Muddy Waters (Otherwhere Book 1)
Page 24
Dorcha ran out of the trees with an almighty snarl. She sunk her teeth into Ann’s leg. Ann let out a shriek and kicked out, landing her heel on my cat’s nose.
Before Ann could attempt her recipe for barbequed kitty, I fired a binding spell at her. She deflected it easily with one hand while the other send a singeing flame at Dorcha. It caught her paw, and she roared.
“Okay, that is it, you bitch,” I hissed. I sent an iceberg spell home to encase her in frozen water. “First my boots. Then my hair. Now this. Nobody. Messes. With. My. CAT.”
Ann torched the ice quickly and stood drenched in the circle.
She caught me on the other shoulder with a fireball that took a pretty good chunk out of my cloak and sent daggers of heat up and down my arm. I screamed, more out of fury than pain.
Panting, we stared at each other.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a twitch. A ripple. Something expanded.
The golem staggered back to life.
Hope lit up Ann’s face.
“Champion,” she croaked between rasping breaths. “Let us finish God’s work.”
The battle-ravaged sculpture limped up to tower over Ann. “Your sacrifice wasn’t enough.”
There went the hope on Ann’s face. Replaced by confusion. She struggled to stand but only managed a wobbly kneel. “I gave you blood. The blood of my husband. You said that’s what you needed. I brought you her. If he’s not good enough, take her.”
They looked at me.
The golem nodded. “This Witch is wily and her blood is impure. I cannot come through yet. I am bound by the laws set forth when this world was created. You are not powerful enough. My transition requires more.”
Where the fuck is Qyll and the backup team? And what the hell is this sweet duo nattering about?
“Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place. And it is thus that I shall continue the work of my God. Rejoice, child of God, for you shall see your Heaven.”
I sprint-limped across the clearing and fired everything I had at the golem, which wasn’t much. The anyshooter was empty. I was out of Elisha salt, holy water, and ideas.
The golem pounded toward me. My water spell collided with its knee as a silly-putty fist shoved me. Hard. I saw stars as I flew backward in space.
“And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood.” The muddy visage leered.
“You really have to learn some new lines. Have you tried The Satanic Verses?”
It picked me up and shook me.
I took a deep breath, tilted back my head, and screamed as loud as I could, “GIDEON! QYLL!” It was the only thing I could think to do at that second. I tried to force their faces into my mind, to think only of them and what it would be like to have them here. My energy flagged, my head fogged up.
The golem squeezed its dripping fingers around my throat, waited until it heard me well and truly choke, saw my head loll to the side.
“Finally! I was getting tired of her endless chatter. Leave her for a moment, my champion,” Ann called. “We have more important work now.”
The golem let me fall in a quaggy heap, then it stalked to Charlie.
In Greek mythology, Mormo was a child-eating spirit, and was said to have been a Laestrygonian, a tribe of cannibalistic giants. The name was also used to signify a female vampire-like creature in stories told to keep children from misbehaving. The Mormo would steal and murder children in revenge of the Queen of the Laestrygonians who was deprived by her children.
―from Mythology Then & Now, by Danielle White
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
top!”
Everyone froze. Even the golem.
I have never been so happy to see Gideon as I was in that forest. From my turn as Juliet playing dead on the floor, I prized open my eyes. Despite the soot and ash, the dirt and muck, he was as clean and white as always.
“Tessa, honey, I do apologize.” He set me on my feet and took my hands in his. My vision swam, but he held me up. His head shook with sympathy as I congratulated myself on a pretend-hanging-death well done. Half a minute more, and Gideon would’ve lost his chance to tender his I’m sorrys. “I mean, I really did think you were lying. I did! And now, I see you aren’t. Truly. I’m sorry. Now, stand back, please.”
The golem’s expressionless gaze flitted from Gideon to me to Ann, who was still crouched in the center of the circle. She looked terrible. She barely looked Human anymore. Eyes and cheeks, sunken. Skin mottled with red and purple. No-longer-white tunic filthy and shredded. Gideon tilted back his pretty head and laughed. “You are so old school!” Gideon pulled Ann up. “Oh, my dear. You’ve been very naughty.” Ann spat at him.
The golem roared. “Brother. You have arrived to slay the Witch. Thou shalt not consent unto her, nor hearken unto her. Your eyes shall not pity her, and you shall not spare or conceal her. But thou shall surely kill her. Thine hand shall be first upon her to put her to death, and afterward the hand of all the people.”
Gideon squinted at the golem. “Good heavens, what are you?”
The mud pie stuck its chest out proudly. “I am called from the ether by God to do his will on Earth. My humble servant hosts me in this lowly body until such time as I can inhabit a physical form.”
Gideon glanced at me, a worry tingeing his features. From somewhere, he produced a gleaming golden sword (a motherfrocking sword) and strode to the golem. Ann tried to torch him but she was winding down. She sank to her knees, misery and hate clouding her drooping features. Magic exacts its toll. Every time.
Thinking I was going to see something awesome, I sidled back a few paces. Just as Gideon lunged at the thing, it… collapsed is the wrong word. It looked like a scaffold had been removed inside it, and the mud shell sort of crumpled. Ann let out an inhuman screech and scrambled to the deflated statue.
Gideon made a noise that sounded like an Angelic curse. Then he shouted in that same language. The golem bucked. It reinflated and then sank again. Gideon repeated his chant, holding the sword pointed at its chest with both hands. The air thrummed with magic.
Gideon struggled, but doggedly called the chant again and again. I wanted to help, but had no idea what to do. A quick look across the circle told me Dorcha was tending her wounds and guarding the rest of Ann’s properly cowed minions.
As the golem reinflated again, Gideon drove the sword into its chest. I’m not sure either of them really knew what to do next because they just froze there in jarring juxtaposition.
Eventually, the golem stepped back, thus un-skewering itself, and swatted at the sword with a massive paw. Then, as though Gideon wasn’t even there, it stomped over to Charlie. “He’s too strong for me,” Gideon whispered, backing toward me. “I don’t know what else to do. I’m not exactly equipped for this.”
“Shhh.”
Mudman knelt, bending over as if to give Charlie CPR breaths.
Charlie’s eyes flew open. He got to his feet, seeping cuts painting deep red on his shroud. It looked like he’d already lost a lot of blood. Too much. The golem sat hunched over, unmoving.
“Oh no. No no no no no.” My voice was a croak.
Gideon grabbed my arm. “What’s happening?”
I pointed. Charlie was moving unnaturally, like his bones couldn’t get their shit together enough to walk. The same purple spark that colored Ann’s lit his eyes. “At last! I am released from my earthen prison!”
“I think the spirit is inside Charlie now.”
The not-Charlie tested out its new arms and legs and grinned at me. What I had seen as a kind, grandfatherly figure was replaced by this thing. He moved with a spryness I’d bet the real Charlie Bartley hadn’t seen in twenty years.
“Look, we’re serving you an eviction notice. Effective immediately.” I sent a blast that knocked not-Charlie over.
The thing keened in pain and threw itself upright. In seconds, he was on me, grappling tooth and nail. My c
loak absorbed some of the blows, but getting increasingly damaged, so all I had left was my tattoos. He landed a punch to my face, dangerously close to my left eye where the existing cut had begun to clot. My cheek split like a ripe tomato.
I launched a blinding spell. The thing deflected and blew a fiery breath at me. I turned my head at the last second. The scent of my own burned hair filled my nostrils.
“Tessa!” Gideon called from the edge of the circle. “Be careful! You could kill Charlie!” Shit. Charlie was mostly dead when the spirit possessed him. There wasn’t much left. Still didn’t mean I shouldn’t try to run this thing out of gas without killing the engine.
Dorcha streaked across the clearing to spring at not-Charlie, her paws on his chest. He rolled backward and they scuffled.
Charlie stumbled to the gold knife Ann used and stabbed at my cat. They moved almost too fast to see. A gash opened in Dorcha’s side, and she screamed. I tried to aim a spell, but fatigue and fear of hitting Dorcha or Charlie stayed my hands.
Dorcha backed away, hackles up, growling.
I tried a root-binding spell, but the monster burst out of the restraints with very little effort.
“Ann. You have got to do something. You have to help him. That thing is going to kill Charlie.” I glanced to the spot where Ann had fallen and almost lost control of my bowels when I saw her.
Her body quivered with raw rage as she ripped her tunic to shreds. It was as though she channeled the force of a supernova. Her eyes, huge and unblinking, became pools of black, as her arms and legs elongated. The crack and snap of tendon and bone was unmistakable as her body distorted. Animal teats sprang down her front over a distended belly and fangs descended from her gaping mouth. Horns like a ram’s burst out of her head and lizardlike scales bloomed where pale skin had been. A forked tongue dangled from her slavering jaws.
I was out of everything. Energy. Ideas. Ammunition. I backed blindly into the trees. My bag of tricks held only odd objects as I searched desperately through them. In the ragged remains of my cloak, I found a cool stone. The piece of amethyst the Holly King gave me. I held it up to my eye, peering through, guessing at its use.
The world was different through the purple gem. It was the opposite of Dorothy’s emergence into Oz; the colors were gone, everything was rendered in black and white. Except one thing. Ann’s demony body came into a sharp relief, but hovering above it was a spiral of blue light. It eddied slowly out of the back of her head. I nudged Gideon, gesturing for him to look through the amethyst, too, then made a motion over my head, my finger swirling in the air.
Gideon nodded. “That’s her soul. It can’t decide if she’s a hostile host or not,” he whispered. He added, sadly, “She might lose it completely.”
She went to the golem and jammed a claw in. The shem. Tossing it to the ground, she sent a spout of flame to incinerate the paper.
In a voice like water over hot coals, she snarled, “Go back to your Hell!” She stomped toward Charlie-not-Charlie and lifted him by the shoulders, holding his eyes level to hers. “Get out of my husband.” She incanted again in that unfamiliar tongue.
Charlie flicked a finger, and a tree stump dislodged itself and sailed across the clearing, slamming into Ann’s head. She dropped him and roared.
Back and forth they ranged, trading blows and screaming. Ann lashed out with taloned feet and hands. Charlie dodged and slashed with the knife, carving out bits of Ann’s flesh.
“Charlie,” she screeched. “Fight it. Please.” Ann stabbed him in the shoulder, flinching when he cried out in pain. He stumbled over the little table, knocking the papers and vials to the ground.
Like me, she couldn’t deliver a fatal blow, lest she kill Charlie in the process. Schadenfreude.
As a bull in a Spanish ring, Ann charged, horns ready to engage. Instead of goring not-Charlie, she used them like a forklift and tossed him thirty feet back.
He lay flat for a minute then staggered to his feet. After a wobbly start, he stormed over to a pile of huge rocks and set to lobbing the entire lot at Ann. She halted on her way toward him and dodged what she could, until a boulder caught her on the shoulder and she howled, that arm bent akimbo.
Charlie ran out of rocks about the time Ann reached him. With her unbroken arm, she grabbed him by the neck and dragged him, stumbling, across the circle.
She staggered to the papers littering the dirt. The Charlie-pretender, realizing where she was taking him, struggled in her hand and managed to get free. They both grabbed for the crumpled sheets. Ann snagged one and crawled back, alternating glances at the paper and Charlie. He grew still, staring with purple eyes.
Ann began to speak, very softly. She stood, letting the paper flutter from her hand.
“The ritual. She’s doing the ritual.” I nudged Gideon.
For a moment, they faced each other, her whispering growing louder until she shouted. Charlie’s body quavered, pulled in two different directions―it seemed on the verge of running and wanting to collapse all at once. Ann took advantage of its ambivalence. She grasped her husband by his arm, holding him at her eye level. Charlie’s back arched, and he cried out in the Demon’s voice. His body shuddered impossibly hard, and he vomited sticky black ichor.
I don’t know how the next part happened, but Charlie got the golden knife and jammed it into Ann’s chest. Then he twisted it.
The screeched chant paused as Ann sucked in a wet breath. Still, she held fast. Charlie pulled the knife free and pierced her again, and again. She fell to her knees, but didn’t let go.
Kicking, screeching, jerking in agony, the Demon’s avatar writhed in her grip, and still Ann held on, repeating her guttural order over and over. At last, Charlie gasped so hard I was sure his lungs would burst, then there was nothing.
He bowed his head, kneeling with Ann in some macabre benediction. I counted ten breaths before she let go and they both slumped to the ground.
“What. The. Fuck,” I hissed.
Ann, who looked like something out of an H.R. Giger nightmare, all scales and dripping jaws, bled from the hole in her chest.
I looked at Gideon. “Aren’t you going to do something?” He shook his head, eyes enormous. “You are a giant baby. What is it with you men? I swear!” With that, I took a few cautious steps toward the couple in the circle.
“Uh, Ann?” I knelt near her head. Slowly, she turned her terrifying face to me.
“Witch.” She regarded me for a moment. Then her shoulders sagged a little more. “It’s over.” Her breath hitched and stopped, started again. “Who told you? Was it Cara? Heather? How did you know?”
I saw my reflection in the black of her eye. The cut on my face looked pretty nasty.
“Well, Ann, I’m a pretty smart cookie. I figured things out on my own. But I did have help. It was Charlie. And Heather was going to chip in, but you sent that thing after her.”
“My Charlie.”
Ann reached across the short distance between them, brushing her too-long fingers against her husband’s pallid skin. It was as touching as it was jarring, to see this slavering monster cuddling up to the nice old grandpa who had, one had to hope, just now been evacuated by a Demon.
For many very long and awkward minutes, we stayed this way. Finally, Ann took a shuddering breath and heaved herself to stand. On shaky back-bending legs, she went directly to the pile of mud that was her golem champion. Letting out an ear-splitting shriek of misery, she blew a massive plume of fire at it. With her talons, she dug at the marks painted on the ground, demolishing her ritual. Dragging her scaly feet, she ground the summoning circle back into dust. Another gout of flame torched the table with the spell and vials of blood. When she finally crawled back to Charlie’s body, she let out another keening wail.
In what felt like the millionth jarring experience that day, watching her drew forth a deep, yawning sadness. This wasn’t a wail of anger or rage. It was of a woman who had lost everything, and realized much of it was her fault.
And then, Charlie sucked in a breath and opened his eyes.
There was a crashing in the underbrush.
“Oh, so glad you could make it to my party,” I shouted as Qyll led the SMARTies into the clearing.
In the ensuing chaos, I started with Gideon since Q orchestrated the evacuation of Charlie and the dazed disciples.
“Uh, can you explain this?”
He put his arm around me. “I’ll try.” And yes, that was jarring, too, but who was counting? That,” Gideon pointed to the golem’s ashes, “was some kind of very old thing. Maybe it was one of us, once. An Angel.” He studied the smoking mud closely. “These days, probably from the Edge, the hinterlands of Otherwhere. Stuff is floating around out there just waiting for something to open a door. Just looking for an invitation in, weren’t you, beastie?”
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
He rolled his eyes. “She summoned that to do whatever it was she was going to do.”
“Kill a bunch of Others, yes. Starting with Antaura. Probably me, too.”
“And she,” he pointed to Ann, “is now a Mormo.”
“A what-o?”
“Sometimes a Human’s rage changes them. I’ve never seen it this bad, but it’s obviously possible. For whatever reason, she morphed into,” he waved his hand in her direction, “that. A Mormo. They typically steal children, give them to their mistresses who are usually childless women. Sometimes they eat them. It depends.”
“But I’ve been doing some research. This?” He gestured to the demolished clearing. “This should not be able to happen. But it did. And I think it means things are changing.” Gideon looked worried. “I think the balance might be tipping the wrong way. This isn’t normal, even for post-Rift times.”
“So… what then?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Seemed like an anomaly. So I called your partner.”