Slay

by Kim Curran

  Not for the first time, Milly felt the twisting stab of grief over losing her dad. If he were here, none of this would be happening. If he were here, she wouldn’t be alone. Even if he couldn’t have persuaded her mother to get rid of Mourdant, then at least Milly and her dad would have enjoyed themselves making fun of the man in sign language. Three years since he had died and she missed him so much that it often felt like there was a great gaping hole in her chest where her heart should have been.

  She focused back on the internet results. Weariness tugged at her mind and she rubbed at her itching eyes. She wasn’t going to give up. She paused for a moment before adding another phrase into the search. Black eyes.

  She scanned the results and felt a cold dread settle in her stomach. Nothing directly related to Mourdant, but pages and pages of reports about people with black eyes. Words jumped out at her. Ghosts. Demons. Evil. She pushed her laptop away. This was getting out of hand. She was getting carried away, as usual.

  Her head pounded and she struggled to keep her eyes open. All she wanted to do was sleep. This could wait till tomorrow. She would find out who Mourdant was and what he was up to tomorrow. She had to sleep now. She dragged herself over to her bed; her limbs felt heavy and awkward. She would just sleep in these clothes. What did it matter anyway? The light was still on but she didn’t have the energy to get up and turn it off. Instead, she pulled a pillow over her head to block it out.

  She felt like she was floating there in the darkness. This was nothing like the feeling when she and Nal had drunk that cider. This was more like when she’d been in hospital to have her tonsils out. More like she was…

  The thought was interrupted by the chime of a new email from her phone. Pushing the pillow aside, she stretched her hand as far as she could, her fingertips just brushing the edge of the phone. She dragged it closer and, finally, pulled it onto the bed with her. It took a while for her to be able to focus on the words. They floated and drifted like she was looking at them underwater.

  To: Lyudmila Durand-Lin

  From:

  Subject: You’re not safe

  Milly hesitated. It was probably just a spam email. But…maybe?

  Dear Lyudmila Durand-Lin,

  We have intercepted your recent online communications and it appears you may be in danger. We have also detected unusual activity in your local area. If you concur with this analysis you should reply to this email immediately and people who can help will be in touch. In the meantime, we also recommend you remove yourself from your current situation. If this is not possible, find a safe place and lock your doors.

  We hope this email has not reached you too late.

  This is an automated message.

  Thank you for your attention.

  DAD.

  Milly blinked, trying to focus her blurry eyes, and read it again. She forced a bitter laugh and closed the email. Not only did she have a creepy conman in her house, now someone else was having her on? Bit of a sick joke, really. Why would anyone want to freak a stranger out like that? And what did this DAD, whoever he was, mean about intercepting “online communications”? She hoped it wasn’t some stalker like they’d been warned about in general studies.

  “Delete,” she said out loud, hitting the little dustbin symbol, consigning the message to the trash.

  She placed her phone on the table and lay back on the bed. Tonight sucked. She felt clammy and her stomach gurgled uncomfortably. Her body was begging for sleep, but her mind resisted, pushing against the weariness. That message kept niggling at her. She opened her email again and went to the trash folder. Sandwiched between spam about prescription drugs and a fresh request from a Nigerian prince was DAD’s mail. She read it for a third time.

  In danger.

  People who can help.

  Lock your doors.

  She struggled to sit up, rubbing at her eyes, fighting against the tug of sleep. Maybe she should take this seriously? Report it to someone or at least tell her mum?

  She heard singing from downstairs, her mother’s voice at full volume. If anything could keep her awake it was this. Her mother never cared if her singing bothered Milly, it always came first. Milly didn’t recognize the part her mother was singing. It sounded more like chanting than an aria. It was unlike anything she’d heard in her life. Hypnotic, uncomfortable. The notes made her skin itch. She wanted to block it out and yet couldn’t stop listening to it. It cut through her weariness like a knife.

  She crawled off the bed and headed for the door. Her mother, accompanied by the piano now, ramped up, hitting her world-famous high F.

  And that’s when the screaming started.

  The boys called their tour bus Agatha and it was the closest thing JD and the others had to a home. It was currently parked under a heavily-graffitied railway bridge on the east side of Chicago. Inside, hidden from the world, the boys and Gail went over the mission.

  “They were from the opera house?” Gail said.

  “At least two of them,” JD said.

  “Interesting.”

  “What’s interesting?” Connor asked.

  “Your face,” Zek said, then quickly dodged Connor’s fist. “No, I mean it. Look at all those freckles. In my country, we would have thought you a freak of nature. Maybe even burned you as a witch.”

  “No one in Morocco burns people as witches,” Tom said. “Stop winding him up. What were you saying, Gail?”

  “We’ll have to go and pay the Lyric a visit tomorrow.

  Maybe they would be interested in a gig from Slay?”

  “We’ve never played an opera house,” Zek said. “Fancy.”

  “Don’t get distracted by the cover story,” Gail said. “There’s definitely something weird going on.”

  “We love weird,” Tom said, plucking a series of eerie notes on his guitar. Tom was the real musical talent in the group. He could play almost every instrument ever made, while the only thing JD could get a decent noise out of was his beloved Gibson Hummingbird.

  The vibrations of the Loop train running overhead shook the bus.

  “All right,” Gail said, tapping her rings against the silver wolf-head of her cane. “Let’s play this one by the book till we know what we’re dealing with. I want you all to be especially cautious.” She gave Connor an extra stern stare.

  “What?” the Irish boy said, clutching his hands to his chest. “I did nothing!”

  “No, but I saw your face when we passed that bike park on the way into town,” their manager said. “No wandering off till we work out what’s happening, okay? I want you all where I can keep my eye on you.” She tapped next to her one good eye.

  “All right, all right,” he said. “I’ll stay here, like a good boy.”

  Gail leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “You can throw yourself off something really tall in the next state we go to, I promise.”

  Connor’s face lit up. “I’ve been dying to try out my new wingsuit.”

  JD shook his head. Connor had a weird kind of death wish. He was always throwing himself down things and off things. He said it was his way of dealing with their wild lives, but JD sometimes wondered if there wasn’t more to it than that.

  “Okay, we’ll keep scanning for any more activity and head to the opera house in the morning. But now, get some rest. I want you on sparkling form for your interview with John tomorrow.” Gail stood, flexing her injured leg.

  “I’m always on sparkling form,” Tom mumbled. “It’s JD who never says more than three words.”

  “Maybe with a good sleep he’ll be moved to say four words,” Gail said, winking at JD. “Goodnight, boys.”

  Zek was already out cold in his bunk. That boy could sleep anywhere. He’d once fallen asleep in a tree when he was supposed to be looking out for a demon. It had turned out to be just an old woman who’d wandered off from a care home, but the boys had given him grief about it for weeks after anyway.

  Connor leaped up onto the bunk above JD, caus
ing the springs to complain wildly. He did this every night, but JD still expected the bunk to come crashing down on him one day.

  “May angels watch me through the night,” Connor said, just as he always did.

  “And wake me with the morning light,” Tom and JD replied together.

  The prayer was how Connor’s mother had always tucked him into bed. Now it was how all the boys said goodnight. JD wondered if he would be able to sleep without the comfort of the ritual.

  He hadn’t been sleeping much lately anyway. He kept having nightmares about the little boy in Nebraska. They’d been too late to stop the boy being possessed and the failure had eaten away at JD every night since. He still saw the boy’s young face twisted by the evil that had taken over it, black bulging eyes and ragged lips chewed purple. Even though they’d killed the demon and stopped it ruining any more lives, it wasn’t enough. Their job was supposed to be about saving people, but lately it felt like the demons were winning. Every time they took out one, two more seemed to pop up in their place. Zek called it demonic whack-a-mole and he wasn’t far off. One day, JD planned to find a way into the demonic Netherworld and take the fight to them.

  In the bunk opposite, Tom put his guitar aside and paused before lying down. “Don’t, Jay,” he said softly.

  “Don’t what?” JD whispered back.

  “Keep blaming yourself. I know that look. The boy was dead before we got there.” Sometimes JD wondered if Tom could read his mind. “Just get some shut-eye. You won’t be America’s hottest teenager for long without your beauty sleep.” Tom threw him a big grin.

  The boys had been teasing JD for weeks after a magazine named him top of their Hot Teens list.

  “That’s the world’s hottest teenager, thank you very much,” JD said, slipping his hands behind his head.

  “How could I forget?” Tom mumbled, and then rolled over.

  Niv was the only one still up, scribbling away, a small light throwing his sharp features into relief. Niv pretended he was ice-cold, always the first to roll his dark eyes when anyone got overemotional. But the poems he wrote in that old leather notebook said different. You’ve gathered up the pieces of my broken heart and made me whole, was the chorus to “Heart Strike”, a song that had been number one in twelve different countries. JD wondered how all those kids who danced to it at proms would feel if they knew it was really about the time Slay had gone up against a golem.

  Niv pointed at the light.

  “No, keep it on,” JD said. “I don’t mind.”

  As desperate as his body was for sleep, he didn’t want to close his eyes just yet. He knew that all the faces of the people he’d failed to save would be waiting for him in the dark.

  JD pushed the images out of his mind and rolled over, pulling the pillow with him. Another L train rattled overhead, shaking the bus. He found the sound strangely soothing.

  He was just drifting off when he heard a high-pitched ringing. He tried to block it out. But he couldn’t ignore the insistent shaking of his arm. “All right, already,” he said, twisting around to face Niv. The guitarist was pointing to his phone where an alert from DAD was flashing.

  POSSIBLE DEMONIC ATTACK.

  RESPOND IMMEDIATELY.

  JD grabbed the phone and scanned the report.

  “No beauty sleep tonight, boys,” he shouted, waking everyone up. “We have some more demons to send back to hell.”

  Milly froze at her bedroom door. The screams didn’t sound like her mother – maybe it was Alice who was hurt. She had to go down and help. The screaming was getting louder, more desperate. And yet Milly couldn’t make herself turn the handle. She was scared. More scared than she had ever been in her life. She felt instinctively that whatever was happening downstairs was beyond bad.

  And then the screaming stopped.

  In the silence, Milly felt the fear loosen its grip. It was okay. Alice was okay. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. She looked down at her phone, still in her hand, and remembered the email.

  Lock your doors.

  She was just freaking herself out now. The email combined with her stupid imagination was causing her to think of all sorts of strange things. Impossible things. She gave herself a mental shake and yanked the door open before she had a chance to change her mind.

  From downstairs, she heard a man’s voice – Mourdant’s. She couldn’t make out what he was saying, but his tone was sharp and urgent.

  She crept along the landing and towards the stairs so she could hear more clearly. She hadn’t been in the house long enough to work out which parts of the floor creaked, so she lowered each foot into place carefully, hoping not to make a sound.

  When she got to the banisters, she bent down and peered through the bars into the hallway. What she saw didn’t make any sense at first.

  Mourdant had one hand wrapped around Alice’s neck and another across her mouth. The young woman struggled and writhed in his grip, but he was too strong for her. Milly’s mother stood in front of them, shaking her head.

  “I can’t. I can’t,” Milly heard her say.

  “Do it, Isobel. Do it and you will have everything I have promised you. Fame, fortune, youth. Everything. It will be worth it.”

  “You said she would be asleep. You said the champagne would knock her out. I can’t, not with her looking at me. No, I don’t know what I was thinking, I can’t do this.” It was then that Milly saw something glinting in her mother’s hand. A knife.

  “We made a deal,” Mourdant snarled.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not a murderer.”

  Mourdant let out a loud sigh. “Do I have to do everything? Very well.”

  Keeping his grip on Alice’s throat with one hand, he grabbed Milly’s mother’s wrist with the other. As soon as Alice’s mouth was free, she started screaming again, screeching for someone, anyone to help. And now Milly’s mother was screaming too.

  “No!” She sobbed, as Mourdant dragged her closer, closer. “I won’t, I can’t!” Mourdant shifted his grip on her wrist, the knife still glinting in her hand.

  “Please, no. Take anything you want, money, anything, please don’t make me do this!”

  “You do not break a deal with The Mourdant.” And with that, the man plunged the knife Isobel was holding into Alice’s chest.

  Milly looked away before the deed was done. She heard a sound like the slicing of a watermelon. And then, stillness.

  When she dared to look back, Alice lay on the floor in a pool of blood, a black hole in her chest. Milly covered her mouth to try to stop the scream of terror escaping. It couldn’t be. Mourdant was holding a human heart! She must have been imagining it. But then she heard Mourdant speak.

  “And now make the mark as I told you. DO IT!”

  As if Mourdant’s hands were still forcing her, Milly’s mother turned the blood-covered knife on herself, carving into her arm. When she was finished, she dropped the blade to the floor.

  “There, there it’s done, God forgive me, it’s done. Now what?”

  “Now,” Mourdant said, a cruel smile twisting his lips, “we say goodbye.”

  “Goodbye? But I—” Milly’s mother’s words were cut off as she threw her head back and let out a terrible screech. What looked like black smoke drifted up from between the old floorboards and curled around her, up her legs and wrapped around her arm. The smoke formed tendrils that caressed the bloody symbol she’d cut into her arm and pushed its way under her skin. Black veins branched out from the mark, down her arm to her hand and all the way up till the veins on her neck turned black too. Then, with a rush, the rest of the smoke poured into her mouth, into her eyes and nostrils, till every last black thread disappeared inside her.

  When the last curl of darkness was gone, Milly’s mother closed her mouth and straightened up.

  A change came over her body. She looked taller somehow, more regal. She rolled her shoulders back, stretched her neck and arms as if waking after a long sleep. She moved with a snakeli
ke grace Milly had never seen in her mother before. She opened her eyes and they shone black-silver, like haematite.

  “Welcome back,” Mourdant said, falling to one knee and bowing his head, “Zyanya, Priestess of Tezcatlipoca.” The name dripped off Mourdant’s tongue like flesh off a rotting corpse, chilling Milly’s blood.

  “How long have I been in darkness?”

  Milly didn’t recognize the voice coming from her mother’s lips. Gone was the thick French accent. Instead, her words sounded sweet, like honey.

  Milly didn’t know what on earth was going on. But she knew one thing. That woman was not her mother.

  “Centuries, my priestess. But I have brought you back. I found you a willing host, strong enough to contain your spirit so that you may finally complete the ritual.”

  The woman, who could no longer be Milly’s mother, looked down at her hands, then ran them across her face and down her body. “Strong, yes.” Then she looked down at Mourdant and lay her hand on his head, as if bestowing a blessing upon him. “You have done well. My lord Tezcatlipoca shall reward you.” Milly shuddered at the use of that name again. “Rise, for we have work to do.”

  Mourdant got to his feet. “I have already tracked down the blade. Once it is returned to you, nothing can stand in your way.”

  The woman took a deep breath, and sighed. “At last, I shall finish that which was denied me.”

  Milly couldn’t process what she was hearing. She fought against the fear freezing her in place and backed away – only to trip over a rug.

  “Who is there?”

  She scrabbled to her feet and ran, faster than she had ever run before, heading for her bedroom. She slammed the door and twisted the lock. She remembered the estate agent making a big fuss over the door handles being salvaged from eighteenth-century French houses – well, Milly didn’t care where they had come from, only that the lock would hold. She looked around for something to block the door. She tried the wardrobe first – a huge, carved oak affair. It didn’t budge. She had more luck with the bed. She shoved it in place, not caring that the cast-iron legs scratched deep grooves into the ash floorboards. One last crunching shove and it was in place.