“Sorry I kept you waiting, but things came up,” Jeremy said.
Mooncricket had come up; he’d been angry with Jeremy for going out without him, especially after he’d promised to go into town with him and show him around. They’d had a little tiff about Jeremy’s inconsideration after he’d come inside the night before. Jeremy did allow that saying he was going to get a loaf of bread from the corner store had been a shitty thing to do, but he’d needed an excuse. He didn’t like Mooncricket’s yelling one bit, so he’d punched him in the face. It had taken two more tries, but eventually he knocked Mooncricket out and he was blessedly silent then. Jeremy’s good mood had been ruined though, so he’d left Corey in the barn overnight and all of the following day, which he spent making up to Mooncricket with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Nothing said I’m sorry like a needle in your vein, Danzig on the stereo and a good, hard fuck like a bow around it all. Jeremy was forgiven and his mood was much improved because of it.
“We can spend some time together now though,” Jeremy said as he took a straight razor out of his back pocket. “I’m glad you picked me, you know. I usually have to work much harder to find the right one. I think you’re going to be my new favorite, Corey. Isn’t that nice? I think it’s nice.”
Corey did not look like he agreed, tears welled in his eyes as he thrashed against his bonds. Jeremy leaned down close to him, ignoring the muffled curses from behind Corey’s gag. He cocked his head as he watched the tears streak down Corey’s face and dipped his head to lick them away. The flavor was salt with a delicate, watery sweetness. Jeremy hummed softly, pleased with the taste as he licked again. He loved the taste of tears, loved the sight of crying eyes, faces crumpled with sobs.
He had seen Corey and the first thought in his mind had been that he bet he would cry beautifully. He had been right.
Jeremy had found him at the Spanish Moon in Baton Rouge, another concert, another dark bar full of fruit ripe for the picking. Such places were perfect hunting grounds for Jeremy’s favorite flavor of sacrifice. Corey had smiled at him almost immediately and Jeremy had been pleased that he didn’t have to look very hard that night at all. Jeremy had still been cautious; making sure Corey was there alone before he decided for sure that he was the one. When he had determined that, Jeremy began to generously ply Corey with drinks, which he happily accepted.
The concert had been a good one and when he invited Corey to leave with him, he hadn’t thought twice about it even though Jeremy told him he lived over an hour away from Baton Rouge. Corey hadn’t thought anything was strange about it until Jeremy parked the car in his driveway and took off his hat—and the wig he wore beneath it to give himself the appearance of having long dark brown hair streaked with purple. His own hair was short and black and he’d run his hand over it to un-mold it from the uncomfortably flattened mess the wig had shaped it into.
Corey had watched all of that with his eyebrows raised, confused and curious about why Jeremy had worn a wig all evening. The answer of course being, To hide my appearance. Sometimes he wore colored contacts, too, green ones made especially for dark brown eyes like his. As long as no one got too close to him, they looked natural and people did not question it.
“What—” Corey had begun to ask, only to cut off with a strangled curse when Jeremy slipped the needle already loaded with heroin into the side of his neck.
It was easy after having done it for so long. He kept the needle hidden under a stack of napkins in the little open compartment on the door. All he had to do was reach down, grab it, turn and slam the spike into their necks. The first few times had been sloppy; no matter how many dry runs Jeremy had done before actually trying it out, they had not prepared him for the real thing. People fought back and cars were by rights tightly confined spaces. Even after all the years he’d been doing it, they still sometimes managed to get out of the car and run. They never made it very far, so Jeremy didn’t bother chasing them anymore.
Corey had been a runner, the drugs already making him clumsy as a drunk clown as he tore open the door of the car. He’d fallen down not six feet from the vehicle and Jeremy had calmly grabbed him by the ankles to drag him to the barn.
He thought about that while Corey’s curses became pleas, tears like liquid glass soaking his face. Jeremy kissed them away, swallowing them as fast as they came, each droplet a perfect liquor on his tongue and in his throat.
“There, there,” Jeremy soothed. “It’ll all be over soon.”
He caught more tears on the edge of the straight razor and licked them away, relishing the drag and threat of the sharp blade against his delicate skin. Corey watched him and screamed behind his gag.
Jeremy smiled and laughed as he reached into his pocket for yet another syringe full of heroin. He didn’t like them tied up while he worked, it ruined the look of it and made it difficult to do what needed to be done.
He held Corey down with one hand pressed to his forehead while he slipped the new needle into his neck.
“Shh,” Jeremy whispered in Corey’s ear as he depressed the plunger. “Don’t fight it.”
The shadows around the standing banks of candles grew agitated, the secret things that lived in them stirring to attention even as Corey gasped and relaxed back against the granite, tension leaching out of him. Barghest lifted his head from his paws to watch the shifting shadows, how they stretched across the grass of their own accord. The dog growled at them and barked before rising to his feet and moving closer to Jeremy.
Corey stared up at nothing, so high he was verging on overdose, which was Jeremy’s intention. He hoped Corey wouldn’t vomit; they often didn’t because there was usually nothing in their stomachs to throw up, but once in a while it happened. He watched him until he was sure that Corey would keep. His respiration was slow, labored, his eyelids fluttered and then slipped closed. Jeremy began to untie him then, laying him out on the altar, arranging him like a doll with moveable parts.
The altar was seven feet long and wide enough that Jeremy could lay them out perfectly without risk of a limb drifting off the side. He stretched Corey’s arms out at his sides, turning them so his palms faced up, the blue map lines of his veins sapphire brilliant beneath his skin. He had scars criss-crossing his arms, chest and legs, the landmarks of unhappy times in his life. Jeremy touched some of them as he moved down his body, massaging his limbs to bring the circulation back to his skin. He spread Corey’s legs slightly to expose the fine, downy skin of his inner thighs, ladder marks of scars climbing up to the crease of each.
When he was done, Jeremy stepped back to take in his work and nodded to himself, satisfied with the look. A soft, sibilant sound like snakes whispering in hisses rose from the shadows, the excited jabbering of the hungry things Jeremy had brought there with his work and tinkering in the occult. It was a soothing, pleasant sound to him. He had his star attraction and his grand audience. Now it was time for him to get on with the show.
He stepped away from the altar and stripped off his clothes, folded them neatly and left them in the care of the restless shadows. Inky fingers as insubstantial as smoke stroked his clothes, murmuring rising to almost words as they fondled the buttons on his shirt. Jeremy left them to it as he lit the cones of temple incense that rested between the tall black pillar candles. He breathed it in, cupped the smoke in his hands and brushed it over his face, blessing himself with it. He spent a few moments bathing himself with the sweet, murky smoke, clearing his mind of all thoughts but one.
When he went back to Corey, Jeremy was calm but aroused, straight razor glinting in his hand as he looked down at the body laid out before him. His breathing was even more labored than it had been; he was dying or slipping into a coma. It didn’t matter which because Jeremy wouldn’t let Corey get that far away from him.
“Hear me, O Death, whose empire unconfined extends to mortal tribes of every kind,” Jeremy prayed as he set the blade against Corey’s throat. His hand was steady, the blade was sharp. The shadows rust
led and crept closer, slid over Jeremy’s back and twined around his ankles like frenzied cats. “On thee, the portion of our time depends, whose absence lengthens life, whose presence ends.”
Jeremy applied pressure to the blade and dragged it across Corey’s throat as he continued to speak. It opened like an envelope full of secrets and myths. Blood splashed Jeremy’s face; it dripped from his chin, ran down his neck, fine droplets caught in his long eyelashes and hung there like seed-tiny garnets. He licked his lips and moaned as Corey arched and thrashed weakly, breath bubbling in his opened throat. Air shrieked down his severed windpipe and the shadows screeched back, gabbling, digging their smoky fingers into Jeremy’s back to egg him on.
Before Corey’s blood all ran out of his severed carotid arteries, Jeremy cut his arms open from elbows to wrists. Blood, thick and lazy, bubbled out of the rent skin, staining the yellowish subcutaneous fat that blossomed along the edge of each slice like strange lichen. The altar was slick with blood that gleamed black in the candlelight as Jeremy sliced open Corey’s thighs, going deep to reach the femoral arteries in each. Blood squirted from them, hitting his face, though the velocity was weak. Jeremy was quick, but he could never outrun the carotids bleeding out so he could get the full effect. He had to sever them first, however, because the sacrifice might scream otherwise. Corey was dead by the time Jeremy sliced through the arteries in his feet, the blood flow barely a trickle by then.
Jeremy was covered in gore by the end, dripping in melted gemstone red from his head to his upper thighs. His cock, painfully hard, bobbed between his legs as slick and red as the rest of him. Jeremy stepped away from Corey’s body, wrapped his fingers around his wet, red cock and stroked with his slippery fingers. He tipped his head back to look at the stars through the skylight and when the shadows wrapped around him, phantom fingers joining his own, he trembled with pleasure.
“O blessed power, regard my ardent prayer,” he gasped, breath dragging in his throat. A cold mouth suckled the head of his cock and Jeremy came with a moan that was almost a sob. His knees buckled as his orgasm tore through him, unblinking eyes fixed on the whirling stars above as he collapsed in the swaying, whispering grass.
He panted, trying to catch his breath as the aftershocks tore through him. No sex Jeremy had ever had, not even the best of it, could even begin to compare to the orgasmic rush after the initial offering had been made. There was more work to be done yet, but there was time for a rest in between. He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the ground as the shadows covered him, touched him, slipped inside of him. They cleaned the blood and semen from his fingers, gathered the last glistening pearl of it from his cock. They loved him until Jeremy was shaking, vision blurring under the onslaught, every nerve alight as they took care of him in the most complete way. He licked his blood-smeared lips, stroked his tongue against one of smoke that tasted like blood and burning leaves. Jeremy opened his mouth to that questing tongue and moaned as it slid down his throat.
When he rose again nearly an hour later, he was so clean it was hard to believe he had ever been bloody. He smelled of incense and faintly of charred autumn leaves. The blood dripped from the altar even still, painting the grass dark red. There was so much of it inside a single human body that Jeremy never stopped being amazed by it. When it spread out, pooled and thick, it became a mirror into which he liked to gaze.
Jeremy did not dress because he was only going to get dirty again and make another feast of himself for the shadows to sup on. He walked down the alley of grass, the wraiths following in his wake, sniffing after him like hungry dogs. The faint glow of UV light leaked beneath the door to the office. He opened the door onto the nodding heads of row after row of snowy white poppies. The smell of moist earth and greenery greeted him and he sighed as he took a pair of clippers from the hook right inside the door. The shadows cooed at the sight as Jeremy stroked one soft, paper-thin petal. Seed pods stood amid the flowers, full to bursting with new life. If he scored them, they would ooze white latex; raw opium right there for his taking. He did take, too, but not often because the poppies were not for him; they were part of his offering.
He clipped the heads off thirteen flowers then carefully plucked the petals from them. When he was done, Jeremy gently deposited the petals into a carved alabaster box he kept specifically for them. He gathered the rest of his supplies; heavy thread, a curved upholstery needle, a black taper candle and a long, thin pair of tweezers. He filled a bucket with warm, soapy water and grabbed several thick cloths from the shelf next to the sink. The shadows swarmed around him when he left the poppy room. They clasped his shoulders, whispered in his ears, told him secrets in a hundred dead languages. Jeremy smiled and walked with them back to Corey’s cold, stiffening body.
As he had died, Corey’s eyes opened and stuck there. The pupils were blown wide open, only thin rings of blue left. They were beginning to cloud over already. Corey’s mouth was slack, hanging open like he was gasping in awe. Blood speckled his face in bruised red stipples.
Jeremy began his work by dunking a cloth into the bucket of water to begin washing Corey’s body. He moved him from the altar and washed it down as well. It took four more trips to the sink in the office to refill the bucket, but by the time he was done, the altar was spotless once more. Only the earth beneath the grass was soggy, spongy and muddy with blood and spilled water. He washed Corey’s back half of all the blood that had run beneath him when he lay on the altar before he put him back in his place of pride.
Once he had lifted Corey back onto the granite slab, Jeremy began to fill his open mouth with poppy petals. His mouth stuffed full, Jeremy loosely sewed his lips closed with thirteen long zig-zag stitches then took up the long tweezers. He gingerly pulled flower petals between the stitches until delicate white poppy petals drooped like elegant lace turning Corey’s mouth into a large, showy blossom. He was more than a body. He was art.
“Do you like it?” Jeremy asked the waiting silence. The shadows swirled and twisted, expectant, but they were not what Jeremy was speaking to.
That which he sought did not respond, it did not show itself or speak any of Jeremy’s many names. He always jumped the gun because he always hoped he would be there already, that he would see Jeremy’s offering and heed his call at long last. Jeremy knew he listened, knew he saw. What he did not know was why it was not good enough. He did everything right. He did. He did.
He took a shaky breath and lit the black taper candle. Jeremy held it and let it burn for a couple of minutes until wax ran down the sides of the candle and puddled around his grasping fingers, searing his skin with a gentle, pleasant burn. The smell of patchouli was heavy in the air, mixed with the temple incense and the lingering meaty smell of all the blood.
He leaned over Corey and used the tweezers to pull his eyelid down and hold it closed while Jeremy dripped wax over it. He took the tweezers away when the first coat of wax had been laid and allowed to set for a minute. He then added two more layers, streamers of wax running over Corey’s cheeks like black tears held in stasis for anyone to see how greatly he wept. He repeated the process on the other side then gazed into the candlelit gloom, looking for a shadow that was more than a shadow and seeing nothing. But he hoped; he hoped so much.
“Do you see how I cry for you?” Jeremy hissed at the air. “Do you? Speak to me, I am begging you. Say my name, any of them. Whisper it in my ear. Please, please.”
There was only silence, overwhelming and oppressive, bearing down on him like he had been measured and found wanting. The shadows began to sing to him as Jeremy covered his face and began to weep.
“All I do is for you and still, you ignore me. Why? Why are you doing this?” He sobbed into his cupped palms, the shadows raising their scratching insect leg voices into the hum of a million locusts as they tried to offer Jeremy comfort. He took his hands away from his face and moved away from the altar, Corey forgotten as Jeremy turned his face up to the skylight and the unfeeling moon that loomed a
bove him.
“Answer me!” he screamed up at the night sky.
Barghest came from his hiding place near the office door and sat at Jeremy’s side, howling up at the sky, sharing in his master’s anger and pain.
Jeremy fisted his hands in his hair, tired of all the waiting, all the pain of living so many lives. Every soul he had ever been screamed inside of him as he sobbed harder, folding over on himself like he was made of paper.
“Thanatos!” he screamed through his clenched teeth.
Through the roar of a ghostly surf pounding in his ears, Jeremy heard only silence and he sank to his knees once more. In time, the shadows came and covered him again, loved him until he forgot his pain for the littlest while.
When he rose again, Jeremy’s tears had dried and he was calm as he went back to the altar to gather Corey’s body up. He had one more thing to do then he could take his dark medicine and sleep for a little while.
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Author’s Note
Hi! Thank you for taking the time to read my book, it means a lot to me. If you liked it and have an extra minute or two, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews help other people find my books and as a starving author, more reads means more Ramen for me. Thank you for your consideration.
Shades of Night (Sparrow Falls Book 1) Page 44
