MudMan (The Golem Chronicles Book 1) (45 page)

The sight before her was enough to rob her of breath:

The homunculus was near. A monstrous body, all long limbs and tearing teeth, but she knew its body was malleable and took its shape based on the essence occupying the shell. This shell had been vacated, and recently. From all outward appearances, the body—which had housed
Dibeininax Ayosainondur Daimuyon
—was dead. Burned, scarred, mutilated, decaying. But she saw true. The body was
dying
, quickly. Without a host to give it form and essence, the homunculus would spoil like an overripe fruit fallen from a tree branch.

But
dying
wasn’t
dead
.

With the miniscule strength left to her, she pulled her ruined remains toward the empty vessel. Perhaps this wasn’t the end after all ...

THIRTY-FIVE:

New Day

The sanctuary buzzed with the quiet hum of men and women sharing words, the greeting of peace before worship began. Light filtered in through the stained-glass windows, splashing bright patches of red, gold, and blue over the cross hanging above the pulpit. A beautiful morning, with everything in its proper place, just as it should be. Levi stood, church face plastered in place, red hymnal—the binding nearly shot—in one palm.

Though he was far from being back to normal, after four days of constant recuperation, he was feeling
almost
human again, or at least as close as he ever came to feeling human. The fact that he’d survived at all was cause for celebration, especially considering the tremendous damage he’d endured after freeing himself from Hogg’s manacles and battling Cain. Even more miraculous, Ryder, her sister, Jamie, Professor Wilkie, and Chuck had all managed to survive the ordeal as well. Not undamaged, obviously—everyone sported their fair share of breaks, scrapes, bruises, and emotional scars—but alive was alive.

Levi didn’t remember much after Ryder had repeatedly stabbed Cain in the head. He vaguely recalled watching Cain’s essence—a big, nasty, bloated thing—being sucked back into the pit where it rightfully belonged, but everything after that was fuzzy. A blur of sight and sounds and darkness. Chuck had been kind enough to fill Levi in once he finally became coherent. Apparently, after Ryder had finished Cain off, Chuck had taken charge of the situation: routing the last of the Kobocks and Thursrs—almost single-handedly, of course—then using Levi’s ichor to stabilize Ryder and Jamie until he could get them to a hospital. Somewhere in there, someone—though Levi wasn’t precisely sure who—had dropped him off at his home.

At least that was the way Chuck told things. Levi trusted the halfie’s recollection of events about as much as he’d trust a politician running for office. He suspected Chuck’s account was more than a little embellished and likely designed to squeeze out a bonus for his “heroics.” He suspected the Black Shillelaghs had played a much more substantial role, but Levi didn’t particularly care to press the issue. Everything had turned out more or less okay, so the exact
how
of it all wasn’t nearly as important.

He’d met with Chuck again last night, over at the Lonely Mountain.

It’d been the first time in days he’d felt physically capable of dragging his mangled body off the bloodstone in his backyard. He’d met both to pay the man the gold he was due and to square away all the nitty-gritty details that remained. Levi had defeated Hogg—in a manner of speaking, anyway—and stopped Cain, but there was still clean-up work to be done: Compensating the mercenaries he’d hired. Disposing of all those bodies so the authorities would be none the wiser. Razing that heinous laboratory to the ground so Hogg would have to start again from scratch.

There was also Ryder to see to. Her and Jamie, the sister.

“So,” Chuck had said, lounging in a booth, spinning a tacky diamond-studded gold ring that hugged his middle finger. “My money.”

Levi waved the question away and plunked a USPS box down on the table. A nondescript package, which would draw little notice. Unless, of course, someone picked up the tiny box. At over fifty pounds, Levi was sure the package would raise a few questions in the wrong hands.

“How is she?” he asked Chuck without preamble. “Her and her sister?”

Levi would’ve taken the pair in, but he hadn’t been in any kind of shape to deal with those two. He’d barely been able to care for himself, which was saying something since caring for himself amounted to sleeping on a rock and not moving for four days straight. Besides, someone needed to actively look after them—to watch for any possible side effects from the botched ritual.

In the end, Levi supposed, it was probably better for them to be with Chuck anyway. For one, even having a cat as a roommate pushed the limits of the Mudman’s tolerance—two women would be a bit much. Two, those women weren’t regular Rubes anymore. They’d be undergoing a lot of changes in the days, weeks, and months ahead, and Chuck was far more capable of walking them through those changes than Levi. For better or worse, the Hub was their world now, and Chuck could help the two find their place.

Chuck spun his ring round and round while he thought. “The sister’s a cold fish,” he replied. “Still in shock, I think. I can hardly get two words outta that broad, but she’s alive. And Ryder, well she’s lookin’ fine as ever. Still got that sassiness about her, but I think she’s finally startin’ to warm up to me. I mean we ain’t together yet, like you know”—he arched an eyebrow—“but she’s interested in the mean green, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

“Absolutely not what I meant,” Levi replied.

“Yeah, I know what you meant. But what you want me to say, man? They dealin’ with some real heavy shit. You and me, we both know neither of those gals gonna be the same. Not after this. With this kinda thing, there ain’t no way a tellin’ how it’s gonna shake out. Not like there’s a lot of precedent, am I right?”

Levi nodded his head, but said nothing.

Levi might have arrived in time to prevent Ryder’s death, but he hadn’t arrived in time to save her. Not entirely. By the time he’d burst through the window, she’d already been marked by dark alchemy—her soul split open and exposed to a demonic essence. She’d been part of an arcane ritual as old as the world itself, which had halted, herky-jerky, before it could come to completion. No one walked away from something like that unchanged. And not just in a psychological sense, either. When powerful rituals went awry, there were always consequences.

Always.

Transference was the most likely possibility:

Some fragment of the wyrm god might have lived on inside Ryder and her sister. Even if a sliver of Cain remained, the effects could be devastating, though it was impossible to predict what exactly the extent of those effects would be. Levi had no doubt, however, that there would be issues of one sort or another. Those two would bear watching, but he was hopeful both would recover, at least enough to go back to whatever life remained to them.

He pointed to the package on the table. “Two bricks. One is yours to do with as you please. The other is for Ryder, minus five percent, which you can keep in exchange for putting her up and cashing the gold out.”

“That’s real generous of you,” Chuck replied, grabbing the box and pulling it across the table with a groan. “Damn, man. That shit right there’s a lot heavier than it looks. Come in here, flop that box down, make it look all easy.”

“Chuck, I’m only going to say this once—make sure she gets what’s comin’ to her.”

“You know I got feelings right, Levi? Always comin’ at me like, ‘Don’t steal my money, Chuck. No leprechaun shenanigans, Chuck. I’ll break your fingers, ’cause I’m a colossal asshole with trust issues, Chuck.’ Let me just ask you, did I or didn’t I come through?” He leaned forward, eyebrow cocked.

Levi sighed. “Yeah, you came through.”

“Thank you for acknowledgin’ my trustworthiness and contribution to the team.”

Levi ran a hand over his balding head, then grunted a monosyllabic apology. “What about the warehouse?” he asked afterward.

“Don’t sweat the warehouse, man. The Black Shillelaghs know their business. They reached out to a freelance cleanup crew. Bunch of ghouls. Nasty-ass sumbitches ate the corpses. All of ’em. Then the Shillelaghs burned that shithole to the ground. Ain’t nothing left.”

“The homunculus?”

Chuck hesitated, fidgeting for a moment, turning his tacky ring again. “That’s the only … let’s call it a complication. Freaky-ass thing was gone. Don’t know what happened to it. But it can’t be Cain, right? Not if Ryder’s alive?”

Levi nodded. The absence of the homunculus was deeply troubling, but considering everything else that had gone right? It was still a win.

“Alright,” said Pastor Steve from the pulpit, pulling Levi from his thoughts. “Let’s greet one another in love before we worship this morning.”

As was usual, George, the lanky beanpole of a man with the balding crown and the awkward smile, shuffled over and extended a hand. And, as usual, Levi grasped the clammy mitt and gave it several pumps before letting go.

“Mornin’, Levi,” George said. “Sure is good to see you. We missed you Tuesday—the food pantry wasn’t the same without you. I take it your commission came through? How’d the project turn out?”

Levi smiled. He didn’t even have to force it. There’d been no art commission, and though the lie sat heavy in his gut, his “project” had turned out far better than he could’ve ever hoped for.

“A few hiccups,” he said after a moment, recalling how he’d had to set himself on fire at one point and had torn his own hands and feet off at another. “Overall though, I’m pleased with the way things turned out. Just between us, it might be the best piece of work I’ve ever done. Certainly the piece I’m proudest of.”

“That’s great to hear, I mean it.”

“How ’bout you?” Levi asked, completing the formulaic greeting. Except it didn’t feel like a formula—he actually
wanted
to know how George was doing.

“Same old same old, but every week’s a blessing from the Lord, if you take my meaning.”

Levi nodded. “I think I understand you just fine.”

“You comin’ out Tuesday?” George asked with a speculative smile, a thin stretching of the lips.

“Try and stop me.”

“Okay,” said Pastor Steve from the podium. “Let’s return to our seats. We’re going to be singing out of the Red Hymnal”—he held up a worn, red book in one hand—“number forty-two, ‘O God, the Rock of Ages.’” The pianist, a silver-haired woman with a smiling face and thin glasses, began playing the tune. “Let us be present together as we worship this morning,” Steve continued, speaking over the music. “The Holy Sabbath is a new day, and as the Apostle Paul wrote, ‘The old has gone, the new is here!’ So let us celebrate this newness together. The past is the past, and the future stretches before us, bright and new. Let’s sing our thanks for the ever-renewing mercies and grace of God above.”

There were plenty of things for Levi to worry about—Ryder, the missing homunculus, Hogg at large in the world, all that gold coming back to bite him—but as Levi sang, those worries rolled away, consecrated oil burning away under a holy flame. Levi was present and, for the time being, happy ... Well, maybe not
happy
, but almost.

Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

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. One other word on ol’ Levi: I don’t have any plans to write more books in this series—I have a million stories to tell and only so many days in the year. If, however, you want to read more books with Levi, Ryder, and Chuck, please say so in your review or email me and let me know ([email protected]). Ultimately, my boss is you, the reader. So if enough people express an interest in reading more MudMan stories, I’ll be only too happy to write them.

If you want to delve deeper in the Hub, Outworld, and the various nightmarish creatures that inhabit Levi’s world, be sure to check out my Yancy Lazarus series:
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About the Author

Hey all, my name is James Hunter and I’m a writer, among other things. So just a little about me: I’m a former Marine Corps Sergeant, combat veteran, and pirate hunter (seriously). I’m also a member of The Royal Order of the Shellback—’cause that’s a real thing. I’ve also been a missionary and international aid worker in Bangkok, Thiland. And, a space-ship captain, can’t forget that.

Okay … the last one is only in my imagination.

Currently, I’m a stay at home Dad—taking care of my two kids—while also writing full time, making up absurd stories that I hope people will continue to buy. When I’m not working, writing, or spending time with family, I occasionally eat and sleep.