As I went down the stairs two-at-a-time, my ears were bombarded by the loud crunk music playing in the basement.
When I turned the corner of the stairs, I almost collided with a horned demon licking the neck of a beautiful nude blonde woman. I was sure she couldn’t see the demon’s true form and that she had no idea what she was getting into. When the demon recognized me as another of his kind, he growled. But his eyebrows raised and his forked tail stiffened as he realized who I was.
He flattened himself against the wall, trying to blend into the shadows as he shoved the woman between him and me, using her as a human shield—the kind of classy move I expected from a demon.
I ignored him but dragged the bewildered woman along with me as I continued on to the basement.
At the bottom of the stairs, the woman broke free and ran away, which was fine by me, because at least she was safe—relatively speaking. I had problems of my own to deal with as I stood, slack-jawed, taking in the unexpected scene in front of me.
I’d shown up ready to stop Oizys from torturing innocent humans and using their energy to escape Ashburn. In the sparse light of the room’s low-wattage lamps, the torture machines, the tables, and the poles were as I remembered them. But the fifty suburbanites wearing only their smiles and various pieces of glow-stick jewelry didn’t look like they were suffering at all.
In fact, I was the only one who looked like he wasn’t enjoying himself.
I swore out loud again, confused and wondering if I’d gotten everything wrong about Marie and Oizys. Then I reminded myself that something supernatural had just used Chaz and two dozen humans to try to stop me from making it to the basement.
That hadn’t been my imagination.
There was something happening or about to happen at the party that someone or something didn’t want me to know about, and that meant it needed stopping. I just didn’t know what it was yet.
As I scanned the mass of dimly lit, naked bodies, I didn’t see Sybil or Oizys anywhere. Not wanting to start another panic, I secured my dagger and waded into the crowd as the intense music pounded mercilessly at my ears.
A few feet inside the basement, I passed a side room filled with intertwined naked people on the floor. I hadn’t been a rock star for very long, but I recognized a good old-fashioned orgy when I saw one. I stepped in and looked closer with my goggles. I wasn’t shocked to see a few horns and snaking tails mixed in with the tangle of human body parts. But the pair of wings in the back of the orgy surprised me—a little bit.
And there, in the middle of the sea of undulating flesh, I finally spotted Sybil.
She was entwined with two women and a man doing various penetrative things to each other. The scene itself didn’t shock me, but the pang in my chest caught me by surprise, even though I knew my emotions made no sense. After all, she was a succubus. Having sex with humans was what she did. And technically speaking, I wasn’t even her boyfriend. But—there it was—the ugly head of jealousy and being hurt was making an appearance in what passed for my heart.
As if sensing my presence, Sybil raised her head from between a set of thighs and stared at me with eyes that glowed amber like those of a snake. Her forked tongue draped over pointed fangs, and a drop of bright red blood dripped from her chin. I pulled my goggles from my face so I could see her in her human guise. Her face was once again beautiful, and she was smiling at me, but the blood on her chin—that was still there.
We held each other’s gaze as the song in the room changed to a sensuous jam with a slow and steady drop-beat.
I wanted to ask Sybil if she knew what was going on—if she’d discovered anything about Oizys. But she disappeared again into the mass of flesh, and I let her be. As I continued walking around, I waited for someone or something to jump out and grab me, even though nothing did.
Weaving through the naked people, I could smell their humanity with every breath. To my right, a woman was on the floor being held down and tickled while someone else pleasured her with his hand. At one point, I passed by a guy sitting with his ankles tied to legs of his chair and his arms tied behind his back. A woman was kneeling between his legs, but instead of doing what I’d expect in that situation, she was performing terrible acts with a long stainless-steel rod. It looked like torture to me, but his face showed nothing but ecstasy. If Oizys was in the room, she wasn’t getting anything from him at all.
And then, to my right, I heard the whap, whap, whap of leather hitting flesh.
I followed the noise to a wall of sweaty male backs and pressed myself in between them to see what was going on.
They were standing, bunched around a wide, low-to-the-ground, wooden table, on which a naked woman with welts on her back and shoulders was tied face-down. She was being beaten by a skinny man wearing nothing but Army boots, and she moaned and cried so loudly, I could hear her above the din of the music.
I moved to grab the man—to stop him from hurting her, but as I did, Oizys turned her head and gazed up at me with glassy eyes.
From the mixed expression of agony and ecstasy on her face, she was enjoying everything being done to her. She certainly didn’t look like she was trying to escape. As far as the men were concerned, maybe their abhorrent behavior was their way of paying the HOA lady back for too many neighborhood fines and fees.
Confused, I stepped back, forgetting everything I’d assumed about Oizys and trying to figure out what the hell was really going on.
Just then, the song overhead ended, and another one started. I didn’t recognize the tune, but it wasn’t an American pop song, that was for sure. Instead, the music had a primal feel to it, with heavy drums and percussion. And as if on cue, the energy in the room amped up as everyone started having sex with one another with the frenzy of wild animals. Some were in groups while others watched and had fun by themselves. But everyone joined in. Oizys flashed me a contented smile as the whip cracked against her back again.
The entire basement had turned into a sea of horny suburbanites indulging in their fantasies and rutting on the floor and up against the walls. I allowed myself a short laugh as I noted the untouched basket of male and female condoms on the floor, next to Oizys’s table.
My moment of humor was short-lived as I reminded myself to stay sharp—that something was lurking somewhere, as yet to unfold.
And then it happened.
The writhing bodies parted in front of me, and a lone figure moved toward me—the head gardener I’d last seen tending to Marie’s imaginary flowers. His skin was a glistening deep ebony like I remembered it, but his face was painted white to look like a skull. He held a thick cane in one hand, and in the other, a half-empty bottle of rum. But most notably, he was naked except for a ragged black tuxedo jacket, top hat, and a pair of sunglasses with only one lens. Through the hole where the other lens should have been, a single milky white eye glared at me. The gardener was still a zombie, but his face wore a wry grin, showing something I’d never seen on an undead face before—emotion.
The gardener broke into a full smile as he neared me. The instant before he spoke, I recognized him from the drawing in Marie’s house—the one of her loa—the Baron to whom she prayed and made all her sacrifices.
“Why are you still here?” the gardener said in a deep voice that rattled my insides. “I will not tell you this again. You were not invited to my party.”
Chapter 47
THE BARON CAME to a stop a few feet away from me. I pulled out Gus and my dagger, not sure either would be of any use, and waited for him to attack.
Instead, he took a long swig from his bottle of rum and laughed.
When I blinked, he was gone, and someone to my left sucker punched me in the jaw.
I looked at the guy who’d just clocked me and tried to ignore the fact that the only thing he was wearing was an unbuttoned leather vest, a cowboy hat, and a pair of fancy red boots.
He stumbled forward and threw another punch that I swatted aside with ease. I raised Gus, ready to
strike, but I stopped myself, even before Ahriman’s spell kicked in. The man wasn’t my real enemy.
With a sharp exhale, I sheathed my weapons and picked Mr. Cowboy up, ignoring the clamminess of his sweat-slick skin. His limbs flailed around in the air before I slammed him against the drywall just hard enough to knock him out.
No sooner was he on the floor than a short, naked woman kicked me in my ass—literally—which hurt my pride more than my butt. One look at her and the way she dropped into a fighting stance told me she’d taken one-too-many kick boxing classes.
I raised my hand out of instinct, but I stopped myself again, not wanting to harm her. Of course, she wasn’t worried about hurting me at all. She swung her leg around, but when she landed her kick, I heard the snap of her shin as it broke against my bone. When she tried to put her weight on her leg, she fell. But with her face set in a snarl, she struggled like a mad person, still trying to attack me from the floor.
A second later, her eyebrows knitted in pain as the Baron’s spirit released its hold on her body.
I turned, ready for my next attacker, but paused as an elderly woman ran at me from the middle of the room.
“Oh, come on,” I said out loud. “I’m not going to fight an old lady.”
I stood with my arms akimbo, waiting for her to arrive. But when she was only a few feet from me, her crazy eyes returned to normal and her legs went out from under her.
She slid to a stop when she collided with me. When she looked up, I saw a glint of recognition.
“This is no way to treat a customer,” she yelled as I shook my head and turned away, guessing it would be a while before she visited my shop again and not really caring.
An instant later, a young, muscled guy with a crew cut came at me from the right and landed a fist to my throat. Unlike the others, he fought like a soldier and knew how to throw a punch.
If I’d been a human, I would’ve been dead right away. As it was, his strike made me cough.
Once.
With a grunt, I picked up Mr. Crewcut and tossed him gently into a decorative column, deciding I’d had enough.
As much as I didn’t like leaving my body unattended, I needed time to think, and I couldn’t do that with a different possessed human getting in my way every few seconds. I needed room to breathe and to figure out my next move.
Running as fast as I could, I pushed through the crowd of men standing around Oizys and noted the biggest guy there as I dropped to the ground and slid under the wooden table. Once I was hidden by the table, I reached out and touched the big guy’s ankle. In a flash, my spirit poured into him, leaving John’s body alone and unprotected.
Inside my head, I heard a muffled what the hell’s going on from Chip—the name of the man I’d just possessed. I turned him away from Oizys, ready to fight back without fear of killing my attackers.
I scanned the room, looking for the Baron.
Instead, I saw the soldier I’d just slammed. He was up again, with that crazy look in his eyes that let me know the Baron was still in command. He sniffed the air and made a straight line for the table where John’s body was stashed. I tucked my chin and rammed Chip’s shoulder into the soldier’s side as hard as I could, which was just barely enough to send him tumbling to the carpet.
What ensued next was odd, to say the least.
I fought like a madman, using Chip’s fists to pound the soldier. I’d chosen well, because even though Chip was older and more out-of-shape than my opponent, he had the shoulders and hands of a boxer and knew how to take a hit. I threw a flurry of left jabs, keeping the soldier at bay. While he was busy watching my lead hand, I came around with a hard right hook and planted it directly in his ribcage.
Crack, crack went his ribs as he sucked in air, trying to fill his lungs. With one more front kick, he was out of it for the rest of the night. On his way to the floor, he started screaming, and I turned around, waiting for the Baron to come at me inside somebody new.
I turned and turned, waiting for someone, anyone to attack, but no one did, and that worried me more than anything else.
Then I felt a chill in my spine, and I knew the Baron was behind me. Before I could make Chip’s body turn around, someone picked me up and slammed me hard into the floor.
I didn’t know how badly Chip was hurt, but I couldn’t move, and I was pretty sure he was going to need spinal surgery—or at least a really good chiropractor. I raised my head in time to see the back of the gardener walking toward Oizys’s table.
If the Baron made it to John’s unprotected body, he could rip it to pieces without a struggle. I still wasn’t the biggest fan of living inside the shell of a demon, but it was the closest thing I had to a body of my own, and I wasn’t about to lose it.
The gardener made it to the group of men surrounding Oizys and began tossing them aside, one at a time. With the way clear, he paused and stared at Oizys’s ravaged, naked body. Then he looked at the floor, focusing on John’s outstretched arm, jutting out from under the table.
Still unable to stand, I reached over with Chip’s hand and touched the woman closest to me. For a split second, I shared her body—the wife of a senior vice president for a government consulting firm—a man who’d stopped paying attention to her long ago.
I made her dive forward and touch the person farthest away from her she could still reach. Suddenly, my soul was in the body of a middle-aged man who worked at Moon Dollarz and spent most of his energy trying to have sex with the customers.
The man lurched forward and touched the next person, and that person did the same, until, like I was riding a stream of spiritual electricity, the gardener himself was within reach.
I watched through the eyes of a stranger as the gardener’s hand inched closer to John’s arm.
Before he could touch it, I grabbed his ankle, and in an instant, the world became very confusing.
Chapter 48
IT WAS DIFFICULT to make sense of things in that first moment. But my spirit and the Baron’s spirit were together inside the body of the gardener—a man who’d already lost his soul—his ti bon ange—and had become a zombie. None of the gardener’s personality remained, and his voice in his own head was weaker than mine or the Baron’s.
From the outside, it must have looked like the gardener was losing his mind or having a seizure. On the inside, things weren’t much better, because the spirit world was the Baron’s domain, and I barely knew what I was doing. There were no punches thrown or kicks landed, but the Baron raged against me, trying to force me out of the gardener’s body, while I resisted as best I could, through willpower alone. It only took a few seconds before I started to lose my tenuous hold on the gardener’s body. I looked around through the zombie’s eyes, as the fear of being exorcised and spending eternity as a disembodied spirit grew inside me.
“You and I should not be fighting,” he said. “We are both prisoners here and have a common foe. Abandon the body of my follower and come with me. We can leave this place together.”
I heard his words as clear as if they were my own thoughts, but that wasn’t all. The two of us shared a single body and a single mind, and before he could block me from learning the truth, I learned everything.
I saw the Baron’s soul inside Marie’s body, as she traded with Sue, the farmer, paying her with a bottle that contained a tuft of black hair, a swath of floral material, and a small waxen figure. Then I saw the Baron using Marie and her animal sacrifices to build his power so that he could influence the physical world and kill Laura Henders. With rage, I learned her death was only meant to distract John and to give the Baron another zombie to do his bidding while he prepared for the party. I didn’t see any memories of Oizys and Baron together. As best I could figure, the only thing she was guilty of was being herself and suspecting something was up but not getting her facts right. Other than that, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She and everyone else at the swinger’s party were providing the Baron with enough sexual energy t
o top off his spiritual gas tank and give him the power to do what he’d been planning all along.
Marie hadn’t been the one trying to get the Baron to help her to escape from Ashburn. It had been the other way around. The Baron was leaving Ashburn, and he didn’t care who he hurt in the process.
As I struggled to digest my revelation, I could feel the Baron gathering his strength for a final push to cast me out of the gardener’s body. My only hope was that, amid his fury, he’d slacked off on his control of our zombie host’s body.
With a single thought, I made the gardener drop to his knees and touch John’s outstretched hand just as the Baron blasted my spirit with all his power.
As soon as the connection was made with John’s body, I pulled a little spiritual jujitsu, and let the Baron push me out of the gardener and back into John’s empty demonic shell.
Home once again, I pulled John’s hand away and rolled out from under the opposite end of the table. I jumped to my feet, ready to face the Baron, but the gardener was gone.
I cursed and turned just as Sybil stepped up to me, naked and drenched in sweat.
“It’s the Baron,” I said. “He’s the one trying to leave Ashburn.”
She grinned as she moved in close to me, her body moving with the rhythm of the drum-laden music that still filled the basement.
“Is that who’s behind all of this?” she said in a slurred voice, like she was drunk on something. “John didn’t pay much attention to him or the other spirits. Usually, they just kept to their own, scaring the locals at Halloween, messing with tarot cards and Ouija boards, but not doing much more.”
“He’s got a lot more than magic tricks planned for tonight,” I said. “He’s feeding off the sexual energy from the party.”
She laughed.
“I’ll bet he is! I’ve never felt so much sexual juju in one place, and that’s saying a lot. But at least everyone’s having a good time. It’s not a bad way to go, really.”
Ashburn_A [Sub] Urban Fantasy Novel Page 24
