Harvester

by Erik Henry Vick

The words now sounded familiar, as though he’d always known them but had forgotten them. Despite their familiarity, they grew harder and harder to speak.

  “Lilitu, ina irkalla naḫāsu!”

  He dipped the torch closer to the bronze base, painting the cuneiform with its blue flame, watching the edges of the engraved words growing soft and beginning to run.

  “Lilitu, anāku atta ašāpu!”

  32

  Lily stood with her shoulders slumped. Her expression was filled with sadness, with grief, and with anger. Her flesh seemed to fade in and out, pulsing with the passage of each breath. The speed of the pulses increased until she flickered like a loose light bulb. Then, the woman he knew as Lily was gone.

  In her place stood a creature built from black smoke and shadows. The structure of her face bore a resemblance to her human features, but any similarities ended there. She stared at Toby in silence.

  “This doesn’t have to be the end.” She raised both chrome-taloned hands to Toby, as though beckoning him for a hug. “It’s not too late, Tobes. You can come with me.”

  Toby dithered, shifting his weight from foot to foot. A part of him wanted to go to her, to be enveloped by her presence, to join her, yet another piece of him was terrified by the prospect. Even so, he found himself inching in her direction.

  Do it, Toby. Do it, do it, do it. Memory whispered the words in his mind, and Lily smiled.

  “Don’t do it, Toby!” cried Shannon.

  “Don’t do it,” echoed Benny in a wisp of a voice. Don’t do it.

  Toby squeezed his eyes shut. “In 1979, I listened to a little voice that cajoled me to ‘do it,’ and it almost cost me my life. Herlequin couldn’t hold a candle to you, Lily. He was as an ant in the path of a charging lion.”

  “Then‍—‍” Lily took a ghostly step forward.

  He shook his head and lifted his hand like a traffic cop commanding someone to stop. “No, let me say this. You are magnificent in almost every way, and there will always be a part of me that is sad that I had to turn you down.”

  The room was silent for a moment, then Lily hitched a sob and turned away. “So be it,” she muttered in a voice devoid of humanity. “Perhaps you were right, back there in the desert. This place…” She raised her hands to encompass the world. “It breeds unhappiness.” She turned back and stared into Toby’s eyes. “I will go then. But I will come back one day. There is always someone willing to pay my price in exchange for my favors. Someone will call to me across the void. Someone will offer me a place here.” She dropped her gaze and stood with her arms hanging at her sides. “If…” She swallowed hard. “If you change your mind, there’s a place you can go, Tobes. It’s in New York, near Genosgwa. You needn’t find it with any precision, just being in the right area will suffice. It is near your new friends’ house.” She gestured at Eddie and Amanda as she faded to translucence, her eyes growing wild. “Enter the circle and call to me, motek. Ask me to come, and I will.”

  She looked Toby in the eye, her expression flat and lifeless. She held that position for the space of five heartbeats, then an unfelt wind ruffled around her indistinct edges, pulling curls of smoke away. This time, instead of the smoke rejoining her body, it faded into nothingness.

  Toby shuffled to the upended recliner and set it to rights. He stood in front of it for a moment, staring straight ahead but seeing nothing. Finally, his knees unhinged, and he sat. He buried his face in his hands. He couldn’t bear to watch her go.

  When Toby raised his head, Lilitu was gone, and the world was free of its last demon.

  33

  They gathered at Eddie and Amanda’s house three days later. The group already felt like life-long friends, and it was to be a celebration—after a final ritual.

  Down in the basement, Eddie had already jackhammered a large hole to expose the black soil beneath. Mike had to carry Greg down the stairs, while Eddie brought his wheelchair, but Mike didn’t mind in the least. Greg was alive and getting better every day.

  “Are you sure this will work?” asked Benny.

  Sean Walker nodded. “Sure, uh-huh. I can show you the research if you‍—‍”

  “I’m sure you are right, Sean,” said Benny. “It’s just jitters.”

  Sean nodded once and set the box he was carrying on Eddie’s workbench. He peeled back the flaps and exposed the clay bowl. He lifted it out and showed it to everyone. The exterior was plain, undecorated, but the interior was full of cuneiform inscribed in a circle down to the bottom. In the center was a hand-painted image of Lilitu.

  “And you’re sure the cuneiform is correct?”

  “Benny,” said Shannon in a tight little voice. “Cut it out.”

  “Sorry,” Benny murmured, squeezing her hand.

  Sean grinned at him and nodded. “It’s correct.” As Benny nodded, he stepped down into the hole Eddie had dug. He held the bowl up over his head as if offering its contents to the rest of them. “Make a circle,” he said. “You’ll have to say it with me, so Kristy has notecards for everyone.” He met each of their gazes—all except Toby, whose gaze was on the ground. “Once we start, we can’t stop until we are finished, so if you have second thoughts, say so now.”

  No one said a word.

  “Toby?” Sean asked quietly.

  For the briefest moment, Lily’s dissonant desert song played in Toby’s mind to the exclusion of everything else. He raised his head as though it were the hardest thing he’d ever done. He looked Sean in the eye and nodded.

  “Okay,” said Sean. “Ready?” Sean flipped the bowl over and set it on the ground. He lifted his foot and held it over the upended bowl.

  Sean brought his foot down and smashed the bowl. Eddie helped him climb out of the hole as Mike stepped forward with a brown paper sack in his hands. He upended the bag, dumping two lumps of bronze, several clumps of fused and melted glass, and a handful of lead nuggets.

  Sean nodded, and together they chanted the Akkadian words inscribed on the interior of the bowl. Words that meant:

  “Hail Lilitu, Bearer of Chaos. Hail Lilitu, Harvester of Sorrow. Hail hag and ghoul, I adjure you by the timelessness of Tiamat, by the power of Shamash, and by the magic of Ea, here is your divorce and writ and letter of separation, sent through the will of Marduk.”

  I hope you’ve enjoyed this twisted tale of demons and madmen from start to finish. If you are interested in reading more of my work, The Blood of the Isir series is also available. Errant Gods, the first novel of the series, can be found at https://ehv4.us/4errantgods. Books two and three, Rooms of Ruin, and Wild Hunt, respectively can also be found on Amazon—please visit https://ehv4.us/4boti for the series page.

  If you’ve enjoyed my work, please consider joining my Readers Group by visiting https://ehv4.us/join. Or follow me on BookBub by visiting my profile page there: https://ehv4.us/bbub.

  For my complete bibliography, please visit: https://ehv4.us/bib.

  Books these days succeed or fail based on the strength of their reviews. I hope you will consider leaving a review—as an independent author, I could use your help. It’s easy (I promise). Complete instructions for leaving your review can be found below.

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  For Supergirl, Real Sig™, and me, this year started off horribly. I found out about a nasty little disease I’d never heard of. Supergirl learned how well she can juggle everything—including a full-time job, our entire life, and keeping me sane during the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life.

  We muddled through it, though it meant having a significant gap in my publishing schedule. I’d planned to write a stand-alone same-universe book, the
n write the rest of The Bloodletter Saga story.

  As fate would have it, I took a different path—the path you’ve just finished reading. The best parts of that stand-alone book ended up incorporated into Blackest Crow and Nightshade—Eddie Mitchell’s story line.

  This is the point where you should stop reading if you are the kind of reader that jumps to the Author’s Note first. Spoilers incoming!

  Lily made her grand debut in the title novella (The Devil) for my collection of shorts (Devils: A Collection of Devilish Short Fiction), and I must admit, I fell in love with the character. Her reckless evil, her silly nickname fetish, her obvious abandonment issues, even her brutal vengeance, they all made her so much fun to write. I spent a lot of time thinking about her and how she fit in to the Oneka Falls story, and it seemed like a perfect fit until I realized that she would kill our heroes without batting an eye unless her emotions got in the way…

  It was Lily that led me to the solution. Lily likes to tell people she’s the devil, and she certainly has the chops for it. When I explored how Lily might deal with a group of demon hunters hassling her daughter, a lot of things fell into place: LaBouche’s demise, why Brigitta/Naamah would hang out with the mazzikim, why Abyzou would care about a silly lamp, the three parts of this novel I call “the temptation of Toby, Mike, and Benny.”

  But the thing I couldn’t bring myself to do is permanently end the story here, and this ending works better, anyway. After all, the devil is always waiting for the next sucker who wants to make a deal.

  “What’s next?” you ask.

  It seems this year will end as it started. I found out a few weeks ago that the avascular necrosis I had in my left hip had jumped to the right hip, and that I had a subchondral fracture of my right femoral head. It’s not as bad as the left, and thankfully, the left has remained stable since the middle of the year.

  So, yeah, what’s next?

  I know for sure that there will be a new series (and think there may be two) rolling out in the first quarter of next year. The first series is an urban fantasy delivered with short novels, and the second is another old-school series of horror novels of the longish variety. Then again, I’ve also got a post-apocalyptic story kicking at my temples, another dark fantasy, and a more “straight-up” serial killer story line.

  To find out my plans before most everyone else, keep your eye on social media—either at my blog: https://erikhenryvick.com or in my Facebook group: https://ehv4.us/fbog.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Erik Henry Vick is an author who happens to be disabled by an autoimmune disease (also known as his Personal Monster™). He writes to hang on to the few remaining shreds of his sanity. His current favorite genres to write are dark fantasy and horror.

  He lives in Western New York with his wife, Supergirl; their son; a Rottweiler named after a god of thunder; and two extremely psychotic cats. He fights his Personal Monster™ daily with humor, pain medicine, and funny T-shirts.

  Erik has a B.A. in Psychology, an M.S.C.S., and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence. He has worked as a criminal investigator for a state agency, a college professor, a C.T.O. for an international software company, and a video game developer.

  He'd love to hear from you on social media:

  Blog:

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/BerserkErik

  Facebook: https://fb.me/erikhenryvick

  Amazon author pages:

  USA: https://ehv4.us/amausa

  UK: https://ehv4.us/amauk

  Goodreads Author Page: https://ehv4.us/gr

  BookBub Author Profile: http://ehv4.us/bbub

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 by Erik Henry Vick

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Ratatoskr Publishing

  2080 Nine Mile Point Road, Unit 106

  Penfield, NY 14526

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Harvester/ Erik Henry Vick. -- 1st ED.