Lord of the feast, p.17
Lord of the Feast, page 17
“Do you have one of the parts?” Kate asked. “Tressa said you did.”
Reyna and Weston exchanged a glance.
“We each got one: the right leg and the right arm,” Reyna said. “We keep them together in a storage unit we rented.”
“Nothing personal,” Kate said, “but a storage unit doesn’t sound like the most secure place to keep two pieces of a god.”
“Did you see the mystic symbols on the walls when you came in? Those aren’t for decoration. They’re wardspells designed to prevent anyone from entering the bar, and I activate them every night after we close.” She smiled. “I may not be as skilled or strong in magic as Tressa and Caprice, but I know a few tricks, and I used them to protect the storage unit as well. No one can get in unless they have the key.”
Reyna reached into her shirt and lifted out a key attached to a black string around her neck. She held it up, and Kate felt a small twinge of pain in her head, a response, she assumed, to the magic the key possessed. Had she inherited some of Tressa’s mystical ability, enough to allow her to sense the presence of magical power? Maybe.
Reyna tucked the key into her shirt once more, and when it was out of sight, the pain in Kate’s head went away.
“So what do we do now?” Lee said. “Go get the arm and leg?” They shook their head. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Tressa told me to gather the body parts,” Kate said.
“I understand that,” Reyna said, “and I have the deepest respect for Tressa’s abilities. But I don’t see how the parts would be safer with you than where they are now. No offense.”
Kate didn’t blame her cousin for feeling this way. She had no special mystic training, and it had been years since the two of them had seen each other. Why would Reyna agree to give her the arm and leg? How could she hope to protect them from Ethan? In truth, she had no idea how she could do that, let alone know what she was ultimately supposed to do with the parts she managed to collect. Tressa said they couldn’t be destroyed, and that meant the best Kate could do was hide them. Maybe Reyna’s storage unit would be the best place for them. Reyna had said it was magically warded, and it already had two body parts inside. If they put the eyes in there as well, Ethan wouldn’t be able to get at any of them. Kate didn’t need to collect all the Lord’s body parts. She just needed to ensure that Caprice couldn’t obtain the complete set. Even if one part was missing – let alone three – she couldn’t resurrect the Lord.
She was about to tell Reyna her thoughts when she was interrupted by the crack of a gunshot followed by screams – some of fear, some of fury – coming from the bar.
* * *
Haksaw was having trouble catching his breath, and his legs felt like they were full of pins and needles. He’d been running – or at least jogging – since fleeing the apartment building, and he hadn’t paused to rest once. He’d had no destination in mind when he’d started, had only wanted to get his love to safety. But as he pushed the shopping cart into the parking lot of High Strangeness, he knew that the torso had guided him here. He wasn’t sure why, but that wasn’t important. He trusted his love completely, and that was all that mattered. He stopped by one of the lot’s light poles, put a hand on it to steady himself, leaned over, and gulped air. He was covered with sweat and his throat was dry as sandpaper. His pulse seemed erratic too, and he wondered if he was on the verge of a heart attack. He wasn’t a young man anymore, and he didn’t get regular exercise, unless you counted killing victims once or twice a month, and while dismembering a body could be physically challenging, it hardly took the place of cardio.
When he could breathe more or less normally again, he straightened, put his hand inside the shopping cart, and slipped it beneath the flat cardboard boxes to touch his beloved.
“What should I do now?”
He received a sensation of quiet stillness which he interpreted as meaning Wait.
So he’d wait. He could do with a rest anyway.
He sat down on the ground, back against the light pole, knees to his chest, and took hold of one of the cart’s legs to keep it from rolling away. He closed his eyes and smiled contentedly. He wasn’t concerned about what might happen next. The torso would provide.
It always did.
* * *
“This is embarrassing. Not to mention painful,” Mrs. No said.
Mr. Yes drove their gun-metal gray Mercedes Benz while Mrs. No looked out the open passenger window, her hair blowing in the breeze. Yes thought she never looked so beautiful than when she was angry. No’s left hand rested on the seat next to her, a towel wrapped around it, the white fabric slowly turning crimson.
Not only hadn’t they obtained the torso, they hadn’t even gotten a good look at Haksaw. Caprice had told them where the man lived – if you could call it living – and what he generally looked like, but her description hadn’t been much help. He looks like a bum because that’s what he is. He’s middle-aged, dirty, and smelly. What else do you need to know? More than that, as it turned out. The Cannery District had no shortage of people who fit the description Caprice had given them. They stopped and asked a few if they knew who Haksaw was and if they’d seen him go by. One woman just stared at them, and then her eyes melted and slowly ran down her cheeks like thick, viscous tears. A man they asked said he had, but rather than provide any details, his body collapsed into a mass of black flies that flew off in different directions. The Cannery District is a pain in the ass, Mrs. No had said, and Mr. Yes agreed with her.
The third person they stopped to ask had been sitting on a sidewalk next to a metal trash receptacle, slumped over, looking more like a pile of rags than a human being.
Do you mind if we ask you a quick question? No had said.
The being – it was impossible to determine a gender – rose to its feet and walked toward their car. It moved with lopsided, lurching motions, and Yes saw that where its face and hands should be were only folds of dirty cloth. In fact, its entire body was made of stained and blackened pieces of cloth.
It’s a Rag Man, Yes thought. He’d heard of them, but he’d never seen one before. Supposedly they lurked in plain sight, camouflaged, feeding off the negative emotions of the humans that passed by them unaware of their presence or who’d simply mistaken them for homeless people.
“Mind?” the Rag Man said. “To mind I’d have to have a brain, wouldn’t I?”
Its voice sounded incongruously beautiful given its appearance, like two bolts of the finest silk sliding slowly across each other. The Rag Man laughed then, a soft tssh-tssh-tssh sound. No ignored his joke. Yes knew she wasn’t intimidated by the creature. There was nothing in existence that could frighten her. What could possibly scare a nightmare made flesh like his wife?
“We’re looking for a man called Haksaw,” No said. “Have you seen him?”
“Yes. He passed this way only a few minutes ago. I don’t think he saw me. Most people don’t unless they look directly at me. I know where he was heading, too. He kept muttering the name of his destination under his breath as he walked, as if he feared he might otherwise forget it.”
“Tell us,” No had said. “We’ll pay you well for the information.”
The Rag Man let out another laugh. Tssh-tssh-tssh. “I have no use for money. But you are very beautiful, and I’ve enjoyed talking with you. I would like a small souvenir so that I might better remember our meeting.”
Yes started to object, but before he could get a word out, No looked at him and said, “Triple our usual fee.”
Yes kept silent.
“What do you want?” No asked.
“Hold one of your hands out the window. Either will do.”
No didn’t hesitate. She stuck her left hand through the open window. The Rag Man sprang forward, wrapped its cloth fingers around her wrist, and lunged its head toward her fingers. Yes caught a flash of sharp white teeth buried somewhere in the creature’s cloth face, and then No screamed.
The Rag Man released her wrist and stepped back. Blood now smeared the cloth where its mouth should be.
“Your pain is delicious. Haksaw is going to High Strangeness. It’s a bar, about a mile farther down the street.”
The Rag Man shuffled back to where it had been sitting and flopped down. This time it looked more like a pile of old, discarded cloth than anything remotely human. No continued holding her hand out the window, and Yes saw that the tip of her pinky was gone, and the wound was bleeding freely.
“Don’t just sit there!” she’d snapped. “Get me a towel!”
They kept a number of work supplies in their trunk, and Yes put the car in park, got out, and fetched a towel from the trunk for her. She’d wrapped it around her hand, and they continued on.
“It could’ve been worse,” Yes said now. “The Rag Man could’ve taken your entire hand.”
No gave him a withering look. “Next time we need to pay for information with flesh, it’ll be your turn to pony up.”
It wasn’t that great a loss. After all, No was right-handed and losing the tip of a pinky wouldn’t prevent her from doing her job. Her ego likely hurt more than the wound did, he suspected. No was likely furious that she’d been bested by the creature. Once they finished this job for Caprice, he wouldn’t be surprised if she insisted on hunting down the Rag Man, pouring gasoline all over it, and dropping a lit match on its head. Flame on, he thought, and smiled.
They arrived at High Strangeness soon after their encounter with the Rag Man, and Yes pulled the Benz into the parking lot. He and No weren’t strangers to the Cannery District, although they didn’t spend a great deal of time there. The Shadowers – those who moved back and forth between Shadow and the regular world – had their own methods of solving problems, many of them far worse than simple murder, and they rarely needed the services of professional assassins. Yes and No’s visits to the House of Red Tears were pretty much the extent of their connection to the Cannery District. So as the couple got out of their car and headed for the bar’s entrance, their attention was on the stranger vehicles in the lot – the orb-drawn hansom cab, the scaled motorcycle, the long, low car with multiple tiny wheels – and not on a shabbily dressed man sitting against a light pole, dozing while holding on to a shopping cart containing flattened cardboard boxes concealing a very special passenger. For that moment at least, Haksaw was as invisible as a Rag Man.
* * *
I can’t believe this, Ethan thought, but I’m actually nervous.
He was back in Oakmont, headed for High Strangeness. Although he lived in the same town as Weston and Reyna, he rarely left the House of Red Tears and so never saw them. But that was only part of the reason, wasn’t it? The truth was they disapproved of Caprice’s plan to complete the Lord’s Incarnation, and they disapproved of his being part of it. They thought Caprice had turned him into her pet killer and that she held such complete control over him that he could no longer think for himself. Weston and Reyna had told him so several years ago, which – not coincidentally – had been the last time he’d seen them. He hated to admit it, but he wanted their approval. No, he needed it. And if he couldn’t have that, then he wanted them to fear him. Best case scenario: he would be able to convince them to willingly give Caprice the body parts they were custodians of – the right leg and the right arm – and they would join him in helping their great-aunt finish her holy work. Worst case scenario: he’d have to kill them both and take the arm and leg.
And what about Kate, assuming she was still at the bar when he arrived? Reyna and Weston would surely have filled her head with lies about him. Would she even listen to anything he had to say? Or would she look at him as if he were a mindless servant of Caprice’s, a machine-like killer who dispatched humans with no more artistry than a slaughterhouse worker? Move ’em in, move ’em out, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill…. He imagined seeing the look of disgust in her eyes when she saw him, and he didn’t know if he could take it. He wasn’t in love with her or anything. He wasn’t interested in romance or sex, never had been. Besides, they were cousins. But for a time she had been his best friend, as close to him as Weston was, and in some ways maybe closer. Of all the family members that he wanted to join him in his quest to bring the Lord to life, Kate – Katie-Bug – was the one that mattered to him the most.
Looking at it another way, though, his feelings about Kate were a weakness, weren’t they? Maybe his greatest weakness. Caprice had long ago taught him what to do when he detected a weakness in himself. Large or small, it didn’t matter – you destroyed it. Maybe that’s what he needed to do in this case: kill Kate the moment he saw her, along with Weston and Reyna. If he severed his familial bonds to them, it would only make him stronger. And honestly, how hard could it be? He’d already killed his mother and one set of grandparents. They’d been good practice, but now the main event was coming up. He needed to prove to himself that he could do this, that he had become the death-dealing monster that Caprice had trained him to be.
Now that he’d made this decision, he felt much better. And if there was some small part of him that remained unsure, he pretended it didn’t exist.
As he approached High Strangeness, he saw it was busy for a late afternoon. Shadowers could sometimes sense when and where something bad was going to happen, and they would flock to that place to witness it go down – and join in if they could. If that was the reason for the crowd, so be it. He’d have preferred to have as few people in his way as possible. Not only did it make the work more efficient, a minimalistic approach had an elegance that appealed to him. But he could work with whatever circumstances he encountered. He was a professional, after all.
He pulled his Camaro into the lot and parked next to a nearly new Mercedes Benz. Nice car. Maybe he’d get himself one after all this was over. If he did, he hoped he’d have enough time to enjoy it, at least a little, before the Lord of the Feast delivered the Omniverse into the vast maw of the Gyre. He believed in the inevitability of entropy, but there was no harm in having a bit of fun before everything ended.
He picked up his phone and the knife he’d taken from Tressa’s house then got out of the car. He slipped his phone into his pocket, but he decided to carry the knife. He might need it soon. He locked the car, but before he started walking toward the bar, he considered the wisdom of leaving the Lord’s left leg – the part he’d gotten from his mother – in the trunk. The leg was in no danger of spoiling, and there was no reason for anyone to suspect there was anything special in the trunk to steal. What the hell would anyone want with a leg, anyway? Then again, this was the Cannery District. Any number of Shadowers could find a use for a severed limb, whether it belonged to a god or not. He couldn’t take the leg into the bar with him, though. Not only did he have no way to conceal the damn thing, his head hurt like a motherfucker whenever he got too close to it. He decided it would be okay where it was. If all went well, he wouldn’t be away from it for long.
As he crossed the lot, he noticed a homeless-looking guy sitting on the ground in front of a light pole, head lowered, one hand holding on to a grocery cart containing…flattened cardboard boxes? That was weird. What kind of value did boxes like that have? None, unless you were planning to move, and since the man looked as if he didn’t have a home to move into or out of…. He winced as a sudden sharp pain cut through the left side of his head. Was he still too close to the car? The leg hadn’t bothered his head while he’d been driving, and he was farther from it now than he had been then. Whatever. This shit was magic, not science. It wasn’t always consistent, at least not in ways humans could fully understand. He continued walking toward the bar’s entrance, knife held at his side, and his pain lessened with every step until it vanished.
He forgot all about the homeless guy.
* * *
As soon as Ethan entered the bar, Haksaw woke, or rather, was woken. Emotional impressions flooded into his mind from the torso, and they resolved themselves into four words: Go to the Camry.
His back complained as he stood. He stretched to try and loosen the muscles, but it did no good. Getting too old for this shit, he thought.
He pushed the cart toward the Camry – he didn’t have to ask which one; his love had shown him – and when he reached it, he felt a sense of recognition from the torso, as if it was familiar with the vehicle. No, with something inside the vehicle. He sensed another emotion from the torso then, one he’d never known it to feel before: joy. Whatever was inside the car made his love happy…happier than he ever had, maybe than he ever could. The realization cut through Haksaw like one of his own tools, and he felt deep, dark despair well up inside him. Close on the heels of this emotion came jealousy, which quickly turned into rage.
He didn’t have to listen to the torso. He was in charge! Hadn’t he been the one who heard his love’s call and liberated it from the chamber below the House of Red Tears? Hadn’t he kept it safe all this time, protected it, loved it? If nothing else, he still possessed a whole, intact body, and the torso needed him to get around. Without him, the torso couldn’t do anything but lie around like a hunk of mindless meat. If he didn’t want to share the torso with whatever was in the car that had it so enthralled, he didn’t have to. He could leave right now and find a new place to live, somewhere hidden where the two of them could be alone for the rest of Haksaw’s mortal life. And after he died, if he was fortunate, his spirit would join with the torso, and they would be together for eternity.
