Cold on the Mountain Page 21

Belphegor frisked him. “What’d you do with it?”

  “I told you, sir, I ate it and—”

  “What’s this all about?” Jasper said, hands folded across his chest. “Benny, did Phil do something wrong?”

  The rover looked at Jasper and took a step back. “I saw him pocket part of his lunch, Jasper. Saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Well, that’s mighty strange, because I sat with him all through the meal. I never saw anything.”

  “Come on, Jasper. Are you calling me a liar?”

  “I’m not doing anything of the sort, Benny. Just saying that I ate with him and I never saw what you’re describing here. Phil, you got anything on you?”

  “No sir. I ate my lunch. Lord knows I need it.”

  “You, uh…you find anything on him?” Jasper asked.

  Belphegor shook his head, fuming.

  “Then there you have it. Let him alone, Benny. He’s not hassling anybody—just setting up for the celebration.”

  Belphegor walked over to Jasper, stretching in height until the men were eye to eye. Phil watched, fascinated, as the rover swelled with anger.

  “Be careful, Jasper. You want to be mighty careful if you want to draw a lot this year.”

  There was a flicker—just the slightest tremor—and the rover revealed himself in full.

  Jasper merely smirked in response. When he inched forward, his eyes threw green sparks.

  “That’s good advice for both of us, Belphegor. You murder an innocent man, and I don’t care who you take your orders from—you know what that means. Think mighty hard before you do anything rash.”

  The rover seethed. He shot Phil a venomous glare and stalked off.

  Jasper hurried over to Phil. “In the back yard, in the charcoal grill. Wait until full dark,” he murmured.

  Then, much louder: “Go ahead and finish up those stakes and get your ass in there to help with the chairs, Benson!”

  And with that Jasper disappeared around the side of the tent.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Miriam drew a deep breath. The tremor in her hands had not abated and, even as she carefully spread the soil over the surface of the table, she felt a twinge of trepidation.

  Something just wasn’t right.

  “Who are you?” she said, closing her eyes. “Won’t you let me be?”

  She let her mind go blank, her hands hovering over the soil. She concentrated on taking slow, measured breaths and, after a few minutes, she felt herself detaching. There was a period of intense nausea, a terrible moment when she thought she would be sick, and then she was there—back in Adrienne, though the town was blurry beneath her. It was like peering through the bottom of a Coke bottle, but it didn’t matter.

  She could see, and feel, the town she would soon be visiting.

  It was cold and the streets were largely deserted. Peering down into Adrienne had always been a chore for her, but now it was downright painful. Every time she dared a glimpse it took something out of her, and she was no longer youthful.

  There just wasn’t much left to give.

  Her essence floated, like a snowflake on the breeze, toward the edge of town and the base of the granite cliffs.

  She understood the path she travelled, and she also understood that they’d be expecting her. If there had ever been a time when her presence had gone undetected, those days were long gone. Something terrible was mounting in Adrienne—something fiercely protective of the town’s traditions.

  “Let them go,” she whispered, wincing instantly when the pain cut through her. Miriam wasn’t welcome in Adrienne. She had escaped, and there were things there that didn’t want her there. Things that resented her ability to move between worlds.

  Miriam noticed the gathering, far out in the pasture. Against a cold, gray sky, men and women toiled in their construction of the lottery grounds. They raised enormous tents, and that stage—that terrible, exhilarating stage—took shape in the distance.

  Miriam floated, always watching. It was surreal, building a makeshift village for a single evening’s debauchery, and she sensed among those working there equal parts optimism, misery, and glee. The normals kept their heads down while the dark ones—creatures that she understood in her heart and in her gut were so much more than they seemed—stood watch on the periphery.

  It was slavery, pure and simple.

  She turned her attention to the monstrous house overlooking it all.

  There, in the highest of the upstairs windows, stood a woman—if one could still call her that. She looked like something out of a child’s nightmare, a decrepit hag intent on luring little ones into her home in order to plump them up before stuffing them in the oven.

  A figure joined her and, despite the anguish of experiencing Adrienne’s toxicity, Miriam allowed herself a tiny smile.

  It was the thing that had infected her. The same creature that might help her sneak through in a matter of days.

  She drifted toward the window, and now she saw them smiling. Grinning, actually. The disguise of the man-servant vanished for an instant and Miriam saw in its place a monstrous creature with a calf’s head.

  It extended a clawed index finger in Miriam’s direction, and she gasped.

  They knew.

  He knew.

  She pulled her hands from the soil and found herself instantly back home, her heart thudding in her chest while she struggled for breath. The room spun, and cramps buckled her midsection.

  She hurried to the bathroom just in time to make it to the toilet. While she spit bile and the remnants of her breakfast into the basin, a string of images cycled through her mind.

  An altar, stained brown with blood. An enormous bronze bull straddling a bonfire, a fragrant steam wafting from its nostrils.

  An ancient infant necropolis standing silent in a grove of wind-swept olive trees.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” she whispered, touching her chest. Things had changed, and her reconnaissance efforts to the Dowager’s home had not been without consequences.

  He knew.

  She was tied to the creature that ran the lottery—tied to it in ways that made the skin on the back of her neck pucker in fright. She raised her hands—the tremor even more pronounced.

  She drank deeply from the spigot before washing her face and returning to the dining room, where she swept up the soil and locked everything away.

  Two days. In two days she would be back in Adrienne.

  But what about the darkness pooling inside of her?

  She went to the windowsill in her kitchen and picked up the image of the Benson family that Kelli had given her.

  A deep and consuming hunger rushed through her as she traced the images of the girls with her fingertips.

  When she turned her gaze to the mountains outside, she had no idea that she was grinning, her teeth long and white in the dying afternoon light.

  ~0~

  “You saw her?” the Dowager said. “You’re sure?”

  Moloch nodded. “She was snooping, my lady—just as she did when she went through my things. But she didn’t know I’d left a seed inside of her when she’d made the switch. She couldn’t know that I’d made a trade of my own.”

  The crone wore a wistful expression. “Whatever her purpose in our kingdom, it won’t be long now,” she croaked. “It won’t be long now at all.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Jasper stole through the streets of Adrienne. The revelry had begun in earnest, and garishly costumed figures stumbled toward the heart of town.

  Two days. Just two days until the lottery.

  He kept his head down, stealing from shadow to shadow. He had hidden the food that he’d managed to swipe from the lottery grounds in his coat. It was coming up on midnight, but he knew that the night’s festivities were only getting started. Decades before, when Adrienne had still been new and confusing to him, he’d actually attended such gatherings. He’d never participated in the debauchery, but he’d been present all the same, and he’d watched—his he
art pounding—while the monsters enjoyed their ball.

  The task of officiating the Night Camp always fell to Adrienne’s acting sheriff; Jasper bristled at the thought of Dennis Rader overseeing such brutality. The moniker “Night Camp,” like many of the scattered elements that comprised the lottery traditions in Adrienne, had been changed over the years from its German origins as the “nacht kampf,” or the night fight.

  But Night Camp had a certain panache about it that the dark ones adored, and many of them did indeed spend the nights leading up to the lottery away from their homes. The lottery was a cultural tapestry, woven from European pagan festivities and customs celebrated in Roman, Mayan, and early Christian cultures. Men and women from all walks of life—and every corner of the globe—had lingered in that poisoned place, and the strongest among them had left their mark indelibly on the lottery.

  Jasper pictured it.

  There was always a ring in the town square—right there in the heart of Main Street. Many decades ago, its boundary had been marked by great stones that took a dozen men to move into place. The last time he’d attended the Night Camp, they had used baled hay.

  One aspect that never changed was the official’s costume. Rader would stand in his pulpit, officiating the battles. His face would be lined with pale blue stripes, and he would wear a cloak fashioned from the coats of that year’s final winter hunting trip. A huntsman from among the normals was usually granted a short reprieve to stalk game in the Sierra Nevada. Some years, the cloak was taken from a fallen elk. Most often, it was the hide of a great buck. A few times it had been wolves that paid the price.

  And, not unlike the Caesars of old, the official decided the victor of the battles. Killing was frowned upon in Adrienne, of course, though it was inevitable from time to time. There were grudges among the dark ones. Some squabbles festered throughout the year, and those that drank at the Dark Earth Saloon understood that there would eventually be a reckoning when the late winter moon hung low over the mountain.

  The lottery was a purge in more ways than one, and Night Camp was its final flurry of orgiastic barbarism. Men and women squared off, beating each other to within an inch of existence while the townspeople lusted for blood. Wagers were placed and, in this way, a year’s worth of frustration at toeing the line—of marking time in a world characterized by monotony—was vented in a few bloody minutes of hand-to-hand brutality.

  If only he could have had Ivan in the ring, perhaps he would see the damned thing differently. But that kind of savagery wasn’t in his nature. His disdain for the Night Camp was just another indicator, he was certain, that he didn’t belong in Adrienne.

  Jasper was two blocks from Main Street when he heard them. Perhaps they had created a new tradition, for he’d never heard such a ruckus before. There was a thunderous clattering of wood against stone—staffs or spears, probably. They were gathering energy, it seemed. Gearing up for something dangerous and primal.

  He jogged down Astoria Street, debating whether it was prudent to visit Phil’s house at all. Something felt wrong, and Jasper was stunned by the presence of an emotion that he thought had long been dead inside him.

  He was scared.

  Still, the Bensons needed his help. They were relying on him. Phil was on his last legs, and who knew how the girls were holding up? He had to come through.

  He ducked behind a row of shrubs while a pack of about a dozen dark ones ambled down the center of the street, clattering staffs against the asphalt on their way.

  Three more blocks and he cut down Belcher Avenue; he ducked into an alley that fed into Hampton Lane and made a careful approach on the rear of the Bensons’ home. The place was dark and shuttered for the night.

  “Okay, buddy,” he whispered, “you can do this.”

  He scaled the fence and made a soft landing, then hurried over to the grill at the corner of the patio; he lifted the lid and placed the paper bag filled with food inside.

  “Pretty smooth,” a voice called from the darkness. Jasper recognized it instantly, and his spirits dropped. He turned toward the voice and saw the glowing cherry of a cigarette. “Yes, sir—pretty smooth operation, Jasper, all the way down the line.”

  “I didn’t know you smoked, Benny,” Jasper replied, already sidling into the largest part of the yard. He would need some space—and some damned good luck—if this had even the slightest chance of going his way.

  He grinned at the irony. It seemed he’d be participating in the Night Camp this year after all.

  “Oh, only around this time of the year,” Belphegor said, stepping into the moonlight. He wore the duster and the cowboy getup. His hat sat far back on his head, revealing a pompadour that Jasper found just a little vulgar. Somebody had sure been watching a lot of Bonanza reruns.

  The demon leered at Jasper as he took a long drag on his cigarette before flicking the butt into the grass. “Man’s gotta live a little from time to time, don’t you think?”

  Jasper snickered. “Man? Shit, Benny—you couldn’t pass for a man if you tried. Just look at yourself. You look like some cut-rate John Wayne lookalike from a ‘50s kiddy show. You, uh…you been watching some Howdy Doodie, have you?”

  Belphegor seethed, fists balled.

  Jasper felt emboldened. Maybe if he could keep the bastard off balance…

  “Which raises a question I’ve been wanting to ask for a long damned time, Benny. Why the hell are you even here? You’re not bound to Adrienne. You could go anywhere you wanted to—you and the rest of those bootlickers working security at the factory and sniffing around the Dowager. Why stay here?”

  “Oh, here’s as good a place as any, I reckon. Adrienne is just filled with…interesting people, you know? And working for the old lady has its perks. One of ‘em will be taking care of your boy in there,” he said, nodding at the house. “Stealing food is a pretty big offense, don’t you think? Ol’ Phil will have to pay the ultimate price, and I’m going to do it sooner rather than later. Tonight, actually. The lady wants to look her best for the lottery.”

  Jasper snorted a laugh. “Her best, huh? That ship has sailed, Benny. Say, you didn’t happen to be out on Mill Pond Road late last year—right around the time of the lottery, come to think of it—did you? Maybe encounter an old friend of mine from the textile factory?”

  Belphegor shrugged out of the duster. He folded it carefully and set it down at the edge of the patio before placing his hat on top of it. He took a step closer. “Come to think of it, that rings a bell. I met a stranger out there on the road, if memory serves. Some asshole that couldn’t stay put, I think.”

  Jasper shook his head. “You’re a real shit, you know that? What gives you the right to do her bidding? You know there are rules up here. Rules governing that great wide cosmos that we all call life—regardless of how we got here. Why do you think you’re so special that you can bend those rules and do whatever you want?”

  “Oh yeah, there are rules, Jasper. And apparently you’re forgetting one of the biggies. You’re a fucking dark one, boy! Sure, you’re immortal in your own way, but you can’t stop me. It would take someone with a righteous soul to do that, and yours is stained by the blood of all those Russkies you slaughtered. Didn’t you pile the bodies, Jasper? That’s what I heard, anyway.

  “But none of that matters to me. None of it. You know what? For all of your moral grandstanding, I guess it all really did come down to pure selfishness, right? You couldn’t see fit to save your friend, and now there’s a world of shit coming down all around him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t you hear all of that ruckus back in town? Of course you did. I noticed that you put a little pep in your step when you crossed over onto Astoria Street. They’re killing your friend tonight, Jasper. They’re going to dress out Big Wren—get him all prepped and presentable for the Great Feast.”

  Jasper stepped into the blow, a blistering jab that crumpled Belphegor’s nose. The demon took two steps back and
touched his fingers to the blood—thick, black, and viscous—flowing down over his mouth.

  “Fool,” he snarled, the voice a guttural growl. “I’ll take your heart as a souvenir, Jasper. Our lady will have dessert this year!”

  He threw a roundhouse that Jasper partially blocked, but his arm went numb with the force of the blow.

  Belphegor flew into a rage, and Jasper fended him off as best he could. In between the bursts of punches, he saw the demon behind the mask. There was fire in the creature’s eyes—and grim death in his grin.

  Jasper took a blow to the chest and lost his footing. A few kicks to the ribs later and he lay panting, flat on his back, the stars blurring in and out of focus. “Beg for your life,” Belphegor said, straddling him. He threw a short punch, pulling it just before he shattered Jasper’s jaw. “Beg for your life, lil’ doggie, and I may let you live to lick your wounds.”

  Jasper spit blood. “Please, Benny…please.”

  The demon grinned. It leaned in, smelling what it mistook to be fear.

  Quick as a timber rattler, Jasper plunged his thumbs into the creature’s eyes. Belphegor rolled off with a howl, and it was Jasper’s turn to take advantage. He rained shots on the demon like he was working a speed bag, and yet they had little effect. Belphegor, unblinking, simply took them—that terrible grin on his face.

  “I already told you,” he snarled, “you can’t kill me. None of you can kill me. All these years, Jasper. All these years, thinking you were better than the rest of them. Acting like you didn’t belong here. All these decades…for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” Jasper said, and he retched. His shoulders hitched as a series of gags rippled through him. Swallowing hard, he heaved again…and again. Belphegor grinned, amused, until he felt the first of the bites.

  And then, when the swarm attacked him in earnest, the grin had vanished and apparently there was nothing left to laugh about at all.

  In a cloud of vaporous green, swarms of flies flowed from Jasper’s mouth. His eyes were lit with the same emerald haze of the mountain he’d so frequently attempted to flee. The flies covered the demon, and they were hungry.