Queen Of Blood (7 page)

Something dark swirled in the midst of all that brightness, a cloud of energy that became luminescent and began to mold itself
into a humanoid shape. The entity was forging a human appearance, one that exactly replicated the form Giselle remembered
from her prior experience with this being.

When the process was complete, Azaroth smiled at her with his human mask.

Ah, Giselle. I see you have need of my assistance
again.

Tears misted Giselle’s vision. The spark of hope became a flame.

I do. My enemies have taken me. They have maimed
me. And I fear what they’ve done to me is only the beginning.
They will not rest until they have done the same to
all those who rose up against the Master.

Azaroth’s expression changed subtly. His eyes continued to glow with that lovely radiance, but the set of his features shifted
to something approximating a frown.
You speak of the woman who served the Master and her
new set of followers.

Giselle gathered her courage. Here was where things might get tricky.
Yes. She chopped my hands off to blunt
my magic and imprisoned me in a dark place. I’ll do anything
you ask of me if you can help me.

Azaroth’s features shifted again, displaying a fluid grace that made the god look like something from an animated motion picture.
He was smiling again, but there was a hint of something very dark behind the expression.

What you ask will require a sacrifice
.

Giselle nodded.
Of course. Anything.

Azaroth was silent a moment, his not-quite-real-looking brows knitting in apparent concentration. Then his expression became
solemn.
I can restore you,
Giselle. Make your body whole again so that you may
combat your enemy on equal footing. But to justify this I
will need you to do something that will wound your soul
very deeply.

Giselle suspected what was coming. She held her breath and nodded tensely.

There is a man who is special to you.

Giselle thought,
Oh, Eddie…

Azaroth paused for a beat, hearing her thought.
Yes,
the very one. I will grant you temporary restoration and
temporal transport to his current location. You will be
there just long enough to kill him.

And though her heart was pierced to the core by the thought of murdering the one person left in the world for whom she felt
genuine affection, Giselle knew there was no other choice. She alone possessed even a slim chance of defeating Ms. Wickman.
A part of her hated Azaroth for forcing her to make this difficult choice, but the feeling was muted by the knowledge that
this was merely the nature of the death gods, this exchange of blood and breath for aid.

And once this has been done…I will be whole
again?

The death god’s expression darkened slightly.
As I
have said. You know I keep my bargains. Do what is
asked of you and you will be more than whole again
. The cast of his features shifted again, projecting a shimmering glow as he smiled.
You will be stronger than before.
More powerful. You will be a fearsome adversary for
the one who took you, her equal in every way.

Giselle thought again of Ms. Wickman’s many vile transgressions against her. The memories stoked her anger anew.

I am ready to do what you ask
.

The god laughed, a sound that echoed like rolling thunder in this place between worlds.
I believe that you
are. And now…go from here.

His words seemed to shift the fabric of reality around her, lifting her and moving her at astonishing speed through a place
of swirling shadows and strange colors. The journey passed in utter silence, but ended with an audible pop that signaled the
end of a temporal displacement.

She blinked against a flash of light . The real, human world reconstructed itself around her in the space of that blink. Then
she was standing in the empty kitchen of a woman’s apartment. She based this supposition on the general cleanliness and the
array of frilly touches and knick-knacks. The sound of a television tuned to a talk show emanated from another room. Giselle
felt a strange tingle and lifted her arms to look at her freshly restored hands. She flexed her fingers, marveling for a moment
at the ease of movement and the smooth, unblemished flesh connecting her wrists to her hands.

Azaroth had been true to his word. And now it was left to Giselle to fulfill her end of the bargain. She heard voices from
that other room, one male and one female. One achingly familiar and one not.

Giselle opened a likely-looking drawer and found a carving knife with a broad, flat blade. A gleaming and very, very sharp
blade.

With a final sigh of regret, she walked out of the kitchen toward the source of the voices—trying all the while to block out
the underlying hints of contentment and happiness she sensed there.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The ground in the woods was still wet from the recent rains. The topsoil yielded easily to shovel blades. The going got rougher
approximately a foot down, but between the two of them they were able to dig a grave of acceptable size in just over an hour.

Marcy tossed her shovel aside and climbed out of the hole. “That’s enough.”

Michael palmed sweat from his forehead and wiped his hand on his dirty jeans. More swollen droplets of sweat gathered at the
ends of his eyebrows. “You won’t get any argument from me.” He threw his own shovel aside and followed Marcy out of the hole.
He was breathing heavily, unused to such heavy physical exertion. “That’s, what? Maybe four feet deep?”

“It’s enough.” Marcy screwed the top off a water bottle and drank deeply from it. She’d changed into jeans and a Bella Morte
T-shirt for the job and they were soaked from her exertions. But she felt good. It was a strange thing. A woman she intended
to kill was tied to her bed back at the house. The dead body of one of her friends was in the same room. Her other friends
were freaking out. She should be beside herself with panic. But she wasn’t. She was as calm as a monk in the midst of prayers.

Michael straightened and brushed more sweat from his forehead with the back of an arm. He was shirtless. Sweat glistened on
his pale torso, the diffused early morning sunlight making him look like a ghost caught in its slanting rays. Marcy watched
him and felt a stir of libido. He was slim and reasonably good-looking, at least compared to the rest of them. And he was
smarter than the others. Too smart, maybe. Unlike the rest of them, he didn’t just accept her every pronouncement as gospel.
But maybe she could bring him more firmly under her thumb if she fuc ked him.

He looked at her and frowned, seeing the glint in her eyes. He shifted his eyes away from her, studied some vague point in
the middle distance. Marcy supposed he’d mistaken her expression for something other than ardor. Which was understandable.
He was very afraid of her. They all were at this point.

Marcy moved closer to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Is there something you want to say to me, Michael? Something that
worries you…”

Michael jerked at her touch. She could feel the tension thrumming through his body. “I just think this is a rotten idea.”

She squeezed his shoulder and moved another step closer. “You shouldn’t worry. Everything will be okay, I promise.”

He was shaking now. “No. I really don’t understand why we’re doing this. We should’ve called 911 last night. Or maybe just
taken Sonia to the ER our selves.”

Marcy didn’t reply to this right away. She was too enthralled by the live-wire trembling of the boy’s body, which seemed to
grow more pronounced by the moment. She moved her hand from his shoulder to the small of his back. Michael drew in a sharp,
involuntary breath. Marcy leaned against him and slipped her other arm around his back. A small sound that might have been
a whimper emerged from his mouth.

Marcy smiled. “Are you a virgin, Michael?”

The sound he produced this time was louder, somewhere between a moan and a whimper. “I’m…that’s…what’s that got
to do with anything?”

He abruptly broke out of her embrace and stalked away to a point several feet away from her. He pointed a shaking finger at
her. “We can’t do this. It’s wrong. Sonia deserves better than being buried in the fucking woods. We need to let someone know
what happened to her. We don’t even have to tell the truth, Marcy. We’ll get rid of that bitch you had us grab first, dump
her in this hole, and everyone will figure Sonia had some kind of hemorrhage.”

He lowered the accusing finger, but his eyes remained bright and glowering.

Marcy put a hand to her face, rubbed at her tired eyes with thumb and forefinger. A dull ache had flared behind her forehead.
Her own rage was building, rising up within her like a black storm cloud. She fought to keep a grip on her emotions. Nothing
good could come of a fight with Michael. Things were too precarious as they stood. On an objective level, she knew the course
of action she’d chosen wasn’t a smart or rational one, but instinct had driven her down this path. This was the way she wanted
things to be. The way she
needed
them to be. It felt like the first step down the road to her ultimate destiny (though she had no clue what that might be).

So fuck it.

Michael would not ruin this for her. No one would.

She lowered her hand and saw Michael still glaring at her. Her own expression hardened, the corners of her mouth curling slightly
in a humorless smile. Michael’s brow furrowed. His eyes reflected fear.

Good.

She darted toward him, closing the distance between them before he could even consider retreat. She drove a fist into the
softest part of his stomach, making him splutter and double over. She crashed the same fist against the side of his head and
he pitched backward onto his ass, landing at the side of the open, empty grave. He instinctively sought to brace himself,
but one of his grasping hands reached into the hole and offset his balance. He tumbled into the hole and landed with a thump
at the bottom. Marcy picked up one of the shovels and moved to the edge of the hole. She turned the shovel around, holding
it like a baseball bat while she waited for the boy to climb back out. She heard him sit up and groan. She tightened her grip
on the handle.

Michael exhaled heavily and groaned again. “Jesus, Marcy…that was pretty fucking uncalled for. I’m only trying to make
you see some goddamned sense.”

Marcy made her voice soft and placating. “I know. And I’m sorry. I got carried away. Now come up here so we can talk things
out. Maybe you’re right about everything. Maybe I’m being overemotional and crazy about things.”

Michael grunted. “Ya think. Jesus, but I’m glad to hear you talking sense for a change. Okay, I’m coming up now.”

She heard him shifting position; then he got to his feet with a groan of effort. He blinked and frowned at the sight of Marcy
holding the shovel. He remained perplexed as she lifted her arms and brought the shovel blade around. It was as if he simply
couldn’t fathom the idea of Marcy doing this to him. Only at the last possible instant did it occur to him to lunge away from
the arc of the blade. He almost made it, but the tip of the shovel blade clipped the side of his face and sent him spinning
back down into the hole.

Marcy jumped in after him, planting a foot at either side of his prone form. Michael groaned and looked up at her through
a mist of tears. He still couldn’t believe what was happening to him. The dumb bastard. Marcy adjusted her grip on the shovel
handle, taking it by the base and holding it in front of her like a jackhammer. Michael squealed and tried to back away, but
there was nowhere to go. The back of his head connected with moist earth and he stopped moving. His mouth opened to issue
a last plea for mercy.

Then Marcy squatted and drove the shovel blade into his throat. A fountain of blood erupted around the dirty blade, and Marcy
watched the gory cascade with a mixture of revulsion and fascination. Michael bucked beneath her and flailed at the shovel
handle. He had to know he was doomed by now, but he was fighting her with everything he had. She leaned forward and used upper
body leverage to drive the blade deeper into his throat. The grind of steel on bone made her stomach lurch, but she kept bearing
down and finally Michael died.

She swallowed hard and let go of the shovel handle. Her heart was racing and her breathing was shallow. She stared at Michael’s
very still face and tried to make herself feel something other than numbness. The strange positive buzz of before seemed to
have at least temporarily deserted her. She stared into the boy’s unseeing eyes and tried to discern some hint of the human
being he’d been, but whatever he’d possessed that had made him uniquely Michael was gone forever.

And she’d caused that. She was a killer. She thought about the bum in Overton Park the previous summer, recalling vividly
the way he’d dropped and not moved after the second blow to his head with the heavy wine bottle. They’d taken his booze and
pitiful handful of pocket change. Marcy remembered the way the dark blood had oozed from the gash at the back of his head
to stain the grass beneath him. She was almost positive he hadn’t been breathing when they’d left him. There’d never been
any verification of the homeless man’s death. But Marcy’s gut told her she’d become a murderer for the first time that summer
evening.

This was different in so many meaningful ways. The old wino had been little more than a walking casualty anyway, a ruined
shell of a man no one could possibly care about, as evidenced by the silence of the local media on the matter. It was as if
he’d never existed at all. But she’d known Michael since childhood. Had watched him grow up and struggle to fit in before
gravitating to her little clique of outcasts. She knew his likes and dislikes. His favorite bands and books. She knew each
member of his family by name. In a way killing Michael was sort of like killing family.

She touched his face, stroked his cooling cheek. “I’m sorry this happened, Michael. If only you’d been quiet and fallen in
line like the rest of them…” As she said the words, the vague sense of purpose—of destiny—she’d felt earlier reasserted
itself. “I did what I had to do, damn you. Wherever you are now, I hope you know that. But I’m sorry anyway, okay?”

The dead boy said nothing.

Marcy got to her feet and hauled herself out of the hole.

Then she noticed for the first time that the front of her clothes was splattered with sticky, coagulating blood. There was
more gore on her hands and arms. Shit, it was everywhere. She’d have a hell of a time explaining all that blood to everyone
back at the house. Then there was the matter of Michael’s absence. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult to put two and two together.

Dammit!

Marcy flicked blood from her hands and shook her head in disgust. This was what she got for acting rashly and not thinking
things through. But the burst of self-directed anger soon dissipated. She’d done this thing and there was no way she could
take it back. She could only move forward and maybe devise a way out of this mess on the fly.

She spied the pile of freshly turned earth next to the grave and had an idea. She grabbed a shovel and dug into the pile,
working feverishly to return the earth to the hole. She stopped when she reached the concealed layer of topsoil at the bottom,
the damp earth that was nearly like mud. She knelt next to the diminished pile and scooped up handfuls of the dark soil. And
she smeared the damp dirt across the front of her shirt. The mud blended nicely with the blood, effectively obscuring the
gore without cleansing it, which would have to be good enough for now. She smeared more handfuls of mud over the front of
her jeans. Using the remaining water from her bottle, she was able to remove most of the dried blood that clung to her forearms.

She would look more of a mess than she should, she supposed. As for Michael, she would tell the others he’d gone for a walk.
The fiction should buy her some time, maybe enough to clean up and concoct a better story.

Satisfied that she’d done all she could do to cover up what had happened, she turned away from the half-filled grave and began
the short trek out of the woods. She soon emerged through a line of trees and entered the large field behind her house. The
field was overgrown with weeds and was dotted here and there with ancient, discarded farm equipment. Marcy trudged through
the weeds toward the house, which sat on a hill a quarter mile away.

She and her sister had inherited the property a year ago, after their parents were killed when their Subaru stalled on some
train tracks. They were drunk and messed up on some other stuff. As usual. With the radio blasting, maybe. And so they probably
never heard the blaring horn of the locomotive that eventually plowed into them, crushing them like bugs in a can. Marcy initially
had a vague notion about reviving the property as a farming enterprise. But she’d soon recognized the idea as foolhardy. She
wasn’t up to all the work it would require anyway.

Most people would love to have a place of their own that was paid for, but Marcy mostly found it to be a pain in the ass.
She was bad at remembering to pay things on time. And there was so much to remember. Property taxes, water bills, power bills,
and miscellaneous upkeep expenses out the goddamned wazoo. She’d already squandered much of the money her parents had left
behind, of which there’d not been very much, and there was no new money coming in. The prospect of having to get a job filled
her with dread and made her want to bolt. She wondered if the crazy things that had happened since the summer—the murder of
the bum, the abduction of the woman, and Michael’s slaying—were symptoms of some kind of self-destructive downward spiral.
Then she thought about that some more and laughed. The laughter was manic, verging on hysterical.

She reached the rear door of the house and—as silently as possible—let herself into the empty kitchen.

She heard muffled but obviously agitated voices. The sound seemed to be coming from the living room. Moving as stealthily
as possible, she crossed the kitchen and entered the hallway that led to her bedroom. She paused at the archway that led to
the living room. The voices suddenly stilled. Not that it mattered. She’d heard enough to know they were talking about her.
And not in a positive way.

She glanced in and smiled weakly at their apprehensive faces. “We’re about done. Michael’s gone for a walk, but he should
be back shortly. I’m gonna get cleaned up and then we can talk everything out, okay?”

Ellen was sitting away from the others. She was on the floor in a corner of the room, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her
eyes were full of tears when she looked at her sister. Then she frowned, noticing the mud on Marcy’s clothes. “Are you . .
. okay?”

Marcy made her smile go brighter and nodded. “Yes. Absolutely. Cheer up, little girl. Everything’s going to be just fine.”