Switchblade Goddess (30 page)

Right. I fixed my gaze on a floor tile in the middle of their circle, stepped forward onto it, and started to pull off my boots and socks. Teresa retrieved each as I set them on the floor. Next I slipped off my dragonskin jacket, then my pants. I tucked my panties into the pocket so she wouldn’t have to handle them directly. Then I stripped off my shirt and sports bra.

As soon as I was in full Monty, two sisters stepped up with a long, pleated white gown that they helped me slip over my head and tie at the waist with a silk cord. Another sister knelt before me with a pair of white satin slippers. When they were done, I was certainly glad I wasn’t going to have to undergo the ritual naked, but I also felt awkward in the clothes, like I was in drag.

The seven sisters all smiled at me.

“One thing you have to understand, Jessie,” said Teresa, “is that this ritual you are about to undergo may be, well … a bit frightening at first.”

She took my flesh hand; hers was very warm, while mine had gone icy. “But you will come to no harm. On that you have my word.”

And with that, she kissed me on the cheek, as did each of the other sisters. Their kisses had the feel of being part of a ritual rather than a friendly greeting.

Without another word, they led me back out into the chapel. The wooden thrones now surrounded the altar area, and they were filled with priests of various ages whose collective stares made me nervous. I felt like someone’s science fair experiment being evaluated by a bunch of judges.

Teresa turned and gave me a soft smile that said,
Don’t worry
. I nodded and smiled back. We approached the marble cross in the floor, and my heart beat faster in anxiety: the three holes that I’d noticed earlier had been filled with heavy-looking iron shackles that had been screwed deeply into place while I’d been changing.

At the head of the inlaid cross stood the young man who’d opened the door for me. He wore a friendly, sympathetic smile, but what he carried didn’t make me feel any better: he was holding a cast-iron gauntlet that looked like some leftover torture device from the Spanish Inquisition. All things considered, it probably was. I could feel it had been enchanted, and since it was clearly for me, I guessed it was fireproofed. Clearly my father had warned them about my tendency to start spewing incendiary ectoplasm during times of stress.

“Please turn around and raise your arms,” whispered Teresa. “We must put you on the floor now.”

Swallowing nervously, I did as she asked. All of the sisters gently took hold of me and laid me down upon the marble cross. They quickly shackled my flesh hand and my ankles. The young initiate priest cracked open the cast-iron gauntlet as Teresa and another sister pushed my sleeve up to my shoulder and then pulled off my opera glove. In one smooth motion the initiate slipped the gauntlet onto my flame hand and closed it with a loud clank. He secured the gauntlet with an ancient-looking padlock and then shackled my hand to the floor, iron squeaking against iron.

Despite the chill of the marble floor, I was sweating and my pulse was racing. I wished Pal and Cooper
could be there, but I guessed that wasn’t how things had to be done. I heard the clack of an old-fashioned switch being thrown somewhere in the back of the chapel, and the lights dimmed except for a spot shining down on me.

The seven sisters took their positions and knelt, each placing the fingertips of both hands onto the floor, just outside the borders of the cross. They spread out their fingers until they’d created an unbroken circle of hands around me.

I heard something clanking in a steady, tinny rhythm. The sound was coming from a side door that looked like it led to another part of the sacristy. I turned my head as best I could and saw several initiates entering the area, each of them holding a scroll of some sort. Behind them entered a very old-looking but still formidable priest, his light-blue cassock and white surplice adorned with a scarflike stole on which a series of figures and tableaux had been hand-stitched. I couldn’t make out any details because my neck was starting to hurt from the strain.

“Me immudum tuo sanguine,” uttered the priest.

The clanking noise I heard was the sound of a silver chain striking a silver incense holder as the priest swung it back and forth, spreading a surprisingly thick cloud of cinnamon-scented smoke all around the area.

“Me immudum tuo sanguine,” echoed what sounded like a hundred different voices. Without having to ask or look at Teresa for confirmation, I knew the ritual had begun.

“Cujus una stilla salvum facere. Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere,” said the priest, his words once
again echoed by everyone around me. I pulled in a breath and the scent of the incense filled me with an odd calm. Suddenly I was feeling a whole lot better about being shackled helpless on a cold floor surrounded by chanting strangers.

But it wasn’t until the priest began singing, “Jesu quem velatum nunc aspicio” that I was able to identify this odd calm: it felt exactly like I’d just taken a massive bong hit of Acapulco Gold. I was getting
high
. In a church. Cathedral. Chapel. Thing. Was Elvis going to show up soon?

Each initiate took a place standing behind one of the sisters as the old priest made one last circle around, handing off the incense holder to an initiate who bowed and quickly vanished with it back into the sacristy.

“Oro, fiat illud, quod tam sitio,” sang the priest. He had a really good voice, not amazing like Shanique’s, but pretty impressive just the same. If Vegas Chapel Elvis showed up, they should do “New York, New York” together. I felt light and drifty. That’s why they’d put the shackles on me; it was so I wouldn’t go floating up into the rafters like I’d been filled with helium. Whee.

I looked around at the faces of the sisters. All eight of them were still singing, their eyes closed in concentration, their faces a little blurry. I wondered if they were getting as high as I was.

Then it hit me:
eight
nuns? Where’d the extra one come from?

The nun at my feet stood up. Her clothing was much tighter and clingier than the habits of the other sisters; I could see her hard nipples through the blue
fabric. My pleasant little buzz evaporated as she pulled off her veil.

“Do you really think these people can save you from yourself?” Miko asked.

I lurched against my iron restraints, trying to call for help, but my throat felt constricted by the smoke. Miko threw herself on top of me, and I felt us plunging into my hellement.

M
iko hurled me across the dungeon and I smacked into the damp granite wall, my teeth cutting the inside of my lip.

“Nuns? Priests?
Really
?” Miko’s voice was mocking. “You should’ve stuck with the old woman’s voodoo. At least you can dance to that. But this old Latin … so boring.”

“I am so sick of you.” I wiped the blood off my mouth and turned to face her. “I’m sick of your tricks, I’m sick of your games. Get out of here and leave me alone.”

I could still hear the men and women singing, their music all around as if every stone contained a speaker. And the song was shifting; the words were no longer Latin but Aramaic and Greek … and something else. Something even older.

I could feel a painful vibration starting in my bones and spreading through my flesh. And that, I knew, was but an echo of what my body was actually experiencing in the living world. We were getting to the heart of the ritual: the physical and spiritual purge. Whatever they’d put in the incense was intended as a sedative, and I wasn’t feeling it in here. I’d participated in enough exorcisms with Cooper to know they
could get pretty rough; people often broke their own arms and legs against their restraints unless you secured them carefully. My shoulders began to ache, whether as an echo of my body writhing against the iron or from my own imagination I couldn’t tell.

Miko laughed at me. “I’m not going to be chased away by a little smoke and some chanting. You should know better than that.”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t consent to your being here. I would like you to leave my hellement.
Now
.”

Another laugh. “Oh,
please
. Does this
look
like it’s still your hellement? And as to consent, well, I seem to recall you made me certain promises when we were together—”

“That’s bullshit and you know it!” Despite my words, I felt my cheeks grow hot with shame. I did remember telling her she could do anything she wanted whenever she wanted,
just don’t stop oh God don’t stop
. “I … I wasn’t thinking straight.”

She shook her head, smiling. “No take backs, Jessie. Not in here. Not
ever
.”

The vibration in my body was growing stronger, and I could feel heat building in every cell, a divine fever strong enough to wipe out the diseases in my blood. Sweat broke out on my forehead. My body was probably drenched in the real world; I hoped I hadn’t lost control of my bowels or peed myself. That was dead common in exorcisms, too, but that didn’t make it any less horrifying to me.

“You know what I want,” Miko continued. “Agree to join me as my lieutenant, and we can share a bowl of tea in here to seal our contract. And then I’ll send you on your way.”

She waved her hand, and the dungeon transformed itself into a paper-walled Japanese tearoom outfitted in low tables with green silk seat cushions atop bamboo mats.

“And if I refuse?” I’d expected the heat to start sapping my energy like most any fever, but instead I was starting to feel strange exhilaration along with my fear.

Miko frowned at me. “Oh, Jessie. You know I’ll have to bring someone in here as a playmate. Maybe the Warlock. Maybe the little girl. Or Charlie. And you’ll have to watch.”

I shook my head. “Another doppelganger like your version of Cooper? Right. I’m not falling for that again.”

“You can’t be sure, though, can you?” Her expression was dark. “You can’t tell the difference between a real soul and my constructs. How will you forgive yourself if your inaction leads to your friends truly being hurt this time?”

“Fuck you.” I started blinking my ocularis to the tenth view my father had told me to try. Maybe if I got a better perspective on the hellement, I’d be able to figure a way out. I had to figure a way out soon. The hot pressure in my body was building, building, and the song was shifting again and I didn’t know what was going to happen next—

Miko sprang at me, clawing at my face. I managed to grab her hands just before she got to my left eye. And then I tried to put her in an arm bar. But her elbows were like rubber and she easily reversed the hold on me and flung me down onto my back.

“Nice try.” She sat down on my chest, pinning my
body and arms to the bamboo floor with her strong legs.

I’d gotten to the tenth view of my ocularis, and at first the hellement just seemed dim, but the solid parts of the dimension began to brighten against a background of dozens of holes. My father was right; it really was built like a cobweb.

“Shit, you really do have lots of ways in here, don’t you?” I told her. “I gotta get rid of those.”

Her switchblade appeared in her hand, and she grimly shook her head. “I have a better idea. Let’s get rid of that pesky eye of yours.”

I strained to push her off, and the heat inside me rose, crested. Something broke free.

Miko screamed and scrambled backward, a huge blistered burn on the inside of her right thigh. At that same moment, I felt a sharp pain in my left hip, and I instinctively jerked my hand up away from my body. My hand had burst into flame.

The voices of the nuns and priests were loud in my head now, their words urgent, faster, condemning the denizens of hell to return from whence they came. Pushing my diabolic flames back to their source, back here to the hellement. Leaving them only one possible outlet.

Miko stared at my flame hand, her expression a mix of surprise and consternation. “Jessie, I—”

I blasted her with a massive jet of incendiary ectoplasm, giving her everything I had absorbed from the Goad, everything I had left. Miko screamed as the flaming goo hit her face and body, melting her flesh down to her bones, crumbling her bones to dust.

She kept screaming even as I blasted her dust
straight through the biggest hole in the wall of my hellement, sending her ashes flaming out into the vast emptiness that lay beyond.

When I was sure she was gone, when my flames had died down and my hand was flesh again, I slowly got to my feet and began to pull the holes closed with my fingers. I might make a lot of mistakes, but I do my best not to repeat them. Nothing was getting in here again without my permission.

I
came back to my body in the living world. The seven sisters and the initiates were crowded around me, concerned.

“Are you all right?” asked Teresa.

“Yes.” My voice was a croak. “I think so.”

I tried to get up, but iron clanked against iron, and I remained pinned to the floor. The white gown clung damply to my skin. It felt as if I’d nearly dislocated both my shoulders in the throes of my purification. The backs of my heels and my butt felt bruised. “Can I get out of this now, please?”

Teresa nodded and gestured for the other nuns to begin removing my restraints. The young initiate who’d secured my flame hand quickly knelt to unlock the cast-iron gauntlet. When he pulled the halves apart, a collective gasp arose.

“It is beautiful!” Teresa whispered, her eyes big.

I looked at my left hand. In the back of my mind, I’d hoped it would be restored to flesh, but nobody had mentioned that as a possibility. And so I’d refused to let myself think about it much. But I was utterly surprised to see that diabolic flame had been turned to pure, pale energy. It was my old hand in
form if not in substance; as I flexed my fingers I could even see familiar lines in my softly glowing palm.

The initiate kneeling over my hand paused, and then tentatively reached out to touch my wrist. I could feel his fingers, and more: I could feel the electricity of his life force flowing inside him.