Chapter Eight

Author's Note: I don't normally review other people's work on this site but this weekend I saw a movie I really felt I needed to respond to: "The Devil's Rejects". I've written a kind of long review, which you can read here. If you prefer the short version: I really liked it. --David Wellington

Baraka tugged at Ayaan’s calcified veins. It had saved her life and now it wanted to be repaid. The power itched inside her, burnt her guts. It needed fuel, it needed meat. She knew exactly what it wanted. She also knew it would never be satisfied, never again, no matter how much meat she ate. No matter how much living human meat.

Nausea ballooned in her stomach, filling it like hot rocks. She dropped to one knee and spat on the boardwalk. When she wiped her mouth and looked up the naked man was there. The one with the blue tattoos and the noose around his neck.

“I know what your next move is, lass,” he told her.

“Then you’re one ahead of me,” Ayaan said. She lowered her other knee, knelt and touched her forehead to the eroded wood. She was pointed out towards the sea—as close to being oriented toward Mecca as she could hope for. Silently she began to pray. She stopped in mid-dua. “You,” she said to the man. She lifted her head. “You must know something of evil. Am I a monster now? If I speak God’s name, will He smite me?”

The ghost closed his eyes and a look of blessed relief came over his face. “Finally,” he sighed, “one of them believes!” which didn’t answer her question. When she stared at him long enough he shifted on his feet and actually addressed her problem, though he provided more of an opinion than any hard facts. “Are you a monster, now? Oh, aye. But your god made you so, didn’t he, lass? He made you what you are and he did it for good reason, you can be sure of that. Pray all you want. I’ll wait here.”

The urge had left her, however. She stood and looked at him, truly looked at him. He wasn’t there. He looked real enough, she could even feel the heat of his hands when she grasped them, but there was nothing behind the image. No energy, neither living or dead.

“I know what your next move is,” he said again, once she had stopped touching him. “You’re going to go on a bit of a tear. You’ll run inside there,” he said, pointing at the open door, “with your death ray blasting and you’ll ask questions later. Hopefully you’ll get the Tsarevich, but even if you just get the green phantom fellow, well, that’ll be a good day’s killing. They’ll slaughter you, of course. But who mourns a pawn when its loss takes a bishop?”

She had used those same chess terms when thinking to herself. She had spoken of them to no one. “You can read my mind.” Ayaan let her hands fall at her sides.

“Is a little bit of good worth it when so much potential goes to waste?” he demanded. “There’s a deeper game, here, if you’re willing to be a little patient, lass, and there’s more to win than you think. You play nice for now. Don’t go in there pretending to be one of them. They’re too smart for that. Act like you’ve been broken, though, broken like a wild horse, and they may want to believe it so bad they don’t ask so many questions. Then you just do as they say. Bide your time. Wait for the real opportunity to come along.”

What he said smacked of prudence. She nodded. “Alright,” she began, but he was gone, without so much as a fare-thee-well. Ghosts were supposed to be like that, she knew, but it was still unsettling.

She shook her head and walked through the open door. She stepped into a cavernous, dark space, and then squinted in pain as brilliant red light attacked her eyes. A sign—a neon sign in English that read “MAD-O-RAMA” buzzed into life in the dimness, showing her its corners and casting everything in a hellish glow. To enter MAD-O-RAMA she had to pass through the mouth of an enormous sculptural head, complete with giant triangular fangs.

Beyond this opening lay a serpentine length of small-gauge railroad track and piles of mannequins painted in glowing yellow-green. Some looked like witches, some like maniacs with knives. Skeletons were well-represented, as were vultures and bats. A spiderweb made of fishing line hung from the ceiling and brushed the top of her hair. MAD-O-RAMA must have been a carnival ride, she decided. A dark ride.

At the back of the room stood the liches, gathered in eerie conference. The green phantom, the lipless wonder, the werewolf. They waited for her, she could tell—their attention, their energy, was directed at her. One of the ride’s cars stood at the end of the track, its high back turned toward her and shielding its occupants from her view. With the vision of the dead she could see right through the wood and metal, however. She could see two figures there, their energy bright with excitement, their auras intertwined. One was dead, a lich. The other was alive but hurt.

Ayaan’s stomach rumbled experimentally. Hurt... living... flesh. Desire tried to bend her double but she fought it down.

Cicatrix stood up, untangled her limbs from the car’s dead occupant. The scarred woman looked almost bashful as her eyes met Ayaan’s. Or perhaps she was flushed for other reasons. An open wound on her chest oozed blood that ran down in clots to stain the plunging neckline of her white linen dress.

The living woman stepped down from the car and walked at her leisure toward the exit. As she passed Ayaan she reached out to touch the Somali’s arm. She whispered, “Is fun life, if you can make you to like it.” Without further explanation she left the way Ayaan had come in. Ayaan guessed it was some kind of warning.

Ayaan moved forward to meet the car’s occupant. It was the Tsarevich, she was sure of it. She would get around in front of the car, see what he really was. She had to know.

Before she could reach the car, however, a projection of the beautiful little boy in his filigreed armor appeared out of thin air, directly in her path. “You come too close. Stay there, yes?” he said, and she could only nod in agreement. She could see now that it was just a projection, just as Sarah had said back at the beginning. There was no energy in the boy, no darkness or light. He might as well have been hollowed out like a pumpkin. He was just as the ghost outside, an illusion. A fakery.

The boy gestured with his skull wand and the werewolf moved forward. He had a strange little machine in his hands, a metal ball studded with vacuum tubes and black bakelite dials. A long telescoping antenna emerged from its center. Its purpose was not immediately clear.

Ayaan remembered the ghost and his words. Don’t pretend to be one of them. They won’t believe it. The device the werewolf held must be a weapon. Ayaan knew one when she saw it.

“Semyon Iurevich,” the Tsarevich said. “Is trustable, this one?”

The lipless wonder came forward. The dry skin of his face had drawn away from his smallish features, making his eyes very wide. His nose turned up like a pig’s. He wore a stained white bathrobe and a pair of slippers. He came up to her and ran his hands over Ayaan’s arms and hips. She wanted to kick him away but she controlled herself. Like a broken horse, she thought. She let her shoulders slump, let her neck bow. Let them think it was too much, that she was overwhelmed, dazzled by their evil.

“He sees future, knows all,” the Tsarevich announced. “Can read you like book.”

The lich’s bony hands stole across her belly, grabbed at her buttocks. She leapt away but knew better than to attack him. The liches chuckled at her discomfort. Semyon Iurevich reached out again and she let him touch her. She closed her eyes and thought of Sarah, of just how far she would let this go if it meant keeping her promise to Dekalb, if it meant seeing Sarah again.

The lich’s touch grew more clinical, less intrusive. He focused on one small patch of her left arm as if the information he sought was written there, as if he’d found the right page of her book. Finally he looked up. She saw, with a start, that he wore a toupee.

Energy passed between them. Ayaan’s soul lurched in her body. Her heart would have gone wild with palpitations if it still could beat—this evil thing, this lich was really looking into her, his power was real. She knew that at any moment he would see through her game.

Then it was over and the hands lifted away from her skin.

“Is not one of us,” the lich told his master. “Not as yet. But is safe, with precautions.”

Only the fact that she was dead and no longer needed to breathe kept Ayaan from sighing with relief. She didn’t know how—maybe the naked ghost had come to her aid—but she had fooled them. “I don’t want anything but to rest,” she said. “And maybe get something to eat. I can see now that there’s no beating you.”

The Tsarevich's image nodded and stepped even closer to her. Another step and his nose would be in her navel. At least the projection of his nose would touch the leather covering her belly. He looked up at her like a toddler addressing his mother. “No rest for wicked,” he told her, “but maybe is not so bad. I have mission here. I have great work to complete. So many things to do, and not so many hands. I take a chance, yes? Is work for you, if you will have it, and it proves you. Otherwise, you stay here, you be like new Least. You interested?”

“I... I guess so,” Ayaan said. She bit her lip and looked away. She had never tried to look coy before and she thought she must be overdoing it ridiculously.

“Is good!” The boy nodded happily and his smile lit up the whole room. “You do good, now. You do good, come back, you see man behind the curtain.” He pointed at the car at the end of the tracks where his real body still sat out of view. “You do bad, we have provision for this as well.” He pointed again, this time at the device the werewolf held. The hairy lich touched one of the black knobs and the vacuum tubes lit up with a dull orange glow.

Ayaan felt something tickling her neck. She put a hand on her throat and felt the silver tattoo there. It felt warm, though the rest of her skin was disturbingly cool. The tickling turned to a tingle, and then a sensation of uncomfortable heat. It only took a few seconds to become painful. She clawed at the tattoo but that only made it worse.

The Tsarevich waved his wand and the searing stopped instantly. Ayaan rubbed at her neck but the warmth was gone.

“Is called ward, and is very strong magic. No way to undo it now without cutting off at neck. Be good now, or he turns it up all way.” The little boy looked as if this was the last thing he ever wanted to happen in the whole wide world. “He turns it up, and your head is to catch fire, yes?”

She nodded. Bide your time, the ghost had told her. Wait for the right opportunity.

“I’ll be good,” she promised.