Chapter 27
27
Above, projected onto part of the mile-long visor of Parklands, the video filmed by Mo from inside Big Daddy kept running, but showed nothing much except floor.
Cyn ran her tongue over her teeth, and one of them pricked the underside. Dentists were probably nonexistent. Could she even get cavities? She was nervous and wished she had a glass of water to wash away the odd taste in her mouth. Would they want her to speak next? Most of the Worshippers attended, to hear about a new way to fight the Ghoul Lords: her. It was odd to be the focus.
She smiled grimly. Better than going nowhere , as Willow had said.
This morning… make that this evening, had begun oddly, with her waking in bed with Vargr and Rutger—and that part was good. But also, and she wrinkled her nose at the memory, also with her picking a bug leg or two off the pillow near her face. Yuck.
The video Locke was projecting stopped when Mo left the door of Big Daddy.
She raised her head at the commotion at the rear of the meeting. Someone new had arrived, and people were slowly stirring, letting them through. She drummed her fingers on the butt of her new gun. Her big, new, gold-embossed gun. Made her feel so badass. Which would likely be needed, that attitude, if they went to find Big Daddy.
That vehicle was a long, long way away from here. She hissed in frustration. “Fuck it. Why can’t anything ever be easy?”
“A pity the viewpoint is so low,” said Locke from where he kneeled, unplugging the cable from Little Mo. “We can’t see shit, except the wheels, legs, and doorframe of that Big Daddy vehicle.”
“Meh.” She shrugged. “It is what it is. Mo is short and ground-hugging.”
Mo waved his front limbs as if in agreement. The more she saw of him, had it/him hanging around, the more she found him cute. Considering Mo was all metal and a programmed AI… She must be going crazy.
Cyn raised a finger to make a point when something appeared at the corner of her eye. Her mind’s eye too. Which was when she recognized the craziness in the air. The pink Lure threads were thick and thickening more by the second. Her heart clenched. She’d never seen it like this before. Not at night.
Dread crinkled through her bones, up through her chest, invaded her mind, then something sloughed away. Bing.
Worry. Worry had gone bye-byes. The world was good and fine and dandy.
She nodded as the doctor advanced with a serene smile on his face. She knew him, didn’t she?
“Dr. Nietz,” people were muttering.
“The doctor! Let him through.”
“Why it is Frank,” Maura said, her eyes wide.
Cyn’s vision glitched, snagged, blurred, like a camera malfunctioning.
Something was wrong here.
Practice makes perfect. You know. You know what’s wrong.
“I have to take Cyn away with me,” announced the doctor, loudly, and his voice sounded so moist .
This is wrong.
“Come with me, dear.” Half his words seemed to be in her head and not spoken aloud.
This is very wrong.
Again, everything did a hop and a skip, and she saw the Lure threads thick and swirling, swarming about, wriggling into heads, into eyes, mouths, even into hers.
The doctor is what’s wrong. He has the Lure.
Spitting, she backed from the offered hand, wrenching at the threads and flinging them away from her, only to find the drop-off of the Parklands at her back. Go further and she’d fall into that trench. Only yesterday, they’d sat here.
“Come,” the doctor beckoned, his smile widening, widening.
He jarred again, blurred, and refocused as this grotesque, decaying zombie figure. Wounds at the neck spilled liquids, flesh flaked and dropped to the floor. The exposed white parts steamed as if they burned.
Cyn stared, making sense of this.
That smile wasn’t so happy anymore. He struggled. He hurt. He burned. The pain seared her as she followed it into his head.
“Do not resist me. Come!”
The world jiggled, wanting her happy. Didn’t she want happy?
“Fuck no!” she screamed at the Thing which must be a Ghoul Lord. Must it not? She wasn’t certain. No, wait. It was the one she’d cut. She saw that buried in its memories. Ghoul Lord then, only now it was lesser, not whole. A part of one. She reached back inside it intending harm.
A micro-second later, she was thrust backward, and she toppled, screeching, striking her hip as she fell into the trough.
She clutched at her hip and swore while on one knee. Tears flowed. Emotions she did not own swirled. The Thing manipulated her or tried to.
“Die you fucker!” Again, she tried the move that’d hurt it, long ago, on Top, on the day she escaped.
It threw her probing thought aside.
“Do not!” it screamed.
“Fuck you.” Her groping, upward-reaching hand grazed the railing and she pulled herself to her feet. Her legs shook. Cyn wiped away drool. It meant to take her elsewhere and kill her. To pull her apart, turn her into pieces. She almost vomited but held it in.
“Come with me, Cyn. You know you want to.” The pretty smile slipped into place, the only part of this lopsided, rotting corpse-on-feet that appeared normal to her. A Cheshire-cat grin on a zombie.
The beasters behind it seemed puzzled but none were shocked. Despite the screaming, it held them in thrall. So close to it, none of them could resist as she did. What if she tore away the Lure?
Impossible. Too powerful, too many beasters. This Thing would be on her if she concentrated on the others.
Kill it. Why not? She straightened and pulled out her gun. Then she leaped up onto the flatter area and began to circle. If she shot now, she’d kill others. The crowd was thick. If she grappled it, would proximity let it take her mind again? Maybe.
Decisions must be made.
“I see you. What you do,” the Thing burbled, laughed. The neck skin flared with sizzling white, as did its eyes, she realized. The darkness was damaging it.
Make holes in it and it would hurt. But how to kill it?
Blasting lots and lots of holes would surely work? If it had a brain it could be hidden anywhere.
Someone plucked at her arm, and she stumbled. People wove in between her and the Thing. People stared at her. She pushed through only to find someone new elbowing her. The whispers began and they came from her friends, the Worshippers.
Violence is the answer , her mind reminded her. Death to it. Kill it. Sacrifices must be made.
Leave it alive and you will die.
Cyn smiled. Good reminder. There would always be suffering, just make sure it’s not me . This one died now. Someone would pay the price, just as long as it isn’t me .
Besides, guns are fun. Blood is good.
Let the mayhem commence.
She smiled and felt flesh move and a spurt of pain and blood in her mouth.
She unsheathed the knife with her left, held the gun high. Then she backed up and ran, rammed, shoved, sending the heavier beasters flying aside. She leaped high over their heads by using a beaster who’d slipped over in the crush as her launching pad.
People were in the way, but she began to fire.
The gun bucked in her hand as the bolts erupted. The range was short, the aim good, apart from her having to go through a few beasters who ran into her fire.
Six shots had burned the air and left fading blotches on her retinas, by the time she plowed into the Thing and carried him backward. White flared from the wounds and the thing screamed internally. Her gun was knocked from her hand. The holes in him bled white fire and black liquid in putrid gouts. He didn’t bleed, he rotted.
With the knife she stabbed, cut through to the chest cavity in three strokes, unleashing white, eye-scalding rays. She cut at the heart. This Thing barely screamed anymore though the noise behind her rose to a roar. Seconds, all she had were those.
The Lure was strong and ripped at her thoughts. It implanted ideas and she growled and shoved them away. Untrue! False! Lies. It told her lies.
“Die!” She cut at the neck, plunged the knife into the head holes, into the eyeballs, and felt the Thing begin to die.
Yesss.
The Lure seemed to wrench inward and twist. White fragments sprayed and a vapor flooded her nose, mouth. As it burned in the scent triggered a memory of a similar scent and taste on the day she escaped from the Top. She’d bitten a tentacle.
Blinding pain ripped at her thoughts then abruptly, everything stopped.
Silence.
The Thing toppled, arms flopping, white eyes paling. To be sure, she ripped out the heart with one hand and kicked it so the last vascular connections shredded, leaving the creature to tumble into the void. The ground would smash it to a pulp.
Exhausted, she shut her eyes. A headache was ramping up. When she found herself again, she was sobbing in air and covered in blood. The dead heart was in her hand and she held it aloft, then cried out and crumpled to the floor. The heart rolled away. Her bloodied fist was before her mouth.
Temptation. Her hunger had become so terrible she would consume anything to satiate herself. The apple to Eve. Weak, she licked at her skin.
She stuck her fist in her mouth and sucked on the knuckles.
Only the silence interrupted her.
She looked up, and above her was Rutger. He stood with his legs spread and arms wide as if he shielded her. Beyond him were the other beasters, and blood, and bodies.
Among them was Tom, splayed on his back with his blond hair and angelic face disrupted by gore and blasted flesh. His eyes looked on nothing. People tended to him. People stared at her. Weapons were being drawn and trained, on her.
“No!” Rutger shouted. “No! Something happened here that not all of us saw clearly.”
“She killed the doctor.”
“What the fuck is she?”
“Her eyes are red, she has murderous impulses, and I saw dark red wings when she flew.” The beaster who croaked that out held his wounded, bleeding arm. His face was wrenched by pain and soiled by tears.
Flew? Cyn pulled her bloodied fingers from between her teeth.
That beaster who’d spoken, it was Vargr.
She’d shot him?
Oh dear gods. Tears burst from her. And Tom? Had she killed Tom?
“Leave her be for the moment.” Rutger’s voice was raw, and his speech came out deadly slow. “I believe… we may have seen a Ghoul Lord. We cannot trust our eyes, but I think I saw one, at the last.”
“We will have a trial!” a woman stated. That was Willow. “It will be fair and just! To me that was Doctor Nietz, but we have no body.”
Her heart was thumping so loudly she could barely hear them. Every beat cranked up the pain at the back of her head.
To her, the words that counted the most were Vargr’s.
“Someone needs to fly down and find the body. Don’t trust her.” His jaw clenched, unclenched. “If we don’t come from beasts, she doesn’t either. That leaves a lot of screwed-up fucking possibles.”
The crowd made more suggestions.
“She’s worse than us.”
“Yes.”
“What if Rutger is right? What if it was a Ghoul Lord?”
“I saw something odd too. He changed.”
“Two of us dead . Two wounded.”
“Vampire is my guess.”
“She’s a vampire?”
“Impossible.” Though they laughed, it petered out.
The weapons aimed at her remained steady as they closed in. The accusations grew louder, wilder.
She might’ve killed Vargr or Rutger, she’d been that intent on destroying the Thing. Why had Vargr seen wings on her? She’d shot him, could’ve killed him, yet could not recall him being in her way. Not recognizing him in the midst of her fury was perhaps the worst of this.
Desperate, she tried to get him to look at her and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” He turned away. She touched the back of Rutger’s leg, but he only sighed and studied her. The wariness in his eyes was devastating.
They thought her a vampire? That was insane. She clutched her hands around her middle where the hunger bit, only to have her head pain remind her it existed too. Her state wavered from wanting to throw up to wanting to collapse. She began to shake.
Really, she did not know what she was either.
You love killing , her mind reminded her, and blood .
Not helping me, brain, not at all.
Shivering, she curled into a ball, too distraught to do anything except let them capture her and bind her. They pulled her to her feet.
They thought she’d killed Dr. Nietz. It had told her lies as it died. One big one: I am your father.
Fuck no. She frowned and looked around her, at the beasters hustling her across the Parklands. They held her upper arms and looked at her as though she’d spawned horns… well not those, half the beasters had them. They thought her evil.
She tightened her mouth, fuming, angry as hell.
What had the Thing thought she was? Stupid? That line from a movie would never be her epitaph. It had fooled the others, made them believe it was the doctor, but not her. It would not take her down after its death.
It would not!
Her stride picked up strength and forthrightness.
She drew a deep breath, another, inhaling through her nose. The headache was fading.
This too shall pass. Somehow.
Besides, she wasn’t a goddamn vampire. Finding out what she really was would be… interesting.
Regaining the trust and love of her men seemed impossible… Had it been love, ever? Anyway, she was tough, determined, and she had an octopus tattoo on her butt. She would do this.
Behind her she heard the scuttling of Little Mo’s legs.
Before her was a heap of discarded stuffed toys and teddy bears. Lost toys. Without breaking stride, she booted a bear to the heavens and watched it fall.
Fuck yeah.