get to the bottom of the Summer Henderson mystery.
She got voice mail.
Of course.
“Hey!” a bright, decidedly non-goth-sounding voice answered. “This is Summer. I can’t take your call right now. I’m probably off doing something really awesome. So leave a message and maybe I’ll get back to you. Then again, maybe I won’t.”
Laughter.
Then a beep signaling it was time to leave a message. Kayla had four or five drinks in her by this point and was in no mood to hold back. “Hey, bitch. I don’t know what kind of game you’re running and I don’t care. I just wanted to let you know that if I ever run into you again, I’m kicking your lying ass. Take a good look at yourself in the mirror next chance you get, because when I’m through with you, you’ll never look that hot again. Fuck you. Fuck you. Do you understand me, you fucking whore? Fuck you.”
A couple of skinny high school girls on their way into F.Y.E. stopped and looked at her. One giggled and said, “Wow. Was that enough fucks?”
The other girl smirked and said, “I don’t fucking know. I’ll have to fucking think about it.”
Kayla saw red.
She gnashed her teeth together and curled her hands into fists. An irresistible urge to hit something or someone made her take a couple of long strides toward them. The girls must have seen murder in her eyes because one of them shrieked and they both ran into the store. Kayla considered following them inside, but she stopped short at the door, veering away at the last moment to cross the parking lot to Elliston Place
She stopped in at the T.G.I.F. a block further down and headed straight for the bar, where she ordered a double shot of tequila. From there, the remainder of the day unfolded much like the previous night, minus a fight with Lee, who never did call her back. The fact that the vast majority of people she encountered continued to shun her did nothing to improve her mood. So she drank and drank until she was cut off. The bartender then called her a cab because she was in no shape to walk back to campus.
When the cab dropped her off outside her dorm, she noticed a familiar form lurking in the shadows by the side of the building.
The Ripper.
She wobbled over to him, stopping a few feet shy of where he stood leaning against the wall. “Hey, fucker. Enjoy your correction session, bitch?”
The Ripper smiled. “You are very, very drunk.”
“That’s right. I’m fucked up.” She turned her head sharply to the left and looked up at the sky. “Hey! What the fuck is that?”
The Ripper followed her gaze and frowned. “I don’t see--”
Her fist connected solidly with his jaw. His glasses slid off his face and dropped to the sidewalk as he tottered sideways. Kayla stepped on his glasses and ground them beneath the heel of her boot, relishing the crunch of breaking glass. She shook her hand and flexed her fingers. Her knuckles hurt. A lot. She’d held nothing back, so that was no surprise. It had been like hitting a brick wall. But the stunned look on his face as he regained his balance and regarded her with a new wariness made the pain so worth it.
His top hat was askew. He straightened it as he took a cautious step in her direction. “Why did you do that?”
“Because fuck you, that’s why. I’m tired of you motherfuckers from hell messing around with my life. And I’m especially tired of your creepy ass showing up everywhere I go. I know you can’t do anything to me, so guess what, asshole? I’m gonna knock the shit out of you every time I see you from now on.”
She mimed throwing a punch in hopes of seeing that look on his face again, but she wobbled and lost her balance. She would have fallen over on her ass, but the Ripper gripped her by a wrist and held her upright until she was steady again.
He smiled and held onto her wrist a moment longer. “You’re right, of course. I’m not allowed to harm you directly. I’m also no longer allowed to ‘harass’ you. A point made emphatically when I was…corrected.” He let go of her wrist and moved back a step, his smile broadening. “However, I am still allowed to act with impunity in the wider world.” He swept a hand toward the city skyline in the distance. “I hadn’t planned to kill again before returning to hell, but tonight I will make an exception.”
He took several backward steps away from her, slipping into shadows again.
“Tonight, a woman in your city will die in a manner so gruesome the people who live here will be talking about it for the rest of their lives. And the legend of the unsolved Nashville Ripper murders will endure for many generations to come. All because of you, Miss Monroe. All because of you.”
And then he was gone, swallowed by the darkness at the other end of the building.
Shit.
She thought about chasing after him, but what good would it do? The master of stealth was gone for now and she wouldn’t see him again until he wanted her to.
Shit, shit, shit!
What have I done? Oh God, what have I done?
Kayla stood right there for several more minutes.
God didn’t answer.
Her head started throbbing. She’d gone too long without a drink. Almost half an hour. And all the booze in her room had been consumed.
Unable to think of anything else to do--and unwilling to deal with the guilt that would descend upon her if she sobered up--she went off in search of a convenience store to buy some beer.
It was the last thing she remembered before waking up the next morning.
33.
Monday’s return to consciousness did not occur on the floor of her dorm room. It also did not occur in her bed. Or anyone else’s bed. The first thing she was aware of was a sound she recognized after several confused seconds as the rumble of an indeterminate number of car engines. That this sound was significantly louder than it should have been was her first hint that she was not indoors. This realization was alarming enough to pry her bleary eyes open. The world was too bright and she had to squint at first, but she could make out enough to recognize that the shapes zipping by less than a dozen feet from where she lie were indeed automobiles.
She groaned and tried to sit up.
And bonked her head.
“Ow.”
She rubbed furiously at her eyes and opened them again. This time she could see more clearly. She knew where she was now, but it was not welcome information. For a moment, she was tempted to closer her eyes and drift back to sleep. Maybe she’d get lucky and this would turn out to be a freakishly realistic dream. The lucid kind where sights, sounds, and smells all had a distressingly sharp form and texture.
She was curled up on her side under the bench at the same enclosed bus stop where she’d exchanged words with that bum. She tried to remember when that had been and for a moment couldn’t get a handle on it. Time was starting to have a disturbingly elastic quality, a fact undoubtedly related to all the drinking she’d been doing. The recent overindulgences were starting to bother her. She liked to party about as much as your average college student, but she didn’t normally go quite so far into Fear and Loathing territory. She had to get a handle on that before she wound up turning into Lindsay Lohan minus the fame. Finals were coming up in a week. If she didn’t pull herself together soon, academic disaster was a certainty.
Then she remembered that in a week school might not matter anymore.
Hell, nothing might matter anymore.
Somewhere above her someone chuckled. “And she lives…”
Kayla groaned again and crawled out from under the bench, shoving several empty tall cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon out of her way in the process of extricating herself from the cramped space. There were two other people with her in the bus stop, both of whom she recognized. One she was surprised to see, the other not so much. The bum she’d tangled with before was curled up on the far end of the bench, snoring away with his eyes closed and his head propped on a threadbare knapsack.
The other person was Daniel, the bearded, handsome angel with the s
haggy hair. He was sitting a few feet away from the bum, and in his lap he had a folded newspaper as well as an item she hadn’t realized was missing.
He smiled and held out her purse. “I was holding on to this for you.”
Kayla snatched it from his hands and shrugged the strap up over her shoulder. “What are you doing here?”
“Watching out for you.”
She glared at him. “Why?”
“Someone has to. You’re not doing a very good job of taking care of yourself.”
“Well, thanks for the advice, Dr. Drew. Fuck you very much and have a shitty day, okay?”
She spun away from him and stalked out of the bus stop, heading down Broadway to the corner crossing at the end of the block. It was early morning. The downtown workday was revving up. Traffic was thick and there were a lot of people out and about. Most of them ignored her as she walked past them, per usual, but a few cringed in an exaggerated way, some doing double-takes. Kayla sneered at them all. Her dark mood had still not abated. She probably looked disheveled and her hair had to be a ratty mess after a night of sleeping on the sidewalk. Her clothes were rumpled and dirty. She probably had dirt on her face. And she smelled like a brewery explosion. In fact, she was probably giving off kind of a homeless hooker vibe.
But so what?
Fuck these people, every last one of them. Sure, they all had their problems. Money worries, health issues, troublesome children, and so on. But not a single one of them would ever face a situation as dire as the one confronting her. She was entitled to her rage, and God help anyone who so much as looked at her the wrong way.
Daniel caught up to her at the corner and lightly gripped her by an elbow to keep her from crossing the street when the light turned. “Walk with me.”
She tore her arm free of his grip. “Get away from me.”
She started across the street.
Daniel hurried after her. “Have coffee with me. We need to talk again.”
She grunted. “Your ‘one time’ offer back on the table?”