Lilith--Blood Ink

by Dana Fredsti

  Mother?

  I shut my eyes, wondering where the hell the tears that sprung up had come from. I hated myself for lying, but I did it anyway. Yes. I am your mother. But you can’t stay here with me.

  It was silent. She… was silent. Ashurra. Once a little girl with ringlets of dark hair, huge dark eyes, the sweetest smile…

  God, I hated this. I waited, giving her time to formulate whatever thoughts were in her head. Her slimy, tentacled head…

  I know.

  You know…?

  Yes. I will stay here. I want to be with you.

  I shut my eyes, heaving a sigh and opening them again. Ashurra, you can’t stay. I told you—

  I will eat you and then you will be with me always, like my mate and my children.

  Oh, that was not good. The itching in my neck flared into a full-scale burn.

  I leaped backward just as she lashed out with one of her tentacles. It smacked me across one hip, knocking me off balance. I fell on my ass, continuing the momentum and turning it into a backwards roll as yet another tentacle thwacked down where I’d just been.

  I love you, she said.

  Whomp. Another tentacle descended, missing me by inches this time as I rolled to the side.

  Love. You.

  Whomp.

  I could not keep this up. She was only using one tentacle at a time and I was still running out of energy fast.

  Ashurra, please, I pleaded, you have to stop. You can’t—

  Whomp. Even as I scrambled out of the way, I saw the harbingers turn—all of them except Tia—and start moving in my direction.

  Oh hell, I was well and truly screwed.

  Scrambling backwards on hands and feet, I turned and dove into the shed, kicking the door shut behind me. It stayed shut for all of a few seconds before something ripped it off its rusty hinges and tossed it aside.

  An unearthly glow filled the doorway. I recognized the Lucifer. Close behind it came the Adjurix, the smell of sweet rot overwhelming in the enclosed walls of the shed. I’d no doubt that behind those two were the Haruspex and the Augury. I could hear the latter’s wings beating and the pulse of the former’s heart. I didn’t hear the song of the Cantrix, but had no doubt it was out there too.

  God, Tia…

  I looked around the interior for something to fight with, any kind of weapon. Nothing but two cowering cultists, one male, one female, and a rusty shovel. Good enough.

  I grabbed the shovel by its handle, lifted it up and jammed the blade of the shovel into the Lucifer’s neck, swiveling it around and into one of the walls of the shed. Its eyes and roaring mouth blazed like angry white-hot suns. I used the momentum to drive the blade in even deeper, its metal edge glowing as it bit into the ripping skin, tearing a bright crack of white light until it suddenly burst completely into a blinding flash, bathing the entire interior of the wooden shed in a fiery white phosphorescent glare. I gave one last shove, separating the head from the Lucifer’s body with a brilliant death-throe flash of lightning. The inner glow in its eyes and mouth died as the head hit the ground, the body crumpling next to it. The grass blackened and died beneath it.

  The Adjurix shambled up towards me next, arms raised to attack, the stench of its perfume filling the shed and making me dizzy. I couldn’t stand the thought of the rotting thing touching me, so I spun the shovel around and smacked the flat side against its head. The skull collapsed like a hollow chocolate Easter bunny, releasing even more rotting perfume into the air. The horrible decay-stench attacked my nose and mouth like a living thing, sickening fingers of corpse-rot inserting themselves into my nostrils and down my throat. I struggled for air. It was like trying to breathe through a mouthful of trash-water and vomit. Choking on the noxious fumes, my head reeling, I fought just to keep from bowling over and retching from the overpowering miasma. With a last desperate burst of strength, I pulled back the shovel and struck again blindly, driving the metal into its shoulder and impaling it against the wall where its fleshy human husk broke open like a smashed egg, its reeking insides oozing out in runnels of pus and watery blood.

  I couldn’t tell if they were easy to kill because I was just that awesome or if they were somehow drained of power from the summoning ritual. Either way, I was nearing exhaustion and had four more to kill, plus She Who Wants to Eat Me, and I didn’t think I had that much energy or willpower left.

  I had to try, though, because even if LeRoy hadn’t opened the Veil before he died, I’d no doubt Ashurra would be able to find a way through and turn the planet into an all you can eat buffet, starting with New Orleans.

  I’d barely taken a breath—a shallow one to avoid inhaling the toxic fumes emanating from the fallen Adjurix—when both the Haruspex and the Augury lurched through the open door, with the Cantrix staggering up behind them. The Augury’s wings beat a steady rhythm in time to the Haruspex’s pulsing heart, the latter reaching for me with sucker-encrusted fingers. The Augury’s oversized mouth opened and closed, drool running out between the rings of teeth and pooling on the ground below. These things were just a never-ending source of gross bodily fluids.

  I held out the shovel, keeping both harbingers at bay, protecting the two cultists cowering behind me. The last thing I expected was hands between my shoulder blades, shoving me forward into the harbingers as the ungrateful bastards ran out of the shed.

  Well, hell.

  The Augury crouched low and spread out its clawed wings, the talons stretched wide. Then its toothy gargoyle jaws yawned open impossibly wide with an ear-splitting screech of challenge, and it leaped to attack. But I was ready for it. As it launched forward I spun around, bringing the shovel edgewise with a terrific swing. Batter up. I clocked the creature perfectly in the head, the point of the shovel’s blade sinking into its jawbone with a loud crunch, like a medieval executioner’s axe. The avian monster shrieked with pain and crashed sidelong into the flimsy wooden wall, spilling a flurry of black feathers and a whip of spittle in the air. It flapped its wings erratically for a moment, then fell still and silent, its body hanging limply by its neck from the splintered hole in the wall.

  The Augury wasn’t the only one to scream at the impact—a jolt of pain raced through the nerves in my wrist and forearms. The impact had shattered both the Augury’s skull and the haft of my shovel. The splintered wooden pole rebounded out of my grasp and clattered off the opposite wall.

  Seizing its chance, the Haruspex hurled itself at me. The grotesque, lumbering body slammed into me, knocking me to the damp ground, crushing the air from my lungs. I hit the dirt floor hard without a chance to break my fall, struggling to draw breath again, nearly losing consciousness. With a gasp, I took in a mouthful of precious air, then barely had time to grab its big forearms by the wrists, using all my might to keep its relentless hands at bay. Every finger was a horrid little leech mouth, along with the bigger one on both palms, all squirming and sucking to get at my blood.

  But worse than any of these was the giant maw where the neck had once been. Now it was humping up from the shoulders, a lipless ring of jagged needle teeth craning towards my face. I could see all the way down its wet, mottled, devouring gullet, quivering in anticipation. Using both hands I could keep the sucker-fingered hands off me—barely—but I had nothing left to defend myself from the horrible mouth, straining forward to engulf me.

  It kept leaning in, using its engorged bulk against me, trying to press me down and feed. Its relentless, pounding full-body heartbeat reverberated through mine. I could only squirm and twist underneath it, struggling to push its thick fleshy mass off me. The thing’s breath smelled like copper, clotted blood, and gastric juices—a sickening combination. I tried to pull my face away from the searching, groping mouth as its spiny corona of teeth scraped at my cheeks. I screamed as the needle-tips began to work their way in, penetrating the skin and muscles of my face.

  A hideous ear-splitting screech, impossible for any human throat to make, shattered the air. The Haruspex stiffened sud
denly, shuddered, and reared its headless torso back. No, it was being yanked back, by chitinous limbs covered in little spines. The Cantrix—Tia—was attacking it.

  As her wings beat the air ferociously for lift, her insectile forelimbs seized hold of the Haruspex’s clammy flesh, pulling the monster back—even as its half-human arms were mercilessly working and twisting the splintered shovel haft like a spear deep into the thing’s veiny back. Crimson ichor spurted into the air. The pallid gray hide of its chest began to tent up—before the gory, jagged point of the haft came tearing out of it. The Haruspex’s pulsating body spasmed, and then its thundering heartbeat seized up and stopped.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Tia…”

  Before I could say anything else, the Cantrix gave a wounded cry and vanished outside, around the shed. I followed her out in time to see Ashurra eat the two cultists who’d thrown me under the bus. I can’t say I was sorry. My only regret was that she didn’t take longer with her meal, because as soon as she’d finished, her attention—and her dozens of eyeballs—turned back to me.

  An odd trick of the light caught my eye, somewhere high in the tree branches above the Thaumaturge—a glimpse of some kind of will-o’-the-wisp, a wavering little golf ball-sized greenish-gray spot of illumination that suddenly roared to life, becoming a shining circle of blue-white flame. Cayden was at the opening, gesturing, crackling blue electricity sparking from his hands like Dr. Strange, increasing the size of the circle until it was wide enough to let a linebacker through.

  Instead, Mike’n’Ike crashed through onto the tree.

  Holy shit, I thought. They’d found the rift the Thaumaturge had left in the Veil.

  The twins gave a wild, hooting holler from up in the branches. Despite everything, I gave a startled laugh when I realized both were stark naked. They stood proud as two Aussie Tarzans in the crown of the tree, challenging the monster below.

  “Hey! Big Ugly! You think you’re a croc, do you?” Ike called down.

  “Not bloody likely, you fat lump, you!” Mike chimed in. “Great grotty blob of dog’s breakfast!”

  The Thaumaturge craned its head up at them, hissing and issuing a low, guttural growl from deep below its long crocodilian jaws. Pointing at it with outstretched fingers, the twins took up a singsong chant.

  “What are you? What are you?

  “Whatareyouwhatareyouwhatareyouwhatareyou?”

  The creature seemed to realize their needling little mantra had power behind it. It began to snap its jaws at them and form thick, angry tentacles from its malleable flesh, thrashing in frustration.

  The brothers stopped their chant, and leaned down to taunt the monster further.

  “We are Illuka and Miro, descended from the line of Old Man Ginga himself,” Ike called down. “Why, you’re no crocodile at all, are you, Mr. Blob Lizard?”

  “You are nothing but a mock croc,” Mike pronounced with a shake of his head.

  “No, that’s not a croc,” Ike said quietly. “This is a croc.”

  The twins’ eyes suddenly gleamed in the dark, a glittering hue of flecked gold with inhuman slit pupils. Geometric lines of tiny dots and little triangles in bright white appeared, running up and down their chests and faces like tribal body paint. They both grinned and suddenly leaped from the branches, howling a challenge as they transformed in mid-air. Their muscular bodies and limbs grew even larger, becoming armored as their heads lengthened, and their spines sprouted raised double lines of horny upright scales all the way down to long new tails. Both kept their upright human stance, though now their feet and hands bore hefty claws.

  And then the two werecrocs came down on their prey.

  The Thaumaturge roared its defiance and whipped heavy tentacles at them, trying to envelop the brothers in gelatinous folds of thick rubbery flesh. I gasped as the Gingas were caught in the grip of the many powerful, constricting arms that quickly wrapped around them—but they were by no means down for the count. Both werecrocs fought back with crushing, saw-toothed jaws, biting down on what passed for the unholy creature’s neck—the place where its scaled reptilian head emerged from the rest of the huge amorphous mass. Then they threw the weight of their reptilian bodies into a frenzied spin.

  They had the Thaumaturge in an honest-to-god death roll.

  Something wrapped around my waist and pulled me off my feet. Next thing I knew, I’d landed on what felt like a bed of nails as Ashurra’s teeth began piercing my clothes and skin, pulling me further into her mouth toward the darkness that lay down that cavernous throat and beyond the Gate.

  You feed me now, Mother, she crooned happily.

  “Lee!”

  I looked up in time to see Cayden leap from the other side of the Veil down onto the tree, knife in hand. In the time it took him to yell “Catch!” he sent the knife spinning in my direction, the hilt smacking into my outstretched palm. I shoved the blade into the roof of Ashurra’s mouth, pulling it toward me as it carved through teeth and flesh as easily as if both were made of butter, and sending a shower of alien blood on top of me.

  Ashurra screamed, the sound louder than the Cantrix’s summoning wail and the winds beyond the Gate, punishing my eardrums, flaying my mind. I nearly dropped the knife to clap my hands over my ears, but I managed to keep hold of it, pulling it out to stab into the teeth below me, cutting them away to stop the mad conveyer belt before it pulled me to my death.

  You hurt me! I hurt!

  She spat me out, sending me sprawling on the gore-covered grass. The bulk of her rose up and more tentacles stretched toward me, their murderous intent clear. I slashed through them all, screaming along with her as I plunged the blade up to its hilt into Ashurra’s body.

  Her screaming stopped before mine did.

  * * *

  “Do you want to go back through the Gate? You can heal there.”

  But I will be alone again…

  I sat on the ground next to the dying creature. Next to Ashurra, who once was as human as me.

  No. If I stay here and die, I will be with you. I will…

  The thought trailed off and Ashurra was silent. Her massive head drooped all the way to the bayou, sending foul-smelling water splashing up onto the shore, soaking me. I didn’t care. I put one hand out, resting it on a space between eyestalks. The eyes were all dimming, their lights going out one by one until there was only one left. It stared at me. I felt peace coming from Ashurra as I sat with her. And I felt her life force leave her body once and for all. The light inside that last eye went out. When it did, the Gate vanished, and the wailing wind stopped. Just like that. No fuss, no fancy incantations, just… nothing.

  I sat there, my hand still resting on the dead creature, for I don’t know how long. Time had no meaning beyond the Veil. I was afraid that if I moved, feelings would break through my numbness. I didn’t want to feel anything.

  A hand rested lightly on my shoulder. “Lee?”

  Cayden.

  “We need to leave.”

  I looked up at him. “She wanted her mother,” I said dully. “She wanted to be home. She used to be human.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Well, I’m here to tell you, this really sucks.”

  With that, I burst into tears, the force of my sobs wrenching my insides. The hand on my shoulder shifted to my elbow, pulling me to my feet and then into warm, strong arms. He pressed my head against his chest, fingers caressing my scalp and hair. It felt good and it offered a comfort I desperately needed at that moment.

  Then I took a step backward. Cayden’s arms loosened, letting me go. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. Not yet. Instead I scooped up his knife from the ground, wiped the blade on one of the few non-goo or blood-spattered patches of grass, and handed it to him, hilt first. He sheathed it.

  “Nice knife,” I said.

  Only then did I look at him. For once, the mocking grin was missing from his face and the manic gleam in his eyes was banked instead of blazing. In his express
ion I saw a comprehension of what I’d been through and how I felt that I never would have expected that from him.

  “Come on,” he said simply, and led the way to the tree leading out of this fucked-up clearing. A rope dangled down from the opening. I stopped.

  “Where’s Tia?”

  Cayden nodded toward what was left of the shed.

  “She’s still alive then?”

  “For now.”

  He followed me to the shed. A few wallboards still stood, the roof collapsed over them. I heard noises from underneath. Like muffled sobs filtered through a buzzing mask. Horrible sounds because I knew what—who—was making them.

  “Tia?”

  The noises stopped.

  “Tia, please come out.”

  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

  “We can’t leave her here.” There was no room for argument in my tone.

  “She’s not fully human anymore,” Cayden said with a lack of emotion I actually found comforting.

  “But she’s not one of them either,” I shot back. “She stopped the Haruspex from killing me. She didn’t transform all the way, something stopped it. Maybe… Maybe she can be brought back.”

  Cayden was silent, considering my words before finally saying. “We’ll try.”

  Using one hand, he effortlessly flipped the piece of roof out of the way, revealing the Cantrix—Tia—cowering against what was left of the wall. I knelt by her side.

  “Tia,” I whispered. “We have to leave. You need to come with us. We can help you.”

  She shook her misshapen head.

  “Yes,” I insisted. “Please… let us try.”

  Slowly, painfully, Tia let me help her to her feet. Cayden called for Mike’n’Ike. Both were battle-scarred and bloody, but still moving. “She’s injured. Can you help carry her out of here?” Cayden asked.

  “I reckon we can,” Ike answered. Mike nodded. The compassion I saw in their eyes earned them my loyalty for life.