God of the Dead (Seasons of Blood #1): A dark paranormal crime thriller novel (24 page)

She swung the knife again, this time in an upward arc, slamming it into Him just beneath the sternum and up, straight through the quivering mass of His core, even as it darkened and veined itself into a heart, even as it grew aorta and began to pump, the blade punched straight up through it and out the back.

Like meat on a skewer.

Clover stared at the gaping, melting mouth, into Daed’s eyes, both of them staring at her. The green ooze flooded out over the blade and over Clover’s fist, running to the ground and starting to steam. Red blood, AJ’s blood, also ran out onto the floor. The two vital fluids seemed immiscible, self-separating into little puddles here and there and smoking. Daed howled and Clover released the handle of the knife, stepping back.

Burden,
the voice in her head told her.

Vengeance,
said the other.

Still Daed screamed, His eyes had doubled in size, sclera running from the corners. The grey iris muddied out to black, and then the black iris bulged a little, then something on the surface of it burst. Two finger-thick, black worms crawled out of Daed’s eyes and down onto his cheeks, back in through the mouth that was hanging wide, the lips collapsing and running down His neck.

“Oh, fuck,” Clover said and staggered back a little more, but continued to stare as the pale skin seemed to vibrate and breathe, pores opening and closing then staying open so she could see into Him, looking through a screen door of rotten flesh that came apart and it wasn’t flesh but maggots, million and millions of pale maggots that hugged themselves tightly together, knitting a barely passable hide. For that moment the shock and sadness and flat-out fucking
horror
were crushed within her, dwarfed and shunted aside as though AJ had been nothing to her, meaningless next to the feeling of raw triumph she felt, of righteous justice having been served. In the days ahead she would have time to examine this moment, to study it and eat herself up with guilt over it, but right then there was nothing but a kind of pure and unfiltered joy that she had never even guessed attainable. The writhing husk dropped to the floor, squirming and melting away with the rest of His body. His insides were not muscle nor bone but worms, black worms, and He was still screaming and staring through the holes His eye-worms had crawled from. The whole decaying form melted slowly, giving off a poisonous-smelling steam. The liquefied remains began to eat through the brick floor of the chamber.

A brilliant white light began from everywhere, and grew brighter, as though an externalization of the triumph she had felt surging through her.

As she watched the light grow and get brighter. A wind from another world blew back her hair and rippled her clothes, then it was bright, so bright the light drowned out everything else. There was nothing else, only the light mattered.

Then it was gone. Clover stood there, alone, and looked down where Daed had been. There was nothing except for a black scorch that shouldn’t have been noticeable with all the other grime. But the grime was gone. There was a rough circle about ten feet in diameter, the center of it the scorch, and the floor there was immaculate, cleaner than it had been the day it had been laid.

Clover started to question but stopped. Who was she going to ask a question of? The voices in her head? She had felt them as a physical thing, a presence, but that presence was unequivocally gone, leaving her feeling husked out and alone in a completely new and different way.

Instead she turned to AJ, the grey matter having crumbled, laying on the floor, two more holes in him that he’d never been meant to have, lying in a pool of his own blood. She kissed him on the forehead and slowly sank from her knees down to the floor, lying next to him and finally starting to weep. The triumph was gone, the shock was gone, the existential abandonment she felt at the departure of the Entities that had briefly been in her head, all of it was gone. In place of those things was grief, and grief, and grief.

* * * * *

Logan still sat against the wall beneath the manhole. His stab wound had stopped bleeding as his advanced body took over and began to heal itself. Then he heard the unmistakable echo of approaching footsteps. He stood and realized a change had taken place, one so gradual it had been overlooked. He felt different than he ever had before, as if some huge and nasty weight had been eased off his chest. Forever.

Logan peered down the tunnel, his supernatural eyesight able to pick out a lone figure, and something in him changed, that lightness once more became a weight, and he was filled with a new understanding.

“Clover!” he called.

There was no answer. She came closer and finally Logan could see she was covered in drying blood, and though her face was streaked clean in places by tears, her eyes now were hard and clear.

He stood, staring into her eyes, not knowing what question to ask.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She took a long, shuddering breath. “You have to help me get his body out of there,” she said. “I can’t carry him.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THREE WEEKS LATER

In a different part of the state, a Harley-Davidson once more made its slow, rumbling way down a road of busted pavement. When that road ended he came once more to a blue mailbox on a large, iron post. Logan turned his bike to the right and crossed a cattle-guard, and once more drove up to the neat little house.

The retired detective was already waiting for him, out on the porch. Logan turned his bike up the little path connecting the driveway to the front walk, pulling his bike up to the steps of the porch. He took from his pocket that same small, square parcel, once more wrapped in plain, brown paper. The retired detective reached out for it with a shaking hand but then hugged it tightly to his chest once it was back in his possession.

“Mr. Perish,” the retired detective said by way of a greeting, nodding his head.

“Keep your notes handy and sharpen your knives, Jin.” Logan said. “Things are getting worse.”

He twisted the throttle on the bike and left, the rear wheel digging a long, black stripe of exposed soil through the lushly green and well-kept front yard of the little house, the owner of the house staring after him, the parcel cradled in his hands.

* * * * *

Clover stood in the bathroom, staring at herself, naked from the waist up. She stared at the bulge of her stomach, where once had been a flat plane. Though this still amazed her, worried her, fascinated her, broke her heart and filled it just the same, it was not, at this moment,
why
she was looking in the mirror. She stared at her naked left breast, trying to find any kind of discoloration of the skin or anomaly of the flesh. She could find nothing, but she looked into her own eyes, chewing her lip.

Outside she heard the dog, a rescue Malamute she’d named Nikolai, as he began to bark.

She put her bra and shirt back on.

Maybe with it out of the house, Clover thought, trailing off. The dog barked louder.

She left the bathroom and headed toward her bedroom, pausing to straighten a framed picture John had given her from his time in in Mexico after he had gotten out of the hospital. It had been the last time they’d spoken, and likely would be, John had said. He’d said it sitting right there at the small apartment she used to live in, one of his large, blocky hands over hers. He had said that this was also why he had been the only one from the department at AJ’s funeral, going to which, he then told her, had cost him a recent promotion.

My name’s been scrubbed from the case
, he’d said to her, looking a little ill when he’d said it.
So’s yours, and his. It’s all been redacted.

What are they saying happened?

The official story is some bullshit about meth addicts, witnesses, everything tied up with the three of you in WITSEC.

Three of us?

John had cleared his throat and straightened his tie and rubbed the back of his head and did everything but look right at her.
Soon to be family of three, now in WITSEC.

That visit had ended with her screaming at him. She didn’t regret it, but she also hoped that she would someday get another chance to speak to him.

Outside, she ambled over to the large, wrought-iron gate that fenced her two acres. With the help of a forged marriage certificate and some other pertinent legal documents in those first awful two days after AJ’s death, also courtesy of John, or at least some people he knew, she’d inherited the assets of AJ’s parents, as well as the trust his birthparents had set up for him. She couldn’t bear to step foot inside their old house again, so she’d moved a little further south where the weather was better and there weren’t so many memories.

“Ms. Danning?” the man on the other side finally spoke.

“It’s Lancaster actually.” Clover hit the button and the gate unlatched. The stranger swung it open and stepped into the yard.

“I take it you’ve been informed on why I’m here?”

“The Book.”

“Yes. I’m a Dogmatic Investigator, Ms. Da--Lancaster. My name is Cain Dulouz and--”

“I’m not sure I want to know any of that,” Clover said quietly and looked at her feet.

“Well, in any case, I—
we
wanted to thank you.”

“Thank me,” Clover said quietly.

“Yes,” Cain said. “You did an extraordinary thing.”

Clover saw the father of her unborn child laying on the ground with a hole punched in his stomach every night, sometimes twice. She saw him coughing blood out through his grin, saw his mother’s throat ripped out and all the world’s dead standing up to come after her and heard his name called out over a dead tongue a thousand times.

But she was more than the nightmares, wasn’t she? She was also a mother.

And yeah, she was a girl who had saved the world once upon a time, had taken up an ancient burden she hadn’t entirely understood…unknowingly, at the time, also placing that burden on her child. Clover wrapped one hand protectively around her stomach, the other holding an old leather bag out at arm’s length, as if it contained something vile and nasty.

She supposed that maybe it did. She hefted its immense weight for a final time. She had read a lot of that book. The parts she was supposed to, anyway...some pages were locked to her and were meant to be read by someone else. Now she just wanted rid of it. Always had, in truth.

“There something in here for you, Mr. Dulouz?” Clover wondered aloud. The Dogmatic Investigator snorted and took a pull off a tiny silver flask, which then disappeared back into his coat.

“Not me, I just need to hang on to it a while.” Cain let a small grin slip out from under the shadow cast by the brim of his Sam Spade hat and held his hand out. Like magic, there was a business card in it.

“Why are you giving this to me?” Clover asked, studying the card.

“You’ve taken on this burden, Ms. Lancaster. You and I both have been cursed and blessed with the knowledge that things like these exist, so if you should notice anything...out of order, you’ll know how to reach me.” Cain turned to go, the book back in its bag and all of it tucked safely beneath his arm when he stopped suddenly and faced her again. “By the way, I have a message from an associate of mine, I believe you’ve worked with him before.”

“Who? Logan?” She hadn’t heard from him since...

Cain nodded. “He sai—”

“I’m not getting involved,” Clover said, a little louder than she intended.

Cain smiled a thin smile and looked at her. “He just wanted me to say hello, ma’am. You need to understand something, though. You’ve done a great service to the universe, no one would ever say any different. You’re not the only one to do that, though. Another man I’m working with, his name is Harry—”

“I’m
not
getting involved!” Clover said.

“You’re
already
involved,” Cain said, narrowing his eyes a little. He then shook his head and took another drink from his flask. “
Your
battle is over, for now, and
your
enemy was vanquished, but there are
always
more of them
. There’s a little girl on the east coast, Nina’s her name. Less than a year from now, she’s…look, when her time comes to step up, and step up again, and again,
she’s going to do it
. Right now, she’s only eleven years old. That’s why I gave you that card.”

“It’s
done
,” Clover said.

“Bad things are happening,” Cain said. “There’s a war coming, and it’s been coming for a long time. If you want there to be a world left for that little boy in your belly to live in, for
anyone
to live in, you may have to re-think that.”

Clover’s eyes began to sting with tears that were about to start running down her cheek.

Cain held his hands up, palms out. “I didn’t come here to upset you, but to thank you, and to warn you, and tell you we always need people like you.”

“You can’t have him!” She said, her hands now around her belly, around the little life in there, all that she had left of AJ.

At her feet, Nikolai bared his teeth and growled, then barked up at Cain, who was already nodding his head, the expression of a harried messenger tasked with delivering news he knows no one will want to hear stamped across his face.

“Why me?” she asked without knowing she was going to. She stepped forward and grabbed the sleeve of his overcoat, looking into his flat, brown eyes.

“It was
always
going to be you,” Cain said softly. “What’s the saying your people here use? That particular star of yours has been in alignment a looong time. Just as long as AJ’s was. I’m talking hundreds of years. Generations. Not to say it couldn’t have happened another way, but this was always an option. You know that, right? Take comfort in the fact that you never had a lot of choice in the matter, once you set upon a certain path. If A then B then C. You felt it, didn’t you? The night you met him?”

“Felt what?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

“The Hand of Providence,” Cain said. “The feeling of not being
moved
exactly, but that everything,
every single thing
, you were doing, was right? What you were sup
posed
to be doing?”

She swallowed hard and wiped at her eyes and nodded her head. It didn’t make it easier. Nothing made anything any easier.

“I know,” Cain said, nodding his head. “I know this has been harder on you than I likely can imagine, and I’m sorry.”

Clover started to cry, and Nikolai whined, looking up at her.

“You know what would have happened if you hadn’t picked up that knife, and I don’t know if that’s of any comfort to you, what you stopped from happening, but it should be. Anyway, it was a pleasure to meet you. And you’re right, you should get that checked.”

She jumped a little, thinking of moments ago, staring at herself in the mirror, left arm up and then draped sideways across her head.

“As soon as possible, get it checked.” Dulouz said, then tipped his hat to Clover and gave her another “Ma’am,” then turned and left.

She lingered, watching as the other man walked away, wiping a tear off her face with the heel of her palm. She could see the outline of a car through him, and a tree as well. She watched as Cain Dulouz walked away, growing transparent, disappearing before he’d reached the end of the long drive, and wondered if he had arrived the same way.

“They
can’t
have you,” Clover whispered, her hands once more around her belly.

Later that night, when she finally made it to bed, Nikolai asleep at her feet, she slept the first sound and dreamless night since she'd walked into a gas station and fell in love.

END

Begin book two, Of Daughter and Demon, Now:

Of Daughter and Demon

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