Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (49 page)

Anastasia counted fifty soldiers at the very least. All had automatic weapons fixed on her and Billy.

“You shouldn't have come here, Billy.” Lissandra did nothing to stop the soldiers from black-jacking the backs of Billy and Anastasia's knees hard, sending them both to kneel in the sand. Long pole arm weapons with arcing electrical tips were held close to both of them, daring either of them to make their move.

“Lissandra, what are you doing here? Do you know who these people are?” Billy had his hands to his sides before the soldiers grabbed
them and placed them at the back of his head. One went for his pack and Billy pulled back to keep it. The electrical weapons pressed into his flesh and made his muscles dance of their own volition. Billy spit out a curse at them.

“The Satanic Five.” Lissandra watched as soldiers grabbed Anastasia by the arms. Anastasia sent daggers from her eyes into Lissandra. “Careful with her, she's a vampire.”

More soldiers moved to overtake Anastasia. The vampire made a quiet hiss at Lissandra, but did not bother with fangs. The look and sound she made was frightening enough all on its own.

“So, you're working for them now?” Billy was more sad than angered. He gave Lissandra a look that was the complete opposite of the one Anastasia was giving her with both barrels. “You're working for crazy evil and demons?”

The girl in the pigtails looked to Billy. “Only a few of us are demons.”

Lissandra grinned at the girl. “This is Morta. Something tells me that you've recently met her father.”

“What did they lie to you and promise you, Lissandra?” Billy felt an ache in his heart. He'd been so happy in what had seemed like mere moments ago. He and Anastasia had made a new connection. A really bizarre and crazy-town demon marriage connection, but a connection all the same. He thought that they would be sent to Lissandra and find a new ally in their fight. That they would all escape this evil together.

Lissandra pointed to the black dome rock. “I read the fortune of the world now. Once you've done something like that, nothing else matters.”

“What about friendship?” Billy looked down as his hands were cuffed behind his back. “What about love?”

Anastasia was looking into Billy's eyes when he said it. She did not share his sadness at the betrayal, but whatever was inside her that amounted to a heart and a vampire soul was breaking for him.

He didn't have the stomach for betrayal. He understood little in this world, but Anastasia knew that he understood one thing, and he could have written the dictionary entry on it if he'd have been forced to.

Loyalty.

“The time for those things was long ago with us, Billy. I felt you leave the world once already. Going off on your mission. I have already mourned your loss.”

“But I'm back.”

The soldiers had hold of Billy and Anastasia and pulled them to their feet.

“You should have stayed gone, Billy. There's no place in this world for your ghost.”

II.

There was a large four-poster bed in the center of the circular room ringed in windows. They were high above the island in the airship. The room was decorated in the intricate patterns of Persian rugs and antique furnishings. Billy looked out one of the floor to ceiling windows in the circular observation room and stared down at the black dome rock below. Some star shine and just a sliver of tropical moon only lit the hint of the dome's outline to his eyes.

He remembered Broom climbing up that rock and reading the spirals to him; then he thought about Lissandra doing the same thing. He looked back to Anastasia. Both of them still had their wrists bound at the small of their backs. The look on his face signaled to the vampire that her new husband was not having a good time with any of this.

“Billy, you have to hold it together.” She sat on the edge of the big bed and watched him pace. His skateboard and his bag were sitting in the center of a table, and she knew that if he could, he would be skating circles around this perch right now to calm his nerves.

For once, Anastasia wished he had that in his power.

“She was my friend.” He looked down.

“She's not any longer. She's chosen sides, and her path is not ours.”

“It's not fair.”

Anastasia pushed herself up from the bed to walk towards him, struggling with her bindings. Whatever cuffs they had forced her
wrists into were strong. No matter how she bent, flexed, or rotated, she could not free her hands from them. “When have our lives ever been fair?”

She watched Billy. He wasn't even trying to break free.

“I'm sorry, Anastasia.”

She walked up to him, wishing she was free to embrace him. “What are you sorry for this time, Billy Purgatory?”

“I'm sorry that I got us trapped. I'm sorry that I didn't listen to you about Lissandra.” He cast his eyes down as she walked up on him. “I'm sorry that I talked you into marrying me.”

Anastasia didn't really think about what she was doing, she just realized that she kneed Billy hard in the groin and sent him falling backwards, landing in an antique chair. He looked up at her and clenched his knees together tightly as he squirmed.

“Dammit woman!” He wheezed. “You're jammin' my cannon?”

“Quit feeling sorry for yourself, Billy.” She leaned down and yelled right into his face. “You're sorry that you married me?”

“Are you gonna keep kicking me in the Nutcracker King?”

“I ought to kick you in the head. I just figured you'd pay more attention to a shot below the belt.”

Billy looked up at her helplessly. “I'm sorry.”

“Stop saying you're sorry. I never want to hear those words come out of that idiot's knot hole of yours again. I don't want your sorry, I want Billy to show back up. I want the cocksure, trash-talking, ego-inflated, dick Billy back. The one that doesn't think about the plan, he just barrels right into it and knocks it on its ass. Whoever you're being in that chair right now is
not
the person that I signed up to be with.”

“Really?”

“Shut up. I would claw your eyes out of your skull if I could get a hold of you right now. Quit being a baby and quit apologizing for your shit life. Nobody wants to hear that, most especially me.”

“I'm…”

“I will bite your face off.”

Billy raised himself up and somehow pushed himself out of the chair. “I wasn't going to say that.”

“You'd better not have been.”

Billy and Anastasia glared at one another. “I gotta figure a way out of this mess before you kill me.”

“You're right about that, because I'm definitely considering doing just that.”

There was clapping from the woman who was walking down the staircase. She was encased head to toe in black leather, and had two swords strapped to her back. “Bravo. Let's hear it for young love.”

Billy and Anastasia watched her walk. The hair was up on her head and framed her face and dark eyes well. She was Asian, and with every stride she took, and every resonant slap of mocking applause, Billy and Anastasia knew exactly who she must be.

“I don't remember ordering a side of bondage with my egg rolls, sister.”

Billy was sounding like himself again. Anastasia smiled at the remark.

“Billy Purgatory, it's such a pleasure to finally meet you.” Her boots hit the bottom of the stairs and she began moving their way. “I must say, your mouth is just as impressive in person as I've always heard it was.”

“I'm sure you've heard tons about this mouth. It's all true. So you're Moon, huh?”

She nodded. “Guilty as always.”

“What is it you want with me and my delicious bride?”

Anastasia looked to Billy. “Delicious?”

“Just run with it. I can't dam up the flood once it starts spilling.”

“Well, I haven't decided yet.” She broke course from the two newlyweds by the window and instead moved to the table. “First off, I think you have some things that belong to me.”

“The contents of that bag are personal and confidential, and we don't take kindly to shoplifting mallrats.”

Moon let her fingers trail over the sword scabbard that jutted from the bag. “It has been a long time since I have seen this.” Her leather fingertip traced the outline of the symbols of the five on the inlay.

“That belongs to my mother.”

“It does not belong to your mother. Your mother stole it from me. She's made a career off of lopping off heads with my sword. Those kills should not have been hers, they were rightfully mine.”

“I'm as clueless about my mom as the day I was born, chaps'n'ass. If you want your sword back, though, maybe you should take it up with her.”

“Oh, once she's located, the things I will do to her will make what I'm going to do to you seem like a baby lamb's baptism.”

“Who baptizes lambs? And lemme get this straight, you don't know where my mom is?”

“Why should I?” Moon's eyes probed into Billy. Billy didn't like the feeling.

“So, she ain't one of you Five?”

Moon made a face. “Your mother? One of us?”

Billy let his mouth stay closed — for once.

“Why would you think that?”

“Take your scabbard back and leave my bag a'tricks trickin'.”

Moon opened the bag and began to dig. “So, you've kept the coverless book you stole from Broom.” She put too much emphasis on the word “Broom”. It made Anastasia uneasy. “A stolen book of stolen secrets.”

Moon pulled the skateboard from the bag. Anastasia watched Billy twitch. “I'd heard the stories, but really?” What is your fascination with it?”

“Quit with the shiatsu to the board. You're creeping it out.”

“I'm going to let you watch as I dump this into the ocean.”

Billy's eyes got wide and he shook more noticeably. “That mouth of yours just popped the cork on the ass-whippin' jug.”

Moon winked to Anastasia. “I think he loves this thing more than he does you, vampire whore.”

Anastasia was standing right next to him. She watched it happen, but she couldn't say how or why it did. Moon looked up when she heard the metal of the cuffs snap and Billy's arms go free.

Moon was drawing a sword as Billy was already in the air and flying over the table at her. Anastasia stared on in complete bewilderment.

Billy punched Moon in midair as the last of his broken handcuffs flew from his body. Billy was tackling her as they crashed into the floor on the other side of the table.

“I'm gonna toss your shiny leather ass into the ocean and see how you like it.” Billy punched her again in the jaw as she cursed and kicked him off of her. She rolled left and rose up; the sound in the room was her swords being drawn and slicing into the air.

Billy didn't care about the swords and rammed Moon hard, sending her flying backwards and impacting with the steps that led into the room. “That skateboard is innocent. You hear me? You stole my friend and turned her against me. You can't have my board too.”

He lifted his skateboard from the table. “I'm gonna let it shammy the evil off ya the hard way.”

Moon sprung and landed halfway up the steps. “You killed Broom!” She screamed and hissed. “You stole my things from me!”

“I used this skateboard to do it. He was gonna shoot me. I smacked the bullet right out of the air and sent it back into his neck.”

Moon sliced her swords and ran them against each other, creating sparks as she began moving down the steps. “You will die an unimaginably painful death.”

“You mean like Broom did? Both times.”

Moon stopped slicing. “What do you mean
both times
?”

“I went to an alternate reality, and you know the one good thing I did over there?”

Moons swords sliced into the wooden railings as she moved. Filleting them as her eyes narrowed.

“I killed Broom again.”

“You lie.”

“He never mentioned you, Moon. He was sure into my mom, though.”

Billy could feel the rage that was building in her. It threatened to set the room ablaze. So Billy pointed his mouth right into the eye of the storm. “Guess Mom stole a lot more than your sword, huh?”

“I'm going to toss that vampire you love onto the beach and watch her burn in the sun.”

“You'd have to get past me first.”

Moon was fast. Billy wasn't prepared for just how fast she was. She sent her arm flying towards him and he watched as her sword left her grasp. He fell back onto the table as it cut the air right over his head.

Billy's face turned in slow motion; it was already too late. The sword flew across the room and sliced into Anastasia. It caught her in the left shoulder blade and sent her flying backwards with it as it continued to fly with the immense force of which it was thrown.

He watched helplessly — the look on Anastasia's face as she spit blood from her mouth, carried with the sword into the window. The glass shattered as the blade pierced it and sent her flying out of the airship.

Billy ran to the broken window and stared down as Anastasia fell through the air and slammed into the sand of the beach far below. He could barely make her body out as it landed. It was so dark. She kicked up sand as she and the sword banged the ground of the cursed beach.

He turned back to Moon as the troops stormed past her and down the stairs to rush him. “You will do as I say, Billy Purgatory, and you will answer for your crimes. If you do not, then I'll leave whatever is left of her down there for daybreak. She's mine now, not yours. Pray that I don't decide to remarry my new possession to the sun.”

Billy watched the troops circle him and felt the electrical lances pierce his flesh and subdue him once more. None of it made sense or mattered; he didn't even feel the pain as they beat him violently. He didn't care what happened to him anymore.

He thought about her falling so far through the air, landing alone on that beach with Moon's sword stabbed into her. He hoped that she wasn't in much pain, and that she wasn't cold down there. All alone with the cutting wind sailing off the water…