Lord of the feast, p.25
Lord of the Feast, page 25
Her thoughts were muddled, which only made sense, given that her brains had been scrambled by the blow to her head. But she could’ve sworn she’d heard Yes’s voice a moment ago. Had he somehow survived the shadow rats? She didn’t see how. He was good, but nobody was that good.
It all depends on how you define survive.
The air in front of her rippled like heat waves, and she thought the distortion almost formed a shape – a human shape.
“Yes?”
That’s me. Or what’s left of me, anyway.
He sounded amused.
“I’m talking with your ghost.”
You think I’d let a little thing like death stand between us?
She wanted so badly to believe it was really him, but she was too practical minded.
“You’re not real. You’re a hallucination brought on by my head injury.”
Maybe. But do you really care if I’m real or not?
“No,” she said after a moment’s thought. “I don’t.”
I know where Ethan and Kate are going. Kate’s the girl who killed me. I guess technically the shadow rats killed me, but you know what I mean.
“Kate,” she said. The name made her think of the word cut. She would cut off Kate’s limbs, slice meat from bone, then feed the flesh to her one gobbet at a time.
And I know something else. I know where both Kate and Ethan are going to end up. Two birds—
“One stone,” she finished. “Where?”
The House of Red Tears. All you need is a ride.
Stronghold Self-Storage was an automated facility, so there were no employees on-site, but she was certain they’d set off any number of alarms when they’d rammed the Mercedes through the front gate. The police were undoubtedly on their way, and might be here already.
Mrs. No smiled. Good.
* * *
Craig Goodwin was having a bad day, and unknown to him, it was about to get a hell of a lot worse.
He’d been a patrol officer with the Collier PD for four years now, and while the work was okay, what he really wanted to do was become a detective. He knew it was a cliché, but he’d loved watching mystery TV shows and reading whodunnits ever since he’d been a kid, and there was nothing he wanted more in life than to solve murders. He liked the puzzle-solving aspect of the work – the challenge of it – and he also liked that he would be getting killers off the street, bringing justice to the deceased, and providing some measure of closure for victims’ families and friends. To this end, he’d taken the promotion exam a couple days ago, and while he’d done well, this morning his chief told him that another candidate, one who’d been with the department longer, was getting the promotion instead.
That disappointment had set the tone for the rest of Craig’s day. A shoplifting teenager had called him a fascist killer and spit in his face, a lawyer who’d had way too much to drink during a business lunch – and who’d gotten violent when the bartender cut her off – had vomited on his shoes when he’d tried to calm her down, and he’d had to tell a homeless couple they couldn’t stay in a small stretch of woods behind a grocery after the store’s manager called the police and complained. Now here he was, responding to a call at Stronghold Self-Storage. Someone had rammed a car into their front gate – probably thought the gate would open automatically for them – and fled the scene, likely due to extreme embarrassment. A security camera had hopefully caught an image of the vehicle’s license plate, and the driver would be found. All he had to do was check out the scene, look around to make sure everything was okay, and write up a description of what he found while he waited for the owner to arrive. Hardly the sort of case Sherlock Holmes would get, but then he was no Holmes, was he? The chief had made sure of that.
So he was in a sour mood as he approached Stronghold, but that mood vanished the instant he saw the woman standing in front of the mangled gate. She had blood on her clothes, blood running down the side of her face, and – Jesus! – it looked like she’d lost four of the fingers on her left hand. What the ever-loving fuck?
He pulled into the facility’s driveway and parked. He got out of his vehicle and approached the woman.
“Ma’am, are you all right? What happened?”
He was walking into an unknown situation and should’ve had his hand on his gun as a precaution. But the woman didn’t look dangerous. She looked like she’d been through hell.
The woman smiled shakily when she saw him, took a step forward, and then her eyes rolled white and she collapsed to the ground.
Craig ran the rest of the way to the woman. He knelt and placed two fingers to her neck to check her pulse.
“Can you hear me? Ma’am, can you—”
The woman sat up abruptly, grabbed hold of his shoulders, fastened her mouth on the side of his neck and bit down hard, severing his carotid artery in the process. Blood gushed onto her face as she turned and spit a mouthful of his flesh onto the ground. She then shoved him backward and stood. He lay on his back, legs folded beneath him, consciousness already deserting him. It didn’t take long to bleed out when you had a wound this bad, and he thought, At least it’ll be fast. He wondered who the hell this woman was and why she’d felt the need to tear out his throat as if she was some kind of wild animal. These were the two biggest mysteries he’d ever encountered in his career, but unfortunately, he’d never get to solve either of them.
Then he was gone.
* * *
No licked blood from her lips as she looked down at the dead cop. Humans were ridiculously easy to kill if you weren’t squeamish.
She removed the man’s Glock from its holster and took his baton as well. He’d left his vehicle running, and she got in, put her new toys on the driver’s seat, and closed the door. She looked to her right and saw the heat-distortion shape of her husband sitting in the passenger seat.
Messy, but nicely done.
“I thought you liked it messy.”
Flirt.
Smiling, she put the vehicle in reverse and, using her good hand, backed out of the facility’s driveway. Next stop, the House of Red Tears.
* * *
The spirits of the Shardlows and Lintons, along with the beast-man that had once been Felton, approached Oakmont. Delora’s ghost had joined them along the way, and Reyna and Weston waited for them next to the cheery Welcome to Oakmont sign. No words were exchanged as the spirits came together, but none were needed. There were eleven of them in total now, a majority of the family, and they continued on into town, traveling slowly but purposefully, Felton darting from one place of concealment to the next. Soon they would reach the Cannery District and the House of Red Tears, and when they did, they would reveal themselves to Caprice. They couldn’t wait to see the look on her face.
Just before they tore it from her skull.
* * *
Ethan was surprised the damaged Mercedes managed to make it back to Oakmont. The engine had sounded like a dying wildebeest the entire way, and the front end shimmied, as if the tires were on the verge of falling off. It was a damn sin how Mr. Yes and Mrs. No had treated such a fine machine. Couldn’t they have found a different way into the storage facility other than ramming the gate? He was glad to be rid of those two lunatics and working on his own once more. Fewer complications this way. His shoulder wound still hurt like a bitch, but Mr. Yes’s bandage was holding up nicely. He could really use some decent painkillers, though. Too bad he didn’t have time to stop and rob a pharmacy.
It had been weird seeing Kate after all this time, especially considering the circumstances, but it had been good too. He was glad he hadn’t been forced to kill her. He remembered her as a happy child, one who loved being part of an extended family. She’d looked up to him back in those days, and he hadn’t realized until now how much that had meant to him. It was too bad that she had fallen away from the pure faith of the Quintessence. Maybe once the Lord of the Feast was fully born and began its sacred work, she would gaze upon its glory and realize that she had been wrong to ever oppose its Incarnation. Then the two of them could witness the end of existence together. He’d like that.
He’d been surprised to see that Kate had joined forces with Haksaw, but he’d been even more surprised by the revelation that her other companion was a member of the Unbroken Court. Given her reaction, it seemed she’d been unaware of her friend’s allegiance as well. He didn’t know a great deal about the Court, only that it prosecuted crimes committed in Shadow. While he’d never heard of the Court acting to prevent crimes, they were Balancers, which meant that they worked to preserve the orderly dismantling of reality. They opposed the Quintessence’s goal of bringing the Omniverse to an early, merciful end, so in this case they might choose to intervene in order to prevent the Lord’s Incarnation. He would have to remain on guard as he proceeded.
He had to admit that he hadn’t done a very good job so far. He’d only managed to acquire the Lord’s left arm and right leg, and Kate had the rest – not counting the head, which Caprice kept in the Repository, and the final piece, the left leg. His current plan was to get the leg before Kate could and then, somehow, to take the pieces she’d gathered from her. He wasn’t sure how he was going to accomplish this, but he’d find a way. He had to.
In the meantime, he would pay a visit to Grandfather Elisha. He was Caprice’s brother and Victorina’s husband, and he had been entrusted with the guardianship of the Lord’s left leg. Caprice had told Ethan about Elisha before she’d sent him out on his grotesque scavenger hunt.
Of all of us, Elisha had the most doubts about creating the Lord. He’d always been a weak-minded sort, ever since we were kids. Sometimes I think it was his lack of faith that caused the Incarnation to fail. I was against letting him take the left leg, but the other surviving members of the family outvoted me. Idiots. He did well enough for the first couple years, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the family members who died or were transformed during the Incarnation. He saw himself as at least partially responsible for what happened to them, and the guilt gnawed at him until he couldn’t take it any longer.
Caprice had urged Ethan to save Elisha for last since he’d remained in the same place for the last eight years and hadn’t once left. Gehenna was located on the edge of the Cannery, in a four-story building that had once been a hotel. On the outside it looked long abandoned – windows boarded up, brick walls darkened from years of car exhaust, façade cracked and crumbling. The asphalt of the empty parking lot was shot through with fissures from which grew ugly, spiny weeds. The lot was empty, and Ethan had his pick of spaces. He parked near the building’s rear entrance and turned off the Mercedes’ engine. The motor rattled and made a loud ker-chunk sound, and the silence that followed – along with the smoke that curled from beneath the vehicle’s hood – told Ethan that the Mercedes had made its final voyage. He patted the dashboard.
“Rest well, faithful steed.”
The leg and arm he had were stored in the trunk, and he figured they would be safe enough there while he visited Elisha. He got out of the car, locked it, and started walking across the parking lot, careful to give the spiny weeds a wide berth. He didn’t like the way the plants turned to follow his progress, and he preferred not to find out what those spines might do if they pierced his flesh. Shadow was filled with all sorts of nasty surprises.
He walked around to the front of the building. The original name of the hotel was carved into the stone above the entrance, letters faint, eroded by time and the elements: The Golden Star. Someone had painted Gehenna over the letters in thick red. The entrance was a pair of cracked glass doors with rusted metal handles, and Ethan took hold of one of those handles and pulled. Despite its appearance, the door opened easily and silently, and he stepped inside. The lobby was in equally as bad a state as the outside of the building, if not worse – walls covered with mold and creeping vines, floor sunken in, as if it might collapse any moment, tile yellowed and curling at the edges. The air smelled of must and mildew, sweat and desperation. The lobby had a few chairs and a pair of couches, upholstery faded and torn, and several people sat reading ancient magazines with ripped covers and crinkled pages. Ethan caught some titles: Transgression Today, Veniality Monthly, Deviant Living, Apostate Review…. The men and women looked ordinary enough, but they shared a haunted look in their eyes, along with a communal aura of sorrow. The front desk was staffed by a lone employee, a thirtyish woman in a violet blazer and white blouse who wore her hair in a bun. She smiled at Ethan as he approached.
“Welcome to Gehenna. How may I help you?”
The woman’s cheerful demeanor was at odds with her surroundings, and her too-perfect teeth looked as if they’d been painted on. Her eyes were an artificial blue, and she didn’t seem to blink. It was like she was a mannequin who’d been brought to life, and considering this was the Cannery, maybe she was.
“I’m here to visit Elisha Linton. I’m his grandson.”
The woman’s smile didn’t waver as she turned to a desktop computer so old it looked as if it had been built in the stone age. Her fingers tapped the keyboard for a moment, then she peered at the screen. She turned back to Ethan, still smiling.
“He’s in room 437. You can go on up.”
“Thank you.” He was about to turn away, but he stopped. “Those people over there.” He nodded toward the magazine-readers. “What are they waiting for?”
“For rooms to become available,” the woman said. “Gehenna is very popular.”
“No offense, but I’m surprised people are so eager to get in.”
“We perform a vital function,” the woman said. She pointed across the lobby. “The elevators are over there. Despite the look of the place, they’re in good condition, so please don’t hesitate to use them.”
Ethan thanked her and started toward the elevators. He looked back once and saw that she was watching him, smile still firmly in place, doll eyes unblinking. He suppressed a shudder as he faced forward once more. There were a pair of elevators, paint on the doors flaking, surfaces scored by crisscrossing marks as if someone had taken a knife to them – or scratched them with their fingers. Ethan chose the elevator on the left and pushed the button to summon it. The tip of his finger came away greasy, and he wiped it on the wall. Despite the doll-eyed woman’s assurance that the elevators were in working order, machinery whirred and clanked laboriously as the car descended, and it stopped at the first floor with an audible thud, as if it had fallen the last six inches. The door only opened halfway, but there was enough room for Ethan to slip into the car, and he did so. He pushed the button for the fourth floor, and the door made a scraping sound as it slowly closed. Once it had, the elevator began to rise. The machinery made loud noises again, and the car vibrated as it ascended. It stopped for several moments between the second and third floors before moving again. When it finally reached the fourth floor, the door opened all the way this time, and Ethan jumped out, half afraid the damn thing was going to plummet downward. But it didn’t, and a moment later the door scraped shut. He let out a sigh of relief. After everything he’d been through today, it would be more than a little embarrassing if he was killed by a rickety elevator. Although he supposed there would be a certain ironic poetry to it.
He turned away from the elevator and started walking down the hall.
The floor, walls, and ceiling were in the same poor condition as the lobby, and the smell up here was worse. As he passed rooms, he heard noises coming from behind the closed doors. Sometimes it was people talking in relaxed tones, as if they were having a civil conversation. Other times people shouted and cursed, as if in the midst of intense arguments. Still other times, there were wails of sorrow and despair, or screams of pain and terror. Ethan didn’t want to think about what might be going on in those rooms.
Gehenna is named after a place in Hebrew lore, Caprice had told him. It was a valley where the wicked were condemned to suffer until they atoned for their sins.
Ethan didn’t know how this version of Gehenna worked, but it sure sounded as if the residents were suffering. He tried to block out the noises as he searched for Elisha’s room. When he at last came to room 437, he wasn’t sure what to do. He leaned his head close to the door, attempting to hear what was happening inside, but there was only silence. He knew from his experiences in the House of Red Tears that suffering wasn’t always loud. In fact, the worst suffering was often the quietest. He raised a hand, knocked, stood back, waited. When he received no reply, he tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. He opened the door, stepped inside—
—and found himself in the past. Specifically, in Tressa and Delmar’s basement, on the night they’d attempted to Incarnate the Lord.
He felt a dizzying sense of déjà vu. On the sectional couch, in front of the glass fireplace, sat his eleven-year-old self, dressed in what he recalled as an extremely uncomfortable suit. Nine-year-old Kate, wearing a dress, sat next to him. Reyna, also in a dress, was on the other side of Kate, and lastly was Weston, also in a suit. Reyna was in her twenties, Weston in his teens. They all looked so young. The adults were dressed in their finest clothes and stood around the pool table, Delmar at its head, The Book of Depravity open in his hands. Everyone was there – both sets of grandparents, Caprice, Kate and Reyna’s parents, and his and Weston’s. Seeing them all like this, younger, alive, unchanged, was a shock. Seeing Tressa, Delmar, and his mother was an even greater shock, as he’d killed all three of them today. And his father…. He hadn’t seen Cordell in a decade, not since, well, not since the night he currently found himself in. He felt an almost overpowering urge to go over and speak to his father, but he had no idea what to say.
