Tempter (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Rossiter opened his eyes and stared at the sagging, crumbling ceiling above his head, trying to place what, exactly, it was that was different about himself. Although he could not put his finger on it, there was no denying he had changed. He did not feel bad, per se. In fact, he felt pretty damned good, though his mouth tasted of blood. It was as if all the worries and anxieties that had weighed him down over the years had suddenly vanished.

“It is about time you awakened.” Tempter was standing over him, gazing down with eyes like dying suns. He clutches the spell book to his chest like a preacher hugging his Bible. “Rise, my servant.”

Rossiter did as he was told. “What did you do to me?” he rasped.

“I merely consecrated you to my service,” the wizard replied. “You now stand beyond the reach of time, disease and death—provided you are careful and literally keep your head on your shoulders.”

“Yes, milord,” Rossiter whispered, his voice rusty in this throat.

“You did well to bring me
The Aegrisomnia
, yet I am still not free of the cage the whore Jazrel built for me. A final ritual must be observed before I can walk this brave new world of yours. You are to bring to me the woman called Charlotte Calder, known to you as Charlie.”

Rossiter frowned. “What do you want with her?”

“Because, my dear Alex,” Tempter replied, his smile as cold and thin as rotten ice. “She was once my wife.”

As Rossiter left the abandoned mansion, it finally occurred to him what it was that was different about himself: the part of him that feared and doubted and hesitated, the part of him that had worried about others, that portion called, for lack of a better word, the soul, was no longer there. This realization made him stop in his tracks and shake him head in amazement. To think, that his soul had been the source of all the misery he had experienced over the decades! If he had known it would have felt this good, he would have gotten rid of the damned thing years ago!

As if to compensate for this loss, he now found his other senses extremely acute. Everything he saw or heard was far more intense, as if he was wired on primo speed. When he looked at the sky, he saw the aura of the stars and heard their shadowy voices singing in negative mass chorales. Trees and shrubbery flickered with emerald fire and animals registered as hot balls of energy. He was overwhelmed by the ecstasy of it all, literally moved to the point of tears, but his eyes refused to grow wet.

As he drove the TransAm back to the highway, he felt as if he could turn the steering wheel into a pretzel if he so chose to. A few miles from the city he abandoned the car on a back road and used one of the flares from its emergency road kit to set fire to the tires. The burning rubber smelled like souls roasting in hell.

He walked along the shoulder of the road until he came to a honky-tonk bar that catered to the weekend sportsmen that fished the nearby lakes and bayous. There was a middle-aged woman at the bar drinking shots. Her name was Naomi and she was forty-three years old, divorced, and worked at the Piggly Wiggly in Gretna. Rossiter introduced himself and asked if he could join her for a nightcap.

He was attentive and polite, and after a couple of drinks he found himself in Naomi’s car, headed back to the city. He smiled and nodded as she rattled on about her ex and her kids, all the while trying to figure out the best way to dispose of her in order to commandeer her vehicle. He closed his eyes for a moment to marshal his thoughts, and his mind flashed to the ritual of consecration Tempter had performed. He saw the wizard crack open Tony Scramuzza’s chest as if the ribs were celery sticks and scoop out the dead man’s lifeless heart...

“Hey, are you okay?” Naomi asked anxiously.

Rossiter twitched as if shaken from a waking dream. “I’m fine,” he replied flatly. He looked out the window and saw they were already in the seedy sprawl of New Orleans East.

“Are you sure? You got real quiet and kinda pale all of a sudden.”

Rossiter turned to tell Naomi to mind her own damn business, but the words died in his mouth. What had been, moments before, an unremarkable woman was now a figure of living glass. Rossiter stared, transfixed, at the great, gray pearl of Naomi’s brain, suspended atop her spinal column in a cage of semi-transparent bone. A mixture of physical hunger and sexual lust flooded Rossiter’s penis with blood and his mouth with saliva.

“Pull over,” he said, his voice rough.

She turned to look at him, lidless eyes floating in a translucent face. “Do you need to be sick?” she asked.

“Just pull over,” he said, sounding even more urgent than before.

Naomi found an empty parking lot and cut the engine. She turned towards him, a flicker of confusion in her eyes. “What’s going on?” Her gaze dropped to Rossiter’s lap and her bafflement gave way to a playful leer. “Oh,
I
see!” she giggled. “Couldn’t wait, huh?”

He nodded, unable to speak for fear the sight of drool spilling from his mouth might alert his prey to the danger she was in. Tempter was right: humans were nothing but mindless, cud-chewing cattle. He had suspected as much when the public refused to accept
Blood Moon Rising
for the work of brilliance that it was. But now things had changed. Oh, how they had changed.

Rossiter grabbed Naomi’s breasts, tearing at her blouse like it was tissue paper. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close for a kiss, but as her lips brushed his, she abruptly froze and her body stiffened in alarm.

“You feel like
ice
,”
she said with a shiver. “What’s wrong with you?” She tried to pull away from his embrace, but Rossiter’s grip was unbreakable. “Let
go
of me, damn you!” she snapped as she tried to struggle free, striking his face with her fist. It was like punching a frozen side of beef.

Rossiter stared in rapt fascination at Naomi’s brain as it sloshed about inside its container. He could see electrical fire running across its folds and contours as fear erupted inside her cerebral cortex. His stomach growled like a cornered animal. The head of his penis was rasping against the teeth of the fly in his jeans, causing his hips to jerk with an instinctive response. The urge to have her, possess her, taste her on his tongue was overpowering. There was no denying his need and no other mean of satisfying his lust. He grabbed a handful of Naomi’s hair and bashed her head against the steering wheel with enough force to shatter her skull. She felt instantly silent, her protests stilled. Her body went limp, sliding sideways so that her upper torso fell into his lap. Rossiter twisted her head so that her sightless eyes now stared behind her. It was surprising how easy it was to snuff the life from human beings. The thought that he had once been one of them was enough to make him shudder.

Seraphine...Seraphine...

Charlie shivered and pulled her kimono tight across her shoulders. Alex had awakened her more than once muttering that word in his sleep. At first she had thought it a woman’s name, but now she wasn’t so sure. There was something vaguely familiar about it, as if she had heard it somewhere before, a long, long time ago. She could not shake the feeling that this Seraphine, whoever or whatever it was, was sinister in nature.

Charlie sat in her grandmother’s bentwood rocker and sipped her gin-and-tonic, staring at the Mardi Gras posters adorning her walls without seeing them. The bitter taste of the quinine and the smell of juniper suited her mood. Pluto lay curled in her lap, nose tucked between his paws.

“Men! All they are is heartbreak and misery. Except for you, Pluto.” The tabby opened one eye, revealing an unfocused pupil cloaked by a translucent inner eyelid. When he realized his mistress wasn’t talking about food, he returned to his snooze. “Why does it always have to be the shitbirds, huh? Why can’t I fall for some nice, solid, reliable guy? Why do I always end up with sleaze-balls who expect me to pay their bills while they cheat on me? What is it with me, huh?” When Pluto made no attempt to answer, Charlie shook her head. “I’m really starting to lose it. I’m discussing my taste in men with something that licks its own butt.”

She knew Alex was bad news from the moment they met. Although he was exciting, exotic and vital, he was also self-destructive and insensitive. She realized getting involved with him was the emotional equivalent of sticking her hand in a garbage disposal, but she went ahead and did it anyway.

She hated feeling out of control; even though it was inevitable. Every relationship she’d known since junior high was composed of total surrender to sexual ecstasy followed by disillusionment, insecurity and betrayal. That was how Charlie expected love to be. She was lucky if the relationship was a month old before the first anxiety attack kicked in.

She was afraid Alex was growing bored with her already. Maybe it was because she wasn’t attentive enough, or submissive enough, or sexy enough. She was angry that he would disappear without calling her for two days. She had spent so much time and emotional energy worrying about him, she was worse than useless at work.

Still, the knowledge that he was avoiding his male friends was oddly comforting. It meant that she wasn’t the reason for his disappearance. But that line of thought lead her to other worries. What if he was lying dead in a ditch somewhere? What if he was in the hospital, about to go under the knife? She would never forgive herself for being angry if something horrible had happened to him.

Charlie wished she could talk to Jerry about what she was feeling. While Alex was around to occupy her thoughts, she hadn’t really missed him that much. But now she mourned the loss of Jerry’s friendship. She was startled by the sudden sound of the phone ringing. She snatched the receiver up from its cradle, expecting to hear Alex’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Hello, Charlie?” It took her a moment to recognize the voice as Jerry’s. He sounded as embarrassed and confused as she felt.

“Jerry? Wow, this is spooky!” she said with a weak laugh. “I was
just
thinking about you!”

“Look, I’m sorry I haven’t called recently...”

“No,
I’m
the one who needs to apologize.” She was surprised at how easily the words came from her. “The way I did you that night at the Gris-Gris Club was inexcusable! I hope you can find it in you to forgive me.”

“Yeah, well, what’s to forgive?” he replied with an awkward chuckle. “It’s not like we’re going together or anything, you know.”

“I’ve missed you, Jerry,” she admitted.

“I’ve missed you, too.”

“Really?” Charlie smiled, even though there was no one there to see it.

“Are you going anywhere tonight?” he asked.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Is it okay if I came over? I’ve got some stuff I need to tell you. It’s pretty important. Alex isn’t over there, is he?”

“No, he’s not. In fact, I haven’t seen him in days. No one has. “

“Shit.” Jerry’s voice suddenly sounded very serious. “ Look, just stay put until I get there, okay?”

The urgency in his voice made her frown. “Jerry, what’s going on?”

“If you’re lucky, you won’t believe me when I tell you.”

Rossiter read the note pinned to his door. It was from Charlie, begging him to come to her place when he got back. He chuckled and crumpled it into a ball.
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig!

He glanced around his apartment with new eyes. He noticed that something in the kitchen had gone over in his absence. Strange how the odor of rot was now as fragrant as that of a night-blooming jasmine. He stepped over a stain the size of a dinner plate and the color of Hershey’s chocolate syrup on the threadbare carpet left by Tony’s cracked skull. The message light on his answering machine was blinking like a horny firefly. He punched the playback button and listened to the disembodied voices of previous callers.

Arsine: “Hey, dawg, where you at? We need to rehearse if we’re gonna make that gig at Tip’s.”

Charlie: “Alex? Are you there? Alex?”

Arsine: “Look, man, where the hell are you? We’re waitin’ for you at the space!”

Charlie: “Alex? Are you there? If you’re there, pick up.”

Tee: “You filthy, stinkin’ motherfucker! I know you’re there! I want what’s mine, asshole! Give me back that fuckin’ book if you know what’s fuckin’ good for you!”

Charlie: “Hello? Alex, baby? Are you there?”

Rossiter fast-forwarded through the rest of the tape. Except for Tee’s angry threat, the bulk of the messages were from Arsine and Charlie. He smiled at the thought of Charlie worrying about his welfare. Silly girl, this was the best thing that had ever happened to him!

Still, if he was going to pay a visit to the lady fair, he needed to take a bath and change into new clothes, if for no other reason than not to call undue attention to the change he had undergone. He went into the bathroom and turned the water on full-blast in the tub. He peeled out of his gore-soaked jeans and kicked them into the corner. He could rinse off the leather jacket in the kitchen sink, but he would have to burn everything else he was wearing.

As he prepared to remove his shirt, there came a knock at the door. Normally he would have ignored the interruption, but since there was a strong chance his visitor was Charlie, he wrapped a towel around his waist and answered the door. However, instead of his appointed prey, he found Arsine standing on the other side.

“What are you doing here?” he asked flatly.

“What the hell do you
think
I’m doin’ here?” Arsine retorted, the veins on his forehead pulsing like worms on a hot sidewalk. The drummer pushed past Rossiter, who quietly closed and locked the door behind him. “The goddamn gig is
tomorrow night!
Where the
fuck
have you been, asshole?”

“Sorry about that, dude. You caught me at a bad time. I had to leave town unexpectedly. Family emergency. I just got back. ”

Arsine sat down in an easy chair, frowning at the singer. “Family emergency? I thought you said you was alone in the world?”

“Turns out that wasn’t exactly true,” Rossiter said with a half-smile. “I’m getting ready to take a bath. How about we practice after I’ve cleaned up?”