Dark Time: Mortal Path (6 page)

The figure relentlessly approached. Steam rose from the snow melt that rushed down the mountain and the tundra blackened in a widening area.

He stopped far enough away that the shimmering heat around him just touched Susannah’s body. She sank rapidly into the snow as it turned into water.

Slave, why do you call me?

The thought sliced into her head with the force of an axe blade, dispelling her rambling thoughts.

Susannah had felt no pull into the Midworld. Another wave of terror swept through her at the thought that Rabishu could enter her world. It was one constant she had been able to count on through the centuries: Rabishu in his place, she in hers.

“Am I still in the Great Above?”

Yes.

His clipped answer did not offer an explanation, as she was hoping. Instead a surge of heat flowed toward her, making his annoyance unmistakable.

“How can this be?”

You called me. You invited me into the World Above and I can remain for a short time. The rules of
Anu permit it.

“I’ve never seen you like this before.”

Ignorant slave! Your perceptions are easy to fool. I can appear as I desire. I ask again, why did you
call me?

Faced with Rabishu’s anger and the heart-stopping image of him in her own world, her resolve had retreated. She dug down deeply for it.

“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Rabishu probed her mind, prowling through her experiences, laying open her desires.

So you want to die.

Before Susannah could answer, the melted water at her feet sprang up in front of her and formed a smooth surface. It was in such a surface that she’d first seen her contract so many years ago. This one, though, was filled with a uniform reddish glow, lit from within by Rabishu’s fiery presence, and it was reflective. She could see herself in the mirror.

Her face and body were as they had been for centuries. Then her youthful vigor began to drain away, her faultless skin became etched with wrinkles that were fine at first, but deepened and spread as she 19 z 138

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watched. Her hair went from thick and black to gray, then patches fell out and the remainder hung in lifeless, wiry hanks from her scalp. In the reflection, her clothes dropped away so that she could see her body stooped over with the weight of the accumulated years. Her limbs became bony, her ribs protruded, and fissures opened in her skin, letting loose a thick liquid of decay.

As she watched, her reflected body slumped to the ground, writhed with its last weak life force, and fell quiet.

Susannah was shaken, but when she thought about it, the horrid scene was only a continuation of what she felt had already begun—the rotting of her body from the inside.

“I…I accept this,” she said, choking out the words. She held her breath, waiting for the process she’d been shown to begin. Instead Rabishu’s words penetrated her mind again.

Then let me show you what awaits after you die.

R
abishu approached her, drawing her into the sphere around him.

She inhaled sharply, expecting her flesh to be set afire. Her body grew hotter, but didn’t burst into flames as she had feared. Rabishu reached out and clutched her shoulder with his claws, piercing her skin and then squeezing until the claws met within her body like a pincer. She was as helpless in his grasp as a hooked fish.

She felt the familiar tug into Midworld, and was dismayed that it didn’t stop there.

He’s taking me to the Underworld!

Suddenly the powerful claws let her go. Her ears were assaulted with shrieks of pain and fear, and in a moment she realized some of those shrieks were hers. She clamped her mouth shut and bit her lip to keep from opening it. Around her were rows of cages, stacked atop one another higher than she could see and vanishing into the distance. Each cage was made of cross-hatched wire and was long enough for a human to lie down. There was some room above each supine body, but not enough to sit up fully.

Her eyes flitted from cage to cage. In them was more horror than her brain could absorb.

Men tried desperately to hold their bodies together as limbs flew off and their abdomens unzipped.

For some, the cage relentlessly collapsed on them, pressing their flesh like ripe fruit through a strainer.

Women had their skin slowly peeled off by an invisible hand. And then the torment started all over, the same or some new form, countless different ways. The despair of tortured minds and bodies assaulted her from all sides.

Suddenly she was swept up and deposited in an open cage. The door clanged shut. She screamed, her heart and lungs nearly bursting with the effort, as the ceiling began descending toward her. Lower and lower it came, so slowly, as she struggled with mindless fear. The ceiling pressed her against the sharp wires on the bottom of the cage, and she felt the wires digging in, then her skin breaking in hundreds of places from her feet to her head. Unable to breathe with the pressure on her chest, she felt her flesh beginning to bulge through the wires beneath her….

Then she was flung back onto the mountainside in the Great Above, rolling, rolling in snow, unable to stop. She tumbled over the edge of a cliff and managed to grasp the edge before falling. Hanging by her fingertips with her mind in shock, her body drew on primal reflexes and slowly pulled her up. She clawed her way back from the cliff’s edge and collapsed. The heat she’d carried with her from the Underground melted the snow below her body. She sank into it, creating a shaft that gave her a narrow view of the sky.

She’d never been happier to see the stars.

2009-08-25 02:50

S
usannah Layhem, demon’s assassin, was in Houston in a home that had seen better furniture but not more love.

In the master bedroom, homeowners Ellen and Glenn Morgan lay slumped, unconscious, in their bed.

Susannah had used a drug—a little needle prick on their arms and the two were out before the fear and outrage that their home had been invaded could envelope them.

The full moon’s light came through the master-bedroom window, bright enough to cast a shadow as Susannah moved. There was a mirror over the wife’s dresser, and as Susannah passed it, she saw a startling vision: herself. The process of physical decay that she’d noticed earlier now seemed more advanced. She paused, studying her reflection. Her face appeared gaunt, her hair limply hanging around it, her lips thin. Her expression was slack-jawed and her eyes didn’t pick up the moonlight—they were flat and unfeeling.

My face isn’t even visible, or my hair. I know that. I know it. My face is covered.

It was her hands that startled Susannah the most. Although she was wearing gloves, the view in the mirror showed bare hands, wrinkled, with small protrusions…

She leaned in closer.

Oh no, it can’t be. Claws!

She pulled back from the mirror in shock and looked directly down at her hands. Black gloves, only gloves.

Which is the real me?

Her shoulder throbbed where Rabishu had pinched her through and through with his claws. An unwanted memory arose of the feeling of his claws brushing against her shoulder blade, sliding off, meeting inside her flesh with a soft
snick
…She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. In the mirror were small, pointed claws extending about half an inch from the ends of her fingers. As she watched, mesmerized, her reflection shimmered, and there she was, as young and beautiful as she had been on her wedding night with Nathan.

Damn Rabishu! He’s toying with me, damn him! Or I’m insane.

She whirled away from the mirror in despair. She had a job to do.

Susannah sat in a rocking chair in the room across the hall from the master bedroom. On a small dresser to her left, a lamp glowed with a soft yellow light. It had a shade that cast patterns of moons and stars on the wall, and across her body.

Dressed in her killing outfit, she held a baby girl in her arms, a knife poised at her throat.

Three-month-old Candice Morgan was her target tonight, the first one she’d had since her time in the Underworld a couple of months ago. For reasons known only to the demon, this baby was marked for death, and Susannah was the instrument of his will.

She’d been unwilling to hold Lucy’s baby after delivering it in the Loon Lake cottage, but this time, she’d had no choice but to take the baby, so full of warmth and life, into her arms.

Rabishu was testing her, punishing her, or both. To her shame, the experience in the cage had suppressed her resolve to stand up to him. Fragments of her Underworld experience replayed in waking visions, leaving her breathless and trembling. The frequency of those experiences was decreasing, and she hoped they would end.

The longer I go on obeying Rabishu, the less he will feel the need to remind me of his power over
me.

Her life had changed dramatically. She kept to herself, took no lovers, traveled to no museums, drank in no raucous pubs. She lived in a cycle of fear: actively having visions, then waiting for the visions to begin again. Exercise invigorated her and gave her a glimpse of her old life, so she kept to a punishing regimen, pushing her endurance to the utmost.

Susannah was resigned to her fate. She would remain an Ageless slave, a killer with a dead heart, a woman with marginal belief in her own sanity.

The room smelled of baby powder and freshly laundered clothing. Candy chortled softly and waved her hands at the moving shapes on the wall. She’d awakened at Susannah’s touch, but instead of crying, she’d lifted her chubby baby arms to be picked up, somehow trusting that the Black Ghost meant her no harm. There was no telling how Susannah appeared to the baby, if Rabishu was creating an outward appearance for her. Perhaps she looked like Candy’s mother, to instill trust until the knife bit.

Why her? To make her parents suffer, break up their marriage? Or as the girl grows, will she do
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something that threatens another of Rabishu’s plans? Somewhere down the line, perhaps generations
from now, things will be very different because this baby died tonight. The amount of pain and anguish
in the world will increase by just that much—a baby’s death magnified over the years.

She’d followed the lives of Lucy and her son John Henry Sawyer II, named J. H. to honor his father’s memory. Lucy did her best for the boy. She was a rock-solid support for her son and made sure he knew what kind of man his father was. She saw him through college and cried at his wedding. With her son settled into adult life, she spent a few days at the house on Loon Lake and quietly hung herself.

Chalk up another one for Rabishu, and for me.

It was the first time Susannah had followed through, tracking the effects of one assassination through the years. It was also the last time, since the experience tore at her heart.

The tip of the knife pressed into Candy’s throat, drawing a drop of blood that ran down her neck and soaked into the fabric of her clothing. Candy’s face screwed up, her mouth forming a silent O at her betrayal. Silent only for a moment, until a scream erupted, one that her loving parents couldn’t respond to, couldn’t even hear.

For all I know, this baby was picked at random. There’s no plan, no reason except to spur on grief.

Rabishu once said: I am a demon beholden to Nergal, Lord of the Underworld, god of glorious
destruction and plague.

Her cheeks burned with shame. She was glorious destruction, personified.

I could end it. Never take another life.

To end it would be ridiculously easy. All she would have to do was kill herself in such a manner for which her rapid healing couldn’t compensate, and she’d had plenty of time to think about how an Ageless slave could accomplish that. If she put some distance between her torso and her head, not even rapid healing could bridge the gap. She dreamed about it, focusing on those moments of relief before the blade bit into her neck and freed her from killing, and didn’t dwell on the promised aftermath.

The baby’s body trembled and her pulse quivered under Susannah’s hands, a rapid beat that reminded her of the clean rhythm of her feet as she ran. She held the knife perfectly still and subdued the baby’s movement with her great strength, like a mother crocodile carrying her young in her jaws.

Do it!

She played out the scene in her mind, the familiar slickness of blood on her hands, the silenced crying, the dull eyes of death, the limp body across her lap. The room that no longer smelled baby fresh.

The parents waking but thinking they were still in a nightmare. The little girl who didn’t grow up.

I was a healer once. A woman who helped the sick and injured, a woman who carried life within me,
and this is what I’ve become: a killer of babies.

Gazing down at Candy, she let the focus of her eyes relax, looking beyond the baby, letting her aura come into focus. There it was: a wide, undulating, red outline, strong and clear, limned in bright yellow.

Candy was a natural healer.

A nurse, a doctor, a psychologist, someone who cares for others. I’m snuffing out the life of…of
myself, as I used to be.

The irony of it made her close her eyes and moan. The baby struggled a little in her lap, but Susannah kept a firm hand on her. This time it was the knife in Susannah’s grip that trembled.

The baby suddenly quieted. Susannah’s eyes snapped open, fearing that she’d killed the baby with her now-abhorrent strength.

Lying across her lap was no three-month-old, fair-haired baby.

It was Constanta, her newborn, and very much alive.

Susannah almost leaped up in shock, almost dumped the baby off her lap. With great effort, she held still, her eyes devouring the baby she’d never seen alive. Wrinkled and red like most newborns, she was the most beautiful sight Susannah had seen. Her heart jumped through time and the barrier of death to bond with her baby girl.