Bride of Death (Marla Mason) (12 page)

“Whatever it was, now it’s a dead one of whatever it is,” I said.

I stood up, kicked the salt circle open, and picked up Nicolette’s cage again. “How about we try to get the fuck out of here?” I said. “I don’t much feel like bedding down in what’s left of Andrew’s place.”

“Do whatever you like.” Nicolette belched, though the exact mechanics of
how
she belched, lacking pretty much all anatomy from the chin down, still escapes me. “I’m
stuffed
with chaos. I just want to nap.”

We went back to the motorcycle and I got everything loaded, including strapping her cage down. Then I stopped. “Damn it,” I said.

“What?”

“Just wait here. Sleep. I’ll be back in a while.”

“Where are you –” she began, but I covered up her cage and walked away.

There was a shovel in a little shed in back of the house, and gloves. I found the place where Andrew had buried his family and neighbors, a little ways to the south – there were no grave markers, of course, but he’d piled up stones. I dug a hole in the hard earth, and put what was left of Andrew’s body in it, and covered it up again.

I stood by his graveside and tried to decide if I was responsible for his death or not. I hadn’t killed him, but I’d
caused
him to be killed, thinking I could keep him alive, and failing. Hubris, again. Me and hubris are old friends.
A door opened in the wall of the nearest house. It was a door that hadn’t been there a moment before, and after a man stepped out, and the door closed, the door went away without calling any attention to its departure. The man was tall, long-faced but handsome, with dark hair that fell past his shoulders, and he wore a dark blue sharkskin suit in what I assumed was a stylish cut. He was wearing rings on nine of his ten fingers. He used to have ten rings, but one of them was on the ring finger of my left hand, now.

“Hello, dear,” he said mildly, standing beside the grave, not quite close enough to touch me. “I sensed a death in your proximity, and I thought I’d come see how you were doing.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been better. I killed a monster, which is always nice, but there were drawbacks.” I gestured at the churned-up earth.

He nodded. “If you want me to leave, I can. I don’t mean to intrude on your, ah, mortal time.”

“No, it’s fine.” Talking to someone other than Nicolette had its appeal. “It’s not like I’m sick of you or anything. We spent a month together in the underworld, but...” I tapped the side of my head. “Somebody poured the memories out of my head like a bucket full of dirty mop water.”

He winced. “Quite. Not my idea, in case you were wondering.”

“So it was my idea, then.” I wasn’t sure if I believed him. Not that Death is a notorious liar, but you can’t trust gods, and I say that as someone who’s a part-time god herself.

He spread his hands. “I’m trying to stay out of it, honestly. True, leaving your memory totally intact would have been... disorienting... for you. There are things you knew as a goddess that a human brain and the associated sensory apparatus aren’t capable of processing, and you – goddess you, I mean – had some legitimate concerns about your health and well-being if you retained all the memories. It’s entirely possible that you’d spend your month on Earth in a state of essential schizophrenia, beset by visions and voices not your own. I argued for a more selective redaction of memories, but you felt strongly that your personal development as a mortal would benefit from a clean-slate approach.”

I snorted. “My personal development. Right. I feel like I’m being nagged by a court-appointed therapist. Am I really such a mess, that I had to get ‘Do Better’ tattooed on my skin?”

He stepped closer to me then, and wrapped his arms around me, and though I didn’t exactly melt in his arms, I didn’t pull away, either. I’ve never been a big fan of human contact, but screw it, he wasn’t really human. “I would argue that you aren’t so bad,” Death murmured into my hair. He drew back and took my face in his hands. “You aren’t exactly tactful, it’s true. And you’re stubborn, and impulsive, and arrogant, and you can be selfish, and you always think you know best –”

“Stop, you’ll make me blush.”

“ – but you’re not
bad
. No one can call you that, not really. You’re the sort of person who would literally tear holes in the fabric of reality to help a friend. Perhaps not the best idea in the world, and I admit the consequences were fairly dire, but it was hardly born from an evil impulse.”

“I never claimed to be a demonic sociopath. I’ve got my good points. But intentions don’t count for shit – just results, and consequences. If I’m honest... I know I’ve got a lot to make up for. I can’t really make amends, or reparations, for the damage I’ve caused, and the people I’ve hurt, but I can try to balance some of the bad things I’ve done, and save others.”

“I am pleased you have a purpose. If I can aid you at all in your work...”

I shook my head. “It’s not really riding a bike if you use training wheels, hubs. I can’t stand on my own feet if I’ve got you propping me up. I’ve already got one unfair advantage. I got an axe to the head today – it should have been me showing up on your stygian shores in the sunless lands today, not Andrew Lin.”

“We have an arrangement. You bargained hard, and as a result, you get to spend half the year alive in the mortal world and half in the underworld with me. Letting you
die
would break our arrangement – and I’m not about to renege a deal I made with you. I’d never live it down.”

“I guess adding a ‘no pain’ rider to the deal would be asking too much?”

He kissed my forehead. “Life is pain. Isn’t that what you told me once?”

I pushed him away. Nobody kisses me on the forehead. “Are you getting along okay down there without me? I can only assume I’m the one who keeps the infernal trains running on time.”

“We’re muddling along. There will be messes for you to clean up when you return in a few weeks, of course.”

“Why am I not surprised? Okay, Mr. Mason. I’ve got wrongs to right and dragons to slay. I don’t much want to hang around Sunlight Shores here, so I’d better get on the road. And hey. Thanks for the motorcycle. It’s a pretty sweet ride.”

“Only the best for my blushing bride.”

“Ha. I can’t remember the last time I blushed.”

“True enough. I do most of the blushing in our relationship. Give my best to Nicolette.”

“Although it would be funny to look her straight in the eyes and say, ‘Death says hello,’ I think I’ll pass. In case you forget, we didn’t invite her to the wedding. She doesn’t know about our relationship.”

“Consider my greeting rescinded, then. I never liked her anyway.”

“See, that’s why our relationship works. We hate the same people.”

Death strolled away, passing through another nonexistent door that vanished when it closed behind him, and I returned to my motorcycle and thumped the top of Nicolette’s cage. “Ready to go? Need a pee break first? Oh, that’s right, you don’t have a bladder. Or a urinary tract.”

She belched again, loud and long. “I’ve got the metaphysical equivalent of a full belly, though. That was a chaos buffet. We literally brought down the house.”

“’We.’ What we? You’re just a dowsing rod. I’m the one who dug the well.”

“You can’t annoy me,” she said, eyes half-closed, a sickeningly satisfied expression on her face. “You have no idea how good this feels. I’m talking heroin orgasms here.”

“I could have done without that mental image.” I covered her up, then drove away from Sunlight Shores as night began to fall, trying to decide if I should head for a freeway and look for a motel, or find a spot to camp out under the stars (which didn’t sound all that appealing). After riding for a few miles on dark country lanes, I saw the lights of a roadhouse, with a gravel parking lot jammed full of pickups and motorcycles.

My stomach started grumbling instantly, and I realized I hadn’t had anything to eat in ages – chaos doesn’t do much to fill
me
up. I figured any decent beer-and-juke joint would probably offer up some burgers or onion rings or sausages or something, so I pulled into the lot. My plan was, get a meal, and if I was lucky, maybe some asshole would try to grope me, and then I’d get to have a bar fight. The ghost sharks had done the killing for me back there, and I was itching for more direct action.

I got something so much more interesting than a fight, though. I got myself a war.

HONKY TONK

The place was called Danooli’s, and it was a seriously old-school roadhouse. Lots of exposed wood, not in a fancy reclaimed renovated antique lumber way, but just because nobody’d ever bothered to cover it up in the first place. Sawdust on the floor. Jukebox about the size of the refrigerator in my last apartment. Guy with scraggly gray hair in a tight-fitting muscle t-shirt drawing foamy beers at the bar for an assortment of bikers, farmhands, and miscellaneous drunks. Quite an array, apart from every one of them being white. I guess the Hispanic population got drunk elsewhere. I projected my best “Don’t hit on me unless you want to
get
hit” attitude and sauntered up to the bar, Nicolette’s cage dangling from my fingers. She seemed asleep – who knows if she really sleeps, maybe she just zones out – and I had hopes for a quiet meal and a drink. I’m not a drinker as a rule, since I like my reflexes fast and my inhibitions don’t need to be any weaker, but in a place like this, if you don’t get at least a beer, you draw too much attention.

“You serve anything edible in this place?” I called to the bartender over the blare of trumpets. (You’d expect the juke to be playing some country shit, right, or classic rock at best? But it was some ‘90s pop-ska instead, at least at that moment.)

The bartender smiled wide, and if he hadn’t been missing a bicuspid on the left side it would’ve been a really enchanting smile – it kind of was anyway. I like people who don’t give a fuck how they look. “The pickled eggs are all right,” he said. “Burgers are hit or miss. Everything else comes so deep fried it don’t much matter how it started out.”

“Give me a basket of the finest of whatever you dip in beer batter, then.”

“Eating light, got it. Jalapenos and mushrooms coming up.”

“Anything on tap that doesn’t taste like piss and rice water?”

He raised an eyebrow at that. “An import or two, but you’re better off going with one of the local microbrews, if you’re picky –”

Even in the dusty roadhouse department, things were getting fancy. “I’ll trust your judgment. Something light, though, I’ve been riding all day and I’m hot as hell.”

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me that. I noticed.” He drew me a beer and slid it over. “You can grab a stool or take it to a booth if you’d rather, I’ll bring your food over.”

“Much obliged.” I picked up my beer in one hand and the birdcage in the other and found the darkest deepest most distant booth available. I’m not normally so chatty with bartenders. Maybe I was starved for human contact of the non-headless, non-attempting-to-sacrifice-me-to-monsters variety. I folded over my coat and draped it over Nicolette’s birdcage in the seat beside me, then pulled out the paperback I was reading and squinted at the pages in the dimness. The bartender appeared a bit later and slid a plastic basket full of unidentifiable deep-fried blobs and a dish of ranch dressing across to me, and I grunted thanks without looking up from my book. I know, so suddenly antisocial. A little human contact goes a long way for me.

A young guy came bursting in through the front door, dressed in dusty, broken-in riding leathers, but he didn’t have a hardass biker look, more the excitable demeanor of a kid who’s just discovered drinking and sex and can’t believe life is so amazingly good. There was a lull in the jukebox music and he shouted, “Hey! Who’s driving that sweet fuckin’ Vincent White Shadow out in the parking lot?”

I winced, and a couple of the other bikers walked over to the guy, then went outside with him, presumably to look over the vehicle in question. I tried not to worry about it. As long as they didn’t try to touch it – or gods forbid
sit
on it – they’d be fine, and bikers by and large are extremely respectful of personal property. They came back in later, and now all
three
of them were excited. I’m not much of a gearhead myself, but I should have realized a bike that rare would excite comment among those who give more of a shit. Trust my boy Death to give me a gift as impractical as it was awesome. He was clearly a guy who’d never had to live in the world. There’s privilege and then there’s
privilege
.

The guys shouted some more, and general inquiries about the possessor of said
sweet-ass-ride
were addressed to the room, and finally someone who must have seen me arrive pointed me out. The young guy ran over like I was his long-lost first love and slid into the booth across from me. “Hey, I’m sorry to bother you, but lady, I think I
love
you.”

I had no idea how long it had been since I’d had sex, not definitely – Death and I had gone on a honeymoon (which is a story for another time) the week before I descended to the underworld for my first month of indentured godhood, but it was possible I’d had some kind of crazy rarefied god-sex while I was down there, too, and just couldn’t remember. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t so hard up I’d go for the slobbering puppy-dog enthusiastic type, so I didn’t give him even an iota of warmth in response. “Great. Get the fuck out of my booth. I’m eating.”

“Okay, okay, I just wanted to say, that bike out there, I’ve never even
seen
one, I saw a Black Shadow once in a parade, but –”

“It’s a nice bike,” I said. “But I’m not a nice woman. Beat it.”

“Any woman who rides a machine like that is plenty nice enough for
me
,” he said, in a tone like he was doing me a favor. “I’d sure love to ride on that thing, I’d even ride bitch. Or if I can’t ride the
bike
–”

I saw clear enough where that was going, so I tapped my wedding ring on the beer glass. “See this, kid? Means I’m taken.” It didn’t mean that at all, necessarily – Death and I are pragmatists – but I could suddenly see the usefulness of wearing a wedding band to fend off unwelcome admirers without resorting to physical violence or magical mind-fuckery.