by S. L. Wright
I glanced at the quiescent Lash, her forehead pressed against her knees, exhausted from her screaming rampage. “Glory wants Lash to stop him.”
Shock rolled her eyes. “Do you have any other ideas?”
“We can’t rely on Ram,” I said.
“I’m glad you finally realize that,” Shock said.
There was silence for a while, with Shock whistling tunelessly as she thought.
Finally Lash raised her head from where she crouched. Her voice was roughened from her screaming. “Just tell me one thing. Why her? Why Bliss? Why doesn’t he love me?”
I glanced at Shock, but she didn’t have a clue. Would the truth help? If someone could tell me the truth about Ram, I would snatch at it, damn the consequences. “Bliss is different because she doesn’t want anything from him, not like other women. He doesn’t have to conform to her idea of the perfect lover. He craves her, instead of her craving him.”
I braced myself for another outburst, as Lash took a deep breath. Then she sighed. “I’m screwed.”
“What was that?” I asked, thinking I must not have heard right. Was the uptight, superior Lash really swearing?
“I have to do it.” Lash banged her head for emphasis against the wall. “If I don’t go back to Dread, I’ll be out on the street with no money, no place to go. Just like Crave.”
“What about Crave?” Shock asked sharply.
“He lives here now,” Lash said tonelessly. “With Bliss.”
Shock glared at me. “None of you lives here. Allay lives here. Not Bliss, not Crave, and definitely not you. You might as well go back to Dread, because once he hears Glory has cast you out, he’ll send Goad to get you.”
I didn’t want Shock speaking for me, but I couldn’t protest. I didn’t want Lash around, especially not after she had busted up my place. I didn’t want Crave here, either. I wasn’t even sure it was a good idea for Bliss to live with me. It was turning out that Shock was right about a lot of things.
Shock held out her cell phone to Lash. “Call him.”
She slowly pushed herself up. “No, I have to see him. He needs to feel my fear, sense my crawling skin.”
I winced at the ugly image.
“I’ll call a car to take you to the Prophet’s Center.” Shock started to dial.
Lash nodded, a new determination in her eyes. She pulled herself to her feet, brushing off her expensive suit. Both her shoes were off and her hair was messed up. But with a few quick adjustments, she was back to her usual pristine self.
I felt bad, like we were throwing her off the back of our troika to placate the wolves. If Lash was a nicer person, maybe I would have mustered up more of an effort to help her, despite the fact that she was our last, best hope to stop Dread.
Lash put on her stilettos and paced up and down the bar, deep in thought. She could be headed straight for Dread’s iron cage, to be tortured at his whim. He might even kill her like he had threatened to.
“Are you sure you want to go back?” I finally asked.
Lash frowned as if I was interrupting her. “You know I have no choice. I won’t throw everything away. I’m not like Crave.” She sniffed delicately. “You can’t expect me to live like you do.”
Shock came over to me.“Don’t bother. Her kind won’t speak to the likes of us unless they want something.”
“My kind are the ones who run things,” Lash said.
“What if you can’t get Dread to stop the resurrection?” I asked.
She was silent for a moment. “I suspect Glory would prefer that I kill him.”
I shivered; she was so ruthless I could believe she would do it. “Are you sure?”
The look she gave me left no doubt she thought I was clueless.
A car honked from outside. “That’s your car,” Shock said.
I let Lash out. I wondered if it was the last time I would ever see her. Typical of Lash, she didn’t bother to apologize or thank me or anything.
As she was getting into the sleek black town car, I heard my name called, “Allay!”
I was so wrapped up in demon-business that it took a second for me to realize it was Phil Anchor. He was across the street waving at me. He was disheveled as always, though trying to look dashing and sexy and failing miserably.
Lash pulled away in the town car. I caught a glimpse of her profile, determined and unafraid. I hoped she could pull off a miracle.
Phil ran across the street and puffed up to me. “I’ve been looking for you, Allay. Why did you close the bar?” His hand clasped around my arm as he eyed Shock in the foyer. “We need to talk. Now.”
I wrested my arm away from him. “Not now, Phil.”
Phil was breathing alcohol fumes in my face. “You threatened me, Allay. I’m not going to let you ruin me.”
I wanted to scream in frustration. “Stop being crazy, Phil! You do too many drugs and you take it out on me. Go talk to a therapist—you need help.”
Phil wouldn’t stop coming, so I had to use his leverage points to unbalance him. He rolled down onto the sidewalk. “Sorry, Phil. But you have to stay away from me.”
I pulled back into the bar. Shock closed the door in Phil’s face. “Nice clientele, Allay.”
“Actually he’s a friend of Dread’s. One of the pettiest of petty criminals I used to hand off money to.”
Shock snorted.
Instead of turning into the bar after Shock, I ran up the steps to the apartment. The door was unlocked. So much for my security.
Now Bliss and Crave were in the front room, curled up together on the couch, playing hand games as they talked quietly.
“Thanks for freaking out Lash,” I said pointedly.
Crave waved one hand. “She gets off on it.”
“I don’t think so. You could have come down to help me.”
“I thought it would be worse if we came down,” Bliss said offhandedly. “I knew you could deal with it.”
“Shock helped.” I waited, but Bliss had no remorse for leaving me to deal with their mess. “Lash has gone back to Dread to try to stop the resurrection. She didn’t want to, but Glory threatened to cut her off, too.”
“So that’s what Glory wanted.” Crave sat up straighter as he realized it. “She took everything from me in order to convince Lash she would do the same thing to her unless she went back to Dread.”
“Does that mean she’ll give you your shop back now?” Bliss asked.
He tightened his arms around her. “I don’t want it back. I’ll open a new place. I’ll do it on my own this time. Nobody’s ever controlling me again.”
“Amen!” I agreed wholeheartedly.
Bliss also agreed, though she and Crave were making googly eyes at each other again. I wanted to suggest they go out and get jobs so they could get their own apartment, but clearly they were too enthralled with each other to do anything else right now.
And to think I had been so worried about Bliss yesterday that I panicked when I lost her on the street. From toddler to teenager had been an awfully quick trip.
11
Bliss tried to cajole me into opening up the bar again, but Shock was so angry that I’d gone out the night before without telling her that I decided to placate her by staying closed. I couldn’t tell her about the underground tunnels, because we had all promised, but I told her about Mystify and how he had helped us. It seemed to make her only more upset to know how close I’d come to being snatched by Goad’s horde.
It was so distracting that I could hardly think of a way to stop Dread. I wanted to charge out and do something, anything, but nothing seemed feasible. Shock shot down every suggestion I came up with.
Would Lash succeed in stopping him? It hardly seemed possible. I was hopeful—that would be the fitting end to Dread to have his long-suffering wife deal the final blow. But Shock scoffed at the idea. “Maybe we shouldn’t have let her go off alone. We could have used her to bargain with Dread.”
“She’s not a piece of meat,” I said.
“Close enough.”
Crave and Bliss were no help at all. Crave would take a sudden interest, giving me all sorts of inside information about Dread that he had pulled out of Lash, like the fact that he consumed a steady supply of girls bought on the international sex-slave market.
For the first time, I wished I had killed Dread when I’d had the chance.
I kept waiting for the phone to ring—surely Glory would hear from Lash and would let us know, but the minutes ticked by. Bliss and Crave went out together around dinnertime to feed. They had been living on a steady diet of each other since last night. I felt no worry as Bliss gave me a cheery wave good-bye. She was safe with Crave, probably safer than with me.
When they came back hours later, I saw Crave counting some cash. “Where did you get that?” I asked him.
“I’ve called in some favors.” He gave me a bland smile. “I’ll be out of your hair soon, I promise, Allay. Maybe as soon as tomorrow.”
His feelings were too conflicted for that to be the whole truth. “Did you take it from some poor woman, Crave?”
His eyes narrowed. “Actually, Bliss took it from some rich old man.”
I could just see it—she seduced some guy and got him to buy her something. Maybe he paid her for sex. “So now you’re her pimp? You’re going from living off Glory to living off Bliss.”
“Don’t you worry. I’ll contribute my fair share. Cultivating women takes longer but pays off better in the long run.”
“I can see that, since you’re the one holding the cash.”
Crave laughed and flung himself down on the chaise. I waited until Bliss came out of the bathroom, where she had been washing up. “Bliss, why is Crave holding on to the money that you made?”
“He helped. He introduced me to the guy and made all of the arrangements. I wouldn’t have known what to say. All I had to do was go down on him, and he handed over a hundred bucks.” She licked her lips in pure pleasure. “I was afraid it wouldn’t be as good as with Crave, but that ultimate pleasure is . . . hmm . . . It’s sublime. He was satisfied. I was satisfied. I can’t wait to do it again.”
Crave was frowning, staring straight past both of us. It was the first chink in their mutual-admiration club that I’d seen.
“Bliss, I don’t care if you’re a sex worker, as long as you’re honest about it. But you can’t give your money to Crave. Cut him in, if you want, but you have to take care of yourself. Look what happened to Crave—he depended on Glory and now he’s paying the price for it.”
“Money is everywhere. Easy to get.” Her sunny smile couldn’t be daunted. “I could go get more right now if I wanted to. Why not give it to Crave?”
“Because if you wanted to go somewhere right now, you’d have to get money from me or Crave.”
Bliss giggled. “Oh, I don’t think that would be a problem.”
I sighed, shaking my head.
From the front room, Shock called, “Allay! Get in here now!”
The local evening news was on the television: “ . . . and this just in. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a local preacher is reported to have decapitated a woman during a religious rite.” The anchorwoman on NY1 was earnest, emphasizing every third word as if she couldn’t believe it herself. “We have shots of the scene outside the Prophet’s Arena.”
A slightly tilted frame righted itself, looking down Kent Avenue. People were packed between the industrial warehouses, running in both directions in and around the cars that were stopped dead. The sound of incessant honking and sirens in the distance made the reporter on the scene press his earpiece to his ear and shout to be heard over the din.
“It’s pandemonium here, Rebecca, as you can see behind me. Less than an hour ago, the Fellowship held a special circle here in the Prophet’s Arena. Insiders claim that nearly three thousand people showed up for what they thought was a special healing service that would be performed by Prophet Anderson himself. Instead, they saw this. A special warning, this footage is very graphic. You might want to send the children away if they’re watching.”
“He did it,” I finally managed to get out. “He really did it.”
The screen went to a close-up of Cherie’s peaceful face. Her remarkable beauty was back. No baggy, craggy skin and bulging veins. No knobby bones poking through paper-thin flesh, no rigid skeletal mask. Her skin was as bright and clear as the day she stepped onto her first New York catwalk at sixteen. Her proud, high-bridged nose was once again the epitome of elegance and sophistication. That exquisite jawline, and wide-open turquoise eyes . . . even her hair was a luxurious mane of cinnamon red that only a true redhead could pull off.
The voice-over of the reporter narrated the shots. He sounded breathless, overexcited, like a junior reporter who knows he’s in on the scoop of the century: “A limited number of the media were invited to the City Arena, more popularly known as the ‘Prophet’s Arena,’ on barely an hour’s notice. We were told that Cherie—one of the first supermodels who rose to prominence in the 1980s and more recently a celebrity spokesperson for the Fellowship of Truth—would be featured in a special church circle.”
The camera angle pulled back to show at least a dozen people forming a circle on the stage in the middle of the arena. They were dressed all in white, and were surrounded by thousands of Followers who stood holding hands on the tiered arena seating around them.
Dread wore his white preacher’s robes, holding up the distinctive Fellowship cross with its flared arms. The glad-handing televangelist had replaced the beady-eyed persona that had sat here in my bar and promised to never, ever pull a demon resurrection. Cross my heart.
His profile was serene as he stepped forward to stand next to the altar where Cherie lay flat on her back, her hands clasped on her breast. Dread stroked Cherie’s forehead, murmuring something to her.
Then he stepped back and raised the cross like an axe.
There was a gasp, but the circle didn’t break. With a two-handed grip, Dread slashed the flared arm of the cross down across Cherie’s neck.
Her head was severed off in one blow, as the axe clanked against the marble, taking out a big chip of the altar. Her hair flew into the air as her head bounced off the altar and fell onto the stage, rolling out a red river of blood. It was awful, more real than any movie. More blood was spurting from her neck stem as her body convulsed, flopping her arm down the side of the altar.
I gulped back my stomach. That could have been me. If Ram hadn’t killed Vex . . .
Crave was leaning forward in interest. “The guy has balls. I’ll give him that.”
The roar inside the arena almost drowned out the commentary. Even the anchorwoman protested in horror. The camera kept shaking as the commentary continued. “As we warned you, this footage is graphic, but we have to show it without any cuts, Rebecca, so you can see for yourself that the film hasn’t been doctored or changed in any way.”
The circle on the stage was wavering and threatening to break with some of the fellows trying to get to the altar while others restrained them. A phalanx of black-garbed security ran out from all four arches and took up a stance to keep people from rushing the stage.
The prophet was kneeling next to the altar, his head bowed over the cross, which he now held upside down. The dripping red blade stained the stage in a puddle around his knee.
“Behold the resurrection!” Dread announced, lifting his head dramatically.
The booming of his voice filled the arena. Everyone cringed and put their hands over their ears. Even through the television it was too loud. I wasn’t sure if it was done mechanically or if Dread had altered his throat to achieve the effect.
“Cherie is not dead,” Dread proclaimed. “Cherie has been touched by God! She has been transformed into spirit! She has gained everlasting immortality through the perfection of her being.”
The camera came in close on Cherie’s severed neck. The blood had splattered across her breast, making vivid red tracks on the white chiffon
. The Fellowship’s philosophy was that anyone could achieve immortality by completely accepting themselves; it was known as perfecting the self to dig deep into the psyche and embrace one’s internal motivations.
“Behold, her resurrection!” Dread intoned.
Almost imperceptibly Cherie’s neck lengthened. The bloody end blurred and stopped dripping. As the shadow of her jaw and chin appeared, shocked cries began echoing through the onlookers.
The camera angle included Dread beyond the altar, and Cherie’s severed head lying at the base. Her head was wavering, growing insubstantial with every passing second. As it faded away, her head reappeared on her body. It looked ghostly at first, then settled into solid flesh as Dread watched her with a burning, reverent gaze.
Cherie opened her eyes. The screams hit an even higher pitch. Now people were fighting to get out, while others collapsed on floor, wailing for God to save them. The circle had finally broken, and half the leadership was on their knees, while others were wrestling with the guards to get off the stage.
The noise level rose again almost as loud as when Dread had chopped off her head.
Cherie sat up, smiling in triumph. Dread held out his hand to help her stand up. She lifted her skirts to avoid the puddle of blood, stepping daintily to the rear of the altar.
Dread lifted her hand and gestured to her. She looked warily up at everyone watching, vulnerable in a way I had never seen before. “I give you Cherie! Immortal perfection through unwavering truth!”
His words boomed around the arena. The place looked as if it were boiling; everyone was moving at once. It was chaos. Only Dread and Cherie in the center were calm, smiling at the cameras, turning and posing for the frantic press. Some had crawled up on the stage and were aiming their cameras from nearly at their feet.
Dread had timed it perfectly to make the evening news.
“Well, that changes everything,” I said flatly.
“Now people know about us,” Bliss agreed.
“They think it was a religious thing,” Crave said. “It has nothing to do with demons.”
