Touched

by A. J. Aalto

  “Never take tea from a stranger, dear,” she advised, a tad late.

  Fuckanut. “Drug…”

  “I drugged you, yes dear, clearly not enough. You're still running that cunting mouth of yours.”

  I summoned my strength to spit, “Suck my left—” and promptly got a mouth full of rubber.

  Ruby didn't kick like an old lady. My lips crushed against my teeth and pain shot up through my face. I tasted blood instantly.

  She pulled me to standing, an amazing feat considering my knees didn't work and I wasn't especially eager to help her. Supporting my whole weight, she moved without effort toward the odd purple light. That was bad, my woozy brain reported. No good can come of purple light, unless you're at a rock concert. I tried to resist and found my sagging limbs useless. Forced into a pile on the floor next to an ominous iron ring, I slid onto my belly as she started humming. Ruby produced lengths of thick rope from a nearby dust-covered bushel barrel, knocking loose several mismatched leather gloves that looked vaguely familiar: pink, tan with fur on the cuff, blood red. Blurrily I stared at them, trying to make a connection through a melty haze. Mine.

  My head fell to one side and my eyes rolled down to crawl over the floor with growing panic. On the cement beneath me, black chalk was barely visible against the dark grey paint. Intricate stars, different than Wiccan pentagrams, curved inward as though stricken with disease, anorexic. Starving, emaciated symbols, each star covered with tiny writing in a foreign tongue and curling sigils, like the ones I'd seen desecrating my office.

  If I could keep my head from swimming, I was sure I could figure something out. OK, so I got tricked and beat up by a little old lady. Who hasn't? That's no reason to cry. But I was crying. As she tightened rope around my ankle, my shoulders shook and my nose leaked. She jerked my arms behind me and bound them together and I could do nothing to stop her.

  Ruby pulled a big wooden stand with a triangular shelf into the center of the circle, where her obsidian mirror tilted to catch the flickering light of two candles, their deviant color a cross between French lilac and February crocus. They made me think of my brother's new eyes, his revenant eyes, and my thoughts bounced to Harry (I should have brought Hood after all, Harry). And then to their babysitter, that hottie with the stakes (I should know that guy's name, cuz I think I fucked him a couple times) and finally to Danika. Her right hand was missing the middle finger, the stump red and smooth, cauterized and covered in what might have been melted wax. It must have hurt. How I wished I could enjoy that sight, but I found myself feeling sorry for her.

  A heavy, sulfurous odor belched from the wicks of Ruby's candles, and the light that curled out around them turned sickly luminous grape-jelly neon. There was something terribly wrong with it, but my grey cells were too sluggish to put it together until she began her incantation, her voice low and sonorous.

  “Come, ethereal incarnate. Come, enigma solved, He who must answer all. Come presently in form daemonic, specific to thy summoning.”

  The light flared under her command, and Danika stirred, her filthy mud-streaked hair swaying like a strawberry-blonde curtain.

  “Come, demon, known as Beroth of Sanchoniaton, Berith of the Sichemites. Come, face the tetragramaton, Great and Terrible Duke Bolfri of the Grave, thy desires to be fed. Come, Seer of the Past, Present and Future. I command thy otherworldly presence.”

  When Danika let out a billowing, choking cough of desperate refusal, the hairs on my arms stood straight up. Her head whipped from side to side, gagging, trying to deny entrance. Ruby's voice climbed, deep and filling the room.

  “Speak without guile, demon, in my mother tongue, of things infernal, and do tremble here before this circle, here visibly, here affably in the manifest that I desire!”

  An invisible finger of warmth slithered along my jaw line then, the heat intensifying until it was hot enough to leave a singe-mark on my skin. Queasy with dread, I used my shoulder against the floor to worm backwards, my rubber legs ignoring commands. Blood-tinged fluid appeared near my chest in a round shape that had no obvious source. Another pool of it formed nearby out of nothing, puddled around unseen footsteps, phantom cloven hooves. I braced myself for whatever might be about to pounce from the shadow between this world and the nether, or the depths of the Eversea, as a low vibration began under the floor, shuddering the very cement.

  Danika's spine jerked rigidly, the legs of the chair teetering back then falling to right with a clunk. She wriggled upright like a serpent worked her spine, except her head which hung low.

  “I will be fed,” Danika's mouth rasped within the waterfall of her hair. It was not her voice. It was not anyone's voice. It was the scratch of evil in the room. Something between a canine's injured howl and the low reverberation of an angry cat, a disembodied voice from the hollow of her throat that raised my hackles in a quilling rush.

  “In time,” Ruby promised lightly. She turned to face me. I was sure I'd see an unbalanced and disheveled face now, but Ruby was still calm, cool and definitely collected. Somehow that was worse, much worse. She informed me, “Today is your lucky day, Marlene.”

  I've been called many things. I wasn't going to stand for Marlene. “Name…Marnie…you stupid bitch,” I managed.

  Ruby's foot flew again and I saw it coming but what could I do? Tied to the iron ring at her mercy, I took it square in the face. Pain ribboned across my cheekbones in both directions from my nose and I tasted blood anew.

  I snorted outward, trying to clear the blood from my nostrils. “What did we…ever do?”

  “Prancing around in the limelight, for one, like fucking whores. Camera whores. Fame whores. Power whores. But you're a flash in the pan, aren't you? You've proven you can't do anything right.”

  I hocked from deep in my throat and spat blood-tinged phlegm at her.

  She looked at it, on the hem of her skirt. “You'll never amount to anything.”

  “If you believed that…” I said with effort, “you'd let us fail.” I wrinkled my face to see if my nose was broken and the pain was so intense I thought I might vomit.

  “You waste precious resources and you're too much of a risk. If I can profit from taking those resources and dealing with the risk, why shouldn't I? Everyone wins.”

  My drug-addled brain stored that away for later, since it made no sense in my present state.

  “You drove Danika mad… tried to get her to kill me.” I had a light bulb moment. Danika's ‘That is the promise’ comment. “You promised… if she brought Harry, you'd help her Bond to him. She'd get a new companion to fill…hole in her psyche.”

  Ruby shrugged. “All I had to do was tell her that you and your little boy-toy Mark Batten killed George Cuthbert, and show her how she could have vengeance. She was practically frothing at the mouth to have her vengeance.”

  “I had nothing to do with–” I cried, but then it struck me so hard my throat clammed tight. Batten knew Ruby, said he had worked with her. In the past, he'd been a vampire hunter, a well-paid, freelance hunter. “You paid Mark Batten and his crew to kill George Cuthbert.”

  Ruby hissed a laugh; it sounded like a disturbed nest of snakes.

  “I will untie you, demon,” Ruby said, touching the back of Danika's bent head. Danika's chin rose, though her eyes remained shut. “And Danielle will have her vengeance in the circle. Does she hear me, demon?”

  “She hears her mother-mistress,” the demon confirmed with Danika's mouth, with his own garbled voice.

  Ruby grinned, her eyes flashing. “You will tear Marnie Baranuik limb from limb, Danielle. Now, while you live, or after your death, you shall not rest until your deed is done.”

  Tear? Limbs? My head cleared in a sobering rush, panic driving adrenalin past the drugs and into my veins for fight-or-flight.

  “Her name's not Danielle,” I shouted, and Danika blinked her eyes open, surprised, confused. “Her name is Danika Sherlock and she's the gorgeous, famous TV star who replaced your sagging ass!”
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  “It's no use, fool, her mind has long been my play thing,” Ruby laughed at me.

  “What are you, a James Bond villain?” I said. “The least-hot Bond girl ever? Pussy NoMore?”

  “Bond,” Danika said, baffled by the words coming out of her mouth. “James Bond. Shaken, not stirred.”

  Though delirious, it was Danika's soft purring mid-West accent now, pushing through the influence of the inhuman visitor within her, enough to get me excited.

  “Danika, listen to me,” I said, forcing my tongue to work properly. Whatever drug Ruby had put in my tea had my limbs lead-heavy and the rest of my body ache with the need to sleep, but my mouth was back to songbird-clarity. “Ruby Valli paid Batten to kill your companion, to kill George. Just like she gave another hunter my address to come and smoke Harry out. Didn't you, Ruby? Who was he? Some local hooligan?”

  Danika's head came around at me and a thin keening fissured out of her throat. Wrenched free of the demon's control, she wailed: “George! Geeeoooorge!”

  Ruby folded her arms and smiled at me. Her apple-pink cheeks were round and soft and lifted smile lines into the creases of her eyes. “What makes you think Mark Batten isn't still on my payroll?”

  I tried to ignore that, because it didn't help me right now, but my heart couldn't un-hear it. It hammered sick and hard under my ribs, leapt with terror, contracting in a dread-squeeze. He's with my Harry, it said. Notice, he's always with Harry, lately.

  Focusing on Danika, I struggled to keep her attention.

  “It was Ruby's plan all along, Danika. She's been using you to keep her own hands clean, just like she used Batten, and who knows how many others? She uses everyone. Now she wants to use you to kill me, and for what? Do you think she's just going to hand over Harry to you?” I raised my voice to be heard over Danika's broken-hearted clamor. “Don't let her win. You're just another sacrifice for her altar. There's no new companion for you, Danika, only death. It's Ruby's fault George is dead.”

  Danika moaned, “George,” as though her motor was grinding down.

  “Danika, she'll break the promise. She already has!”

  Danika's moaning ended abruptly. Her chin fell even and her eyes bored into mine. For a fierce second, sanity and understanding blazed in her aspect; she poured fully back into herself, mentally filling her psyche with clarity and realization. Though it was an invisible change, I could tell the instant that Danika Sherlock thrust the demon completely from her exhausted body, and summoned her will for vengeance.

  So could the demon's conjurer. Ruby lunged forward behind her. For a second, it must have showed in my face, because Danika's eyes flew wide. She screamed, “Mom, don't! Moooommeeee!”

  The jagged point of a knife tore the front of Danika's delicate throat, sending a foaming jet of blood splattering across my face, lashing the revenants on the wall. It was over in a heartbeat.

  Something behind me, barely alive, drew a shuddering groan as it stirred.

  FORTY-THREE

  I had been abandoned.

  The odd purple candle light was fading in the mirror as the wax sank to nubs. Somewhere Harry was likely waking, stretching his sleep-stiffened body languorously, cat-like, in silk sheets on his big four-poster bed, and lighting a cigarette. Maybe Wes would be rousing in Harry's casket. My Cold Company would soon be asking Chapel and Batten where his DaySitter was. He and Batten would waste precious time they didn't know I didn't have, trading barbs and hassling each other, while Chapel realized I'd been gone too long and was not answering my cell phone. Probably my phone was ringing right this second in the Buick out front, filling the hot car with the Inspector Gadget theme song. The Buick. Where my gun was. Again, I had not known when to use it or how. And I was going to die in the middle of the day, surrounded by the sour stench of blood, death and bodily fluids.

  I considered my options: A) Be a human sacrifice, or B)… ok, there wasn't a B. Was there?

  What would it feel like to be ripped limb-from-limb, I wondered? Was Danika really going to rise from the dead to complete the deed? I'd already seen one ghoul.

  Her own daughter. More than just random jealousy; hating the very girl you created. So much for motherly nurturing. I knew all about being rejected by your mother, but my mom never used me as a demon's sock puppet. I hadn't seen a familial resemblance before, but I hadn't been looking.

  As the drugs fully receded from my dulled mind, I was able to taste fear; it did not taste good. I figured it was only a matter of time before Ruby had some other living host body for her demon to enter. Or maybe that was my new purpose, here. What did that feel like? Or maybe she was just going to torture me. Just. How long would she hurt me, and with what implements?

  I lifted my cheek off the floor and found it sticky. I could see shelves of tools, mostly woodworking tools: vices, files, rip saws, carving knives and gouges, chisels. They didn't look dusty or unused, which bothered me, because I wanted to believe they had been there from the last owner of the shop. What I really didn't want to know was what Ruby needed the planes for, but my brain still hates me, and it tripped along several flesh-removing options.

  My eyes fell to the circle. Summoning a demon didn't sound all that difficult. You called it by name and title, kissed its ass a bit, and it came. Of course, I'd only just seen my first live ritual. And what demon would wanna help me? I didn't know any demon names, did I?

  The spit on my tongue stung with a sudden excruciating sweet heat, that tart cinnamon candy heat. The Overlord? He was a demon king. He had better things to attend to than… well, hell, I was a servant of one of his revenants. He should be on my side, right? I could give it a shot. What did I have to lose, here? Except blood, sanity and lots of flesh, if Ruby grabbed the plane off the shelf.

  “Hear me, Asmodeus,” I whispered. “Prince of Lust, Father of the Line Immortal, King of the Old Believers. Faithful… uh, backer-upper of… yeah, no, that's not going to work. The devoted servant of your creation calls you to—ow!”

  My left nipple twisted suddenly with such an unbearable intensity that hot pain shot down the nerves deep in my chest to tangle around my heart. An invisible force tweaked it again with joyous, sadistic fingers. I cringed and, with my arms tied behind me, could do nothing to rub away the feeling. “I am the faithful servant of—ow! Motherfucker!” Both nipples twisted in unison, pinching hard. “OK, sorry! I was going to invite you out to play, but forget it.”

  So, no Overlord. Asmodeus, the prurient father of the vampire lineage, was playing purple-nurple with my girly parts like a tipsy adolescent and would be no help. My options at this point were limited.

  My eyes crept to the revenants chained to the wall. The young dark-haired one was Patrick Laurier Nazaire; I knew this immediately. He had owned the sunglasses before Danika tried to force the Bond on him. Patrick was, at this point, uselessly insane. Starvation-weakened arms bound across his chest as if he was already in a straightjacket, he licked the chains that rested across his shoulder, looking through me. If he were ever freed, he'd leave a swath of slaughtered bodies in his wake, until the day someone like Batten did the nation a rowan wood favor. That thought made me wonder if Ruby was bluffing about Batten being on her payroll, but the idea made my gut churn, and to keep from yurking-up I had to consider something else and quick.

  That left Ruby's immortal companion, Gregori Nazaire: a blond giant of a man, well over six foot seven, probably very distinguished at full health, looking like someone's frightfully realistic but under-stuffed Halloween prop chained to the wall, clothes hanging off his frame. Jeans and a white button-down dress shirt covered in months' worth of filth. Fourteen hundred-year-old poets wear Levis? Who knew?

  Why had Ruby chained up her own revenant? Had he tried to stop her from doing the rotten crap she'd been up to? If so, that indicated he wasn't completely evil. Maybe he was trustworthy. Maybe he could help me. Maybe we could help each other. Or, maybe Harry was right and I was utterly naïve.

  “Mister Naza
ire?” I breathed, experimentally. The sound of his name coming out of my own throat made my legs go numb and I suddenly needed to pee real bad. It would serve Ruby right if I whizzed on her chalk circle. That is, after all, the best-known folk cure for beating demons: pee your pants and run like hell.

  “Mister Nazaire?”

  The revenant did not respond.

  I used the grippy toes of my Keds to push myself closer, my feet tingling as though asleep. The rubber soles scraped loudly in the echoing room, smudging chalk writings. I glanced behind me then pushed again, until the rope dug in around my ankle. An inch closer. Again. Closer.

  I left the candlelit spot in front of the mirror behind, and scrape-shuffle-snaked my way into the cool dark by the back wall. My thighs quivered like Jell-o inside my pants, and sweat greased the skin under my bra's underwire.

  I could smell him now, faintly, like a skeleton nearly desiccated, weeks-old carrion cooked to dry bones, ligaments cracking in the summer sun. I wished I didn't know what that smelled like. Other people didn't have to know. Then again, it was a slight improvement on the smell of blood and loose bowels in a clod under Danika's chair.

  Up close, Gregori Nazaire hardly looked real. His flesh was a horror of shrunken musculature, paper-thin skin, blue veins roping emptily and visibly beneath. A belt held up his jeans; new holes had been punched in it to tighten it enough to keep his pants up. I wondered how many times Ruby had broken in a new belt hole and adjusted his pants around his dwindling waistline. His chest, sunken within his white button-down dress shirt, didn't rise or fall.

  But I knew he was not gone: underneath that light cooked skeleton smell was the sharp familiar tainted sweetness of burnt sugar.

  “Gregori?” I whispered. No movement, no hint that he'd heard me. The smell of the chains against his skin was like a sweaty, oiled coin. They'd blistered his skin, not a lot but enough to tell me there was significant silver content in the iron. The only way you'd be able to keep a revenant of his age chained to a wall, even with silver, is if he'd been starved for quite some time before you put him here. She must have locked him in his casket for years, blocked his escape with crosses. Starved him into submission.