A Matter of Forever (11 page)

“Well now,” the Jens/Enlilkian monster says, “look at who has come to join us today.”

The chair slams down; I topple out of it onto the gravel below. Blood beads up through scrapes on my palms and knees, but I scramble against the tiny rocks to try to get on my feet anyway. I cannot let him control me with pain today.

“Hello, little Creator. It’s time to play.” When I tell him he can go do that with himself, he merely clucks in disappointment. “Despite your disobedience, I have a gift for you today.”

I refuse to wince at the pain that comes from standing. I also resist the urge to tell him exactly where he can shove said gift. “Hello, Enlilkian.”

He claps his hands again; white flakes go flying in the breeze. “Aren’t you the clever little thing after all. I was worried, frankly. I feared you might be a stupid sow, but it appears you do have some cunning I can work with.”

Fantastic. I’ve impressed the serial killer. I shift a step toward him. When one of my bloody knees buckles slightly I wish, oh I wish I could just make myself a brace, but I’m afraid to show this bastard any sign of weakness. But if I could get close enough, even to just touch the hem of his sleeve, this all could be over in a matter of seconds.

“Cities are interesting creatures,” he muses, countering me with a step backward of his own. “In so many regards, they are the epitome of advancement. And yet, they are also the death of the natural world.” He smiles at me, oily and unnerving. “Look at how nature fights back. Taking over the perverted, one small flower at a time.”

Ha. It’s more like a Nymph lives in this building and these are his or her plants.

Jens is looking significantly worse off than the last time I saw him. His skin is grayer, softer and yet flakier at the same time. Small bits of skin snow with every movement. His hair, once so white it gleamed, is dull and patchy. The gums in his mouth have receded dramatically, leaving yellowed teeth that resemble weathered tombstones.

Oh Jens, I think sadly. How long have you been dead? How long has this monster been inside your body?

“I lived in a tree once.” Enlilkian’s all congeniality in this moment. “It was a large tree with a trunk wider than a river. It reached into the very heavens, it was so magnificent. I was able to survey my domain with ease.” His eyes, beetle black and lifeless just moments before, flare with hatred. “It was destroyed by those not worthy to touch its bark, little Creator.” A thin finger juts out towards Karnach in the distance. “The last pieces I can find of it lie in that building there.”

Is this part of whatever game he thinks we’re playing? “Are you challenging me to find it?”

He slides a small smile my way. “Aren’t you curious about your gift?”

A quick glance behind him shows my father’s head lolling back and forth like a doll’s; blood dribbles from his ear and mouth. My stomach churns. Is he even conscious? “The only gift I want is for you to let my father go.”

This amuses Enlilkian. “Be careful what you ask for. You might just get it.”

Our dance continues: one step forward for me, one backward for him.

A low roar fills the air around us, winds whipping the leaves on the trees into a frenzy. Black dust clouds blanket the sky garden, blinding me. I lunge forward, desperate to grab him in this sudden storm, but within an instant, I’m flying through the air, landing hard on my ass, the wind knocked clean out of me.

Dreads seeps through my bones as I wonder:
can he control the elements, too?

The air clears instantaneously; Enlilkian is only a few feet away. “You will move when I tell you to do so.” The black in his eyes eats away the remaining white. “That is, if you want those that you love to live out the next hour.”

My father and I are not close. Not by a long shot. Hell, we haven’t even spoken in over a year. But I cannot let him suffer in my name. I just can’t.

“I went to some trouble to obtain you this gift,” Enlilkian is saying, and I can’t help but stare as the white slowly emerges in his eyes once more. “You would do well to be more appreciative. Children?”

Oh gods. Earle, Nivedita, and Harou all snap to attention. They are Guards that, ironically, Jens had accused me of murdering and now that I am closer to them and take in their haggard, gray countenances, I can’t help but wonder if this is the truth. Because they are in just as bad a shape as Jens is. Which means ... oh gods. They’re dead, too. Possessed. He called them children.

Fear seizes up my nerves. Shit. This just got a thousand times worse.

Harou shakes my father until his head lolls backward. Dilated, glassy eyes stare up into the sky. But that’s not the worse thing of all—no, his shirt is soaked brick red near his kidneys.

“You have angered me with your insubordination, little Creator. With the disgusting things you are doing with one beneath you.”

He’s insane. What is he even talking about? I force the words out, even though they are barely voiced. “What disobedience?”

He always stays just out of grasp, far enough away that I would have to take several steps to even hope to hook a single thread of his clothes. “You and that aberration broke the bond I created for us, and that just won’t do. You sully yourself by continuing to consort with abominations.”

I stare at Jens’ body; gods, it’s rotting in slow motion. I never liked the man. In fact, I’d go as far as saying I’d loathed him. He’d been a thorn in my side, had accused me of ugly, unthinkable things, and yet ... I’d never wish this on him.

I’d never wish this on my worst enemy.

I clear my throat. Lick my lips. Calculate the feet between us. “What are you talking about? What bond?”

His head tilts to the side; there is a patch missing just under his right ear. It reminds me of a zombie television show Will likes to watch so much, where the bodies are disintegrating right before the viewers’ eyes. “The one that would have made things much easier on you during our journey.”

Is he talking about being in my head? “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Yes,” he agrees quietly, “I think in the end, you most certainly will be.”

My heart splutters uncontrollably. Desperate, I muster the atoms around to grab at the chair he made earlier and hurl it; if only I could distract him, knock him closer to me, just to get a single damn finger on him so that this would all be over with.

But the chair disappears without a sound.

He tsk-tsks. “Just look at you, little Creator. How the mighty have fallen. You are really nothing more than a pathetic little sow, aren’t you?”

A rock forms behind him; mere centimeters from his head, it explodes into thousands of tiny shavings that transform into harmless glitter.

“I thought perhaps you would be a worthy opponent ripe for what needs to be done. Except ...” He shakes his head slowly. “You are weak, little Creator.”

A sword forms, races for his heart, but it’s gone in a burst of sparks, too.

“Now you’re just embarrassing yourself. I am the Alpha. The Omega. The beginning. Beauty, and life, and death all at once. If you think your little efforts can dispatch me so easily, I beg you to reconsider. If my whelp couldn’t best me, a weakling like you has no chance. It’s going to take me ages to condition you, isn’t it?”

One of my mini-suns forms in my bloody hand, but before I can throw it, it explodes, sending me down onto the ground once more.

Laughter swirls around me “This is what the worlds have come to: a Creator who is nothing more than an embarrassment.”

Flashing light—not the good kind, but the hazy, blinding kind—fill my vision. Agony twists through my palm, racing up through my veins.

“Fear not, though, little Creator. I have ways to fix your deficiencies. It will just take us a little longer than I initially expected.”

I literally have to swallow the bile back that rushes into my mouth. Jesus. I can’t move my hand. I don’t even know if I still have a hand.

A soft cry sounds nearby. It’s my father, I think. I blink blink blink but I cannot focus in on him. Words, thick and sticky, fall out of me. “Leave him alone.”

“You and I,” Enlilkian says, “will remake the worlds into what they should be.”

A shudder rolls through my body. I need ... I need to—

Something sharp cracks against my head, sending me sprawling again. Gravel tears across my cheek and all those lights threaten to wink out and turn black.

Get up, I think to myself. Get—

Something strikes me again, this time against my spine. A loud cracking sound fills my ears. Somebody is screaming bloody murder.

I fear somebody might be me.

The gravel around my face spins. I think ... is he squatting down next to me? I snake a hand out, grope frantically, only to find laughter instead. “Be a good girl and hush. You need to listen carefully to me.”

“Let him go.” Invisible hands strangle my throat, making the words difficult to pass through. “Please. Let ... my ... dad ...
go
.”

Something is said in a language I can’t understand. Without warning, my scalp burns as somebody grabs me by the hair and hauls me up until I dangle by my toes. I thrash like a fish out of water, arms swinging in hopes of touching something, anything, but my back spasms until I scream.

One thought filters through this agony:
I will kill them all, even if it kills me.

“Is that what you want? What you really, really want?” Enlilkian is saying somewhere nearby.

A chunk of hair is ripped clean off my head as I thrash about.

“Then that will be your gift today instead, little Creator. We’ll wait until later for the other.”

I blink frantically and just when my vision finally clears enough for me to make out what’s happening, Harou and Earle are dragging my father toward Enlilkian.

NO. NO. NO.

I’m screaming and things are exploding around me but it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, because my father’s face is cupped between Enlilkian’s hands.

“When you obliterated Cailleache, you made a crucial error,” Enlilkian is saying. He’s smiling, just ...
smiling
. “You didn’t take from her. What a mistake. Think what you could have been, with her essences mixing with yours? To destroy a sentient being, to
truly
destroy them, they must become a part of you. Mercy is weakness. But to take what makes them
them
? That is true power.”

My father groans faintly. Weak hands bat at Enlilkian’s rotting ones.
“The key,” the first Creator tells me as more hair yanks away from my head in my efforts to free myself, “is to strip them from the inside out.”

The high-pitched noise I’d last heard in the restaurant bathroom fills the air around us. It hums and builds until every molecule of my body is vibrating. My father is crying horrible, keening wails that shatter me in until I match him sound for sound.

Oh my gods. He’s dying, he’s dying, and it’s because of me.

Blood gushes out of my father’s nose, out of his eyes and ears. He keeps keening until it transforms into gurgling. And then Enlikian punches a hand into my father’s chest and all our screams turn rabid.

Just when I think I’ll literally go insane from the awfulness, my father falls silent, head bobbing back, eyes glassy and flat.

I ... I ...

Enlilkian leans over what is left of Noel Lilywhite and runs his graying tongue from the base of my father’s neck to the forehead hairline. I throw up right then and there, all over myself. My father is dead. He killed my father.

The thing in Earle says, “Her absence has been noted.”

My father’s body hits the ground like an unwanted bag of trash. “How many?”

So much fight clamors in me, yet all that seems to want to escape are sobs.

Earle’s head cocks to the side. “One from the building she came from. No—four.” He turns toward another direction, sniffing the air. “One coming on the ground; I believe several follow at a distance.”

Enlilkian’s growl withers the plants around us. “Is it one of aberrations?”

Earle says, “Yes—both the one on the ground, and the one across the way.”

“Extraction will be difficult at this point.” The Harou Elder’s voice is brittle. “They will surely counter us.”

Enlilkian hisses, “Rudshivar and his abominations.” His eyes follow the ledge toward the ground below. “That one is causing too many problems already.” He swings around to look at the horizon. “You have all failed in your efforts to take care of this problem. I’ll deal with it personally today.”

Something dribbles out of my mouth. I think it’s blood. “I’ll ... kill ... you.”

He turns back toward me. I attempt a swing, but too much darkness is encroaching on me. “You can try.” I must surely be hallucinating, because he swipes a finger quickly across my chest and my words, and my words fail me before his touch leaves. “In fact, I’d enjoy that very much.”

It’s vomit. He ... my vomit is on his finger. He’s licking my vomit right off his finger. Fresh gagging spasms set off in my stomach and throat.

“Two minutes, Father,” Nivedita is saying.

Somebody is yelling my name. Somebody I love. More than one somebody. My name, my name, oh please, go back the other way—

A roar leaves my ears ringing. That sound, that awful, awful sound that just destroyed my father fills my head until I am nothing but pain and my name is being called and I’m shattering into too many pieces to count.