by B. L. Morgan
“You bastard, son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted and waded into the thing.
As fogged as I was I could still see an opening when one was presented to me.
The thing was completely occupied with Johnny and it was turned sideways to me attacking him. I darted in and leaped on its back clamping my legs around its scaly hide.
It reared up like a bucking bronco with ten heads but I wasn’t in the mood for a rodeo. I buried my sword up to the hilt in the things back and twisted the blade around jerking it back and forth trying to slice and dice all of the creature’s inner organs.
It thrashed and wiggled then all at once went stiff and crashed forward onto the black tiles stone cold dead.
Chapter Fifty-One
The Most Secret Wish
I rolled off the dead thing and looked toward the woman on the throne.
She applauded.
“Brilliant!” She shouted. “Brilliant! You are the first to ever defeat the Hydra. Step forward to receive your reward.”
I glanced over at Johnny. He was kneeling touching his ankle where he’d been bit.
“How’re you doing bro?” I asked.
“Shit, ain’t nothing but a thang,” he said. “I’ve been bit worse by fucking Chihuahuas.”
I looked directly into Elizabeth’s eyes.
“We got a present for you too,” I told her as I stepped forward gripping my sword.
The beautiful melodious chanting came again speaking directly into my mind.
“Come to me,” the chant told us. “Come to me and I will fulfill your most secret dreams.”
If only you could, I thought for only one brief second and the waters in front of us churned with two of the dark shapes.
The shapes were long and sinuous. They swirled and glided back and forth underneath the water with an oddly feminine grace.
Both Johnny and me moved forward our swords in our hands ready to part Elizabeth’s hair for her.
I felt the warmth wash over me and I stepped out into the water. My mind was being filled once again by that beautiful melody. All of me was being filled.
In this place, if I let go, I was told that I would feel no more pain. If I let go I knew that I would receive what I most dreamed of, my most secret wish.
I stepped further out into the water. Johnny was beside me. He stumbled against me.
Absently I asked, “What’s up with you?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I feel strange.”
Johnny coughed and it was like a smoker’s hacking cough. He stumbled forward.
The head of the dark sinuous thing circling in front of him surfaced. I instantly recognized the oval eyes, the smooth golden-brown skin, and the pouty thick Asian lips. The face was the face of Sushi, Johnny’s old girlfriend.
His mouth fell open as Sushi came out of the water standing up to her waist. She was as bare as the day she was born.
“Oh Johnny,” she said. “I have missed you so much.”
“Why’d you leave me for that guy?” he asked. “You know I’d have given you everything. You already had my heart. What else could you ever want?”
“I am sorry. It was a mistake,” she told him.
The dark shape swimming in front of me emerged from the water. Pitch black hair, glistening eyes that I would never forget and the ruby red lips that I would hunger for forever.
It was Sherry St. Claire. She was here. She reached for me.
“Come to me,” she whispered. “We can be together forever.”
I reached out to take her in my arms but something was wrong.
We have many lives, many bodies, but only one soul, only one soul mate.
I hesitated.
Johnny coughed again. It was a loud bark of a cough.
Blood sprayed from between his lips and out of his nose. It struck Sushi as she stood in front of him.
She smiled and licked her lips and her smooth golden-brown Asian skin changed in an instant to shiny snake scales.
“Son of a bitch!” Johnny yelled his sword flashing up out of the water the point catching the Sushi-thing under the chin and slicing the now dark green snake face in half with an upward stroke.
It screeched out a scream unlike anything any human throat had ever uttered.
The Sherry St. Claire-thing in front of me morphed into a lizard-headed creature spitting threats at me.
I ripped my blade up and to the side and sliced through the reptile’s throat. It gurgled and screeched and dove beneath the water.
Sushi was gone from in front of Johnny leaving a trail of foul black blood behind her. The Sherry St. Claire-thing fell backward and swam to the bottom of her lake, a black swirl left in her wake.
Johnny staggered back out of the water hacking and coughing, each breathe spit forth a spray of red mist into the air. He collapsed on the shore of the rosewater pool.
I went to him.
He heaved in some air and said, “Fuck man, I ain’t right.” He looked down at his leg where the Hydra had nicked him. The skin was tight and his leg was swollen big and round.
Johnny started shaking like he was in sub-zero temperatures.
“Hold on God-dammit!” I told him because I didn’t know what the hell else to tell him.
I glanced over at the throne.
Elizabeth was gone. She’d vanished into thin air. She had enough brains to realize that if Johnny died I was going to kill anything and anyone that I could get my hands on.
I knelt down with Johnny, put my arms around him and held him. He was shaking uncontrollably and sweat poured out of his skin like we were in a steam room. He coughed again and more of the blood mist filled the air.
Johnny caught his breath for a moment.
“Don’t let me die back here,” he said. “Get me back. I don’t want to die in this pit.”
“You’re not dying bro,” I told him and I knew it was a lie.
The stone oval hummed its loud song of power. The gateway, the portal was still open. The yawning gulf of the space between worlds shone in its center.
I’d failed.
Elizabeth was gone.
She’d escaped.
But at least I could still do one thing.
I slung Johnny’s arm over my shoulder and stood up with him. Blood poured freely from his nose and mouth. It ran down onto my chest but that didn’t matter. We were like brothers, had been since we were kids. His blood was my blood. If I could have taken his place at that moment and been bleeding out my life instead of him doing it, I would have gladly done so.
I carried him along the bank of the rosewater pool and stepped up onto the platform in front of the stone oval.
I carried him like a child.
“Just hold on,” I told Johnny and stepped inside the gateway to another world.
Instantly we were engulfed in the flames that had cooked us and changed us each time we’d traveled between the worlds.
Johnny leaned close to my ear and uttered one single word, “Good-bye.”
“Don’t die!” I shouted back at him commanding him to survive just a little while longer but he melted to nothingness in my arms.
Part Three
Back To the Beginning
Chapter Fifty-Two
Fate
I flew out of the portal onto polished stone. I instantly knew where I was. I was in The Temple of Isis beneath the Masonic Lodge in Cahokia Illinois.
I was alone.
I wore the same kind of clothes that I had on when we’d leapt into the stone oval to go after Elizabeth. In my jacket pocket there was a very large pistol. It was a .44 Magnum. One single shot from that gun could put down a moose.
It was fully loaded.
Stuck in my belt was a slim bladed stiletto. I guess that’s what the dagger I’d been carrying on the other side changed to during the ride.
I looked back to the portal. It was still alive and active, whining out a song of forever, although it seemed just a bit weaker now.
My clothes and the weapons had changed to this era’s equivalents. That’s the way it always happened before. That’s what happened this time.
But what had happened to Johnny?
He was a dying man and he just turned to nothing.
It didn’t matter anyway.
I’d failed.
I was alone, more alone than I’d ever felt in my entire life.
Through my entire life, every since I’d met Johnny, we’d been best friends. Through the best and worst of times, through all kinds of women and wars we’d stayed that way. We faced off against things that most men would run screaming away from and kicked its ass. Hell we’d even beat the crap out of each other a couple of times when we were drunk. Now I felt like a part of me was gone and I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do.
The humming ceased. The stone oval went silent. The stars vanished from inside it. All was quiet inside the chamber. It was the quiet of death.
The doorway to another universe was now closed.
In a fog I stumbled through the tunnels leading out of The Temple of Isis. Then I climbed out into Paul Brady’s office and walked through the Masonic Lodge of Cahokia without really seeing anything around me.
I was back where I started, wandering the streets at night with nowhere that I wanted to go and no one that I wanted to see. Johnny’s Pinto wasn’t out front.
That wasn’t such a big surprise. We’d been gone for months so it probably had been towed a long time ago. Either that or Jeanette picked it up.
Jeanette. I knew I really should go by and tell her about Johnny.
I stood outside in the drizzling rain not sure what to do.
My best friend was dead.
What do you do after that happens?
Neither one of us was the type to cry. Johnny wouldn’t want it that way.
We were the type to make certain that someone paid.
A cab drove by. I flagged him down.
I told him to take me to Johnny’s Bar and Grill.
The streets flew past in a blur. I watched them glide by through rain dotted windows. The pavement looked like polished steel, streaks shining like laser beams from headlights and street lamps.
Not a single word was passed between the driver and me.
Fate, Johnny had told me. Fate was driving me ... us toward this thing that we had to do.
Different lives, different bodies, but only one soul.
As the taxi pulled up to the curb outside Johnny’s Bar and Grill that all sounded like bullshit.
I paid the driver and got out. He drove away.
The sign was lit and the lights were on inside. Jeanette usually ran the place when Johnny was gone.
I took a step toward the door. The second step was much harder. The third step ... I couldn’t force myself to take that one.
How could I tell Jeanette that her Grandson, her only living relative as far as I knew, was dead?
I stood there for a moment, and then I turned and walked away just like the coward that I felt like.
I promised myself that I would go and see Jeanette and tell her everything. But I really had to have something strong to drink first.
The winos and junkies and beggars were out in force on that night.
The beggars held their hands out to me as I passed but one look made them jerk their hands back like they’d been scalded. The only thing anyone was going to get from me was a double dose of death.
I walked past them and wondered how long it would be before I’d be just like them, sleeping in alleys, shitting and pissing outside just like all the rest of the stray dogs.
A black prostitute was on a corner attempting to make money by renting out her African ass. She smiled a big red-lipped toothy smile and started, “Hey baby ...”
My look stopped her cold, made her back away saying, “Sorry. Shit, I’ll leave you the fuck alone!”
That was a good idea.
Just up ahead I saw the sign for The Barbary Coast.
That’s where it all began. Maybe, that’s where it all needs to end.
I went in.
The place was quiet. There were a couple of drunks on barstools arguing about a baseball game that was playing on the tube.
Nate Jones was serving the drinks. He was here the last time I was. He’s just about always here.
I step further into the room closing the door behind me and in an instant my eyes adjust to the gloom.
My breath caught in my throat. My heart skipped one very long beat.
A small well built woman with jet black hair and light almost ghostly skin was seated at the center of the bar. She was stirring her drink and watching the ice twirl around and not looking at anything else.
Fate, Johnny said. Fate is driving us or me to do something that we are meant to do, something only I was built to do.
I walk all the way into the room.
The woman looks at me and smiles.
Well maybe this time I’ll get it right.
I went and sat beside her. I waved at Nate.
“Bring the lady another of what she’s drinking,” I told him.
Yes, it was Elizabeth. There was no doubt about it. She was a little bit changed, but it was her.
And she didn’t recognize me.
I remembered my lines well and played my part like a well-trained actor.
We talked and then we danced and when I held her, her skin was as cold as ice.
Just like before I told her, “We need to get you someplace warm.”
“Yes,” she answered me, just like I remembered. “It has been some time since I have felt warm.”
I wanted to drag her outside right then but I had a part to play, a role to fulfill, a fate to complete. So we danced another dance and I spoke my lines exactly on cue.
And when it was the right moment I said, “Let’s get out of here and I’ll show you something really nice.”
I helped her into her coat and we went out into the street, out into the storm.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The Alley
The rain was coming down harder than when I went in the Barbary Coast. It stung like buckshot being thrown in my face. The Wind was cold and harsh. I was glad it was. I needed to feel cold and harsh to get done what I had to do.
The streetlights made steaks on the wet pavement. Cars drove past and splashed putrid water at us.
We walked about a half block then I motioned for Elizabeth to step out away from the light and into the darkness of an alley. This alley was a shortcut to my place. I knew it well.
She hesitated at the alley’s entrance.
“What’s the matter princess?” I asked her. “Are you afraid of the dark?”
“No, I am not,” Elizabeth answered just as I expected her to. She stepped out of the light and moved up close to me. “You might want to be wary of who you invite into the darkness with you.”
All of this was according to the script. Everything was exactly the way I remembered it.
Now I end it! I decided at that moment.
She was standing up close to me, too close to see me slip the stiletto out of my belt. Elizabeth didn’t even know that I’d moved at all until I jammed the blade all the way up to the handle into her chest.
Sticky thick cold blood flowed out over my hand from the wound. She staggered back gasping and coughed out a stream of bright red blood.
“How could you? How could you?” Elizabeth gasped staggering away. She slipped and fell to her ass. The knife was sticking straight out of her chest, vibrating in the air as she coughed and heaved short hacking breaths.
“Girl, after what I’ve been through since the first time I met you,” I told her. “It was easy!”
Elizabeth flopped to her back. She expelled a long breath that rattled as the last of the air left in her lungs was forced from her.
All was silent in the dark alley as she lay there unmoving as cold as a stone.
Fate, I thought. This is what I was meant to do.
“Look at all the shit you caused,” I told her and squatted down to retrieve my stiletto.
I leaned forward and her hand shot up as her eyes opened and Elizabeth grabbed me by the throat. A bestial growl erupted from her. She sounded like a rabid dog on steroids.
Grabbing her hand I tried to pry her fingers loose from my throat. Her grip felt like a hydraulic clamp as she squeezed, crushing my windpipe.
Seeing stars from the lack of oxygen I punched her four times, left-right-left-right.
With a strength that was totally inhuman she pitched me up and over herself through the air like a rag doll. I smacked into a dumpster and bounced off it waking up a wino sleeping in his own vomit.
“What the fuck?” He slurred. Then he screamed in terror as Elizabeth changed completely in front of him.
Four black bony appendages slid out from inside of her where her ribs should have been. Hair sprouted from all parts of her body in a wave covering her in a type of prickly stiff black fur.
Her eyes grew large and round covering at least half of her face. The slit of her mouth widened running all the way from jawbone to jawbone.
Elizabeth smiled and her teeth shone white and pointed in the night. Green venom dripped from the tips of her teeth.
The wino screamed again in unholy terror. I bet what he was seeing at that moment sobered him up faster than he’d ever sobered up in his life.
The four arms sticking out of Elizabeth’s sides that I now saw ended in spike pointed claws reached out and grabbed the wino then stabbed into his skin skewering him. Elizabeth picked him up and held the quivering man in front of her.
The wino was shaking uncontrollably.
Elizabeth drew him to her then her mouth opened impossibly wide. She upended him and jammed his entire head into her mouth.
The wino’s screams were muffled from inside Elizabeth. There was a crunching sound and the wino went limp.
