by Dana Fredsti
* * *
I woke up to a pounding headache and a mouth that felt like I’d eaten a bunch of stale rice cakes with nothing to wash them down—“dry” didn’t begin to cover it. The air was stale, hot, and humid, and the sound of buzzing flies was impossibly loud. Sweat dripped off my face. I was lying on my back, something sharp digging into my lower back.
What the hell?
“What the hell?” I said out loud. My voice emerged as a hoarse croak. When I finally mustered up the energy to open my eyes the first thing I saw was Micah’s concerned face hovering over me. Behind him I saw an ancient-looking shovel leaning against a wooden wall. We were in some sort of tool shed.
I tried pushing myself up on my hands, but things instantly started spinning. I lay back down and shut my eyes again until the spinning stopped.
“Lemme help you,” Micah said. He put an arm around my shoulders and helped me sit up.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I mumbled.
“Here.” He handed me a can of ginger ale. “It’ll help.”
I took a few deep breaths and managed to keep the nausea at bay long enough to take a sip of the soda. It was lukewarm, but right now it tasted as good as craft beer.
“What happened?” I asked when I was sure I wasn’t going to throw up.
“Your breathing went all funny and you passed out in the car,” Micah said.
“How long have I been out?”
“’Bout six hours, give or take.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. Tell me you’re kidding.”
Micah shook his head. “Nope.”
I groaned. My call time had been noon. We’d left the hotel at ten, stopped for coffee around 10:30. That meant it had to be at least four o’clock. “Where are Devon and Cayden?” I asked. “They’re going to kill me for fucking up the schedule.”
The door to the shed suddenly opened and watery light shone inside.
“You are indeed going to die,” a familiar voice said from behind me. “But they won’t be the ones to kill you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
LeRoy stood in the doorway, towering above me. Micah’s expression turned to fear.
I pushed myself unsteadily up to hands and knees, then got to my feet with Micah’s help. I’d be damned if I’d cower on the ground while this asshole tried to intimidate me.
“It’s obvious we’re not on set.” I kept my voice steady.
“Smart girl,” LeRoy said with a condescending smile. “We are still in Bayou Ef’tageux… but now we’re in the part that lies beyond the Veil.” I could tell he was waiting for me to ask what the Veil was, so I didn’t. That didn’t stop him from telling me.
“The Veil is like a curtain,” he intoned grandly. “Something only a powerful few can conjure to separate the mundane from the mystical. The earthly from the arcane. It can be left open to allow passage between the two, or sealed, as it is now, to insure the ritual is not disturbed. And now,” he added with a smirk, “allow me to introduce you to the harbingers. You’ve nothing to fear from them either… other than what they’ll summon.”
“He Who Eats Worlds,” I supplied, taking a small bit of satisfaction at the frown of surprise on his face.
“How did you—” He stopped, shook his head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” He gestured with one hand toward the doorway. “After you.”
I went outside, Micah still holding onto one arm as if afraid I’d fall without his support. And what lay outside the shed was almost enough to make my knees go weak.
We were in a clearing ringed with cypress trees. A large pond was at the center, but instead of the murky green of the bayou, this water shimmered. Rainbow colors, but a sickly rainbow, like an anemic oil slick. The plant life in the water and on the banks was equally bizarre, flourishing, with thick fronds and large leaves. Instead of healthy green and rich browns, the leaves were a flabby, leprous gray. The tree bark looked more like slime-encrusted scales and the Spanish moss like tiny writhing snakes. Unnatural things that should have died before they saw the light of day. Although, looking up at the sky and the diffused light that made it through the bloated trees, I wondered what sort of daylight, if any, had shone on this part of the bayou in recent times.
This place was not sane. If I were religious, I’d say it wasn’t hallowed. But I wasn’t… and it was worse. Somehow I knew it was no longer part of this world either. And neither, I thought, were the two dozen or so people ranging around the clearing.
“The Castro family,” I said softly. Micah nodded, his expression sickly and scared.
“They’re cultists,” he whispered.
If Cletus the slack-jawed yokel had mated with a frog and spawned dozens of slack-jawed chinless offspring, they’d look like the Castros. We’re talking an entire inbred family, generations maybe, of huge swamp-green eyes, almost non-existent noses, thick lips that owed nothing to collagen, and… well, no chins. Batrachian didn’t even begin to cover it.
Even worse, though… the things that stood on makeshift wooden daises at equidistant points around the pond. There were five of them.
“Ah yes, the harbingers,” LeRoy said in pleased tones. “First, the Adjurix.”
The harbinger on LeRoy’s right was a parody of human form, with parts of its sagging limbs either strangely bloated or elongated and twisted. The distorted skin hung loosely on the skeleton within, irregular bags of flesh bulging like water balloons. Noxious vapors constantly rose from the pores in its skin. The ghastly, cloying corpse reek of its body was horrifying, as if its entire insides had broken down and collapsed internally, only to be liquefied, and finally putrefied in some unspeakable alchemical process.
He pointed to the next one. “The Haruspex.”
The Haruspex was barely recognizable as human-shaped anymore—it looked more like a walking, engorged heart muscle with outstretched arms. With every loud thumping beat of its massive pulse, its entire body, bloated and grossly veined, pulsated as well—changing color from a sickly pale oyster to a flush of dark red. Its once-human face was lost now, sunken down into the swollen flesh—except for the vestiges of the mouth, which had devolved into an oversized, crude lamprey maw, just like the thing’s fingertips and palms of the hands. What eyes it once had were now little more than a pair of beady crimson slits, like open wounds.
“The Lucifer.”
This harbinger looked like nothing so much as a mummified corpse, although instead of wrappings, it was covered in ragged layers of dried-out papery skin, a brittle husk the same gray, lifeless color of ancient burial rags. In the black pits that had been its eyes and mouth came an eerie white ghost-light glow that pierced the overall pale azure glow that came off of its entire body like a ghastly beacon of doom.
“The Augury.”
The Augury looked as though a human being had been shaped, pulled, and twisted like saltwater taffy, its body and limbs elongated. Greasy black feathers had grown through the skin, forming long, powerful wings ending in clawed hands with exquisitely elongated fingers. The unnaturally wide mouth on its gargoyle face was filled with cruel teeth, slavering continuously.
“And of course, the Cantrix.” LeRoy’s voice was filled with a sick, gloating tone as he gestured to the harbinger directly across the water.
I looked at the Cantrix. What seemed to be a silken cloak of pale orange and gray velvet was, in fact, its enormous moon-moth wings. Its wasp-waisted torso was supported by three pairs of limbs. There was nothing human about its two upraised beetle-like forelimbs, but the chitinous arms and legs weren’t fully insect yet. One arm, in fact, was still free of the orange and gray membranous cover that had taken over the rest of the body. I recognized the fragile jeweled tattoo that laced around the wrist.
Oh god. Tia.
Slowly I raised my eyes to the thing’s head, looking into its eyes and seeing the half-mad gaze of my friend. The folds of its wings had grown into her body, become a part of it, even as parts of her were still contained in a coc
oon of tightly woven filaments that reminded me of crystalized spun sugar. As I watched in horror, part of the cocoon that swaddled the left arm fell off as her fingers flexed, showing how the threads had gone into the skin. God, that must have hurt.
LeRoy nodded as if reading my mind. “The harbingers can only be created when their hosts feel fear and the kind of agonizing pain we can only imagine. The more horrific and profound their suffering, the stronger the harbingers and their aspects.”
“Their aspects?” My tone was dull. I had failed to save Tia and it was most likely my insistence that she try to find out what LeRoy was doing that had brought her into his grasp. If she hadn’t gone back to the tattoo shop, she would still… she would still be Tia and not this poor creature.
“Tia had to suffer a lot in a much shorter time,” LeRoy went on, enjoying my horror. “Losing the original Cantrix was a blow. It shouldn’t have been able to leave its womb until I summoned it. And it shouldn’t have been able to be killed so easily.”
“Surprise, surprise,” I muttered.
He shot me a dark glance. “This is not the first time you and yours have interfered. But it will be the last. He Who Eats Worlds will be brought through the gates tonight and you will know what it is to suffer.”
I looked into the pain-glazed eyes of what had been Tia and felt a small ember of rage light inside me and begin to blaze.
“Why do you want to summon something called He Who Eats Worlds?” I asked, keeping my voice level. “I mean, what is the percentage for you when this thing is going to bring eternal torment to all mankind… or just eats us? What do you get out of this?”
“The Old Ones are not without gratitude to those who help them.”
I gave a derisive snort. LeRoy either didn’t hear or ignored it as he continued. “He Who Eats Worlds has been trapped for millennia in a dimension he long since devoured, and those who free him shall rule what is left of humanity.”
“Unless he eats it all,” I shot back. “The only thing worse than evil is stupid evil. And the only thing worse than stupid evil is gullible stupid evil. Congrats. You win the triple crown here.”
He frowned. “I want you to bear witness, bitch. What your ancestress stopped before, you will experience firsthand. If I had known you were here, I would have gladly chosen you to replace the Cantrix and let you feel the exquisite agony as the tattoo took over your body from the inside out. As you lay in one of the oven vaults, unable to move or scream, feeling things pierce your organs and muscles. Thirst and hunger would be ever-present, driving you mad until all you would think about was a cessation of the pain and the hunger. That would ensure that when you were summoned to the place of the ritual you’d rip a swath of death all the way here. Fear and pain, both the hosts and their victims.”
I flashed on the dream where I’d stumbled on the experiments in the attic of the LaLaurie mansion. That terrible dream…
“It was you,” I whispered, like some idiot heroine in a Gothic romance. “You tried this before. You’re Louis LaLaurie. You turned those people into monsters—”
“Slaves, not people,” he corrected me.
“You are one fucked-up little monkey.” Disgust dripped from my voice. “How did you justify using them?”
He shrugged. “They are subhuman at best. Not like us.”
“And these?” I gestured toward the harbingers, feeling an unearthly heat pulsing from the Lucifer as I did. “I’ve seen their pictures. They were human. I knew—know Tia. How do you justify that?”
“I don’t have to justify it.” LeRoy’s smug expression nearly caused me to lose what little calm I still clung to. I so wanted to punch him in the middle of his face.
“That you waste your time lamenting the fate of those destined to take this path shows me you are no better than your ancestress. She too mourned the fates of those chosen to open the gates.”
Étienne may have been my ancestress’s lover, but through the dreams I had shared both her joy in his company and her grief at the discovery of his fate. I’d felt her outrage at the inhuman horrors that had been inflicted on those in the LaLaurie attic. And her fury that Louis LaLaurie and his wife had escaped punishment.
“Did you really return to France?” I asked slowly. “Or did you plant that rumor, as well as the one blaming Delphine for your work?”
LeRoy laughed. Long and hard, a rich, full sound that should have been appealing. Instead it made my skin crawl.
“Delphine was not a perjured innocent,” he said when his laughter finally died down. “She handed over her slaves to me without a second thought and never asked what became of them. Never questioned the fresh graves. Delphine only cared that her needs were met. Anything else was so far removed from her world, it might as well have been a fairy tale. Today you would call her one of the one percent.”
“What does that make you?”
He smiled. “Divide that one percent into ten thousand more, and I am the only one who will be left standing. The rest, if they survive the coming of the Old One, will serve me.”
The harbinger that had once been Tia made an incoherent sound. I could swear she said, “Kill me.” Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part because I didn’t know how long I could stand to let Tia’s harbinger live.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Micah whispered, his voice quavering in fear. Something about it didn’t ring true, however, like someone acting a part rather than being the character.
I looked over at the production assistant. Suddenly I noticed the huge greenish-blue eyes. The nose, small, but not Japanese anime small… still, it was tiny. Full lips, sensuous under a certain light, but here… he fit right in. Even his chin seemed to be receding as I watched.
Oh, fuck me gently with a chainsaw, I thought. I’d been had.
“You’re one of them,” I stated bluntly.
Indecision flickered across his features. I guess he’d been playing the worldly innocent for so long he couldn’t quite decide if continuing the charade was the way to go.
“Not one of them,” he finally said. “Not wholly. They called me ‘half-breed…’”
“That’s all you ever heard,” I whispered.
“How I learned to hate the word,” Micah supplied with a friendly smile. “Yeah, you got me, Lee.”
“You drugged my coffee.”
“Yup.”
“You really a love child of a swampy Hatfield–McCoy feud or was that just a fun story to spin?”
“Little o’ both,” he admitted cheerfully. “But I told it to you backwards. Momma wandered a little too close to Castro land when she was still pretty much just a cub. Couple of the young Castro bucks, they thought it would be fun to take turns with her, then let her loose in the swamp again. Probably figured she’d die before she made it back home, considering what they all done to her.” He shrugged. “But she didn’t. Momma made it out of the bayou back to Marcadet land. Got magicked back to health… more or less. Her mind was never much good after that. But even though her momma tried to talk her into getting rid of her unborn baby, she wouldn’t hear of it.” Micah heaved a sigh. “And, well, here I am.” He gave me a sideways glance. “You don’t look particularly surprised.”
“Oh, please,” I retorted. “I’ve worked in Hollywood more than long enough to spot a half-assed plot twist a mile away.”
“Yeah, well, it was more than a plot twist—” he put a sarcastic spin on those words “—to me. Angelique was the only one of her family to treat me right when I was young. Rest of ’em…” He spat on the ground, which sucked up the fluid as if it was thirsty. “I can’t wait to see them torn apart, their outsides ripped off and their insides eaten, all while they’re still alive. I wanna hear their screams.”
“What is it about the name He Who Eats Worlds makes you think you’re not gonna be on the menu?”
Micah shrugged again, wearing that grin I used to think was kind of charming, but now made me want to punch him in the mouth.
&
nbsp; “We’ll just have to see about that.”
The low croak of voices took on new excitement. The water started to bubble and froth like the world’s skankiest Jacuzzi with the jets on high.
“Ah,” LeRoy said with a pleased smile. “And here is the Thaumaturge!”
What came bubbling out of the lagoon looked like it should have had a job guarding the Mines of Moria. It looked like a crocodile and a kraken got busy bumping uglies, possibly had a threesome with the Blob, and spawned a truly fucked-up offspring. Even with the bulk of its body in the water, its shape rose higher than the others, topped by a long crocodilian head bowed in reverence, hanging downward like a hood. The rest of its massive body descended into formless protoplasm, merging with the water. In the gelatinous mass around its middle, parts of former meals were still visible floating in the viscous jelly. I saw bits of snakes, frogs, and the jaws of an alligator that had to be at least four or five feet long before it had been bitten in half.
* * *
It had lain in a stupor after it ate its mate. Millennia together, feeding on the worlds in this dark dimension, then they ran out of food, and the honeymoon period was over. Since it had devoured its mate, no other food had come its way. Between them, they had long since eaten everything in this dimension. Truly, if it had not acted first, its mate would have fed upon it.
Their children had long ago been sacrificed on the altar of their parents’ appetite.
After a while, there was nothing. No food. No light. No offspring. No mate. Just the endless ocean’s sterile, stagnant depths. It became lonely. Hungry. It willed itself to shut down. To die before hunger and loneliness drove it mad. It fell into a torpor and slept, dreaming strange, dark dreams of gluttony interspersed with more disturbing visions of a different world. A different dimension. One where its appetites were small. Harmless.
Now it floated listlessly in the thick jellied waters of its home-turned-prison, letting its massive bulk drift wherever the currents took it.
