“Come to us, Erik,” Rena said.
“The little brygorwreccan.”
Their young faces beamed, the stare of their eyes sinking into his head like daggers, like cnifs.
“Come to us.”
Erik stepped forward. The shotgun was charged, but he scarcely even felt it now. It felt like something he was holding in a dream.
“Let us give you fulluht. Let us make you holy again.”
Kill them, he commanded himself. He tried to aim the gun, but his arms barely moved.
“The doefolmon is coming.”
“The Fulluht-Loc.”
“You’ve come back to be with us. We welcome you, Erik. We will take you back into the cirice.”
No, pounded the thought like hammer to stone. I’ll kill myself first.
He would, he knew he would. Anything to be free of them. They were so strong against his will, much stronger than before.
They began to come forward. Wendlyn outstretched her hand, smiling softly. Rena came up behind her.
Kill them, he demanded of himself. Kill them before they—
“Little peow. Kneel—”
—change, he thought.
Erik squeezed his eyes shut. His mind felt released from a fetter. His forearms shot up, brought the shotgun to bear.
“No!” Rena shrieked.
His finger contracted. The shotgun jumped behind a great flash and concussion: ba-BAM!
The round socked a hole into Wendlyn’s throat. Blood flew out of her like thin, flailing tentacles. Rena, screaming, flew at him with a small glinting æsc.
He racked another round and fired. The hand holding the spike flew off the end of her arm. He cycled the shotgun once more, raised it to her face.
Her face…
His teeth clacked shut.
The third round of 12-gauge exploded in her face. Her head blew apart in wheeling, wet chunks.
Gunsmoke shifted up like a ghost. It tinged in his nostrils. Before they change, his thoughts continued to tick. His face felt like a flat plate of stone when he looked down at the two naked forms. Their dark blood pumped slowly into the soil.
The part of his mind that still belonged to this world told him, You just killed two kids.
“No, I didn’t,” he answered himself in voice. “I just killed two monsters.”
He racked another round into the chamber and stalked off back into the darkening forest.
—
Chapter 28
Sooer, dooer, the dark voice groped. The black words seemed to drag her down, deeper, deeper into the strange, chanting labyrinth of the dream.
Ann awoke in the terrible crimson vertigo, the knife—
slup-slup-slup
—sinking to its guard into her abdomen.
Slup-slup-slup, she heard, wincing. She brought a hand to her flat, sweat-moistened belly. She was naked in bed, drenched. The room was empty. She gasped when she saw the clock: 8:12 p.m. She’d slept the entire day away, and well into evening.
She showered in a cold torrent, hoping the spray of water would revive her. She felt terrible, as if hung over or drugged. She shivered as she washed herself, her hand guiding the bar of soap felt like someone else’s hand, like the fluttering hands of the nightmare, roving her, stroking her stretched belly.
God, was all she could think. She felt haunted; she didn’t even feel real. Each movement as she dressed prodded the worst headache of her life. What was wrong with her? Something was terribly wrong; she could feel it. Something wrong with…everything.
She must be sick—that was it. She must be coming down with flu; that’s why she’d slept so late. She went downstairs for some juice and heard car doors closing.
Ann peeked out the sidelight sash of the front door. Her mother’s Fleetwood was backing out the drive. It looked like there were several people in it.
She frowned. The car drove off. Dusk was settling. A bright, pinkened moon peered over the horizon. It was full.
Something shattered. Upstairs.
Ann spun around. She raced up the staircase. Something else shattered. It sounded like glass breaking.
The heart monitor’s beep down the hall sounded slow, irregular. Ann’s breath lodged in her chest when she spun into her father’s room. Saline bottles lay shattered around the outer rim of the throw rug. The wheeled stands lay toppled over. Ann’s vision rooted to the bed.
Her father lay sprawled, half over the convalescent rail. Blood dripped out of his arm from where the IV needles had torn out. He was convulsing, his mouth locked open. His eyes bulged as if lidless. Ann could only stare. His right arm, tremoring, began to lift. The crabbed hand unfurled.
His mouth jittered but no sound came out. He was pointing at her.
“Oh, Jesus… Dad…”
His hand fell to the bed. The slow beep-beep-beep of the Lifepak monitor stopped—
—then flat-lined.
He’d been leaning over for something. Ann’s wide gaze slowly lowered. The nightstand, she saw. The antique, enameled nightstand seemed to have something on the side facing the bed.
Writing? she thought. It looked like writing.
She cast it aside. She quickly dragged him over, leaned down. She attempted CPR as she best knew how. Each downward push against his frail chest pumped a little more blood from the torn IV hole at the inside of his elbow. She craned his head back, pinched shut his nostrils, and blew.
Nothing.
The flat line droned on.
He’s dead, she realized.
Her downward stare seemed drawn by something. She stared at the side of the drawered nightstand.
Her father had written something on it. He’d used his own blood:
Doefolmon
Leave Melanie, Martin, Everything.
Get out while you still can.
«« — »»
“The Ardat-Lil was a succubus,” Professor Fredrick explained. “Or I should say, the supreme succubus, the first lady of hell.”
“Succubus,” Dr. Harold repeated the word.
“A female sex-demon. Many variations exist throughout world mythology, and it’s interesting how many ancient religious modes reflect a reverence to identical gods and anti-gods. The Ardat-Lil is no exception. The Scottish Bheur, the German Brechta, the Scandinavian Agaberte, the Teutonic Alrune, the Egyptian Aldinoch—they’re all names for the same thing. They’re all the Ardat-Lil.”
Succubus, Dr. Harold thought. The word even sounded evil. It seemed to walk across his groin like a tarantula.
Professor Fredrick lit a pipe with a face on it, puffing sweet smoke into the air. “The Ardat-Lil has a very racy history. The Ur-locs believed that when the earth was made, half of heaven’s angels were banished. Sound familiar? On the first day of his banishment, Lucifer decided to take a stroll around the earth, which he found, to his complete dissatisfaction, to be inhabited by peace-loving humans who were completely bereft of sin. They all rejected him immediately, and Lucifer, mind you, doesn’t take kindly to rejection. Therefore, he decided to corrupt the human race, by tricking them into turning away from God. This may sound familiar too. Anyway, Lucifer searched for the most beautiful virgin in the world and after six days he found her—a young woman named Ardat. Lucifer promised to make her his queen if she turned away from God, and Ardat, as you’ve probably already guessed, agreed. They sealed the agreement by having intercourse. Ardat became pregnant, and after only six days, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. This baby eventually bloomed into a woman even more beautiful than her mother, so beautiful that Lucifer deemed any name unworthy of her beauty. She was known simply as the Daughter.”