“Or, you’d be worm meat in a box.”
One of the security guards chose that moment to go for his gun. He was to my right and probably thought he had a reach chance.
I pivoted and shot him in the chest. I don’t care how big your pecs are or how much Dianabol you take, a nine millimeter slug is going to punch your ticket. The round went in beside his sternum and punched its way out through a shoulder bone, taking pieces of his heart with it. Blood sprayed some of the gathered men.
The guard dropped right there and then.
The crowd looked down at the blood on their clothes and skin, and immediately began rubbing at it. I thought they were freaking out and trying to rub it off. But that wasn’t it. They were smearing it into their skin, smiling as they did so, laughing as if they were in ecstasy.
The rest of the crowd…cheered.
The second guard was also cheering as he pulled his gun. He was standing five feet from Bambi, and I swung around and put one into his chest and a second through the bridge of his nose. The back of his head exploded, splattering the girl and the golden statue with brain tissue and blood.
The crowd began yelling, laughing, applauding.
I turned back to White-hair, who was clapping his hands together with slow irony.
Around us the cheers were turning into a new chant of Moloch…Moloch.
White-hair said, “Do you have any idea what’s happening here? Do you have any idea what you’ve stepped into? What you’ve interrupted?”
“Some,” I said. “Bunch of dickheads making human sacrifices to an ancient god in the hopes of getting some divine assistance with your stock portfolios.”
He beamed at me. “That’s wonderful. Oversimplified and a little naïve, but wonderful.”
“So, fill in the blanks,” I suggested.
“Why? Are you hoping to join us?”
“I don’t know. Let me hear the recruitment speech.”
He spread his arms and turned toward the golden statue. “You said it, friend. We’re praying to the god Moloch. We sacrifice to him as man was instructed to do — a sacrifice of the children, made in blood and flesh and flame. In return he guides us and protects us and fills our pockets with gold.”
“Uh huh. Tell me, sport,” I said, “how many of those sacrifices are your own kids?”
He snorted. “Our own? Do we look crazy?”
“Pretty much.”
He glanced around. “Okay, sure, in the moment, but you came in at the wrong part of the show. If you’d been a little patient you’d have seen the main attraction.”
“Which is what, you going all Hannibal Lecter on a teenager girl who can’t defend herself? Excuse me but that’s hardly a—”
“No,” he said. “The life or death of that worthless slut is nothing. You’re a man, you should understand that. She’s a cow, a piece of meat. If you’re here looking for her then you must know her history. A whore and a junkie whose life would never have mattered. If we hadn’t given her the chance to matter, then she’d have wound up in a crack house giving two dollar blow jobs while marking time until disease and a cirrhotic liver took her down to the hell that is surely waiting for her.”
“Oh, right, and you guys are the Salvation Army. Skinning her alive is the best way to save her soul.”
“Her soul doesn’t matter,” he said, his smile flickering a bit. “She is a means to an end. Our god is appeased only through the offering of living flesh, and the only flesh that matters is that of the young. That is the pathway to glory. It is through such offerings that every man here — every devout believer in the majesty of Moloch — has become wealthy beyond his dreams.” He scowled at me for a moment and shook his head. “You probably can’t grasp this. You put on an expensive shirt and think that’s going to make you look rich? You stink of poverty, of cheapness, of weakness, so this might all be beyond you.”
“Maybe not.”
He gave another shrug. “But we were all born to money. We deserve the good things we have. It’s in our blood, in our breeding. We are the elite of this world.”
The men all applauded this. Some of them gave each other high-fives.
“It is our right to take what we want,” White-hair continued.
“Even if it means killing the innocent?”
He spat on the floor between us. “Innocent? That’s a bullshit word and it doesn’t mean a fucking thing. That girl and everyone like her is a parasite. It’s because of people like her that our whole country is on the edge of economic collapse. She’s a leech on the system, and who pays for her free food and medical care? Us! The very ones who actually make the money and whose skill and genius made America great in the first place. It’s people like her — and you — who want to take it from us.”
“Seriously,” I said, “you want to turn this into a political rant? Now? With a gun in your face and your guards’ brains on your shoes? That’s where you’re going with this?”
He stopped and cocked his head as if listening to a replay of his own words. Then he sighed.
“Sorry,” he said. “I got caught up in the moment.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Where were we?”
“The girl. You were about to come to your fucking senses and let her go.”
“Ah,” he said, gesturing to a small table near the golden statue on which were various knives and scalpels. “No. I think I was going to invite you to watch our god accept the sacrifice of flesh and blood.”
“I’m pretty sure we weren’t going there.”
Behind me fists began pounding on the door. They must have broken through into the hall downstairs. My time was up. His eyes flicked to the door and back to me, and his smile returned, brighter and broader than ever.
“Playtime’s over,” he said.
I shifted around to stand between Bambi and the crowd. White-hair turned with me, so I edged closer to him so he could get a better look at the barrel of my gun.
“You’re right,” I said. “We’re done fucking around. I want you and all of your asshole buddies down on the floor, hands behind your heads, fingers laced. Last man done gets a bullet in the head.”
Nobody moved. All the chanting died away and the room fell into silence except for the fists pounding on the door.
Bambi stirred and moaned.
White-hair smiled.
Behind me, Bambi suddenly screamed.
I whirled, bringing the gun up, expecting to see a guard or one of the men trying something fancy, maybe sneaking up behind me.
I wish that’s what it was.
But it wasn’t.
When I’d shot the second guard his blood had splattered all over the statue. As I turned I saw that almost all of it was gone.
It hadn’t dripped or rolled off.
As I watched in absolutely stunned horror I saw the blood vanish as if it were being absorbed, pulled into the skin of the golden statue. Bambi screamed and screamed. Not because the blood was vanishing…but because the statue was moving.
Moving.
Moloch, the bull-headed god.
Moving.
Flexing its massive limbs, muscles rippling beneath a skin that glistened like polished gold but which was becoming real, tangible flesh. Still golden, but pulsing with life. Wherever the blood had touched it, the statue’s surface became alive.
Behind me I heard White-hair say, “Behold the glory of Moloch. Behold the demon-god made flesh through a sacrifice of blood. Behold your death.”
Bambi screamed and screamed.
And I screamed, too.
My mind reeled just as my feet staggered backward. This was impossible. This wasn’t some fucked up frat stunt…these men had actually conjured a monster, a demon, from the darkness of the ancient world. It was real.
It was real.