Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (50 page)

It made the boots and the night sticks which bludgeoned him into a dull throb.

“I'm sorry.” Then everything joined black.

III.

Billy woke up on a set of metal steps on a vast egg-shaped room of alien looking technology. Below him there was an open bay door in the floor, and the wind cut up from the island below. He could see the outline of the black dome rock through the open doors. Lissandra stared up at him from the metal railing that rimmed the opening. He knew that he must be inside the heart of great beast itself.

There were control panels of blinking lights and computer monitors. Billy let his eyes wander to the enormous metallic sphere suspended by tubes and support joists above his head. The sphere was like an engorged robotic eyeball, with a closed aperture pointing down at his head.

“You've abducted me.” Billy laughed so as not to cry as he remembered Anastasia on the beach below. “Is that what the Satanic Five really is, Lissandra, space aliens?”

She looked up to him with sad eyes. “No Billy, they're not space aliens. They're here to forge a better world.”

Billy pulled himself up to sit properly on the metal steps that led to the sphere-eye. This presented its own set of challenges. There wasn't an inch of skin on his tired bones that hadn't been blackjacked, electrified, or just downright beaten. The only part of him that didn't hurt was the scar across his face.

He found that to be really creepy.

“They're going to kill her.”

Lissandra had her back against the railing over the opening that stared directly down to the black dome rock. “You can still save her. Let Moon have what she wants and Anastasia might live.”

“Doesn't Moon want me and Anastasia dead? If I let her have that, then that doesn't sound a lot like saving her.”

“Moon wants you, Billy. She's only using your feelings for Anastasia against you. Your vampire might still walk away from this with what accounts for a life in her terms.”

“That vampire has a name. It's Anastasia Purgatory.”

He watched Lissandra's hands grip the rail tight. “What did you just say?”

“What's the matter? Didn't you see me and Anastasia getting married in that big dumb future rock you worship?”

Lissandra pushed herself from the railing and walked towards the steps. “You couldn't have married her. Even you're not that stupid.”

“We were now pronounced skateboarder and wife by the demon Brewmaster.” Billy smiled at her through his busted lip. “She may be a vampire, but she's true to her word.” His eyes narrowed. “Traitor.”

Lissandra crossed her arms as she took the first step. Billy was rubbing his wrists and watching her move — they hadn't bothered to
cuff him again. “You talk to me as if you and I had some loyalty to one another, which we did not. You floated in and out of my life, and only came looking for me when you wanted something.”

“I came looking for you because I thought we were friends, and that's what friends do for one another. When you're lost, they let you float in on them, and they try and help you.”

“There was never any helping you. Crying for your mother and wandering around the world in search of answers — or that's what you claimed to be doing, anyway.” Lissandra didn't move beyond the first step and kept her distance. “Everyone knew that you and the vampire you married were just playing cat and mouse with one another.”

“At least she didn't sign up with the enemy.”

“She was with the enemy long before I was.”

“She didn't have any control over that. They made her. She was never really with them.”

Lissandra nodded. “Right. How do you think they knew anything about you in the first place?”

“This is a lot bigger than me, or you, or Anastasia. This has to do with my parents and the gods…”

“The gods have no claim over what we are building here.”

Billy gripped the steps, tried to pull himself up as she took a step back in response. He decided it wasn't worth it. His aching body was too painful, and the thoughts he was having about settling scores were even more painful than that.

“You're talking just like them. You've pushed your Tarot cards all the way in, haven't you?”

She looked away. “You have no idea what they've offered. What it's like just to be offered something like that.”

“I know what it's like to be lied to and then backstabbed.”

Billy could hear all the boots pounding up the steps from the lower decks. Moon and her army would soon be upon him again. “Whatever it is they've promised you, Lissandra, I hope it's worth it.”

There were three sets of stairs which led into the egg-chamber and Billy watched as all the guards ran up them in their shock-troop black armor with their ray guns, or whatever it was they carried. There were hundreds of them on this ship, and they all seemed to be marching up to visit Billy Purgatory.

“Lissandra, you are a brave one, aren't you? I'm shocked that he hasn't sprung for you and clamped his hands onto your throat.” Moon crossed the railing over the open floor and made her way swiftly to Lissandra. “You are betraying him, after all.”

“It ain't worth it, Moon. A long time ago a goddess told me things. She tried to, anyhow. I didn't understand her then, but I'm starting to get it.”

“Are you sure you're just not still delirious from being beaten?”

Billy sat alone on the steps. “I'm not delirious, maybe for the first time in a long time. I think I finally understand what karma means.”

“Karma is a fool's explanation of retribution and justice. You understand nothing, but you will understand both of those things.”

Billy nodded. “I've done bad things. I probably deserve it. That's not all the goddess told me about, though.”

One of her troopers carried Billy's bag, and Moon pulled the sword scabbard from it. “What is this realization you've come to? Spit it out.”

“I've got the blood of the old gods in me. I'm not supposed to exist, and she said that I can't die.”

“I did say all of those things.” Billy saw the antlers first, and then the rest of the goddess rose up the steps following them. Her dress was new and green, and her eyes were dark and filled with judgment. “Your path is not death.”

Billy raised up as best he could. What was she doing here? “Artemis…?”

Lissandra turned from facing Billy when she heard the words, and watched the goddess Artemis follow the path that Moon had. “Goddess…?”

Artemis smiled, and it wasn't a pleasant smile. “Lissandra, here's where you ran off to.”

“Moon.” Lissandra looked back to her. “Why is she here?”

“You made the decision that our path was the place to be, Lissandra.” Moon crossed to Lissandra. “Don't be so surprised that your former goddess has as well.”

“Liars and tricks.” Billy laughed. “There's more double-cross going on than an octopus crochet party.”

“Don't look so disheartened, Lissandra.” Moon stood with the goddess and glared at the girl. “Or is there some new betrayal in that head of yours that I should know about?”

Lissandra gave Moon a defeated look. Nothing in it spoke of the defiance she normally projected fiercely into the world.

“Such a slave to the big rock of fortunes.” Moon smiled and turned towards the wall. “Light up the big screen.” She raised her arms. Billy saw static, then the face of Anastasia. Someone had a camera pointed on her and was projecting her image on the wall. Billy reached his hand into the air towards her face. There was sand in her hair and blood on her chin.

The image widened. The demon girl with the pigtails, Morta, had hold of the sword that pressed into Anastasia's shoulder and kept her pinned to the beach below.

“Anastasia.” Billy hoped she could hear him. The demon pulled at the sword and Anastasia's face twisted up and filled with pain. “Make that demon stop, Moon.”

Anastasia's eyes opened and stared into the camera. “Billy, what is the plan?” She coughed out her words and there was a new trickle of blood at the corner of her lips.

“Anastasia, I love you.”

“Shut up, Billy. Answer my question.”

Billy stared into the open pit in the floor that led down the black dome rock below. He was formulating a plan.

“Answer her, Billy.” Moon called up to him. “The sun will be up soon.”

Billy looked into her face projected on the big screen, her pain magnified to his eyes a thousand-fold. He had to save her.

“Morta, pull the sword out and drive it into her other shoulder.” Moon smiled at Billy's horrified face.

“No!” Billy stood on shaking legs. “No, don't hurt her anymore.”

Anastasia's voice boomed from the screen. “What is the plan? Billy?”

Billy plotted the jump in his head. “Kill ‘em all.”

Anastasia laughed as Morta grabbed the sword to pull it out so she might drive in new wounds. “That's right. That's the plan.”

Moon had his mother's stolen sword scabbard pointed at Billy. “Whatever stupid plan is swimming around in that rock quarry atop your neck, consider something first.” She walked towards Billy, brandishing the scabbard. “Artemis wishes her as her new disciple. You accept the inevitable sacrifice you are to become, and I let the Olympian take her.”

Seventeen steps and then jump. He might even be able to get his bag on the way down.

“Billy, do we have an agreement?” Moon had the scabbard pointing at him like a mocking finger.

“Yes.” Billy looked away from Anastasia's face on the screen. “Let her go with the goddess.”

He heard Anastasia's voice, even though he tried to block out the words. “That's not the plan.”

Billy smiled at the screen when he leapt. Anastasia was right, that wasn't the plan. Now it was six steps and into the air, as one hundred laser sights painted every inch of his body. He watched Moon swinging fully in his direction and brandishing the scabbard stolen from her long ago.

Billy thought about his mother — not about the living breathing form he had seen with his own eyes and held in his own arms, but the images of her he had watched on an 8MM film projector in his house. He focused on the mother that he only knew from moving silent pictures, and from dreams given him over many restless nights. He locked his mind on the image of her moving through the back yard of the house he'd lived in as a boy. Her pregnant belly shifting in the morning light, and her strong arms brandishing the sword before he'd ever been born, were his only thoughts.

It was harder to slide down the center railing of the steps with just his boots, but he did it as they began to fire their guns at the behest of the angry scabbard Moon pointed his way. He dodged low first, and the body armor took care of the impact to the shoulder. When he went up, he could feel the bullets breezing past his temples and whistling a hateful song.

He was too fast for them, and he knew they could do him no harm when he heard Pop's voice in his head. “I'm proud of you, boy. Now take every last one of ‘em down.” He grabbed the scabbard right out of Moon's hand, and he heard her screaming orders below him as he flew higher and truer than he had off the mountain in Africa.

“Silly man, only birds can be as Billy Purgatory.”

He landed right in the center of them all, and none of them knew what to do. They were shooting each other more than they were him. Billy was being shot at too, and close-range gunfire stung like no
pain he had ever felt before. The armor took some of it, but bullets tore into his flesh. It didn't seem to matter, because no matter how bad the pain got, multiplying with every wave, it didn't hurt near as much as betrayal, or lies, or watching Anastasia lying on that beach, waiting to die in the sun.

He swung the sword like Pop had taught him to swing a baseball bat, and he was knocking them down ten at a time as he swiped. He heard their bones crack and he saw the looks of surprise and mercy on the faces of trained killers when he knocked their helmets off. He never swung so hard as to take off a head; those were his mother's prizes. He aimed like she would have told him to, though. He went for heads, he snapped necks, and he decided he was never going to stop.

At that moment, he hoped they'd never stop either. He hoped there were a thousand of them down below, waiting to run up the stairs after he'd knocked all their buddies into the grates of the floor. He spun amongst them quickly, laying into them before they could get a bead. More of them were backing up than were running at him. Then he turned.

Moon was standing behind him with one hand in Lissandra's hair and the other wrapped tightly around her sword handle. She pushed Lissandra forward, and Billy watched the blade of Moon's sword press against the gypsy's neck.

“Enough.” Moon had a look of insanity in her eyes that Billy had never witnessed in any other creature. No vampire had ever stared at him like that. Mira, in her worst zombie moments, hadn't looked so hungered or depraved for blood. Moon's face was more devoid of soul, logic, or emotion than the demon's had been. The dark eyes and the smiling mouth were a more fitting representation of everything wretched that can overtake a creature and twist it to shadowed paths than Billy had ever seen crawl over the Time Zombie's face.

Billy finally understood what it all meant, and why it was so important not to let himself become such a thing. Surely nothing
starts
their life so empty and damned. It had to be that you make the wrong sacrifices, the easy sacrifices, and there comes a point when there is nothing left in you that means anything to the world, or anyone in it.

You reach a place where the only offering you have for the pyre is yourself, but what's left of you is too petrified to burn.

Billy finally understood the plan. “Evil.”

He felt the scabbard slip from his fingers and heard it bang into the floor at his feet. “Let her go. Here I am, Moon.”

Moon nodded to Billy and Billy nodded back. “Yes, Billy Purgatory, there you finally are.”