Lilith--Blood Ink

by Dana Fredsti

  “Man, I can’t believe you’re bailing on me for that bitch.” Jordan had kept his glare leveled at the ground, not wanting Blaise to see how hurt he really was. “Whatever happened to bros before hoes?”

  “If you needed to be bailed out,” Blaise had replied, “I’d be there. But you’re not. You can drink beer by yourself, right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jordan muttered. “Have a blast.”

  “I will.” Blaise had flashed him a cocky grin. “See you later.”

  Maybe. Maybe not. Jordan wasn’t sure anymore.

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a big deal. Having a few beers and hanging out, nothing that couldn’t wait for another time. Except Blaise always seemed to have something better to do with his time these days.

  “I won’t leave you behind.” Blaise had made this promise to Jordan years ago, when they were just kids who lived on the same block in a crappy neighborhood. But wasn’t he doing just that, little by little, every day? Jordan should have known Blaise had planned on ditching him for Tiffany when he’d suggested meeting at Lafayette Cemetery. Bitch only lived a few blocks away.

  If Jordan could get rid of all the bitches like Tiffany, he would. Maybe not kill them, no, maybe not go that far, but something. Maybe scar their pretty faces so they wouldn’t be so full of themselves, take up the time and attention of his friends. Like Blaise.

  Fuck it. He wasn’t going to think about it anymore. At least not tonight.

  He heard that there was a time back in the day when the cemeteries were open after sunset. People used to perform rituals on the graves of voodoo types like Marie Laveau. Now, of course, wandering the cemeteries by yourself even in the daytime was practically sending a frickin’ invite out to potential muggers.

  Jordan knew, because he and Blaise ran with one of the gangs that haunted the cemeteries of New Orleans. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 was one of the safer ones. Too small and too close at the edge of the Garden District to offer more than an occasional opportunity to relieve a tourist of their valuables.

  Blaise had taught Jordan to only use force if they fought back. If that happened, then Blaise would just rough the mark up enough to teach them a lesson, not do permanent damage. That was smart. Jordan didn’t want a manslaughter charge on his still theoretical rap sheet. Worst thing Jordan himself had done so far was shove some stupid tourist hard enough that the guy had fallen and hit his head against a sarcophagus. Knocked him right out. There’d been some blood, sure, but the guy had been breathing fine when Jordan had left, and nothing had turned up in the news about a dead tourist.

  An unexpected noise from the other side of the cemetery wall drew Jordan’s attention. It sounded like a flag flapping in the wind. But how was that even possible? The night air was cool and still, only a slight breeze rustling the leaves.

  The sound came again, definitely from inside the cemetery grounds. From one of the vaults.

  What the fuck?

  Lafayette No. 1 was a safe cemetery. Safe for tourists, safe for its residents. No graffiti, no mischief. A body laid to rest here stayed at rest—unless they were in one of the oven vaults shared by generations of the same family. Then, the bones of the last stiff were swept into a hole in the tomb when the time came for a new relative to be sealed into the vault.

  What the hell could be making a noise inside one of those vaults?

  Giving a quick look around to make sure no one was watching, Jordan grabbed a low-hanging oak tree branch and hoisted himself over the cemetery wall. Like it could keep anyone out who really wanted to get in.

  He jumped to the ground, knees flexing as he landed. Then he listened, the sounds of voices further down one of the nearby streets filtering through the sudden soft moan of the wind as clouds scudded across the autumn sky.

  There.

  Jordan followed the flapping noise down a row of raised sarcophaguses and single-family mausoleums to a bank of oven crypts. They were creepy as fuck. Jordan didn’t so much mind the thought of each generation of bones being dumped to make room for the next, but the idea of bodies rotting in the heat skeeved him out. When he was a kid, his gran used to tell him that the oven vaults were openings to hell and if he wasn’t good, he’d be shoved inside to feed the hungry demons. Keep them from breaking out to seek their meals elsewhere. Gran had been a terror, no doubt. He’d said the first and only heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving of his life when she’d finally died.

  Flap flap flap.

  That sound again. Closer now. Like demon wings beating against the brick and mortar sealing the crypts. A hungry demon trying to get out. The hairs rose on the back of Jordan’s neck and arms, and his balls seemed to shrink as if trying to crawl up inside and hide.

  Jordan was suddenly five again, stricken by the same paralyzing fear he’d felt when his gran had sat next to him on his bed, pinning the blankets tight around his arms with her weight so he was trapped, forced to listen to the horrors she’d gleefully recount. He’d lie awake for hours, frozen in place, afraid to move for fear that something would reach out from under the bed, seize him, and pull him down with it.

  “Fuck this,” he muttered, angry at his own cowardice. His pack would laugh—Blaise would laugh—at him if they saw him practically pissing his jeans. It was probably just an injured pigeon, hitting its wings against the stone and brick.

  Flap, flap, flap.

  Pressing an ear against the brick, Jordan listened.

  Flap, flap, flap. Yeah, definitely a pigeon. Must have been trapped when they’d sealed the vault. The mortar around the bricks looked pretty fresh. Poor stupid bird. That was a fucked-up way to die.

  Satisfied that he’d solved the mystery, Jordan turned to go back the way he came. He could use a beer or three now and—

  “Help me…”

  No fucking way.

  No way he just heard a voice from inside a fucking sealed tomb. It was sealed, right? Still, he leaned up close to it and said, “Hel… Hello?”

  A chunk of brick fell out of the wall as if pushed from within.

  Jordan jumped, letting out a yelp and nearly falling over his own feet as he stumbled away from the wall. His phone hit the ground with an ominous crack. Retrieving it, he checked the screen, relieved to find it undamaged. He shone its flashlight at the oven vault.

  “Shit,” he breathed.

  There was a gap in the bricks, crumbling around the edges.

  Even as he watched, something that looked like a cartoon version of a hand—like a flesh-toned mitten with the vague outline of a thumb attached to a blob—thrust through the gap, pawing at the loose mortar to enlarge the opening. Another deformed appendage pushed through. Was it wrapped in bandages? Or—

  Both fleshy blobs seized him by the neck, cutting off his air as more bricks tumbled to the ground. Before he could even try to break free, something plunged into one of his eyes, puncturing the eyeball and piercing his brain. Luckily for Jordan, he died before the brains were sucked out of his head.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “My place is a few blocks from here,” Tia told me as we waited for our burgers in a little sports bar near the Garden District. The place didn’t have an extensive beer list—no fancy craft beers—but they did carry Abita, and I didn’t want anything too heavy or sweet anyway. I ordered an IPA, hoppy and crisp, and exactly what my queasy stomach craved.

  “It’s really more of an in-law than a proper house,” she continued. “Well, it’s really a shack—you’d only stick your mother-in-law in there if you hated her, but at least it has running water. Most of the time,” she amended. “And since it’s around the back of a big house, it’s got a locked gate and it’s pretty safe.”

  “That’s something,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Tia agreed. “The landlord’s son is kinda creepy—I caught him peeking in my window one morning.”

  “Gross!”

  “I know, right?” Tia shrugged. “He looks like your typical good Christian boy—” she did finger quotes “—but he’s pret
ty much a perv. Anyway, I bought some cheap fabric and hung it up for curtains. Solved that problem.”

  “Do you think he’ll try anything else?” I couldn’t help but be concerned. Tia couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds, even with all her clothes and her backpack on.

  “Yeah, no. He’s about thirteen and he’s smaller than me anyway.”

  I lifted my bottle and clinked it against hers.

  We sat in a booth near the back of the bar, some sportsball or another playing on the three large flat-screen TVs that dominated the walls at either end and in the middle of the bar. Might have been football, might have been baseball. I didn’t care enough to pay attention.

  A voluptuous waitress in tight jeans and an equally tight T-shirt, both of which looked painted on, sauntered over bearing two plates of food, which she set in front of us with a warm smile.

  “Getcha anything else, ladies?”

  I picked up my beer bottle and sloshed it around. About a quarter of it left. “Another round, please,” I said.

  I dug into my burger. “Holy shit, this is good,” I moaned, eyes at half-mast.

  Tia gave a complacent nod. “Best burgers in town, told you. Wait till you try the fries.”

  I did. They were thin and golden and crispy, the perfect French fries. They didn’t even need ketchup.

  I started feeling better almost immediately. As my blood sugar levels stabilized, it was also easier to dismiss the weird 3-D Technicolor flashes of déjà vu I’d had in front of the LaLaurie mansion. I knew better than to go on an empty stomach for any length of time. I’d let the weirdness of the day throw me off my game.

  I finished my burger in record time despite doing my best not to shove it down my throat. Growing up around a bunch of stuntmen hadn’t done a lot for my table manners, especially when I was hungry. I managed to slow down and eat my fries one at a time instead of by the handful, but I was done with my meal while Tia still worked her way through half her food. I tried not to eyeball her fries. No one likes a glutton, right?

  Tia caught my glance and swiveled her plate around so the fries faced me. “Help yourself.”

  “Are you sure?” Please be sure.

  She nodded. “I can never finish. I don’t spend my days working out like you do.”

  As I made short work of the fries, I realized the sound of the game on the TV had been replaced by the voice of a solemn-sounding male newscaster.

  “…not the first young woman to go missing in the last month. A week ago, a young woman called Celia Davenport vanished from her house after going to bed. Her parents heard no disturbance, there were no obvious signs of a break-in, and all of Celia’s belongings, including ID and wallet, were still in her bedroom. A week later, four other young women, friends of Celia Davenport, vanished from their homes, all in a single night. While there is no sign of foul play, the disappearance of these five women has residents of the Garden District in an uproar.”

  Tia’s mouth was agape as she stared at the images of the missing women on the TV. She sank back into her seat, skin pasty.

  “Did you know them?” I asked curiously.

  “No.” She shook her head without conviction. “It’s just that—” She swallowed, then took a sip of her beer. “It’s just that if it can happen to people like them, girls that live in safe neighborhoods, with their parents… that can’t be safe for people like me.”

  She picked up her beer, started to take another drink, and then set it down again. “Are you okay if we take off? I could really use some fresh air about now.” Without waiting for an answer, Tia stood up and practically ran out of the bar, leaving her backpack behind.

  WTF?

  Hastily settling our bill and leaving a generous tip on the table, I grabbed the backpack and hurried outside, looking up and down the dimly lit street for Tia. A slight figure was stumbling down the sidewalk further down the street, lurching from side to side as if drunk.

  “Shit.”

  I ran after her, her backpack bouncing against my shoulder blade. “Tia!” I called as I drew closer to her.

  At first, she put on a burst of speed, accompanied by an almost explosive noise that sounded as if she couldn’t decide if she wanted to cry or throw up.

  “Tia!” I passed a cement wall and a wrought-iron gate as Tia vanished around the corner. Stepping up my pace, I rounded the corner just in time to see her trip and fall to her knees. I ran over before she could pick herself up and take off again. I hate running. “Tia, what the hell is going on?” My voice was harsher than I meant it to be, but did I mention I hate running?

  All of her energy seemed to have seeped into the concrete sidewalk beneath her. Tia stayed slumped where she was, her breathing shallow and rapid.

  “Those girls,” she finally choked out.

  “What about them?” I tried not to sound impatient, but I could not think of any good reason why she would suddenly bolt out of the bar, leaving me and her backpack behind.

  “I don’t—”

  A scream rang out, cutting off whatever Tia was going to say. The scream itself was muffled and then cut short, as if someone had thrown a heavy blanket over whoever was screaming. The sound had come from around the corner up ahead.

  Before I had a chance to do more than think about going to the rescue, someone—no, two someones—staggered around the corner toward us, arms flailing. The street lights were dim, barely casting enough light to make out details. What I could see, however, was that one of the figures wore high heels and jeans. The rest of her was shrouded in what looked like gray cheesecloth, which was also attached to the second figure. As I watched, the woman in heels stumbled and fell to her knees. The person holding her followed her down and—

  “Holy shit,” I breathed as I saw what was going on.

  I didn’t stop to think. If I had, I might’ve sensibly run in the other direction. Instead I dropped Tia’s backpack in front of her, propelled myself to my feet, and ran toward the abomination down the sidewalk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  By the time I reached the crumpled woman, it was too late to save her. When I got a closer look at her assailant, I could still see the human form that had once been a young female inside the sticky grayish-black membrane. Her features were blurred, as if they were partially dissolved. Human arms and legs had merged with insectile limbs, but the stubs of fingers and toes still protruded, pink nail polish still visible. A double set of wings unfurled in the breeze, but instead of having the delicate beauty of a butterfly, they were scabrous and gray, like shroud-cloth left too long in the grave. Where a mouth should be, a proboscis protruded, the tip pulsing and wet, dripping with red fluid. It came out of the woman’s body with a wet sucking sound, spraying little droplets into the air.

  “Help me.” The words, thick and bubbling with mucus, were still clear enough to understand. I took an involuntary step backward as the thing reached for me. She? There was something about the voice and the blurred features that seemed feminine.

  “Help me,” it said again. Even as it repeated those words, however, it lunged for me, wings wrapping around me like wet towels, slapping against my arms, torso, and legs, encasing me in fibrous folds that smelled like death. The wings wrapped tightly around my body and head exuded a sick, sweet perfume—like night-blooming jasmine with a hint of decay underneath. It made me nauseated and dizzy at the same time.

  Even worse, though, was the sound of that thick, clotted voice saying, “Help me” over and over again, even as it did its best to kill me. And knowing there was still something human left inside, but not enough to stop it from feeding. I had to act quickly, before the sickly-sweet odor made me lose consciousness. It would be all too easy to succumb, if only to spare myself from the guilt I knew I’d feel when this was over.

  The fibrous wings pinned one arm to my side, but luckily for me, I’d been raising the other as the creature attacked. It would have succeeded in killing me if it had managed to trap both my arms. Its proboscis snapped forward
toward my chest, but I had enough range of motion to grab it right below the tip with the hand not trapped at my side.

  As it squirmed in my grasp, the proboscis whipped around, the tip landing against my palm and found the fleshy part under my thumb, nuzzling, almost suckling like the world’s grossest infant trying to feed. Before I had a chance to be totally disgusted, what felt like hundreds of needle-sharp teeth sunk into the meat of my palm, and almost immediately began suctioning up blood like greedy little vampires.

  “Oh, no you don’t, you fucker,” I snarled, my ambivalence evaporating. Whatever this thing had been in its human incarnation, there was no way back for it. This creature had to die and screw any guilt attached to killing it.

  Twisting my hand—doing my best to ignore the scalding pain as the flesh ripped away from all those teeth, I grabbed the proboscis and pulled, even as the wings tightened in smothering folds around me, cutting off oxygen. Flashes of red burst in my vision as I struggled for air, still pulling the proboscis as I managed to lift up my right leg and shove my foot against the thing’s lower body.

  As I felt something start to give, a high-pitched squealing pierced my eardrums—not just a sound but a visceral auditory assault that threatened to dissolve me from the inside out. It felt like my bones were liquefying, the muscles and tissue melting. My voice rose in a shriek of its own as I gave one last vicious, desperate yank on the proboscis. There was a ripping sound, like a thick piece of cloth being torn in two. Dark, foul-smelling fluid spurted out from the hole in its face, a gory fringe of pink and red gobbets of tissue hanging from the edges.

  The creature shuddered as if hit with high voltage, its squeals thickening and weakening as it choked on its own fluids and the regurgitated blood of its last victim. The membranous wings loosened and fell away, the monster toppling to the ground. It twitched feebly and then was still.

  Holy shit.

  As I watched, the fluids still bubbling from the wound I’d inflicted began pouring out more rapidly, the flesh around it starting to smoke. The thing deflated and dissolved before my horrified gaze until the only thing left was a spreading puddle of pinkish slime. Turning away from the remains, I put my hands on my knees, leaning over to take a few deep breaths to clear my head and chase away the cloying smell.