Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (15 page)

"Le mo ghrása mise agus liomsa mo ghrá," came the Goddess's honeyed whisper spilling from Tian's mouth.

They were playing a dangerous game. Someone was going to get hurt. If they were lucky they would only be hurt.

"Time's up," Loren said as the ground shook and the hallway began to crawl forward on paws made of stone. The high-pitched screams of the corridor were drowned out by the sounds of a pipe organ.

"Is that Mobb Deep?" Loren asked.

"They're nothing if not ironic," Tian said.

"Bad guys with a sense of humor?" Loren had the gun sighted again.

"Not exactly."

"Who are the 'they' we're talking about, Tian?" Sio moved up next to her so she was forced to look him in the eye.

When she did, the goddess presence blazed to life. She railed against the rising tide of possession that screamed of kismet and connection. It was choked down along with a shallow breath and she realized her face was caught up between two enormous hands. Her eyes locked on gun metal gray ones and she found herself thinking how little the color suited him. A nervous energy was snapping at the vacant spaces in her soul, synapses seeking to connect unwilling pathways.

"They are the Slaugh," she said. And the ground gave way beneath them.

****

The lights were blood red where they landed, casting long black shadows over what could've been the set of a Rob Zombie film. They were standing in a white trash gear head bar with quirky undertones of psychopath.

"Seriously, what's up with all the falling?" Loren swore as he leveraged himself against the wall behind them.

"There's always a lower deep," Tian answered.

Wasn't that the truth? Sio watched the shadows writhe in the dark corners of the room, wondering if they would go away when she hit them with the flashlight or if they would stay and he'd see the bogeyman in them.

A small form stepped out of the darkness, but it didn't move like anything human. The thing was bald, dressed up like Oliver Twist, and sporting a line of human teeth embedded in its face like a fashion accessory. The mutilation accentuated the set of ink black eyes that regarded them. Its skin peeled, flaking away like old newspaper, making a sickening crackle as it moved. The noises grew more pronounced and the creature's face contorted into an unsettling rictus leer.

Other nightmares oozed out behind it: a frighteningly non-child little girl with skeletal long fingered hands that lengthened and retracted, making gruesome popping sounds and an anti-child that towered at around six feet elevated by legs that didn't belong to it. Its stolen gams were stitched with thick black thread, one on top of the other. All four of the tiny knees were horribly swollen with waggling flaps of flesh that peeled from the attachment sights.

The list kept going; so many atrocities ran together at once his brain couldn't process them all. He was looking at a crime scene so brutal that the bits and pieces came off as abstract: big bodies with extra limbs, exceptionally long arms, misshapen joints, childlike perfection under sloughing skin, anatomy twisted at impossible angles. Each affectation was increasingly disturbing even to a card carrying member of the desensitized horror junkie generation. The air of menace that rolled off the pack of them made his blood curdle like a bad drink, but the stolen innocence that hung heavy in those small faces was what put him over the edge.

The female with the spider leg digits and the soiled night shirt started to move. Sio stood entranced, watching the methodical way in which she used those malformed hands to drag her small body forward. Her seeking skeletal fingers climbed from the floor, reaching toward the tan coat Loren was wearing.

"Don't let her touch him," Tian said.

The hollow note in her tone caught his attention. She was pressed up against the wall with her gun aimed at the tiny bald monster with the teeth in its mug. Otherwise she was a statue, emotions locked down so tight, she was practically inanimate. Her expression reminded him of the night he'd seen her in the fireplace. God, that seemed like years ago.

There was another nightmare standing on the opposite side of her. The entire lower half of its face had elongated, skin stretching in horrific ways while bones hung in broken patches sticking through the skin at impossible angles. What remained of its nasal passageways and ruined mouth slid up her thigh with lecherous affection. Sio closed his eyes while a fear-fueled desire for violence built to unreasonable proportions in his skull.

"Get her away from him," Tian reiterated.

Sio looked back at Loren. The anti-girl had her talons into the skin of the guy's chest and he'd turned the gun on himself. Sio reached out, grabbing both of her brittle paws in one hand, and jerked them free with a sickening crunch. Her small head whipped toward him as if it were the first time she'd noticed he existed. Her awful child face contorted and her lower lip twitched. She looked dead at him and shrieked so loudly that he let go out of sheer reflex. There was a collective hiss from the peanut gallery.

"It lies," came the creature's shrill whine. "It lies with its eyes. False, treacherous, shadow wrapper! The dark one hides its lies inside. It lies!!!" She was hysterical, wasn't making a damn bit of sense, and the high pitched Eliza Doolittle accent was overkill.

"Are you wearing contacts?" Tian asked under her breath.

"I am."

"Do you need them to see?"

"No."

"Fuck me," she sighed. "I need you to take them out."

The last thing he wanted to do was fly his freak flag so soon in front of her. Sio looked at Loren slumped against the wall, grabbed the guy by the collar, hauled him closer. Then he did what he was told.

The energy in the room had shifted. Even the red cap molesting her leg had paused in hungry anticipation. Its scarlet red hair was caked with thick mats of dried blood that did nothing to distract from the annihilated face mashed against her thigh. Tian stared hard at the pieces of red cap next to her as Sio leaned down to remove his contacts. She didn't like admitting to herself, how much she wanted to see what he went out of his way to conceal. The desire was sick and invasive.

Sio straightened and went to flick the two translucent gray disks dwarfed in his palm onto the ground. The resulting electric spike of panic cleared the cobwebs and propelled Tian into action. She switched the gun to her left and caught the disks as they slid in wet tracks down his skin. Power radiated from their contact, spreading outward in sharp metallic lines of fire. The red cap balked, breaking contact and dragging the elongated mess of its face behind its retreating form.

"Keep them," she said. The deep hurt her words had inadvertently generated flowed through the point of contact between them, squeezing her chest until it ached and she couldn't breathe. That was not supposed to be able to happen. It took her two attempts to speak.

"It's not safe to leave pieces of yourself around."

Tian didn't break contact, didn't want to, and didn't know if she could. Sio looked at her and she had to wonder if he could feel her response to him in the same way.

The Slaugh hollow shifted and rearranged itself with a loud echo, but all she could see was him. The earth bucked under the force of the wild energy between them. Sio's eyes were inhuman and mesmerizing, a luminous pale color she couldn't quite make out in the red light, rimmed with a shockingly contradictory thin black line that matched his pupils. The sound of her own heartbeat drowned her voice.

"You're beautiful."

She hadn't meant to say that. The raw aftershocks ricocheting through Sio's system made the ache in her chest unbearable; scared her more than the red cap had.

"What's happening?" Loren asked around a sick wet cough.

"What a valid question." The dry maturity to the phrasing was at odds with the voice that had rendered the statement.

Tian let go of Sio's hand in the futile hope that nothing had noticed the spark simmering between them. The tiny bee sting electric currents continued to trace lovers' patterns over her skin. She fought back a shudder and looked around.

They were standing on a platform of worn bones. The remains had been stripped bare; interlaced in dizzying artful patterns inside of an ancient stone megalith. The power of the place thrummed against the residual energy in the air. The Slaugh were everywhere, draped against the tall menhirs, crouching on top, and lurking in the black beyond. The sheer number of them was suffocating.

"Don't say something unless you've been addressed," she said loud enough for the men next to her to hear. "And don't make any promises...In fact, don't say anything."

The Slaugh Lord Augustine stood ram rod straight where he was dwarfed by a thick tangle of vines that reached from a shadowed pit like the wooden flames of a fire. The black orbs of his eyes burned with interest as he regarded them. They'd managed to startle Faerie's oldest nightmares who also happened to be the last vestiges of the wild hunt. Startling the Slaugh had never played out well.

The long legged fae that had unfurled itself from the shadows of the bar scuttled over to Augustine. All four of its knees bent at separate intervals, causing the thick black stitches to gape and bulge under the pressure. It shot them wary glances as it made a valiant attempt to shield the collection of vines with its gangly limbs and emaciated torso.

"They don't smell like food, Auggie," it hissed through pointed teeth. It cocked its head to the side in a delicate gesture. Tian swallowed, willing the moisture to return to her mouth. Her hands were shaking, though to be honest she wasn't sure which of the night's events had rattled her the most. She balled them into fists at her sides and started talking before she lost her nerve.

"We were brought here. It was not our wish, nor was it our intent to intrude on your domain without invitation."

"And yet here you are." Black eyes bored into her. Nameless terrors shifted in the darkness outside of the circle, hiding from the soft illumination emanating from the remains of the dead. The air grew colder and soft scraping noises rustled the darkness.

"No, no, no, you silly git. They's food, yeah, but they's also faerie. Ask dembo what squiggy types of fae they be, luv muppet. Sick the big chacka on them if they don't tell out wif it right quick." The shrill voice that cut through the stillness was grating and unmistakable.

Tian forced down a curse. The crackling sing song belonged to a night hag, and there was never just one night hag anywhere. They traveled in packs, preferring stolen flesh to their own skin, and parading around in the decaying corpses of young children until the bodies rotted and they were forced to jump ship.

Tian didn't answer the hag's question. The lot of them had a violent aversion to being spoken to by adults, regardless of how many centuries they'd been alive. She waited to be addressed. The rest of the Slaugh shifted in anticipation.

"You could be food. We find we are rarely opposed to the notion or the practice of cannibalism," Augustine began. His mouth curled back up into that awkward leer. "Before you become dinner, however, there seems to be some speculation as to what lineage of Faerie you hail from. If you would be so kind as to alleviate further questions by supplying the requisite information, we would be happy to repay the favor by making your deaths as painless as possible under the circumstance."

"You've got to be shitting me," Sio said.

Tian shot him what she hoped was a dark look, though it lingered too long for comfort.

"Sado pontsy little wanker, you. Wants to show off. Fancy talkin fer the bigguns. Silly turtle, whot's so great bout em anyway?" another hag piped up from the opposite side of the darkness.

Irritation slid across Augustine's face. His peeling skin sloughed faster, exposing embarrassed bloating purple patches of muscle while the teeth jutting out from the side of his puss caused him to resemble a blow fish. For a moment the interaction struck Tian as odd, as if the Slaugh were more lost than they had interest in letting on. As quickly as the feeling came on it dissipated, leaving only wariness in its wake. Pissed off and hungry was a less than desirable combination. No one on her plot of circle spoke.

"Tickey, tickey, tickey muppy kins. Whot's it shines down ear maybe can't be seein' it's way clear," the hag's voice had jumped again, but another one like it joined the first from across the circle.

"You know little cranial minsky, you ain't never done no pontificatin' to we's down ear like you be doin' to those gratinoose biggers. Makes we's all wubsy bums galled out in plontz tinkers. You's runnin' around makin' the do in your knickers every time we get to jonesing for a snuggly bump. Ain't no fair you's always hoggin' the bestest toys. The pretty ones. We's pretty. No playing with the food ain't no fair at all. Go frip your painless, muppet. We's not playin' that game."

Augustine closed his eyes with a long suffering expression. "Someone be so kind as to tell the shrews that I have been attempting to glean the answer to the question that was so poorly posed at the beginning of our conversation. Unfortunately, their incessant yammering is hampering the process."

None of the slaugh responded.

"I'll fucking tell them," Loren said from his position on the floor next to Sio's foot.
He gripped the handle of the Springfield harder.

"What is this place?" Sio asked.

Augustine's dark eyes snapped open. "You and your female
brought
us to this place. Do not speak as if our pain is not a palpable force here; as if you did not know that the beating heart has been lost to us for over a century. I will only ask once more. What. Are.You?" Augustine's childlike voice had grown louder, deeper, and older.

"It hasn't been determined what he is," Tian said. She licked her lips and fought the urge to reach out and run her hand against Sio's chest for comfort. "There has been no intentional attempt on our part to deceive the Slaugh specifically. If this Nemed has been lost to Faerie, then its discovery should be considered a gift. Do you not find it so?"