Malus Domestica (75 page)

The witch came around the front of the kitchen island and casually leaned against it. “The demon called you here, didn’t it? The one Annie summoned, the one she infested her house with. It’s been calling you. It brought you here.”

“…Yes.”

“Did it ever occur to you to wonder why?”

Robin stiffened. “It knew what you were doing! It knew—”

“—That the time was at hand.” Cutty smiled. She gestured at the Matron and her fleshy, heaving tumor. “Hundreds of years, we’ve been working to bring Ereshkigal into the material world. Coddling it, feeding it life from the dryads. Mum’s been eating for two for a very,
very
long time. And she’s not the first…it’s taken a lot of trial-and-error.” The witch scoffed sadly. “Halloween. It’s almost too on-the-nose, isn’t it? Hokey. But I kinda like it.”

Robin tried to push away from the wall, but no dice: she was glued down. She could move her hands, though, and as Cutty kept talking she slipped one into her jacket.

“Regretfully, I’ve missed a few of your birthdays, littlebird,” said the witch, emphasizing every so often with the handle of the dagger. The blade rested in her hand. “What kind of a great-grandmother am I? So after your magician friends left, I thought, why don’t I bring Mother to town and make a night of it? Throw you a surprise party? You and the goddess Ereshkigal can share a birthday party. Isn’t that
neato-keen?”

The top of the Matron’s massive hunchback split open like a Jiffy-Pop bag—
splutch!

But instead of popcorn, what volcanoed out was a river of … at first Robin wasn’t sure—it looked like crude oil, black and thick—then a nose-burning stench filled the apartment with fish and rotten eggs. Pus and blood and God knew what else sprayed straight up in the air and clattered to the floor around the wheelchair.

Even Cutty was surprised. “Oh, goodness me,” she said, and tugged the collar of her sweater over her face.

Robin’s fingers closed over the prize in the pocket of her jacket. She pulled out Eduardo’s watch and flipped it upside down, pincering it with her thumbs to turn the back counterclockwise. The pewter plate came loose with a subtle click.

The shredded skin over the hunchback’s colossal tumor spread like lips, and the whole thing tilted forward, spilling its contents.

A great gush of fibrous black matter poured out of the broken hump like a horse giving birth and hit the floor with a surprisingly solid, bony weight. The empty sac flopped over the Matron’s lap, covering her face with a parachute of loose skin. Soupy slime oozed down her shins.

Robin removed the watch’s backplate and took out the teratoma hair inside. She focused on the lock of hair and found the energy lying latent inside. Eduardo’s Gift of Manipulation spiraled up her arm and into her body. She put the watch back in her pocket.

“Hey, bitch,” she said, pointing.

Preoccupied by the nauseating resurrection taking place in front of her, Cutty looked up.

“Happy Halloween.” Robin put her index fingertip over the Osdathregar and stole it out of Cutty’s hands as if she were dragging a file on a computer screen. The dagger whipped upward and hovered over the witch’s head.

“The hell is this?” asked Cutty, staring up at it.

Robin whipped her hand down in a slashing motion. The Osdathregar arrowed down at the witch, but halted in mid-air as if it’d struck an invisible obstacle.

Cutty was pointing up at it, concentration on her face.

“Where did you learn to do
that,
littlebird?” she asked, grinning over her shoulder.

Robin pushed against her and the Osdathregar trembled, turning slowly in the air like the needle in a compass. “I get by with a little help from my friends.” The dagger had become the ball in a game of will. She forced it but it wouldn’t turn, and the bladepoint gradually, excruciatingly, rotated toward her.

“The Order?” Cutty cackled. “They’re a bad influence on you.” The witch thrust her finger, overpowering Robin, and the Osdathregar whipped across the room.

At the last instant Robin put up her hands in surprise and the dagger pierced her right palm, bursting from the back. The hilt slammed into the heel of her hand, the tip of the stiletto coming to a stop just a few inches from her face.

That’s when it began to hurt, an incredible rush of pain. She could
feel
the blade between the bones of her hand.
“Aaaaaaah!”

“I hate to do it, my sweet little demon, but you’ve got to be taught a lesson.” Cutty stepped around to the kitchen island, selecting a filet knife from Kenway’s dish drain. Then she went to the creature writhing on the floor and used it to pierce the caul covering its face.

Taking hold of the Osdathregar, Robin pulled it out of her hand, inviting a fresh round of agony. Blood ran down her arm. She flung it back at Cutty, who looked up just in time and put out a warning hand.

The dagger stopped in the air.

“You need new material,” said Cutty, twirling her finger.

The Osdathregar tried to pivot again, but Robin pointed with both hands two-gun style. She howled with effort.
“Eeerrrrraaaah!”

“Do you know what the definition of insanity is, dear?”

Robin pushed the dagger-tip away. Vivid red blood dribbled from her clenched fist. “I may not be insane,” she growled from the wall, her entire body shaking with exertion, “but I’m pretty fuckin crazy.”

The witch stepped away from the thing on the floor, redoubling her efforts, her teeth bared, eyes wide.

Figures coalesced to Robin’s left and right, a pair of shadows made of cobwebs and a faint blue shine as if patched together from old memories. They marched toward the Osdathregar at a stately wedding pace.

A third one appeared between them, and Robin recognized her: Annie Martine, wearing the dress she’d died in.

Spirits. Ghosts. Robin swore to herself in shock.

The other two shades were a black man and an Asian woman. She supposed they must be Fisher Ellis and Wayne’s mother Haruko.

“Wuh-what is this?” stammered Cutty.

Fisher and Haruko’s gossamer hands rose and grasped the hilt of the Osdathregar, and it wheeled to point at the witch. Annie took up position directly behind it, and Cutty’s fists balled into hard claws as they walked the dagger through her willpower like a trio of pallbearers.

A fourth ghost appeared, a bloody-faced man in a police uniform. Then a fifth and a sixth, two boys in black dress clothes. They all crowded around the hovering silver dagger, urging it forward.

Sweat trickled down Cutty’s gray face. “No!
No!”

As if she were bringing someone back to life with shock paddles, Robin punched forward with both fists. The spirits rushed forward and the Osdathregar caught Cutty in the solar plexus, lifting her.

Robin brought her fists down as if ending an orchestra piece and the dagger darted into the floor, nailing the witch to the hardwood planks.

“AAAARGH!”

As one, the ghosts faded, and the force that was pinning Robin to the wall let go. She dropped onto her hands and knees, barking her shin on Kenway’s nightstand on the way down.

“Uuuuuuuhr,” groaned the cadaverous horse-limbed thing on the floor.

Robin crawled to her feet and staggered toward it.

An angular shape moved restlessly inside a cloudy white caul. The rubbery sac was clear enough that she could see through it. Thick wisps of black hair clouded around pale limbs…an elbow…a hip…a hand… a face.

One bloody eye gazed through the membrane. A finger poked through and ripped the knife-hole wider.

Robin recoiled.

Her ankle bumped something, and she found the bottle of champagne.

Getting an idea, she approached the thing currently tearing its way out of its amniotic sac. Her heart slammed a door in her chest over and over. Robin steeled herself and grabbed the reborn Ereshkigal. The death-goddess’s flesh was like cold butter. Robin’s fingers sank into clammy wax.

A thin, malformed face stared at her, eyes glassy and veiny under a scum of cold clear mucus.
“EEEEEEEEE!”

Robin screamed back, terrified,
“Aaaaah!”
but she was already steamin’ along and there wasn’t no stoppin’
this
train. She rose, flexing, and lifted Ereshkigal by the upper arms. The wraith under the flapping caul screeched and kicked like a feral child.

A hard strange wind skirled through the apartment, rising and howling and stinking of rot and sulphur, and the paintings on the walls flapped and clacked in stiff wooden applause. Papers blew off their fridge-magnets and swirled on the air, plastering against the couch and cabinets. Robin’s sexpot witch-gown ripped and flapped madly around her thighs.

Robin muscled the larval Ereshkigal over to the lifeless Matron in the wheelchair. There she dumped it on top of Morgan, or Sycorax, or whatever the ancient bitch wanted to call herself. Then she turned, grabbed up the bottle of champagne, and…

…remembered that champagne is not flammable.

“Shit. Shit!” she shouted into the building hurricane.

She dashed to the kitchen, threw the bottle into the sink (where it shattered) and hauled the refrigerator door open. Inside was a carton with one egg in it, a bottle of ketchup, a half-quart of milk, a box of Mexican leftovers, and enough liquor and beer to stock a tavern.

“Thank God for bachelors.” She grabbed a bottle of Stolichnaya. Storming around the island (dodging Cutty’s reaching hands on the way) she went over and poured Russian vodka all over the banshee.

“Nooooooo!”
roared Cutty. Her face changed, became cavernous with teeth. A fell light shined in her eyes and she bucked ferociously against the dagger’s hilt.

Robin found Kenway’s cigarette and took a steep drag on it, sucking smoke.

The cherry throbbed orange.

She tossed the butt on the monster squirming in the wheelchair, where the Stolichnaya caught and went up in a bright splash of white flame. Ereshkigal shrieked and thrashed, gabbling nonsense. The wind caught the fire and whirled it into a helix of flame, worming toward the ceiling.

Rushing at the conflagration, Robin grabbed the arms of the wheelchair and ran it backwards. Flames licked at her face. Her eyebrows roasted, turning black, curling into ash.

The back of the wheelchair crashed through the window.

Robin found herself teetering on the edge of a three-story drop. Her arms windmilled as the wheelchair and its flaming payload somersaulted head over heels and crashed into the dry canal below in a shower of broken glass.

“You little bitch!”
Cutty was screaming, still pinned to the floor by the Osdathregar.

Wind kicked across the side of the building, howling into the apartment through the broken window. Robin realized her jacket was on fire and wrestled it off, throwing it out into the canal.

“I’ll kill you!”

She went over to where the witch was flailing around and picked up Wayne’s phone, dialing 911.

“I’ll tear your goddamn guts out!”

“Hello,” the dispatcher said pleasantly. “What’s your emergency?”

“My boyfriend’s been stabbed.”

Robin crouched next to Kenway. She frowned at the blood soaking through his shirt from the hole between his shoulder blades—what she could see of it through the tears in her eyes. “We’re at 3210 Broad Avenue, Griffin’s Art Shop. There’s a big red picture of a gryphon on the front window. Please hurry.”

Cutty snarled in a gutteral, blustering roar.
“I’ll crack open your chest and eat your heart, girl!”

The dispatcher sounded startled. “An ambulance is on the way?”

“Thanks,” said Robin, hanging up.

The witch panted like a winded horse, slavering and coiling around the dagger in her chest.
“Get this thing out of me and I’ll show you how to hurt! You’ll wish Annie never pushed your sorry ass out of her rotten cunt!”

“Keep talking.”

Giving her a wide berth, Robin shut the refrigerator door. Then she braced her foot on the wall and hooked her fingers around the back of the fridge.

Six feet to her right, Cutty looked up, curious.

“What are you d—NO!
NOO!”

Robin pried the fridge away from the wall and overturned it on top of Marilyn Cutty’s face.

The Kenmore flattened the witch’s skull with an impact heavy enough to vibrate the hardwood floor. Gray brains and skull fragments sprayed in a thin starburst.

Thin wisps of energy curled from underneath. Robin followed them and found Cutty’s heart-road. She absorbed it. The spray of gore sizzled as if the floor were a griddle, and dissipated into black scum.

A few minutes later, Robin was finishing off the Stolichnaya and watching the thing in the canal burn, when the Parkins came trudging up the stairs. Wayne had one of Kenway’s toluene paint markers and a deep scratch on his face. Leon had an
algiz
rune drawn on his forehead and he was cradling a blood-slick cat.

The three of them stared at each other with shell-shocked eyes.

A distant ambulance siren fell over them, growing to a caterwaul. “You look like you need a drink, Mr Parkin,” said Robin, and she offered up the vodka bottle.

Leon smiled tiredly. “No thanks.”