… You are brave and strong, and nothing is inescapable. Not even No-thing…
The MahTree let me go and I snapped back to my body. I tore away from her and vomited around the gag and onto the floor.
I was still puking when the slab-like iron doors across the room opened, and lights glared into the meat locker where me and the Tree were imprisoned. A deep rumbling sound rattled my teeth, and the reek of exhaust briefly overrode the smell of rotting meat as a truck slowly and awkwardly backed up toward us. It looked like a cement-mixing truck, much larger than the one that we’d found at the funeral home. A digester truck. The one that had gone missing.
The driver had little idea of what they were doing. The truck moved forward and back, angling weirdly, lurching, and then jerking to a stop. The cabin door opened, striking the edge of the entryway with a sharp bang, and Glory’s angry cursing broke through the sounds of my retching. Unbound, I probably could have escaped. Tied up and surrounded by Philimites, head hot as memories continued to flood in under the surface of my consciousness, I could do nothing but watch the small Gift Horse as he broke open a panel from the side of the truck with a crowbar, swearing and muttering to himself, and pulled out a long hose from inside.
“He has come. You must flee,” the Tree said. Her voice was… different. Clearer, the words formed with greater clarity.
“How?” The sickness was passing, but I was still tightly bound, dry-mouthed, and the pain was fading back in. Blearily, I struggled to kneel and groped for my magic. It was there, kindling deep in my belly. I’d barely formed the word of power in my mind’s eye when whatever was around my neck turned hot and began to squeeze. I fought against it as my breath cut, but it quickly became unbearable, tight enough to almost dislocate my head from my spine.
“That’s right! No juice for you!” Glory dragged the hose along the floor toward us, crushing bugs or kicking them aside as they swarmed away from the corpses in an excited, chittering mass. He delicately stepped over the edge of the circle, careful not to mar the lines, and the magic flexed and recoiled from him before resealing. I blinked, unsure I’d seen what I’d just seen as he lugged the hose in beside the pot and dropped it. It hit the flagstone floor with a thump. “What a sight for sore eyes you are. But it’s done, nearly finished… nearly time to sleep.”
The Ruined Stallion moved toward me with the same sensuous, fluid step I’d watched in the Bronx. He palmed my head as he unbuckled the gag, pulled it free, and threw it dismissively to the floor.
“You’re sick,” I said. “Let us help you.”
Glory leaned in until his nose almost touched mine, and the violently rotten smell of corrupted Phi and old blood washed over me. His breath was fetid, and when I tried to turn my head, he caught my chin in his rough fingers. “You are helping. And I’m going to help you, Alexi. Listen to me… I’m going to tell you a secret. A very special secret, just between you and me. You see, I know you. I know you better than you know you. And I know that you have struggled, and fought, and that you hate feeling like this around me, don’t you? You hate how beautiful I am, and what other men do to you. I’ve watched you fight it, just like I do.”
The schizoid prattling was made more disturbing by his low, intimate tone, the way he stroked my skin and tried to gaze into my eyes. It reminded me strongly of Jana, the way her nipples had stood out against the front of her dress as she forced me to strip at gunpoint. “Glory, please-”
“You want to know my secret?” Glory hissed. “You? The other you? The first one? I know him inside and out... and you want to know what he is? What his ‘soul’ turned him into? A slut. A whore. A filthy sodomite. You know that voice in your head? The one that calls itself ‘Kutkha’? You want to know what it did to the first Alexi Sokolsky, the original? It made him a slave.”
Calmly, my slave. Disturbed, I searched back for Kutkha, but found only a dark, heavy silence, as if a partition had been put up between us.
“You think... hahaha... you think I’m exaggerating, don’t you?” Glory stroked my cheek, my neck, my chest. “You think I’m lying, don’t you? No, no, no. I know you. The oldest part of you, the man who could have been so much, is a pathetic rentboy, whored out by his old, perverted Master to anyone who’s willing to pay for him. He stole you from me and he defiled you.”
I stared at Glory, perplexed, as he tried to stroke the Tree, who flinched away from him. He was tearing up as he refocused on me. “But not you, no... no, no, no. He won’t get you. Because I’ve got you, right here. You and my Mother, at last. We’re going to be free together.”
Something occurred to me then. We were alone. There was no one else here: no TVS personnel helping him, no one driving the truck. I swallowed, eyes widening. “The Deacon… he doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”
Glory smiled, and for a moment, he was almost beautiful. “Oh no. He thinks he is my Master. A HuMan puppet in a coat of many colors, that’s all he is. ‘Lord of Time’, hah. They all think like that, you know. Those Temporalists. They forget that time is less important than experience.”
That cunning little bastard. “How long have you been using him?”
He flashed a crooked grin, almost bashful… an expression that abruptly fled his face as he cupped my cheeks in both his hands. His palms were clammy and cold, like frog skin. Hard, determined, the caress turned into a stranglehold as he stood, dragging me up with him. The wiry little Gift Horse might as well have been three hundred pounds of solid muscle. He pulled me around like a kitten as I struggled against his grip, pushing my face down into the tarnished soil. The Tree recoiled as he held me there, reaching down to cut the thick bands of zip ties constricting my lower legs. As soon as my legs were free, I kicked back like a horse with my better leg, snarling when I only found air. He slid up behind me, and for a horrified moment, I wondered if he was going to fuck me instead of kill me. I fought heedlessly, thrashing as the sick fruit smell washed over me, but he was still clothed. He bent over my back, sunk his sharp, glassy teeth into the meat of my shoulder, and ripped out a chunk of flesh.
Agony. I screamed before I could help myself, and with the fresh pain came a wave of panicked energy. Glory reared back, chewing noisily, and I struggled in outraged terror as he went back for a second mouthful, then a third. Blood poured down my back and onto the MahTree’s roots as I pushed back against him, snarling.
The Tree meant me no harm, but I was still a Wise Virgin and she was a creature of Eden. She seemed to swell with a silent gasp. Glory chortled and muttered to himself as he messily fed on the meat of my shoulder, holding me down as a living sacrifice. My blood obliterated the tarnish on the soil and restored its silver sheen. I felt the Tree’s trunk straightening, filling out. She kindled with luminous light even as her silent sorrow reached a fever pitch.
“Run. Please find a way.” The Tree’s branches curled inward like shielding arms as she fed greedily, unwillingly, on the blood that spread across her depleted soil.
When he was sure that the wound was large enough, Glory rolled me over onto my back and straddled my chest, pinning me awkwardly with his slight weight. He had a thin stiletto knife in his hand. He was healing, too: The white sores were shrinking, skin repairing, chest swelling as he drew a deep, clear breath. His muscles, atrophying with rot, were filling out. I bucked underneath him, trying to throw him off as he raised the blade overhead.
“It’s time.” Glory’s expression was one of pure joyous mania, violet eyes glowing with mingled excitement and madness. “Goodbye, my sweet.”
And with one sure stroke, he cut his own throat.
Chapter 37
Putrid, thick gray fluid burst from the Ruined Gift Horse’s carotid, the spray explosion of a punctured artery. Glory’s expression was one of orgasmic wonder as he pulled the knife down through his carotid and collapsed onto my face, spasming and rattling his way to a quick, violent death.
“Run! Run! Get away!” The MahTree’s scream of warning cut through my shoc
k.
The magic circle—an enchantment that must have been bound to his blood—failed around us as Glory choked to unconsciousness. Three things happened simultaneously: I slithered to the floor under his dead weight, slippery with rotten Phi. The hose leading from the truck shuddered, then began to pump thick white fluid onto the filthy ground, and the Philimites surged toward us in a wave of legs, spines, and sucking proboscises, emitting high, off-key shrills.
The cuffs on my wrists rattled and fell off as I slid into the puddle of mingled Gift Horse and rendered Weeder Phi. I struggled back to my knees again as the first bugs reached it and began to feed—and grow. The truck was humming, the pump fueled by whatever trigger Glory had laid on it. I staggered up to my feet, and turned to see the Tree swelling, thrashing, and darkening to a nasty bruised purple color as her son bled onto her roots.
“Run!” She was fighting it, but the corruption moved through her like water being drawn up a syringe.
Still bleeding, I staggered past the truck, ignoring the sharp pinpricks of Philimite bites. I’d barely squeezed past the cab when the air around me darkened and warped. A tingling numbness gathered in my limbs, a sensation followed by waves of giddy, masochistic madness. The air behind me breathed on the back of my neck, wet and sticky, as a high-pitched shriek of insane, piercing laughter pushed me out into the room beyond the door, a void of space littered with rubble and trash, and lit only by the lights of the grinder truck.
Turn back. There was a small, mad, compelling voice in me, neither myself or Kutkha, who reveled as I limped out ahead of the squealing, chittering, screaming tumult behind me. It was manic, gleeful even. You did this! You didn’t stop him. You deserve this!
“No!” I pulled at the collar—it had melted, losing its rigid shape as it oozed into a loose hanging loop around my neck. I turned and threw it back toward the door, only to glimpse a thick, fleshy limb—a misshapen, tentacle-like root—slither out of the door and up over the cab of the truck. The shrieks sounded like Glory. He was still alive in there?
The MahTree’s empathic aura was weaponizing as she expanded, corrupted, and multiplied. The bodies had been tinder; the Philimites, my blood and Glory’s were the matches, and the Weeder sludge was the fuel propelling her to rapid, agonizing growth. The air was wracked by her screeching, pulses of raw emotional energy that cracked like whips across my nerves, dulling them even as I wept and stumbled down a flight of broken stairs. I fell down the last couple, plunging onto an old train platform facing flooded tracks. There were a few small red lights at the ceiling level, flickering as the Phitonic storm above and behind me built to overwhelming force, pushing me down to hands and knees.
Go back! You made this! You killed Vassily! You deserve this!
“No!” Visions of the Engine quickened my pulse, battling with the hallucinations of the Yen. It was feeding me a movie reel of getting to my feet, staggering back up the stairs, and running to Her. I lost my sense of reality, feeling myself stand, feeling myself throw my arms wide as I went back to embrace the Tree, my body erupting ecstatically with shards of bloody glass. It was glass that fed off the putrid Phi, the desolation of the ruins, and my own hysteric, giggling exultation. My imagination had me dance madly through my own death as the Tree erupted with fruits along her trunk, like enormous lipomas, that burst and released skeletal figures who shambled to me and tore me apart. Wherever my flesh was pulled away, more Stained Glass grew, multiplying until I was a walking, jagged bomb, careening blindly into a wall and shattering into a fertile mess of new Yen.
The hallucination played over and over as I slapped and scratched at the ground with my hands, fighting the erotic, giddy self-destructive energy that surged through me. The Yen wasn’t playing it subtle any more. It was wailing on me, pumping my veins full of adrenaline and endorphins. The MahTree’s siren song built to a fever pitch, rattling the rotten subway tunnel and raining concrete and scree down on my head.
Jaws working, I lashed my head from side to side and clawed at the torn flesh of my shoulder with the nails of my other hand, crying out at the sharp pain that felt all too much like a glass cut. When I looked down, I saw them—the first protruding shards, growing from the wounds lie spear points. They vanished as soon as I blinked.
“No!” My hand, the walls, the floor were wriggling, and the train tunnel was full of a thundering racket that had been enmeshed with the harbinger moan of the Ruined Tree until it was almost on top of me.
In pure dread, I gaped as half a dozen huge, dark shapes burst out into view; apocalyptic horsemen tall in their saddles as their enormous chargers clambered and leapt up onto the crumbling platform. The one in the lead barreled toward me, only to pull up sharply on the reins. Sick as I was, details filtered in: The animal was eighteen hands or more at the withers and built like a tank. Thickset, powerfully muscled, with a horn the shape and size of a scimitar curving from the center whorl of its forehead. Split hooves, like a camel or a deer, zebra-like tail with a whisk at the end; it resembled a unicorn like a dump truck resembled a Ferrari.
The huge animal slid on the loose rubble, prancing as the rider reined her in and looked down. The rider’s features were obscured by a sleek black helmet, part of a leather bodysuit that looked like something out of a movie. The opaque full-face visor was smooth and crystalline, like the eye of a praying mantis.
“Alexi!?” The voice was eerily familiar.
“We’re too late! It’s already started!” A woman called from behind.
The sound of my name jolted me out of the growing fugue of hysteria, bringing the newcomers into focus. Six riders, armed to the teeth and now struggling to control the cloven-hoofed animals who plunged and bucked with terror. They were crying out, high whistling squeals nothing like a horse’s whinny.
“Zarya! Grab him and run! We didn’t make it in time!” The first rider snapped, his voice hard and oddly familiar.
Zarya? A rider pulled up alongside me and reached a hand down. I was too sick, too numb, and too weak to take it. That can’t be right. Zarya’s dead.
“Come on, come on, come ON!” The rider vaulted to the ground, hauled me up under the armpits, and threw me over the saddle as the others turned back the way they’d come. The tunnel rumbled, and old instinct finally kicked in. I grasped the animal’s stiff mane and held on as the rider pulled herself back up behind me, wrapped an arm around my waist, and pulled her mount around to join the others. Three of the riders, the ones now behind us, started shooting at the stairwell doors with weapons that sounded like airsoft launchers as we charged for the edge of the platform.
“I failed!” I gasped aloud, struggling against the too-strong arm around my waist. “Let me go! I failed her! They’re all dead because of me!”
Humanoid creatures were pouring down the broken stairs: naked, twisted, masked by clots of ragged white hair, they brandished make-shift swords in their hands. I reached out for them, flailing back at the tall rider who held me, twisting with sobs as we angled for the edge of the platform and leaped out into the darkness. The moment of weightlessness took my breath away, and then the impact even more so. It jarred my chest, and I coughed up a gout of frothy blood onto the animal’s neck. The pain stunned me into stillness so that I passively hung, too wrung out to fight.
The squadron of riders loped into the wet darkness of the underground rail yard, their animals whistling in terror as the ground and the roof shook. The rain of gravel had turned to chunks, heavy missiles that fell down around us as distant sirens pealed through the tunnels. A distant clacking sound was getting closer, and all of the animals fell into a column as we tilted left and raced down into a narrower, dark corridor. The horned horse-like creature squealed as it plunged, terrified, into the murk of the subway. There were no lights down here, but as we ran, I heard her hooves splash through water.
“Ei-ei-ey!” My captor called to her mount and bent us forward, her arm tightening around my waist. “Hold on as tight as you can, bat’ko!”
Our mount made an unearthly vibratory sound. The powerful muscles of her forequarters bunched, hooves digging into the stone between train tracks as she shot forward and leaped out and up. My rider came forward and tucked her head down against my shoulder, both arms around my midriff. We hit water and plunged. The shallow pond swallowed us, pulling us into a void of weightless green Everything.
LoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYou...
It was cold. The vacuum howled like a cyclone as we fell, and then swam. Light blazed around the pair of us: Kutkha’s energy shielded my body in a ball, a caul of blue-black light trailing from my body like the tail of a comet. Around and behind me, the rider was awash in green and white liquid fire that shimmered, seethed, and boiled. I couldn’t speak, feel my hands, or breathe. The pressure of that great, singular sentience boomed around and through us, rattling every cell.
...LoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYou...
I was mad. Coming apart. There was no Alexi any more.
We burst out of water only slightly less filthy than the slurry in the flooded subway, still underground. It was warmer here, a heavy, dusty deep hush, like an old church. The animal struggled out of the pool, champing at the bit and rolling her eyes as she climbed onto dry ground. The others followed us out, forcing us to move up a flight of worn stone steps to make room as more beasts and their riders appeared out of nowhere.
Zero Sum: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 3) Page 35
