Soultaker

by Bryan Smith

  He hit the brakes and let out a scream of frustration. An 18-wheeler was blocking his way, slowing down as it neared the intersection. Raymond glanced at the rearview mirror. Cindy still wasn’t upright. The older gun-shop clerk was at her side, offering his assistance. A knife appeared in her hand. The blade flashed in the morning sunlight before she stuck it in the man’s throat. Raymond whimpered and whipped his head back toward the street. The 18-wheeler was rolling slowly through the three-way stop. He heaved a sigh of relief and let his foot off the brake, allowing the Lexus to roll closer to the edge of the street.

  Then Cindy was there again, screaming and launching herself through the halfway-open driver side window. Raymond might have cursed his stupid failure to close the window had he been capable of coherent thought in that moment. Instead he matched Cindy’s scream with an impressive one of his own as he dodged the bloody blade in her hand. Then he looked in front of him and saw that the street was clear again. He hit the gas and the Lexus surged into the street, straight toward the brick wall of a building on the opposite side. He spun the wheel hard to the left and the car swerved back to the street.

  There was a massive thump and Cindy loosed a scream of sheer agony. Raymond realized two things in the next moment.

  One, the lower half of the psychotic cheerleader’s body had struck a telephone pole with extraordinary force.

  And two, the Lexus was still speeding down the street.

  He pulled his leaden foot off the accelerator and hit the brake. Then he twisted the steering wheel and ducked down an alley, dragging Cindy Wells’s now very limp body along with him. He slammed the gearshift to the park position and sat there struggling not to hyperventilate for several moments. After he had calmed down some, he forced himself to look at Cindy. She was very still and at first he was sure she was dead. Then he looked at her throat and saw the slow throb of a weak pulse.

  He thought about taking her to a hospital, but dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Doing that would doom everything and Cindy would probably die anyway.

  Frustration made Raymond pound the steering wheel again. “Fuck!”

  His breath hitched and a sob worked its way out of his throat. A series of progressively more wrenching sobs followed. This lasted until it hit him that he was living down to Lamia’s worst assumptions about him. He wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at the rearview mirror. There was no one behind him. A glance through the windshield confirmed that the opposite end of the alley was also deserted. But it wouldn’t be for long.

  He got out of the car. The sight of Cindy’s badly mangled legs made him gag. They were twisted and broken, though he saw no compound fractures, no shards of bone sticking through punctured flesh. In that regard only she’d been lucky. Not that it mattered. Cindy’s limited future remained very bleak. Raymond choked down bile and forced himself to act quickly. He extracted the girl from the shattered window and dragged her to the rear of the Lexus. She whimpered softly, but did not regain consciousness. Raymond opened the trunk, hoisted her up, and dropped her inside. He hesitated a moment, his hand poised on the trunk lid, ready to slam it down. By all rights, the broken girl should no longer pose much of a threat, but he knew he shouldn’t take that for granted. With this much weirdness in the air, that would be the height of arrogance.

  He removed his GUN CITY USA purchases from the trunk and stowed them in the backseat.

  Then he slammed the trunk and got the hell out of there.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Trey McAllister sat at the chintzy little kitchen table in his mother’s house and stared at his fists, feeling sick as he remembered how his brother had fallen beneath the force of his punches. A sickness surpassed only by the guilt he felt at the memory of the shock and betrayal he’d seen in Jake’s eyes.

  He told himself it had been necessary. That he’d done it only to protect his brother. Once again he reviewed the morning and laughed bitterly. He recalled the lies he’d spewed to drive Jake away and laughed again, and this time he felt a sting of tears. It had been the performance of a lifetime. Real Oscar-caliber work. If by some miracle he managed to make it to tomorrow alive, he would have to give some serious thought to pursuing an acting career.

  The thought of surviving triggered yet another round of that numb laughter.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  He was a walking dead man and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. Which was kind of okay. He’d been through a lot. Had seen a lot of awful things. Had been made to do things so gruesome and deranged that the thought of living with the memories horrified him nearly as much as the acts themselves.

  So, yeah, dying—preferably sooner rather than later—would probably be for the best.

  He thought of the hopelessness of his predicament some more and laughed one last time.

  “What’s so funny, child?”

  Trey’s breath caught in his throat at the sound of her voice. He clenched his fists tighter as he struggled not to scream.

  The voice turned colder. “I asked you a question. I expect an answer.”

  Trey consciously reminded himself to breathe. He exhaled slowly and unclenched his fists with great deliberation. Then he turned to look at Myra. And he did the only thing possible. He told the truth. He couldn’t lie to her. There would be no point even if he could. “I was just thinking about everything. About my brother. About how much I hate you. And about how fucked up this all is.” The depth of his despair came through in his voice. He made no attempt to hide it. “And I was thinking about how there’s not a fucking thing I can do about it.”

  Myra was nude save for a tiny black thong. He looked at her slim, pale body and tried to feel even a ghost of the overpowering lust he’d felt for her just days ago. But there was nothing. It made sense. The compact little body he’d once found so enticing was only a facade.

  She smirked. “You’re right about that. But you’re wrong about the other thing. I could make you feel lust for me again if I really wanted.”

  Trey felt a chill. She was still inside his head. Still knew his every thought. It was a violation. A mental rape of sorts. And just one more thing he could do nothing about. “I know. But it wouldn’t be any more real than the girl I’m looking at.”

  Myra ran a hand slowly down one side of her sleek body. “Oh? I could alter my appearance, you know. Change my shape, make it more pleasing.”

  Trey shook his head. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

  “I suppose I do, at that.”

  She stared at him for several long, exceedingly uncomfortable moments, her dark, glittering eyes boring into his skull like lasers, making him squirm. Then she turned away from him and opened a cutlery drawer. Trey heard a clank of steel as she sorted through the contents. He sucked in a breath when she turned toward him again. The gleaming carving knife looked impossibly big in her little hand. She approached the table with a slow roll of her hips and set the knife down before him.

  “What—”

  “I’m giving you a chance to take yourself out of the equation, but I’m leaving it all up to you, darling.” She grinned at his thunderstruck expression. “You can live for a while or die right now. If you choose the latter, you can do the job with that easily enough. It’ll hurt, of course, horribly, but that won’t last long. Well, not too long.”

  Trey looked at the knife and thought about it.

  And thought about another possibility or two.

  Myra snorted. “Yeah, right. Try and I’ll pop a vessel in your brain before you even get the fucking thing off the table. Now put that idiot thought away before I take this choice away from you. You’ll want to think about this very carefully, Trey. It’s the last time you’ll ever have any say in what happens to you.”

  Trey stared at the knife another long moment, then pushed it away with a sigh. “I…can’t.”

  “Because you’re a coward.”

  Another sigh, then, very quietly: “Yes.”

&nbs
p; Her laughter was smug and very satisfied.

  Trey hated himself more than ever in that moment.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  Trey turned his head away from Myra’s hateful face and cringed at the sight of his mother sauntering into the kitchen. She wore only a grimy white T-shirt and a pair of lacy pink panties. She winked at Trey and patted Myra on the ass on her way to the refrigerator. She took a can of Old Milwaukee from the fridge and popped the tab.

  She took a long swallow from the can, made a sound of almost sexual satisfaction. “Got-damn. Tell you what, ain’t nothin’ hits the spot like a beer after getting laid.”

  Trey struggled not to throw up.

  Myra had elected to stay inside and out of sight during the confrontation with Jake. She was not yet ready to reveal herself to the older McAllister boy for some reason. After Jake and his girl left, Trey and Jolene came back inside. Myra had been very pleased with the way the whole thing had played out. And she had chosen to show her pleasure by dragging Jolene into one of the tiny home’s two bedrooms. Trey had retreated to the kitchen at the sound of the first orgasmic squeals.

  And now here they were again. Utterly shameless. Making no attempt to disguise what they had been doing. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  Jolene finished off the beer and tossed the crumpled can into the overflowing sink. Then she sidled up next to Myra and slipped an arm around the girl’s waist. Keeping her eyes on Trey, Myra smiled and leaned into the embrace. Jolene slipped a thumb beneath the band of Myra’s thong and gave it a snap. “Mmm…your girl’s primo stuff, boy. Knows her way around a woman’s body better than any man I ever knew, that’s for goddamn sure. If I’d known that, I never would’ve given you so much fuckin’ grief about her.”

  “She’s not my girl.”

  Jolene ran a finger along the delicate line of Myra’s jaw and made a purring sound. “You mean I can have this fine piece all to myself?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Jolene made that purring sound again and said, “Oh, I think I will.”

  Trey stared at his hands and tried to make his mind a blank while they noisily made out for several minutes. But the effort was doomed. There was too much to think about. Too many awful things had happened. And there was the prospect of a near future awash in blood and violence to consider. So his mind wandered. He thought about Lamia. He understood in a general way her need to harvest souls and replenish her energy for another long stretch of years. And to some degree he understood some of the machinations necessary to put all the right pieces in place and arrange a successful harvest. He was less sure about why she did so many other things that seemed unnecessary. All the random murder and mind games. And she had some kind of fixation on Jake. Some kind of connection she refused to clarify. Trey didn’t have much left that mattered to him, but his brother did matter. He wished he could talk to him, convince him to head out of town, to run like a mad bastard, and keep running until he was hundreds or thousands of miles away.

  He felt like crying now.

  Because he knew it wasn’t possible. He knew that Jake was just as doomed as he was.

  “You’re right about that.”

  Trey flinched. He looked up and saw that Jolene had left the kitchen. Myra had moved closer to him while his mind was elsewhere. She stared down at him, her dark eyes cold as ever but also amused. “You can’t warn him. And he won’t escape. He was always meant to be here at harvest time.”

  “Why?”

  She shook her head ruefully. “You know better, darling. I don’t like to reveal all my secrets at once. Why ease your mind when it’s so much more fun to watch you writhe in torment?”

  “You’re evil.”

  “Well, fucking duh, Trey.” She laughed and her modest breasts jiggled in a way he would have found thrilling only a short time ago. “As for the rest of it…the seeming lack of a method to my madness…let’s just say that most of it is fun and games.”

  Trey shuddered. “Murder. Torture. Fucked-up head games. Those are fun and games?”

  She shrugged. “I’m old beyond your ability to comprehend, little worm.” She smiled and stroked his cheek with the back of a soft hand. “I get bored. Even a goddess, an immortal, can get bored. Maybe even especially a goddess. So many years, Trey. Endless. The centuries. Millennia. I have to amuse myself somehow.”

  “You’re not a goddess.”

  She lifted her chin, tilted her head. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. This goddess bullshit…it’s just your way of fooling your followers into believing you’re more important than you are.” There was contempt in his tone now. He knew he was pushing it, that he risked invoking her wrath in a big way, but he was powerless to keep this inside. It wouldn’t matter anyway—she would just look inside his head and know what he was thinking. “No, the truth is you’re just some kind of fucking demon. Satan kicked you out of hell or something.”

  Her hand moved from his cheek to his neck, encircled it.

  She applied pressure.

  His eyes bugged out and he couldn’t breathe.

  Then she released him and smiled again. “No. That would be too easy. I want you around to see everyone and everything you care about go down in flames.”

  Trey touched his tender throat and smiled weakly. “Okay. But I’m right. I know I am.”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. And Satan? Please. Just an idea. And I was a player long before it was even conceived. And goddess or not, I am immortal. Perpetual. I’ll survive the end of the world. Doesn’t that make you feel small?”

  Trey didn’t have an answer for that.

  Myra smiled. “Not that it matters. I’m almost done with you anyway. With both of you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She touched a hand to his forehead. He felt her invading his mind again.

  She said, “Forget.”

  There was a fuzzy moment. Trey shook his head and looked up at her. “What…”

  He frowned.

  Something had happened, but he couldn’t remember what it was. It was probably just another symptom of his exhaustion.

  “I’m back!” Jolene threw an arm around Myra and laid a loud, wet smack on her cheek. “Did you miss me?”

  Myra smiled. “Of course.”

  Jolene had returned with a largish Tupperware container. Trey frowned at the dark shape visible through its opaque side.

  It was…moving.

  Jolene caught his puzzled look and cackled. “Oh! That’s right. You don’t know about your daddy yet. Check this shit out, boy.”

  She disengaged herself from Myra and peeled back the container’s purple top. Trey peeked inside and let out a gasp.

  “Holy…”

  His head swam.

  He thought he might faint.

  “That…it’s not…it can’t…”

  Jolene loosed another burst of mad laughter. “That’s what I thought, baby, but I was fuckin’ wrong. Myra did it for me. A special gift.” She beamed at Myra. The girl’s eyes shone with amusement. “And I fetched him now ’cause I figured out what I want to do with him.” She giggled. “You’re gonna love this shit. It’s perfect.”

  She hurried across the kitchen and popped the open container in the microwave. A series of beeps followed as she set the timer, followed by the hum of the machine working. Several seconds later there was a loud PLOP! And something wet splashed against the microwave’s little window.

  There was a good deal of feminine laughter then.

  Trey shoved himself away from the kitchen table, put his head between his knees, and heaved.

  This elicited more laughter.

  And then he did faint.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The first thing Jordan thought as she began to wake up was that she was hungover. Her mouth was dry. She felt thickheaded, engulfed in a mental fuzz obscuring memories of the night before. An ache throbbed somewhere behind her eyes. Her stomach fluttered. A taste of bil
e at the back of her throat hinted at a big meal her digestive system wanted no part of, probably something fried and drowned in grease.

  Must have really tied one on.

  She’d probably gone out to the Grill again. Their whole menu was chock-full of things the food nazis would scream about. Loaded with fat and deep fried to hell and back. She had to stop eating there. Had to change her habits while she was still young and thin. And…

  Wait.

  She still wasn’t fully awake. But she was close enough now to find certain things curious, verging on alarming. She became aware of various aches throughout her body. Then she felt the hardness beneath her. She wasn’t in a bed. She stretched and groaned. Her foot kicked something hard that skittered away. Maybe she’d crashed for the night on the floor for some reason. Too drunk to make it the bed or sofa, maybe. She rolled onto her back and groaned again. A frown twitched at the corners of her mouth.

  Something about the hardness beneath her felt…wrong.

  It was too…lumpy.

  And now she felt something else. A sweet, mellow warmth on her face. It felt nice. Familiar. She knew what it felt like, but it wasn’t something she should feel crashed out on the floor of her apartment. And yet the warmth on her face felt like sunshine. Couldn’t be. Like many people her age, she liked to have a few drinks, maybe even get pretty tipsy, but she’d never been the type to get completely hammered and pass out outdoors.

  Then she felt something wet and rough on her face.

  She flinched away from it.

  What the hell?

  She felt it again. What could that possibly be?

  Then it hit her.

  Something’s licking me!

  Her eyes snapped open.

  The big dog’s lolling tongue lapped at her face again.

  Jordan screamed.

  She sat up and scooted away from the golden retriever. It sat on its haunches and grinned at her in its simple doggy way. The dog had company. A loose circle of animals surrounded her, all of them staring at her. A German shepherd sniffed at her feet. A squirrel sat on its hind legs and chittered at her. A big gray tomcat approached her from the right and nuzzled her hand. And there were more of them. Cats and dogs. A rabbit. A skunk. A row of gleaming blackbirds peered down at her from a telephone wire. Jordan scanned their faces and tried to tell herself this was just coincidence, all these creatures gathered around her like this. Christ, it was like being surrounded by Lamia’s minions again.