Bride of Death (Marla Mason) (10 page)

“Just a couple of questions, Andrew,” I said. “After the first person got taken, why didn’t you call the cops, or at least
leave
?” Then I caught a glimpse of the tattoo on my inner arm, “Do Better,” and hurriedly added, “Uh, and I’m sorry for your loss.”

He shook his head. “We can’t leave. You haven’t figured it out yet. Sunlight Shores is like... a tiger pit. A pitcher plant. People can come in – the bank
did
send a guy, a couple of weeks ago, and he was taken, too, that’s why I’m still alive, I guess the thing hasn’t gotten hungry again yet – but nobody can get
out
again.”

“Huh.” That might explain the spatial distortions Nicolette had noticed. “What happens when you try to leave? Do you hit an invisible wall? Or is it like a treadmill, and you never get any farther away from the development, no matter how much you walk? Or do you get confused and lose your train of thought when you walk too far away? Or –”

“It’s like a
loop
,” he interrupted. “You start walking in one direction, out the front door, and before long, you see the
back
door in front of you.”

“Mobius loop,” I said. “Space folded back on itself. Well, that’s a nasty trick, but nothing I can’t fix. We’ll get you out of here. I guess I’ll have to kill this ‘thing’ of yours, though, whatever the fuck it is. Did you want to help me, to, whatever, avenge your family?”

“What are you talking about?” It was hard to read his expression underneath all that beard, but he seemed... anxious, maybe. Not incredulous, or hopeful, or surprised, or any of the other emotions I would have expected.

“I didn’t just happen to wander by here, Andrew. I’m sort of a hunter. But stalking deer and bears and man-eating tigers is a little too dull, so I hunt bigger game. Monsters, mainly. Sounds like you’ve got a monster problem. And I’m a monster solution. Match made in heaven.”

“You’re insane. You haven’t seen it. It’s not... it’s not something you can
fight
.”

“What is it? Chupacabra that developed a taste for human blood? Some kind of subterranean sand-worm? Feral scorpion god? Give me something to go on here.”

“We knew we’d uncovered something,” Andrew said, gazing toward one of the windows. “When we broke ground, it was mostly normal, except for a lot of fossils, teeth and stuff, more than we usually found. I picked up a few for my son, he was so excited. But in one of the lots, we dug down, and we uncovered this... I don’t know. Some kind of a seal. Or a lid to a tomb. A big flat stone, almost round, marked with strange designs, these spirals, they hurt your eyes if you looked at them. The backhoe cracked the lid right in half, and underneath there was this cavern. We got a couple of lights, shone them down in the hole, but didn’t see anything, just rock and darkness. We didn’t know how big the cavern was, and the foreman said we should just mark it off with caution tape and leave it for the night, and get the developer out here the next day, let him know we had a potential subsidence situation, that we couldn’t build on that spot unless he wanted to fill the hole with concrete or something.”

Spirals. They’re often used in order magic, to contain forces of chaos and disorder. “You found some kind of ancient artifact and you didn’t tell anybody?”

He grimaced. “Archaeologists and housing developments don’t mix. We didn’t want anyone to find out about it, and risk shutting down the whole job site. The boss, he said it was better just to fill it in. So the next day, that’s what we did, dumped in a bunch of dirt and rocks and junk. Honestly, it didn’t take that much, a couple of dump trucks worth. But before we filled it in... something must have gotten away. Maybe it was weak at first, and fed on mice and birds and stuff it found in the desert, but then it got stronger, and after I moved in here, it trapped us, and...” He began to weep.

I always get uncomfortable when people cry at me. “Okay. But what
is
it? You didn’t see it when you found the cavern, maybe it was small or intangible or something then, but you’ve seen it since, yeah?”

He shrugged, still weeping. “It’s hard to describe. Your eyes slide away from it, and it comes in the night, but.. it’s like stilts, bird legs, scissors, tent poles... sharp and pointy and long and bony, but made of shadows, always folding and unfolding. It goes from something compact, the size of a horse, to sprawled-out as big as a house, all claws and angles, coming at you from every direction...”

It didn’t sound like any kind of monster I’d ever heard of. But, hell, there are half a million different species of beetle on Earth. Biodiversity has never been a problem for our planet, and that applies to things that live partially in other dimensions or come from deep time or eat fear or have parasitic relationships with dreams or whatever, too. Shit gets weird. “I wonder if it really eats people. I mean the way
we
eat. Or if it feeds in some other way. Have you found any body parts? Or blood?”

He shook his head. “It comes, and reaches out, and wraps someone up, and drags them away. I’ve looked – we all looked, when there were more of us – but we couldn’t find any remains. We couldn’t find any... sort of a lair, or anything, either. Do you think the people who were taken might still be alive?”

I shrugged. There was Doing Better, and there was giving a grieving man false hope, and I wasn’t comfortable with the latter. “I wouldn’t expect it, no. I’m sorry. Even if it’s not literally eating their flesh, it could be feeding on them in some other way, using them up just as effectively. There are monsters that drink serotonin, monsters that feed on auras, monsters that eat memories, or suffering, or breath... none of them leave their victims better off than they were to start with.”

“That’s... almost worse than thinking they were just devoured.”

“No argument here. Okay. It comes at night, you say? And goes a couple of weeks between appearances? When is it due to come again?”

“Any time now.” He frowned. “You’re actually going to try and fight it? I told you, Pete –”

“My weapons aren’t the same ones Pete used. I’m not into guns. Hmm. I think you’ve got to wait it our, Andrew. You should hole up in here, I can set some protective wards.”

“You said you could break the spell, make it possible for us to escape, let’s just
run
–”

I shook my head. “Bad plan. Breaking the Mobius loop – the spatial distortion that’s trapping you here – is going to take some effort, and once I start trying, it’s going to notice, and attack me, probably – I won’t be able to finish breaking your jail cell open anyway. I’d rather save my energy for fighting. After I kill the thing, I’ll set you free. There’s a good chance its death will break the spell anyway, and spare me the effort.”

“But... what if you die first? How will I get away then?”

“I don’t expect to get killed, Andrew, but if I do, you’re no worse off than you were before. I don’t want it to know I’m more formidable than your average drifter wandering through the desert, anyway. Let it think I’m another helpless little morsel. The element of surprise will help.”

“You really think you can fight it?” He still read as anxious to me, not hopeful, or even curious. Maybe he was just a nervous guy.

I stood up. “I’ve killed gods, Andy. I’m not worried about a collapsible shadow monster. I’m going to scout around, though, while there’s still a little daylight. See about setting up some traps and wards around the houses, so I can at least get a warning if something nasty comes close. You hang out here.”

He nodded, staring at me like he didn’t quite know what to make of me, which is a look I’m pretty familiar with.

I carried Nicolette out with me, through the kitchen and its dwindling stockpile of canned goods, into the backyard. “What do you think?” I said.

“I think there’s a chance you might get eaten by a monster – so, hurray!”

“If I get eaten, you’ll be a head in a cage stuck in a Mobius loop with a grief-stricken bearded guy for very temporary company.”

“I never said there I didn’t see a downside,” Nicolette said.

The backyard had clearly been a sort of communal outdoor kitchen/dining area. There were a couple of barbecue grills, now very dusty, lots of lawn chairs, a patio table, a long redwood picnic table flanked by a couple of benches, and the remains of one of those squarish folding canopies you see at farmer’s markets and outdoor weddings, one of its four supports bent and the whole structure leaning.

“Huh,” Nicolette said. “Something
bad
happened out here.”

“Well, duh. We’re in a monster’s pantry.”

“No, I mean, right
here
– screaming, suffering. Not just once, and not quickly, something drawn-out... Shit, it’s pretty overpowering, it’s all a mishmash, I can’t get anything specific out of the general mess.”

“Hmm.” I put Nicolette’s cage down on the patio table, then walked around the grills and chairs, and toward the picnic table.

The wood was red, but there were splotches of darker color, deep stains, reddish-brown and crusty. I’ve seen enough old blood in my time to recognize it instantly. The table had holes drilled in it, too, each about the diameter of a quarter: a pair of holes spaced six inches apart in the middle plank at one end of the table, and at the other end, two sets, one close to the table’s left edge, one close to the right. I crouched down to look under the table, where the dirt was stained with various leakages, and saw three of those u-shaped bicycle locks tucked under one of the benches, all with keys sticking out of their holes.

The underside of the table was carved with designs. I didn’t recognize them, specifically, but I recognized them generally: magical runes and sigils. Messages – or, more likely, commands, or possibly pleadings – written in an inhuman language.

“Oh, fuck,” I said, but didn’t have time to elaborate on my revelation, because that’s when Andrew buried the blade of an axe right between my shoulder blades.

Then he wrenched it out, and as I fell, he brought the axe blade down on the back of my skull.

NO PICNIC

I can’t say it didn’t
hurt
. I’d never had an axe in the head before, obviously, and I don’t recommend the experience. I’m not sure what parts of my brain it chopped up – I’m not a neurosurgeon, in case you hadn’t noticed – but I can tell you I saw bright colors, tasted hot metal and chili peppers, smelled rubbing alcohol, and puked a bit.

Fortunately he wrenched the axe out, which saved me the trouble of trying to lever an axe out of my own skull. As soon as the blade left my brain, my devastated tissues began to heal.

That’s how I found out that not dying when you’re supposed to is one of the perks of being the Bride of Death. According to our deal I was supposed to spend half the year alive on Earth, and that meant I had to
stay
alive, and apparently my DH had chosen to just... cancel dying, in my case. As far as solutions go, it’s pretty elegant. Technically I was in my mortal body, I was flesh and blood and bone and lymph and so on... but just as death was withdrawn from Nicolette, it was also withdrawn from me.

So the axe-blow knocked me down, but not out. Still hurt like a bastard, though. Then again, pain is a great motivator.

I stared at my puddle of puke for a minute, my head resting against the edge of the table, letting Andrew assume I was dead. Nicolette, obligingly, started yelling from beneath her cover: “What the fuck was that? Who’s puking? What’s going on?”

Hearing a human voice emerge from a birdcage distracted Andrew – a parrot would have probably been just as effective – so I rolled to one side, drew my dagger from my pocket, and slashed out at his Achilles tendon. He dropped the bloody axe and fell over, screaming and clutching his ankle. I kicked the red-bladed fire axe aside – not very far, since I was still a little wobbly as my skull knit itself back together – and stood over Andrew.

He stared at me, whimpering. “I
killed
you!”

“You’ve got lousy aim,” I said. Nicolette didn’t know I was married to Death, and I didn’t especially want her to know I was immune to axe-in-head syndrome either. She was my ally now, but she was also my enemy, and I don’t like giving enemies any more intelligence than I have to. Besides, knowing I wasn’t likely to die in an accident of Nicolette’s devising would only depress her, and she was hard enough to deal with when she was cheerful.

I tore the cover off the cage. “Will you stop squawking?” I moved the cage to the edge of the table so Nicolette could see Andrew. “He just tried to murder me, but he did a terrible job.”

Andrew looked up at the severed head in the cage grinning down at him, then shrieked like a little kid in a haunted house.

“Ahhh,” Nicolette said. “Delicious screaming. There’s a lot of blood on that axe. You sure he didn’t hit you, Marla?”

“He might have nicked me on the back,” I said, reaching around and touching the tear in my coat. Damn it. I liked that coat. I hoped the hole wasn’t too big. “Okay, big boy, up on the table.”

I grabbed him by the hair and one arm and dragged him upright. He hopped on his good foot as I shoved him onto the picnic table on his back. “Nice altar you’ve got here.” I knelt and picked up one of the bicycle locks, opening it up. Andrew tried to roll away, but I smacked him in the forehead with the heavy end of the lock and he groaned and lay still. I slid the prongs of the lock over his throat, and as I’d expected, the sides of the U-bold slid easily into the holes drilled into the table. “Guess you knocked them out before you put them on the table, huh? You don’t seem like you’re tough enough to lock down a victim who’s struggling.” I ducked under the table, fitted the bottom of the lock over the ends of the U protruding from the underside of the table, and turned the key. Now Andrew was fastened to the table by his neck, and he wouldn’t be going anywhere. I didn’t bother locking his legs, as he’d done with his victims – I wasn’t all that worried about getting kicked.

Andrew stared at me, eyes slit, the black bar of the lock pressing against his meaty throat, but not tight enough to cut off his air, unless he struggled. “So,” I said. “What’s the deal? Human sacrifice is fuel for big magic, especially if you sacrifice the ones you love – or was that stuff about your wife and kid bullshit? Somebody sure died on this table, though. What’s the sorcery you’re working? Immortality?”