by Dana Fredsti
“Oh my God,” Angelique breathed in horror. “It’s one of those goddamn boas!”
The three of us dashed over to the edge of the water, staring up as the cub, apparently frozen in place, wailed again, hissing and spitting in between cries of fear.
Cayden turned to Angelique. “You get Tikka. I’ll take care of the snake.”
Angelique leaped up the tree, shifting form halfway as she did so. And as fast as she moved, the snake was faster. I couldn’t tell if it was its mouth or what, but it snapped out, grabbing the cub around its midsection. Angelique’s scream of panic and fury pierced the sky. In seconds, Cayden pulled a wicked-looking knife out of the scabbard on his belt and hurled himself into the air like an action hero, grabbing onto a tree limb with one strong hand, muscles in his arm and shoulders flexing as he brought the knife edge across in a flashing arc, slicing into the snake below. He stabbed it several times until he succeeded in cutting the thing in two. The cut piece went limp and, as it fell, still wrapped around the helpless cub, Angelique reached out, grabbing Tikka by the scruff. The piece of boa fell to the ground, and Cayden dropped back down next to it.
Except it wasn’t a part of a snake. There was no mouth, no eyes, nothing but rubbery gray tentacle, like that of a squid or an octopus, but with no suckers. Even as we watched, it dissolved into liquid that rapidly evaporated in the heat.
“Tikka!” One of the women came running over, scooping up the squalling cub in her arms. It was an odd déjà vu of the encounter with the seaweed dragon, Cayden once again heroically saving a child.
Before we could all breathe a collective sigh of relief, there was another yell from the cypress tree, from Angelique this time. Even as we watched, another mud-colored tentacle whipped up the tree, wrapped around her ankle, and jerked Angelique off the branch and into the water below. Except I didn’t see her hit the water and there were no ripples circling out to show where she’d fallen in. She had vanished.
Cayden and I exchanged a quick look. Scrambling up the roots of the cypress, I pulled myself up by one of the lower branches—less graceful than a shifter, but just as efficient—until I was on the same branch that Angelique had been perched on, Cayden right behind me. The branch easily bore both of our weights.
Using my arms to balance like a tightrope walker, I made my way out to the end of the branch and looked down. What I saw was almost beyond belief.
The pond was below me, but it was as if an invisible shield cut it in half, creating two totally different bodies of water. While the water on one side was smooth and glassy, the water directly below was a sickly gray-green, roiling as Angelique thrashed in the grip of something I could not see beyond the tentacles wrapped around her waist and legs. My mind skipped back to when I had looked out over the water the first time I was here. How the ripples had radiated out in half circles instead of full—and how something had spilled blood in the water.
“Angelique!” I yelled.
She looked up, eyes wild, nostrils flaring in panic, and her arms and hands now the furred and claw-tipped legs and paws of a large predator. She used her razor-tip claws to shred at the thing trying to pull her under the water.
Dark fluid bubbled out where her claws slashed the tentacles. It wasn’t blood as we knew it and I couldn’t tell if she was hurting the thing or not. I did know that we had to get her out of there because I could see more undulating tentacles breach the surface of the water, reaching for her.
“Here.” Cayden tossed his knife to me and I caught it by the hilt. Dropping to his knees, he hooked his legs around the branch and hung upside down. Reaching up, he grasped my ankles and then swung me down so I dangled below him, right above the frothing, bubbling water.
Even as I reached for her, Angelique went down again. She shot back up, spitting water and gasping for air. We locked gazes. Her eyes were filled with fear—she knew she was fighting for her life.
“Grab my hand!” I yelled as my body pendulumed back and forth above the Lovecraftian horror. Angelique reached out frantically with her free hand, fingertips brushing mine but not close enough to get a good grip. The creature whipped up tentacles, but before it could grab me, I cut it with Cayden’s knife, not quite separating the gray slimy thing from the rest of it. I slashed again, this time having the satisfaction of seeing the suddenly limp tentacle fall back into the water. Another one almost immediately took its place, dragging Angelique once more below the surface, which was now turning an ominous red.
“No,” I growled. I was not going to lose her. Not to another one of my fucking ancestors.
“Can you lower me any further?” I shouted up to Cayden.
Almost immediately I dropped down another few inches, and that was all I needed. This time, when Angelique’s grasping hand rose up out of the water, I managed to grab her around the wrist. I held on for dear life, using the knife to hack at the tentacles holding her. I saw something else come out of the water, something that looked like it might be an eye, but I couldn’t be sure. I stretched my arm out as far as I could, plunging the tip of the knife into it. A high-pitched squeal rose from the water, the sound mingling with a bubbling noise. At the same time, all of the tentacles gripping Angelique became momentarily flaccid.
“Pull us up! Pull us up!”
I had never been more thankful for my regime of weightlifting and all the other exercise I’d done all of my life, because I now held the full weight of Angelique’s limp body with the strength of one arm alone. My arm felt like it was going to pop out of the socket, but I thought of Cayden who was bearing both our weights, gritted my teeth and held on, the knife clutched tightly in my right hand in case the thing tried again. Angelique’s white dress was splattered with ribbons of red, and there were slashes and gouges along her arms and legs. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing.
My own knees and shins scraped along the bark as Cayden pulled me back up onto the branch, reaching over me to grab Angelique’s arm above my own grip on her wrist. Grunting with exertion, he took some of the weight off of me until all three of us were draped over the tree limb like wet laundry.
I wanted nothing more than to lie there, my arms and legs dangling down, and just rest for a minute, but below us the water started to bubble and froth again, and gray tentacles began questing toward us. “We need to get off this tree right now,” Cayden barked.
I didn’t argue with him. Pulling myself up so I was kneeling on the branch, I looped an arm around Angelique’s waist while Cayden gathered both of her legs. I carefully scooched backward as he moved toward me, and between the two of us we slowly inched our way to safety.
Devon and the Ginga twins were at the base of the tree to catch Angelique’s limp form as we lowered her down. Jumping to the ground, I followed as they carried her over to the porch and set her gently down on the wooden flooring.
Leandra ran over to Angelique’s side. All traces of the bitchy diva were gone, replaced by frantic worry. She knelt by her unmoving cousin, tears creating runnels of mascara down her face.
“Is she dead?” she sobbed, reaching out to touch Angelique’s face.
Please, no, I begged to any number of unspecified deities.
“We need to clear any water out of her lungs,” Devon said. He gently but firmly moved Leandra out of the way so Ike could perform CPR. After less than a minute, Angelique began to cough and choke. All the tension—and any remaining strength—ran out of my body as she spat up a quantity of murky water.
Leandra’s frantic sobs changed to deep, wrenching tears of relief as she gathered her cousin into a fierce hug. She looked up at me, green eyes filled with unmistakable gratitude. “You are part of our family now,” she said simply.
I put a hand on her shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze, and then walked back to the tree where Cayden was just now climbing down.
“How is she?”
“She’s alive,” I said. “Other than that, I’m not sure. One of her ankles is pretty swollen.”
He nod
ded. “We’ll adjust the shooting schedule if necessary.”
“Are we going to be able to film here?” I asked, shooting a wary glance up into the tree.
“I think so.” He followed the direction of my gaze and added, “I took some temporary measures to seal off the opening until I have the proper tools to make it permanent.”
“Do you know what that thing was?” I asked. “Or where that opening led to?”
“I have some ideas,” Cayden replied, “but—”
“But it has something to do with whatever’s coming through the Gates.” The words came out of nowhere, cutting him off. He cast me a puzzled look.
“What gates?”
“He Who Eats Worlds is coming,” I whispered. “It comes from beyond the stars, through the Gates opened by harbingers created through sorcerous transformation, through blood and tears, pain and suffering.”
“Lee, what—”
I held up a hand as words continued to spill out of me. “This isn’t the first time someone has tried to summon He Who Eats Worlds from his home. And once the way is open for Him, it will open for others who also dwell elsewhere. Our world will be devoured. Those who are not eaten will be enslaved, kept alive to breed more food for our new masters.”
I stopped abruptly, like someone had hit the “off ” switch on a recorder playback. My knees suddenly went weak, wobbly. I swayed and wilted like a southern belle.
Cayden caught me before I hit the ground face-first.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
There are many horrible ways to die. Some might argue there are no good ways, but some are kinder and gentler than others.
The deaths offered by the four harbingers as they cut a deadly swath through New Orleans from their incubation tombs to the ceremonial grounds hidden in the swamps were not kind or gentle. If they had broken free during daylight hours, perhaps they would have been stopped. Or perhaps more people would have died. As it was, some parts of the city didn’t close until the dark hours of the soul—a bad time to encounter creatures with origins as dark as theirs.
Born out of unbearable pain and fear, the harbingers had taken over all that used to belong to their hosts, who were now little more than pain-maddened husks carried along by the newfound appetites of the harbingers. The four—the Lucifer, the Haruspex, the Augury, and the Adjurix—carved their own paths, instinct guiding them the quickest way to their destination, but they all found sustenance. The corpses they left behind did not concern them.
The bodies the Lucifer left in its path looked as though they had been microwaved, skin blackened and flaking on the outside, the whites of the eyes gone as if they’d exploded from the inside, and they glowed an unhealthy green. Even if someone had the slightest inkling of what was happening and why, it would be too late to make a difference.
The Adjurix—what was once Tiffany—left behind several rotting bodies, the flesh and organs dissolving as if the victims had all gotten a super-accelerated dose of Ebola.
Outside of Lafayette Cemetery No. 2, a couple of gangbangers stumbled across the body of one of their friends who’d gone around the corner to relieve himself and met the Haruspex. Weird sucker marks pocked his flesh. His heart, liver, and intestines had been ripped out. What flesh was left was leached of all color.
As for the Augury, it took to the sky, its spiky black wings glistening with amniotic fluid. Its flight was unsteady at first, but then the mouth at its core opened wide as it passed over an old man sitting out on his back porch, enjoying a pipe in the quiet of early morning. The pipe was found by his granddaughter a few hours later, the only clues to his fate a few ugly black feathers covered in a thick fluid, and the hand still clutching the pipe. Her screams woke up the neighbors, even though this was a neighborhood used to screams in the night.
The harbingers fed, gaining strength both for their journey and for the task ahead. They grew strong on flesh and blood, and on the fear and pain of their victims as they made their way ever closer to the Veil.
* * *
With the help of his sorcery, LeRoy watched their progress in the surface of the Thaumaturge’s pond. This was something LeRoy realized he’d missed before. His surgically created harbingers, while they’d suffered the torments of the damned up until their transformations, had not fed. Had not been able to spread the fear so necessary, so sweet to He Who Eats Worlds. Maybe this was why things had gone so badly back in the 1830s. Maybe he would have failed even if Lily Chouette had not discovered his secret before he’d had a chance to complete the ritual. Perhaps it was just as well he hadn’t had the chance to complete it—if the Elder God had been displeased with his method of summoning, there would have been no reward—only a slow, painful death as one of the Elder God’s first meals. And while it would be a great honor to feed Him, LeRoy preferred this honor to go to someone else. Anyone else, really, as long as it was not him.
His wife, Delphine, would have been easy to give up. He had, in fact, offered her to He Who Eats Worlds as soon as it was clear the harbingers had not been successful at summoning him. The offering had not been accepted, however, and LeRoy had been forced to feed Delphine to the hungry harbingers before they looked to him for sustenance.
No, he would not make that mistake again.
The timing had been bad—Delphine had insisted on throwing one of her tedious dinner parties for the local Creole society. He could not skip the dinner without an excuse, so his plan was to plead a bad humor of the stomach, slip out, and ride quickly to the bayou for the ritual. The harbingers had been kept at his secret dwelling on the edge of Bayou Ef’tageux. He’d created these in the bayou rather than at his home, so he would not have to transport them to the Veil. Too much risk in that. He also hoped that creating them within the influence of the Veil and the Gates would mean success. He simply needed to give himself enough time to travel to Bayou Ef’tageux and enact the summoning ritual before midnight.
It would have worked. It should have worked. Instead, one of their slaves—ungrateful animal—had deliberately set a fire in the kitchen, ending the dinner party in chaos. Even worse, it had led to the discovery of his trial patients in the attic when, intent on rescuing the household slaves, the inevitable good Samaritans intruded. It was bad luck that the first person up there was Lily Chouette, who had been haunting the streets near their mansion ever since her lover had vanished. He had come to the mansion to give the girls piano lessons and, one day, never left. She hadn’t believed their story that Étienne had left as usual after the lesson. But ultimately the authorities chose to believe the rich and powerful LaLauries over an octoroon, even a free one.
The cursed bitch had somehow known where to find him, find the Veil. She had also somehow managed to destroy the harbingers before the ritual had been completed. Her strength and skill had been more than human, and their structural integrity had not held.
He had barely escaped the same fate, slipping away into the waters of the swamp, risking alligators, copperheads, and whatever other creatures lurked in the bayou. All preferable to facing the grief-fueled wrath of Lily Chouette. He did not think she was entirely human.
And to see that same face with those dark violet eyes… to have her knocking on the door of his shop? It was not to be tolerated. Lily’s smart-mouthed descendent would not spoil this for him. He would make sure of that.
* * *
I was woken up at 7 A.M. by the sound of my text notification going off. “Winter is coming. Winter is coming.”
I really need to change that, I thought, reaching for my phone.
It was from Micah.
Yo, Lee. Downstairs waiting for you. What’s up?
Huh? I texted back:
I thought we had the day off.
Nope. Cayden and Devon wanna work on some new fight stuff. Thought you knew.
Well, hell. So much for resting.
Give me ten minutes and I’ll be right down.
With no joy in my heart, I got out of bed, took the quickest shower of
my life, and threw on yoga pants, tank top, and running shoes. I left a quick apologetic note for Eden, still soundly sleeping, letting her know our plans for a day of playing tourist had been spoiled by my workaholic director and stunt coordinator, and then ran out the door.
Micah and his Cadillac were waiting for me outside the hotel.
“Hey,” I said as I got into the front seat.
The Caddy slipped out easily into the traffic. Micah was a damn good driver, good enough that I didn’t get all control-freaky and push on an imaginary brake pedal while hanging onto the “oh Jesus” handle.
I yawned, my jaw cracking with the force of it. Between my concern for Angelique, worrying about Tia, wondering what the hell Cayden and I had gone up against yesterday, and another horrific dream involving tentacles, dismembered bodies, and voodoo drums, I’d barely slept.
Micah chuckled. “You want me to stop for some coffee?”
“Slept like crap,” I admitted. “Some nights there’s not enough ibuprofen or Epsom salts in the world to take the aches out. And yes on the coffee, please.”
He swung into a little drive-thru kiosk on the outskirts of the city. One side of it was for cars, and the other for pedestrians. There were a half-dozen cars waiting their turn in the drive-thru lane, but only one person at the walk-thru window. “Probably faster if we park,” Micah observed. “How ’bout I go get it and you can wait here and maybe catch a few winks.”
I gave him a grateful thumbs-up, asked for a Depth Charge with three shots, cream, and sugar, and shut my eyes. I didn’t think I’d slept, but when the car door slammed, I jumped, eyes flying open. “Sorry about that,” Micah said with a laugh. “Guess you really needed that nap.”
“Guess I did.”
He handed me my Depth Charge. “Three shots, cream, and sugar. You are gonna be flyin’ high after this.” I sipped my coffee while Micah turned the stereo on, pushing in one of his zydeco tapes. Between the caffeine, sugar, and lively music, you’d think I would’ve perked right up. Instead I found my eyelids drooping until they were too heavy to keep open any longer. I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
