Hellbound Hearts (30 page)

But each way that she stepped, the beast moved likewise, and swiftly; each time she turned, it did, too. It was playing with her, a bobcat toying with a desert mouse before devouring it. It was a terrible thought, compounded by the way the monster looked at her through hungry eyes filled with dark, shifting sand above a mouth that had cactus needles for teeth, needles that were as long as her thumb and purple like the plentiful prickly pear spines at the height of summer. As it tracked her, a tongue, black and forked, flicked out of its mouth and tasted the air like a rattlesnake before probing the edges of its own lips until the sharp spines opened its flesh and left it bleeding and twitching. Would it eat her, tearing at her skin like the coyote ravaged the stricken rabbit? Or was there some other nightmarish fate that awaited her in the dark underworld she had claimed did not exist?

The beast reached for her. Its spiked hands were the color of cacti, green and shriveled with drought and disease. Cha'kwaina could sense its urgency, its craving for the moisture within her body, could feel everything that was inside her—water, blood, the very essence of life—being pulled toward it. It was impossible for her to look away, and she realized that she had been played,
steered
. Now she was trapped in the corner, with Grandmother Chochmingwu sitting quietly against the opposite wall and oblivious to the danger only a room's width away.

The beast glided across the floor and sank the ends of its fingers into her shoulders. The sensation was agony, like pushing skin-first
into the wreckage of a dead cholla. Cha'kwaina tried to pull away as her mouth opened involuntarily, but she locked her throat against the wail that wanted to come out. Pain erupted everywhere it touched her, and red sparks, like the embers from an out-of-control fire, swirled across her vision. But she would
not
make a sound, she would
not
—

Just to make sure of that, the creature closed its cactus-spine-covered mouth over her lips.

Nothing that Wikvaya had ever imagined could have been as terrifying as coming through the doorway and seeing the monstrosity latched on to Cha'kwaina. He catapulted into the adobe and screamed, slashing at the monster holding his bride-to-be at the same time his father leaped over to Grandmother Chochmingwu and held her blindfold in place. “Return to the darkness!” Wikvaya bellowed, thrusting his spear into its back again and again. “Let her go!”

“Cha'kwaina!” Grandmother Chochmingwu grabbed at her face but Hania stopped her before she could pull the fabric aside.

“Be still, old woman,” Hania commanded as he slapped her hands away. “Let the spirit warriors do as they must.” She sank back to the floor, but her hands fluttered at the ground around her, unable to stop their search for her granddaughter.

Wikvaya's brothers rushed forward as the beast finally released Cha'kwaina and turned to face them. The young woman dropped without a sound, her eyes open but unfocused, her mouth seeping blood from a hundred punctures. The barbed ends of cactus spines protruded from the bottom half of her face, and more speckled her bare shoulders from the creature's grip.

The monster itself seemed barely fazed by Wikvaya's attack. It was a hulking abomination, the opposite of everything good that the Sun Spirit or Grandmother Spider had ever created. Its form was a collection of desiccated pads of prickly pear; they shifted as it moved, not sliding but
dragging
, stabbing itself a thousand times over with every motion. Below a half-crushed, misshapen nose, its
wide, grinning mouth was an unspeakable pit of sharpness, and the sight of Cha'kwaina's blood rimming it like war paint made Wikvaya want to vomit. Its eyes were fluctuating pits of dirty sand, light and dark streaks that moved constantly and tried to mesmerize him—

Wikvaya didn't wait for it to charge. He hurtled forward and rammed his spear into the monstrosity's chest. Instead of going down, the creature
laughed
at him—or at least that's what he thought the twisted noise that came out of its throat might be. It clutched at the haft of the spear with its spine-studded fingers, trying to pull it out. Wikvaya held on with both hands, grinding his teeth at the beast's unexpected strength. His weapon began to push back at him, sliding out of the deep crevice the spear's blade had opened just below the monster's neck. He wasn't sure he could hold it, he was losing ground—

Then Cheveyo was there, hacking with his obsidian knife. The cactus-skinned beast stumbled at the ferocity of Cheveyo's blows but recovered instantly, releasing the shaft of the spear as it swiped at this new attacker. Cheveyo ducked and stabbed again, then screamed as the monster swung backward and its spine-tipped limb opened the skin of his face from his cheek to his neck. Blood sheeted from the wounds and soaked his chest as he staggered backward, and the sight and smell of it seemed to renew the evil thing's strength. Wikvaya's spear still protruded from its chest, but it did nothing to slow the beast as it lunged after Cheveyo, drawn to his lifeblood. Wikvaya hauled backward on the spear but it was like trying to hold back a crazed bear; he couldn't let go, but his feet slid uselessly on the dirt-covered floor as he was pulled behind it. With one hand slapped against his mangled face, Cheveyo made it back up to his knees and scrambled after the knife he had dropped. Wikvaya's face twisted in repulsion as he realized the fiend was following the trail of his brother's blood, sucking it right off the ground and into its blighted skin like some kind of abominable parasite.

“Hania!” Wikvaya shouted. “We must stop it—”

Hania's arrow shot past Wikvaya's shoulder and buried itself in the mass of pads at the beast's shoulder. It roared in anger and tried
to turn, nearly jerking Wikvaya off his feet. But Wikvaya refused to release it, and this time he pushed as it pulled, driving the weapon deeper, searching for something,
anything,
vulnerable. A mixture of sand and rancid oil abruptly oozed from the chest puncture, as if inside the beast were earth that had soaked up the fat of a bloated deer carcass. Still it paid no heed to Wikvaya as he desperately tried to force it to the side and angle it away from Hania while he readied his second arrow.

All of them were shouting at once but there was too much confusion for any one of them to be heard. Honaw gave up and shoved the struggling old woman toward Cha'kwaina, swinging his own spear forward and jabbing at the creature. His spearhead found its mark again and again but it had no effect. Cheveyo's hand brushed his knife and he snatched it up, scuttled forward like a scorpion, and hacked furiously at the back of the beast's legs.

For a moment, all the air seemed to disappear from the world and time slowed. Hania stood his ground and calmly pulled back on his bowstring, even though all four of them knew the youngest brother could not fire and still escape to safety. The monster swayed beneath Cheveyo's slashes and kicked backward, embedding a hundred spines and shredding the flesh of Cheveyo's arms just as Hania let go of his bowstring. Then Hania's arrow pierced the shrunken, discolored spot between the hellish beast's eyes, and the screams of all four spirit warriors mixed together as it fell onto him, enfolding the youngest warrior inside its murderous grasp.

And to the end, the horrible creature never let go of its prickly, terrible smile.

“Everything is ready for the ceremony tomorrow,” Cha'kwaina said. She glanced sideways at Wikvaya, who nodded slowly and watched as she drank deeply from an earthen pitcher of water. Did he think of his brothers—one dead and one hideously maimed forever—when he looked at her? Did he blame her? Perhaps. Even now she was sure he wanted to say something, then decided against it. “What is it?” she prompted.

“You're so parched,” was all he said.

“I worked a long time in the sun today,” she told him. “Grinding corn and making the piki bread.”

Wikvaya nodded again but said nothing more and she dismissed him by turning back to her chores. There were many tasks ahead and her groom didn't seem to know what to do next, a drawback of people who had relied on outdated traditions for far too long. Much of the matrimonial steps remained, but Cha'kwaina had changed the order to suit herself, disregarding Grandmother Chochmingwu's instructions and, to a substantial extent, shocking the others in the pueblo.

No matter; Grandmother Chochmingwu was old and would not live much longer. When she died, Cha'kwaina herself would be the matriarch of the entire village, the one who made all the important decisions regarding ceremonies and traditions, things like the endless grinding of corn and the way her soon-to-be groom walked the desert every morning searching for ancient gateways painted in sand on the ground.

After a few minutes, she heard Wikvaya sigh, then finally leave. Cha'kwaina stayed where she was, her strong hands deftly working to crush the corn beneath the grindstone as Grandmother Chochmingwu's sharp gaze shifted toward her from time to time. When the old woman was finally gone—and that would definitely be
very
soon—Cha'kwaina would see to it that the old ways became the dead ways. Then the new ways could move right in. For now she faced away from her grandmother and kept her head lowered, as if nothing in the world mattered more than the task at hand.

Smiling mindlessly, Cha'kwaina made sure to blink away the dark swirls of sand that gathered in the corners of her eyes.

Mark Morris

Heaving his bulk from the stool, Elliott peered over the counter to discern the source of the approaching rhythmic squeak. At first he saw nothing, and then the library door bumped open, dragging a wheelchair behind it. The occupant was wizened, twisted, bald, and childlike, black spectacles that more closely resembled aviator goggles transforming its face into a simian skull. The creature propelling the chair was almost as grotesque. Dressed in a blue nurse's uniform, the woman's mottled, grayish skin seemed to hang in wattles from her face. Elliott had to make an effort not to stare at her sagging eyes and slack, rubbery lips. It was as though the flesh she was draped in was designed for considerably larger bones.

His nose twitched at the odor that accompanied the couple. It was a hospital smell—chemicals, sickness, and something else; something raw, animal. As the woman brought the chair to a halt at the counter, Elliott stepped back, feeling faintly nauseous.

“Can I help you?” he mumbled.

The woman regarded him with an odd and unsettling expression. An expression somewhere between sadness and fury, which she communicated almost solely through her eyes. She stared at
him for so long that Elliott began to feel uncomfortable. He was about to repeat his question when she awkwardly, stiffly, folded her body in two, reaching for something in the well beneath the seat of the wheelchair. She straightened with a supermarket carrier bag in her hand, the white plastic stretched and shiny with the weight inside. Elliott took another involuntary step back as she swung the bag toward him. For an instant he was certain there was something wet and soft in the bag—a lump of raw meat, perhaps even a dead animal. Then, in a strangely muffled voice, the woman said, “We're paying no fines. We've got no money,” and the bag thumped on the counter with a solid weightiness that could only be caused by books.

Elliott glanced again at the creature in the wheelchair. He thought it was a man, but he couldn't be sure. The creature was chattering to itself, or perhaps cackling softly, its tiny gnarled fists pressed to its puckered mouth, its head nodding in spasmodic jerks. Slick drool looped in glittering strings from its twisted fingers and formed gleaming runnels like slug trails on the bib of its stained black smock. Elliott shook his head disdainfully, causing his several chins to wobble, and plucked at the neck of the bag.

A dank odor, barely preferable to the operating-theater stench of the couple, rose to meet him as he craned forward. Bracing himself, he lifted out the topmost book, pinching it between thumb and forefinger. The pages were wrinkled and bloated with mildew, the transparent dust jacket so brittle that it broke off in dry fish-scale flakes beneath the pressure of Elliott's plump fingers.

He squinted to read the title—
Doorways to Hidden Realms: A Treatise on Summoning Magicks
by Guillaume Barsac. The volume was unfamiliar to him, as were the others—
Configurations to the Endless Kingdom
by Johan Goodrich and
Beyond the Veil of Night: A Warning to the Unwary
by Millicent May Dublin. Each of the volumes was equally aged and repellent to the touch. Elliott placed them side by side on the desk before him and reluctantly pried open the first.

Something scurried from beneath the cover, causing him to snatch his hand back. But it was only the desiccated corpse of some long-dead insect, animated by the cold draught ghosting through
the old building. Irritated by his own nervousness, Elliott examined the card detailing the book's borrowing history. The most recent date was March 30, 1969.

He blinked in disbelief, and then opened the second book, and the third. The inner pages of
Beyond the Veil of Night: A Warning to the Unwary
were seething with blue-black mildew, rendering much of its contents illegible. Elliott could still ascertain, however, that the return dates on all three books were identical.

“You do realize these items were due for return almost forty years ago?” he muttered.

The woman glared at him. Her slack mouth quivered.

“We're paying no fines. We've got no money,” she repeated.

Elliott sighed. He felt greasy, itchy sweat gathering in the folds of his fleshy body. He could make an issue out of this—call in his supervisor, threaten the couple with consequences—but what would be the point? In truth, he just wanted these people gone. They disquieted him in a way he found hard to rationalize. He felt there was something fundamentally
wrong
with them, that they brought with them a hint of . . . what? Danger? Foreboding? It sounded absurd, but he couldn't deny the unaccountable sense of dread in his belly. With a supreme effort, he forced his doughy features into a smile.