“He doesn’t understand that much English, you know,” Sybil said in exasperation.
“I need my pants,” I growled at her, frustrated, still not wanting to speak my plan out loud.
She sighed.
“Ask him if he wants to go for a walk.”
The Baron was five feet above the ground, his arms outstretched to either side of him.
“I don’t have time to take him for a walk,” I said.
“Just do it. Trust me.”
I reached down and rubbed Shadow’s chest. “Do you want to go for a walk, boy? Who wants to go for a walk?”
With that, Shadow dropped down with his front paws extended and his rump up in the air. Then he disappeared, leaving me and Sybil alone with the Baron.
“He left again,” I shouted at Sybil. “That’s not helping very much!”
Shadow was gone for what felt like an eternity, but within seconds he reappeared, sitting in front of me with his leash, my pants, and my shirt in his slobbery mouth. He stretched his neck forward and dropped everything at my feet.
“Good boy,” Sybil said, glaring at me.
I knelt down and pulled the piece of paper from the back pocket of my jeans. I unfolded it and scanned the indecipherable language scrawled in Walt’s handwriting.
“What the hell is that?” Sybil said.
“A gift from John, I think,” I said. Taking one last look at the markings on the paper, I rolled it up and dropped it in the bottle. The paper sunk into the eighth-of-an-inch of rum at the bottom of the bottle, but its ink didn’t run. Walt must have used one hell of a pen. I shook the bottle, and the dampened paper stuck to the inside of the glass.
“I hope you aren’t trying to make a Kanari,” she said. “It takes a master practitioner of Voodoo and the proper ritual to create a soul jar that works properly.”
I grinned like a madman and shook my head. I looked up at the Baron who had moved even higher into the air amidst a shower of red and purple sparks.
“He’s breaking through the first of Ahriman’s spells,” she said.
“I’m going to try to bring him down, but if that doesn’t work, I need you to toss this up to me, when I say so,” I said, and handed her the bottle. “And be ready to seal it up.”
“With what?” she said, taking the bottle from me.
“Be creative. And watch your head, I don’t want to land on you.”
She furrowed her eyebrows—confused—but before she could ask me any questions, I crouched down and jumped high into the air, aiming for the Baron’s bare legs. As soon as I touched his foot, my spirit jumped into the gardener’s body a third time. I watched through the gardener’s eyes as John’s body plummeted to the yard below and Sybil jumped to one side just in time to avoid being crushed.
My offer for you to join me has expired, demon. Be gone.
The irony wasn’t lost on me that the Baron was trying to exorcise me from the gardener’s body. Luckily for me, his efforts were just as effective as when I’d tried to control Ahriman. Without my real name, he had no hope of getting rid of me that easily.
But the sheer force of his spirit kept pushing at me, forcing me out a little at a time, just like the last time we’d battled for control over the gardener’s body. As I felt my grasp begin to slip, a feeling grew in my stomach, but it wasn’t Ahriman’s spell this time.
It was fear.
I didn’t know much about being a demon yet, and I was especially ignorant about how to move around as a disembodied spirit—which is what I was about to become. Worse, I had no idea how to get back to John’s body without touching it.
For all I knew, as soon as the Baron threw me out, my spirit would sail around loose like a balloon in the wind, forever lost.
With no other option, I focused on Sybil and the ground below and willed the Baron’s body to descend. But we continued to rise.
I have met many a demon far greater than you in the spirit realm, and I have conquered them all, he said. Let go and rejoin your body while you still can, or I will force your ti bon ange to serve me for an eternity of torment.
People don’t make threats when they really have the upper hand, and his words of bravado let me know that some part of him was worried.
I focused harder, visualizing my feet touching the cool, damp blades of the grass below. And as the moments passed, so slowly that I almost didn’t notice, the gardener’s body began to lower. It moved only a few inches, and it took all of my might, but at least we were going in the right direction.
I was winging it, hoping my willpower was enough to get me closer to the ground and to Sybil, but the spirit world was Baron’s home. Even as I pushed harder than I’d ever tried before, our descent stopped and we started to rise again.
I screamed inside the gardener’s head, my spirit flailing like a child throwing a tantrum. But nothing I did made any difference.
Almost drained of energy, I knew I had to try my plan before it was too late.
While the Baron was busy pushing my soul away, sucking the last bits of sexual energy from the sleeping partygoers, and breaking through Ahriman’s first magical barrier, I made the gardener’s mouth speak—something the Baron hadn’t been expecting.
“Sybil,” I said in the gardener’s voice. “Throw me the bottle.”
Without hesitation, she heaved the bottle skyward, complete with Walt’s little scrap of paper. I reached out and caught it before the Baron knew what was happening. And as soon as I grabbed it, I held the bottle in front of the gardener’s face.
I saw the strange symbols, and so did the Baron. And just like someone trying not to think about something they’ve been told not to think about, the Baron read the word out loud in his head.
And I heard it.
I didn’t know what the sounds meant, but I had a pretty good idea he’d just inadvertently told me his real name. I’d always been good at memorizing lyrics and I had near-perfect pitch, so I spit his name back at him, sound-for-sound in my head and commanded him to do my bidding.
Hear me, mighty loa. By the power of your name, I command you to enter this bottle, where you shall stay until I release you.
I’d like to say I heard him screaming in agony as his spirit was sucked into the bottle, but in reality, he was there one moment, sharing the gardener’s head with me, and the next moment, he was gone.
The gardener seemed to barely notice the difference, but I felt it immediately. I was stuck inside a zombie’s head and most importantly, I didn’t know how to make us float.
Instantly, the gardener, still clutching the empty bottle of rum, free fell to the ground and landed next to Sybil’s feet, a few feet away from John’s body.
The ground was soft and grassy, but the gardener was already broken, and his body would barely move for me as Sybil grabbed the bottle and held it close to her ample bosom.
“Close it,” I managed to say, as I struggled to stretch the gardener’s arm out far enough to reach John’s body.
My hand was almost there when Sybil grabbed it.
“David, I need to know something.”
“Can you ask me later?” I said in the gardener’s undead voice.
“Do you really promise to take me with you when you leave?”
“I said I would.”
“That’s not an answer. Give me your oath.”
I forced my head up and looked at her, but when I saw her face, my anger drained away. Her face was soft and vulnerable, and even though I knew it was an illusion to make her look human, all I saw in front of me was a creature afraid of being left behind again.
“I give you my oath,” I said and closed my eyes, even as I felt the gardener’s heart stutter and stall. Without the Baron to animate him, his body was near the end of its existence.
I set my head down and waited, unsure of what would happen to my soul when the gardener finally passed.
Then I felt Sybil lifting my hand and placing it on John’s arm.
Instantly, my soul f
led the dying gardener’s shell and returned to John’s body.
After taking a few deep breaths, I sat up and looked up at Sybil and the bottle she held in front of her.
For some reason, the bottle of rum looked odd. As I narrowed my eyes, I saw that its stem was pink from the piece of latex stretched over it.
“Is that a condom?” I said.
“You told me to be creative.”
It looked ridiculous, but it worked great.
As we both silently watched the bottle for signs of the Baron trying to escape, we saw none—only a purple swirl of smoke writhing and twisting behind the glass—the Baron’s spirit bound by my command and unable to leave the prison of my makeshift soul jar.
After a few minutes, my heart rate calmed down, and I became acutely aware that Sybil and I were sitting in someone’s back yard, mostly naked.
“I’m getting hungry,” Sybil said as she stared at my tight boxer briefs.
I looked back at her, and for a moment, I felt a pang of affection for her. Yes, she ate human hearts fresh from their chests. And yes, her demonic existence revolved around destroying men with her sexuality. She was a succubus, through and through. But she’d stuck by me and had been there when I needed her most, and she was my succubus.
And that was all that mattered at the moment.
Chapter 52
I SLIPPED INTO my pants, then walked down the concrete stairs with Sybil, back into the basement. Shadow followed close behind us with his leash still in his mouth, while naked people everywhere woke up, exhausted, befuddled, and satisfied.
Sudden movement from the far side of the room caught my eye, and when I turned, I saw Raziel, buck naked, stepping out of the orgy room. He yawned and grinned—and then he spotted me.
“Breathe a word of this, demon,” he said in a voice filled with hatred, “and I shall see you destroyed and banished to eternal pain in ways you cannot imagine.”
Sybil and I looked at each other and laughed.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t tell Dad what you’ve been up to.”
Raziel snarled and balled his hands into fists. It looked for a moment like he was going to attack me, but all he did was flex, close his wings in front of him, and disappear into nothingness.
“Are all angels that friendly?” I asked Sybil.
She shrugged.
“They’re usually in better moods, especially after an orgy.”
As we continued our way through the basement, stepping around people as they stood up and stretched, I didn’t sense any fear in the room—just a lot of confusion as people tried to remember what they had done and with whom.
Even the men who’d been taking out their anger on Oizys had dropped their whips and were looking around bewildered and lost.
I walked past the men and undid Oizys’s restraints. She lay there, completely naked, the skin of her torso and her thighs crisscrossed with welts and bruises. She looked a mess, but the relaxed smile on her face was one-hundred-percent genuine.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I said. I knew my words were out of character for John, once again, but I didn’t care.
If Oizys noticed, she didn’t say anything. She just laughed and slowly sat up.
“Well, that was delicious,” she said.
I shook my head as the guests made their way to the ground floor to retrieve their clothes from Samantha.
One person, however, didn’t move at all, even though her eyes were open as she stared at the ceiling.
Marie.
Even though I’d just defeated a powerful loa, I was still woefully inexperienced with the workings of Voodoo. But I understood enough to know she’d been a casualty of the Baron’s plans and that she’d never be herself again without her ti bon ange.
I held the liquor bottle with the Baron’s spirit trapped inside close to my face.
“You’ll make this right somehow,” I said. “Or you’ll be the one suffering for all eternity.”
I leaned down and helped Marie to her feet. She stood up like an automaton, but at least she wasn’t under the Baron’s control anymore.
“Can you find something for her to wear?” I asked Sybil. I half expected her to be annoyed by my request, but she nodded, and together we went upstairs in search of Marie’s dress.
When we finally made it through Samantha’s line, she grinned sheepishly at me, then wiped all emotion from her face when she saw Sybil standing next to me. A minute later, she handed our clothes back to us, and we dressed in the foyer.
As we walked out, Samantha pointed at the bottle of rum with the pink condom for a top I was carrying.
“I’m sorry sir, but you can’t leave here with an open bottle. Club rules.”
“Don’t you remember me?” I said.
“I’m afraid not, but it doesn’t matter who you are, sir. Rule are rules.”
Whether it was because the Baron’s hypnotic music had stopped or because some other unknown magic was at play, I was happy she didn’t remember who I was.
I turned around and walked away, bottle in hand, with Sybil, Marie, and my little hellhound by my side.
I was surprised to see Marco and his boys outside, still there, waiting for me like he said they’d be.
“I was wondering where your mutt went,” he said as Shadow gave a low growl. “I hope you and your friends had a good time, because you look like shit warmed over.”
“Thanks for waiting,” I said.
He laughed and held out his hand, palm upward.
“I’m not leaving until you pay me what you owe.”
Sybil started to say something, but I motioned for her to stand down.
Without words, I held out my right arm and let one of Marco’s guys drain me of another pint of the black stuff that ran through my veins.
Once Marco had what he wanted, he and his Olmecs left in silence.
Marie stood next to me, expressionless as Oizys came out the front door, walking with a limp. She winced with each step and avoided eye contact with me.
“You were wrong about Marie,” I said.
She shrugged and kept moving.
“Then again, if it weren’t for you, I never would have ended up here tonight, and I wouldn’t have stopped the Baron from escaping.”
It was her turn to grin and nod.
“Then you still owe me,” she said as she walked past us.
“I’m ready to go home,” I said, looking at Sybil.
We walked toward my car, with Marie following—a blank expression on her face the whole time. Seeing her like that made me wonder how much I’d really helped her by foiling the Baron’s plans. My head told me I’d done the best I could, but my heart knew I’d been too late to save her.
Shadow pranced along next to me, his leash in his mouth and his tail wagging. I wondered if he realized that he’d saved the day. Even though he likely didn’t, I vowed to take him on the longest walk of his life as soon as I woke up the next day.
“I had a good time tonight,” Sybil said, with a grin spreading across her face.
I know my eyes widened even though I tried to keep a straight face.
“That was your idea of a good time?”
“I’ve had worse,” she said in a whisper.
That wasn’t the last time I wondered what kind of evil jerk the real John must have been to Sybil, and I decided I didn’t feel bad at all about him trading places with me and ending up in my cancer-ridden body. He probably deserved that and more.
“What are you going to do with the Baron?” she asked as I opened the car door for her.
“I’m not sure, but I have an idea I think is going to be a win-win-lose proposition.”
Chapter 53
THE NEXT DAY, I woke up early, left Sybil in bed sound asleep, and checked on Marie in the guest room. She was lying there in the same position we’d placed her in the night before, her eyes open, her body apparently no longer requiring sleep. I’d insisted Marie stay in the guest room, despite S
ybil’s suggestion that she sleep in bed with us. Even though she denied it, I think the idea of it turned her on, because—well, that’s just how Sybil is.
After giving Shadow a rack of frozen ribs, I took him for an hour-long walk around the neighborhood.
When we returned, I tried to get him to get in the car with me, but he refused to go. He even whimpered once, so I left him at home. I didn’t think his powers included being psychic, but it sure seemed like he knew where I was heading.
And to be honest, I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to join me. I didn’t want to go either, but I had to.
During the ten-minute drive to The Farm, I tried to put myself in a positive mental state. It had been a pretty rough night, but in the end, I’d stopped the Baron from escaping and had done the best I could to uphold Ahriman’s commandments.
Of course, there’d been some casualties along the way.
Laura Henders had been turned into a zombie by the Baron and had later lost her undead life at the hands of the Olmecs. Blaire had been killed by something pretty powerful, and although I had no evidence, I suspected he’d been a victim of his helpful nature and the Mendes Goat—the same creature I was on my way to see.
And then there was Marie. Unlike Laura and Blaire, she actually lived in Ashburn, but technically, she wasn’t fully dead. She was a zombie without the Baron being around anymore to control her, which sucked for her, but meant Ahriman probably didn’t care. But I did, and it was for her sake I pulled off the side of the road and walked past the road-side store that was closed for the day and down the path in the early morning dew.
With each step closer to the barn, a dark foreboding filled me like a nightmare I didn’t want to revisit.
Finally, I stood in front of the double doors to the barn, this time unarmed and without my faithful hellhound. The only thing in my hand was the bottle containing the Baron’s spirit.
What I was about to try would have been a lot easier if I’d known the Mendes Goat’s real name, but with the deal I was about to offer, I hoped I wouldn’t need it.
I stepped into the barn and did my best not to jump when the door slammed shut behind me. Inside, the three human farm hands working with one of the horses stopped in their tracks, frozen and unresponsive.
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