Switchblade Goddess (21 page)

“Granma, pleeeeease?”

“Fine, watch the fool show if you want.” Madame Devereaux made a disgusted face and began to limp across the yard toward the barn. “Come on, shake a tail feather, bring yer critter, I ain’t got all day!”

Once we had Pal settled on a pile of straw in the barn, I secured the enchanted litter in a horse stall so it wouldn’t float away. Cooper shut the doors while the old witch pulled a milking stool over and began to examine my familiar’s wounds.

“Change-rats?” she asked.

I nodded. “He got bit a few days ago.”

She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “I can heal him, I reckon, but I’m a mite short of heart-juice for the potion, and it’s three more nights to the dark moon … you’d need to do the harvest then, when there’s nothing but starlight. I’ll tell you what to do, and Shanique can take you there, but y’all have to do the juice-collectin’. I’m too old to go running around in the bayou after that critter.”

“What critter?” Cooper asked.

“Sap Daddy. The beast come here with the Spaniards
four hunnert years ago; they let it go in the swamp when it got too big to keep as a pet. And there it stayed, eating gators and getting bigger and bigger. When it died, something in the swamp kept it alive. It’s more plant than animal now, but that don’t make it no less dangerous. Its heart makes a black sap every month, and that and a little silver nitrate and some other bits and bobs are just the thing to cure most any case of the Change.”

“He’s got it pretty bad,” I told her. “Can you keep Pal from getting any worse until we go out hunting?”

She nodded. “I ’spect I can. I got enough juice left to get him through. Y’all will have to keep yourselves busy till then. There’s a Motel 6 off the highway, but that’s about twenty miles from here. You folk got a car?”

“No, ma’am,” I replied. “And I don’t have a credit card, either. Or much cash. We … can just stay here in the barn with Pal, if that’s okay.”

The old witch sighed, looking conflicted and annoyed. “I got a couch in the den and cot in the room off the kitchen. Y’all can have those, I guess. But don’t be keepin’ me up at night with your hanky-panky! And if you make a mess, I ’spect you to clean up after yourselves. And you help cook—I ain’t running no bed-and-breakfast out here!”

“Yes, ma’am,” we said, and she grumped back to the house to the comfort of her sofa and television.

I
’d just gotten a bucket of fresh water for Pal when the mirror in my pants pocket began to shake. I set the water down and pulled the mirror open. Randall gazed back at me, looking anxious. Spike was perched on my brother’s shoulder, his gleaming tail raised in alarm.

“Hey, sis, is your guy there?”

“Yes, he is.” I handed the mirror over to Cooper.

“What’s up?” He frowned down at Randall.

“I hate to do this, but you really need to get back here,” my brother told him. “One of the other kids just flipped the fuck out. The Warlock’s gone over there, but last I heard things weren’t going so well. We could really use your help with this, bro.”

“Dude … no.” Cooper’s frown deepened to a scowl. “Jessie needs me here. Pal’s sick, and we have to chase down God-knows-what kind of monster, and … just, no.”

“But—”

“Tell my brother to put on his big-boy pants and deal with it himself. Seriously. He can take care of our little brothers on his own for once.”

Randall blew out his breath; clearly he hadn’t expected
this response from Cooper. “Okay. Whatever you say, bro. I’ll tell him.”

“Good luck. Let me know what happens.” Cooper closed the mirror, stuck it into his back pocket, and sat down on the milking stool. He rubbed his face, looking troubled.

“Honey, if you think you need to be there, I really don’t mind,” I said.

“
I
mind,” he replied. “You’ve had to go through so much without me around to help, and I don’t want you to have to do all this by yourself. We should take care of Pal together.”

“Do you think the Warlock can handle whatever’s going on by himself?”

“Sure.” The worried look didn’t leave my boyfriend’s face. “He’ll be fine.”

   An hour later, we were watching Pal eat a ripe cantaloupe from Madame Devereaux’s garden when the mirror buzzed in Cooper’s pocket. He pulled it out and opened it.

“Ohgodohgod I made it worse!” I heard the Warlock holler. “The kid’s totally out of control!”

Oh crap, what now?
I wondered as I peeked over Cooper’s arm at the mirror. The Warlock was crouching down behind an overturned SUV to avoid branches and trash hurtling through the air in a tremendous swirling windstorm. I’d never seen him look so freaked out. In the sky behind him, a Victorian house and the plot of land it was built on were hovering unsteadily about one hundred feet above the rest of the neighborhood. It looked as if a giant had scooped the house out of the ground and flung it into the air. Water and
sewage spurted fitfully from the torn pipes dangling from the root-packed earth. The slate roof was on fire.

Cooper swore. “Where are you?”

“Clintonville! Pacemont Road, just a few blocks from High—can’t miss it!”

“I’ll be back there as soon as I can.” Cooper snapped the mirror shut and rapped it against his forehead in frustration. “Dammit. There’s no way I can backtrack through all those portals. And I don’t even know where we are.”

I pulled the mirror from his grip and opened it. “Let me call my father; he can get you back home.”

Cooper blinked at me. “But that means I’d be taking the mirror.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied. “I’m sure there’s another mirror around here someplace if I need to get in touch with you.”

After I opened a connection to my father and he agreed to direct my boyfriend back to Columbus, I walked with Cooper back up the dirt road.

He leaned down to kiss my cheek after I pulled the portal open for him. “Are you sure you’ll be okay out here by yourself?”

“I’ll be fine. Go help your brothers. And, hey … maybe it’s something that won’t take much time, and you can get back here before I have to go into the swamp.”

I waved to him as he stepped through the hole in the air, and then I went back to the house. Madame Devereaux met me on the front porch; she held a half-bushel basket full of whole pecans.

“Where’s that Cooper feller?”

“He had to go home,” I replied. “Family emergency.”

She grunted noncommittally, frowning. “Gonna make a pie for dessert.” She thrust the basket into my hands. “Make yourself useful and shell these out back.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

M
y brother’s energy potion had well and thoroughly worn off by the time dinner was over, but I dared not drink my second one since I knew I’d need it for my encounter with the bayou beast. So I took some diphenhydramine I found in the bathroom and lay down on the cot in the guest room, sweating and itching, trying to still the waves of nausea churning through my stomach.

C’mon, Benadryl
, I thought.
Do your thing
.

Fifteen minutes passed, and nothing happened. The capsules were either too old, or my infections had changed my body chemistry enough that antihistamines wouldn’t make me drowsy. Dammit. I briefly considered a second trip to raid the medicine cabinet for something stronger, but then I remembered what happened to Heath Ledger, Keith Moon, and Jimi Hendrix. Two pills might not put you to sleep, but a cocktail of five or six can put you in the ground.

I’d been resisting going back into my hellement on general principle—it hadn’t been the scene of my best moments. But if I couldn’t drug myself into a stupor, it seemed like it was the only place I was going to get any decent rest. So I closed my eyes and focused on the flames hidden beneath my enchanted glove, and
soon I felt myself slipping down into my private dimension.

The vertigo passed, and I opened my eyes in my hellement, expecting to see either the familiar walls of my childhood bedroom or the broad lawn in my old neighborhood. But what was there gave me the same disorienting lurch of fear I’d have felt if I got home late at night to discover my apartment door ajar and my living room ransacked. The first thing I saw was my favorite childhood teddy bear impaled to a wall of moisture-darkened dungeon stone with a rusty spike. The bear’s plush acrylic fur was damply red around the piercing iron.

Alarmed, I looked around the room. The rest of the wall was set with rusty rings for manacles and ropes, and every so often, I saw one of my childhood toys or photos staked into the slimy granite. The overhead light was the dim yellow of half-remembered nightmares; it gleamed dully on the shards of my shattered vanity mirror scattered across the concrete floor. Splintered pieces of the wooden frame lay among the glass. Beside me sat an antique electrocution chair made from scorched, bloodstained oak, the worn leather straps open and awaiting a new occupant. A few yards away, a scarlet velvet curtain hung from the rough stone ceiling to the glass-strewn floor, blocking my view of whatever lurked beyond.

But I could hear a muffled moan. Something was here. Something had taken over. The place couldn’t have screamed “Get out!” any louder if the walls had been covered in flies and dripping ichor. My heart thudding, I turned back to the portal door and grabbed
the handle … but it wouldn’t budge. I looked down and saw a shiny new deadbolt lock set into the steel.

Oh hell no
, I thought, shoving down on the handle with as much force as I could muster. I was strong in here, this was
my
place, and I could will all this away … couldn’t I?

I shoved until my shoulders popped. I yanked until my fingers went numb. I willed with every cell in my brain. The damn thing wouldn’t open.

I heard a soft laugh behind me. Miko’s laugh. My guts went to jelly.

“You shouldn’t have brought me here, Jessie. But you did. And now you’re not leaving until I’m done with you tonight.”

I tried to swallow my terror and turned to face her. She was naked except for the switchblade she was flicking open and closed in her left hand. Something far beyond hate burned in her green eyes. Her skin was flushed, sheened with perspiration, but her nipples were as hard as if we were in a meat freezer. She smiled at me.

“Look who I found.” Miko stepped back across the floor toward the scarlet curtain, either unaware or unconcerned that the shattered glass of my mirror was cutting the soles of her feet. She grabbed the edge of the velvet with her right hand and pulled it aside for her big reveal.

Cooper was shackled to a rough wooden Saint Andrew’s cross in the corner, his arms and legs spread in a wide X. He was sweating, breathing hard against the blue silk rag she’d stuffed into his mouth. His white cotton dress shirt was soaked, plastered against the tight muscles of his abdomen. The knees of his
jeans were stained with dirt and what looked like blood, but I couldn’t see any cuts or bruises on him. I wondered if my brother and the Warlock were okay. Behind him, the jarred memories were stacked in a neat pyramid.

He met my gaze and shook his head furiously at me, grunting against his gag. His eyes said
Get out, get out, save yourself
.

I wondered for a moment if he could be a doppelganger she’d conjured to trick me, but I could smell his sweat. And instead of gingerbread spice, he smelled like garlic. I smelled the real man, not my fantasy of him.

“Let him go!” I stepped toward Miko, my fist raised, wishing once again that I knew how to bring my fire into the hellement. I blinked through several gemviews, trying to see where she’d hidden my sword and shield, but the stones of the dungeon stayed solid no matter how I looked at them.

“Sit down.” She made a little shooing motion with her hand, and an invisible force swept me off my feet and dropped me down to the electric chair, the straps snapping up and binding me to the wood at my ankles, thighs, chest, upper arms, and wrists. I felt helpless and terrified.

“It’s time for us to play,” she said.

I strained against the leather, unable to break free, unable to take my eyes off the keen blade she kept flicking open and closed in her hand. It was a restless, angry motion, like that of a caged jaguar lashing its tail.

“Miko … you don’t have to do this.” I blinked to the architectural view with my ocularis and concentrated
as hard as I could, but the walls around me remained solid and black; I couldn’t see my weapons anywhere.

She stopped flicking the switchblade and gave me a withering smile. “Oh, but I do. I promised you I’d take a trophy tonight, and I will. I can’t break a blood oath, Jessie. It’s not in my nature.”

Miko turned back to Cooper, opened the stiletto again, and began to pick the buttons off his shirt with the point of the blade. I heard them ping against the concrete floor and roll away into darkness. Once she’d exposed his torso, Miko drew the blade down the center of his chest in a single quick motion, bright red spilling down his damp flesh as his skin split. His eyes rolled white as he shuddered, but he didn’t make a sound.

“No! Don’t!” I begged.
“Please.”

To my surprise, she stopped. And then she turned and stepped toward me, my lover’s blood dripping from the tip of her weapon. Her bare feet crunched on the broken glass littering the floor, turning the shards to glossy rubies.

“I must take a trophy,” she repeated. “Will you take his place, then?”

“W-what?” I stammered.

“You or him; it doesn’t matter to me.” She paused, tilting her head thoughtfully to the side as she stared at me. Appraising me. “You might even survive it. I don’t know about him, though. Sometimes the wiry ones can go the distance … and sometimes they’re done in five minutes.”

I scanned the grim walls, looking for something,
anything
that would give me an idea of how to get us
out of this. Jesus. There didn’t seem to be any escape except to submit to whatever twisted vivisection she had planned. My magic felt distant, diminished. Useless.

“It’s up to you.” Miko turned and slowly walked back to Cooper. “I won’t touch you without your consent.”