Coven (32 page)

Minutes later he was
driving down Randolph Carter Street, past the Circle. The sister’s
grinning white face beamed in the headlights. He picked her up in
front of the sciences center, as instructed.
—Hi, Jervis!
she greeted.

Jervis nodded, gulping. The sisters gave him
the willies—their monstrous kiddie grins, perpetually shaded
eyes, and the unearthly giggling. How could you trust someone who
giggled like that?

—
Ready?

“
Yeah. Where
to?”

She gave him Besser’s Qwik Note, which
read: “Elizabeth Whitechapel, Duke of Clarence Hall, Room 688.”

—
She’s the last one. Then
all we need is the holotype and we can leave.

“
Leave to where, if you
don’t mind my asking?”

—
New kingdoms, Jervis. New
pigs.

“
And I get to go with you,
right? Immortal?”

—
Of course! We’re all
immortal in the glory of the Supremate!

Jervis drove on. Something was fishy about
this whole business. Why hadn’t he seen any other productionvassals
around, from past procurements? There was only him. Jervis knew
shit when he smelled it. Just because he was dead didn’t mean he
was stupid.

—
The Erblings have just
given birth to two beautiful baby mutants. And Inez Packer’s
insemination couldn’t have gone better.

“
Glad to hear it,” Jervis
muttered. If they could make their own vassals, what would they
need him for in an eternal future?
Am I
getting screwed?
“We have to stop at the
dean’s first. Besser told me to kill him.”

—
Oh, Good!
the sister rejoiced.
—I’m
so hungry!

“
There’s plenty of eats in
back.”

The sister looked at Inez
Packer’s roommate and the dead security guard. She made a
face.
—But I want a
FRESH
pig, Jervis. I want a
FRESH
man thing.

Wonderful. I’m stuck with
the pecker eater again.
Except for
their size, the sisters had no distinguishing features. They were
clones. He wondered how many years it had taken to hybridize them.
How many crossed genes from how many planets.

A long drive lined with
hundred year old oaks led to the dean’s mansion. Acres of
mown, open land gave the estate a rich Dixie plantation appearance.
Jervis parked next to the dean’s Rolls. The moon hung low behind
wisps of clouds.

They walked casually up the
pillared front steps. Jervis hocked a lunger into the topiary. An
old brass door knocker stared at them, an oval bereft of features
save for two wide, empty eyes. Jervis raised his hand to knock,
then paused.
What am I doing? Murderers
don’t knock.

He bumped the heavy door face with both
palms. The door jumped out of its frame and thudded to the floor.
They were halfway up the winding stairs when the hall light came
on.

“
Winnie? Is that
you?”

Jervis chuckled. “Not quite.”

The dean froze two steps out of his bedroom.
He wore a maroon robe and pink pajamas. Doubt of reality drew slits
into the lined, tanned face. “What the—” he stammered. “Who
the—”

—
Hi, Dean!
the sister announced.
—I’m going to eat your man thing!

Jervis smiled.

The dean fled screaming back into the
bedroom. Jervis promptly knocked down the door. The clean white
room lay in total contradiction to what was taking place. The bed,
the furniture, and the lambent white walls coalesced into a pattern
of normalcy that Jervis and the sister violated merely by
entering.

“
Nice place you’ve got
here,” Jervis complimented. “Elegant.”

The sister began her wet, clicking
giggles.

Whimpering, the dean backed into the
walk in closet. Thousand dollar Italian suits surrounded
him like a conspiracy of accusers. The jury was in. “Please,” Dean
Saltenstall shivered and begged. “I’ve done nothing to deserve
this.”

“
I know,” Jervis
acknowledged. “That’s why we’re doing it.”

Be creative,
he reminded himself. He spun the dean’s head off
in one graceful motion, a sharp twist and a jerk. The dean’s lips
sputtered a nifty, musical sound, like a kazoo. “Thar she blows!”
Jervis celebrated as the stump gushed rich red blood onto the
walls, the suits, the ceiling. For a moment the dean seemed to
dance headless. It was
magnificent.

The spouting figure collapsed. “All yours,”
Jervis said. The invitation made the sister giggle. At once she
knelt betwixt the dead legs, tearing open the pajama bottoms.

—

CHAPTER 27

It all fit well with the
course of the day: a dream that made no sense. Was it premonitory?
Wade dreamed he was paralyzed, his jaw locked open by pegs. The
women in black were stuffing slabs of putrid meat into his mouth.
The meat was black and full of parasites.
—This is what we eat at home, Wade. Isn’t it good?
It was not good. Each helping crawled down his
throat, warmly alive, and every time he thought the dream was over,
another dainty white hand appeared to push still more of the
squirming meat into his forced open mouth…

When he awoke, he felt empty headed. He
sat up in bed and felt for Lydia, but she wasn’t there.

Wade,

I borrowed your car, hope you don’t mind. I
got this idea about the sunlight stuff, and I have to check it out
on my own.

Stay here till I get back.

Lydia

Wade crumpled up the note. He had two
choices. He could sit here naked and do nothing, or he could act.
He couldn’t imagine what her “idea about the sunlight stuff” could
be, but where else could it lead but back to the groves?

He dressed, checked out, and left. It was
just past 3 A.M. If he walked fast and cut across campus, he might
make it to the groves in an hour.

The warm night seemed to
welcome him in his solitude; the moon gave him light.
Damn it, Lydia,
he
thought, and stepped up his pace.
Where
the hell are you?

««—»»

“
You’re in the labyrinth,”
Winnie said. “Our master’s palace.”

“
The Supremate,” Lydia
muttered.

“
That’s
correct.”

“
Who is he?”

“
He’s…God, I
think.

Great. I knew I never
should’ve stopped going to church.
Lydia
could see very little within the temphold, which seemed vaguely lit
by some bizarre blackish light.
This is a
jail,
she realized. A black rod in the
ceiling gave the impression that she was being watched. She’d
already tried, and given up on, simply walking out. The hold’s
barrier, though invisible, couldn’t be passed. Beyond it she could
see nothing.

Except Winnifred, who stood on the other
side. She was nude, her flesh like mist in the labyrinth’s static
blackness. “You can’t feel it in there,” the woman said, “but out
here, the Supremate’s breath is on me. It’s the psilight, it’s his
influence. The Supremate is a god of great passion, and he breathes
his passion on all of us.” Her hand then ran over her pubis.

Lydia recalled the events that brought her
here—the student shop, Jervis, and the solid cinder block
wall. Instead of killing her, they’d…

“
Why am I here? What do you
want me for?”

“
We don’t want
you
,” Winnifred said,
stroking herself. “Wade’s the one we want. And when he finds out we
have you, he’ll come.”

Would he?
“What do you want Wade for?”

“
It’s all part of the
master plan.” Winnie lapsed back into her muse, touching deeper.
She masturbated unabashed.

“
What’s that thing around
your neck?” Lydia asked.

Winnifred fingered the amulet between her
breasts. “An extromission key. You just put it in and walk through.
There are extromitters all over the labyrinth. We even installed
some at the college and in the woods. Jervis brought you in through
one.”

Doorways,
Lydia realized. “You think Wade’s going to come
here? He doesn’t even know where I am.”

“
Jervis left a message for
him,” Winnifred said, stroking, stroking, eyes slitted. “He’ll
come. Love always follows its heart.”

Lydia wondered.

“
And afterward, we have a
surprise for you.”

“
What?” Lydia
asked.

“
That.”
W
innifred pointed, her face aglow,
grinning.

It had been there the whole time in the next
temphold, just not close enough to see. Lydia felt very sick very
quickly.

It stood up as if on command, pressed the
fingerless pads of its hand against the barrier. A stout, flexing
holotype with spotted gray skin like a slug’s. It stood on four
bent legs, between which hung testicles the size of grapefruits. It
grinned from its prognathous face, drooling for her. The thing’s
erection, with pulsing blue veins like hoses, was as long and thick
as a leg of lamb. The bulbed glans, too, drooled with
enthusiasm.

Oh, shit,
Lydia thought.

««—»»

Nina McCulloch was just about to leave the
bathroom when her world exploded. She heard the front door being
broken down. She heard screams like sirens, and dark satanic
laughs. When she gapped the bathroom door and peeked out, she
saw…hell.

She saw a hooded girl in black and a dead
man with an ax.

Elizabeth and her drug friends cowered,
still screaming. Kara tried to run, but not fast enough for the
huge luciferian ax. It blurred effortlessly like a great sail and
sliced her into two pieces, from right shoulder to left hip. Her
top slid off her bottom, and innards unfurled. Then Stacy tried to
bolt, but she slipped and fell—screaming—on those same innards. The
dead man placed his foot on Stacy’s head and crushed it.

Poor Elizabeth was next. Her corkscrew
screams blazed away as the dead man dragged her out from behind the
couch. He lifted her off her feet, by her ear. Nina was surprised
that the ear did not come off. Then the girl in the black cloak
approached, and from her mouth shot a long pink cord with a needle
at the end. Elizabeth fell silent when the needle punched into her
throat.

I’m sorry for my
sins,
Nina thought.

Now the dead man was yanking up the
carpet—he was rolling them up in it! But then he paused, as if
perturbed. “I’m gonna take a look around,” he remarked to his
hooded companion. “Make sure no one else is here.”

—
Hurry, Jervis!
the evil abbess replied. She knelt down and began
to lick blood off Kara’s legs, giggling.

Jervis,
Nina pondered. She recognized him now. The dead
man was Jervis Phillips, a boy who’d been in some of her classes.
Her eye froze in the gap. Jervis searched Elizabeth’s room, then
Nina’s. He stopped to light a cigarette, still perturbed. He was
staring straight at the bathroom door.

Nina backed against the wall.

The door pushed open. Jervis stuck his head
in, looked around.

Jesus save me,
Nina prayed.

He would cut her up like Kara. He would
crush her head like Stacy. He would let the abbess lick blood off
her legs. Then he would take her body to Satan.

She bowed her head in the
dark.
Jesus…please…

“
All clear.” Jervis was
walking away. “I just had this funny feeling that someone else was
here.”

The abbess rose, chin smeared red and
grinning. She followed Jervis out, who impossibly had rolled the
three girls up in the carpet and was carrying them away on his
shoulder.

“
Thank you, Jesus,” Nina
whispered when they were long gone.

««—»»

Wade cut across campus quickly, weaving
between unlit buildings and hulking trees. It was embarrassing
having to walk when you owned one of the most expensive cars in
America. He could call a Yellow, but what on earth would he say?
Cabbie, drop me off at the clearing behind the agro site, you know,
the mutated one?

But when he rounded Tillinghast Hall, he saw
headlights.

A car had turned off Arkham
to the Hill.
Lydia!
he thought at once, but then he noted the headlight
configuration. It wasn’t the Vette. It was a Dodge Colt.

Wade dove behind trimmed hedges. The Colt
passed under the streetlamp. Jervis’ face was plainly visible. He
was smoking a Carlton. One of those girls sat beside him, grinning.
The back of the car seemed weighed down.

Wade waited for the tailgate to disappear.
They’d come off Arkham, away from Duke of Clarence Hall and the
dean’s house. He trotted north, up the drive, to the dean’s
estate.

The mansion faced him,
quiet, normal. But when Wade rapped on the old brass knocker, the
door fell in. It had been broken off its hinges and
propped
back up, to feign
security.

Don’t go in,
Wade warned himself, and went in. The hall lights
were on; he took the stairs up, watching for shadows, listening. A
door down the hall appeared to be open, but when he moved closer he
saw that it, too, had been knocked down.