“What do you mean, it’s not a bad way to go?”
“Look around you. Humans are normally so boring they don’t usually give off enough magic to light a candle. But tonight’s different. Everyone here is generating lots of sex magic, and now that the Baron has a hold of that energy, he’ll pull on it like a string, until there’s nothing left of these people. He doesn’t really have a choice, though. He’ll need everything they can give him to break through Ahriman’s wards.”
I looked around and knew she was right. I could feel the power leaving people’s bodies as each of them climaxed in ecstasy only to start again and again, never satiated, in an endless loop of desire.
“I could make them stop fornicating,” she said with a cold grin. “That would cut off his power source and solve our problem.”
“You know I can’t let you harm them,” I yelled over the din of the music, as my stomach twitched.
“You’re much nicer than John, but not nearly as fun,” she said as she leaned into me and started rubbing my chest.
“Is it always this hard for you to focus on something besides sex?”
“I’m a succubus. Abstaining from temptations of the flesh is not my strong point. But I have to admit, I am finding it more difficult than usual to concentrate.”
I exhaled a long breath as she wrapped herself around me, pressing her naked body fully against mine.
“How do we stop an orgy in its tracks without hurting anyone?” I said. “Should we call the police?”
She shook her head and pointed at two Sheriff’s Deputies indulging in the pleasures of a soccer mom dressed as a cheerleader.
“How about a hellhound?” I said. “If Shadow showed up in his true form, that might scare them enough to do the trick.”
“I believe you’re not allowed to expose the truth to humans,” she said, even as Ahriman’s spell wrenched my stomach to remind me that she was right. “I don’t think that would work anyway. Everyone here is in some sort of a trance.”
And like someone had pulled a shroud of stupidity from my brain, I knew exactly what I had to do. It wasn’t the sex I had to stop.
It was the music.
Chapter 49
I HUGGED SYBIL, which I think scared her more than anything else she’d seen that night.
“You’re amazing,” I shouted as someone turned the music in the basement up even louder.
“Of course I am,” she said.
“No, I mean what you said about them being in a trance. We have to stop the music. Find the speakers.”
“And then what?”
I smiled.
“You should like this part. Rip them to shreds.”
“Very funny,” she said as she walked off, elbowing her way through a couple trying to have sex while standing up.
I made my way to the nearest wall, stepping through the writhing sea of humanity as best as I could. At one point, I paused and cocked my head to the left when I saw the little old lady who’d run into me earlier having more sex than I thought her heart could stand. I knew senior citizens needed love, too, but I still grimaced and turned away.
I tried hopelessly to zero in on the source of the music, but it was too loud and bouncing off the walls. Instead, I scanned the room until I spotted a tiny box speaker mounted to the wall above two men and a woman who were busy going at it.
Without hesitation, I rushed over to the threesome and pulled out my dagger. Their eyes remained glossed over as I stabbed the speaker above their heads, sending a spray of sparks raining down on them.
They didn’t even pause.
Unfortunately, with only one speaker out of commission, the music was just as loud. I turned around and saw Sybil on the opposite side of the room—a crushed speaker held high in her hand.
That was two down, but the place was still rocking, and with each minute, the Baron was growing in power.
I walked along the wall until I found another speaker hidden behind one of the lamps. When I looked up, I saw Sybil ripping another speaker out of the wall.
At this point, the music was noticeably quieter, and I started to think we had a chance. Then, just as I spotted one of the last speakers sitting in the middle of a basket of condoms, I felt the presence of someone coming toward me.
I raised Gus, ready for anything as I looked up and saw Marie, walking confidently toward me, naked and as beautiful as ever—except for her milky white eyes. People always say the soul is in the eyes, but that’s not true. The soul is in the muscles and everything around the eyes. I know this, because even though her eyes were dead, I could still see pain and sadness on her face.
“You came for me,” she said. “I knew you would.”
“I thought you were dead.”
She laughed the same gentle way I remembered. I breathed deep the smell of her skin and her hair, and my head reeled with intoxication like it always did when I was around her.
Wordless, she moved closer until her breath was gentle on my ear. Even though we stood in the middle of a sea of naked bodies, it felt as if we were alone.
“Come with me,” she said. “We can leave this place together. My loa will protect us from Ahriman.”
She moved her hand to my belt.
“All you have to do is—nothing,” she said with a smile before she kissed me deeply. I closed my eyes, and any foothold I had with the real world was lost.
As we kissed, the moans and groans of pleasure around us grew louder and more frantic. It was like the entire room was riding a single, shared wave of sexuality. But even though the mounting energy meant the Baron was close to making his move, I couldn’t tear myself away from Marie.
I was lost in her, hopeless, until somewhere from my left, I barely heard someone talking to me—yelling at me to snap out of it.
“Pay attention,” the voice said. “Pay attention.”
I tried half-heartedly to focus, but I still couldn’t ignore Marie—until I realized somewhere in my swirling thoughts that the voice belonged to Sybil.
“That’s not Marie anymore,” she screamed.
I blinked, trying to break the spell I was under, but my passion argued with me, saying that Sybil was jealous because Marie was the one rubbing my chest and kissing my neck instead of her.
Marie stepped back and leveled the gaze of her dead white eyes on me, then raised a bottle of rum and took a giant swig. I shook my head and narrowed my eyes, trying to focus on her. The bottle was the same one the Baron had been holding. I shook my head again and again. I closed my eyes and tried to listen only to Sybil’s voice.
When I opened my eyes again, I still saw Marie in front of me. But she was different. Her rosy cheeks were gone, replaced with cold, pale skin, and her sensuous smile had turned to a slightly parted mouth with gray lips.
I tried not to think about the fact that I had just been kissing a zombie and held her at arm’s length as she struggled to embrace me. I pushed the hollow shell of Marie away as the crowd writhed on all sides of me to the rhythm coming through one last speaker.
She came at me again, but my lust for her had been replaced with sorrow and dread. I put my hand up, ready to stop her as gently as I could. Whatever she’d become wasn’t her fault.
But before she reached me, Sybil stepped in and lifted Marie off the ground by her neck.
“Don’t hurt her,” I said.
Sybil looked at me, then dropped Marie, letting her body hit the carpeted basement floor with a thud.
“She’s already as good as dead,” she said in a voice devoid of sympathy.
I didn’t know whether zombies could be knocked unconscious or not, but Marie didn’t move.
“I told you not to hurt her,” I said, but Sybil ignored me and stared at Marie’s motionless body, the bottle of rum by her side, draining its remaining liquid onto the carpet.
She reached over to the final speaker that was sitting in the basket of unused condoms and crushed it in one hand.
The music stopped. When I raise
d my head, all I could hear was the buzzing in my ears. I expected to see a bunch of very confused, naked suburbanites running for the door, but instead, everyone was sleeping. Other than the sounds of snoring, and the soft moaning from a barely awake Oizys, a dead silence filled the room.
Then I heard footsteps and saw the gardener appear, dressed in his top hat and tuxedo jacket, walking toward us. He used his cane to pick his way through the piles of sleeping people.
He came to a stop a few feet from me, and I tensed, tired and worn, but ready for another fight if that’s what it came to.
Instead of attacking, he smiled and looked at me through the open lens in his sunglasses.
“I believe our relationship began on a sour note,” he said. “Let us try this again, shall we? I will go first.”
Chapter 50
“AS I MENTIONED before, you and I have much in common,” the Baron said. “We are both slaves to Ahriman. And neither of us wish to live out the rest of eternity in this place.”
I couldn’t argue with him on that point, and I’m sure that’s what he was counting on.
“Do you understand what a loa is?” he said. “What do you truly know about my kind?”
“Only what she told me,” I said, glancing down at Marie’s unmoving body on the floor. “She worshipped you, and you had her fooled into thinking you cared about her. That was her mistake.”
The Baron ignored my dig.
“The loa are the spirits of the ancestors of the living. We listen to messages from worshippers like Marie—their hopes and their prayers—and we deliver them to Bondye, the one true god. But because of Ahriman, I am unable to fulfill my duty.”
“People are used to having their prayers ignored.”
The Baron’s milky white eye took on a faraway gaze.
“I used to answer them,” he said. “I was their champion with Bondye, until I came here one day and never left. Now I can only listen to the distant cries of my descendants. Their voices give me just enough power to sustain myself, but not enough to break free of this place.”
“You seem pretty strong to me right now.”
“Tonight is different. St. John’s Eve. The beginning of summer when people turn to thoughts and deeds of the flesh. It is my favorite time of the year.”
“Are they ever going to wake up?” I said, motioning to the crowd of sleeping people.
He shrugged.
“Not here in this world,” he said. “But fear not. Each of them will live on in one form or another. This will not be the end of them. And they are serving a higher purpose. My descendants will praise their names for generations to come.”
“That’s not going to be enough,” I said.
The Baron grinned and stared me down, the same way the picture of him in Marie’s house used to follow me.
“I can still take you with me,” he said. “I have enough power. You and your woman can join me in leaving the confines of Ashburn. You will be free at last.”
Sybil hesitated when he made the offer, but she knew the same thing I did. The Baron was lying.
“That’s mighty nice of you,” I said. “But I have to insist you stay. It’s nothing personal, but I’ve got a job to do.”
He shook his head and grinned.
“You will not stop me.”
The Baron might have been right, but I wasn’t about to give up. But if I was going to have any chance of defeating him, I’d need every ounce of power I could muster. So I let my human guise drop completely and went into full-on demon mode for the first time since my arrival. My hardened muscles were suddenly covered in rough, dark red skin. My feet had talons instead of toes; and my forked tail swung slowly by my side with a life of its own. Swirls of red magic engulfed my hands, and my fiery eyes glowed with power. Most of all, I could feel the weight of black, razor-sharp, curved horns protruding from my forehead.
I was no longer David Steele, the musician. I was John Starling, the demon enforcer, and I was about to kick some spirit ass.
I drew my dagger and took a single step toward the Baron. The blade had worked before when the Baron had possessed Chaz, and I was hoping it would work again.
As I closed in on him, he blew a cloud of something glittery at my face. I shut my eyes as my exposed flesh was attacked by what felt like a thousand mosquitos all at once. When I carefully reopened my eyes, my arms and chest were covered in tiny shards of glass. The Baron laughed when he saw the confusion on my face, and he smiled when I came at him with my dagger.
“Your weapons are nothing to me,” he said, swatting my blade away with his cane.
The Baron was right; my dagger was useless. All I could figure was that the blade’s demonic magic had worked earlier because the Baron had been in the body of a god. If I were going to beat the Baron now, in the body of one of his loa followers, I was going to need something a little more…noble.
I sheathed my blade and pulled out Gus, crackling with its white energy, and the Baron stopped laughing.
When I swung it at his head, he stopped smiling.
But he remained perfectly still as Gus sped toward him. An instant before the holy weapon was about to hit its mark, the Baron moved out of the way as fast as the wind. An instant later, I felt my neck hairs stand up, then felt a burst of pain shoot through me as he struck the back of my legs with his cane.
I howled in agony, like someone had just scraped my nervous system with a rusty piece of metal.
“Somehow, you wield the power of a god,” he said. “But you are still only a demon. Nothing more. The cold, hard iron of my cane can burn you like you were back in Hell.”
The skin on the back of my legs was sizzling like a steak on a grill, but I pushed past the pain and lunged for him. Once again, he moved so quickly that by the time I was there, he wasn’t.
He appeared again to my right, and as I turned to face him, Sybil made her move, lunging for him with her claws. The Baron turned and raised his iron cane to fend her off.
“No!” I said as Sybil ducked and barely missed having her head bashed in. Before he could recover from over-swinging, she was on him, clawing and ripping at his torso, shredding his black tuxedo jacket and opening several deep gashes in his chest.
She was doing a lot of damage to the body, but no blood was coming out, and the Baron wasn’t slowing down.
“Nothing you do to this body can hurt me,” he said with a booming voice. “This is only a shell. I am a loa—a spirit—and I shall be held captive no longer.”
He balled his fists, and purple energy crackled around him as Sybil was thrown to the ground, and he began moving toward the back door.
I dove for his legs, but as soon as I touched him, I was thrown across the room, landing on top of some very unfortunate naked people, who still didn’t wake up even when I crashed into them.
I pulled myself up and charged at the fleeing Baron with Gus held in front of me. I was rewarded when the sharpened wooden weapon sliced through the Baron’s magic with a burst of white energy and pierced the center of his back. The gardener’s body staggered—his central nervous system clearly damaged—but my best shot still barely slowed him down.
“He’s a spirit,” Sybil said, coming up behind me. “This is not the way to defeat him.”
“I’m open to your ideas,” I said, exasperated, as the Baron opened the back door and stepped outside into the muggy night air.
Sybil and I followed him up the cement stairs that led to the backyard, still helpless to stop him. Even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good, I stabbed his body again, as hard as I could, and one more time for good luck, because I had no other choice. But just as Sybil had said, despite the horrible damage I was inflicting on his physical form, he continued, unhindered, into the middle of the yard.
I tried to tackle him again, but was thrown back again and this time landed on a patch of lush, wet grass. I hadn’t been able to hold on to him for more than an instant, but for that brief moment when our bodies were connected, I
had felt the power of his spirit.
As I lay sprawled out on the grass, trying to catch my breath, the Baron dropped his cane, raised his hands to the night sky, and began chanting in a language I’d never heard before.
And that was when I finally came up with a plan.
Chapter 51
“DON’T LET HIM LEAVE,” I said as I raced down the concrete stairs and into the basement. I slid across the carpet and landed next to Marie’s unmoving body. I wondered if any piece of her was still alive, but checking on her would have to wait. I snagged the nearly empty bottle of rum lying next to her and raced back outside to join Sybil.
By the time I made it back, the Baron was three feet off the ground and fully aglow with purple magic. And Sybil was snarling mad.
“You left to get a drink?” Sybil said through gritted teeth as she eyed the bottle in my hand. “And how the hell am I supposed to keep him from leaving? If I could do that, we wouldn’t be having this problem.”
I rolled my eyes, then shook my head. I wanted to tell her my plan, but if I did that, the Baron would hear me as well.
Instead, I put my fingers between my teeth and whistled as loudly as I could—hoping Shadow would hear.
Before the sound of my whistle had faded, Shadow was standing at my feet, wagging his tail and glancing at me expectantly, ready to go for a ride.
“I know you don’t understand me,” I said, kneeling down in front of him and petting his head. “But this is very important. Please, I need you to bring me my pants.”
Shadow cocked his head and whimpered once.
I pointed to the underwear I was wearing and nodded.
“Pants. Go get my pants, boy.”
Shadow wagged his tail excitedly, then blinked out of existence. Gone.
I looked up and saw the Baron rising ever higher. The purple magic that surrounded him had sprouted into dozens of thin streams that arced into the air and stretched back into the house.
A few seconds later, Shadow returned with what looked like a human femur bone in his mouth. He dropped it in front of me and barked.
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