For a moment I see other figures out there, draped in black, silhouetted in the slashes of flashlight. The girl has brought my past alive within me. I recognize faces, body language, intent. I watch dead men looming. It is easy to get distracted.
The men of the coven watch Mercy. They all want her. So do some of the women. She is desirable in the way that make lovers stupid, especially now, bathed from above. I can smell a hint of methane in the wind. It takes nothing at all to stand in the wetlands with strangers, breathing in the stink of decomposing bodies around you. Mercy's bare feet tamp out a staccato rhythm that beats louder than the pulse in my temple.
She sweeps in close to me, shakes her hair wildly in my face, and a barb catches me across the chin. She withdraws. I thumb blood away.
Jenks puts his arm around me, dips his head and draws me into a huddle of clandestine mystery as he speaks quietly in my ear.
"You ready to fuck Mercy yet?"
Of course I don't like the way he says it, half with a sneer and half with a laugh. No one else glances my way, not the White Queen, not even Mercy. My back muscles tighten and my stomach dips. Ricky urges me to tear his Jenks's eyes out. Gary Lowers loves his mother. He knows I love my mother too.
I turn to Jenks. "When I am it'll be between her and me."
He puts a hand to my chest and pushes hard, forcing me back a step. "No, it's between me and you. You pay me."
"I pay you what?"
"Depends on what you want. Half and half is one-twenty. Around the world three hundred, you want the whole night it's five, and that's a bargain. Believe me, I know."
"You know."
"I know." He actually holds out his hand. "Payable now, up front."
He snaps his fingers.
I look over at Mercy, the silver studs on her short-shorts burning. She dances among flashlight rays that seem to cut her to ribbons. She meets my eyes. I realize what a dupe I've been. She'd spotted me and off the cuff had known I was the loneliest, horniest, most futile asshole in a long line of them. A gray-haired punk old before his time, full of need and empty of action. A couple of air kisses in my direction, a hand to my neck, and I'd be hers. She'd even hinted at her true intention. Whatever you desire, it costs. And I'd been too eager to see what she was actually talking about, distracted by ritual and subjugation.
Jenks still has his hand out. He snaps his fingers again, says, "Come on, c'mon. You going to kick in or are you going to let a fine ass like that get away from you?"
I keep my gaze on Mercy as she snakes her way across the field, dancing and gyrating, sweaty and laughing.
"What about me makes you think I have five hundred bucks on me?" I asked.
"We can always hit an ATM."
"And how do you know I have that much in my bank account?"
"What else are you going to spend your cash on, man? Trips to the French Riviera? You've got no woman. You drink milk, for Christ's sake. You don't do drugs. You live in a dive someplace, you've got no friends and no wife and no kids."
"And how do you know all that about me?" I ask, genuinely interested.
He frowns like I've asked the dumbest question he's ever heard. Maybe it is. "It's written in your face, man. Don't you know that? Don't you see that every morning when you're shaving?"
My expression must be fairly absurd because he starts to chuckle, and then guffaws.
Mercy's dance ends and some of the men can't contain themselves. They whistle and hoot. Not very becoming behavior for a coven.
The White Queen tries to stop the noise with a hiss, but the guys keep going and Mercy even takes a bow. It pisses off Kip, who appears to be serious about the rite. He growls, "That's enough. This is a solemn ceremony."
Mercy steps back to the tree and kneels at it in caricature of pagan worship. Her harlequin's face appears to be poised on the edge of laughter.
Dropping her chin to her chest, the White Queen begins to chant, holding the athame tightly in both hands. The blade dips and jerks, turning her as it moves. It seems to be alive, like she can barely hold onto it.
She cries out and spins, and her arms are wrenched and yanked this way and that by the trembling knife. Wheeling, she faces me, her arms jutting forward, the dagger pointing at my heart.
She says, "It's you. The spirits want you."
"Yes," I admit. "They want me. And they want all the rest of you too."
She takes two fumbling steps in my direction and then stops. The athame begins to pull her away in a different direction. She wanders with it, mewling. She struggles to let go of the handle, but can't. The other members begin to gasp, mumble, titter nervously, make sounds of surprise and disbelief.
I turn to Jenks. I feel the first real smile of the evening crawl across my face.
I reach out and grip his wrist hard enough to make him drop the flashlight.
"Hey!" he cries.
It rolls at my feet and I kick it aside, the beam illuminating nothing now.
"Hey…my wrist…stop-"
I grip tighter. I pull him closer, the night sky playing in his moist eyes. "You really know how to steal the last remnant of a man's self-respect, don't you, Jenks?"
"What? It's dark, I can't-"
"You think I don't need that last bit of honor? That last piece of my own sense of self-worth? You think I'll turn that over to you without a fight?"
"Hey, man, don't-"
"I didn't give it to Baphomet. I didn't give it to my father. I didn't give it to Ricky. You really believe I'll hand it over to a piece of wet shit like you?"
"Hey, man, hey! Hey!"
The bones in his wrist grind together and he tries to shriek, but the agony steals his air.
"You think I don't have repressions and pressures building up inside of me. You think I don't have violent fantasies just looking for a way out of my head? What am I, just a clown out here in the moonlight? No. No. I am rage."
Kip begins to shout. "I call forth Bathal, Bathei, Bathezel, Bathezuwen," he says. "I ask for my familiars Three-Together-in-the-Blind-Eye, Hildegrance, and Winter's Leg to come to me now and guide these blessed magicks. Where there is abomination, there is integrity set against it. Where there is devilment, there is dignity to balance it. Where I am lacking, there is redemption. Where there is sin, there is confession. My misdeeds are countered with my repentance."
I let Jenks go and he draws away, unable to rub his wrist. "You broke it," he whines. "I'm going to hurt you now. I'm going to hurt you bad." He smiles, trying to hang on to his dwindling cool. "You bastard-"
"Keep grinning, Jenks. That's right, just like that."
I grip his chin tightly in my left hand, pressing hard into the nerve ganglia under his ear with my right so that his jaw pops open. I reached into his mouth. He struggles for a moment and I kick his feet out from under him. I keep hold of his jaw on the way down. I find the razor he keeps stashed between his gum and his cheek, the one he said he could slip out any time and slice somebody. It's a nice move if you practiced it. I'd seen guys go down with cut throats on the yard. Their jugular veins leaking, an eye taken out, or their faces marred forever by jagged gutters.
Mercy had been right. Blood sacrifices might be in order.
I gash him high on forehead with the razor and blood pours into his eyes. He doesn't feel any pain yet and just says, "What…? What are you doing to me?" Then I slice again in the same place, right at the base of his hairline. The flesh parts like muslin cloth. I grab hold of his hair and wrench it. His scalp starts to come off.