by Nazri Noor
He shook his head, like he was dislodging a charm spell that had buried itself right in the center of his brain. “Sorry. I’m so sorry. This is all so new to me, you know?”
I tilted my head. “Conservative upbringing?”
“You could say that,” Sterling said, nodding to give Gil the table.
“I guess,” Gil said, scratching the back of his head. “I was raised by my tias and my abuela – my aunts and grandma – and they’re strong women, some of the best people I know. But you know how it is. Different generation, so this is all very foreign to them, and to me.”
“It’s pretty cool that you’re so open to the idea of it,” I said.
Gil raised an eyebrow. “It’s common sense, I think. Everyone should be allowed to live the way they live, to be who they are. If you’re not hurting anyone, if you’re not pushing anyone down, you’re okay in my book.”
I smiled. When I first met Gil, I’d assumed that he’d be gruff, grumpy, and macho. I mean the man was a damn werewolf. But over time I figured he was one of the good ones – no, one of the great ones. That strong and silent type, you know, who always measures his words and his actions before doing anything.
Too bad you can’t say the same for when he goes full dog, but that’s a different story entirely.
Jonnifer returned with three bottles practically frosted over, and I licked my lips at the sight of them. That got me a small smile. We collected our bottles – I tipped mine back immediately, not realizing how thirsty I was, relishing the rush of carbonation down my throat – but Jonnifer planted her hands on the bar counter, leaning in towards Gil.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Jonnifer cooed. She was the kind of person who cooed everything, never truly speaking above more than a whisper. She didn’t have to, with the way she commanded so much dripping presence.
“I’m sorry,” Gil said earnestly, wiping the beer from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Truthfully, and I don’t mean to offend, but I feel more like I’ve seen a god. A goddess? I’m sorry, I don’t know which you prefer.”
“Or a fairy, or an angel?” Jonnifer tittered, one hand over her mouth. “No offense taken at all. Anything works for me. I’m totally mortal, though. Not an entity, unfortunately.” She leaned closer over the counter, giving the club a cursory, conspiratorial glance. “But some of these people are.”
I looked around nervously. Should have figured that a club owned by battle-hardened, literally enchanting drag queens would mainly cater to the supernatural community. But I couldn’t really see anything different about anyone. Naturally, it would have been a simple matter to wear a glamour, not that they would have to someplace neutral, somewhere safe.
A finger tapped me on the back of my hand, and I jumped.
“Dustin Graves, right?” Jonnifer said, nodding towards the far end of the bar. “Someone wants to see you.”
I looked down the counter, not sure what I was expecting, to find a woman sitting there alone. She was nursing something out of a porcelain jug, drinking out of a tiny porcelain cup. Sake, I figured. Looked like the good stuff, too. The woman smiled at us, waving us over with delicate fingers.
My heart thumped. Again there was something so awfully familiar about her features, like this was someone that I might have already met. Her long, sleek black hair hung down the middle of her back, contrasting with the strange, nearly vampiric pallor and perfection of her skin.
She blinked once as we approached, as she took another shot of sake. Her fingernails were painted black, and on more than one finger she wore silver rings in the shape of, well, somewhat macabre icons and images. One was a skull, and another was a skeleton wrapping its limbs in a bony embrace around her finger.
I turned over my shoulder, looking towards Jonnifer to make sure we had the right person. Jonnifer only nodded and turned back to tend to the bar.
“I have the strangest feeling about this,” Gil whispered, nodding cautiously.
“Whatever it is, we’re about to find out,” Sterling said.
The woman set her cup down on the counter, slender fingers brushing against a serviette as she wiped the condensation off her hand.
“Cold sake,” I said, smiling. “The good stuff, too. A fine choice.”
The woman smiled back, her teeth glinting. “I’ve made many interesting choices in the course of my career, Mister Graves. As have you, it seems.” She leaned back on her stool, folding her hands delicately on the counter. “I believe you’ve met my children.”
I raised an eyebrow. That was when I started sweating. “I’m sorry. Your children?”
“I said what I said.” The woman poured herself another drink, hardly looking at me as she spoke. “Amaterasu. Susanoo. Tsukuyomi. Sun, storm, and moon.” The little jug thudded with the counter as she set it down and turned to stare me full in the face, her eyes hard and black.
My heart fell out of my ass. It was her. No. No, no, no.
“My name is Izanami,” the woman said. “And I am a goddess of death.”
Chapter 13
Gil gripped me firmly by the shoulder as my instincts threw my legs into motion. I hadn’t even said anything back but my muscles were already engaging all the bits I needed to run the hell out of there. My eyes scanned for the shadows, for the right spot to enter the Dark Room. Good body, I thought. Loyal body.
But a goddess of death?
“Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Sterling said smoothly, offering his hand. “The name’s Sterling.”
Izanami took it, smiling politely, shaking it in return. “The vampire, yes. I believe Susanoo has taken quite a liking to you. He gave you one of his swords, did he not?”
“Sure did,” Sterling answered. “I keep it in a place of honor back home. Fantastic weapon. I hope he’s well.”
Izanami nodded pleasantly. “He is. I will let him know you send your regards.”
How the hell was Sterling being so calm? Etiquette, I reminded myself. Be polite. This was an entity after all, and not just any damn entity, but the mother goddess of the Japanese pantheon.
“Gilberto Ramirez,” Gil said, offering his hand next. “Nice to meet you.”
Izanami shook his hand, too. “I remember, yes. My daughter says she had a very enlightening conversation with you about the nature of your moon curse. How interesting.”
“She was very kind,” Gil said. “Served some fantastic tea, too.”
“I am happy to know that my children still adhere to good manners and right conduct.” Izanami lifted the cup to her lips, her eyes downcast. “Quite unlike some others.”
“I’m so sorry,” I blurted. “It’s just – I figured you’d be super mad at us for what we did. The last time we encountered Tsukuyomi and the others, I mean. It was a trial, and we were going to be put to death if we lost. It was a matter of survival, that’s all.”
Izanami nodded. “Well and truly understood, Mister Graves, there’s really no need to panic. Or to explain, even. We all do what we must to survive. And that is why you have come here, seeking someone of my – well, not to be uncouth about it, but someone of my stature.”
“That’s right,” Sterling said for me as I stammered around a non-reply. “Very interesting that we’d find you at the Leather Glovebox, of all places.”
When she laughed, Izanami’s voice rang clear as bells. “I blame the French.” She cocked her shoulders as she shrugged, the delicate, gauzy black of her dress moving in small, billowing wisps. “I trust you’ve heard one of the fanciful phrases they use to describe the human orgasm. La petite mort?”
“The little death,” I said, finally collecting my nerves and my manners.
She cocked her head, smiling at me broadly. “Well, someone took French in high school, I see. That is correct. The world is so different these days, you see. Once humans were so warlike, and the deities of death had so much to do, so many souls to ferry, and to consume.”
I took a swig of my beer to hide the fact that I w
as gulping. Consume? Yikes.
“Medical advancements and progress in the codes of war – in morality in general, truthfully, have given us slightly less to do in modern times.” She closed her eyes momentarily, her lashes fluttering as she sipped in a breath and shivered. “Ah. There goes another one. Each time you mortals finish sexual congress, there is a pause in the biological system, when all the breath leaves your body, when it goes perfectly taut, and rigid, and still.” Her lashes fluttered again as she blinked, gazing meaningfully up into my face. “Like a corpse.”
I chugged another mouthful of beer.
“So,” Gil said. “One of Dustin’s friends in the underground told us to come here, and we can only assume that this is connected to you. What can we do for you?”
Sterling slunk onto the stool next to her, flashing a charming grin. “What can these humble ones do for a goddess of death?”
“It’s more a question of what I can do for you.” Izanami’s eyes burned with black fire each time she smiled. Her beauty could stop hearts – literally, I assumed – yet something about her grin seemed so terrible, frightening. “I think we’ve exchanged enough pleasantries by now. The Old Ones are coming, and I am no fool. They must be stopped at all costs. I will offer you the ritual you require to seal them away.”
“For a price,” I said, softly, politely. “Surely this comes at a price.”
“Entities and our whims, yes? Offerings and sacrifices?” The goddess waved her hand. “Surely this is no longer a surprise to you.”
“With all due respect,” Gil said. “Why do this? Most of the entities we’ve spoken to refuse to even lift a finger.”
“Even the All-Father,” I said. “Odin himself.”
“Because the gods of death understand what the others do not,” she said, her voice cold. “Oh, the underworlds would be safe, and perhaps for a moment we might even profit from the influx of souls filling our realms. But once all mortals are dead, there will be no one to reproduce, to create more souls. Soon the Eldest will seek to ruin us, too. Soon there will be nothing left.” She tilted the cup back, finishing the last of her sake. “And that includes a good drink.”
“Okay,” I said, licking my lips. Half a beer down my gullet, yet there I was, mouth dry. “What’s the price we have to pay?”
“That you have to pay, Dustin Graves,” Izanami said. “This is, after all, your problem. The shard of star-metal in your heart is what started all this.”
No, I almost spat at her. It was Thea stabbing me in the chest and planting her poison there that started all this. But I couldn’t say that. The corner of Izanami’s mouth lifted in a grin, like she knew what I was thinking.
Sterling rubbed my upper back in what I took to be a reassuring manner. “Sorry, pal,” he said, for once sounding genuinely contrite. “You know how these things work. A communion it is, between you and the entity.”
“Correct,” Izanami said.
Gil clapped me on the shoulder, then turned back to the bar, heading off to talk to Jonnifer. Sterling squeezed me by the back of my neck, reassuring. “It’ll be fine, Dust,” he whispered, like it was only for me to hear. “We trust you.”
I blinked, looking him in the eye, wondering where all this niceness was coming from. Sterling grinned, then winked at me.
“We trust in Dustin.”
And stupid, impressionable me: that was all I needed. But it was good to know that, despite the push and pull of our friendship, how often we bickered, Sterling still had my back.
Literally. His hand, cold and dry, pressed like ice into my nape.
“Right,” I said. “You can let go of me now.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He released my scruff, nodding at Izanami, then going off to join Gil, Jonnifer, and the Fuck-Tons, who all seemed to be enjoying a round of drinks – but I could sense the tension in the air. They were watching, waiting for what Izanami was about to do.
They were never meant to see. The goddess took my hand, then snapped her fingers, and the world around us erupted in green fire. A conflagration the color of old jade, of horrible, pale venom. But it was cold. So cold.
And all around us, the screaming. The hairs raised at the back of my neck, all up and down my forearms as an infernal shrieking scraped at my very soul, as of a thousand, no, millions of voices screaming. There we stood on a blasted plateau of black, cracking rock, massive gouts of cold, poisonous fire reaching for a sky that we couldn’t see, for a heaven that had forsaken all that dwelled there.
“What is this?” I muttered, fully knowing with dread where we were. “Where have you taken me?”
Izanami’s hand pressed tighter around mine, like it was meant to be a reassuring gesture. “This is home, Dustin Graves,” she rasped.
My stomach churned. Rasped. Izanami’s voice had taken on a different quality, not the smooth, whispered soprano she used in the bar, but something old, crackling. Something dead.
I turned to her slowly, already knowing what to expect. And yet it still didn’t prepare me for the sight of her true form.
Izanami’s death’s head of a face smiled at me with its rictus grin, what little hair she had gone white and stuck in stringy clumps to the rotting, flaying flaps of skin still on her scalp. Her teeth were yellowed and bloody, her face sunken, rotting.
But her eyes. Worst of all were her eyes, no longer so black – because they were tinged with small, moving masses. Maggots, crawling over, under, into her sockets, even as the bulbous horror of her distended eyeballs fixed me with gleeful, delighted malice.
I tried not to panic. I swear, I did. But breathing was hard enough without the horrific, sickly-sweet stench of Izanami’s decaying body. She squeezed my hand harder, her long, curling nails pressing into my palm so hard that I screamed.
Her teeth chattered as she laughed, as blood streamed down my fingers, drawn by her dead, wicked talons. The dress she wore was gone, and her chest heaved and bucked as she chortled, her rotted lungs working like bellows as her grating laughter filled my ears.
And the dead screamed on, and on, and on.
Chapter 14
I blinked, and the world wasn’t green anymore.
The room was dark, the music pounding, the lights flickering and switching between all shades of florescence. I was back in the Leather Glovebox. Sterling and the others were still watching me surreptitiously, their eyes flitting in my direction each time they took sips of their drinks.
“They don’t know,” Izanami’s voice said in my ear.
I shuddered at the touch of her breath, but the fetid stench of her ruined lungs was gone. The air that left her perfect lips smelled faintly of sweet sake, of flowers. Shuddering, my sweat gone cold in the club’s air-conditioning, I turned to her slowly.
The goddess was whole again, perfect, her true form put away as easily as a change of clothes. She released my hand, finally, and I looked down at my palm. The skin was unbroken and clear as it was before, except for the three telltale black dots that showed where her nails had drawn my blood.
“So that was it?” I said, desperate for the tremble to leave my voice. “You took my blood, and that was my offering?”
Suspicious, I thought. That couldn’t have been the only price.
Izanami smiled sweetly, gesturing to Jonnifer, no doubt ordering another bottle of sake.
“It was your terror that I wanted, sweet Dustin. You shamed my children in battle, and I longed to humiliate you in turn. Now, we are even.”
“I don’t know about even,” I said, patting at the front of my jeans. “I’m pretty sure I pissed myself.”
Izanami laughed. “Even better. See, I couldn’t have taken your life, or your soul, for where would that leave me? You’d be dead, and the Old Ones would still come to destroy everything. So fear it was, one of the primal forces that fuel the blasphemous miracles of necromancy.”
It made more sense now. I’d once seen Asher relishing in the pain of others, feeding off of it himself, that time when we’d
attacked the cult of the Viridian Dawn together. I had to wonder, though: I’d never seen him actually expend that power. I wondered where it all went.
“Okay,” I said. “You’ve probably had your fun, and I’m probably in need of a change of boxers. Could we have that ritual now? Pretty please?”
Izanami ushered me back to the bar, where she gladly accepted a new round of sake, pouring one little cup out for me. I watched her fingers – I didn’t want another situation like that time Dionysus poisoned me – and when it looked clear that she had no intention of dosing me, I took the cup eagerly. I needed something to wash that horror out of my body. I savored the coolness of the sake, its sweetness and its fire as it burned its way down my throat. Ah. Some spirits, to settle my own spirits.
“Good,” Izanami said. “You trust me enough to drink with me.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Just, no more sudden, hair-raising transformations next time? Or maybe give me a warning before you go full death goddess again.”
She laughed, full and throaty. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
Getting the ritual was sort of anti-climactic. She asked Jonnifer for a pen, then scrawled the shopping list onto the back of a napkin. I say shopping list because the ritual wasn’t simply a ritual, but a sort of recipe, a guide for the creation of an artifact.
I guess I was about to enchant my very first magical item. Hey, not bad.
We headed back to the Boneyard shortly after, Sterling protesting, but ultimately agreeing that there were somewhat more important things we had to attend to that didn’t involve a sex sling and a ball-gag. In the rideshare back, I remembered something I’d meant to ask Gil about Prudence.
“Gil? When I was out with Carver and Asher, that incident near Latham’s Cross? Bastion showed up with Royce, but no sign of Prudence. Is something going on there? They’re supposed to be partners.”
Gil scratched the bridge of his nose. “Oh, yeah. Figures, one of us should have told you sooner. She’s on hiatus from work for a minute.”
I cocked one eyebrow. “I didn’t know about this.”
