Sacrifice (26 page)
Authors: John Everson
To: TedIsTooCool
Thursday, 3:05 P.M.
Hi sweetie! Just wanted to let you know that I’ve managed to find my way through 100 miles of winding back roads and
voila
…here I am! I got a room in town, and am looking forward to meeting you and your sister. I’ve got a very old book on demons that I think you’ll be really interested to see. I know how you’ve enjoyed that old journal you found beneath the lighthouse.
Speaking of the light house, it seemed to me that the place you described with the blue crystals in the wall, where you found the journal, would be the perfect place for us to hold the ritual. That’s the same place where the demon possessed your sister a few weeks ago, isn’t it? I’m going to try to swing by there sometime tomorrow so that I can check it out.
How about if you meet me there with her on Saturday night? Just tell me what time, and I’ll be waiting!
Bloody Kisses, Baby!
Yours in Dark Arts,
Ariana
Fr: TedIsTooCool
Friday, 8:15 A.M.
Hi Ariana!
Just wanted to let you know that I got your message. I’m so happy that you’ve finally gotten to Terrel. I can’t wait to meet you! The blue crystal room is a perfect idea for the ritual. It also gives me a great excuse for dragging Cindy to meet you. I’ll just tell her that I’m going to the caves to return the book, because it’s like, a historical trea sure or something and should stay where it was. She won’t want me to go alone, so she’ll come with.
How about you meet us there around 7 P.M.? Mom always has dinner on the weekends around 5:30 or 6, and I’ll tell Cindy right before dinner that I’m going up there afterwards.
And if she doesn’t want to come, I’ll just knock her over the head and drag her ROTFLMAO!
See you Saturday!
Dreaming of Naked Curburide!
Ted
To: TedIsTooCool
Friday, 11:05 A.M.
Hi Sweetie!
Can’t wait to see you tomorrow. And if you have to knock Cindy over the head to bring her to the caves, make sure you don’t hurt her too bad. She’s useless to the ritual if she’s already dead, you know! LOL
Bloody Kisses, Baby!
Yours in Dark Arts,
Ariana
Friday
It was strange to drive down Main Street again. Everything seemed smaller than it had before…and yet he’d only been gone a couple of weeks. It seemed like a lifetime. Joe had left Terrel after his relationship with Cindy had soured; she didn’t trust him somehow, once Joe had forbidden Malachai from talking with her privately. The demon was dangerous, and God knew what the creature would have whispered in her ear if he’d allowed it.
Likewise, Angelica had grown more withdrawn as the weeks passed after Joe rescued her from the bowels of Terrel’s Peak. Malachai had raped her by possessing an ambitious spelunker, and then had tried to force first the caver, and then Joe to rape Cindy, so that a child could be conceived to forge a “new covenant” and thus give the demon a human foothold to stay in this realm.
Instead, Joe had “called” the demon by its true name, and bonded it to himself. While this gave the creature its foothold, it did not give it the upper hand it would have had with a child. Joe thought Malachai was simply biding his time, waiting for a way to turn the tables on Joe so that the demon could get what it wanted, while technically abiding by the covenant. The demon’s pretension of neutrality was easily seen through by Joe, but he still wasn’t sure what to make of the demon’s poorly hidden interest in stopping the Curburide from gaining access to the earth again. Perhaps the demon feared his old enemies. The whole reason Broderick Terrel had called the creature to this realm in the first place was to stop the Curburide. Joe laughed to himself. Maybe Malachai was scared shitless that the Curburide would kick his ethereal ass if they were allowed some power in this realm.
He’d stopped at the newspaper yesterday and rifled through recent issues to see if the paper had covered any strange events over the past week, that might give him a clue as to the Sunday Slasher’s whereabouts.
Randy, the editor, had been shocked to see him at first, and then smug, assuming he wanted his old job back. But when Joe told him he just wanted to catch up, Randy had pointed to the morgue and given him free reign. “Read up,” he’d said. Joe had hit up the vending machine for his usual fix of Fritos, but hadn’t found a thing in the papers unusual. A high school performance of
Hamlet
, a Woman’s Club bake sale, some library board assessment news and a two-car accident on the corner of Main and Second were the stories of the week.
So today he was pulling into the driveway of a house he’d been sure he’d never see again. readings by angelica, the sign out front read. He took a deep breath when he got out of the car, and walked up the weedy path to the front door. It opened as he raised a hand to knock.
“I was wondering when you’d get here,” Angelica Napalona said. She wore a purple cape today, covered with sigils of moon and stars and skulls.
“Nice trick,” Joe laughed, stepping inside. “Did you have a motion sensor installed to let you know when someone’s in the driveway?”
Angelica crossed her arms and looked hurt. “No hug, no kiss, no ‘How have you been Angie, I’ve missed you,’” she said, turning up her bottom lip.
He held out his arms for a hug, and she bent forward to “allow” him to give her one. She didn’t squeeze back.
“Oh c’mon,” he said, “I have missed you.”
With that she gave him a squeeze, and led him into the sitting room.
“You haven’t missed me or Cindy too bad,” she said pointedly. “Who’s the redhead?”
Joe opened his mouth to say something smart, and then thought better of it. “She doesn’t have red hair.”
“Sure she does,” Angelica said, setting up her crystal ball in the center of the table and placing it directly between them. “She’s just dyed it black.”
A quiver went through Joe’s stomach. Malachai had given Angelica the gift of sight when she was 18, as part of his covenant with her and her friends. In return, she had pledged to give up her first born, Cindy, at 18. Her refusal to sacrifice Cindy had led to Joe’s involvement in stopping the demon from killing them both. But Angelica had never flaunted the full measure of her gift to him before. Or perhaps she had never used it as much before.
“Been practicing your art lately?” he asked.
She didn’t smile. “Been waking up every night at three a.m. Sometimes I’ve seen you, and your little punk friend, wandering around in the mountains, or in San Francisco, or some other city.”
“And other times?”
“Other times I’ve seen a skinny girl in a black latex suit carving up innocent guys with razors, and then fucking their corpses on the floor. I’m not really sure which is the more frustrating thing to see.”
“You saying you miss me?”
She got up from the table and crossed to the window. Pulled the shade. “This is big, Joe. Something really awful is coming, I can feel it. Has Malachai told you anything? Who is this pretty little witch girl you’re road-tripping with? Where is she now?”
“Hmmm…so the crystal ball and dreams don’t tell you everything, huh?”
“Joe, I’m serious. Why are you back here?”
“Alex, my little witch girl as you so perfectly call her, is back at my apartment. And you’re right, something big is coming. Malachai managed to sucker me into helping Alex when she was in trouble, so that both of us could end up helping Malachai.”
“Why would you want to help Malachai do anything?”
Joe laughed. “Exactly. But here’s the rub. He wants us to stop the Sunday Slasher from performing another sacrifice. Have you heard of her?”
“The serial killer?”
Joe nodded. “The whole point of the Sunday slashings is to offer sacrifices to open the door for the Curburide to come through to our realm. If she performs enough of them, the Curburide will be free to fuck with us all.”
Angelica put a hand to her mouth. “I knew it,” she whispered. “I knew it would never be over.”
She walked across the room, turning her back to him. “Why are you here?” she asked finally.
“Because according to a dead guy I met in an Austin hotel room, the final sacrifice is going to take place in Terrel, tomorrow night. I was hoping, with that sixth sense Malachai gave you, that you might have felt something that would help us track down the killer, before she strikes.”
Angelica’s head nodded slowly. When she turned, her eyes glistened with brimming tears.
“It’s the cliff again, Joe,” she whispered, eyes growing weepy and wide. “I’ve seen you there, in the blue room. With blood on your face.”
“Am I alive or…never mind,” he said. “I don’t want to know.”
“Is this Alex strong? Will she be able to stop them from coming through?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But now I know where to go. I had a feeling anyway. How could this not end up being connected to the old light house, and that damned cliff?”
Joe stopped in at McColvin’s Tavern on the way home. If there was one thing about Terrel he missed, it was the homeyness of the old Irish bar. As soon as he walked through the door, he got a loud, “Hey stranger!”
He grinned and pulled a stool up to the bar next to a burly guy nursing a Killian’s.
“Hey Jill,” he said to the ‘keep. “How’s tricks?”
A pixie of a woman pulled herself up from behind the bar and planted a kiss on his mouth before slapping him on the head.
“Where you been, ya doofus?” Jill said. “We’ve missed you around here.”
“Had to take a little trip,” he said. “Just had to get away.”
“Where’d you go?” she asked, automatically pulling him a Newcastle from the tap.
Joe laughed. “Where didn’t I go? Been up to the Rocky Mountains, down to San Francisco, Austin, Texas…”
“Collecting bumper stickers for your camper or something?”
“Don’t have a camper. So I just stick ’em on my ass.”
“Nice.” She slid the beer across the bar to him. “I heard you quit the paper. Are you back here for good?”
Joe took a long pull on the mug, draining half the cool ale before wiping his mouth to answer her. “Don’t know. Haven’t decided yet. Anything been going on around here?”
“Naw,” she said. “Since you left and took all the ghosts with you…”
“Cool it.”
She flashed him a grin. “Hey, what other story is going to top yours? I guess you had to leave town. They’re never going to stop talking about you.”
“Well in that case, I’m definitely not sticking around,” he said, and stood to leave. “Just wanted to check in, see if anything was up.”
“You want another?” she offered, as he stood and chugged three more gulps of beer.
“Not now. Got some stuff to do today. But I’ll be back.”
“I’ll be here!”
Joe admired her tight, lithe form and frowned inwardly as he waved goodbye.
Not if the Curburide come you won’t,
he said silently.
Jeremy Bruford looked up from his Killian’s and watched the bar door close.
“Popular guy,” he observed aloud. “Who is he?”
“Oh that’s Joe Kieran,” Jill said. “He used to be a reporter here for the
Times.
Over the summer he covered a story about suicides up on the haunted cliff. He ended up working some kind of spell and…what do they call it…he
exorcised
the demon or something like that.”
“Did he now?” Jeremy said, scratching the stubble on his chin. “And he’s just back in town?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sounds like he’s been getting around. I mean, from the mountains to San Francisco to Austin. He’s been gone close to a month, I think.”
Jeremy nodded, and sipped his beer in silence. But inside, his stomach turned cold.
Saturday
“So this is the place huh?” Alex picked her way carefully around the broken rubble that was all that remained of the ancient light house.
“This is it. Could use a coat of paint, huh?”
“That and four walls, and you’d really have something.”
“Hmm. Stairway’s over here.”
He led her between the boulders and broken beams to a half-obscured pit. Without hesitation, he stepped backwards into the darkness, and found a step. Then his body disappeared another foot, and he pulled the flashlight from his backpack. Suddenly Alex could see the narrow steps, disappearing beyond the reach of the light.
“Lead on,” she said, and stepped in to join him.
Joe waved the light back and forth as they descended the stairs and then walked down a long, narrow corridor. The terrain was continually descending, and in moments the tiny light behind them from the opening above disappeared from view.
“Why is this here?” Alex whispered.
“It’s a natural series of caves,” he said. They built a lighthouse above them, probably in the late 1800s, and the stairs gave the lighthouse keeper a safe escape during a bad storm. He could slip into the solid stone beneath the tower and hide. Probably stored spare supplies and stuff down here, too.”
“Hell of a basement,” she murmured, pushing a spiderweb out of her face in disgust.
“Feel at home, Malachai?” Joe said aloud.
It’s nothing I ever wanted to see again,
the demon said.
“The last light house keeper basically imprisoned Malachai here, is that it?” Alex asked.
Like a genie in a bottle.
“Very big bottle though,” Joe added.
Still a prison.
“Ahhh,” Joe said, as they walked towards an opening in the corridor. “Here’s the real deal.”
They stepped out into an open chamber, and Joe kept the flashlight pointed at the floor. “Are you ready for some fireworks?”
“Always.”
“Watch this.”
He moved the flashlight up to catch the nearest wall, which shimmered and sparkled aqua blue in the dull light. Then he moved the flashlight all around them in a circle, and it was like an explosion of blue fairy dust. Everywhere the flash hit, the light prismed in a rainbow of icy color that almost hurt the eyes to look at.
Alex gasped. “It’s beautiful.”
Then he pointed the flash at the oblong slab of rock in the center of the room. Its base was also covered in blue crystals.
“Beautiful and deadly,” he said. “That’s where Cindy almost died. And where Malachai became my best friend.”
I’m forever in your debt, master.
The demon didn’t say
master
very convincingly.
“What’s through those?” Alex asked, pointing to a couple open doorways leading out of the chamber.
He led them to the one closest. “This one is kind of a writing nook. I think the old lighthouse keeper used to come down here at night to put his thoughts down. Maybe so the spirits above couldn’t see?”
Joe pointed at a small ledge inset in a tight alcove of gray limestone. “But someone’s been here since the last time I was here.”
“How do you know?”
“The old man’s book is gone. I left it right there, where I found it.”
They stepped back out of the room and into the chamber.
“And that one?” Alex pointed to another dark exit.
“That leads to a river that flows through the cliff, and to another cave that opens out onto the beach you saw when we drove up.”
“Cool!” she said. “Shall we go skinny dipping?”
He laughed. “Not here. Too many dead bodies have been floating in that water for my taste. Anyway, you had your chance in Austin.”
“Yeah well, so did you and you said no then, too. And you still want to do it, don’t you?” She put her arms around him and looked up into his eyes. His face was all in shadow, but she could see the tension there as he leaned down to kiss her, quickly, on the mouth.
“Yeah,” he said. “I still want to. And hopefully after whatever happens to night, you’ll still want me, too.”
“I’ll always want you, Joe.”
“Hope so,” he said, as his heart skipped a beat. “Let’s get out of here for now. This place gives me the creeps.”
Jeremy hit the gas as they rounded the turn that would take them out of town and up to the top of the cliff. They’d scouted the area the day before, and now planned to hole up in the cave below until Ted and Cindy showed up later this evening.
“So what do we do if the kid doesn’t show?” he asked.
“He’ll show,” she said. “He’s a hard-up, perverted little punk. We’ll do him first. I need two sacrifices to night to complete the ritual.”
“Okay, but seriously. What if he chickens out?”
“Then it’s going to get a lot messier. We’ll have to make a house call.”
“You know where he lives?”
“Let’s just say that in his past e-mails, he hasn’t exactly been circumspect about himself. And this ain’t exactly the big city. We’ll find him.”
A police siren sounded behind them.
“Oh shit,” Jeremy said, seeing the red and blue lights in his rearview mirror.
“You speeding?”
“A little. What do we do?”
“They’ve already run the plates,” she said. “Pull over and see where it goes.”
Jeremy edged the car off onto the gravel and the squad pulled up behind them. A big Southern-looking cop—complete with silver hair and matching shades—walked up to the driver side window. His name tag read swartzky.
“You wanna be careful on these roads,” the officer said in a voice soft as a whisper, but still heavy as lead. “Dangerous curves to be speeding on. License?”
Jeremy looked at Ariana, who shrugged. He pulled out his wallet and handed the card over.
When the cop walked back to his car, Jeremy clenched his hands on the wheel. “What do we do?” he hissed. “By now they’re looking for me. If he runs that number…”
Ariana frowned. “I didn’t think of that. What’d you give it to him for then? Shit.”
She opened her door and stepped out onto the gravel. “Officer?” she called. The cop was just easing his bulk into his squad and reaching for his radio. He stopped, and stood up, hands on the car door.
She started walking towards him with her hands out. “Officer, I think there’s been a mistake.” She shimmied as much as she could, trying to draw his eye so that he didn’t think about the fact that a routine traffic stop was growing into more.
“I was pushing Jer to go faster…my mama’s real sick and I want to get home to take care of her. I’m so afraid she’s gonna pass before we make it. Please don’t give him a ticket, it’s really not his fault.”
She’d gotten to the grill of his car.
“Where’s your mama live?” the cop asked, suspicious, but drawn into her story.
“She’s outside of Savannah,” she said, stepping right up to the door to face him. “I know we were going a little fast, but it’s really not Jer’s fault. He agreed to drive me all this way and I’ve been pushing him to get us there faster. I just can’t let him get a ticket. He’s had a bad time of it and…well…he just can’t afford this ticket on his record. He’s cleaned up his act over the past few months. But this would kill him.”
She made a show of wringing her hands, and then stuffed them both in her back jeans pockets to lean forward, making sure he saw the shift of cleavage in the V of her T-shirt. Swartzky nodded, and held the license up. “I tell you what,” he said. “I’ll write you up a warning, not a ticket. Now you go back to your car, ma’am, and I’ll be right there. I still will have to run this license.”
It wasn’t the best of possible positions to be in, but Ariana knew she had no choice. She threw herself forward pushing the door against him to pin him between the window frame and the car roof, and pulled a razor from her back pocket. In a heartbeat she held the blade at his throat, cutting in enough that he could feel the pain. Blood welled up instantly as she hissed, “I’d prefer it if you’d just let us be on our way now.”
He pushed back, using the door to punch her aside, but she stabbed with the blade as she fell away, opening a three-inch gash from his throat to his chin. Swartzky bellowed at the pain, and clapped a hand to the wound as Ariana hit the ground on her ass, and used the fall to reposition herself. She rolled to the right and came around the squad door, gasping as her ribs made contact with the hard ground. The cop was coming around the door to meet her. He pulled his gun, but she slashed at his leg with the razor, shredding the blue uniform trousers and digging deep into the flesh of his calf.
Ariana leapt to her feet and came up on his side, wrapping an arm around his neck even as he began to crumple from the pain in his leg. He’d gotten the gun out, but didn’t have a shot as she danced behind him, once again connecting the cool edge of the razor to the soft skin of his neck.
“Drop it now,” she said. “Or I’ll open you up all the way.”
He did.
Jeremy had seen what was going on from inside the car and ran to Ariana’s aid.
“Get the gun,” she said, as he arrived. Jeremy trained the barrel on the cop as soon as it was in his hand.
“We’re in the open,” Jeremy said.
“I know. Let’s fix that. Take him to the other side of the car and make him lie down. On his belly.”
“Do it,” Jeremy commanded, and the cop began to hobble around the front hood. The back of his pant leg was already drenched and dark.
“You would have gotten a warning,” Swartzky said. “Now you’re going to jail.”
“We’re not going to get anything, old man. Lay down and shut up. Hands on your back where I can see ’em.”
Ariana came back from their car with a roll of wire. She knelt at the cop’s side and wound the wire tightly around his wrists. Then she snaked the ends up his arm, away from his fingers, and twisted them together round and round and round again.
“Get up,” she demanded. She took the gun from Jeremy and pointed towards their car. “Backseat. Now.” Then to Jeremy she said, “Find a way to turn those damn bubblegum lights off, put the car in gear, and send it downhill into the trees here. Make sure it’s out of sight from the road.”
“This is not starting out well,” he murmured. Ariana and the cop walked away and Jeremy slid into the driver seat of the Terrel police car. When he flipped the sun visor down to block the glare, a piece of paper caught his eye. It had the number of the squad, and a name on it. “Police Chief Harry Swartzky.”
His stomach churned. “And it just gets better,” he said, and drove the car off the road.