"Yeah, but…" He left off, not knowing what to say. She was right of course, the man had said that, but just then Will didn't know if that was Ba'al talking or a man.
"I can tell that you're confused as usual, but that's ok, I'm used to it." She spoke to Will as if he were a five year old and his face burned hotter with anger and embarrassment, but she couldn't see it and went on calmly, "You want those kids back and I can help you with that, however, it's not going to be pretty. So why don't you take your little friends out of here and go make some tea?"
Father Alba, who stood just inside the room asked, "What are you planning on doing, Miss Jern?"
"Torture of course. We tried it your way talking, blah, blah, blah. Now we'll do things my way."
"No, Miss Jern, we…" the priest began, but she cut right across him.
"I'm so tired of you talking to me in such an insolent manner, Alba." Her voice was low and fairly dripped with venom. "And another thing. No more of this Miss Jern crap, I am now Ba'al Fie-ere."
The man, Will still thought of as Ba'al Zubel, had just struggled to his feet, and started to say something, but Talitha alerted by the sound of his movement punched him dead center in his chest. He went down again, his breath came and went, a tiny squeaking sound, high and weak, and to Will alarming.
They all stared at the man in shock and when a minute went by and the squeaking hadn't progressed, Will asked, "Should we do something about him?"
"He'll be fine. You know, I killed a man a few months back with a punch to the solar plexus, wham! Dead center." She shook her head sadly. "What a waste, he went so fast. But you won't have to worry your pretty little head, Will. I learned my lesson; this one won't die so easily. I'll make sure it will take a long, long time."
Her smile made him cold.
"See, he's moving, I told you he'd be fine." Talitha turned her vicious smile back to the man. His breathing had progressed past the squeak and into a wheeze, which was helping his complexion. He had been a fearful purple beneath the dried blood and now, Will could see that he had turned a high pink.
Grabbing his hair, Talitha helped him to his feet by it, before slapping hard across the face. It was like the sound of a cracking whip, but with volume and the man collapsed again at the feet of Father Alba.
The sound triggered something in Will. It was like déjà vu, but he knew it was a vision. He saw blackness suddenly lit, followed by a crash. The death, the first one was creeping closer. His chest constricted painfully and he checked his watch 11:58. It would be soon.
"Miss Jern," Father Alba stared at the man groaning at his feet, "You can't…"
Talitha leapt over the possessed man, just as pretty as a deer clearing a fence and landed a foot to Father Alba right. She slipped in close to the startled priest, pivoted around him, and within a second had him by his throat.
"Hey! Uhhhng!" The priest's eyes bulged as she applied a healthy squeeze.
"Talitha, no!" This was shouted in chorus by Will, Jim, and Father John and they each stepped nearer to her.
"Stop!" her voice, startlingly loud, stopped the men. "I can tear out his throat in an instant. Ask Will if you don't believe me."
No one asked, but all eyes went to him and he nodded rapidly.
"Talitha, please…" Will began, pleadingly.
"Ba'al Fie-ere! My name is Ba'al Fie-ere!" she yelled, her face a furious mask that came and went in a second only to be replaced with a sudden blazing triumphant smile. "I have named myself! As is only proper."
"I'm sorry…Ba'al Fie-ere," Will had trouble spitting out the name. "Father Alba is about to pass out. Could you please…uh?"
"Uh, what? Not kill my hostage? I guess so, for now. Hey look at that." Talitha's head turned slightly back and forth at the blood covered man who crawled toward her in something of a delirium. She backed out of the room still holding the priest by his heavy jowls.
"Good doggy," she wore an unpleasant smile for the man. "Look at that, Will. If only you were so well trained, I would consider keeping you around, when my dreams are done."
"What are you doing…Ba'al Fie-ere?" Will had nearly forgotten to add her new name and she had glanced up with a new menace in her eye.
"I'm doing you a favor."
"What favor? I don't understand."
"What else is new, Will? When do you ever understand, shit?" Clearly aggravated she stomped on the man as he crawled up to her. "Let me spell it out for you: I'm going to hurt this little bastard! I'm going to make him scream and beg for death. I'm going to make him really bleed! And he's going to learn, he can't fuck with me!" She screamed this more at the man than at Will.
However, she calmed suddenly, the manic air about her turning sweet. "I'm going to do this for you, Will…dear brother. I know being the good guy can be so constricting, so limiting, so damn boring! You can't hurt him like you really, really want to. Deep down, I know you want to. You want to hurt him bad for what he's done, you want to punish him for what he did to that nun. Doing it in her ass, making her…"
Jim's face had grown red with a tremendous rage and Will worried that he would rush her, not to hurt her but to kill the man. He stepped in front of Jim. "Talitha…I mean Ba'al Fie-ere, please stop. Ok, I understand, I guess, but…but what do you need the priest for?"
"I had planned on taking him as a hostage the moment I heard his cowardly voice. I knew you wouldn't let me cut up this pathetic fraud without having proper collateral. He sure did have me going there though…" She looked down at the man, hatred marring her features. Grabbing the priest by his thinning hair with one hand, she pulled him down. Kneeling, she turned the possessed man over and dug through his pockets.
She held up something small and thin that glittered, "Looky! A razor blade, for sudden unexplained bleeding and…" She dug about again and brought out a key, shiny and new. "He somehow got out of his room and killed a nun," she mimicked her brother's voice making him sound idiotic. "He faked the whole thing, so he could get his hands on the sword." She pulled the priest up and stood gazing down, quiet, and contemplative. "But how did you even know about that?"
"Ok, I get it…but you have Ba'al, you could just…" Will began.
"He's not Ba'al Zubel, you idiot! He's not a demon! He's not possessed either, and never was, damn it!" She shouted at Will, shaking the priest easily as if he were a kite rattling in the wind—there was a wild fire of insanity raging behind her eyes
"Yes, yes, of course. I'm sorry." Will's hands were out uselessly attempting to placate the blind woman. "You're right, he's only a man."
"His name is Luke, I think," intoned Jim in his deep voice.
Will went on, "He's just a man, I get it, but, you have the key and the other is still in the door. You don't need Father Alba, you could lock us all in here. That way you could do…whatever to the man and we won't even try to stop you."
She nodded thoughtfully. "That does sound reasonable, but you've driven me beyond reason, Will."
The sound of an audible and deadly click came from Will's right. Jim stood, holding the gun that had traveled to Maine and back. It was small in his great hands, however in the dim light it was jet black and filled with an uncaring deadly malice.
The sound was not lost on Talitha's keen hearing and she slid easily behind the priest. "So, Big Jim has finally grown a pair?"
"He won't shoot, Talitha," Will said, but was contradicted a moment later.
"Yes I will," Jim told her. "I want answers. What the hell just happened? Were we under a spell?"
"Actually it was an incantation…"
"Is there any damned difference?" he snarled at her, and she only smiled slyly. "Forget that...forget it," he said talking mostly to himself. And then to her, he demanded, "Let the priest go, or else."
"Or else what? You'll shoot?" She gave him a little giggle. "Come on cowboy, take your best shot." She ducked left and right, playfully behind Father Alba, whose wide eyes stayed fixed on the weaving gun in Jim's hands.
Will wanted to protest
. He wanted to step in between Talitha and the gun, but he realized that this could be one of the three deaths he had foreseen. He paused at the idea, hating himself as he calculated the odds of living if Father Alba were to die just now. He would go from a three in six chance down to a two in five chance and if he could…
"I can't," Jim murmured.
The sound of the gun clattering on the cement near Will sent his appalling calculations out the window. With a perverse longing, he stared down at the gun, which conversely represented life to him. If he were to possess it, he could decide who lived and who died, who would be afraid and who wouldn't. The thought triggered Will to take a sly glimpse at the men nearby and with relief, he noted they were all taken up with Talitha and no one eyed the gun, but him.
"That wasn't very smart, Jim," Talitha said and in Will's periphery he saw that she had moved to her right, out from behind the priest. Will's eyes flicked over to her, and he saw that she now had one foot on the back of Luke's neck and was grinding her heal down onto it.
The man struggled weakly.
Will didn't care. His eyes darted furtively back down to the gun and he wondered why he didn't just pick it up. After all, Talitha wouldn't know. She was blind. But there seemed to be an inertia within him that was greater than his yearning for the gun. He fought the feeling, knowing there was no reason for him not to command it and bending down, he reached out his hand…
There was a flash in the pitch black, it was brilliant, and it lit up a silhouette of a man just in front of him. Following it was the roar of the gun. It echoed all around him, and in him as well, shaking his inner being. He felt a wave of nausea wash over him, but that feeling was secondary, he needed to know the time, desperately. He pulled back the sleeve of his coat with a hand that sweated against the grip of the black gun and the familiar orange glow of his watch showed 12:19.
He came back to the present with a snap and found himself in the horrible fetid room and he gasped loudly, but the sound went unnoticed. His hand still reached out for the black gun—the one he'd use to kill and seeing this, Will's fingers curled inwardly with an involuntary motion. He pulled his hand back to his chest and glanced around, this time without any devious notions, but with worry that everyone had seen his vision as well and knew what he was going to do. However, they were all still in the exact positions they had been in, as if Will had froze time to see his vision.
With a start, he tore frantically at his sleeve and the friendly orange glow showed the time, 12:01 pm. Eighteen minutes.
"I've dropped the gun, that's what you wanted," Jim said loudly as if Talitha were deaf as well as blind, making Will jump. "Now, please let Father Alba go."
Eighteen minutes, Will would kill in eighteen minutes. He had killed before, twice. This would be his third murder.
"The future is not set," Will didn't know if he had said the words aloud or if he had just thought them, but nobody seemed to notice, nor did they notice him backing away from the gun, eyeing it as he would a dangerous animal.
"But I'm not done having my fun, he's still so squishy and lively," Talitha grabbed the priest's fat stomach and gave it a playful shake. "And besides, he's still moving."
"Don't kill him," Jim pleaded. Will looked at him and saw the tears, the real, factual tears on Jim's face. They had sprung up out of nowhere.
To Will, it had all the relevance of seeing an apple sitting on a counter. Will's mind was in another world, seeing himself as a killer, again! Knowing that if his soul wasn't forfeit already, it would be as soon as he pulled that trigger. And the fact that Jim was upset mattered nothing to him.
"Kill him?" Talitha asked. "Killing is childish, sophomoric. I'm past that, I've evolved you might say. I'm into pain." Talitha's eyes were now filled with a fevered mania and in their own way, it was worse than the cold evil that had been Ba'al's. Will saw this, but couldn't find it within him to care about that either.
That is until he heard his name sliding from his sister's mouth like warm spit. "Does that make you feel better, Will? That your priest will live? Disfigured, maimed, hopefully insane, but alive? All because of you."
Will's mouth came open and he stared at her stupidly, the conversation that had gone on around him, slowly bubbled up from the molasses of his mind. "My fault?"
Father Alba shook his head, the fat of his jowls swinging back and forth. "Don't blame yourself, Will."
"No, do blame yourself. I warned you, remember?" Talitha wasn't going to be denied. "I told you to speak to me with proper respect but you wouldn't listen. You had to go and be an asshole. So now, whatever happens to the priest will be on your head, I hope you can live with yourself."
"I'm sorry, I wasn't feeling well. I dreamed your dreams and they make me…edgy."
She glared at him, harshly. "If that had been the only thing you'd ever done to me, I might have forgiven you."
His mind cast aside thoughts of his upcoming murder and blundered about trying to recall what he had done to Talitha. "Taking you out of the void? I was trying to help."
"What about this?" She gestured at herself, from head to toe. "This is all your fault. Everything for the last eight years has been your fault! If you hadn't been out trying to dip your wick into Lisa, this wouldn't have happened. Dad left me to find you, remember? He left me alone with a demon! You were supposed to be home."
A great bonfire of guilt turned him cold inside. "I'm sorry."
Her pretty face turned nasty, feral. "I don't care about sorry. I care about payback. Come trade places with the priest. Remember the demon Juuba' al-ex? Remember the teeth? Let that be you, instead of him."
Goosebumps flared at the memory of the dream and Will took another step back away from her. The priest's eyes, huge and brown were on him. They held a desperate fear. A brave man would have traded places with the priest without hesitation; his father would have. But Will had gone through too much and he knew too much. He knew about the pain.
He hesitated a second before answering. The vision of Juuba' al-ex and the teeth, the endless teeth coming out of the black made him hesitate. And when he heard his own screams echoing in his mind, his pause stretched out.
His mouth came open, but no sound issued from it and the taste of the horror in the room settled on his tongue but it was nothing compared to the dreadful memory and it went unnoticed.
Talitha shook her head; the tremendous contempt in her smile staked his heart. "I thought so. Coward!"
"No…wait," He fished about in an empty mind for something to say, but before he could, she twisted the bitter stake into him, splintering it.
"Don't you have any of your father in you?"
"I'll trade places with Father Alba," Jim's words finished what Talitha had started and Will felt himself shrink at them. He became nothing.
"No. I want only Will," she said.
"Ok," the word was inaudible to all but Talitha, who smiled with cruel intentions. Will took a deep breath and tried again, "Ok, I'll switch…if you want me to."
"It's too late, coward," she sneered at him.
At that moment he hated her with unnatural passion, but the hatred that he felt toward himself was nearly as great and the feeling of being small went from figurative to literal; his shoulders slumped and his back stooped.
"Talitha, I want you to know, that I forgive you for what you have done and…unnnghh!" Father Alba went instantly red with the force of her squeeze and slowly, he turned a purple color in her hand.
"I didn't ask for your forgiveness and I don't want it," she said quietly.
"Talitha!" Jim growled a warning, which brought about a smile from her. Jim's eyes flashed at it and he barked, "Talitha, damn it! Let go of him."
Surprisingly she did, "Damn it? So manly, so forceful, I like it. Hey, Will. Try adding that to your vocabulary. It might make you feel like a man." Releasing her grip on the priest, she took the white stole from about his shoulders and with amazing strength, tore it in half lengthways.
Twistin
g one section, she tied one end of it around the neck of Father Alba, making a combination noose and leash.
"Ba'al Fie-ere, what are you doing?" Will asked, using her adopted name. It didn't matter that Jim still called her Talitha; Will knew that if he tried it, someone would get hurt.
"I'm tying up my prisoners, duh." She was sitting full upon Luke's back, working the second half of the twisted stole into a knot.
Father Alba, who had been gasping for breath, said, "I forgive you regardless…"
Talitha gave her end of the makeshift rope a sharp tug, tightening the noose suddenly. "Maybe you should wait until I am done with you before you forgive me. I promise to leave your tongue intact, so that…" She paused and swung her head around. "Jim! I hear you, now step back."
Jim had taken two quiet steps toward the door. "No. You call Father Alba a hostage, but you talk of torturing him, why shouldn't we just rush you right now? It won't be any worse for the priest."
"I'll tell you why. First, you're too slow and I'm not just talking about your lack of brains either. You'll never make it. I'll have his throat out in a heartbeat." She paused and gave a tug on Luke's leash bringing him to his feet. Ignoring his gasping, she slammed him face first into the wall, pinning him there. "Second, this isn't my fault and after what's been done to me. I'm in a very eye for an eye mood. Hey, Father? Isn't that in the bible somewhere?"
Somewhere in the last eight years, Father Alba had discovered a reserve of courage within him. He said in strong voice, "Jesus instructs us to love our enemies."
She snorted, "Yeah he was always bit fruity. But you ducked the question. Does your bible say something about an eye for an eye? The reason I ask…look at me. Remember what happened to Father Menning?"
The priest craned his neck around to look at her, his eyes bulged in fear. "Please…no."
"Oh yeah! Father Menning clawed his own eyes out, driven insane by Ba'al Zubel.," She paused, her own eyes were wide with excitement. "I don't have any of those fancy mind tricks yet, so I am going to have to take your eyes out by hand."
"What did you say?" Jim asked, with equal parts outrage and disbelief.
The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set Page 54
