The dwarf began to sing lowly in a milky falsetto that would have been beautiful anywhere else.
“Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled forever, let me mourn;
Where night’s black bird her sad infamy sings, There let me live forlorn.”
“That was a missed opportunity, Eisheth,” said the black woman, from behind The Rider. “You really should have made him swallow his pecker.”
“He would have enjoyed it too much,” Eisheth laughed, and when The Rider opened his eyes again, she stood, framed in the firelight, her face and naked body splashed with blood, a very picture of the infernal creature she was.
The three succubi giggled, an enticing sound even in the light of this horror. The fat man still sat in the davenport, head lolling, gaping mouth silently oozing red, two gaping holes in his belly which continued to empty blood and threatened to dump his quivering organs.
“Very amusing sister-daughters,” said the one who had admitted him, “but I think your sport is upsetting our guest.”
“Fuck him.” Eisheth passed the back of her hand across her bloody lips.
“If only he would succumb,” said the first woman in mocking regret, passing her eyes over The Rider.
“Take away his baubles and pentacles and he will, mother-sister,” said the black one, her chin suddenly perched over his shoulder, her soft lips whispering in his ear. She had taken off her own wig, and her dark skull was smooth as a creek stone.
“Manners, Agrat,” said the Oriental one, who slid into view on his left, pulling her own wig away and draping it over her shoulder, exposing her small chest between the fringes of her silken robe. “These Hebrews put much stake in hospitality. Let me have your coat, Rider. It is a start.”
“Don’t be vulgar, Lamia,” the first woman chastened her. “Cover yourself. The Rider isn’t here for you.”
The Rider shuddered.
“Yes,” she smiled widely, letting the end of the word linger like a snake’s hiss. “You are for me, are you not?”
“No,” The Rider managed with difficulty. They were all gathering close around him now. It was almost unbearable. What he had felt in the doorway was nothing compared to now.
The lute music was rising like the spluttering flames consuming the fat man’s tongue in the hearth. The dwarf sang, and Nehema sang in unison, her voice electric and serpentine.
“Down vain lights, shine you no more! No nights are dark enough for those
That in despair their lost fortunes deplore. Light doth but shame disclose.”
“But I came to you,” she reasoned. “You remember? Do you remember that song?”
“I remember.”
“Yes,” she said again, the word drawing into a lingering hiss. She was close in his face now, her breath hot on his lips. The others were huddled close, cheek to cheek. Their hands were moving over each other beneath his field of vision. He dared not look away from her eyes.
“Do you know who I am?”
“No,” The Rider admitted, shuddering.
“My mother called me Nehema, and my father, my lover, made me Marshal of the Order of Nehemoth. My sister-daughters and I, we are the Queens of Hell. Have you ever touched a queen, Rider? Have you ever touched any woman?”
The Rider wanted to squeeze his eyes shut, to close them out of his mind. Even with his various periapts and talismans, he could feel their influence. Without them…God, what would happen to him without them? He wondered…
“He has,” laughed Agrat gaily.
“A woman right here in Tip Top,” said Eisheth in his ear.
“Ah, he’s spoiled,” pouted Lamia.
“I would say seasoned,” said Nehema, her eyes flashing. “And only lightly. Anyway, I’m not particular.”
She sang with the dwarf again.
“Never may my woes be relieved, Since pity is fled:
And tears and sighs and groans my weary days Of all joys have deprived.”
It was as if they sang of him, not to him. Her words, so sorrowful despite their delivery. He physically trembled. It was a lament of unimaginable despair and absolute loneliness, insidious in its assault on his heart when combined with the attack on his physical senses. He suddenly pitied this woman. He wanted to comfort her. A creature that could summon such beauty could not possibly be entirely evil. And yet…
The red lantern. The fat man had kicked the table with the lantern over. He slowly, gingerly reached into his coat for his spectacles, afraid of what would happen should even the back of his hand brush against any part of these succubi.
When he felt the cold lenses between his hot fingertips, he gained some reassurance, and drew them out, fumbling them over his eyes.
“Hark! You shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to condemn the light, Happy, happy they that in hell, feel not the world’s despite.”
When he looked up, he saw the women as they truly were, cadaverous and putrid. He could hardly tell them apart but for their sparse clothing. They did not possess any human ethnic characteristics, and The Rider realized those he had observed in them were entirely a product of his own desires. It was no coincidence that Nehema resembled a Palestinian girl he had seen in a market once fleetingly. The others too were amalgams of women he had seen in his travels. He realized Lamia for instance drew her features from both a Tibetan girl he had once known and a Chinese prostitute he had recently encountered in Delirium Tremens.
In reality, such as it was, they were almost uniform in appearance. The gray flesh drooped from their emaciated frames, bellies swollen in perpetual, malignant pregnancy, their bodies covered in suppurating sores. Their groping fingers were hooked. Each bore one leg of a mangy mule, and gargoyle-like bat wings sprouted ungainly from beneath their jutting shoulder blades.
Before his eyes, one of their grotesque newborns flopped onto the floor, spilling like a calf from Lamia’s womb. It bore the likeness of the black man she had escorted out, and scuttled on centipede legs and webbed feet. The infant demon matured almost instantly, flapped a few inches off the floor on black vulture wings, and hurtled itself mewling into the hearth fire. This baptism complete, it went shrieking up the chimney to join the mass exodus going on above.
As he recoiled, the black toothed harridans withdrew from around him, and from the corner, the music of the dwarf stopped.
“He sees us now,” said Agrat flatly.
“Yes, feel it? He’s gone,” said Eisheth.
“Ah! So close!” said Lamia, shaking her head.
“Yes,” said Nehema, her hideous face fallen into what could have been disappointment. “It is regrettable.”
“I was told you called me here to talk,” said The Rider, fighting back his revulsion now, instead of his ardor. All sense of temptation had bled from him at the sight before his filtered eyes.
“Yes, but not to us, and not on our authority,” said Nehema.
She pointed to the curtained partition.
“Mother is through there,” she said.
“What about the baby?”
Her expression filled The Rider with dread. It was as if she did not know what he was referring to at first. Then she nodded.
“The baby. Yes. With Mother.”
The Rider backed away from them toward the doorway.
They made no move to follow.
“Whatever happens,” Nehema said suddenly stepping forward, to the apparent surprise of her sister-daughters, “remember the song of the Order Of Nehemoth, Rider. Remember the angels of prostitution.”
She held out her hand to The Rider, and dangled a coin from her fingers. It was one of the pass coins Eisheth had tried to give the fat man.
He hesitated, then opened his palm.
She dropped it into the middle of his hand. It was a simple copper coin with a rosette design in the center.
Nehema smiled strangely and turned back to the others.
The Rider drew back the curtain, and nodded once. He wasn�
�t sure what Nehema meant by her admonition. Whatever it was, it did not sit well with the others. He turned and went into the dim hall beyond, slipping the pass coin into his pocket.
The house was deceptive. It didn’t seem quite so large without, but this hallway was long. He wasn’t sure if it was some trick of the architect or a result of illusory magic.
Two small bedrooms branched off on either side, and lining the remaining wall space were six full length mirrors, three on each side.
At the end of the hall was another curtained doorway, and leaning against the wall beside it was Junior, looking as if he could be shot and killed a couple times over and still think it a mild day. He had changed his shirt to a dark paisley blouse with a matching kerchief. The Rider could smell him from the other end of the hall. Junior had apparently bathed in some sort of rosewater perfume.
Junior said nothing as The Rider slowly made his way down the hall, ready to pull his Volcanic if the shed made a move for his own gun. Halfway down the hall he caught a hulking movement in the corner of his eye, but when he looked, there was nothing but his reflection staring out of one of the polished mirrors.
He went on, until he stood before the doorway.
Junior had been still as a statue the entire time. He hadn’t even blinked. Then, when The Rider reached out to pull back the curtain, Junior moved. Blindingly fast, he slapped his open hand to The Rider’s chest and held it there, so quick his palm cracked audibly on The Rider’s coat. He grinned widely as The Rider jumped and touched his gun.
“I could’ve killed you,” Junior assured him. Through the Solomonic lenses, his eyes were a ghostly white, devoid of irises, confirming The Rider’s suspicions about his infernal nature.
He hadn’t gone near his gun.
The Rider relaxed his grip on the Volcanic. He hated to be startled like that. Whether Junior was referring to earlier today or just now, The Rider didn’t know, but he retorted;
“Maybe. But you won’t have another chance.”
It was all bluster, but Junior didn’t care for it.
“Stop pestering the man, Junior,” came a woman’s voice from behind the curtain. It was like whiskey in a broken china cup.
Junior took his hand off The Rider’s chest and drew the curtain aside for him in one swipe. The Rider stepped through the doorway, into a well-furnished bedroom dominated by a large, four-poster double bed with a red coverlet with white rose patterns. There was a mirrored dresser against the back wall and a wash stand with a white porcelain basin near the window, to the right. The room was lit by kerosene lamps, poppy designs etched into the red glass breaking up the light, casting chimeric patterns on the walls.
The Rider saw a woman standing at the washbasin in the lamplight. She was indeed beautiful, but not in the otherworldly way the illusions of the succubi had been. She was broad hipped and heavy breasted, and her dairy white skin was heavily freckled. She wore the same dark lace dress he had seen her in at the funeral. The peacock feather parasol stood in a corner, and the dark glasses he had seen her wearing were folded on a nightstand beside the bed. Her hair was unbound, and fell in a thick mane of scarlet nearly to her heels. The light coming through window shone in her hair, painting it like curling rivers of dripping moon milk. She was drying her red nailed hands, and as he watched, she ran her fingers over her pleasant face and through her hair, then turned from the window towards him. She smiled a full lipped, generous smile. He had thought her blind when he saw her at the funeral, but the bright green eyes that regarded him were direct and alive.
What struck The Rider was what he saw of her through the Solomonic lenses.
Nothing. Only the faintest hint of magic glow clung to her like wisps of St. Elmo’s Fire. She was entirely human.
“We’ve never met,” she said, in her husky voice. “But I feel like I know you already. You’ve met quite a few of my family. My children.”
He tensed.
“Relax,” she said, taking a towel off the washstand and drying her hands. “If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t see it coming. I’m not a demon, so your wards don’t work against me, and your bullets won’t kill me. I never ate from the Tree of Knowledge, and I left Eden on my own. I’m quite immortal. About the only thing you can do to me, you’ve already failed to do with your miserable little trinkets. Why don’t you take off those ridiculous spectacles?” She nodded to the nightstand. “I’m not wearing mine.”
He took off his lenses and folded them, but kept them in his hand.
“Yes,” she smiled. “You’ve got his eyes. You mortals always have either his eyes or hers. I’m glad you have his,” she said, hanging up the towel. “It’ll make you a little easier to deal with. It’s not the easiest thing in the world for me to do you know, entertain you like this when you’ve hurt so many of my children.”
“Why have you asked me here?”
She crossed the room towards him, the moonlight and shadows playing over her bright skin, her hips rolling suggestively, but quite unconsciously. Her powers of attraction weren’t as vulgar as her daughters,’ but they were just as potent.
“I know you’re going to try and bust up my operation with your silly little talismans and spells. Your Order has harried me and my kind all over the Earth for generations. But I want to parley, Rider.”
“Parley?”
“Yes. A truce. I’ll provide you with information in exchange for you letting me pull up stakes peacefully.”
“What’s The Hour of Incursion?” he asked promptly.
“No, I’m afraid that’s not on the table. You don’t get to ask me anything, but if you let myself and my daughters go, I’ll tell you a great deal. I’ll tell you some things you don’t know about Adon.”
The Rider’s eyes must have betrayed his emotion at hearing his renegade teacher’s name, for she nodded.
“Oh yes, that Adon. Your ambitious ex-teacher. He destroyed your enclave in San Francisco, killed all your friends and faculty. He’s been very busy the past seven years.”
“Tell me,” The Rider pressed, almost breathless.
“First, your word,” she said, holding up one finger. “We’ll cut our losses here, but you don’t harm my dear daughters, or any of my children this night.”
The Rider stared. Could he trust her? Could he deal with this ageless creature, when she had been responsible for the deaths of innumerable children since the dawn of time?
“How can I trust you?”
She inched toward him now, leaning forward to whisper in his ear.
“You must, Manasseh Maizel.”
The Rider felt cold sweat break out all over his body. She knew his name. His true name.
Adon had warned him about taking an alias early on, to prevent anyone or anything from gaining a hold over him. Demons, even angels could be controlled if their names were known. It was the basis for most of the protective magic The Sons of the Essenes had taught him. Some entities could likewise gain power over mortals in the same way. They could circumvent his preventive charms.
“Now you understand the power I hold,” she said, straightening. “I know you, Rider. I’ve known you since your cradle, as I have known your father before you on back to Adam. I could render you forever powerless against my children. All I have to do is whisper to them what I just whispered to you.”
“Why haven’t you?” The Rider said, after taking a moment to find his voice again. It was true. With a word she could destroy him. She could put him at the mercy of mazzik and malakh alike. If she had known his name all these years, why hadn’t she destroyed him before now?
She smiled, and walked a little past him to a low table next to the door where a decanter of some clear, hard smelling liquor sat on a tray of glasses beside a chair. She poured herself a drink. The trickling and clinking in the pregnant interim was like the ticking of a strange crystal clock.
“It’s not that I haven’t had ample opportunity. I’ve watched you a long time. I’ve seen your work. You’re good, Ride
r. There’s a new kind of war coming. Sneakier than the one you’re used to, but the stakes are more immediate and far reaching. I’m not on your side, but I don’t much care for some of the participants. It might be that you’ll wind up all that stands in their way when the time comes.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“No more questions,” she said, putting the glass to her lips and knocking it back with a swift, practiced hand. “Your word, or we can have this out.”
The Rider swallowed bile, desperate for a way out of the deal he was set to make. He had been so long without purpose, so long without a clear trail to follow.
“You’ll just set up your operation somewhere else.”
“Well of course,” she said, pouring another glass for herself. “We all have our roles to play in creation, Rider. All doled out long ago. If God had no reason for me He’d have taken me out of this world Himself, ages ago. I didn’t say I wouldn’t set up somewhere else. But it won’t be on this scale. My daughter and I can’t usually stay very long in the same place. Familial difficulties you don’t want to hear about it. We’ll go on doing our work, but we’ll spread out again. This, what I was doing here, was a favor for someone, Rider. I’m willing to call it quits myself if you’ll go easy this time out.”
She pushed one finger at his face and lowered her brow.
“But if you don’t, I promise you I won’t go easy on you either.”
She drained her drink.
“I have a caveat,” said The Rider.
“Please,” she said, rolling her eyes and replacing the glass. “No caveats.”
“I want Hetta’s baby, if it’s alive.”
She closed her eyes.
“The baby.” She opened them again. “Alright. Done. Hetta was a good girl for a while, doing Tamiel’s work on all those daughters of Eve. She’s one of mine you know,” she grinned, a hint of pride in her voice. “I can always tell.”
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply, for he hadn’t noticed anything strange about her.
“Oh, not a demon.” She dispelled the notion with a wave of her hand. “I have human descendants too, Rider. Adam didn’t want anything to do with Eve after their expulsion. He blamed her. He always blamed women for his shortcomings. We spent a hundred and seventy days together in Nod, just for old time’s sake. But he was an idiot. You can trace most of mankind’s general idiocy back to him.”
Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter Page 24
