Her hand moved from his cheek to his neck, encircled it.
She applied pressure.
His eyes bugged out and he couldn’t breathe.
Then she released him and smiled again. “No. That would be too easy. I want you around to see everyone and everything you care about go down in flames.”
Trey touched his tender throat and smiled weakly. “Okay. But I’m right. I know I am.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. And Satan? Please. Just an idea. And I was a player long before it was even conceived. And goddess or not, I am immortal. Perpetual. I’ll survive the end of the world. Doesn’t that make you feel small?”
Trey didn’t have an answer for that.
Myra smiled. “Not that it matters. I’m almost done with you anyway. With both of you.”
“What does that mean?”
She touched a hand to his forehead. He felt her invading his mind again.
She said, “Forget.”
There was a fuzzy moment. Trey shook his head and looked up at her. “What…”
He frowned.
Something had happened, but he couldn’t remember what it was. It was probably just another symptom of his exhaustion.
“I’m back!” Jolene threw an arm around Myra and laid a loud, wet smack on her cheek. “Did you miss me?”
Myra smiled. “Of course.”
Jolene had returned with a largish Tupperware container. Trey frowned at the dark shape visible through its opaque side.
It was…moving.
Jolene caught his puzzled look and cackled. “Oh! That’s right. You don’t know about your daddy yet. Check this shit out, boy.”
She disengaged herself from Myra and peeled back the container’s purple top. Trey peeked inside and let out a gasp.
“Holy…”
His head swam.
He thought he might faint.
“That…it’s not…it can’t…”
Jolene loosed another burst of mad laughter. “That’s what I thought, baby, but I was fuckin’ wrong. Myra did it for me. A special gift.” She beamed at Myra. The girl’s eyes shone with amusement. “And I fetched him now ’cause I figured out what I want to do with him.” She giggled. “You’re gonna love this shit. It’s perfect.”
She hurried across the kitchen and popped the open container in the microwave. A series of beeps followed as she set the timer, followed by the hum of the machine working. Several seconds later there was a loud PLOP! And something wet splashed against the microwave’s little window.
There was a good deal of feminine laughter then.
Trey shoved himself away from the kitchen table, put his head between his knees, and heaved.
This elicited more laughter.
And then he did faint.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The first thing Jordan thought as she began to wake up was that she was hungover. Her mouth was dry. She felt thickheaded, engulfed in a mental fuzz obscuring memories of the night before. An ache throbbed somewhere behind her eyes. Her stomach fluttered. A taste of bile at the back of her throat hinted at a big meal her digestive system wanted no part of, probably something fried and drowned in grease.
Must have really tied one on.
She’d probably gone out to the Grill again. Their whole menu was chock-full of things the food nazis would scream about. Loaded with fat and deep fried to hell and back. She had to stop eating there. Had to change her habits while she was still young and thin. And…
Wait.
She still wasn’t fully awake. But she was close enough now to find certain things curious, verging on alarming. She became aware of various aches throughout her body. Then she felt the hardness beneath her. She wasn’t in a bed. She stretched and groaned. Her foot kicked something hard that skittered away. Maybe she’d crashed for the night on the floor for some reason. Too drunk to make it the bed or sofa, maybe. She rolled onto her back and groaned again. A frown twitched at the corners of her mouth.
Something about the hardness beneath her felt…wrong.
It was too…lumpy.
And now she felt something else. A sweet, mellow warmth on her face. It felt nice. Familiar. She knew what it felt like, but it wasn’t something she should feel crashed out on the floor of her apartment. And yet the warmth on her face felt like sunshine. Couldn’t be. Like many people her age, she liked to have a few drinks, maybe even get pretty tipsy, but she’d never been the type to get completely hammered and pass out outdoors.
Then she felt something wet and rough on her face.
She flinched away from it.
What the hell?
She felt it again. What could that possibly be?
Then it hit her.
Something’s licking me!
Her eyes snapped open.
The big dog’s lolling tongue lapped at her face again.
Jordan screamed.
She sat up and scooted away from the golden retriever. It sat on its haunches and grinned at her in its simple doggy way. The dog had company. A loose circle of animals surrounded her, all of them staring at her. A German shepherd sniffed at her feet. A squirrel sat on its hind legs and chittered at her. A big gray tomcat approached her from the right and nuzzled her hand. And there were more of them. Cats and dogs. A rabbit. A skunk. A row of gleaming blackbirds peered down at her from a telephone wire. Jordan scanned their faces and tried to tell herself this was just coincidence, all these creatures gathered around her like this. Christ, it was like being surrounded by Lamia’s minions again.
Jordan’s eyes went wide.
Fuck.
It all came back then, all the madness of the night before. The tortures she’d been forced to endure. The depravity. The cannibalism. She’d eaten bits of her next-door neighbor. Her stomach fluttered again and she thought she would be sick. But then she remembered how it had all changed, how the tables had turned. How powerful she’d felt while killing Angela. That unnatural energy thrumming within her as she ripped the bigger girl apart with the knife. And then there was the matter of Bridget’s crazy claims about her true nature. About her true mother.
Lamia.
She shook her head as the memories unspooled like a forgotten reel from a long-lost film. “No. No way. Nonononononono. A lie. A big fucking lie. All of it.”
But it wasn’t.
In her heart, she knew it was all true.
And now she remembered the rest of it. How she’d left Todd’s apartment in search of her mother, with no destination in mind. On foot. Hunting by instinct. She had walked the streets of Rockville for hours, that unnatural energy awake and alive within her the whole time, steering her relentlessly toward Lamia. She’d felt the connection between them, a sort of spiritual tether that was as real and palpable to her as any physical object. A connection so intense she couldn’t understand how she’d gone her whole life without being aware of it. She walked for miles and miles, the minions accompanying her the whole way, reverted as they were now to an animal form so as not to unduly alarm the clueless citizenry. Her winding path took her out of the upwardly mobile part of town surrounding the Rockville Community College campus to the farthest outskirts of the community until she’d arrived here.
The Zone.
And she remembered how the power had swelled within her as she’d entered the streets of the sprawling old neighborhood. Her flesh tingled. Her whole body felt like a live wire. But it wasn’t a wild energy. She sensed she could focus and control it. Direct it. Shoot bolts of electricity from her fingertips if she wanted. It sounded particularly fanciful, but she’d really believed she could do it. And even now she believed it.
But something had stopped her.
Some…presence.
She shivered as she recalled how it had invaded her mind. She’d felt it initially as a darkness stealing into her mind. A malign tendril slithering into her psyche. This was followed by an overwhelming sensation of cold. Freezing cold in the near-summer heat. And within moments that incredible power had deserted her, and the connection she’d felt with Lamia began to wane. But she soldiered on, continuing for a time in what she felt was the right direction.