by Jon F. Merz
“Tell me, Lawson.”
I flexed my wrists. The blood from her cut had started making the ropes moist and slippery. I looked up and saw the bits of fiber that her blade had cut away. It wasn’t much.
“Say it, Lawson!”
I don’t know why she was so intent on getting me to say that I adored her. I don’t know what I’d felt for her. Was it love? Maybe. She’d been something new and exciting. I loved the chase. She was right about that. And I’d really loved sleeping with her. But was it love? I didn’t think so. I knew what love was.
Love was what I had with Talya.
Secure. Confident. Passionate. Knowing that we could always be completely and totally honest with each other. And it didn’t matter if no one else in the world ever approved of what we did or even liked us, we had each other and that was all we would ever need.
I loved Talya.
Not Lilith.
My eyes filled with the sweat running down my body mixed with blood and then I started tearing up at the same time.
“Say it! I command you!”
I thought about Talya. I saw her face. The strength and the compassion she had in equal measure. Her love for the kids she cared for in Africa. The look of total abandon when we made love and held each other afterward. I saw her incredible tenacity for living and never giving up. She was so much more than Lilith would ever be.
Talya didn’t need someone to tell her they loved her; Talya knew in her heart that I did.
And that was all she needed.
I felt a surge of power rise up within me and as I screamed out from another cut that Lilith made, I jerked both of my arms forward, breaking the ropes that Manny had used to tie me down to the board.
The effect was immediate: the wheel came forward, flying off its axis or whatever it was that allowed it to turn. I fell forward, crashing into Lilith who still held her scalpel and we toppled together onto the floor.
I headbutted her hard and she reeled back and away, but was unable to do anything because I was on top of her. Quite a difference from how I was on top of her only an hour ago.
“Manny!”
I didn’t wait for the little skidmark to make an appearance. I pushed up and grabbed the scalpel, slicing through the ropes at my feet and coming away free.
I got to my feet just in time to see Manny rushing at me headlong.
I sidestepped and kicked him hard in the nuts.
“Payback’s a bitch.”
He screamed and dropped. I was guessing his dick wasn’t the only thing suffering from a lack of use.
Then I looked back at Lilith as she slowly got up off the ground.
“Now we dance.”
39
Manny recovered faster than I thought, but that was probably because he hadn’t used his balls in a while and they were pretty much dead anyway. He tackled me around the waist and we fell backwards into the tabletop wheel that I’d been strapped to.
For a little elf, he was surprisingly robust in his attacks, coming up and raining down punches at my head while he tried to knee me again in the crotch. He had some weight on him as well, the stocky midsection he sported gave him enough girth to put some weight behind his strikes. They rebounded off my head, causing my vision to blur temporarily. I saw stars but brought my hands up and warded off the majority of his shots.
My blood was starting to clot, which helped cut down on the slippery factor. But I was still slick with sweat and even Manny was having a hard time staying glued to me to beat me up.
I drove an elbow into the side of his jaw, snapping his head around hard and then used that momentum to throw him off of me. I came off the wheel and fired a solid kick into his midsection as he started to rise and caught him square in the gut.
He shrugged it off and tried throwing a roundhouse kick at me. I moved to the inside of its arc, wrapped my arm over his and cranked a hard arm bar down and around, throwing him face first into the wheel. His head snapped off of it and I felt certain he was going to be knocked out cold.
That didn’t happen. The little bastard kept coming back for me and I was running out of ideas on how to dispatch him until I noticed that Lilith was lurking in the background watching this entire thing go down. She clearly didn’t give a shit about Manny, but I suspected that no one in this guy’s life ever had. He was utterly forgettable; a comedic laugh when you needed one but apart from that, he wasn’t remotely what anyone would ever call a man. He was a clown and an old, balding one at that. If people laughed now, they laughed at him rather than with him.
He rushed at me again, clearly foregoing any attempt at punching and kicking now, and figuring his best option was another tackle followed up with raining down of punches on me.
Except now I knew what his tactic was and as he rushed at me, I used his momentum against him, turned his direction and sent him sprawling into Lilith who was in the midst of starting to shout something that was probably a spell or some shit.
Too late, Manny crashed into her and sent them both falling ass-over-teakettle across the basement. By the time they manage to gather themselves, I was rushing across the basement toward an old rake I’d spotted during the commotion.
Lilith’s robe had fallen open exposing everything and she quickly shoved Manny off of her telling him to get me controlled so she could continue the magic.
Manny needed no further encouragement and came rushing at me again.
Unfortunately for him, I now had the rake in my hand and I flipped it over so the metal rake at the end dropped down on Manny’s head as he ran at me. He dropped on to the floor on his back and I saw his eyes cross as though he was going to lose consciousness.
I glanced at Lilith but she was far too absorbed in her own shit to care about Manny.
“Sorry pal, game over.”
I flipped the rake over and then plunged the wooden handle straight down into Manny’s chest, staking his heart with the shaft of the rake. He screamed out for Lilith and she finally saw what was happening.
She rushed to him and knelt next to him, taking his hand up in hers.
Too late for Manny, his incisors had already extended and his eyes were going black as his pupils blew out. He was dead. He knew it and Lilith knew it, too.
His hand fell from hers, limp on the floor.
Lilith rose then. I wished so much that I had my gun with me. Even though Lilith had told me that she couldn’t be killed, I knew there had to be a way.
She flicked her hand at me and I felt a force lift me off the floor and slam me into the wall across the basement. My head struck hard stone and I saw blackness coming for me.
But I clenched my jaw and fought it off. I couldn’t afford to black out now and risk coming to all tied up again. If I wanted to stay alive, I needed to finish this now.
I slumped down and Lilith tossed me across the basement again. This time, I knew it was coming and put my hands out to brace myself against the impact. It still hurt like hell when I hit the wall, though.
“You will pay for what you did to him,” said Lilith. Her voice had changed and I was guessing that any shot I had of getting a blowjob was now pretty much nonexistent.
I rebounded off the wall and fell across the floor, sprawling and some of my cuts opened up again. Blood streaked the dirty basement floor and Lilith came at me with both her hands spread, calling forth some invocation that made my entire body light up as though she’d just touched a live wire to my skin.
I screamed in agony as the voltage ran through me. It was like touching a bolt of lightning and I felt like my hair was being singed out of my skull.
She released me and I collapsed to the floor again, unaware I’d even been standing until that moment, such was the power of her magic.
“I will hear you say that you love me, Lawson. I will hear it.”
“But I don’t,” I said. “And I never will.”
She paused in mid step. “You must say it.”
I frowned. What the hell difference did it
make if I said it or not? She was the all-powerful one who could use magic to kill me if she wanted. So why didn’t she? Why was she holding back?
Wait.
She’d said that it was only after that blind beggar had adored her that her appearance changed. What if the reverse worked? What if she needed the adoration of three men in order to retain her good looks? I could spoil that by refusing to tell her.
“Say it!” Her voice was a screech now and I remembered that Newby had said that her name could be translated as ‘screech owl.’ It certainly fit.
“I won’t. I don’t adore you, Lilith. You are not worthy of my adoration or my love.”
“No!”
I backed up toward the tabletop wheel, watching her advance on me with her claws now splayed in front of her.
“You are ugly. You’re an ugly woman.”
“No!”
“You know it’s true. You’re a superficial woman who uses her looks to get people to like her, but those looks don’t hold up. Because you’re really just a bitch.”
Lilith recoiled and I saw her forehead suddenly begin to crease. As I watched, more lines and wrinkles started forming at the edges of her face, becoming huge fault lines that ran all over her body. Lilith started shrieking as her face literally started falling apart before my eyes. Chunks of her flesh fell off her skull, blood ran freely as her face collapsed. I’d seen some bad plastic surgery before but this was a nightmare beyond all proportions compared to that.
“Lawson…say you adore me. Please…say…it…”
“I don’t.” I said. “And I forsake everything we ever did together. You are a worthless entity underserving of love and affection. You never loved freely but always with the goal of getting something. Even from your very creation you have never loved with total abandon. You have only proven yourself unworthy of any love and affection. And now, you will finally at long last pay the consequences for your actions.”
Lilith fell to her knees, sprawling amid a pool of blood and flesh as she started melting now. The air in the basement sizzled as more of her fell apart. Her hands clutched at her face as she desperately tried to collect the bits that had fallen and put them back onto her skull.
But it was in vain. Lilith was dying and she knew it. For all her power, for all her invulnerability to any of the things that would have killed another, Lilith was a most susceptible to her own vanity. She needed people to love her; she needed to be adored; she needed to be the center of everyone’s universe.
And the truth was, she didn’t deserve it.
As she melted, Lilith’s body started to morph back into her true form and I saw the demon for who she was: a Succubus who preyed on the lust of man to sustain herself. But when men no longer desired her, she lost all of her power. And it would kill her now.
Lilith looked up at me with despair in her eyes. It was the toughest thing I’d done to stand there and stare back at her without showing any sign of pity or remorse for her condition. She’d brought this upon herself and she would have to face the consequences alone.
Which she did.
Lilith died there on that dirty basement floor then, wailing and eventually whimpering as the last of her vitality and beauty faded away, streaming out of her pores as her entire body collapsed. God knew how long she’d been alive for, but all of that age caught up with her in the space of a mere minute.
When she finally fell to one side and was utterly still, I managed to take a deep breath.
Part of me was sad to see her go, but in my lust for her, I’d forgotten about the other aspects of my life. The more important aspects of my life. And it was only by falling down that rabbit hole that I learned how to escape from it.
I checked her over, but there was so little left of her body that I couldn’t even tell where most of her body was. It was just one massive congealed mess of goo on the floor.
Manny was definitely dead, too. And I wasn’t sorry to see that fucker dead.
I headed upstairs and found my phone. I called Niles.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“I need a clean-up crew,” I said. I gave him the address.
“You okay?”
I took a breath. “I don’t know. Just get here.”
I hung up and felt my throat tighten up. A wash of sadness came over me. And I wasn’t sure what it was due to. Part of me missed Lilith already now that she was dead. And a part of me wanted nothing more than to go to the woman I truly loved and just hold her.
Sometimes when we chase the fire, we get burned. And I’d definitely been burned this time. Scorched, more likely.
It was only after the flames have died that we realize how much those burns help us grow.
But it still hurt.
I’d never admit that I might have fallen in love with Lilith in another time and place. I’d never let anyone know how much of my heart she’d captured because I was upset that I’d allowed it to happen in the first place.
Such is life.
I found the rest of my clothes and pulled them on. Then I wandered into the kitchen and made myself a stiff drink, toasted the memory of Lilith.
And waited for Niles to show up.
40
“I’m never going to know, am I?”
I was sitting with Letourneau in his new unmarked police car in the South End. He sat behind the wheel drinking coffee while I watched the street scene in front of us.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” I said.
He held up his hand. “Yeah, I know. It’s that you can’t.”
I watched him for a moment and knew that he was frustrated. He’d helped a lot on this case and if it hadn’t been for him introducing me to Newby, I might never have cracked it until it was too late for me. Finally, I took a deep breath. “I mean, if I was going to tell you anything about how it went down, it would probably sound like some sort of bizarre story to you. I’d probably make something up about the killer actually being a demon from thousands of years ago who has walked the earth ever since and every five hundred years or so needs to sacrifice three men who adore her in order to retain her beauty and youth.” I glanced at him. “But seriously, who would believe me?”
Letourneau eyed me for a second, gave me a half-hearted grin, and then took another sip of his coffee. “I guess some cases are just going to have to remain cold, huh?”
“Cold with the assurance they’ll never heat up again,” I said. “But yeah.”
Letourneau nodded. “We owe Newby a drink.”
“A dinner, more likely,” I said. “Let me know when you want to get together and I’ll be there. That dude was more valuable than you know. Or don’t know as the case may be.”
“You’ll have to feed him something,” said Letourneau. “He won’t swallow any of that bullshit you just fed me.”
“Don’t be so sure,” I said.
We sat there for a few minutes enjoying the companionable silence. Finally Letourneau looked over again. “When I said I’m never going to know, I wasn’t actually asking about the case.”
“No?”
He shook his head. “No. I was asking about you.”
“What about me?”
“I know you’re not CIA.”
I grinned. “And how would you know that?”
“You’re not the only one with resources, Lawson.”
I said nothing but kept looking straight ahead. “One thing I’ve learned in my life is that sometimes we need to be careful about the lengths we go to to get answers. Sometimes, things are better left unanswered. Even for those of us who make our careers out of finding them.”
Letourneau nodded. “Sounds like a good philosophy. I might just embrace it.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said.
He held out his hand. “Thanks for the help. For what it’s worth, I’m glad Larazo introduced us.”I shook his hand. “Me too, pal. Stay in touch and let me know when we’re taking Newby out for that dinner.”
“Take ca
re of yourself, Lawson.”
“Stay safe, Letourneau.”
I got out of the car and watched as he turned the engine on and eased away from the curb. In seconds, he was gone.
“We found a small submarine gun at the house.” Niles shuffled a few papers and looked up at me. “We checked the ballistics report the State Police ran on the drive-by and it matched what we found. Manny must have been the shooter.”
“Why though? If he was helping Lilith with all of this, why would he potentially ruin it for her?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Niles. “He saw you as a threat. Despite it all, he wanted her for himself. He knew what she was doing. And he couldn’t take it.”
I sighed. “I guess that makes sense. He hadn’t been through it before with her since she only had to do it every five hundred years. That would have been before Manny’s time, huh?”
“And as much as he had agreed to do it because he loved her, he must have been insanely jealous at the thought of you and the others being with her. Especially since your report mentions something about him having erectile dysfunction?”
“Yeah.”
“Imagine seeing the woman you love getting together with other guys because you can’t satisfy her. Must have driven him blind with rage and jealousy.”
“But she wasn’t getting together with us because she didn’t love him; it was because she needed us for our adoration. Manny must have known that.”
Niles shrugged. “When it comes to matters of the heart, there’s no telling how people rationalize things. God knows we’ve both seen some crazy shit in that department.”
“I guess.”
“Speaking of which, “ said Niles. “You’ve got a date next week.”
“Say what?”
“Eva,” said Niles. “She fully intends on holding you to that promise of dinner and drinks as your way of making it up to her. And you’re definitely not going to weasel your way out of it unless you want Ava coming down on your ass.”
“Which I mostly definitely do not want.”
“Exactly.” Niles tossed a file folder into another pile and then leaned forward. “Make sure she has a great time. You don’t have to marry her, but you’d better leave her feeling good, because she wasn’t exactly pleased about what happened.”
