Gods and Monsters: Unclean Spirits
An Abaddon Books™ Publication
www.abaddonbooks.com
First published in 2013 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.
Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Oliver
Desk Editor: David Moore
Cover Art: Clint Langley
Design: Pye Parr
Marketing and PR: Michael Molcher
Publishing Manager: Ben Smith
Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley
Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley
Copyright © 2013 Rebellion Publishing Ltd.
ISBN (.mobi): 978-1-84997-542-1
ISBN (.epub): 978-1-84997-543-8
Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
PART ONE
LOVE DIES
CHAPTER ONE
The Bloom Is Off The Rose
L
IFE, SLICED INTO
tiny moments. Cason Cole beneath a shattered door. Smells: eggy gunpowder smoke, rose petals, sweat, sex. Sounds: someone screaming. Another someone gurgling. A high-pitched
eeeeeeeeeee
in the deep of Cason’s ear.
Pain along his shoulders. Arcing like a lightning whip.
Pain in his nose, too. Mouth full of blood.
Older wounds—the ghosts of injuries from fights long over—stir restless beneath his skin, above his bones, within his joints.
His own breath. Loud against the door above him.
Blink. Blink.
What the
fuck
just happened?
T
HIS IS WHAT
the fuck just happened:
Cason sits there in the hallway. Flipping through a magazine—
Us Weekly
, not a magazine he’d ever want to read, but it was there and besides, he’s not reading it anyway.
His eyes hover over a story about some teen pop star sticking it to some other not-so-teen pop star, but he’s not taking in any of the information, not really. He’s thinking that he feels like a rat caught in a chain-link fence, tail lashing and teeth gnashing. He’s thinking how the teenage pop star—a boy with bright eyes and classic dimples—might look like his own son were Barney that age. He’s thinking that he’s a piece of shit, that all his choices aren’t choices at all but really just a pair of mean shackles and they’re holding him here, to this magazine, to this hallway, to E. and the Croskey twins and this Philadelphia brownstone—to this tits-up asshole of a job that he’ll never be able to leave.
An RC car whizzes suddenly past.
It looks like a little remote control dune buggy. Its toy engine goes
vvvvzzzz
as it bolts down the length of the hallway, over the literally spit-polished heart pine floor.
It’s dragging something.
A small cloth satchel. Cream white. Flap snapped closed.
It heads toward the end of the hall.
Cason stands. Knows that it’s probably just one of the Croskey twins playing around again, those narcissistic nitwits. They’re twenty-five, but they act half that. This is probably Aiden, if he had to guess—Aiden’s the giddier, bubblier of the two. Ivan, on the other hand, can be sharp and mean like the stinger of a stepped-on scorpion, and he’s less inclined for physical games—his are all in the head.
The car is headed around the hallway toward E.’s door, though, and that’s a no-no. For a half-second Cason entertains the idea of just letting it play out—letting the car thump against the closed door of E.’s chamber, interrupting whatever (or more like
whoever
) E.’s doing, and that’ll be that. E. will emerge and his wrath will be swift and unparalleled as it always is. And maybe, just maybe, Aiden will learn the nature of cause-and-effect. Things we do in this life have consequence, a fact that seems to have escaped him and his brother so far.
But Cason knows that’s not how it will go. Aiden’s a favorite. A flavor-of-the-month that’s gone on three months too long. E. is, for whatever reason, fascinated with the Croskeys—the Croskeys think it’s wonderful tanning in the warm spotlight, but they don’t realize that E. is ‘fascinated’ in the way a praying mantis is ‘fascinated’ with a buzzing bee. When E. is done with them, the twins will find out what it’s like to be cast out of the firelight, left to wander the darkness feeling a kind of profound,
surgical
loneliness, as if a sharp knife cut something precious from your insides. Something that doesn’t kill you. But that leaves you dead anyway.
Cason’s seen it before.
E. is cruel, callow, callous. Cason doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of that... malicious whimsy. Or whimsical malice. Whatever. He’s been there before.
Better then to catch the RC car before it gets too far.
Cason jogs after it. Rounds the corner.
His heart catches in his chest like a thread on a splinter—
That little thing is fast. It’s already there. At E.’s closed door.
Cason sprints.
The RC car pauses. Then backs up a few feet.
Vvvvzzzzzzz
.
The toy surges forward again into the door.
Thump
.
Two more times in quick succession—
thump, thump
, like it’s knocking to be let in—and then Cason catches it, scooping it up in his arms. Wheels spinning against his forearm, antenna almost jabbing him in the eye. Bag dangling.
Cason shakes his head, starts to walk away.
But then the hallway shimmers. Like it’s not real. Like everything is suddenly a sheet of foil or a sequined dress rippling in a wind. The humidity in the room jacks up by a hundred per cent.
Cason feels dizzy. Sweat in the lines of his palms. Mouth dry.
He’s here
.
The door unlocks and opens and Cason feels perfumed breath hit his neck, crawl up his nose—the smell of roses. Apropos, given his boss’ name: E. Rose.
“What’s that?” E. asks.
Cason turns. E.’s naked. Erection standing tall like a toddler’s arm fervently clutching a toy. Everywhere else, he’s not a big man; in fact, he’s fairly small—five-five, thin arms, thin legs, cheekbones like shards of glass, lips sculpted onto his face as if by little scalpel blades. Boyish. E.’s olive skin shines from sweat.
“I...” Cason’s not sure what to say. “I don’t know.”
“You interrupted us.”
A damp chill grips the air.
Behind E., Cason catches sight of another naked someone—no, more than one. Then, the smell: sweat and sex and latex and lubricant. Commingling in their own orgy of odors. From inside the room, one of the somebodies—a man with a high-pitched titter of a voice—says, “Come back inside. We were just about to see if it would fit!”
Then, a woman’s voice, heady, druggy, ecstatic: “I can take anything.”
E. ignores them and holds out a hand to Cason. “I want to see that.”
Cason offers a feeble nod, hands over the car—and there, as E. reaches for it, is that sudden spike of undesired desire: his body tightens as hope surges, hope that E.’s finger will touch his own, just a momentary brush, an electric flash of skin-on-skin. He doesn’t understand it, doesn’t ask for it, doesn’t swing that way but it’s there just the same—and it’s been there since the day he started working for E. as a bodyguard five years ago.
But no. E. just takes the remote control dune buggy. Holds it up and stares at it, lip in a sneer, brow in a quizzical knit—as if turning it one way makes it junk, and turning it the other way makes it art. He shakes the bag, and what emanates sounds like metal chips or stone pieces rattling together. “I suppose we could use it.”
