Southern Gods (35 page)

“Now, at the end of all things, it would be a Rheinhart to thwart me,” the Pale Man said.

Sarah gasped.

“Wilhelm!”

The Pale Man grinned and flicked the black tongue in his mouth.

“Yessss,” he hissed. Then suddenly he coughed, a deep hacking sound coming from someplace further than his chest. Blood darkened his lips.

“I was once Wilhelm Rheinhart. And you are my blood. And so was she.”

Sarah’s eyes burned with the gunsmoke in the room. She brought up her hands to her chest and glanced wildly about, looking for something to use as a weapon. In the smoke, she couldn’t see Andrez’s or the pilot’s guns. Ingram must have landed on his own sword as he fell. She clutched her chest, felt hardness there, and remembered.

“She was…” The Pale Man smiled, bloody lips like heated and fluid wax. “She was blood of my blood? My niece. My great niece. Ah. That explains why it was so
sweet
. Her pain
…
exquisite.” He shook his head. In the light, his skin looked like paraffin, waxy and inhuman.

“But it’s too late now. He’s coming over the threshold.”

Sarah looked down at Franny’s remains. The blackness spilled over the sides of her daughter’s chest cavity like water flowing from a high place. It spread out from the table and lapped at the walls. Sarah felt the cold of the darkness touching her legs. As she watched it, her perceptions skewed, tilting sickeningly. For an instant, she felt like she stood at the precipice of a gigantic vortex, massive and unknown. The rim of the abyss. At the center, she sensed something vast and monstrous moving through limitless dark spaces.

“No,” Sarah said, raising her eyes from her daughter’s corpse. “No.”

She withdrew the straight razor from her breast, and flicked it open.

“No. He won’t come through when you’re dead. I know that much.”

Before she realized what she did, Sarah vaulted the edge of the table and crouched in front of the Pale Man, swinging the razor in short, sharp arcs.

His pale-blue eyes grew large, surprised. He brought up his hands in time to meet her swing. The razor sliced through his flesh as though it truly were wax, drawing a dark line down his forearm and palm. A manic strength overcame Sarah, and she knocked his hands to the side, lashing him with the straight razor again.

A line of black beads crossed the skin of his face, his hands. She reversed her swing, as she’d seen Ingram do with the sword. The Pale Man threw himself backward and jumped to the side. He backed away, trying to keep the table between him and Sarah.

“Wait! We can be…
exalted
! When he comes past the threshold, he’ll grant us anything!”

She rushed forward, swinging the razor in bright steel arcs. The Pale Man feinted, then lashed out with a long white arm, his fist impacting with her cheek, and she reeled back, bright tracers swimming at the edges of her vision. She righted herself with difficulty.

Rage unlike any she’d ever known filled her. She regained her balance and advanced again, keeping her body low, hands up, not swinging blindly now but waiting for an opportunity to strike.

“Blood of my blood! We will wed and be king and queen over the world! Multitudes will beg for our mercy! We will never die!”

As he spoke, he kicked out at her. Pain erupted in her knee and she fell heavily into the table, half on top of her daughter’s corpse.

As she fell on top of her daughter, the faintest scent of Franny remained, despite the slaughter, despite the gunsmoke and candles and incense. For the briefest moment, Sarah smelled her daughter, her baby, the scent of her hair fresh from the bath, the smell of her body as they lay together in bed.

She righted herself. Ignoring the pain, she darted forward, ducking under the Pale Man’s swing, and swiped his chest with the razor.

When he screamed, it sounded like the whine of a ball-bearing burning itself out, high and grating. He swung his fists wildly, but Sarah crouched low and the blows glanced off her skull. She lashed out again with the razor, opening the Pale Man’s cheek.

He jumped backward, trying to get more distance between them.

“We can live
forever
! We can give your little girl back her life!”

Sarah slashed again, and he moved backward once more.

He stopped and smiled.

“But this is better now. His entrance will be faster if I have your body lying beside your daughter’s. Maybe you possess a bit of innocence yet.”

As she watched, his blood-caked penis began to rise.

“You might even enjoy it, niece, when I stab you. But I’ll bring you back.” His smile grew and grew, past any human’s capacity for joy. “And do it again, just to teach you not to interfere.”

Like a snake striking, he was over the table and upon her, forcing her down to the floor. Hands like a dead man’s grabbed her wrists, pinioning her. He opened his mouth and his tongue, black as night, emerged, longer and more grotesque than anything she could imagine.

His eyes became obsidian. Hastur inhabited him. The god had come to partake.

She was screaming now, but his grisly head lowered to hers, black tongue snaking, and he placed his mouth over hers, blocking all sound, and she had no breath anyway. She could feel his tongue growing tendrils that burrowed into her flesh. The Black Kiss. His skin felt like oil upon her, invading her most secret spots.

She thrashed. She writhed. She felt her hand fall on something hard. The smooth, ivory handle of the razor. But she couldn’t move.

The god that inhabited Wilhelm thrashed in response, thrusting as far inside Sarah as his flesh would allow. And then, just as it seemed it couldn’t get worse, that the darkness pushing in from all sides would shut her mind off like the turning of a light switch and she’d go gibberingly, totally insane, Wilhelm’s eyes blinked and they were no longer black but watery blue.

His eyes grew wide as a huge fist grabbed his neck and yanked him away.

Ingram. Still alive. Bellowing.

Sarah felt him withdraw from her mouth. And suddenly, where she’d once been filled with something hideous, now she was filled with rage like some incendiary light firing in her chest.

Ingram screamed. He pulled Wilhelm to him, struggling to hold the thing that had once been a boy. Wilhelm exploded into movement, thrashing and screaming wildly, each limb moving frantically, jerking, spasming, trying to injure the inexorable grip that held him. With his good hand, Ingram began raining blows down.

“
Sarah
!” Ingram screamed, struggling to hold the white thing in his grasp. “You’ve got to—”

She lurched forward, flicking open the razor. Wilhelm’s fists caught her on the temple, on the jaw, and darkness closed in on her. She fell forward, through the barrage of fists, landing heavily on his chest.

Face to face, once again, she brought the razor up. With the blade, she entered him.

She raked his neck once, twice. She sliced his eyes.

His hands went to his mouth, which opened and closed soundlessly. He began to cough as the black line of blood on his neck widened, then opened, spilling ichor down his front. He coughed, blood spattering Sarah’s face and arms.

He coughed, the sound dying away into a burbling hiss. Then he lay still.

On top of him, she could feel the life leaving his body. His eyes grew dull.

The boat lurched violently, rolling Sarah away. The floor of the pilot house wasn’t level anymore.

She crawled over to Ingram. Blood pumped from his stomach in horrifying amounts. It was hard to tell where his body ended and the floor began, so much blood covered everything.

Weakly, he said, “Sarah, you’ve got to… got to… get the sword.”

Too much. Too much had happened, and all she felt was grief. All she saw was death.

She stared at him, unblinking.

“No time. The boat’s hit something. You have to get… have to get Franny and yourself off the boat.”

She sat, unmoving.

“Sarah! Goddamnit!”

“Bull, Franny’s dead,” she said with a dull voice. She didn’t care whether she lived or died now either.

“No. Not gonna—” He coughed a huge gout of blood. “Not gonna let that happen. Get the sword.”

“What? Why get the sword?”

“Get the—” He took short, shallow breaths now, his chest rising and falling quickly.

He swallowed. “Get the…
Get the goddamned sword
!”

Sarah jumped at his words. She frantically searched the floor around his body. Under the lip of the pilot’s wheel, the sword had come to a rest as Ingram fell. She grabbed its sticky hilt and drew it to her.

She turned and knelt over Ingram, holding the sword in both hands.

“Good… good. I don’t have long.” He tapped his chest, on the sternum. “Right here. Put the point right here.”

“Bull, I… I can’t. We’ll get you a doctor. Just hang in there.”

“No, no. I’m dead. But I’ve got… I’ve got one last thing I can do.”

“No, we’ll get a doctor. He can— ” Her tears disappeared into the pool of his blood.

“Sarah. Sarah. Remember the book. The book. You have to take out my heart. Cut it out.”

She shook her head. Closing her eyes as tightly as she could, she shook her head and denied it.

“The… the
Quanoon
, Sarah. Cut out my heart and put it in Franny. Do it.”

“No, Bull, you’ll die before it even—”

“No, I won’t. Take it out. I give it to you freely. To her. Save her.”

Tears burned her eyes.

“I give it to you. It’s mine to give, and by giving it, it will—”

Finally, she nodded once, understanding.

“Do we need to say anything?”

He closed his eyes and didn’t open them for a long while.

“Just goodbye. And—”

She leaned forward and kissed him.

“
Mithras
,” Ingram said.

His face went white. His eyes snapped open and grew to the size of half-dollars. His pupils darkened to black.

Then, every cord, every sinew, every ounce of Lewis Ingram’s body thrummed, filling with light. Blinding white light.

Ingram’s eyes—enormous and swimming in light—turned on her, and he spoke to her with the voice of a god.

“
Now, Sarah. Do it now.
”

With all her strength, she drove the sword into Ingram’s chest, splitting his sternum. Light streamed from the wound instead of blood. His flesh tore with a ripping sound. All the way to his pelvis, she worked the blade. She screamed as she pulled, closing her eyes to the brightness.

She threw the sword to the side and stuck her hands in the gash, gripping the edges of his ribcage. With a great heave, she opened his chest. It split with a crack.

Nova
. A bright explosion of light.

And then Ingram’s body dimmed, the god’s eyes went vacant, and in her hands was a pulsing, living heart made of light.

She rose on trembling legs, turned, and went to Franny’s body, horribly maimed and broken.

She set the heart in Franny’s chest.

***

Epilogue

T
hey watched the children from the shore.

Lenora and Fisk danced around the shallows, splashing each other. Franny sat on the beach, observing their water fight. Fisk ran in circles, high stepping in the shallows, chanting, “I’m a preacher man, I’m a preacher man! Gonna baptize you!”

Franny smiled wanly at his antics, and Lenora came and sat down by her. She took Franny’s hand in hers and put it to her cheek. They sat like that for a long time, Lenora holding Franny’s hand to her face, watching Fisk dance around. After a while, he noticed and joined them, sitting to the side.

Sarah tried to hear what the children said, but the lapping of the water blanketed any sound. A buzz grew in the air. A flat-bottom passed their vantage, two men with fishing rods heading south, into the cypress. They waved, and the children waved back. Eventually, the wake reached where the children sat, casting miniature breakers onto the muddy beach.

“Do you think she can remember any of it?” Alice asked, pouring a cup of coffee from a thermos.

New leaves wreathed the shore of Old River Lake, and the water had a film of pollen on the surface. As the children sat, the water stilled, the yellow film creeping back in like a noose tightening.

“Yes. She remembers everything.” Sarah took the cup Alice offered. “At the end, Momma…”

She stopped, rubbed the bridge of her nose, blinked back tears. “At the end, Momma said that they war over us because there’s no such thing as a soul. That this is all there is.”

Alice snorted. “She always was a damned fool, your mother, with no sense of place. The evil bitch.”

“I have to wonder if it is true.”

“No, goddamnit, it ain’t.”

Sarah watched the children. She stayed very still and did not move.

“How are you so sure?”

“I feel it. Here.” Alice tapped her chest. A strange echo of her mother’s gesture. “And your proof is right there, in front of you.”