Authors: Tim Pratt
That sounded pretty good, so I nodded.
“I can sniff it out for you, little sis.” He tapped his nose. “That’s one of my powers—sensing magic. Hell, half the artifacts in that house are things Dad had me sniff out for him. Sure, he imbued a few things with his own power, but lots of the stuff was enchanted when he got it. Did you find the bell that tells the truth? The oil lamp that plunges everything within half a mile into impenetrable darkness when you light it? Both yard sale finds, believe it or not. Archie used to call me his little truffle-hunting pig.” He paused, a troubled expression crossing his face, then shook his head. “Our dad was kind of an asshole. Let me into the house, Bekah, and I’ll find the vessel easily—it’ll be the strongest scent around.”
“I don’t trust you, though.”
He shrugged. “So? Why should you? Doesn’t the house do what you want? If I misbehave, tell the house to throw me out.” I didn’t wonder until later how he knew the house obeyed me—either he’d been watching me more closely than I realized, or he had other sources of information. Turned out to be the latter.
I was emotionally battered and drunk, so this was not the ideal time to make big decisions. But to get the vessel of power…“You’re not offering to do me a favor. You said there were things you wanted.”
“It’s true. There are. My power…Let me demonstrate. Here, give me the broom.”
“What? I’m not giving you my broom.”
He sighed. “It’s basic telekinesis, sis. You think I couldn’t knock you around with my
own
abilities? Besides, the broom is yours, you haven’t given it to me as a gift or renounced your claim, so its powers won’t do a thing in my hands anyway.”
That was true. I’d forgotten that part, on account of all the bourbon. So I nodded.
He picked up the broom, then tipped his head back, and slid the handle into his mouth. My eyes went wide as first inches, and then feet, of the rough wooden broom handle vanished down his gullet. It was like watching a sword swallower at a carnival, except he didn’t
stop
, just kept pushing the handle down, and then shoving the straw of the broom into his mouth, too. He looked like a cat with the feathers of a bird sticking out of his mouth. A few convulsive swallows later, and the last of the broom vanished between his lips. He took a bow, then opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue like a patient at a mental institution proving they’d swallowed their meds.
“You ate. My broom.” My voice was a lot weaker and confused than I would have liked. “You
ate
it.”
“True, but seriously, don’t worry about it—once you take on our father’s power, you’ll be able to create all the enchanted cleaning supplies you could possibly want. Mops that drip acid, sponges that turn things invisible—think of the possibilities.” He belched mightily, not even bothering to cover his mouth. “Dad always called me a phage. I eat stuff.”
I blinked. “Matter-Eater Lad.”
He beamed. “You got my little joke. Except, I mostly eat magical things, by preference, and when I do…I take on their properties. Observe.”
He waved his hand at the oil barrel where we’d burned the Firstborn’s scraps of disguise, and the barrel went spinning and bouncing across the yard. “See? Now I have the broom’s power, and I didn’t even have to get permission to use it. Your consent is irrelevant when the magic is
inside
me, when I’ve digested it and absorbed it and made it my own.” He glanced around, gestured, and sent a heap of scrap boards flying across the lawn. “This is fun. I was totally lying before—I didn’t have any other telekinetic abilities.”
My head hurt, and I wasn’t even hungover yet. “So. What. What is it you want?”
He snapped his teeth at me again, and I flinched backward. “Only everything. An all-I-can-eat buffet at Chez Grace, with every artifact in the place on the menu. You’re the witch, minus the broom, and I’m going to gobble up your whole gingerbread house. Dad kept me on a strict diet, but now that he’s dead, I eat what I want. And I want lots.”
I shook my head, the facts not quite coalescing in my head. “You want me to trade you…all the magical junk in the house…in exchange for showing me where the vessel is?”
“Close.” He waved his hand again, this time at me.
It was like being hit by a wind full of brick walls. I flew backward across the porch and slammed into the door, hard enough to rattle my bones. I slid down the door, and Ken—the Belly—stalked back up the steps. “No, what I want to do is eat everything in the house, and maybe also the house itself. I’m tempted to just eat the vessel of power, too, but I’m worried the pure magic would be too much for me, like a drunk trying to guzzle down grain alcohol like it’s beer, and dying of alcohol poisoning. So I’m going to trade the vessel to the Firstborn for a favor to be named later. When she called me up and said she needed help, that you’d brought the house to life to fight her, I expected more. You were able to drive her off, so I thought you’d be more formidable—not stinking drunk in the midafternoon. I went to all that trouble: doing recon, hanging around this shitty mountain town for a fortnight, pretending I had an appointment, all that nonsense.” He snarled. “I
hate
having my time wasted.”
I was pretty much doomed, and the house must have known that, because it tried to save me. The door swung inward, and when I sprawled onto one of the countless rugs, the rug slid across the floor, dragging me inside to safety, the door slamming in the Belly’s face and locking itself.
“Little pig, little pig!” he shouted from the other side. “Let me in!”
I stood up, wobbling, trying to think. Run and hide? Call the cops?
The Belly took a bite out of the door. It was like that scene in
The Shining
, Jack Nicholson chopping through the door with an axe, but the Belly was using his
teeth
. They should have been immense fangs, a mouth full of daggers, but they just looked like ordinary teeth, despite the incredible damage they did. The inside of his mouth, though…it had changed. I didn’t see a tongue inside, or a throat. Nothing but impenetrable darkness. Like there was nothing inside him but empty space and black holes.
He bit a gash in the door big enough to fit his hand through, reached in, and tried to twist the doorknob. The knob fought him—good house!—so he just kept gnawing at the door, swallowing splinters of wood, widening the gap.
I thought of the axe, still in the kitchen after my failed attempt to break open the door that led to Grace’s study, and considered grabbing it and burying it in the Belly’s face. But the axe was way the hell in the kitchen, and my fist was numb already because of the watch, and it would be
so
much more satisfying to punch the Belly with my own hand. Feeling in control of myself for the first time all morning, I marched purposefully toward the door just as the Belly ate a hole big enough to squeeze his body through. Either the front door couldn’t self-heal the way the one in the kitchen did, or the Belly had drained its magic by eating it, or something else—magic was still a mystery to me. Either way, he bent his stork-like frame and angled himself through the opening into my living room.
I should have told the house to throw him out. I shouldn’t have let the rage and the visceral desire to knock him down—to knock
someone
down, and here was a worthy candidate—get the better of me. I blame the bourbon, but of course, I’m the one to blame for drinking so much of it.
My punch was not elegant, but it was enthusiastic. I threw it when he was still partway through the door—one foot inside, one outside—too awkwardly positioned to defend himself. I realized even through the haze of bourbon and fury that there was a good chance I’d kill him, with the watch turning my hand to lead. At the last minute I tried to pull the punch, to minimize its power, but it didn’t matter.
The Belly smiled, and then his mouth dropped open, gaping impossibly wide, big enough to swallow a basketball, revealing all that nothingness inside. He moved his head just enough for my fist to smoothly pass between his teeth without touching them. The inside of his mouth was shockingly cold, so cold I could feel it despite what I’d assumed was a total absence of sensation in my enchanted hand.
I saw the wristwatch disappear into his mouth, and then he bit down. His teeth cut through the bones of my wrist just behind the watch without any difficulty; he might as well have been biting through a carrot stick. I fell backward, staring at my arm—my
hand
was gone, how was I supposed to paint when my
hand
was gone—and blood fountained from the wound. I tried to lift the arm over my head with some vague idea that elevation might slow the bleeding, but everything swam and went gray and I fell down.
Some distant part of my mind explained:
You’re in shock
. But the rest of my mind couldn’t do anything useful with that information.
I’m going to tell you what happened next, but understand: the world was a gray haze after he bit off my hand, so this is pieced together from what others told me…and some other sources (more on that later). Even if it’s not entirely accurate, though, I think it’s close.
The Belly climbed all the way through the door, swallowed, and smiled at me. There wasn’t even any blood on his teeth. “Mmm. All that bourbon adds a nice caramel note to your blood. And that watch!” He flexed his fist. “This is really interesting. I wonder if I can get the effect to migrate, to expand beyond just the hand—it’d be awfully handy to be invincible, don’t you think?” He crouched beside me. “I could get a tourniquet on that arm of yours. Or stick the wound against a hot stove, cauterize it, and then you might live.” The Belly looked at the ceiling for a moment, hummed, then shrugged. “Nah. I have too many sisters anyway. Even if I’m not sure if any of the Drips are actually girls, they might as well be. Losing one of you won’t matter much. Have fun bleeding out, Bekah. I hear it’s a very relaxing way to go.”
“House,” I whispered. “House, get him out…”
Lamps and books began to levitate, but the Belly just waved his hand and batted them away—telekinesis, courtesy of the broom—or knocked them out of the air with his stone fist. He was fast, inhumanly so, and I wondered who or what he’d eaten in the past to get that power. “Throw something magical at me, house!” he shouted. “Spare me the trouble of hunting it down! Once your mistress here pumps out her last spurt of blood you’ll stop fighting me anyway—”
Which is when I heard a boom. At first I thought I’d time traveled again to the night with the window-rattling thunder. But then the noise came again, and it made sense that time: a gunshot. The Belly looked down at himself, expression baffled. There was a huge hole where his stomach used to be. He could be immovable—I guess that’s why two shotgun blasts didn’t send him flying across the room—but apart from his hand, he wasn’t invincible.
Especially his head.
The next shot made that disappear. His body fell forward, getting blood all over a perfectly nice old couch.
I turned my neck, even though it felt like trying to steer a sailboat in a hurricane, twisting to catch a glimpse of my savior…and there were three of them, all holding shotguns, standing just inside the door. Stacy Howard the First, the reptile. A balding man of middle years with a distinct family resemblance to Mr. Howard. Presumably Stacy Howard the Second, the worm. And, of course, Stacy Howard the Third, Trey, the…whatever he was.
Trey rushed to me, taking his belt off, and tied it around the stump of my wrist, pulling it brutally tight. “You’ll be okay, you’ll be okay, Bekah, I’m so sorry…”
Why wasn’t he getting the sword, so I could heal myself? Wait. I hadn’t told him about Hannah’s brief visit, and the sword’s return. He didn’t know we had it. I had to tell him—I had to—
I didn’t have to do anything, it turned out, except lose consciousness entirely before I said a word.
I woke in a dim room, tried to sit up, and fell back weakly instead. “The sword!” I said. “I need the sword!”
“Bekah?” A face floated into view above me, and for a moment I was sure I was hallucinating, because it was
Charlie’s
face, those dark eyes, the spray of freckles across his cheeks barely visible against his dark skin. He looked so serious, not mock serious but
actual
serious, and I said, “Are you real?”
“Real as you are, girl. I’m so glad you’re awake. The doctor said you might come out of it soon, but—are you in pain?”
“I…” There was a distant throb in my hand—or in my wrist, rather. Where my hand used to be. Things were fuzzy. I wondered what drugs I was on. “What are you doing here?”
“Your lawyer-slash-boyfriend flew me out yesterday night. Said you needed someone here with you, someone you trusted, because you were hurt. He didn’t want to call your parents because he wasn’t sure you’d want them to know, but Becks, I almost called them anyway. Honey, your
hand
…they had a doctor here, he seemed to know what he was doing, and you’re full of antibiotics and painkillers, but I don’t understand why you aren’t in the hospital. What kind of Southern Gothic shit have you gotten into down here?”
“Sword.” I licked my lips. “Water, too, I need water, but first…under the bed, wrapped in a towel, there’s a cane, a sword cane, get it for me?”
He frowned, then sighed. “I just love being part of your opiate haze, Becks. I’m supposed to be the one who does heavy drugs in our relationship.” And yet, because he was Charlie—my best friend, the one person who had never let me down—he vanished from view, reappearing moments later holding the cane. “Okay. This is old school. Did Mr. Hyde use this to beat schoolgirls to death?” He slid out the blade and whistled. “What now?”
I reached out for the cane—with my right hand, which no longer existed. I closed my eyes, took a breath, and tried to push back the cotton-candy fog covering my mind and senses. I reached over with my left hand and grabbed the hilt of the blade.
“Bekah, you shouldn’t really be holding bare steel in your condition, you might cut—”
I wrenched the sword out of his hand and jabbed it into my side, because that was the closest bit of my body I could stab.