The Soldier did stop, and was glad to, really. His head pounded and he realized just how exhausted he was. The Capitan had turned and walked to his little desk across the room. The Soldier's cell door was left standing open. Freedom called.
The Capitan pulled out two glasses and a bottle of what the Soldier could only assume was tequila. Then the lawman poured as the Soldier made his way out to sit across from the Mexican at the desk. The Capitan slid him an overfilled tumbler. The host didn't wait for the guest and began to drink.
“It was a what.” The Soldier drank too.
The Capitan looked quizzically to the man across the desk. “What?”
“A what took him. The old man said he made a deal with the Devil, and that's what took him. Sure looked like demons.”
The Capitan slowly sipped. “You know what demons look like?” Alook was exchanged between the two men, a knowing one. They understood that both knew something about demons.
“There was a woman, too.”
The Capitan leaned back in his chair. “I'm sure there was. A beautiful one?”
The Soldier nodded, although he had some issue with admitting just how beautiful something so surely evil had been.
“You will bring him back to me,” came the Capitan's order.
“Me? You're the law. Gather a Mexican posse.”
The Capitan shook his head. “None from the village will follow him, and most certainly will not follow her.”
“Who is she?”
The Capitan set his empty glass down and put his hand on the bottle. “She gathers things for her master. You must get him from her before they make it back to their territory.”
“Let them take him off to where he said they're taking him. If it's really where he said—”
“That won't do, gringo. That's what the men say, and the priest too. Unless he atones for his crimes here, by our hand, the curse he has placed on our village will never lift.”
The Soldier leaned forward. “You let me out that door, I ain't never coming back, and you know it.”
“Oh, but you will. I have your things. I gathered them from the hotel, and I know you want them back.”
The Soldier did not like this angle, none at all. “You will give me what you took that's mine that don't belong to you. If you don't, I'll have to kill ya for them.”
The Capitan laughed as he poured. “Not only would you never find them, but you wouldn't kill me for them.”
The Soldier finished his drink. The fire in his eyes matched the one the tequila burned in his stomach.
“You sure about that, Mexican?”
The Capitan raised his drink, “Of course I am. If it was in your nature to kill me, you wouldn't care about what I have.”
~15~
MOON
GOD'S LUNGS WERE CHOKED BY THE SAND and salt of the desert riding up the mountain of the world. His eyes took in no glory through the fester-cloud madness, which swirled about in fits of dusk to pitch. His feet of clay burned in the hot stone beneath the clouds, and he could not remember ever crafting this lonesome range, where never a bird had flown nor ever a song had been sung. It was a place of angel-pact suicides and dementia-fueled laughter, tethered to a sky filled with stars which stared down dead and ill placed. Like any deities before him, he had many moonshine ago turned his back on the agony which strangled nature herself.
The horns and bell sounded when the airship broke the clouds. The deep moan of it all had a sickened timber echo, like a melody trying to cast beauty. Yet it ultimately became an orchestra, sliding off the deck into the icy waters while mid-crescendo. The monasteries, which held perilous to the tops of lower peaks, seemed only to exist to send forth the signal that something was coming into this world from the other. If they had any other lessons to pass on, none could say.
“I am dirigible” was the hymn of this time, and even the dead stared up to the clouds to see it pass silently once the horns had heralded approach. Fascination that something so large could move so quickly and quietly, perhaps. But even that the laws of physics worked to keep it aloft in this country was wonder enough. Everything about this place looked skyward at man's science with the envy of a hungry killer going for a meaty throat.
Beyond the nose of the ship was the object of lust for this place — something that did not belong, which had been built here in spite of the environment. The hot rock and salt glacier desperately wished to reclaim the space the fortress had taken from them, which was massive.
Central was a tower which made the mountains about it into jealous wenches, so vividly perfect in its construction that it seemed unreal. The stone quarried from an aborted world which had never been graced with the blue sheen of the morning light of a healthy sun. The complex was flanked on all sides by an equally puzzling spiral wall which coiled about it for one thousand turns. There was no gate anywhere attached, and if an army could only find the last open spur, it might be stormed — if the dizzying looping ever in and up did not first drive the conquerors to insanity.
The ship thought nothing of the ground or its moorings, where miles up, near the clouds, the cranks wound to action. It pulled it towards the mother tower; it opened and cast down a plank far too vast for the girl with no companion to walk down towards her home.
Completely skinned in leathers of black, her outward form was protected from the cold and wind of a cancerous sky. So much care in packaging her form, as if completely delicate beneath, not one of the mistresses of the hidden world surrounding her. The ways of the delicate were not hers to know. Function was her standard, and the fact that her appearance — with her flowing dark hair, clothes, boots, and gloved hands — added menace to her form was simply an extravagant gain. The buckled clasps and hooks which held her together all had purpose, and the goggled eyes and mask covering her mouth and nose held any emotion from her face, so as not to betray just how dangerous she was.
Especially at this moment.
The cascade of straight raven braids and the high arches of her eyebrows over the goggles where all that could be seen gave up that she was a living thing and not some golem. She was very human, though, somewhere under all that black. Nothing came to meet her. The dead things that roamed about the keep tower hid behind the pillars which lined the walkway towards the entry arch, leading towards the stone pathway down into the head of the awful monster of a tower. Only the bats flew in covens about the newly arrived ship at her back, and even though they could not see her, they knew to keep their distance.
She found him lying covered in their flag. It too was burned, just as he was beneath it. She could tell by how the body lay, and the unnatural twisting of final repose, that not only had he been burned, he'd been torn and snapped — twisted into something which no longer resembled a man. Her goggles were on her forehead now, and the mask still covered her face and stifled her breathing, but she didn't care. She wasn't taking it off. She wasn't reaching to pull back that flag and kiss this dead thing which she had loved so. If she kept her lips a prisoner, maybe nothing more could leak from her than the single tear which had welled in her left eye and now ran down what little was exposed of her cheek.
Could this be the horrible end that they, the most evil who lived, all faced? Would this be the ultimate prize for their work?
“Who did this to him?”
She heard herself say it before she meant to. She could feel someone staring down at her from the catwalk at her back, and knew that it must be Owl.
“Billy Purgatory.” Owl's deep voice didn't hold the emotion that she herself was trying so hard to contain. Owl was a man of science, and viewed all things with no regard for passion.
“Billy Purgatory is just a boy.” She felt her fists attempt to close, and the back of her neck throbbed, but she wouldn't allow her body to tense.
“You've been gone a long time, Moon. He's grown.”
Moon allowed herself to wipe the tear from her face.
“Why did we allow him to grow up at all?” Moon's anger was growing,
in spite of her best efforts. “Why didn't we know he'd become a problem?” She unsnapped her mask and let it fall from her face to the floor.
Her lips wanted to kiss Broom's burnt and broken face under its death shroud, but she knew she'd never kiss him again.
“An error.”
Moon didn't allow her fingers to form the fists; she'd need them spry in the moment about to come. She turned, but didn't yet look up at Owl's lumbering form on the level above.
“An error?” Moon could feel the hot in her stomach flow into her spine, and a dull pain overtook her as if all her muscles were about to shred. Every synapse fired all at once. She felt her soul about to explode.
Owl was never fast enough, and as the Asian girl let anger claim her body, she was into the air. She used those spry fingers to take hold of the catwalk railing and was on him. She felt near orgasmic as the back of his head thumped like a slab of meat had been flung onto the metal grate floor. The look of shock on Owl's face thrilled her; his normally lifeless baby blue eyes dilated as she pressed his neck so that he would stay down.
She spoke calmly now, which came across much worse than if she had let screams spring from her well.
“Broom is dead, and you say an error?”
She heard the doors slide open at the end of the catwalk. The guards pooled there with weapons drawn, but they accessed quickly, not quite foolish enough in their pause to level them towards her.
Moon looked up and her eyes burned to the sentries. “The grownups are talking,” she hissed. They backed down, and the door once again closed. Owl was again on his own, and Moon took little time to re-direct her pain below to him.
“Who was watching him?”
“A vampire.”
“You said you killed all the vampires.”
“I left a few. Moon…”
She tightened her grip then. “If I had known Billy Purgatory would be a problem, I would have killed him myself.”
“The one they called the Priest. He has a girl, she's always been efficient.”
Moon rose, leaving Owl at her feet.
“Since Broom is dead, that negates ‘always’.”
Moon walked to the catwalk then. She looked down one lasttime at the dead pile of bone under the shroud which had once been Broom.
“I want this vampire girl who was supposed to be watching Purgatory and keeping him leashed.”
“Anastasia is her name. We've already sent a team to mortally punish her.” Owl stood, steadying himself on a chair. He was bleeding at the back of his head, which would heal quickly; it would all be a memory soon. Regardless of the particulars of the exchange between them, which was still ongoing, he kept his distance.
“Make sure it hurts. Make sure she's burned.” Moon turned her back on the corpse below, and had hold of her anger once more as she continued. “I want Purgatory dead.”
“We'll erase him from history.”
“No. I want him dead. Things that never existed can't feel pain as they're bleeding and dying.”
“Moon,” Owl was using his rational voice, “we haven't the time for revenge. You must assume Broom's work.”
Moon gripped the railing and didn't lash out. “My work is revenge now. He's murdered one of us. Broom is gone. We are now four.”
“What will you do, Moon? Waste time tracking him? He's little more than a vagrant, he could be anywhere.”
Moon lifted her finger and made the sign of an “X” across her face. “I'm releasing the hounds.”
Owl stood fully at her words. “We won't allow that.”
Moon's eyebrow twitched then and her eyes tightened. “Who won't allow it? The only one who votes with you will be Flower.”
“You have to convince Key.”
“I've already spoken to Key. Key votes for blood.”
Moon didn't look back, but she pointed over the rail as her voice rose for the one and only time necessary during the discussion. “I'm certain that Broom votes for blood as well.”
Owl dropped all pretenses then and sank into his chair. Standing and thinking were too painful, and he could feel blood true enough — his own, dripping from the back of his skull.
Owl placed his face into his hands. “The Hounds will destroy what little is left of America before we can re-contain them. You toy now with plagues and atomic fire, Moon.”
Moon let the slick back of her gloved hand caress Owl's face as she walked past to leave.
“Well,” she remarked coldly, “we always knew somewhere was going to get the Hell end of it — why not the colonies?”
It was long after Moon had passed from the room before Owl quietly said to no one, “What horrors have you agreed to, Key?”
~16~
ÁZOTOS
THERE HAD BEEN TWENTY-ONE BLACK masked and riot helmeted heads. They decorated the pikes of the iron fence that contained the gate allowing entry into the courtyard of the abandoned hotel. The hot desert sun of the forgotten day had dried the blood that had dripped from them onto the rusting white painted uprights. In the night after the battle, Margot snuck a taste with her tongue as the Priest led her inside. “Guess they didn't enjoy their stay.”
The Priest made no comment back to Margot.
“Maybe they should have called down to the front desk for extra towels?”
The Priest didn't say anything about that one either, so Margot gave up.
“Your hair is more blonde,” he said in his raspy voice. Margot was totally unprepared for him to speak. He hadn't said ten words to her since they'd finished lapping up Calvin.
“I like it blonde, and my roots are showing a lot faster.” She teased it as they walked. “Is that a vampire thing?”
“Your hair is rejecting the chemical imbalance caused by that foreign mixture of whatever cheap concoction you think is making it more attractive.”
“Did you just say my hair isn't hot?”
The headless bodies had been stacked in the courtyard and then burned. The Priest studied their arrangement while Margot suddenly had the urge for some strawberry gum. Did vampires do that? Chew gum?
“I did not say that. I believe the correct human terminology is ‘trailer trash’.”
Margot folded her arms and squeezed tight. She wanted to pop off at him, but was too focused on what a waste it was that all the blood in those bodies had been barbecued. “I liked you a lot better when you weren't talking to me.”
The Priest started for the open arch of the hotel's grand entrance. A door had never been affixed to it, or to any portal within the structure. Someone had sure lost out on a big payday on selling some doors. Margot decided to follow him and they made their way up the steps to the second floor.
“She killed a wild animal,” The Priest said with disdain. “I can remember a time when she was much too proper to resort to something so desperate and uncivilized.”
Margot could smell it, and she didn't like that smell at all. She'd never liked the smell of death, but it was far worse now. If she'd have had a larger vocabulary, she might have even said that it was a tragic odor.
“So, then, Anastasia killed all those guys? No way, we shanked her but good…”
“You did little to put her in the state we last saw her.”
“Oh, sorry your Teacherness — I was too busy taking the brunt impact of all those bullets while you used me as a human shield to get in a good shot at her.”
The Priest actually laughed. Margot didn't find it jovial; she found it unnerving. His laugh made her newly undead skin crawl. It made a noise like he had just skinned a puppy alive and was raking its skull across a chalkboard.
They made the landing and the Priest made his way to the balcony. “No, child, Anastasia did not do this. Even if she had fully regained her faculties, she would never be able to take on all those trained men alone. She is good, but she is not that good.”
“Was he that good?”
The Priest craned his head to Margot, “Was who that good?”
“You kno
w, that guy that Anastasia gets all mopey and heartsick about that she's in love with but she says…(even The Priest had to admit, her Anastasia impression was pretty spot on) ‘I love no one’.”
Margot clasped her hands over her heart and stared out to the sea and fluttered her eyelashes. It was the eyelash part which broke the spell. Anastasia never fluttered anything.
The Priest pointed down to the charred bones, swords, and body armor, which was all that remained of the squad of killers. The corpses had been arranged into a symbol:
5
“What does S stand for?”
The Priest didn't even have the energy to shake his head. “That is the numeral five. The sign of my former masters.” He looked to Margot, who was still wondering about chewing gum getting caught in her fangs. “It presents us with two very deep concerns. First, since we have failed to eliminate Anastasia in payment for her crimes against said former masters, I have no trophy to give them, and no leverage to spare my existence.”
“These guys must be serious badasses, huh?”
The Priest considered that Billy Purgatory was definitely in love with the wrong vampire girl, then continued, “Second, Anastasia had aid in ridding herself of these foes. I only know of one creature whose single blade can best twenty-one against it.”
“Pretty badass too, if you ask me. So you gonna spill a name?”
The Priest took in a deep breath, and then forced out the name nice and slow. Once he let it out into the universe he shuddered a little. “Sword Witch.”
His mind was already ripe with the myriad details of how this development overcomplicated everything he was trying to accomplish, and all the things he was trying to avoid. Things could not be more dire for him and his new charge. Finding Anastasia was not only a priority now, but it might prove to be deadly in consequence if she and the Sword Witch had joined forces.
He turned back to his charge before he began his move to the steps and away from this place. He wished to gauge how she was handling these new developments, and whether or not there would be some fire left in her eyes indicating that she might be up for these sudden challenges.
Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five Page 18
