Number of the Beast (Paladin Cycle, Book One) (27 page)

“
Yes. Sort of. But it
doesn’t matter. He wasn’t a friend.”

“
Was he an enemy?” Scooter
pressed.

“
I don’t have enemies.”
Amy gave Scooter a sidelong glance, and noticed a fresh scratch
down the side of his cheek. “What happened to you?”

“
Nothing.”

“
Is someone giving you
problems again at school?” Amy pulled onto the two-lane
road.

Scooter exhaled. “I said
nothing happened.”

Amy nodded, biting at her
lower lip. “Well, your brother made it in today.” The statement
more of a cautionary one.

“
Great. Thanks for the
heads up. Will you drop me off at Zack’s house?” Scooter stared out
the passenger window.

Shane wouldn’t be happy
about Scooter getting his butt whooped again and she wasn’t going
force the poor guy to listen to one of Shane’s hot-headed lectures
about standing up for himself and being a man. Not
again.

After she dropped Scooter
off at Zack’s house, a wave of emotion washed over her. Tears
filled her eyes. Silently, she scolded herself for being so damn
emotional. Was it from the heavy night of drinking? Had the news of
Chris’ bizarre death brought out the emotions and waterworks? If
she put any stock into what her body was trying to tell her then
she knew something was off. Something new and strange and
not-quite-right was festering inside of her.

She had just gotten
engaged to the only man she’d ever loved. Why wasn’t she ecstatic?
It should’ve been the grandest, most marvelous, day of her
life.

What reasons is there for
this much despair?

Vision blurred from a
steady stream of tears. Struggling for a breath, her lungs heaved
against her ribs, hiccupping in rhythm with her uncontrolled
sobs.

She thought back to
Shane’s proposal, and the smirk on his face as he teased her about
getting married in a strait-jacket lined with lace. Pursing her
lips, wishing she could do it all over again, she’d hit him much
harder. In the face.

No.

The family
jewels.

What afflicts
you?

“
You killed Chris...didn’t
you?”

The insect dared to touch
the Beloved and the blasphemy cost the price of its
life.

“
Chris wasn’t an ‘it’. He
was a person, not an insect. How could life be so petty to
you?”

My motives are not of your
concern, female!

She slammed her palm on
the steering wheel. “Stop calling me that!” With a growl, she
muttered, “Men.”

I am no man.

“
Dammit!” She wiped tears
from her eyes. “Go away. I need space.”

Your tone is of great
insult to me.

Amy turned on the radio.
Rock ’n’ roll. Loud.

Miles stretched without a word. She
pulled onto the dirt road leading to the trailer.

You will
marry the one you call Shane. For it is his feats that are critical
in the saving of worlds.
If you do not
then the course of time will be forever altered. And all universes
will be enslaved by the King and Queen of Beasts and the Empress.
Nothing more will mortal-kind be than food, labor and playthings.
All your modern civilizations will crumble; your mass weapons be
reduced to the lethality of sticks and stones; and within a century
all mortal-kind will be extinct.

Amy turned into her
driveway. She shut off the engine. “I really wish you were a
figment of my wild imagination. I’d rather have just dealt with the
pissed off rat spirit than listen to your ravings of the end of all
universes.”

I will depart and give you
this ‘space’ which you speak of.

Amy scooped up her purse
and sneakers, and leaned against the car door. “I do love
him.”

This I have
known.

That brazen beauty would
render his doom, Atticus thought. He pulled his leather pants up,
gathered his sword and fastened his belt.

As he descended the
stairs, Trish ran toward him with a camera in hand. Before he could
utter a word, she had blinded him with a flash as bright as the
arcanium blast he’d used at the crime scene. She waved a flimsy
sheet that had ejected from the contraption.

“
Oh, sweetie! Sorry. I
just had to get a pic of you in that get up.” She pointed to a
corkboard plastered with photos of people standing over slain deer
and hogs.

Trish tacked his picture
next to a fat bald guy holding a silver can in one hand and a
string of fish in the other. “Now when you snag that big ol’ beast
you’re after you just bring him back here and we’ll put your
picture on the trophy wall.”

“
Yes ma’am.” While the
notion was utterly absurd, Atticus could not help but smile at the
thought of him ‘snagging’ the Beast and getting his photo taken
with its head on an iron pike.

The feast was served on paper plates
with plastic utensils. He served himself and sat across from an
elderly couple. Skepticism abandoned him when he tasted the
succulent seasoned beef. It was more spectacular than anything he
had ever eaten at Eagle Hall.

The old man took an upside
down bottle from the center of the table and squirted red goop on
his meat.

“
What substance is that,
sir?”

The old man stared at him.
“Ain’t you ever seen ketchup before?”

“
May I try
some?”

“
Sure.”

Atticus shook a drop onto his plate.
He tasted it on the tip of his fork before lathering the meatloaf
with the remainder of the tangy but sweet substance. Halfway
through his feast, he ran dry and looked for another bottle but
could not find one. Sighing, he pushed the remaining food away and
headed for the door.

Outside, he stretched his
arms, popped his neck before jogging out the gated driveway and
toward Sacred Oaks.

What better place to seek insight on
his prey? Perhaps he could witness a new fiend surface from the
cursed waters and touch the Earth for the first time. He had not
slain a foe. The warrior in him yearned for the virgin
kill.

At the edge of the thick
woods, Atticus searched for an animal trail that would serve him.
He soon found one that deer frequently traveled. Trees were scraped
and missing bark, obvious signs of a buck; and the soft dark soil
was imprinted with hundreds of tracks.

Like any other woods,
Sacred Oaks was alive with chirping songbirds, a cawing crow, and
numerous locusts and grasshoppers.

“
Rotten root!” He swept a
thick spider web from his face.

The further he ventured
into the forest the more dense the woods became. He could no longer
see the soil through a blanket of crisp leaves and dried pine
needles.

The forest canopy blotted
out the mid-afternoon light. Atticus feared not the dark, and he
welcomed the coolness. The Beast was as lethal in the day as well
as the night.

An owl hooted as if to
mock him.

“
Hush,” Atticus said in a
harsh whisper. “I will kill you then nail your carcass to the tree,
you ominous pest.”

He came to a pond filled
with murky water. Bullfrogs croaked warnings. Crickets chirped
their gossip. Sparrows and crows watched from the ancient ash and
oak.

“
Listen to all of God’s
creatures,” Elder Cai had said. “Even the bees and the spiders have
wisdom to bestow.”

With his legs planted wide
on the dried pine needles and leaves, he held each hand out—palm
out—in front of his body and circled them
counterclockwise.

In his current stance, he opened his
soul to all planes.

The bubbling pond taunted
his efforts in a sinister tongue. Elder Cai’s words rang in his
ears. “Evil will tempt you from the righteous path, but a true
Paladin will remain firm to his convictions.”

“
I am Atticus,” he said
aloud. “The power of the seven choirs are with me!”

The pond water boiled.
Steam rose from its choppy surface, testing his patience further.
Atticus held the stance for several long minutes before he
repositioned himself.

He spread his arms wide, curved his
back, and spread his legs as if succumbing to a free fall. He
opened his mind.

Voices whispered from the
trees. An unseen creature hissed.

“
Grant me your
wisdom.”

More hissing filled his
mind, and soon an orchestra of snarling and buzzing.

Atticus fell to his knees.
Water seeped into his boots and saturated the green leather
covering his legs. His palms pressed against his chest. He angled
his elbows upward, pointing to the west and the east.

Silence.

“
Provide my heart with
direction.”

The bullfrogs and the
crickets went mute.

The water rippled.

“
Chlokend dekruaacho eha-da ekrlloli
Galmoria
.” Alien words
echoed.

Atticus’ eyes opened.

A shadowy humanoid
standing thrice as tall as him stood on the surface of the boiling
pond, its body a shifting blur of shadow. Eight insectile arms
wriggled in front of its thin form. The only part that was not
shadow were the two bulbous eye peering from beneath a black
hood.

“
Be gone! I do not seek
knowledge from a devil!”

The demon rumbled like a bear in a
deep barrel. Was it laughing?

Atticus’ hand gripped the
hilt of his blade.

Two cold slimy tentacles
shot forward and wrapped around his throat. Suctions stuck to his
flesh and tiny barbs burrowed into his trachea.

“
Chlokend eekruaacho eha-da ekrlloli.
Galmoria
!”

In desperation, he
abandoned the hilt of his sword and latched hold of the tentacles
with both hands. They weren’t tentacles, but bones as rigid and
ungiving as ironwood branches. There was no breaking free of the
demon’s clutch.

Oxygen deprivation took hold. His
might struggled to keep his knees from buckling; the muscles in his
face strained to keep his eyes wide, fighting through his blurry
sight.

The otherworldly
creature’s face leaned forward like the top of an ancient tree bent
by a powerful wind.

“
Ho’gon Geminii-th Kiqus Cinis-hub!”

His knees sank into the mud. His
fingers uncurled from the black limbs. From above, the creature’s
mouth fell agape before gobbling him whole.

Then it was over.

Blackness.

Atticus felt himself
falling. The ground crashed into him. A parking lot sprawled around
him. The world was masked in a sepia-toned hue. It was a parking
lot belonging to the Fiesta Mart; in the near distance, across the
faded highway, he spotted a gas station. An eerie silenced domed
the world. There wasn’t even the whisper of a breeze or a chirp of
an insect.

When he took a step, his
boot scuffed the gravel loudly. “Hello?” His voice echoed as if
bouncing off invisible walls.

The aged paper-colored
glass doors of the Fiesta Mart slid open. A figure in a scarlet
robe with metallic silver hair and a staff walked toward
him.

Shane stood at the stove,
stirring the macaroni into the boiling water. He didn’t much like
cooking but soon after their first fight, he’d learned flowers and
chocolate were not key to fixing things with Amy. Birch had
recommended cooking her a nice meal. So he had taught himself how
to fix her favorite, his failsafe plan for every time he fucked
up.

Except this time he had no
clue what he’d done to piss her off. Amy seemed so happy and
excited when he proposed, then—as if a switch had been pressed—she
got all emotional and shit. If she was any other girl, he’d chalk
it up to girl stuff, but Amy wasn’t like other girls. She wasn’t
prone to fits of emotional outbursts.

Shane loved her. He told her so. He
wanted to marry her. He told her so. What the fuck did he do
wrong?

Shrugging, he stirred the cheese into
the macaroni.

So far, the simple recipe had worked.
Two hundred and thirty-six to zero. Not bad odds for a guy who
caught the kitchen on fire the first time he’d cooked cheeseburgers
in the frying pan.

He set
the spoon down and cracked his knuckles.
Here’s hoping for two hundred and
thirty-seven.

He heard the front door
open and glanced over his shoulder. “Hey babe.” He dumped the pasta
into two bowls.

She tossed her sneakers on the floor
and smiled as she turned into the kitchen. But she didn’t seem
happy. Her eyes were swollen and red.

Fuck.

Shane set the bowls on the
table. “Hungry?”

Nodding, she draped her
purse on the ladder-back chair before sitting. She took a bite and
glanced up at him. “Thank you.”