I opened my eyes just in time to see Baalth wave his hand, tracers of magic at his fingertips. Then we were gone.
Chapter Eight
Dumped unceremoniously into my living room by Baalth, the short fall to the floor jarred some sense loose. My eyes rolled around in the sockets for a few seconds and then settled. While things were a little blurry about the edges, my vision was clearing. Karra helped me onto the couch and I heard Chatterbox clucking away across the room.
“Are you okay?” Karra asked.
My head pounded like it was a kick drum for the band Deicide, and my chest felt as if I’d played chicken with a nuke and lost, but it wasn’t too bad. I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, but I didn’t want to look at them. They’d heal soon enough, but I wasn’t up for watching it happen.
I shook my head. “Yeah.”
Karra apparently took my indecision as the former. She disappeared from my side as my eyes focused slowly on the porn Chatterbox was watching on the big screen. I looked away when I could see it clearly, my stomach roiling at the sight. All I could picture was my mother. Lucifer had stolen her from my father, and she’d been killed for it. To top it all off, I’d been used to slay Arol for Lucifer’s lust, pure and simple. I was nothing more than a pawn; a pawn and a murderer. I could add patricide to my resume of fuck ups.
My screamed protestations played on inside my head.
My father is dead.
Azrael’s words came back to me: Of all the lies you’ve swallowed, like the lonely whore desperate to find love in a mouthful of bitter seed, that’s the greatest of them.
The uncertainty spewed from me. I crumpled over and puked, the lies of my life spraying warm and wet across the carpet. On my knees, I hovered weakly over my vomit. My body shook violently as I puked again and again and again, my throat shredded in its vehemence. Red streaks of blood lent color to the whitish bile as I coughed up chunks of phlegm.
Karra returned and pulled me onto the couch, pressing a smooth glass vial against my lips before I could protest. I tasted the bitter fluid of Lucifer’s blood and went to spit it out, but she pressed my mouth shut. The healing power of the claret went to work without me needing to swallow. I wanted to scream, to kick, to rage against the essence she’d made me consume, but I couldn’t find it in me to be angry at her. She’d done nothing but what she felt was right. I couldn’t hold that against her.
As the blood went to work, I sunk down into the couch with a ragged sigh. Karra settled beside me, her hand caressing my cheek as she whispered her love in my ear. Her words couldn’t chase away the pain of what I’d learned, but her touch and soft kisses were enough to soften the edges just enough so I didn’t snap…again. Unable to hold it in any longer, I fell into her arms and wept.
I don’t know how long I stayed there, my breath coming in roughened gasps, but Karra held me close the entire time. After what seemed like forever, my tears had started to run their course, the sterile sense of realism and cynicism, which had abandoned me, crept back, encasing the wounds in its empty anesthetic.
“ Fffurrrriiiieeeeessss! ”
Chatterbox’s voice broke through my misery. Karra hopped to her feet. Alone on the couch, I looked up through wet eyes to see her in a fighting posture, staring at the front door. A dozen or more growls erupted around the house and I wondered what had set the dread fiends off when I suddenly remembered having ordered them to silence. They spilled out of the spare bedroom without a sound and into the hallway just as the front door was torn from its hinges. Through it came a band of werewolves, all gnashing teeth and slashing claws. Their growls and howls made my ears ring.
Glass shattered behind us as more of the werewolves burst through the windows. Chatterbox threw himself forward and rolled off the table to hide. Just as I hopped to my feet, the forty dread fiends crashed into the line of weres before they’d gotten more than ten feet into the house. The looks on the werewolves’ faces were priceless. Surprise!
The fiends tore into them without mercy. Karra and I stood back and watched as the werewolves went down in a whimpering heap of bloody and savaged fur. Several of them scrambled to escape but the fiends were having none of that. Arms and legs were ripped free and flung about the living room, decorating my house in shades of red and brown. Judging by the smell, there was some shit mixed into the whole concoction of carnage.
Before I could even think to call the fiends to heel, they had slaughtered all of the werewolves. Mangled bodies were littered around my living room, my kitchen, and dining room. There was more red on the walls than there was white. Everything was coated in a layer of werewolf gut juice.
“Put the door back in place,” I yelled to one of the fiends. It complied immediately, snatching up the door and holding it inside the broken frame to keep it there. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d do to block people’s view from the outside. “Clean this up,” I told the rest. I didn’t have to tell them to do it quickly, as that was implied in the tone of my voice. While the fiends weren’t anything resembling smart, they were well trained.
I ran to the windows and yanked the curtains closed. Peering out between them, I didn’t see anything to make me think the attack had been witnessed; not that there were a whole bunch of folks still living in my neighborhood. After all the weirdness around my house, the storms created by the Tree of Life were the last straw for most of the people. A whole bunch of them up and moved away, abandoning their homes to never come back. I imagine some of them had gotten caught up in the deadly fall and were killed, but regardless, the nearby population had dwindled in just the last few days. While that was good in a sense, it made it real easy to pin the tail on the paranormal jackass when shit like this went down. Hoping I’d gotten away without being noticed this time, I went back over to watch what Karra was doing.
She lifted one of the werewolf heads and set it on the table where Chatterbox had been just a minute before. The zombie head peeked up from his shelter underneath and gave a crooked smile, not that he could give any other kind. It took me a second to figure out what Karra was doing, staring into the dead wolf’s eyes, but I got it. Unlike me, she didn’t need a living body to interrogate.
After a moment, the wolf’s eyelids fluttered and its eyes filled with reddened life. Its gaze swung around and found Karra’s as it licked its lip, its blackened tongue lolling between its shattered teeth.
“ Mmaasssstttteeeerrrr,” it said in a roughened imitation of Chatterbox’s dragged-out enunciation.
“Why are you here?” Karra asked it.
Despite spending a bunch of time with Chatterbox, and having seen Karra’s powers in action, it was weird watching her carry on a discussion with a dead werewolf.
“ Ttriigggaallltthherrronn.”
What a surprise. Not in the mood for Captain Obvious’ charade, I stormed over and grabbed the werewolf head by its scruff. “No shit, Sherlock, now tell me why you want me.”
Karra must have commanded it to answer because it did without hesitation.
“ Rreeevveeenngge.”
I flung the head into the dining room for the fiends to collect and dropped back onto the couch. The cushions squished. The rutting sounds of Chatterbox’s porn hit me right then and I mashed the remote to shut the TV off.
“Looks like the weres are pissed at me for ruining their attempt at becoming the dominant life forms on the planet.” I let my head fall back into the cushions and ignored the clinging moistness that stuck warmly to my scalp. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Karra gave me a pity smile, and I peeled myself off the couch and went to the kitchen. I pulled the last of my beers from the fridge and returned to the living room. After Karra waved off my offer of the beer, I popped it open and took a big swig and went to the front door to see if it could be fixed or it needed to be replaced. I ordered the fiend out of the way and it stepped aside, carrying the door with it.