Bride of Death (Marla Mason) (16 page)

I caused an image of myself to appear. “Boo,” I said.

Orias didn’t leap up and attack me, though the spore-lord snarled. She arched one drawn-on eyebrow and said, “An illusory body, I see. Afraid to come calling in person?”

She was more perceptive and less prone to leaping without thinking than Sarlat. Good to know. “Oh, I’ll be along,” I said. “You know, you’re not what I expected. I figured, madam of a supernatural brothel, you’d go for the slutty-enchantress look, black lace and red accents, push-up bra and spiked heels.” She was dressed more like a weekend warrior on a paintball course, all desert camouflage and black boots, but exceedingly well-tailored.

“There’s a time and a place for such sartorial choices. Since I came here to kill you, not seduce you, I dressed appropriately. Your own fashion sense, though... Is that coat made of buffalo leather? Planning to take part in a Wild West show? I can’t think of any of my customers who have a dead cowgirl fetish, or I’d offer you a position in one of my houses after I’m done killing you.”

“Tempting, but I’ve got a full-time job and lots of hobbies. Just out of curiosity, how did you know I was an illusion? I thought I faked this up pretty well.”

Orias shrugged and tapped the side of her nose. “No smell.”

Interesting. You’d think Sarlat, having the nose of a dog, would have noticed my lack of smell before trying to kill me, but I guess he’s a “murder now, sniff crotches later” sort of animal. “You’re missing out. I smell wonderful.”

“Did you want to say anything of substance before my people slaughter you in your hidey-hole?” Orias said.

“Oh, I just wanted to give you a chance to make a counteroffer.”

“Triangulating,” the spore-lord said, walking around my illusory body in a small circle, motes of black nastiness drifting up from his spongy body. “I’ll have her location shortly.”

I snorted. “Right. Good luck with that. And ‘triangulating’ means pinning down a location by finding the position where three lines intersect. Whatever you’re doing, you’re not doing
that
. Now shut up, Mr. Thrush, the grown-ups are talking –”

“Mr. Thrush?” Orias said, amused.

“Because he’s a fungal infection,” I said. “I came to talk to the gardener, not the plant life. Here’s the thing, Orias: Sarlat has offered me three wishes, pretty much, if I’ll bring him your head.”

“Ha. I thought you were formidable, but clearly you’re an idiot. You’d trust a deal he offered? Sarlat is a cur.”

I shrugged. “He’s setting up a circle of binding now, so we can make our obligations and responsibilities clear. But I’m not bound
yet
, so you can step in and save yourself. I don’t much like Sarlat, to be honest. I went to him first because he seemed to have the stronger crew, and I like to bet on winners, but I think I see a way you can wipe him out instead of going down in a blaze of blood and suffering yourself.”

“I am not here to wipe him out,” Orias said. “I am here to wipe
you
out.”

I shook my head, impatient. “You’re living in the past, lady. Circumstances change. The current situation is, I behead you, then I lead Sarlat’s forces in an all-out offensive against the remnants of your forces here. Now, most of them are hired mercenaries who’ll flee in the face of Sarlat’s more passionate and personally-invested murderers, and your lieutenants will be utterly overwhelmed. That’s the reality you need to be grappling with, not some imaginary scenario where you kill
me
.”

“This is absurd. You can’t possibly threaten me, I have a hundred –”

Boring. Deep in my undisclosed location, I snapped a twig in half.

The polaroids weren’t the only things I’d scattered around the town. I habitually traveled with satchels full of nastiness, and I’d made sure to sprinkle some of my best liberally across Tolerance. There was a sound like a tree growing at ten-thousand-times normal speed – not a sound most people find familiar, but unmistakable once you’ve heard it once – and the spore-lord was lifted (or more like
flung
) upward by fifteen or twenty gnarled, thorny spikes that shot forth from the ground all around my illusory form. Seven of the spikes penetrated his body, impaling him through his neck, thigh, and chest, leaving him hanging a good eight feet in the air, up close to the pavilion’s ceiling.

My illusory body stepped through the spike garden and strolled toward Orias, who was standing – not cowering, more’s the pity – near the far wall of the pavilion. “That could’ve been you,” I said. “You idiots came to ground
I’d prepared
. You let me choose the site of our confrontation, thinking mere numbers would make that advantage moot. Bad plan. I had the best part of a day to get ready here before any of you arrived. Maybe you’re used to dealing with idiots, but you’re in a whole different kind of fight here.”

“Ow,” the spore-lord said, dangling on the thorn tree. “This is very tedious.”

“You’re Marla Mason.” Orias hmmmed. “They say you killed Elsie Jarrow.”

“That’s what they say, and they would know. If you knew about that, you should have known better than to come after me.”

“Yes, Marla, I knew you were formidable – that’s why I brought a
hundred fucking people
to kill you. Or should I have ignored a deliberate provocation, like stomping my advisor to bits? Would you have just let that pass?”

“Nah. But I’d plan my reaction a little better. Really, the whole big-crowd-of-mercenaries brute force angle? I expect that kind of thinking from Sarlat, but you’re better than that.”

“Some say you bested a death-god in single combat, and banished another god somewhere in California, before it could fully rise.”

“They’re easier to kill when they’re babies,” I said.

“I didn’t really believe it,” Orias said. “I’m cautious, so I came prepared for a real fight, but in truth, I thought you were some drifter, using a moderately famous name to try and frighten people away.”

“And now you know better. Do you want to be on my side, or under my boot?”

“Hmm. I could send for reinforcements. I have favors I can call in, from people who might even make you tremble.”

“By all means! Call for help, or hell, just run away. But you should know, I prepared the border, too – or
a
border, anyway, or call it a perimeter. Anyone who tries to enter or leave Tolerance before I turn off the wards won’t leave behind enough mortal remains to fill a bucket.” That was pure bluff, unfortunately. A working like that wasn’t within my powers, not given my current resources and time constraints. Sealing off an area gets exponentially more difficult the bigger the area is. Could I ring a room, or a small cottage, with death? Totally. But a whole town? Not without help. Serious perimeter control was never one of my strengths. I’m better in one-on-one fights. But if Orias believed it...

“
Why
?” Orias said. “Why bait us into this confrontation at all? Why kill the beast of Sunlight Shores, and why on
Earth
did you stomp my spore-lord to pieces, deliberately insulting me? None of us had even heard of you before this, some of us would have respected you, even worked with you, given the chance –”

“My new hobby is killing monsters,” I said. “You’re lucky, because your bunch isn’t quite as monstrous as Sarlat’s, so I’d rather kill his gang than yours.” Not true, really. Sarlat’s guys were more violent, but I found Orias and her affection for human (and inhuman) trafficking more offensive than Sarlat’s honest thuggery. “Look, I came here to give you a way out, but if you don’t want it, I’ll just crank up the murder-engines –”

“What do you propose?” Orias said.

“I promised Sarlat I’d bring him your head. I propose to do just that. Or, at least, to bring him a head that
looks
like yours.”

“You’d need an actual head, to make a convincing illusion,” she said thoughtfully.

I grinned. “I’ve got the head covered.”

“Even so, he’s likely to see through a glamour, or smell through it –”

“I’ll need a strand of your hair and a drop of your blood to make a really convincing illusion.”

She shuddered. “To give you those things... they’d allow you to enact terrible sympathetic magics...”

I was tempted to tell her to suck it up, take the deal or leave it, but I had a whole elegant thing planned out, so I decided to give a little. “Fair enough. Luckily you’ve got an attorney present. Have the fungal infection up there lay down a circle of binding and we’ll make an agreement right now that I’ll only use your precious DNA to concoct an illusion, and not for any more nefarious purposes.”

“Very well,” she said. She glanced at the creature on the tree. “Are you functional?”

“Of course,” he answered querulously. “Nothing essential was harmed.” He writhed on the thorns a bit, and a fine snow of black flecks drifted down, like we were underneath the world’s largest pepper grinder. The flecks fell in a neat circle about twelve feet around, surrounding both Orias and my illusory body – which was good enough, since I was animating and controlling it directly. For ritual purposes, my illusion was me.

“I heard a name from the thing I killed at Sunlight Shores,” I said as we waited for the circle to form. “The Eater. Is that what they call Sarlat?”

Orias shook her head. “No. The Eater... I heard Sarlat mention someone by that name, back when we were friendly. The Eater is a business associate, perhaps, or a kind of mentor? Sarlat can be paranoid, and he never told me much about anything, if he could avoid it.” She frowned. “He did say the Eater advised him, though, and I must admit –
someone
is giving Sarlat good advice. I am vastly more intelligent than he is – this I know from intimate experience – but he somehow always seems a step ahead of me, a step ahead of
everyone
, as if there’s nothing he doesn’t see coming, no eventuality he can’t plan for in advance.”

I grunted. “Doesn’t look like he saw me coming.”

“There is that. It’s given me hope, actually.”

“Any idea how Sarlat might be paying the Eater for all this good advice?”

Orias shrugged. “He never mentioned the details of their arrangement. But Sarlat excels at smuggling, human and otherwise. Perhaps he’s helping the Eater transport something? Or perhaps the Eater’s name is literal – maybe Sarlat supplied him with whatever, or whomever, it is he likes to eat.”

“Anthropophagous take-out? That’s a lovely thought.” I’d hoped for more useful intel, but that was okay. If things worked out the way I planned, Sarlat would be eager to answer any questions I asked him, pretty soon.

When the circle was done, and the room thrummed with the dark power of compulsion, I said – truthfully – that I would use the blood and hair of Orias only to create an illusion, not to harm her, on pain of painful death.

With that pledge made, the magic fled, and I was free to lie my ass off again. “After I give Sarlat your head – or the head he thinks is yours – I’m going to lead his people against your camp. If you’ll allow me to make a few suggestions about the most effective way to set up an ambush, you should be able to kill his goon squad with grace and efficiency...”

GETTING AHEAD

So after I killed them all, I got on my motorcycle and roared toward Texas singing “Another Traveling Song” by Bright Eyes, just loud enough to annoy Nicolette –

All right, I won’t do that to you. For one thing, I know you like the bloody stuff. For another, it’s not accurate to say I killed them
all
. Besides, the way I worked it out was pretty sweet, and I want you to admire me, Future Me.

My undisclosed location was several hundred yards down a sharply-sloped shaft in some old copper mine not far from what remained of Tolerance. (I don’t actually know if it was a copper mine, but it was some kind of mine, and copper sounds plausible, right?) Somehow I’m more and more comfortable in caverns and dark places lately – imagine that. I was down there in the deep black, so dark even my night-eyes weren’t any help, because that’s a spell that sucks up every stray photon of light and puts it to use, only there
was
no light in the mine in the dark. I conjured a little red flower of light and stuck it on top of Nicolette’s birdcage so I wouldn’t go totally crazy and lose track of where I ended and the darkness began. Mostly I was in a trance, looking through the photographs I’d scattered around town, seeing a couple dozen viewpoints at once, so when I pulled all the way back into my own head, the darkness was kind of a shock all over again.

Nicolette was sticking out her tongue at me and generally making hideous faces, but I just smiled at her. “You’re going to
hate
this next part,” I said.

I could’ve used a minion just then – it made me wish I’d had Pelly send a couple of death cultists out to meet me. Not that putting their lives in danger in the course of running my errands was really fair, but wouldn’t dying in the service of their goddess give them a thrill?

I am so not cut out for the responsibilities of divinity.

With a bit more time, I could have banged together a remote-controlled rock golem or maybe even summoned up a temporary tulpa, but this plan required some pretty close timing, so I took up arms myself and told Nicolette, “I’m going out for a few minutes. I’ll be back, and then, guess what? You’re getting a makeover! It’ll be just like a slumber party.” I walked out of the shaft, axe in one hand and dagger in the other, so I didn’t quite hear Nicolette’s no-doubt-witty rejoinder, apart from something about killing me in my sleep.

I crept out into the darkness, shrouded in spells of bent light and misdirected vision, pausing occasionally to look through the eyes of my scattered photographs for signs of ambush. In twenty minutes I traveled a slow half-mile until I reached a heap of rocks overlooking the drop site.

Orias didn’t come to me herself, of course. She sent one of her minions, a petite woman with a squirming fringe of jellyfish tentacles where her mouth should have been. She set down a metal thermos on top of the broken horse trough I’d designated as the drop. She paused, so I shouted, “Get lost!” and she scurried away into the night. After waiting a suitable interval, I slid down the slope, snatched up the canister, and headed back to my undisclosed location, using a roundabout route to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I didn’t think Orias would double-cross me, since there was no upside in it for her at this point – if I succeeded in killing Sarlat for her, she might turn on me, of course, but she wouldn’t try to kill me when there was a chance I might get rid of her worst enemy.