As soon as we stepped in, Ozzie started growling low in the back of her throat. I felt it too. Everything was as it had been, but it was wrong. A parody of my childhood home. A grotesque version of it. The smell of gingerbread filled the air so thickly, it nauseated. The dead Christmas tree was decaying in its stand. I gathered my will and pressed out, making a warm place at my heart and expanding it like a bubble all around me. The sense of transcendent madness and evil lessened a degree, even if it didn’t evaporate.
From the kitchen, something laughed. It was a sick sound, wet and phlegmy. I walked in. They were at the table. Mom, Dad, Curtis, and the small, twisted tumor of a thing that had once been my brother Jay. Thick nylon rope bound all of them except it. Bright red Christmas stockings were stuffed in their mouths as gags.
The Graveyard Child’s grin split its face, and it cackled obscenely.
“Hey there, sister,” it said, and smacked its massive frog-like lips. “I was hopin’ you could come.”
chapter twenty-one
“Abraxiel Unam,” I said.
“Sure, whatever,” it said, waving a hand like it was shooing a fly. Its skin was pale as maggots, its hands larger than a grown man’s, and thick. Its knuckles seemed to sink into its flesh. “Call me that. I’ll call you Little Janie Pees-Her-Pants. Or whatever. Your Royal Majesty if you want. Might as well fuck a horse as a supermodel where I come from.”
It shuddered. Its black eyes quivered. Ozzie barked once, and the Graveyard Child barked back, spraying spittle across the room. Ozzie got behind my knees but didn’t retreat past that. I could feel her growling. The thing at the table was madness. Not stupid, not out of control. It was vast intelligence gone necrotic. It hopped down from its chair and reached for a plate of cookies beside the stove. Everything it did seemed rich with meaning and menace. Even putting a cookie in its toothless mouth.
“You want some, sister? They made them for everybody but you. You’re the fucking Whore of Babylon,” it said, then winked massively. “I should know, right?”
“What do you want?”
“I want what’s mine back!” it shouted, its mouth a square of rage. “You took my things. You took my stuff. Do you have any idea how long it took me to build all that up? All those places, all those houses? All that lovely, lovely money? Because you know what money is? It’s power.”
It sighed.
“So here’s the deal. You get out of my sister’s body, and I won’t kill all these people. Sound good?”
“You’re not talking to her,” I said. I did, not the rider. “You’re talking to me.”
“Sonnenrad! Darling! Why the cold shoulder? I know you’re in there. I fucked you into her,” it said, then pressed fingers to its lips. “Oh. Hey. Was that rude? I never know where the line is.”
It took the plate of cookies and trundled back to its chair, chewing with its mouth open, unself-conscious as a baby.
“Let them go,” I said. “You don’t have an issue with them. You have it with me.”
It reached down with one foot, hooked an ankle under the rungs of the chair Dad was tied to, and tipped it back. Dad’s eyes went wide as he fell backward. I shouted and moved forward, but I still heard the thump when his skull hit the floor. It popped another cookie into its mouth and looked up innocently.
“No? All right,” it said, its deformed face a picture of wide-eyed guilelessness that melted into a leer. “How much do you think it would take?”
“I am not here to bargain,” my voice said without me.
“Didja come to mud wrestle? Because I’m all for that shit. Of course you’re here to bargain. That meat suit you’ve got on is mine. I tailored it. You only got to borrow it for a while, and then you were supposed to give it back. I mean, honey. I’m your daddy, right? You wouldn’t steal from your own daddy?”
“I have no father,” the rider said, and I could feel the power of the words in my throat. “I am the Black Sun and the Black Sun’s daughter. You are no part of me.”
“Okay, not daddy, then. Favorite midwife. It doesn’t matter. The thing is, all my toys are tied to that meat sack. And I want ’em back. You can crawl up out of there and give her to me, then you can swim on back to the Other Side and all these poor bastards can fall into lives of denial and alcoholism, or I burn them all and you besides. Jayné Heller turns into that icky Ball Park frank that’s been in the cooker since last August, and her fortune goes to her only living relative, her poor brother Jay-bird.”
“I don’t fear you,” the rider said.
I didn’t see it move. It was that fast. The Graveyard Child was at the table, popping another cookie between its toothless gums, and then it was on me, its massive hand around my throat, banging my head against the kitchen wall with a violence that cracked the plaster. My hands dug at it, trying to find space between its finger and my flesh. Even with the strength of the rider, I couldn’t do it. I tried to join my will to hers, tried to help. I felt the plaster crack against the back of my head, the hot/cold trickle of blood coming down my scalp. I swung my leg out, hammering at the arch of its foot. It ignored me. I twisted, bringing my elbow hard across its throat. Nothing. It seemed to go on forever, slamming me like a rag doll. Its breath smelled like old meat. Somewhere, Ozzie was barking in a frenzy. Somewhere, Curtis was weeping from wide, horrified eyes. Somewhere else. The world went gray. It would keep doing this to me until it chose to stop, and there was nothing I could do about it.
It was dragging me across the kitchen floor. I didn’t remember exactly how I’d gotten there. Then, with a power that felt like it was wrenching my arm out of my shoulder, it hauled me up and deposited me in the chair it had been in. The plate of cookies was in front of me. It patted my head gently.
“I’m a reasonable guy,” it said. “And really, I think you’ll see it’s a pretty damn sweet deal I’m offering here. I don’t have to go through the extra waiting time while they do all the paperwork. That’s all I get. It’s not much. And look at what you get in return. Your freedom. And Jayné gets to save her whole family. Her poor mommy. Her kid brother. Her daddy who’s her uncle who’s her daddy. You ever see Chinatown? Great fucking movie. And you want a bonus? I won’t even kill her little playmates outside. Do you think she wouldn’t choose to do that? I know Jayné Heller. She’s a hero. She’d give her life in a heartbeat if it meant saving these people. You’d just be doing what she wanted.”
It nodded. Paused. Looked at me, then up at the clock on the wall, then back at me. The wall it had beaten me against was caved in. There was blood on it. Ozzie was pacing back and forth in front of the doorway, her teeth bared and her eyes anxious.
“Okay,” the Graveyard Child said. “You need to talk to me here. Communication’s a two-way street.”
Dad shifted. I could see him trying to move away, but he was bound too tightly to the chair. Mom’s eyes were closed, her nostrils flaring and pinching thin as she hyperventilated. My body ached. Something deep in my belly shifted in a way I was pretty sure wasn’t a good sign. My vision swam.
“I will not make this choice,” the Black Sun said through me.
“You’re gonna leave it to the meat? I like your style, kid. That’s classy. Okay. Bring the meat girl up and let’s have a little talk. Jayné? You in there? Hey. I don’t know if you’ve been following all this . . .”
I tried to speak, but all I could manage was to shift my jaw a little. I tried to sit up and the pain left me gasping. The Graveyard Child helped me sit forward. I coughed, and the phlegm came up bloody.