The devil dances, p.22
The Devil Dances, page 22
part #2 of Nick Englebrecht Series
By then, the portal had begun to shrink. I hung on, my heels planted in mounds of gravel, even as the tentacles slid loose over her body and lost their hold. I had seconds left, if that, before the portal disappeared. It shrank even more around Cernunnos’ wrist, and I heard his last bellowing shrieks of fear and anger as the closing doorway sliced through the flesh and bone of his wrist and his hand dropped, still spasming, into the dirt.
Vivian, her hair burning like a candle flame, slid in the gravel and landed on her back. The flames died down, leaving her hair smoking, but otherwise untouched. Her eyes were wide open, her mouth gaping in a scream of unknowable horror at the things she had briefly seen on the other side of the portal, but nothing came out for some time.
The wind gave out as the clouds began unraveling above us and I dropped to the ground beside her, my armor and wings melting away, the last bleating vestiges of Cernunnos’ dreadful scream echoing in my ears. I wrapped my arms protectively around her. She put her arms around my neck and cried, long and hard, her voice wailing on the wind like a siren until it finally gave out and all she could do was shake and gasp in soft, hoarse sobs. We lay like that a long time, clinging to each other like lost children, until the horror finally let us go.
It wasn’t yet high noon, but the gunfight was already over.
I offered to drive Mary and some of the women who had lost husbands into town, but she and the others had decided to stay in Zion, despite the damage, and despite what their husbands had done. Mary said that, eventually, a local investigator would be out to look into things, but that they, the almost all-female survivors of the Swartzcopf colony, would take care of the matter, tell them the men had run off, or left the community. The police wouldn’t look into it. They never did, she said. Meanwhile, she and the other women would need to rebuild the colony, and attend to the young girls like Sarah, the girls who desperately needed their mothers as the births of their unnatural children quickly approached.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I let Mary doctor my various wounds. My cuts and scrapes were mostly taking care of themselves, but I knew she needed the busy work, needed to feel she was doing something. I told her about John, and what he had been; she sat digesting that a long time. She didn’t really understand the concept of the Arcana; she could barely believe the evil witch had been festering in her own community.
I asked her what she planned to do with the children of Cernunnos when they were born, if she and the other women would be destroying them as Elise Knapp had said was done in the past. Mary hesitated, and looked up at me, and said she felt that enough killing had been done in the colony. I wasn’t sure if I liked her answer, but I was going to make a point of avoiding this place from now on, I decided.
Before I left, I threw a new circle of protection around the colony to safeguard it against any last vestiges of Cernunnos’ influence. As I did so, I wondered about those children. I wondered what would become of them, ultimately. I had a fantasy of small, cloven-hoofed Amish children wild running through these haunted woods. The idea seemed both horrific and prosaic at the same time. A little bit like nature itself, I suppose.
Near the edge of the Knapp property line, where the gravel gave out to the grove, I found a pair of crushed round glasses—Isaac’s, I think. I went and picked them up. I thought about him in those last moments, fighting beside me. He’d found Caleb in the end, and he was where he wanted to be, I suppose. I knew I should be happy for him, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I could have done more in the end. Or done better.
Story of my life.
I tucked the glasses away inside my brand new coat, and walked back to where Daisy was parked on the gravel, packed with our things. We were ready to go.
I leaned against the side of the Jeep and waited while Vivian stepped onto the front porch, carrying her school knapsack over one shoulder. She gave Mary a one-armed hug. The two women exchanged some private words I couldn’t hear at this distance, and Vivian kissed Mary on the cheek. Then she stepped down off the porch and headed toward me.
I went to help her with her last bit of luggage, but she jerked away from me and gave me a hostile look. She dropped her luggage in the backseat. Then, to my surprise, slid in beside it. She slammed the door in a petulant way, and waited patiently for me to get in and start the Jeep.
I thought about saying something, but I found I wasn’t in the mood to argue. Some leaves had fallen from the elms and maples high above us, gathering against the windshield. An early fall just getting started, I thought, as I swiped them away. There might even be frost tonight. It wouldn’t surprise me. I got in and started the engine and put the Jeep into drive.
“What happened to the wedding ring quilt?” I finally asked ten minutes later as we headed away from Zion, away from the Swartzcopf colony and all its horrors.
Since the incident with Cernunnos, we had barely spoken. A few words here and there, everything polite, but nothing of consequence. Last night, I’d slept alone in our room, while Vivian slept in Mary’s room. If things weren’t so tense between us, I might have made a tasteless sex joke about the two of them together, but it I knew it wouldn’t have helped break the ice. Besides, I wasn’t in a very joking mood.
“I left it with Mary. I didn’t want it anymore.” Vivian’s words were clipped and businesslike, chosen for maximum impact.
I drove in silence. About an hour in, I found I was sore from my various injuries and the cramped space. I was tired from lack of sleep and feeling irritable, restless. Ascension had done nothing to change such things. I kept thinking about the last few days, and if I could have done things differently. Even so, I had to ask myself, would I have? Probably not.
More than anything, I was annoyed by the grim silence in the backseat. I was surprised I could feel so human, so miserable, despite everything. Despite being what I was. What I had become.
At last, I said, “That was supposed to be for our almost-wedding.”
Vivian was watching the landscape flicker by but she turned her head to face me in the rearview mirror. I saw her pale face, her long, flaming red hair, her shocking, blue-green eyes, so much like my dad’s. “How dare you?” she said.
I stiffened in my seat but didn’t answer.
“How fucking dare you, Nick? You knew. You knew who my father was. You knew it was him. You knew I had wondered all my life, and you had the answer, but still you didn’t tell me.”
“Maybe I wanted to protect you,” I answered, more angrily than I’d meant to. My voice faintly vibrated with my anger. “For what it’s worth, he isn’t much of a father. You aren’t missing out on anything, believe me. He left me alone for years. He left me in foster care. He left me to fend for myself on the streets. He only came to me when I was useful to him. That’s who our dear father is.”
“That isn’t the reason you kept it from me, and you know it,” she hissed with narrowed eyes. “At least be honest with yourself, Nick, even if you won’t be honest with anyone else. You didn’t tell me because you knew I’d find our situation uncomfortable and you’ve enjoyed fucking me too much. You never wanted it to end.”
I lit a cigarette and realized I was walking on a proverbial minefield. As we started moving out of the deep country and back into the more developed areas, I snorted out smoke and said, “Fine. You want the truth? I’ll tell you the truth, then. I love you, Vivian. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone in my life. I burn for you. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t say anything at all.
“Fuck it. You said once that you can barely control yourself around me. Well, it’s the same for me.”
She muttered something into her lap. It took me a moment to figure out what she’d said.
Of course you burn. You’re the goddamn Devil.
“Is that the reason? Are you afraid of me? Because nothing’s really changed, Viv. I’m still Nick Englebrecht… whatever else I might be. Ascension hasn’t changed me in the least.”
It took her a moment to respond. “Nick, I couldn’t care less if you were an angel, a demon, a devil, or a man,” she said. I could hear the tears in her voice. “That’s not the point I’m trying to make here.”
The tears hurt me. They made me angry. I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “What is your point?”
“You lied to me. You lied to keep me with you. You lied because you want to fuck me, the same as my teacher. He wanted to own me, to possess me…”
“You’re comparing me to a pedophile?” I shouted.
“I don’t care if you are a Man of Sin. I don’t care if you’re the fucking Anti-Christ. But if you can’t be honest with me, then we have no future together.”
We fell silent after that spat, and spent the rest of the drive in our own heads, thinking our own virulent thoughts. Vivian had a point, I suppose. Trying to make daemons be truthful was a little bit like teaching pigs to sing. It just annoyed all the parties involved. I smoked my pack down to nothing and concentrated on feeling angry. If I felt angry, maybe I wouldn’t feel so guilty. So helpless. So much like a bastard.
I thought about what my father had said. Even Vivian will abandon you in time, when she finds out what you’re really made of.
A few hours later, we finally reached Blackwater and I pulled around to the lot behind Vivian’s apartment building and shut down the engine. I got out of the Jeep and opened the back door, offering her my hand, but Vivian slid out the opposite way, carrying her knapsack over one shoulder. She came around the Jeep so we could face each other in the parking lot like two modern-day gunslingers with an unsettled grievance.
Vivian eyed me steadily, fearlessly, even if I was the Devil. “You saved me from Cernunnos, Nick, and for that, I’m grateful. I owe you one. But the truth of the matter is, I don’t want to see you again, not in the romantic sense.”
I stared long and hard at her, trying hard to hide how her words crippled me. Years of street-living helped. I’d learned a long time ago how to mask my weaknesses. “So this is it, then.”
Vivian lifted her chin. A warm breeze blew a long crimson tendril across her freckled nose. “I don’t want you coming around. I don’t want you teaching me magick. In fact, I think it might be best if one of us considers leaving this town.”
“I take it this means no almost-wedding. No almost-house.”
Her mouth quirked up on one side but her eyes remained cold and dead. “Maybe I’ll be able to forgive you one day, Nick, just not right now. Maybe not ever. You should know I can carry a grudge a long, long time.”
“You don’t want to make an enemy of me, Viv,” I warned her.
She blinked and her eyes flashed all white for a moment—that scary white that stemmed from her power as the Devil’s only begotten daughter. I could tell she was unafraid of me, one of the few in this town who were. “Can I ask you something, Nick?”
I kicked at some gravel. “Ask.”
“If Cernunnos hadn’t said anything, if I had never learned it from him, when would you have told me about our father? After our almost-wedding or after our real wedding?”
I stood there in the long, dark coat I’d recently bought to replace the one I’d ruined, and said nothing. It was the only one in the store that fit me. It was pitch black, and fell almost to my heels, with deep pockets and a buttoned Inverness. It made me feel very cowboy-ish as I stood there in the parking lot, facing down my girlfriend and now greatest and most powerful enemy. But I knew I wasn’t a cowboy. Cowboys were heroes, and I was far from that.
“Nick?”
I knew she would see through any lie, so I didn’t say anything at all. Big, silent cowboy type. Yeah, that’s me.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, and turned to head toward the back door of the apartment.
I watched her walk away from me. “Vivian,” I said, and she stopped in mid-step, though she didn’t turn around. All I saw was her long, red hair sparking in the daylight. “I love you. I never lied about that. No matter what I’ve done, or how I’ve screwed up, I never meant to hurt you. I love you too much for that. I want you to know that.”
“Nick,” she answered, “you told me once that you’re just a regular guy, but you’re not.”
“How’s that, Viv?”
She sighed just before she walked away from me. “Because you’re the Prince of Lies.”
Now that you have completed this book, we hope you will leave a review so that other readers may benefit from your perspective. Authors like K.H. Koehler live and die by your reviews, after all!
Please visit http://curiosityquills.com/reader-survey/ to share your reading experience with the author of this book!
K. H. Koehler is the author of various novels and novellas in the genres of horror, science-fiction, dark fantasy, steampunk, and young adult.
She is currently writing in several different novel series, including The Kaiju Hunter, the Mrs. McGillicuddy Mysteries and, secretly, The Scorpion series of pulp novels.
She is a freelance editor, a cover designer, a writer, a reader, an artist, a fan, a cynic, and a pet owner. Her short work has been featured on Horror World and in the Bram Stoker Award-winning anthology Demons, edited by John Skipp.
She lives in the beautiful wilds of Northeast Pennsylvania in almost the exact same town as Nick Englebrecht. She has two very large and opinionated Rottweilers. Her official website is located at http://khkoehlerbooks.wordpress.com.
A Division of Whampa, LLC
P.O. Box 2540
Dulles, VA 20101
Tel/Fax: 800-998-2509
http://curiosityquills.com
© 2013 K.H. Koehler
http://khkoehlerbooks.wordpress.com
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information about Subsidiary Rights, Bulk Purchases, Live Events, or any other questions - please contact Curiosity Quills Press at info@curiosityquills.com, or visit http://curiosityquills.com
Cover design by Ricky Gunawan
http://ricky-gunawan.daportfolio.com
ISBN: 978-1-62007-338-4 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-62007-339-1 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-62007-340-7 (hardcover)
The Devil You Know, by K.H. Koehler
(http://curiosityquills.com/the-devil-you-know/)
Not only does the devil have an only begotten son, but he’s currently residing in the rural town of Blackwater in northeast Pennsylvania.
Semi-retired from law enforcement, the handsome, if cynical,Nick Englebrechtbecomes quickly caught up in a local missing child case that seems mundane on the outside, but when the sheriff requests his help as a psychic detective to help find the missing girl, his off-the-books investigation quickly leads him to some terrible truths about life, love and the universe as we know it.
And if that isn’t bad enough, the angels have begun an ethnic cleansing of all beings with demonic blood. Of course, Nick is at the top of their to-do list.
Sweet Dreams are Made of Teeth, by Richard Roberts
(http://j.mp/18xnQ95)
Have you ever had the nightmare of being chased by a beast? Then you’ve met Fang. He’ll be the first to admit that he’s a very simple nightmare. All he knows is hunting your dreams and dragging them into the Dark.
He’s not ready for his life to get complicated. He’s not ready to be dragged into his best friend’s schemes to make dreams so terrifying they break people. He’s not ready to love, or to be loved, or to meet someone who makes him happy.
He’s not ready to grow up. When he does, one thing will stay the same: he’ll stay an artist, and he’ll paint your dreams with fear until they’re beautiful.
Buried, by Gerilyn Marin
(http://j.mp/15sVw5n)
Fane’s Cove isn’t the average coastal town- not with wandering apparitions, disembodied voices and poltergeist activity occurring on a regular basis- but the residents are used to it. As far as they know, it’s simply always been that way.
Somehow, Cadence McKenna can’t shake the feeling that the seemingly-normal new resident, Gray Addison, is hiding something stranger than all of the town’s odd happenings combined and she’s determined to find out what that is – by any means necessary.
Real Vampires Don’t Sparkle!, by Amy Fecteau
(http://j.mp/14QqF5K)
Matheus Taylor didn’t ask to be murdered. Quin didn’t care. A seventeen-hundred old Roman, Quintus Livius Saturnius had a different view of morality than most people. Killing Matheus and hijacking his undead existence seemed perfectly acceptable to him.
Now, Matheus spends his nights running for his life, questioning his sexual orientation, and defying a mysterious new threat to the vampires within his city. Not that he set out to do any defying; he just wanted to be left alone. Unfortunately, that was never going to happen.
The Department of Magic, by Rod Kierkegaard, Jr.
(http://j.mp/16xQgna)
Magic is nothing like it seems in children’s books. It’s dark and bloody and sexual – and requires its own semi-mythical branch of the US Federal Government to safeguard citizens against everpresent supernatural threats.
Join Jasmine Farah and Rocco di Angelo – a pair of wet-behind-the-ears recruits of The Department of Magic – on a nightmare gallop through a world of ghosts, spooks, vampires, and demons, and the minions of South American and Voodoo gods hell-bent on destroying all humanity in the year 2012.
The Serendipitous Curse: Reborn, by Aiden James & Lisa Collicutt
(http://j.mp/1922q3Q)
The soul of Solomon Brandt, an evil plantation owner murdered by his slaves, has been safely contained by the Hoodoo circle over his burial site. But construction work has disturbed the seal, and the essence of Solomon emerged at last into the modern world – but forever changed.
