Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8) (28 page)

After a moment Marla spoke. “Perren, let me talk to Nicolette. I know she’s with you.”

Bradley widened his eyes. “Why are we calling –”

She flapped her hand at him, and he went quiet. “Nicolette, be quiet, there’s a multiverse-destroying monster called the Outsider on its way to Felport right now.” She paused, then sighed. “If you shut up, I’ll
tell
you. This is the big problem I had to deal with, the planet-destroying space rock. My stupid death cultists accidentally released this creature from another universe, and it’s been merrily murdering people and eating gods and getting stronger. I had it locked up in a magical pocket universe in the back of a coffee shop in Santa Cruz – never mind, it’s a long story. Anyway, it got loose, and I took another run at it, but I couldn’t kill it, and now it’s on its way to Felport, looking for a locus of magic in Fludd Park. I think you’re the worst person for the job, but you
are
the chief sorcerer there, and you’ve got some resources, if you don’t fuck them up. The Outsider is maybe not killable, but it
can
be trapped, obviously, some ancient-ass humans did it centuries ago – what?” She shook her head, as if flies were buzzing around her. “I
told
you, I trapped it in a pocket universe in a coffee shop – oh. Why do you care? It was in California, in a cave under Death Valley. No, of course I don’t, you think I walk around looking at a GPS all day? I – what do you mean hold on a second?”

She looked at Bradley. “I tell her a monster is coming to destroy her and she asks me dumb questions and puts me on
hold
?” She scowled and returned her attention to the phone. “Yeah, I’m here. I don’t know, it just left San Francisco. It’s been appearing in human form, mostly, but it can turn into a flying shadow, too. Maybe a day or two? Best assume it’ll be there
soon
. Yeah, this number’s good. Anyway, I’m coming, and I’m bringing Bradley and maybe another hired gun or two – Sure you’re on it, you’d
better
be.”

“Which hired guns?” Bradley said, but Marla hissed in an angry breath.

“Where do you get off? How the hell do you come up with
four
? Those stupid elf things were
not
my fault, that was Tom O’Bedbug, how was that
my
responsibility? Anyway, what about
you
, miss two-time-destroyer, you’re the one who caused Genevieve to get out of Blackwing, and
that
brought Reave, and then you sicced that crazy mushroom magician on us.” She kicked sand toward the ocean, hard. “Anyway I
saved
the city, those times and more, what have
you
ever – oh, I almost hope you fuck this up, Nicolette, you are the ultimate Dunning-Kruger case, you have no godsdamn idea how much you don’t know – Did you just hang
up
on me?” She hurled the phone to the sand.

Bradley sighed, bent down, and picked it up. “Seems like that went well.”

“Nicolette is so far out of her depth she’s never even
heard
about the bottom, but she’s the boss now, so I had to let her know what was coming. If she scrambles Hamil and Perren and the other heavy hitters, such as they are, maybe they can at least hold the Outsider at bay long enough for me to get there and take care of business.”

Bradley nodded. He wondered, though. Nicolette had seemed... well... damn near
queenly
in Felport. Her usual jittering twitchy energy was gone, replaced by serenity and confidence. Oh, she was still deeply unpleasant, and her enmity for Marla was way into obsessive territory, but she was more capable than Marla gave her credit for, and she had the resources of a whole city at her disposal, too. Not that he was going to sit back and say, “Let Nicolette handle it.” The whole reason he was on Earth was to stop the Outsider, after all. “So what do we do? You said something about hired guns?”

“First we’re going to Santa Cruz, to see if Marzi wants to saddle up and ride.”

Bradley whistled. “I thought you wanted to spare her from dealing with crap like this?”

Marla nodded. “I do, but, like we keep saying: fate of the world shit. If I had to ask Nicolette for help, you better believe I’ll ask Marzi too – she hurt the Outsider worse than either of us managed to, it sounds like. I won’t insist, though. Then... Well, I had a thought, and now we have to stop by Las Vegas.”

Bradley nodded. “Pelham and Rondeau could be helpful, now that we’re all on the same team and Nicolette isn’t going to kidnap them anymore. I’ll call and tell them not to leave Vegas before we get there.”

“Yeah,” Marla said. “We can take them along, sure. But we’re mainly going to Vegas for something else.”

“Dare I ask?”

“What,” Marla said, “and spoil the surprise?” She jerked her head toward the door. “Come on.”

“How’s it work? You put in the key, click your heels three times, open the door, and we’re in Santa Cruz?”

“Nah. It’s more like... taking a shortcut. Through this door, into someplace else, out another door to our destination.”

“Someplace else, huh?”

Marla grinned. “What, are you afraid to go through Hell?”

“Um, yeah, actually. I’ve been there before. I showed you the train to the underworld, remember? But there’s a little rule about not going to Hell more than once while you’re alive, or you forfeit your soul, right? If it’s a choice between a road trip and losing my soul, I’ll buy a bus ticket.”

“The old god of death had all kinds of rules,” Marla said. “Me and my Death are reformers, though. We’ve streamlined things. You’ll be fine, trust me. You have Dread Queen Marla’s promise. Come on. Let’s see what’s behind door number impossible.” She stepped to the door, then paused. “But, uh, just so you know, when I go through this door, I might get... a little weird. Just roll with it, okay?”

“When you say a little weird, you mean...”

“I’m not myself when I’m in the underworld. I’m more Dread Queen Marla, Lady of Hell.”

“Ah. So you’re not as warm and cuddly as you are now?”

“You tread on dangerous ground, Bowman.”

•

If Bradley hadn’t been psychic, he might not have noticed anything was wrong at all. They opened the door, and stepped into what looked for all the world like a foyer in a gloomy Gothic mansion: hardwood floors, dark wood paneling, flickering sconces on the walls, and a chill that settled immediately into his bones. But his psychic senses kept screaming at him that this place was
not for him
, that it was inimical to life, and from the corner of his eye he saw looming shadows, and firelight, and immense creatures moving with slow deliberation in his direction.

Then he made the terrible mistake of looking at Marla. She was taller than before, dressed all in white silks, her skin pale as a sheet of paper, her hair dark – as if she’d been rendered in black-and-white and then the contrast got pushed way up. The being before him was not exactly Marla, but she
contained
Marla. The goddess of death was a great tree, and the mortal Marla Mason was merely the seed. He could barely stand to look at her: it was like looking directly at the sun. A terrible, cold sun.

The dread queen turned her head toward him, her deep black eyes shining, and smiled, showing off teeth that were more fanglike even than the Outsider’s. She raised a hand toward him, and her fingers were dripping blood: somehow he knew it wasn’t
her
blood. “Living man,” she said. “You should not be here.”

He swallowed. “You brought me here. We... we’re on our way to save the world.”

She chuckled, a sound like skulls rolling down the stone steps of a crypt. “Ah yes. I see now. You are Bradley. You just look so much... smaller than I remembered. Mmm. Yes. This Outsider is beyond any death I can wield here. But there is another life, an irritant, the one called Nicolette. She has been given too much liberty. She belongs here in the underworld. I can take her, before we leave this place again, and I relinquish my true power.”

“But – everyone in Felport will die if she does!”

The goddess shrugged. “They will die soon anyway. Death is inevitable. New ones will be born. This will take but a moment.” Her gaze became abstract, faraway.

“We need Nicolette to stop the Outsider!” Bradley shouted, even though shouting at her felt like shouting at an uncaged lion. “We can’t do this alone, there’s a
plan
, don’t you remember?”

The goddess focused on him again – it felt a bit like having his skin peeled away in layers, one millimeter at a time – and then sighed. “Ah. Yes. The plan. How petty. But it will serve, I suppose. Very well.” She flashed across the foyer, her movement a flicker of speed impossible to follow, and opened the door on the other side. “Please. I will follow.”

The thought of stepping through first, and turning his back on her, made his skin crawl, even though he knew it wasn’t particularly dangerous. After all, she could kill him just as easily to his face.

Bradley went through the door, and the sense of terrible wrongness receded, though he sank against the wall of the desert-painted storage room in Genius Loci and gasped, his eyes closed.

A moment later, he heard the click of a closing door. “You all right, B?” Marla said, her voice perfectly mortal again.

“You are awesome and terrifying, Marla.”

“On my good days. I can’t remember anything that happens to me when I’m... her. The goddess. The whole experience just gets wiped out of my brain, like I signed a cosmic non-disclosure-agreement. Was I nasty?”

“A little bit scary, yeah.”

“Cool. Come on, open your eyes, we have to talk to Marzi.”

Bradley was afraid to look, but when he did, she was just Marla again, no sign of the supernatural vastness she’d just contained. There was no magical door in the room, either, which was comforting: apparently they’d just emerged through the door that, in the normal world, led into the kitchen.

“I just looked death in the face,” Bradley said.

Marla patted him on the cheek. “I know. Won’t be the last time you do that today, either, kid.”

•

Marzi groaned. “Jonathan will
kill
me. If I go off monster-fighting and die he’ll never forgive me.”

“You’ll just be backup, riding drogue,” Marla said. She sat in the office chair by Marzi’s drawing table, swiveling gently back and forth. She drawled, she was taller than usual, and her hat cast unnatural shadows across her face – all alterations caused by Marzi’s presence – but they were such minor differences compared to the way she’d changed as the goddess of death that Bradley hardly noticed.

He and Marzi were sitting on the edge of the bed, though, giving her lots of space anyway. Marla didn’t look like someone you wanted to crowd right now. She said, “The main posse will have the big guns trained on the Outsider, don’t you worry. You’ll just be exerting your psychic pressure, and Bradley can help you boost
that
, too, so you won’t get brain damage or nosebleeds.”

Marzi nodded. “Sure, but I might still die, right?”

“Might could,” Marla said. “If’n we don’t stop the Outsider, though,
everybody
dies.”

Marzi sighed. “All right then. I’d better leave Jonathan a note.”

•

“I’m serious,” Bradley said. “Close your eyes. I can spare you that much.” He held out his hand.

Marzi shrugged, took his hand, and closed her eyes. Bradley gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Marla put the key in the door of Marzi’s room – the key shouldn’t have fit, but reality didn’t seem to mind – and opened it onto that grim foyer again. Bradley stepped inside, leading Marzi, and Marla followed.

Then Marla walked past him, and she was the dread queen again... except she was still wearing a cowboy hat. The goddess took off the hat, frowned at it, and the hat turned to ash without bothering to burn first, gray dust sifting through her fingers. “Hmm. This Marzipan has great power... by human standards. Come. The longer I stay here, the harder it is for me to remember why I should ever leave, when I have the business of life and death to attend to. If this Outsider didn’t threaten everything in the multiverse, I would leave you two here and get on with more meaningful work.”

“Damn.” Marzi kept her eyes closed as she spoke. “I thought you were bitchy in the real world.”

“What she means is, we’re ready when you are,” Bradley said.

The goddess flickered her tongue – black and pointed, of course – at him, then opened the door.

They stepped out of the wall of a hotel onto the Las Vegas strip at dusk, and Bradley said, “You can open your eyes now.”

“Dang,” Marzi said. “That’s a nice way to travel. Beats the hell out of driving to Vegas.”

“You gotta go through a pretty bad neighborhood on the way, though,” Marla said. “Y’all go fetch Pelham and Rondeau from the hotel.”

“Where are you going?” Bradley said.

Marla hitched up her pants, turned her head, and spat onto the sidewalk. “Gotta go see a demon about a woman.”

Rondeau in His Element

Rondeau lounged in his silk robe and watched Pelham fuss over Marzi, offering her tea and sparkling water and whatever else. The girl had a definite sparkle of magic, a bit like his own, but subtly different – like two different strains of weed, Sativa versus Indica, maybe.

Bradley sat beside him on the couch, and he elbowed Rondeau in the ribs. “So the Pit Boss is cool with you staying here?”

“Hmm?” Rondeau stuck a finger in his ear and twiddled it around. “Oh. I dunno what Marla said, but she put the fear of... something... into my demon-tulpa-kid-whatever. He had a couple of goons – humans too, not trash golems – here to meet me, and they gave me a warm welcome. Gave me a big old briefcase full of cash in exchange for my share of the casino, and returned access to my bank accounts, so I’m actually better off than I was before, in terms of straight-up liquid assets. They even offered me use of my old suite, for life, whenever I want it. I get the feeling the Pit Boss doesn’t much want me around, though – he’s just afraid to be inhospitable.”