Graveyard Child

chapter twenty-one

“Abraxiel Unam,” I said.

“Sure, whatever,” it said, waving a hand like it was shooing a fly. Its skin was pale as maggots, its hands larger than a grown man’s, and thick. Its knuckles seemed to sink into its flesh. “Call me that. I’ll call you Little Janie Pees-Her-Pants. Or whatever. Your Royal Majesty if you want. Might as well fuck a horse as a supermodel where I come from.”

It shuddered. Its black eyes quivered. Ozzie barked once, and the Graveyard Child barked back, spraying spittle across the room. Ozzie got behind my knees but didn’t retreat past that. I could feel her growling. The thing at the table was madness. Not stupid, not out of control. It was vast intelligence gone necrotic. It hopped down from its chair and reached for a plate of cookies beside the stove. Everything it did seemed rich with meaning and menace. Even putting a cookie in its toothless mouth.

“You want some, sister? They made them for everybody but you. You’re the fucking Whore of Babylon,” it said, then winked massively. “I should know, right?”

“What do you want?”

“I want what’s mine back!” it shouted, its mouth a square of rage. “You took my things. You took my stuff. Do you have any idea how long it took me to build all that up? All those places, all those houses? All that lovely, lovely money? Because you know what money is? It’s power.”

It sighed.

“So here’s the deal. You get out of my sister’s body, and I won’t kill all these people. Sound good?”

“You’re not talking to her,” I said. I did, not the rider. “You’re talking to me.”

“Sonnenrad! Darling! Why the cold shoulder? I know you’re in there. I fucked you into her,” it said, then pressed fingers to its lips. “Oh. Hey. Was that rude? I never know where the line is.”

It took the plate of cookies and trundled back to its chair, chewing with its mouth open, unself-conscious as a baby.

“Let them go,” I said. “You don’t have an issue with them. You have it with me.”

It reached down with one foot, hooked an ankle under the rungs of the chair Dad was tied to, and tipped it back. Dad’s eyes went wide as he fell backward. I shouted and moved forward, but I still heard the thump when his skull hit the floor. It popped another cookie into its mouth and looked up innocently.

“No? All right,” it said, its deformed face a picture of wide-eyed guilelessness that melted into a leer. “How much do you think it would take?”

“I am not here to bargain,” my voice said without me.

“Didja come to mud wrestle? Because I’m all for that shit. Of course you’re here to bargain. That meat suit you’ve got on is mine. I tailored it. You only got to borrow it for a while, and then you were supposed to give it back. I mean, honey. I’m your daddy, right? You wouldn’t steal from your own daddy?”

“I have no father,” the rider said, and I could feel the power of the words in my throat. “I am the Black Sun and the Black Sun’s daughter. You are no part of me.”

“Okay, not daddy, then. Favorite midwife. It doesn’t matter. The thing is, all my toys are tied to that meat sack. And I want ’em back. You can crawl up out of there and give her to me, then you can swim on back to the Other Side and all these poor bastards can fall into lives of denial and alcoholism, or I burn them all and you besides. Jayné Heller turns into that icky Ball Park frank that’s been in the cooker since last August, and her fortune goes to her only living relative, her poor brother Jay-bird.”

“I don’t fear you,” the rider said.

I didn’t see it move. It was that fast. The Graveyard Child was at the table, popping another cookie between its toothless gums, and then it was on me, its massive hand around my throat, banging my head against the kitchen wall with a violence that cracked the plaster. My hands dug at it, trying to find space between its finger and my flesh. Even with the strength of the rider, I couldn’t do it. I tried to join my will to hers, tried to help. I felt the plaster crack against the back of my head, the hot/cold trickle of blood coming down my scalp. I swung my leg out, hammering at the arch of its foot. It ignored me. I twisted, bringing my elbow hard across its throat. Nothing. It seemed to go on forever, slamming me like a rag doll. Its breath smelled like old meat. Somewhere, Ozzie was barking in a frenzy. Somewhere, Curtis was weeping from wide, horrified eyes. Somewhere else. The world went gray. It would keep doing this to me until it chose to stop, and there was nothing I could do about it.

It was dragging me across the kitchen floor. I didn’t remember exactly how I’d gotten there. Then, with a power that felt like it was wrenching my arm out of my shoulder, it hauled me up and deposited me in the chair it had been in. The plate of cookies was in front of me. It patted my head gently.

“I’m a reasonable guy,” it said. “And really, I think you’ll see it’s a pretty damn sweet deal I’m offering here. I don’t have to go through the extra waiting time while they do all the paperwork. That’s all I get. It’s not much. And look at what you get in return. Your freedom. And Jayné gets to save her whole family. Her poor mommy. Her kid brother. Her daddy who’s her uncle who’s her daddy. You ever see Chinatown? Great fucking movie. And you want a bonus? I won’t even kill her little playmates outside. Do you think she wouldn’t choose to do that? I know Jayné Heller. She’s a hero. She’d give her life in a heartbeat if it meant saving these people. You’d just be doing what she wanted.”

It nodded. Paused. Looked at me, then up at the clock on the wall, then back at me. The wall it had beaten me against was caved in. There was blood on it. Ozzie was pacing back and forth in front of the doorway, her teeth bared and her eyes anxious.

“Okay,” the Graveyard Child said. “You need to talk to me here. Communication’s a two-way street.”

Dad shifted. I could see him trying to move away, but he was bound too tightly to the chair. Mom’s eyes were closed, her nostrils flaring and pinching thin as she hyperventilated. My body ached. Something deep in my belly shifted in a way I was pretty sure wasn’t a good sign. My vision swam.

“I will not make this choice,” the Black Sun said through me.

“You’re gonna leave it to the meat? I like your style, kid. That’s classy. Okay. Bring the meat girl up and let’s have a little talk. Jayné? You in there? Hey. I don’t know if you’ve been following all this . . .”

I tried to speak, but all I could manage was to shift my jaw a little. I tried to sit up and the pain left me gasping. The Graveyard Child helped me sit forward. I coughed, and the phlegm came up bloody.

“Ooh,” the rider said. “That’s gotta hurt. You’re the kind of girl who really plays it rough, aren’t you? No curb too high for a rental car. That’s what I always say. So what do you think? Kill all your family or let ’em live. No pressure. Totally your call.”

I gathered the strength I could. We were doomed. There was no way I could beat this thing in a fight. Chogyi Jake had warned me once—a long time ago, it seemed. Things work until they don’t. Guns. Hordes of the possessed. Supernatural serial killers. I’d taken them all. This time I didn’t stand a chance. I could save them all, and all it would mean was giving my soul to this thing. I looked over at Curt. My little brother, Curtis, who hadn’t even hit Senior Prom yet. How could I take that away from him?

Okay, I thought. Fine. Take me. Just leave my family alone.

“Get him!” The voice wasn’t mine. I thought for a moment that it was the Black Sun, but it had been a man’s voice.

Ex’s.

The front door burst open, and then half a second later the back one. The report of the shotgun was louder than I remembered. The Graveyard Child reared up, its arms spread wide.

“Oh, come on,” it shouted, and there were storms in its voice. A depth like the deepest canyon. “I was almost done here.”

Chogyi Jake stood by the back door and racked another round. And then another man stepped in behind him. Not Ex. A thicker man, older, whose dark skin made the tattoos on his face only a little less legible. Eduardo Martinez lifted his palms toward us, and I felt the blow of his will. The Graveyard Child stumbled back, its vast eyes going wide.

“By your name I bind you,” a woman said from the front door. Idéa Smith, with Ex standing behind her. “Puer Mórtuus, I bind you.”

“Well, this is fucked,” the Graveyard Child said, and Jonathan Rhodes stepped through the door to the dining room. The power of his will laced with the others, pushing and pressing, fashioning a cage of information, meaning, and intent so powerful, it was almost visible. The Graveyard Child writhed back, twisting at the waist and clawing at Rhodes. The thin young man didn’t even seem to notice the attack.

“By your name I bind you,” he said, and the resonance of his voice made the walls themselves seem to sing and crack. “Abraxiel Unas, I bind you.”

“You know,” the Graveyard Child shouted, “there are other ways we could address this. God, you cocksuckers are—”

It dropped to its knees, and for a moment its skin seemed to run. I saw Jay, kneeling as if in prayer, his hands before him and his eyes pressed closed.

Yes, I thought. Fight it. Come back to us, Jay. You can do this.

“By your name I bind you,” Martinez said. “Graveyard Child, by your name I bind you.”

The house went silent. I could hear the tick-tick-tick of the clock. The soft hushing of the wind. Snow swirled in through the doorways, and the furnace clicked, hummed, and came to life. I tried to stand up but my knees wouldn’t support me. Ex limped over to me and took my hand.

“Hey,” he said. “Look what I found outside. Pretty cool, huh?”

I smiled. Jay lay on the floor in a fetal position. His eyes were closed. He could almost have been sleeping. Waves ran along under his skin. I couldn’t imagine what it was to be him just then. Worse than being trapped in the cage with the monster, he was the cage.

“Exorcism,” I said. “You have to get Jay back.”

“I will,” Ex said. “It may take a while, but it will happen.”

Chogyi Jake and Idéa Smith were to my right, lifting my still-bound father back to where he could sit up. There was blood running down past his ear and his breathing was hard and labored. But he wasn’t dead. He probably wasn’t even badly hurt. Rhodes came toward me, grinning. His teeth were ornately carved, and there were black tattoos on his gums, and despite all that, he looked like a kid who’d just gotten his first bicycle.

“How did this happen?” I asked.

“We followed you,” Rhodes said. “Nothing personal, but we weren’t entirely sure our conversation back at my hotel wasn’t a trick. When you left, we started surveillance. And when we got here, and you went in . . . well, that was kind of the acid test.”

“I told them it would be okay with you,” Ex said. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“You get a raise,” I said.

Chogyi Jake had untied my father’s hands and moved on to Curtis. Dad wasn’t looking at me or anyone else in particular. His gaze was fixed on the middle of the table, his jaw set and angry. I tried to imagine how this all looked and felt to him. This was his home. The one place he’d always been able to assert control. And now look at it. Filled with freaks, demons, and unholy magicians. His eldest son caught in the grips of Satan and his disgraced daughter and her friends wandering through the place as if it were theirs. He was humiliated, broken, and embarrassed, and I didn’t even know how to make it better for him. I got to my feet, still unsteady, and didn’t look at him. Pretending not to notice was all I had to offer him now. Mom was being untied, her freed hands fluttering around her like pigeons on strings, frantic and pointless.

“We’re going to need a space for the exorcism,” Ex was saying. “My guess is that thing had its claws pretty deep in your brother. It may take some time to do this right. I was thinking that if your dad’s garage—”

“Not here,” I said. “It needs to be done, and so we’ll do it, but not here.”

Ex raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“Whatever you say. You want me to start looking for decent ritual spaces? It could be kind of hard to find a place, with the holidays and all, but I can’t see leaving him like that until January.”

Jay, on the floor, twitched and shifted, his face distorting in something like a scream, only silent. His hands clenched and unclenched.

“No, you’re right,” I said. “We’ll find something. Maybe the church. Would that be all right?”

“Sure,” Ex said. “I can do nondenominational, if that’s what we’re working with. Just as long as you don’t have any amateurs who want to get in on it. I don’t have time or patience for that crap.”

“I’m sure we can work something out,” I said. “If nothing else, I’ll rent a warehouse and you can consecrate it.”

“Okay,” he said, and sat on the table with a sigh. “You know, I’m really looking forward to not having my foot hurt.”

“You caught a shotgun blast from one of the most powerful and dangerous riders I’ve ever heard of,” I said. “I figure you’re going to be faking a limp for decades.”

“Me? Never,” he said. “Years tops. Not decades.”

I walked to the living room. Ozzie was sitting on the rug, panting. Her tongue hung out of her mouth and her eyes were wide and distressed. I squatted beside her, scratching her with bent fingers.

“Hey, girl,” I said. “It’s okay. That was freaky, I know. But it’s over. Good guys won.”

Ozzie looked at me and then past me to the kitchen door. Her mouth closed and she growled. I rubbed her ears. They were soft and fuzzy, just the way dogs ears should be.

“You did a fine job,” I said. “You’re a good, good—”

It came like a detonation. There was no sound, no physical movement, no sign or signal apart from the overwhelming sense of vast power released. I stumbled, trying to get to my feet. I got to the kitchen too late. The Graveyard Child stood in the room’s center, Eduardo Martinez in its grip. In a fraction of a second I was in the small space behind my eyes, my body exploding forward. I dove, leading with my left elbow, and the impact actually made the thing lose its grip and stumble back. Eduardo lay on the kitchen floor, motionless. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. My mother huddled back against the stove, her hands up over her ears, her eyes closed. Curtis knelt in front of her, his fists at the ready like a boxer on his knees. Dad was in the TV room, turning away. Idéa Smith and Rhodes were running toward the rider. I kicked twice, hard. The first one connected, but the second time it caught my ankle and twisted. Something in my knee tore, and I fell to the linoleum. Chogyi Jake was over me, one foot on either side of my chest. The shotgun went off three times in fast succession and the rider let go of me, batting Chogyi Jake away and rushing down the steps and into the TV room, where he lay still.

“By your name I bind you,” Idéa Smith shouted, and I felt her will trying to take hold, trying to find some purchase on the implacable wall that was the Graveyard Child. “Puer Mórtuus, I bind you.”

The Graveyard Child shrugged, picked up the chair my father had been tied to, and swung it against Idéa hard enough that the oak splintered. Rhodes paused. I saw him begin to breathe in, gathering his will, preparing the Oath of the Abyss. The Graveyard Child ran to him, moving so fast it was like watching a film with a few frames missing. It drove its knee up into the man’s crotch, grabbed his head as he crumpled over, and casually ripped off an ear. Rhodes fell to his knees, his eyes open but unseeing. Ozzie was barking again, her yellow teeth flashing in threat. She could as easily not have been there.

The Graveyard Child tossed the ear to the floor, put its hands on its hips, and grinned.

“Well, that was something, wasn’t it? I mean, goddamn, right?” Its eyes fixed on me, the irises contracting as the pupils dilated. “They almost had me fucked. You have got to respect that effort.”

With a shout, my little brother grabbed a carving knife from the counter and flung it at the Graveyard Child. The blade sunk into its arm. The rider smacked its lips, plucked the blade back out, and with a perversely reflective expression dropped the knife to the floor.

“All right. Where was I?” it said. And then raised a single finger. “Oh. I remember. The hard way.”