Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (48 page)

Brau Ahl'Drow lowered his scroll and crossed his arms. “I'm not a genie. Demons don't just give out wishes. Demons barter.” Drow began rolling his scroll back up. “You've nothing to barter with as we have you trapped…”

“Come get me then.”

“Pardon me?”

“Here we are, demon. You got us trapped, then come get us.”

“It doesn't work like that either. You are standing at the crossroads.”

“A-ha!” Billy raised his finger into the air for emphasis and Anastasia looked on nervously. “So the crossroads
does
mean something to you bunch of lawyers. Checkmate and shit, Satan-licker.”

“The easiest course of action for you and the vampire would be for you to step out of that crossroads, and to accept the punishment that is to be given. You toy with powers you do not understand.”

“What is this punishment?”

“We find you guilty. We tear you limb from limb. We extract your souls, and then we burn what's left.”

“That is not a good plan.” Anastasia looked to Billy. “That is the worst plan ever.”

“I'm gonna have to agree with my companion here. That is an outhouse mud pie of a plan.”

The sheriff walked up and whispered into Brau Ahl'Drow's ear.

“Whispering is not cool.” Billy pointed accusingly. “You're both out of order.”

The sheriff stepped back when done. Brau Ahl'Drow looked Billy and Anastasia up and down. “Since you have invoked the old ways, it matters not that you have no idea what you're opening yourself up to by doing so. Hand over the vampire and we have no recourse beyond granting whatever silly request you might have.”

“No dice. Fangs is with me.”

“There are completely dice in this matter. The soul of the vampire is not cut of the same cloth as your own soul. She is not tied to you, so therefore, we take her and we grant you a wish.”

“What do you mean she's not tied to me?”

“There is no binding between your two souls. You travel together, yet that does not make you as one.”

Billy looked to Anastasia and then back to Brau Ahl'Drow. “Wait a minute, are you saying what I think you're saying?”

“I could not even begin to answer that question properly, as it would take a tremendous leap of logic on my part to conjecture what is in your head.”

“I get a wish and I can walk away?”

“No, you make a deal. If you make this deal, you owe me, and in doing so you will eventually pay what you owe. If it is your wish to leave this place, then I can grant that. There is nothing in the laws of the old country that says I have to let the vampire go with you.”

“Unless we're binded?”

“Unless you were bound, yes. But you are not bound.”

“Billy, what are you two talking about?” Anastasia whispered it into his ear. “Just go, I can make it…”

“So, join us.” Billy's gaze latched onto the face of the demon in the suit. “If that's what it takes for us both to walk out of here, then make it happen.”

Anastasia pulled back, looking down and making sure not to stray out of the blood circle. “Wait! No.”

“But the deal is between you and me, Drow. You can come hunt me down, but you don't get her too.”

Brau Ahl'Drow considered and then nodded.

Anastasia turned Billy to face her. “Let's fight.” She cut her eyes across the room and over the legion. “Kill them all.”

“We'd never make it out alive, sweet-cheeks.” Billy looked back to Drow. “You're good with deals and contracts.”

Brau Ahl'Drow nodded. “She has to accept of her own free will.”

Billy turned to face Anastasia once more. “Anastasia, will you marry me?”

He watched the color leave the vampire's already pale face. “What?”

“It's the only way I can take you with me.”

“The village idiot is correct. It is the only way.”

Billy and Anastasia both glared at the demon. Then Billy put his hands to the sides of her face and looked deep into her eyes. Anastasia looked over Billy's face, and everything around them faded into a blur of colorless background.

“Answer me.” Billy touched her face gently — much more gently than she could have ever considered possible from him. “Let's walk out of here. Together.”

“Billy, I can't marry you. This is insanity.” She looked down. “How are we going to get married?”

“The demon is going to do it.” Billy cut his eyes to Drow. “Right, demon?”

“I am ordained in the laws of such unions.”

“See.” Billy leaned in and kissed her, and she pressed herself closer to him as she kissed him back.

“Vampires don't marry.”

“It's all we got, Anastasia. You and me.”

Anastasia looked into Billy's eyes. “It's all we've ever had.”

Billy nodded.

They closed their hands into one another's and turned to face Brau Ahl'Drow.

The demon looked them over. “You are a stupid boy, Billy Purgatory. You know not what would have been offered you as a plea during your trial. You cannot grasp the bigger and better deals that would have surely presented themselves to you.”

“Sounds like a lot of desperate lies, Brau. I should know, I've been telling stuff like that to myself my whole life.” He closed his hand tighter around Anastasia's.

“This is wrong, Billy.” Anastasia wasn't projecting the confidence and determination Billy had come to expect from her. She wasn't flying out of the circle with fangs and claws at the ready either.

“Are you saying you don't want to marry me?”

Brau crossed his arms and stared. “I thought we were past this touching moment.”

Anastasia stood next to Billy and didn't look away. “Say the words, demon.”

Brau Ahl'Drow raised his arms again. As he looked about the room to his legion, they rose from their seats in the bleachers. “Assembled horde, there will be no trial here today. The human and the vampire wish to prolong their suffering and first be joined as one.”

“A little more upbeat, Drow.” Billy was ready to face the demon's gaze when he had finished with his announcement. “This is our wedding day and all.”

“Billy Purgatory, you barter your existence in this crossroads, and admit that you leave here today simply on technicality, and that there is still judgment left for you to face?”

“Yeah, yeah…”

“You wish of your own free will the union with a night thing? A demon in her own right, one who takes the blood of the innocent by force as an animal would. You would openly let this creature into your heart and let her have full mingle with your soul?”

Billy turned his head and caught the little pink tear running down the side of Anastasia's face. “Not only do I do it all on my own; ‘cause it's my idea, I do it gladly.”

“Anastasia, you forego the ways of your blood tribe and take a human as a mate?”

“Equally gladly.”

“Then by the laws of the old country and the old gods, it is with my former place in the heavens and my new charge as crossroads trader that I give you to one another. Let the two of you find what misery waits for you in agreeing to such things.”

The sheriff called forth to them. “Kiss her.”

The skateboard kid pointed to Billy. “Yeah, show us what you got, amateur.”

Billy shot them both a look and then wrapped his arms around Anastasia. He dipped her just enough; any more, and she might have cut him. He leaned down and joined his lips to hers.

The kiss was long, and warm, and legendary. She opened her eyes as he pulled back and lifted her up, and he watched those wonderful dark lips form words. “You are an idiot.”

Billy smiled. “Yeah, you're the idiot that said yes.”

“I wish there was rice to throw,” said the sheriff.

“I wish there were knives to throw,” came the skateboard kid.

“Now.” Brau Ahl' Drow raised his arms once more. The arms of the entire legion went towards the ceiling to mirror their leader's. “What is your final desire? What do you ask of me and mine that will only set you free for an instant in the order of the universe and the time that governs it?”

“We just want to go.” Anastasia said that defiantly and quickly. “Billy, just tell him to let us make a run for it.”

“Demon, you know about the fortune-teller? Lissandra?”

Brau Ahl'Drow smiled. “I have heard of her, yes.”

“No Billy, just tell him to let us leave.”

“I want you to send us to her.”

Anastasia racked her nails into Billy's arm and he looked over with a start. “Uh, honey. You're drawing blood there.”

“We don't need her.”

“So, this is your wish? To be sent to wherever Lissandra is?”

“Billy, no!”

“That's right. I want you to send me and my lovely bride to wherever Lissandra is right now.”

The lights in the gym eclipsed, and Billy could see the eyes of the demonic legion go red. The blood Billy had painted onto the floor went hot like neon. Billy grabbed his bag in one hand and clutched Anastasia in the other.

He felt the hair on the back of his neck burn and his nose was assaulted by the smell of sulfur and death. He could hear the sheriff laughing in the darkness and then the words of Brau Ahl'Drow, Brewmaster of Heaven, crossroads demon, and wedding planner.

“Your wish, Billy Purgatory, is my pleasure.”

~41~

“
G
OT TO SEE THAT EVERYWHERE
I
TURN WILL POINT TO THE FACT THAT TIME IS ETERNAL”

— T
HE
KLF

THEY HIT THE SAND HARD. He had the wind knocked right out of him, and he was lying on his back, holding her tightly. The harder it was to focus and the blacker his vision got, the more force he focused on pulling her into him. He gasped for breath and flailed about with her. Only when she closed her lips to his and blew warm air into his lungs did he find himself calming.

She kissed him once more, and again blew air into his lungs. “It's okay, Billy. You don't have to squeeze the life out of me. I'm here with you.”

She kissed his cheek and he tried once more to open his eyes and focus. He saw the strands of her dark hair falling into his face, before the numbness subsided enough that he could feel that hair resting on him. He loosened his grip on her, but only a little. He took in a long breath and saw the pinhole stars above come into view, then spin like the light tendrils in a kaleidoscope.

He was outside, and she was with him, and it was night. He could hear the roar of waves and feel a cold breeze coming off the nearby water.

“Where are we?” His words were broken and hard to form.

“We're on an island. At least, I suppose it's an island.”

Billy tried to sit up, and his head pounded and spun. He had his hands in hers and she helped him. The waves tumbled in to the shore beyond his boots. He craned his head and rubbed his temples. “No.”

There it was. The black dome rock. The secrets of the universe cut into it in spiraling glyphs and numbered codes.

“No. We can't be here.”

He looked up, and the more he stared into it the more he wished it away. It didn't seem to be going anywhere soon, though. “How can we be here?”

Billy pulled himself up as best he could. Anastasia helped to steady him. He cast his eyes over the mountain of black dome rock. In the dark sky a ship was moored, floating over the curtain of night. “Not again.”

Anastasia stood before him, her hands cupping his face. “Billy, what are you saying? Where is here? Have you been here before?”

Her eyes tried to hold his captive. His pupils darted and danced. There was so much to see, and none of it was good. All of it read as doom.

Billy nodded to her as she held his face to hers. “This is the place I killed Broom. This is their place. The demon tricked me.”

He stared up to the blinking red lights of the vast airship in the night. He saw the lights glowing out of the windows of the faraway bridge. He saw the movement of the things within.

“He tricked me into walking us right into their trap.”

“This island belongs to The Five?”

Billy grabbed his pack from the sand. “We've got to find a way out of here. I don't care where it leads, but we've got to get away.”

He looked away from the rock and down the narrow island. The jungle he had walked through to find Broom. There might be a ship they could steal.

“Billy, there's a girl.”

There was a girl. She stood halfway between them and the jungle. She wore a long dress that was blown about by the wind spilling off
the surf. She had pigtails, wore a cloak, and had her eyes trained on Billy and Anastasia.

“Who is she?”

Billy shook his head. “I don't know. She sees us.”

The girl was staring at them intently for a moment. Then she broke gaze with them and looked up.

The balloon was floating down silently from the airship. The fire over the basket was flaring and then silent as it began to slowly touch down into the sands near the girl. It was a dark grey and had the symbol of The Five, the tentacle and eye, stitched into it.

The soldiers came from everywhere. One minute they hadn't existed, and the next they were everywhere. They filed from the direction of the black dome rock. They came from the jungle. Billy saw ten or more walking, with guns drawn, from the direction of what had been Broom's camp.

“I trapped us.”

Anastasia found he still had hold of her hand. He didn't seem to have the force to squeeze it any longer. Soon his fingers would slip from hers and he would make some move.

A foolish move.

The basket of the balloon touched down on the sand. Billy and Anastasia saw the curls of her hair and the way she moved. Bare feet touching the sand as she slipped from the basket. Her hair danced as she advanced now to meet the many soldiers and the girl in the pigtails on the beach.

Lissandra walked right up to them. “The spiral told me that you would come.” Lissandra wore cut-off shorts and a black top. She had the scarf across her forehead, keeping her hair at bay. “I hoped it was wrong, but so far the spiral hasn't been wrong.”