Tales of the Unquiet Gods (14 page)

Which was good, as far as Pat was concerned, as intent wasn't legally actionable. Hell, he'd wanted to kill any number of people in his life, but hadn't done it.

"So, you and Carla were outside the marina," Pat said.

"Yes," Aram nodded, eyes glazing slightly. "We'd, ahh, just arrived," he paused, looking at Pat, "outside the marina, when I heard a noise." Aram's gaze went distant as memory caught him. "Carla sat up, and then some men burst it. At least I thought they were men." The blood drained from Aram's face, leaving a sickly pale greenish. His hands started shaking. "What do you get when you cross a frog, a fish and a man?"

Pat blinked, momentarily silenced.

"I don't know, Mr. Kazemi, what do you get?"

"I don't know, either, but four of them took my girlfriend." Aram turned and flashed a ghastly rictus grin. The look in his eyes nearly made Pat miss a step. The kid walked a knife-edge of horrified panic. And there was something else deep in his eyes that Pat couldn't identify.

The two men arrived at the pier. Pat stepped into the shadows to get out of the sparse foot traffic and beckoned Aram to join him. With his other hand, he reached into a pocket and pulled out his phone. Time to get in touch with his partner. Jaime Alcocer had been a cop nearly a decade longer than Pat. What the Puerto Rican detective from the barrio didn't know about police work would just about fill the back of postcard.

"Where about were you when Carla got snatched?" Pat looked out over the darkened marina, trying to pierce the gloom. And avoid the charming melange of salt water and rotting garbage.

Aram giggled.

"Hey," said Pat, his voice sharp and low. "Keep it together while I call this in and get some backup."

Pat heard the kid strangle a gasp and jerked his head up. The something dark in Aram's eyes grew stronger. Pat could see it even in the dark. Despair mixed with something else, something that looked almost like-

A sudden greasy stench assaulted his nostrils, a combination of dead fish, rancid oil and something alien. He coughed as that acrid alien reek caught at the back of his throat. A sense of presence behind him pulled his head around, and felt his eyes widen. A pit formed in his stomach, pulling a decade and a half of police experience down with it. Pat froze.

Aram hadn't lied.

A figure loomed out of the shadows, bulking large against the side of the building. At first, it - there was nothing about it to suggest it even had a sex - looked as though it wore some kind of armor, but it dawned on Pat that the thing's skin was made of plates of purplish chitin. It was nearly as wide as it was tall, and appeared squat against the mass of the warehouse, but Pat had to look up to see its face, which hung down over the front of the thing's chest.

Its face. A shudder of horror passed through Pat. Aram had been right, there, too. An obscene mix of frog, fish and man, the abomination's face showed pale, bluish skin with a spattering darker spots the same color as its carapace, all covered in some kind of shiny slime. Pallid gills in its neck flared in a regular pulse, and even paler lips stretched wide across a narrow jaw.

It was as though someone had taken a man's face, wiped off the features leaving only the eyes, and opened a mouth just under the jawline. A mouth that gaped open, filled with inward-pointing, conical teeth. Like the eel the thing resembled, Pat saw an inner set of jaws as it opened its maw to hiss at him.

The smell of its breath went beyond stench to a place of sublime horror. Pat's stomach didn't have time to rebel before he heard Aram giggle again. He tried to turn, but the impact of a blow to the back of his head sent the world into a spiral of horrible, clawed monstrosities.

8

Consciousness returned, and dragged in new, unpleasant friends. Pat tasted sour, oily copper and assumed he'd vomited and somehow hit his mouth. He hadn't been this blackout-drunk since one time in college that had him swear off booze for a year. His head hurt, his stomach hurt, and so did everything else. For some reason, his face felt stiff and he couldn't open his eyes.

Pat tried to shift, and found he was sitting up. And that he was bound. With the realization returned his memories of the evening. Breath hissed through his nose, thick with the stink of vomit, blood and the same oily fish reek he'd smelled at the marina.

He'd have cursed himself for a fool, but he was too scared. Even without the monster he hoped he'd dreamed, Pat knew after years on the force what could happen when one person had another at their mercy like this.

"Oh, good. You're awake, Detective." The voice got closer as it spoke. Pat recognized Aram even with his eyes closed. "Ah, my friend's secretions have glued your eyes shut. Well, we can't have that. You need to see the truth." He barked a command in a language Pat didn't recognize. The strange words echoed inside his skull, driving spikes of nauseating pain through his already-abused brain.

The floor shuddered as something massive moved across it. Pat couldn't tell what it was until the smell of the monster struck him in the face. Its hideous presence suddenly loomed over him, and the churning reek of its breath sent cloying fingers deep into his lungs. His stomach roiled, threatening rebellion.

"Now, none of that, Detective Timmons," Aram counseled, his voice soft and unnaturally intense. "My kinsman from the deep is only going to help. I should encourage you, however, to hold very still. I don't genuinely care. You only need one eye, really."

With the implicit threat hanging in the air, Aram barked another command in that mind-shattering tongue. Afflicted with a sudden, bone-deep fear, Pat froze, barely breathing. The horrific abomination bent low, its noxious breath hissing between its fangs and wafting gently over Pat's face.

A flickering touch ghosted over his cheekbone. Something cold and wet. Pat's pulse drummed wildly in his ears, and it seemed as though every muscle in his body contracted into a rock-hard knot.

The chill touch, moist and worm-like, slid up his face and began to lave his eyes. He gripped the armrests in iron fingers. A rhythmic clack-clack sounded very near, in jarring counterpoint to his racing pulse. The obscenely intimate caress went on and on, until Pat was certain he was going to scream.

Then the menacing presence receded, taking the violating
something
and the clacking sound with it. Pat choked back a sob as his entire body shuddered with reaction. Saliva flooded his mouth and he swallowed convulsively, his throat quivering just on the point ejecting the contents of his abused stomach.

"Now then, Detective, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Aram's footsteps moved around from behind Pat. "You should be able to open your eyes freely, now that my kinsman has seen to you." And the bastard giggled.

Pat opened his eyes, and very nearly puked again. He'd didn't know what he'd expected, but it hadn't been a pit of hell. Unclean growths, like some kind of monstrous, dry-land barnacles, covered the walls and poured down to spill across parts of the floor. Gelid slime coated the things, obscuring hard edged shells without softening them. Near where the thing from the marina stood, the growths clattered, shells pulsing and rubbing. Long, feathery spindles licked at the air, and contributed to the effluvium with spurts of gaseous vapor.

The crustaceous eel-man squatted over a mass of the things. Its head weaved back and forth, muzzle agape. It inhaled the gas from the shells, and as it did, a pale nictitating lid slid over its dead, black eyes. Dangling from its mouth writhed a tentacular member the color of dead skin that twitched in time to the clack, clack of slime-laden shells. Pat shuddered and looked away.

Directly in front of him an odd design was carved into the floor. The lines seemed to melt and flow into and over each other in ways that defied reality. Here and there, symbols etched deep into stone flickered and danced to the pounding in Pat's head. Despite the difficulty he found seeing it, it was impossible to miss the shackles bolted to the floor. Light caught in more of the symbols carved around each restraint.

Just beyond the weird, circular carving, water lapped up a set of carved steps. The rainbow sheen of oil swirled across the amorphous surface. It was somehow hypnotic to Pat's tortured sense.

At last, he looked up at Aram. The young man had changed into a robe the color of rust, adorned with embroidery that matched the symbols carved into the design on the floor. The robe was open at the neck, revealing an odd necklace made of strips of brown leather and what looked like shiny, black crab-legs.

"Where's Carla?" Pat asked, his voice harsh with suppressed emotion and expressed stomach acid. "Was she even real?" Pat felt his anger surge; recognized the boiling stew of rage under his fear. He fed it, focusing on the betrayal and imprisonment instead of the madness-inspiring monstrosities around him.

"Oh, Carla's real enough. She's in another room down here. Don't worry, Detective: we're taking good care of her. She needs to be healthy for the ritual in the new moon next week. She will be blessed above all women, for she will bear the first of the New Ones." Aram's lips bent up in the same ghastly grin he'd shown before, and now Pat recognized what else was in his eyes. Despair, and gibbering insanity.

"Then what do you need me for?" He cleared his throat and spat at the younger man's feet. "Is your name even Aram Kazemi, you backstabbing son of a bitch?"

Aram's smile grew fixed, and sweat broke out on his forehead. The bastard's fingers flexed, and for a moment Pat thought he saw his chest twitch. Then he realized with horror that what he'd thought was a necklace was actually moving on its own.

"What the hell?" Pat couldn't hold back the explosion.

Aram came back to himself and stroked the thing draped across his chest.

"Oh, do you like this? I should think you'd want to. As to this-" he gestured toward his body, "-this host is Aram, whose girlfriend resides at our pleasure and insistence a short ways away." The light of madness in his eyes grew stronger, and Pat wouldn't have been at all surprised to see them start glowing in truth. "But for
me
, I am
Iaphneth;
one of the Created. I am grown for the Mother's service. And-"

He was interrupted by a hissing roar from the creature at the other side of the room. It had bolted upright and stood swaying, clicking its claws together.

"Ahh, just what we were all waiting for," Aram- no,
Iaphneth
gloated, his face taking on a cast of infernal glee. "You, most especially, honored Detective. Watch!"

And Pat watched, unable to look away. The clacking of shell on shell from the things on the floor increased in tempo to a rattling hum that penetrated the mind and settled into the empty places of the heart. Brilliant crimson feathers whipped out, lashing the air now in orgiastic fury.

Pat's pulse raced, cold sweat beading on his forehead to drip into his eyes. He felt caught between terror and a perverse excitement, and his Catholic soul rebelled. Distantly, he heard a sound, as of stone rubbing together. He realized his jaws were clenched so hard his teeth ground.

With silence so abrupt it was painful, the thunderous rattle stopped. And with it, the violent motion of the virulently red-frilled tendrils, which disappeared into slime-covered shells as though they'd never been. All but one. That one remained, and its shell twitched. It came to Pat that he was witnessing the hideous birth of some inhuman horror, and his gorge rose.

Purple-black shell cracked with tiny detonations, and the bright red spindle collapsed to lay limp and twitching over the other eggs. More pops and crackles echoed through the chamber, their only competition the wheezing hiss of the monster and Pat's own strangled breathing.

And one other note. A moaning croon.

Pat looked over at Aram-
Iaphneth
and his guts twisted in shock and revulsion. The man's robe had fallen farther open, and the thing around his neck squirmed, waving tendrils and spidery claws toward the blasphemous nativity. Aram - or the kid's mouth, at least - crooned, stroking the thing that controlled his body with gentle caresses.

The crustaceous monster hissed, loud in the hushed room, and Pat whipped his head back around. The egg structure had shattered, releasing a cloud of putrid fog into the already fetid room. The mucoid sludge coating it held the shards together in a jagged, gelid mass. The eel-headed creature hovered over the rippling aggregation like nothing so much as a nervous parent, a parallel that made Pat shudder.

The remains of the egg heaved and pulsated with a wet, squelching gurgle. Pat was held fascinated, as finger-length legs the same red as the still quiescent tendril thrust out of the dark mess of mucus and shell fragments. At last, the foul thing dragged itself from its birthing chamber and lay on the floor, twitching weakly. Bright red legs and pale tentacles slowly darkened, all except for the original feathered whip-like appendage.

"Ahhh," Aram-
Iaphneth
sighed, the satisfaction in his/its voice profoundly disturbing. "Now, I think, Detective. It is time to introduce you to my - sibling." He turned and barked a phrase in that mind-bendingly wrong language, which set Pat's limbs twitching.

The horrible mutant picked up the now completely-darkened blend of insect and cephalopod, and stumped across the room toward Pat. His heart gave a lurch as the thing passed behind him, but he felt nothing. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, however, as Aram-
Iaphneth
turned to face him.