And then I went looking for that sun-kissed bungalow with the wide porch and the ugly green chair, the mother who would never die and the happy little girl.
fourteen
I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my legs tucked under me. My arms are crossed in front of me on the Formica table and my chin is resting on my hands. I’m watching Scooby-Doo on the little black-and-white TV set. The Scooby gang is in some tropical paradise. They find a flying saucer, but skeletons with a single large eye try to scare them away. The skeleton people frighten me and I bury my face in my arms when they come on the screen. The eyes are all wrong. They should be normal eyes, but gray and cloudy, like the surface of an old marble.
Mama is with me in the kitchen. She’s making huevos, and corn tortillas are heating in the oven. The smell fills the room and my mouth waters. A commercial comes on and a genie with a bald head and bushy eyebrows is getting rid of dirt and grime and grease in just a minute. The genie is smiling and friendly, but I don’t like him. He’s very old, and he knows secrets, and he’s always trying to sell something. The bright, shining eyes and wide grin hide something dangerous and never to be trusted.
A shadow passes in front of the window. I get up from the table and climb up in the armchair by the window to look out. I part the blinds with my small fingers—just a little—and I see a man with dark hair and large eyes standing on the front porch. He’s dressed all in black, and he has an old wooden gun slung over his shoulder and a silver sword at his side. He’s terribly handsome and I’m not afraid of him. He stands on the porch, looking at the front door, but he doesn’t knock.
“He’s waiting for you to open the door, Dominica,” says Mama. She’s standing beside me, looking down at me with a small smile on her face. Maybe breakfast is ready? The eggs will get cold. I hate cold eggs.
“Should I let him in, Mama?” I ask.
“You will have to decide that for yourself, child.”
“If I open the door, I don’t think he will come in. I think he will try to take me away.”
“He doesn’t belong here.”
“But I don’t want to go with him. I don’t like it out there.”
“You don’t belong here, either,” my mother says. “Not anymore.”
I start to cry, the tears welling in my eyes without warning. I shake my head. “I do belong here, Mama. I like it here, with you. There are bad people out there, bad things. We’re safe here, though. They can’t come in.”
I’m in my room, sitting on my small bed and playing with my favorite doll. She has a name, but I can’t remember what it is. It seems strange that I’ve forgotten her name and it makes me sad. I decide to call her Honey, though I can’t remember why. I’m shining the light on her, the light no one else can see. I don’t know what it is, but I call it Glitter. I’m putting Glitter on Honey and making her walk around the room, as if she were alive. I’m certain if I can just put enough Glitter on Honey, I can make her a real girl, like Pinocchio, and she can be my friend. It makes me sad that I don’t have any friends. No one except Honey.
Honey stops and falls awkwardly on her rump, and I giggle. She turns her head and looks at me, and her doll eyes are somehow the bright, perfect blue of the summer sky. “You have to come back, Domino,” she says. “We’re all waiting for you. We need you.”
I shake my head. “My name is Dominica,” I say. “Domino is a stupid name.”
“Come back, Domino,” says Honey. “Please come back.” Tears stream down her face, but I know it’s just the Glitter. Honey isn’t a real girl and she can’t cry.
I’m in the kitchen looking out through the window in the back door at the tiny yard. Butterflies flit in the sun light and Glitter falls from their wings and dances in the air. I want to go out and try to catch them, but I know it isn’t safe. Something horrible is waiting out there. I can’t remember what it is, but it doesn’t matter as long as I stay in the house.
I see a fat man with white hair standing beside the small orange tree. His eyes are on fire and when he smiles at me, a black, forked tongue darts out, flicking at the air. He beck ons for me to come to him. I turn away and run deeper into the house, looking for Mama.
She’s in her room, lying in bed with the blankets drawn up to her chin. Her Bible rests on the table beside her and a crucifix hangs on the wall above her head. Something is wrong. Her hair is thin and gray, and her skin is terribly wrinkled, as if God had reached down and wadded her up like a piece of paper He would throw away. I cry out and run to the bed, leaping atop it and throwing my arms around her. She’s so thin, like part of her has already gone and only a little remains. I bury my face in the blankets and sob.
“You’re wrong, child,” my mother says. “The darkness can find you here, too.”
The room grows cold and I lift my head. It’s dark outside now, and shadows move against the window glass. There are shapes in the shadows—black figures with no faces that scuttle like crabs, writhing tentacles and hairy spider legs, a giant that burns from the inside, a wasted corpse of a woman with a swollen belly.
“No!” I cry. “They can’t come in!” I look at Mama and her eyes are gray and glassy. Her thin body is cold and still.
“You cannot run from it, Dominica,” Mama says. “You must face it, child. If you do not, it will swallow the world.”
“Mama,” I cry, “I’m so afraid.”
“I know, cariño. But you needn’t face it alone. Your friends are waiting for you. I am waiting for you.”
“But you’ll die, Mama! You won’t let me help you!”
“Nonsense, Dominica. My time on this earth will end someday, Lord willing. But I will leave part of myself behind, in you, and your children, and in theirs. That is the way it should be. You have seen what happens when the circle is broken.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Go to them, child. Together you will find a way.”
I’m at the front door, and I reach out and grasp the knob. It feels very large in my small hand. I turn it and open the door. The sunlight streams in and wreathes the man standing there in golden light. He smiles and extends his hand. I take it and walk out on the porch. I turn and look back.
My mother is sitting in the ugly green chair, sewing the patch on my favorite jeans. The little girl sits on the floor, making her rag doll turn somersaults in the air. Mama looks up and her face is filled with love. She smiles.
The image blurs as tears fill my eyes. I try to return the smile. “Goodbye, Mama.”
Her smile widens and she shakes her head. “Not yet, cariño. Not yet.”
I opened my eyes to a large bedroom with white walls, colorful abstract paintings and sleek, modern furniture. Adan sat beside the bed in a minimalist chair with a wooden seat and back and chromed metal legs. His face was buried in his hands. I thought he might be sleeping.
“Either I’m not dead, or Heaven hired an expensive interior decorator,” I said. My voice rasped, like sandpaper on cement.
Adan looked up and smiled. He moved onto the edge of the bed beside me. “You’re in my father’s house,” he said. “It was the safest place I could think of.”
I nodded. “How long?”
“Two days. Your wounds were serious, but Honey patched you up.” He shook his head. “After that, it was…”
“Yeah, I bought a one-way ticket to Crazytown.”
“Not one way,” he said. “You’re back. You going to be okay?”
I shrugged. “Nothing years of expensive therapy can’t make slightly less horrific.”
“By the time I got there, it was over. I didn’t see what happened.”
“Something wicked came my way,” I said, and shrugged. “They’re demons. I guess they can do worse than try to kill you. What’s the zombie situation?”
Adan nodded. “Mr. Clean is here…somewhere. He says he has something for you. It’s in a box, and it’s dripping—I can guess what it is. He says he either has to deliver it or you have to finish d
ying, thereby terminating his service to you.”
“I’m touched. So it’s over?”
“The zombie apocalypse is over. Mobley, Valafar and the demons are still an issue.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I missed it.”
“You missed the cleanup, you didn’t miss the hard part.
You did your part, and then some. Everyone is talking about the Battle of the Fourth Street Bridge. No one really knows what happened, just that there were about a thousand zombies and multiple demons involved. And you.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly, “kill enough people and you may become a god.”
“What? You didn’t kill anyone, Domino. You destroyed a bunch of zombies and several demons. You saved a couple dozen soldiers, including Lowell, and who knows how many others. The sanctuary network and the unified response to the zombie threat saved the city.”
“Never mind, it was just something somebody said to me once.” I struggled to sit up on the huge, overstuffed pillows.
“So what’s next?”
“We have to take down Mobley. He’s the gate. Without him, Valafar can’t bring more demons into this world.”
“So let’s go get him. Where is he?”
“He’s holed up in the Salvation Army building on Compton Boulevard.”
“Nice choice.”
“Yeah, but we haven’t been able to get at him. Valafar knows we have to clip Mobley. The place is crawling with demons. Oberon is rolling through Inglewood and Watts, Hawthorne and Lynwood. We thought that might convince Mobley to come out and fight, but I guess Valafar isn’t concerned about the territory anymore.”
“If Mobley can’t get any juice, he won’t be able to open the gate. No more demons.”
“He’s still got enough. He’s got all of Compton down to the north side of Long Beach. And this thing with the zombies…I think it was a sea-change, Domino. We stopped it, but I don’t think it will ever go back to the way it was.”
“The walls are falling.”
Adan nodded. “There’s a lot of holes in them, anyway. Just because no new ones are opening up doesn’t mean we’ve patched the ones that were already there.”
“So Valafar doesn’t care about anything except keeping Mobley alive and bringing in more demons.”
“That’s the way it looks. We don’t know exactly how many demons Valafar has brought over. Enough to stop our efforts to get at Mobley. You know better than anyone, it doesn’t take that many.”
“Mobley’s a tool,” I said. “We can’t even be sure he’s irreplaceable. This round won’t be over until we send Valafar back to Hell.”
“That’s a heavy lift, Domino. If we get to Mobley, we’ll get to Valafar. But there’s going to be a small army of demons standing in our way.”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” I said. “Are Honey and Jack here?”
Adan nodded.
“Good. Ask them to come in. I’ve got a plan.”
“Are you quite certain a frontal assault was the best idea you could come up with?” Oberon asked.
“I like to keep it simple,” I said. We’d invaded Compton in a classic pincer formation, the Seelie Court moving southeast out of Hawthorne and the outfits moving south from Lynwood. The demons had met us at Wilson Park. I stood with Oberon, Terrence, Adan and Honey on the roof of a VFW post and looked across Palmer at the darkness gathering in the park. It wasn’t much of a battlefield—maybe three city blocks long and one block wide. Demons slouched from the trees at the south end, and more crawled from burning cracks in the world to join the impending conflict.
“They just finished the skatepark a couple years ago,” Terrence said. “Hope it doesn’t get tore up. Seems like we could have done this at a rail yard or something.”
“Demons can be inconsiderate that way,” I said. Once we’d seen where the demons would commit, we’d dropped enough wards around the park to keep the civilians at bay. They wouldn’t know why, exactly, but they’d find someplace better to be while the desperate battle was waged against the forces of Hell.
I’d brought my heavy hitters with me. They stood together with Oberon’s sidhe warriors, strung out along the street and watching the demons mass in the park. I wasn’t sure how many battles it took to be a veteran, but I figured some of them qualified. Ismail Akeem and Amy Chen were down there, and they’d fought beside me in the showdown with Papa Danwe at the old factory in Hawthorne. We’d been trying to stop Oberon from returning to our world, and we’d failed. If we’d succeeded, we’d probably all be having brains for dinner. And even if we’d managed to stop the zombie apocalypse without the sidhe’s help, we’d be standing there facing the demons alone.
“It’s funny how shit works out,” I said.
Oberon glanced over at me and smiled. “It’s almost enough to make you believe in fate, isn’t it?”
“It’s not that funny.”
“What are we waiting for?” Honey said. “Let’s kill them.” Her sword was in her hand, and red and orange pixie dust fell from her wings. She was wearing bright blue war paint, though I guessed it was only glamour. Oberon’s sidhe warriors were similarly decorated.
“Settle down, William Wallace,” I said. “Let them come.”
“I’m worried about Jack,” Honey said.
“I know. That’s why we have to let them come.”
The south end of the park had become a twisted nightmare of darkness and fire, obscene flesh and corrupted biology. There were more of the demon mothers there, and while I didn’t look at them, I saw the crawlers they spawned moving forward to the front of the pack. Fire giants, like the one we’d fought at the Carnival Club, formed up behind them.
“Time for the artillery,” Oberon said.
I looked over at him. “What kind of artillery?”
“Me,” he said, and grinned. He walked forward to the edge of the building, raised his arms and began singing in that strange, haunting language he shared with Honey and Jack. A wind blew in from the coast, tugging at our exposed position and kicking up dust from the infield of the small baseball field. Clouds rolled in overhead, so fast it looked like vapor from a smoke machine crawling across the sky. The clouds undulated and turned in on themselves, and lightning began to flash in their bellies.
Across the field, the demons raised a terrible cry, a discordant symphony of screams, shrieks, roars and stomach-turning moans that crawled along my spine to the base of my brain and flushed my body with cold, stark terror. It was the sound of all the worst things humans had ever imagined waiting for them in dark places since they first dared to climb down from the trees.
Oberon tilted his head up to the sky as the rain began to fall, and the wind whipped his long, auburn hair around his face and shoulders. He began to glow, to shine, as if moonlight had been trapped beneath his skin and was straining to be free. The look on his face was rapturous, orgasmic, and his chant built and swelled with magic until the beautiful, secret words drowned out the demonic cacophony from the far side of the field.
A wave of crawlers raced forward, swarming across the grass and concrete toward us, and the glowering sky attacked. Jagged, crackling lines of blue-white lightning flashed down from the roiling clouds and caressed the scuttling crawlers almost gently, outlining them in fairy fire and reducing them instantly to smoking puddles of black tar. Only a handful made it through, and the sidhe warriors stepped forward to meet them, blades flashing and deadly glamours tearing into the crawlers like wild beasts.
“You’re supposed to hit those guys with countermagic, first,” I said to Oberon. “You got to soften them up so they don’t shrug off your spells.”
The fairy king laughed. “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he said. Oberon threw back his head and sang, and the sky growled like a belligerent animal in answer to him. A slender funnel cloud formed in the twisting gray blanket overhead and reached for the demon horde assembled below. The tornado split in two and then another uncoiled from the angry sky. Emerald light fl
ashed within the three vortices, and when they touched the south end of Wilson Park, the twisters spat forth an airborne brigade of piskie warriors. The piskies swarmed over the demons and the red-orange pixie dust was so thick it looked like burning snowfall.
“My people,” Honey said. “We kick ass.”
“Join them, if you will,” Oberon said, inclining his head and raising his sword in salute. “Your House is pardoned and it is your right to stand with them. To war, Princess, and red glory!”
The blue war paint on Honey’s face and body pulsed alight and green fire danced along the edge of her sword.
“Until death and darkness and the world’s sorrow, my King,” she said, and then she was off, blazing across the field like an emerald comet falling into the sun.
“Yeah, Honey, don’t let me hold you back,” I muttered.
Despite the piskies’ ass-kicking prowess, the fire giants pressed forward, tromping across the field and churning the turf into mud. They were armed with an array of the Dark Ages’ most advanced weaponry: massive black iron swords with serrated edges, spiked balls on the ends of heavy chains that looked like they could demolish a house, mauls the size of small trees. The twisters roared through their ranks, scattering earth, foliage and playground equipment, but the fire giants leaned forward into the storm and marched on.
“What else you got, Oberon?” I said. “We had trouble with one of these guys in the club, and there’s six of them here.”
“Seven,” Terrence said. “There’s another one behind that big guy.”
“They’re all big guys, Terrence,” I said.
“The really big motherfucker with the big fucking ax.”
The figure striding across the field at the center of the giants’ ranks towered over his fellows. He wore an ornate iron helm engraved with leaves and vines, and topped with a crown of fire that twined and branched like the antlers of a great stag. Flames burst from his eyes and from a mouth that was nearly hidden in a full beard that wreathed his craggy face like a wild tangle of spun silver.
Skeleton Crew Page 25
