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

“Rondeau and Pelham aren’t here.” Crapsey pumped the gun, loading a cartridge into the chamber with that wonderful “ka-chunk” sound so beloved of action movie directors. “Last I saw them, they were tied up in the back of a van, but that was days ago. They’re all tucked away, now, probably crying and wondering when you’re going to save them.”

“Oh, I so do not have time for this bullshit.” Marla stood up, shaking off dirt as she did, though she still looked like the avatar of some particularly earthy deity, her hair sending down showers of dust with every step she took toward him.

Crapsey pointed the barrels of the gun at her. “You can keep walking, and I’ll blow a hole in your middle, and you can listen to what I have to say while you lay there knitting your guts back together, assuming you can really do that. Or you can stop where you are and listen to me
without
getting major abdominal damage. Personally, I’m not bothered either way – in fact, I’d kinda prefer the bit where I get to shoot you, but I’ve been instructed to play nice until you force me to do otherwise. So which is it, option one, or option two?”

“I’ll go with option C. I’m going to walk over there and get a drink.” She pointed to a dusty cooler against one wall of the cavern. “Because you don’t know what a dry mouth is until you’ve woken up from your own grave. Then I’m going to put on one of those black robes hanging on the hooks over there, left by my former cultists, because you’re lecherous and I’m not in the mood to give you a free show.”

“You’ve literally got sand in your vagina. You are the opposite of alluring.”

“Yeah, you say that, but didn’t I hear you fucked Nicolette? If so, your standards are as low as they can be without recourse to bestiality. Anyway, shoot me if you must, but I’ll make you eat a bucket of scorpions if you do. That’s not an empty threat, either. I’m feeling very literal today.”

Crapsey couldn’t help but feel he sacrificed some of the initiative by acquiescing, but he let her put on a robe and then guzzle a bottle of water while sitting on the cooler. She poured water on her face, but that just made the dirt streak and darken, giving her a very war-paint sort of visage. Her gaze was calm. She’d clearly faced things a lot scarier than Crapsey and come out of it okay. He knew she had; once or twice, he’d been in the vicinity when she did the facing.

She stretched, rolling her head around on her shoulders. Sleeping for a month probably put quite a crick in the neck. “Who talked you into being an idiot this time, Crapsey? I know you don’t have the initiative to kidnap my friends and point a gun at me on your own. You’ve tagged along after some high-quality monsters in the past – the Mason, Elsie Jarrow – but I’m drawing a blank trying to figure out your current employer. There aren’t many big scary people with a grudge against me left.” She swished more water into her mouth, then spat it out. The water was still brownish. Marla met his eyes again. “There aren’t many left because they’re dead. Which you
know
. And yet, here you are, throwing in your lot with someone trying to oppose me
again
. Call it the triumph of enthusiasm over experience, huh?”

“Read this.” He reached into the pocket of his blazer, pulled out a folded sheet of paper, and tossed it toward her.

She bent, picked the letter up, and read it aloud, in a showy, declamatory voice. He knew that Marla could make anything sound contemptuous if she tried, and she was trying pretty hard. Crapsey had found the letter in the RV, among Rondeau and Pelham’s crappy possessions, and handing it over spared him having to tell the story himself. Nicolette had written it – or rather, since she’d been a conscious severed head in a birdcage at the time, she’d dictated it to a mind-controlled hotel maid who’d done the actual writing – in her usual gloating-and-crowing-and-boasting tone. In the note Nicolette explained how she’d learned that Marla was a goddess. That she’d sweet-talked and lied and turned Marla’s hired muscle, a cursed and lethal goon named Squat, against her. That with Squat’s help she was going to escape and spend the month Marla was down in the underworld wreaking havoc, or plotting revenge, or researching how to murder gods. And how she was going to
finally
make Marla take her seriously as a nemesis.

When she was done reading – “Thugs and pisses, Nicolette” – Marla snorted and threw the letter on the ground. “Gods, Crapsey. You’re working for Nicolette, now? You used to be a henchman for
queens
of villainy, and now you’re, like, assistant dogcatcher. You’re working for a
head
in a
cage
–”

“I don’t think she spends a lot of time in a cage anymore,” Crapsey said. “I hear she got herself a new set of legs, and all the stuff in between, too, I imagine. The thing you don’t get it is, you’ve
made
Nicolette dangerous, more so than she ever would have been without you to prove herself against. I get that Nicolette’s ambition has exceeded her ability in the past, but you’re the standard she set herself against, Marla. All she wants is for you to take her seriously. It’s sad, but at the same time, it’s pushing her to do great things, for a certain fucked-up definition of ‘great.’ She’s determined to become dangerous enough that you can’t just snort and roll your eyes when she comes to cause trouble.” He shrugged. “I don’t know her whole plan, but from what she’s told me... hating you has given her some real inspiration. She’s making some moves.”

Marla closed one of her nostrils with her finger and blew, spraying dirt and less sanitary things at Crapsey’s feet, making him jump out of the way. She cleared the other nostril the same way, then said, “I
really
don’t have time for this, Crapsey. Do you know why none of my cultists are hanging around right now, ritually sacrificing you to me? It’s because they discovered something in the caves down below, something that
ate
them, and then flew away. At least, we think it flew. It’s some kind of serious primal monster from out of deep time, imprisoned here by ancient wizards or some shit, maybe not even human wizards, at that. I told Rondeau and Pelham to get started on trying to track the thing, and now you tell me Nicolette has kidnapped them? I am just
so
not in the mood to make a side trip to smite her.” She sighed. “Crapsey, it’s
stupid
. Nicolette, by all rights, should be dead. She even admits it in the letter. Elsie Jarrow decapitated her, and her original body is literally fish food now. The only reason she retains her consciousness is because I called in a favor and had death.... withdrawn from her. I kept Nicolette alive and conscious because I thought she could be useful to me, as an oracle and a bloodhound for dangerous badness and chaos. I needed her as a compass for my monster-hunting trips, that’s all, and there are other options for tracking down big bad beasties. If Nicolette annoys me, all I have to do is let nature take its course again, and she’ll get bounced right off this mortal coil. Plus, as she may have mentioned, I’ve got some connections in the underworld – I don’t mean the mob, I mean the land of the
dead
– and once Nicolette’s a corpse, she’s pretty much entirely in my power. She’s lucky I don’t take her seriously, because if I did, she might have an eternity of unpleasantness ahead of her, but the fact is, when Nicolette is not actively pissing in my face, I don’t even think about her. So, fuck it. I’ll just let her die, as soon as I can get word to Death, which will be shortly.”

Crapsey shook his head. “Come on, Marla. Even if you think Nicolette’s stupid, that she’s a joke, you know she’s not
that
stupid. She’s taken steps to keep you from just letting her die. She said
that
in the letter, too –”

“Yeah, she kidnapped Pelham and Rondeau, and she’ll arrange for them to be killed or maimed if I let her die, I get it. I’m going to rescue them, or send people to rescue them, assuming they don’t just rescue
themselves
. But I don’t have time to deal with Nicolette myself. If that hurts her feelings, tough.”

Crapsey shook his head. “I’m taking you with me, Marla. You
are
going to see Nicolette. Rondeau and Pelham, kidnapping them was just to get your attention, and to keep them out of my way while I had this little talk with you – they are
not
Nicolette’s dead-man’s switch. I don’t know what she did, exactly, or what her plans are, but she’s pretty pleased with herself. She was straight-up chortling last time we talked, and she wants to give you the big reveal herself, let you know exactly how she outsmarted you.”

“I’ve never gone wrong yet underestimating Nicolette, and I don’t intend to start.”

Crapsey thought she sounded doubtful, though, or at least concerned. With Marla it was hard to tell how much of her act was bravado and how much was actual bedrock self-confidence. The woman was often wrong, but rarely uncertain. “Fine. You can keep right on underestimating her, just as long as you get in the Jeep I’ve got waiting and behave yourself on the way to the airfield.” He hefted the shotgun and pointed it at her. “You can walk, or I can drag your bleeding and screaming carcass. I don’t care which.”

“Will you go ahead and do something already?” Marla said. “How long are you just going to stand there and watch?”

Crapsey frowned. “What the hell are you – “ His eyes suddenly felt heavy, like they were window shades being dragged down, and he blinked and swayed. How had Marla managed to cast a sleep spell on him? She didn’t have anything with her, no charms, she’d spoken no incantation, and she was no more psychic than your average kumquat, so
how
... He yawned as widely as he could – and with his magical jaw, that was very wide indeed – and felt himself falling forward, but was deep asleep before he hit the ground, sparing him the indignity of feeling the impact.

Bradley on the Road

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Marla said. “I figured you’d just throw a rock at his head or something, make a distraction so I could take the gun away and feed it to him.” She nudged Crapsey’s unconscious form with her toe.

“I’ve learned a few new tricks.” Bradley stepped from the mouth of the tunnel where he’d been hiding, into the pool of overlapping lantern light. “I’m not much good when it comes to mind control, and that’s kind of a gross and evil thing to do anyway, but making somebody really sleepy is a lot easier, and handy, too.” He moved to stand beside Marla, looking down at Crapsey, who was curled up and snoring outrageously. He wore a blue sharkskin suit, perhaps the most impractical desert attire Bradley had ever encountered.

“I’d hug you, but I’m covered in filth,” Marla said. “Oh, screw it, the robe is covering most of the filth.” She threw her arms around him and squeezed him tight. “I know you’re not
my
B,” she said into his ear, “but it’s good to see you anyway.”

“I’m very, very close to being your B,” he said. “I’m from a branch of the multiverse just half a degree distant.
Your
Bradley arrived at the scene of a crime in time to get himself killed. Me, I was a little late, so by the time I got there, everything was over.”

“Rondeau didn’t take over your body, then?” she said. “I mean, demonstrably. So, what happened in your branch?”

“Remember that guy Danny Two Saints, the thug? Rondeau took over his body instead. Nobody much mourned his loss, I must say. I stayed on as your apprentice for a while in that world. Admittedly, from that point on, my timeline and yours diverged... a lot. Where I come from, you’re still chief sorcerer of Felport.”

She grunted. “Sure. I didn’t ruin everything by trying to bring you back to life over there.”

He nodded. “I appreciate the effort, though. We all do. Anyway, when Bradley Bowman became the new overseer of the multiverse, I got uplifted along with all the other versions of us from throughout all the branches, consolidated into a single consciousness...”

“So what are you
now
, standing before me? Like, a pseudopod? The Over-Bradley sticking his pinky finger into my reality?”

He shook his head. “I’m more like an autonomous vehicle. A single instance of Bradley, cut loose and sent here on a mission. The reason I’m here –”

Marla cut him off. “I bet I know. The thing my cultists found in the caverns, it’s from
elsewhere
, yeah? Something from another, inimical universe? Like my old cloak?”

Bradley shivered at the mention of her cloak, which had seemed like a powerful magical artifact, but had actually been an intelligent parasitic entity from a place with entirely different physical laws. The cloak had caused him trouble, even after he was elevated to his position as overseer of the multiverse. “Like that, but not identical. As far as I can tell, this new creature, this Outsider, doesn’t need a host to survive in this universe, but it doesn’t have much of a body, either – it’s almost ethereal, looks like a creature made of shadow. Probably once upon a time it had a more concrete form, but the centuries or millennia it spent imprisoned took a toll. It’s traveling around now, consuming humans as it goes, and its ontological mass – it’s
reality
– is increasing with each kill. I think it’s building itself a body that can function in this universe. Maybe learning about us by devouring us. Maybe taking memories or other properties from its victims. Who knows? I’m just here to kill it, and since you’ve always been infinitely better at killing things than I am, I figured I’d ask for help.”

“Also because it’s my fault the thing got loose.” She sighed. “I was trying to keep the cultists out of trouble, because a bunch of unsupervised zealots devoted to a goddess of death is a recipe for trouble. I sent them into the caverns to explore, thinking they wouldn’t find anything, that it was a snipe hunt, but the poor idiots found an actual snipe. That thing that got loose is my responsibility. I’ll take care of it. But I’m happy to have one of the Over-Bradley’s fingernail clippings to help out.”

Bradley, fortunately, had been under no illusions about how this was going to work. Just because he was an emissary from an entity elevated as far above the gods as the gods were above humans, just because he was a psychic capable of summoning oracles to answer nearly any question, just because he was well-versed in the dangers of incursions from other universes, didn’t mean he was going to be in charge. So what if Marla was currently penniless, without unkidnapped allies, and cut off from the powers she possessed as a god of death during her mortal month on Earth? She was still Marla Mason, and that meant she was going to take the lead.