Bride of Death (Marla Mason) (29 page)

“Yeah, no shit,” I said.

But first I had to escape Eater Memorial Hospital. I hopped off the table and opened up the paper bag Death had brought me. Loose cotton pants, button-down short-sleeved shirt, jogging bra, socks, and hand-made running shoes, all in black, of course. I rolled my eyes at the underwear, which had little black bows at the sides, but at least they covered my whole ass and didn’t have any unnecessary lace. Everything fit me like tailor-made, which they probably were, assuming the underworld had tailors.

Once I was dressed, I looked over the tools in the room, considering scalpels and saws, but the problem was, I didn’t want to
kill
any of the Eater’s thralls – I had enough innocent blood on my conscience for a lifetime. I settled for a steel hammer with a wicked hook at the bottom of the handle, figuring I could drive it into someone’s gut or tap someone on the temple without offing them in the process.

Before I slipped out of the room, I had the bright idea of checking the doctor for a phone, and lo, he actually had one. I’d worried the Eater communicated with his disciples telepathically or something – or that their lives were
so
deterministic that they didn’t even need to receive orders, just doing whatever the Eater wanted them to automatically. Maybe that was the case usually, but my arrival had disrupted things. The phone was old-fashioned and dumb, only good for making calls, and it didn’t get any reception here in the bowels of the building, so I pocketed it and peered into the hallway. A boring white corridor, tiled walls and gleaming floors and fluorescent lights overhead. I walked out like I had every reason to be there, looking for signs marked “Exit,” but I guess OSHA didn’t ever visit Moros, because there was basically no signage at all. Fortunately there were no patients, either, at least not down here, and eventually I found a stairwell, and from there, an exit.

The outside was bright and hot, and I wondered if it was the same day I’d arrived, or the next. Who knew how long it took to recover from having your head twisted nearly right off? I’d emerged on the far side of the hospital, away from City Hall, near an empty parking lot. I kept a lookout for terrifying hordes of children, but so far my revivification and escape had gone unnoticed. I lit out for the steep hillside behind the hospital, scurrying up into the trees and making my way up to the ridge. The sightlines were a bit shit, but I’d probably notice if an army of philosophical zombies came charging up the hill toward me. I found a flattish rock, sat down, and dialed Pelham’s number from memory.

It rang and rang, which was weird, because he was usually the type to pick up before the first ring even finished – but then, he usually knew it was me calling, and with this random-ass phone... Finally I heard his voice, sounding harried and impatient: “Yes?”

“Pelly? It’s Marla.”

His tone changed instantly. “Oh, dear, Mrs. Mason, has something happened to your phone?”

“Oh, yeah. My phone, my weapons, my potions, my charms, my oracle in a birdcage, my stalwart companion, my just about everything. I took the fight to the Eater, and he kicked my ass. I got away, but only just. I’m in the woods near his lair, and since I don’t like to say I’m
hiding
, let’s just say I’m regrouping.”

“Rondeau and I will be there in –”

“No, no, I’d just lose you, too – the Eater has some heavy mind-control mojo, that’s how he took over my buddy Squat, and every other person in this little toy town. You’d better stay clear. I’ve got a plan, sort of, to take down the Eater and maybe even save Nicolette and definitely to get my shit back, but I need a safe place. I can get out of town, but I need a hidey-hole up, someplace I’ll be hard to track magically. You did so well finding Tolerance for me...”

“Of course. I will call you back as soon as I can.
Please
be careful.”

“I can’t imagine why I’d start being careful now. Thanks, Pelham.”

I started walking down the other side of the ridge, into the wilderness, wondering how far I’d have to walk before I felt safe, wishing I had my motorcycle. I had no doubt it was still standing in the street where I’d left it – not even the Eater’s magics weren’t sufficient to overcome all its protections – but I wasn’t about to walk over and get it. I should have enchanted my pale horse to drive itself toward me whenever I whistled. The dagger
did
have that kind of enchantment, and would spring into my hand when called, but the trick only worked at short range, like if it got knocked out of my hand in a fight. I wouldn’t dare put a long-range enchantment on a weapon like that – if I whistled for it from a mile away, it would slice through walls, trees, cows, cars, children, lawnmowers, horses, cattle, mailmen, whatever, on the way back to me. A neat trick, but hardly worth the rather awful possible consequences.

No, I was on my own, with just my wits... and whatever secrets were buried deep inside my mind. But I was going to excavate those secrets soon.

ANOTHER GREAT ESCAPE

I heard people coming so I climbed up a tree, or rather up a pair of trees standing so close together that their branches overlapped and formed a ladder or a cage. Fortunately the pines were thick with needles so I was able to hide myself pretty well. Unfortunately, the pines were thick with needles, so I couldn’t see a thing. I was only a few feet off the ground, and considered going higher, but if the Eater did have hunting parties out for me, I didn’t want to give my position away by making the branches shake and sway.

For a while there was silence, and I started to wonder if maybe I’d just heard a deer, or whatever fauna calls woods like these home. I was standing on two branches, and had my hands on two others, and I discovered that pine trees bleed sap, which is pretty gross and sticky. (You know I’m not a country girl.) The approaching footsteps got louder, and I was ninety percent sure they were human, but they weren’t
talking
. I realized I hadn’t heard any of the Eater’s thralls speak, except for Squat, and wondered if that meant Squat still had some unshredded shred of agency, or if the Eater had just wanted him to talk in order to demoralize me. Probably the latter.

The footsteps were just starting to move away when my stolen phone rang, an annoying up-and-down trilling sound. I fumbled for the phone as fast as I could, trying to figure out how to silence it, cursing the unfamiliar controls.

Gunfire boomed. Sounded like a shotgun, and from the explosion of pine needles up and to my left, it had been aimed at the tree. None of the shot hit me, but I didn’t want to give the bastards time to reload, so I played dead and just let myself fall out of the tree, tucking in my arms so I wouldn’t bang too many branches on the way down. I hit the ground – which was plenty hard, and not cushioned much by a scattering of pine needles – and tried to look mortally wounded while peering through slit eyelids. I was on my side, one arm tucked under me (with a surprise in my hand), the other flung out in an awkward fashion that I hoped would sell the whole “unconscious” thing. The phone had fallen not far away, and it was still ringing.

Two people approached – a man in a flannel jacket and a petite teenage girl in, I swear, a frilly white Easter Sunday sort of dress. The girl was the one with the shotgun. The guy just had a baseball bat.

Clearly they were not trained in the arts of war, because she didn’t unload a point-blank shot into my chest or face to make sure I was dead. Instead they just walked up to me, and stood so close I could have reached out and grabbed their ankles.

“I don’t see any blood,” the man said. He prodded me with the end of his baseball bat, and I didn’t react.

“Maybe she healed,” the girl said. Totally missing the fact that my clothes were intact, too. At least I wasn’t dealing with genius detectives here. “She was definitely dead before, we saw her head get twisted around, and she somehow got up again.”

“It’s strange the Eater didn’t know she would rise from the dead.” I wanted to hear a hint of doubt or defiance in his voice, a questioning of his living god, but instead it was a simple observation.

“We need not understand to obey.” The girl spoke with the confident devotion of the very young or the thoroughly brainwashed. “Do you have the handcuffs?”

“I do.”

If they’d had any sense, she would have covered me with the shotgun while he cuffed me. Instead, she leaned the shotgun against the tree and took the cuffs from him.

I rolled onto my back and whipped my hand around, the steel hammer inverted in my grip so the hooked end of the handle sank right into her calf. I twisted and yanked, ripping out a plug of flesh about the size of a thumb. She howled and fell, clutching at her leg. Instead of lunging for the shotgun like a non-idiot, the guy swung his bat at me. He could have pulped my skull if he’d done a good hard overhand swing, like a guy splitting wood with an axe, but instead he did this half-assed sort of sidearm thing, and I jerked my head out of the way, catching the blow on my shoulder. My upper arm went numb, but I’ve got two arms, so fuck it.

I dropped the hammer and grabbed the bat, rolling over and yanking it out of his grip. Then I bounced up to my feet and grinned at him, doing my best to look like a scary returned-from-the-dead revenant. I suspected the pine needles in my hair spoiled the effect, but he seemed sufficiently wide-eyed and startled. Good. These people needed to be startled. I flipped the bat up into the air and caught it by the grip – a little show-boat-y, I know, but if you can’t have a little drama in your life, what’s the point?

“I’d rather not bash your brains out, since you’re slaves and everything,” I said. “How about you lay facedown for me, slugger?”

He glanced at the shotgun, so I swung the bat and cracked him right in the side of his knee. He fell, howling and clutching his cracked kneecap. He wasn’t going to be a problem for a few minutes.

The girl was trying to scurry away, scooting backwards on her ass. I walked over to her and put my foot down on her wounded leg, just above the injury. “Handcuffs,” I said. She looked up at me, wide-eyed, and then tossed the cuffs toward me. “And the key?” She winced, then tossed that to me, too. “Okay, sweetie, why don’t you hug that tree there?”

She scooted over to the tree I’d indicated, one small enough that she could reach her arms around it, and embraced the trunk. I cuffed her wrists together. She’d be stuck there until someone came by with a key or a saw. “Don’t suppose you have another set of cuffs?”

She shook her head mutely.

I looked at the guy, who’d subsided into whimpering. I thought about giving him a thump on the side of the head with a bat, but that whole knock-someone-unconscious thing mostly only works in the movies. In real life, if you hit somebody hard enough to put them under, you run a real risk of fucking up their brains forever. Instead, I picked up the hammer and used the hook to slice through the fabric of the girl’s dress until I had a few long strips of cloth. She didn’t even try to kick me. These people really were shit at improvising.

“Ready to get on your belly now, Babe Ruth, or do I need to take a crack at your other knee?”

He obediently rolled over, prone, but had to bite back a scream when the movement jostled his hurt knee. I hog-tied him with the strips of cloth, wrists to ankle behind his back – but because I am trying to Do Better, I only bent back and tied his uninjured leg. I didn’t see him getting too far by pushing himself along with his busted knee, anyway, and why cause the guy unnecessary pain?

Once they were secured, I picked up the phone and called Pelly back.

“Sorry about that,” I said when he answered – more promptly this time. “I had to deal with a couple of goons.”

“Oh dear,” he said. “I have located a place for you to take sanctuary. Can you make it to a main road? I can have someone pick you up.”

“You’re a prince, Pelly. Sure, I can get to a road.” Luckily I have a good sense of direction, and figured I could get back to the endless enchanted loop that circled Moros. We discussed the details and timing.

“I hate to see you cut off from communication, Mrs. Mason, but you should probably dispose of the phone you’re using. Such things can be tracked.”

I swore. I was used to having phones enchanted to be untraceable. “Crap, right.” I said my farewells, then removed sim card and crunched it under my foot, took out the battery, and flung the pieces of the phone in opposite directions. I picked up the shotgun, leaving the baseball bat, then paused. “Do you guys even know what the Eater did to you?”

“The
Master
saved my life,” the man said hoarsely. “I was a drug addict, a gambler, and he set me on the true path.”

“I ran away from home, and I was living on the street, when he set
me
on the path,” the girl said. “He shows us the way.”

“Yeah, he’s a humanitarian all right. The same way a vegetarian is a guy who eats vegetables.” There was no point in talking to these people. They could only do one thing: serve the Eater. Every other option had been flayed away from them.

I hiked out, keeping a sharp ear and eye out for other patrols, but I didn’t encounter anyone. Since I was so unpredictable, the Eater probably had his people searching the whole town and the surrounding areas, which would spread his flock a little thin. Eventually I emerged by the side of the road and crouched in the undergrowth, waiting for the car Pelham had told me to expect.

Eventually it came put-putting up, a modified dune buggy painted in blue-and-red tiger stripes, carrying a reek of used french fry oil from its badly-modified biodiesel engine. The guy behind the wheel looked like he’d gone to Burning Man one year and never come entirely back: shirtless and deeply tanned, ropy with muscle, a dozen necklaces of beads and chunky turquoise and carved wood around his neck, face scraggled with beard, hair an explosion of matted braids and dreadlocks woven with bows and ribbons in a way that reminded me uncomfortably of how Nicolette used to wear her hair, thick with charms.

“Hey, lady,” he said. “You wanted a ride?” His voice was a gulf state drawl, but unquestionably welcoming, so I emerged from the bushes.