Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2)

by Justine Sebastian

  “I remember that,” Dawn Marie said. She shook her head, expression warring between a smile and a frown. “You’ve always been a charmer.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Tobias said.

  “I know that, honey. I do think you’re charming,” Dawn Marie said. “Ms. Wilson was just a hysterical fucking bitch. End of.”

  “That she was,” Tobias said. “She hit me square in the face with an orange one year.”

  “Is that the year your dad finally lost his shit with her?”

  Tobias’s smile was small and quietly pleased. It had been glorious—and gloriously embarrassing at the same time. Tobias remembered standing there in his little cowboy costume and holding his dad’s handkerchief to his bleeding nose while his old man ripped Ms. Wilson a new asshole. He’d felt pretty good about that, but also bewildered. She’d actually thrown the orange at him and he was just a kid. He’d never done anything to her, especially not something so bad he deserved that.

  Every year after that, Ms. Wilson had left a huge bowl—actually a prop cauldron—on her porch with a sign that said, Please help yourselves, but don’t be greedy!

  Tobias had always taken a double handful from her cauldron; a tiny rebellion that felt like triumph, like payback for having taken citrus to the face.

  Dawn Marie finished half of her sandwich and folded the paper up over the other half then shoved it back in the bag.

  “Let’s get to it then,” she said as she stood up.

  “Yes, let’s.” Tobias didn’t like thinking about his childhood much. It was a lot of bad memories with only fly specks of happiness.

  Tobias disposed of his trash then rejoined Dawn Marie to make the walk back to his car. He offered his arm and she took it, leaning against his side with a smile.

  “Who says chivalry is dead?” she asked, always charmed by Tobias’s gentlemanliness.

  “Everyone,” Tobias said.

  Dawn Marie tipped her head back, pouring her throaty laugh up into the mercilessly blue summer sky.

  4

  A hummingbird breathed bright flames across the back of Mooncricket’s left shoulder, its ruby throat aglow with the furnace burning inside of it. Jeremy licked the tattoo, following the forked tongue of fire back to the long, slender beak, tracing his way down to suck at the blistering inferno. Mooncricket was covered in tattoos of winged things; the owl on his arm, the hummingbird on his shoulder, an array of wicked looking moths and butterflies swirling up his calf in a cyclone of razor-sharp wings and needle antennae. There was a bat on the nape of his neck. At the base of his spine, a weeping angel knelt, teardrops dripping through the spaces between its fingers, great wings drooping and heavy with sorrow.

  Jeremy had learned enough about Mooncricket to know that once he had been a rich kid with disposable income and a little side job in an alternative clothing store. Then the drugs got him, Mommy and Daddy cut him off and he was left adrift on the cracked streets of New Orleans. Say bye-bye to any new tattoos that weren’t done with razor blades and India ink.

  Mooncricket made soft, stoned sounds of contentment as Jeremy licked and nibbled at his back. He ran his hand down the sharp protrusions of Mooncricket’s ribs and when he reached back for Jeremy, movements clumsy and lazy from the heroin, Jeremy caught his arm and bit lightly at the fresh track mark in the crook of his elbow, tasted the faint salt of blood, the contaminant bittersweetness of heroin. Mooncricket’s smile was sleepy, his eyelids heavy, the shining blue of his irises turned to blown glass disks in his lax face.

  “I’m sleepy,” Mooncricket said.

  “I know,” Jeremy said. “Rest a while.”

  “What about you? Don’t you want…” Mooncricket trailed off, lost inside his own head.

  Jeremy did want, he wanted very much to scratch his own itch, but it wasn’t that bad. He was a casual drug user, not a junkie like dear Mooncricket was. Jeremy’s fix could wait a while longer; he had more important things to do.

  “Later,” Jeremy said.

  Mooncricket didn’t seem to hear him.

  Jeremy got out of bed, pulled on his clothes and left Mooncricket staring up at the ceiling. He could’ve been dead if not for the slight rise and fall of his chest, the livid redness of his sunburn and the fresh bruises on his face too bright for him to be a corpse. It didn’t look right to Jeremy and there was the urge to correct the scene, to place a pillow over Mooncricket’s head and hold it there until he stopped thrashing. Then the colors would fade from his skin, his chest would be still, his pinprick pupils would be fixed and dilated, letting all of the light into his blind eyes.

  He wouldn’t do that though. At least not yet. He liked Mooncricket; he was fun to play with and even more fun to look at. Jeremy had brought him home to keep for a little while. There were many boys and girls just like Mooncricket, all of them with a monkey on their back and eyes like marmots starving for the plague. However, not many of them were as exceptionally lovely as Mooncricket; androgynous, angular, willowy and tall with long legs that wrapped around Jeremy’s waist just so. So, no, Mooncricket’s time at the fair was not up just yet.

  Jeremy walked away, leaving him to his half-waking dreams to go out to the barn. His dog, a soot-black Caucasian Ovcharka named Barghest, fell in step with him, panting in the heat. Jeremy reached down and patted the dog’s head, barely having to lean to the side to manage it because Barghest was so large.

  The huge padlock on the barn door glinted in the moonlight and Jeremy slid the key into its base with long-practiced ease. He walked inside, shut the door and locked it from the inside again with the same padlock. Something whimpered in the darkness, small and afraid. Barghest chuffed and padded away into the gloom to go sniff out the source. He was well acquainted with all the oddities of the barn and only growled softly when he found what it was.

  Jeremy lit the candles set all around the wide open space of the barn. He’d long since removed the stalls, leaving only the open hayloft and office at the far end of the barn. It was a wide open space, rich with the scent of the tall grass that grew where the dirt floor had once been. The grass got sun from the skylight he’d had installed in the roof of the barn years ago, much to the bemusement of the people he had hired to do so. Then he’d sown the seeds for the inside lawn and in the spring, wildflowers grew in tangled profusion among the tall grass.

  “Hello, Corey,” Jeremy said to the young man he had tied up in the center of his field.

  Jeremy smiled down at the frightened young man who looked back at him with sweet baby blue eyes. His hair was bleach blond and splayed in drooping spikes across the cold stone of the altar, each spike tipped in a different color. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet in retina-searing shades created a neon rainbow. Jeremy stroked over a lock of hair tipped in blue and tangled with a few strands of orange. Corey lay on a raised platform hewn of black granite. It was another of those things that had gotten him odd looks when he approached a stone mason about carving it for him. Everything needed to be right though, he’d long since decided that and if he was to do his work the way it was meant to be done, then an altar was needed.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting, but things came up,” Jeremy said.

  Mooncricket had come up; he’d been angry with Jeremy for going out without him, especially after he’d promised to go into town with him and show him around. They’d had a little tiff about Jeremy’s inconsideration after he’d come inside the night before. Jeremy did allow that saying he was going to get a loaf of bread from the corner store had been a shitty thing to do, but he’d needed an excuse. He didn’t like Mooncricket’s yelling one bit, so he’d punched him in the face. It had taken two more tries, but eventually he knocked Mooncricket out and he was blessedly silent then. Jeremy’s good mood had been ruined though, so he’d left Corey in the barn overnight and all of the following day, which he spent making up to Mooncricket with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Nothing said I’m sorry like a needle in your vein, Danzig on the stereo and a
good, hard fuck like a bow around it all. Jeremy was forgiven and his mood was much improved because of it.

  “We can spend some time together now though,” Jeremy said as he took a straight razor out of his back pocket. “I’m glad you picked me, you know. I usually have to work much harder to find the right one. I think you’re going to be my new favorite, Corey. Isn’t that nice? I think it’s nice.”

  Corey did not look like he agreed, tears welled in his eyes as he thrashed against his bonds. Jeremy leaned down close to him, ignoring the muffled curses from behind Corey’s gag. He cocked his head as he watched the tears streak down Corey’s face and dipped his head to lick them away. The flavor was salt with a delicate, watery sweetness. Jeremy hummed softly, pleased with the taste as he licked again. He loved the taste of tears, loved the sight of crying eyes, faces crumpled with sobs.

  He had seen Corey and the first thought in his mind had been that he bet he would cry beautifully. He had been right.

  Jeremy had found him at the Spanish Moon in Baton Rouge, another concert, another dark bar full of fruit ripe for the picking. Such places were perfect hunting grounds for Jeremy’s favorite flavor of sacrifice. Corey had smiled at him almost immediately and Jeremy had been pleased that he didn’t have to look very hard that night at all. Jeremy had still been cautious; making sure Corey was there alone before he decided for sure that he was the one. When he had determined that, Jeremy began to generously ply Corey with drinks, which he happily accepted.

  The concert had been a good one and when he invited Corey to leave with him, he hadn’t thought twice about it even though Jeremy told him he lived over an hour away from Baton Rouge. Corey hadn’t thought anything was strange about it until Jeremy parked the car in his driveway and took off his hat—and the wig he wore beneath it to give himself the appearance of having long dark brown hair streaked with purple. His own hair was short and black and he’d run his hand over it to un-mold it from the uncomfortably flattened mess the wig had shaped it into.

  Corey had watched all of that with his eyebrows raised, confused and curious about why Jeremy had worn a wig all evening. The answer of course being, To hide my appearance. Sometimes he wore colored contacts, too, green ones made especially for dark brown eyes like his. As long as no one got too close to him, they looked natural and people did not question it.

  “What—” Corey had begun to ask, only to cut off with a strangled curse when Jeremy slipped the needle already loaded with heroin into the side of his neck.

  It was easy after having done it for so long. He kept the needle hidden under a stack of napkins in the little open compartment on the door. All he had to do was reach down, grab it, turn and slam the spike into their necks. The first few times had been sloppy; no matter how many dry runs Jeremy had done before actually trying it out, they had not prepared him for the real thing. People fought back and cars were by rights tightly confined spaces. Even after all the years he’d been doing it, they still sometimes managed to get out of the car and run. They never made it very far, so Jeremy didn’t bother chasing them anymore.

  Corey had been a runner, the drugs already making him clumsy as a drunk clown as he tore open the door of the car. He’d fallen down not six feet from the vehicle and Jeremy had calmly grabbed him by the ankles to drag him to the barn.

  He thought about that while Corey’s curses became pleas, tears like liquid glass soaking his face. Jeremy kissed them away, swallowing them as fast as they came, each droplet a perfect liquor on his tongue and in his throat.

  “There, there,” Jeremy soothed. “It’ll all be over soon.”

  He caught more tears on the edge of the straight razor and licked them away, relishing the drag and threat of the sharp blade against his delicate skin. Corey watched him and screamed behind his gag.

  Jeremy smiled and laughed as he reached into his pocket for yet another syringe full of heroin. He didn’t like them tied up while he worked, it ruined the look of it and made it difficult to do what needed to be done.

  He held Corey down with one hand pressed to his forehead while he slipped the new needle into his neck.

  “Shh,” Jeremy whispered in Corey’s ear as he depressed the plunger. “Don’t fight it.”

  The shadows around the standing banks of candles grew agitated, the secret things that lived in them stirring to attention even as Corey gasped and relaxed back against the granite, tension leaching out of him. Barghest lifted his head from his paws to watch the shifting shadows, how they stretched across the grass of their own accord. The dog growled at them and barked before rising to his feet and moving closer to Jeremy.

  Corey stared up at nothing, so high he was verging on overdose, which was Jeremy’s intention. He hoped Corey wouldn’t vomit; they often didn’t because there was usually nothing in their stomachs to throw up, but once in a while it happened. He watched him until he was sure that Corey would keep. His respiration was slow, labored, his eyelids fluttered and then slipped closed. Jeremy began to untie him then, laying him out on the altar, arranging him like a doll with moveable parts.

  The altar was seven feet long and wide enough that Jeremy could lay them out perfectly without risk of a limb drifting off the side. He stretched Corey’s arms out at his sides, turning them so his palms faced up, the blue map lines of his veins sapphire brilliant beneath his skin. He had scars criss-crossing his arms, chest and legs, the landmarks of unhappy times in his life. Jeremy touched some of them as he moved down his body, massaging his limbs to bring the circulation back to his skin. He spread Corey’s legs slightly to expose the fine, downy skin of his inner thighs, ladder marks of scars climbing up to the crease of each.

  When he was done, Jeremy stepped back to take in his work and nodded to himself, satisfied with the look. A soft, sibilant sound like snakes whispering in hisses rose from the shadows, the excited jabbering of the hungry things Jeremy had brought there with his work and tinkering in the occult. It was a soothing, pleasant sound to him. He had his star attraction and his grand audience. Now it was time for him to get on with the show.

  He stepped away from the altar and stripped off his clothes, folded them neatly and left them in the care of the restless shadows. Inky fingers as insubstantial as smoke stroked his clothes, murmuring rising to almost words as they fondled the buttons on his shirt. Jeremy left them to it as he lit the cones of temple incense that rested between the tall black pillar candles. He breathed it in, cupped the smoke in his hands and brushed it over his face, blessing himself with it. He spent a few moments bathing himself with the sweet, murky smoke, clearing his mind of all thoughts but one.

  When he went back to Corey, Jeremy was calm but aroused, straight razor glinting in his hand as he looked down at the body laid out before him. His breathing was even more labored than it had been; he was dying or slipping into a coma. It didn’t matter which because Jeremy wouldn’t let Corey get that far away from him.

  “Hear me, O Death, whose empire unconfined extends to mortal tribes of every kind,” Jeremy prayed as he set the blade against Corey’s throat. His hand was steady, the blade was sharp. The shadows rustled and crept closer, slid over Jeremy’s back and twined around his ankles like frenzied cats. “On thee, the portion of our time depends, whose absence lengthens life, whose presence ends.”

  Jeremy applied pressure to the blade and dragged it across Corey’s throat as he continued to speak. It opened like an envelope full of secrets and myths. Blood splashed Jeremy’s face; it dripped from his chin, ran down his neck, fine droplets caught in his long eyelashes and hung there like seed-tiny garnets. He licked his lips and moaned as Corey arched and thrashed weakly, breath bubbling in his opened throat. Air shrieked down his severed windpipe and the shadows screeched back, gabbling, digging their smoky fingers into Jeremy’s back to egg him on.

  Before Corey’s blood all ran out of his severed carotid arteries, Jeremy cut his arms open from elbows to wrists. Blood, thick and lazy, bubbled out of the rent skin, staining the y
ellowish subcutaneous fat that blossomed along the edge of each slice like strange lichen. The altar was slick with blood that gleamed black in the candlelight as Jeremy sliced open Corey’s thighs, going deep to reach the femoral arteries in each. Blood squirted from them, hitting his face, though the velocity was weak. Jeremy was quick, but he could never outrun the carotids bleeding out so he could get the full effect. He had to sever them first, however, because the sacrifice might scream otherwise. Corey was dead by the time Jeremy sliced through the arteries in his feet, the blood flow barely a trickle by then.

  Jeremy was covered in gore by the end, dripping in melted gemstone red from his head to his upper thighs. His cock, painfully hard, bobbed between his legs as slick and red as the rest of him. Jeremy stepped away from Corey’s body, wrapped his fingers around his wet, red cock and stroked with his slippery fingers. He tipped his head back to look at the stars through the skylight and when the shadows wrapped around him, phantom fingers joining his own, he trembled with pleasure.

  “O blessed power, regard my ardent prayer,” he gasped, breath dragging in his throat. A cold mouth suckled the head of his cock and Jeremy came with a moan that was almost a sob. His knees buckled as his orgasm tore through him, unblinking eyes fixed on the whirling stars above as he collapsed in the swaying, whispering grass.

  He panted, trying to catch his breath as the aftershocks tore through him. No sex Jeremy had ever had, not even the best of it, could even begin to compare to the orgasmic rush after the initial offering had been made. There was more work to be done yet, but there was time for a rest in between. He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the ground as the shadows covered him, touched him, slipped inside of him. They cleaned the blood and semen from his fingers, gathered the last glistening pearl of it from his cock. They loved him until Jeremy was shaking, vision blurring under the onslaught, every nerve alight as they took care of him in the most complete way. He licked his blood-smeared lips, stroked his tongue against one of smoke that tasted like blood and burning leaves. Jeremy opened his mouth to that questing tongue and moaned as it slid down his throat.