Black Goat Blues Read online

  I also feel better.

  Not completely recharged. I still need some sleep, but I’m not going to collapse anymore and I can think.

  Javier has leaned back and slouched down on his side of the booth. His eyes are half closed and his thin fingers intertwine across his stomach. “What now?”

  Before I can answer him the bell over the door jangles out a warning and in through the door walks an ancient being of incalculable power who sees me, smiles crookedly, and heads in my direction.

  16

  ASHTORETH.

  The Scarlet Harlot, Unholy Ishtar, Concubine of Chaos, and Whore Goddess Galore.

  Glory hoary hallelujah.

  She stands in the harsh white fluorescence looking better than she did the last time I met her lying in a puddle of other people’s fluids on a filthy mattress in a run-down slum of a motel. She doesn’t look like a crack whore this time, doesn’t really look anything like she did last time, but I still know her. Now she looks young, far younger than before, falling into the raw bloom of early womanhood. Crow-haired and sullen-eyed, she’s long and lanky under a bright yellow slicker too short to cover more than her torso, leaving coltish legs sleek and bare to stretch from its bottom hem to the floor. The clothes under her raincoat are inconsequential, some kind of ragged little skirt and a scrap of cloth that covers a nearly-flat-but-in-no-way-boyish chest. The sunshine colour of her slicker glows in the harsh light, giving a buttery haze that makes her complexion look even darker.

  She looks nothing like she did before, but I know it’s her by the feel of her in my blood and the electric buzz in the torc around my throat.

  She begins walking toward our booth.

  I slide out and stand. “Javier, get over here.”

  The kid doesn’t question. He jerks up and moves fast, coming around the table and into my side of the booth like a jackrabbit.

  From the corner of my eye I see him look up at the approaching goddess of desire and surreptitiously slide the steak knife I used on my ham somewhere out of sight under the table.

  He’s not dumb.

  The closer Ashtoreth comes the more her hips sway, moving from side to side like a pendulum, the stiff latex of her raincoat swinging like a bell. Each bump and grind of her narrow hips makes her skirt ride up, sliding higher and higher and higher until I know she isn’t wearing underwear. A few feet away she lifts her arms, stretching them out as if to hug me.

  I put my hand out flat.

  She draws short and frowns.

  I indicate the empty side of the booth and she slides in surprisingly ladylike, straightening her skirt and moving primly.

  I sit across from her, beside Javier.

  She smiles widely and her teeth are intact. The first time I met her, the last time I’d seen her, there was a circle of missing teeth that had been eaten away by the corrosive smoke from a crack pipe. Now her teeth are all there and covered by the remains of a set of old-school braces, rectangles of dull gray steel cemented to the enamel and tiny bits of broken wire rimmed in watery pink from where they’ve cut the insides of her lips till they bleed, just a little, all the time. If it hurts, she doesn’t seem to notice.

  Maybe that’s why her lips look so full, nearly swollen.

  Her eyes are glassy, the pupils dialed down to pinpricks, and they jitter in their sockets. She’s looking at me, not around, but even staring straight ahead her eyes shake side to side as if some tiny creature inside her head is chewing on the optic nerve in the back of her eye socket. Her skin is smooth but waxy looking, shiny from not being washed.

  She smells slightly sour.

  Like milk left to sit out all night.

  “Hello, child.” Her voice is raspy, like her throat is sore from a cold coming on or she had strained it.

  “Ashtoreth.”

  “Did you come to take me up on my offer?”

  I almost ask her what she means and then her fingers tug slightly at the cuff of the slicker and it hits me, the image of her the last time I’d laid eyes on her.

  “Still, I owe you my gratitude.” The Whore Goddess rose, kneeling on the soiled mattress. She stretched out her arms and the wound gaped open, starless void yawning wide. “Would you like to fuck my wound?”

  Ashtoreth’s terrible giggle chased me down the hallway.

  I repress a shudder.

  “That will never happen,” I say.

  She frowns. “Never is such an ugly word.”

  “Never.” I put more force behind it.

  She shrugs and her face pivots toward Javier. She licks her lips.

  “Don’t.” The word comes out in a snarl and she looks at me like I’ve spit on her instead of just speaking.

  “My, my, I didn’t take you to be the polyamorous type, Acolyte of Nyarlathotep.”

  “That’s not my name or my title.”

  She tilts her head and stares at me, thick eyebrows creasing. The movement makes the slicker squeak against the vinyl of the booth seat. “No. I guess it is not.”

  “Never mind that; just leave him—”

  “What do I call you?” she interrupts.

  I catch the phrasing. “You don’t need to call me.”

  Those dark eyes light up and focus on me. “Ah, you have learned a thing or two since we last saw each other.”

  I shrug.

  “How do I address you then?”

  I sigh. The Man in Black used to call me by either my full name of Charlotte Tristan Moore or a title. Ancient beings take names very seriously. “Charlie is fine.”

  “Charlie is what your friends call you.” She smiles and it is full of dark promise. “I did not know we were so … intimate.”

  “We aren’t intimate.”

  “If you speak it then it must be true … Charlie.”

  I want to slap the smug smile off her face.

  Javier leans forward. “I’m Javier, but you can call me Javi.”

  Ashtoreth giggles. “Javi! Such a sexy name for a sexy young man.”

  “That’s right, mamacita.”

  “Javier, stop,” I say.

  Ashtoreth acts like I said nothing. Her voice undulates across the table, writhing around the words she is using. “So sexy. I bet you could do things to me that would make me scream. Are you sexy enough to make me lose my mind, to make me scream your name to the wild wastes for the dire wolves to hear?”

  Javier jolts beside me, practically climbing over the table.

  Ashtoreth licks her lips, her voice a whiskey-dark growl. “Come show me.”

  Javier pulls his legs up into the seat and lunges as Ashtoreth giggles. I throw my arm out, pushing him down, and he turns to me, eyes wild and full of rage. I see it crawl up into his expression. Another second and he will hit me to get away.

  Then I remember the knife he took from the table.

  I shove my elbow into him and lean, pressing him into the corner of the booth while putting my Marked hand against my mouth. The raised lines of scar tissue on my Mark rub all slickhard over my lips and I lick them. The body fluid crackles across it, igniting a connection to the magick inside me. It’s still low ebb, only a little replenished from the food, but I don’t need much.

  Javier has started to jerk against me as I slap my wet palm against his arm, spark my Sight into effect, and strip away the world that we know.

  17

  MY VISION FLASHES like a power surge, flaring bright and then dulling into a weird amber glow. I can still see the booth and the diner, but everything else has changed. I can feel Javier at the end of my magick and I know he’s seeing the same thing I am.

  Ashtoreth is still across the booth from us, but now her body fills the other side. Her breasts lie on the table in loose skinsacks that jiggle across their surface like the skim of milk gone warm. Her skin is mottled, dark spots gathered across her arms, chest, and face like moss. The rest of her is tinged a shade of suffocation blue and has the wrinkly look of plastic over cheese. Her face is now a hatchet wound, split into a r
aw fissure from brow to chin with round yellow marbles for eyes that protrude on each side of it. They shine and their light makes deep shadows on the edges of the wound that is her face. Her hair slithers around her shoulders as if alive.

  “Madre Dios!” I hear Javier say. My hand jerks and he pulls out of my grip.

  I can blink and break the Sight, but I hold on for a moment.

  There are lines of energy running from the three men to Ashtoreth. They zig and zag through the diner, bubbling streamers of liquid energy that flows into her.

  Interesting.

  I exhale sharply and break the magick, letting it fall inside me to lie on the floor and shake like an exhausted animal.

  18

  JAVIER SHAKES BESIDE me.

  A leaden weariness has crept back into my bones, but I sit straight and pick up my coffee to hide it. The coffee has gone cold and the creamer is starting to separate from it, but I swallow and act as if it is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted.

  Ashtoreth still sits across the booth, looking human again and frowning.

  “What was that?” Javier asks.

  “That is what she really looks like.”

  Ashtoreth frowns. “You revealed me to him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That is … uncool.”

  I just shrug and let slide the strangeness of slang coming from her mouth.

  He stares at her for a long moment, then mutters, “Madre Dios.”

  “Remember that the next time she tries to seduce you.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.”

  “But how…?”

  Ashtoreth twirls a lock of hair. From somewhere she has a piece of well-chewed gum she uses to blow a big pink bubble that stretches thin enough to see through before tearing apart and collapsing to be drawn back inside her mouth. “You’ll never understand how, Javi,” she says. “Magick and physics are incongruously compatible.”

  “But you’re so—”

  She cuts him off with a sleepy snarl. “I don’t owe you pretty, human boy.”

  “Let’s stop with the games,” I say.

  “Existence is a game, Charlie. You should learn that.”

  “I need your help.”

  She laughs and it shakes her shoulders up and down. She keeps laughing, leaning forward as strands of black hair fall loose around her face. When she sits back there are tracks of glycerin tears on her cheeks.

  “I don’t know why you found that so funny,” I say.

  “Humans asking gods for help, that is humor at its finest.”

  “You helped me before.”

  Her teeth show. “Not you, him, and under threat.” She tilts her head sideways, looking at me. “Did you forget that part?”

  “I didn’t forget.” I still remember how the Man in Black treated her, with dismissive, casual abuse.

  “What can you threaten me with?”

  The look on her face.

  Her jittery eyes are drowning me. She’s not looking at me with defiance or anger, but a profound sadness that radiates off her, a sense of desperate need mixed with something I can’t put my finger on, but it cuts me, slicing to my bone marrow.

  Shame.

  It’s shame that it is mixed with.

  And, all of a sudden, I’m tired again. Not just in my body, but in my soul. I search for the words to tell her how much I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

  Except the Man in Black.

  I don’t even want to hurt him, I just want to kill him.

  “Inside this coat I wear, a coat that lives and holds power on its own, I have the cursed blade of the Crawling Chaos. I have the Aqedah, holy knife of Abraham, at my right hand. I own the soul gem of an elder god. Around my throat I wear the torc you gave me of your own power.” I raise my right hand, fingers spread to display my Mark. “And most of all, I bear a magick inside me that I have used to kill and destroy and drive away things like you that would cause harm to humanity.”

  One by one, I fold my fingers down into my palm, covering my Mark.

  “Sitting here tonight, I offer none of these things as a threat.”

  Her mouth has gone slack, bottom lip out, as she stares at me.

  I reach out my hand, opening it palm up. “Instead, I offer them to you in friendship and protection. I will use them, with your help, to track down the one who threatened you, to find the Man in Black, and to make him pay for the insult offered to both of us.”

  Beside me Javier crosses himself.

  Ashtoreth’s eyes flick from my face, to my outstretched palm, and back.

  “You would be my friend?”

  “I would try, Ashtoreth. I truly would.”

  She nods.

  “I accept.” Her hand slides into mine and it is warm like a human one would be. “Charlie.”

  19

  THE DARKNESS IS warm and it wraps me close.

  I snuggle down into it and I don’t want to climb out. The world around me rocks gently and everything is soft.

  Wait.

  Where am I?

  I jerk up and open my eyes. It’s dark, but I can see. It’s a closed space, walls and a roof close above. I’m sitting on something wide and flat and brighter than the walls and ceiling. It’s soft. A mattress. I’m on a mattress. To my ears comes a softly grinding whub-whub-whub noise that fills the space around me.

  I’m on a mattress.

  A mattress in a truck.

  A truck moving down the road.

  In just a second all of it clicks into place, burning away the sleep-fog in my brain, and I remember Ashtoreth helping me and Javier into the back of a box truck half full of new mattresses.

  Javier.

  I turn and find him lying next to me but lower, the curve of his spine pressed against my thigh and hip.

  The bottom of the coat around me is spread over him like a blanket.

  I whisper, “You jumping ship for the new guy?”

  My head fills with its musical babble. It’s urgent and reassuring and sounds stronger than it did back at the truck stop. The coat shifts, beginning to pull away from Javier, coalescing back toward me. I put my hand on it. “Stop. I was just kidding.”

  The coat relaxes back in place over his thin form, but it’s too late; the movement has woken him. He stretches and yawns.

  In the dark I can see when he opens his eyes.

  And when he smiles.

  “Hey, Charlie.”

  He is still pressed against my leg, through the coat, but against me. His voice is throaty and familiar.

  Too familiar.

  Nope.

  I scoot away to the edge of the mattress, bracing my back against the side of the truck, turning to put my feet and legs, the strongest striking limbs I have, between me and him. I can feel the vibration of the road under the truck tires more acutely through my back.

  The coat drags off him, going with me.

  He rolls over on his side and watches me, still lying down.

  What is wrong with this situation?

  Javier is acting like we’ve known each other for years instead of hours. Comfortable. Familiar. Friendly.

  Not freaked out to be hundreds of miles from home with a stranger who wish-napped him into a world of monsters and whore goddesses.

  And why am I so calm?

  I’m in the dark. In a closed-in space. On a mattress. With a strange man.

  I should be in total freak-out mode right now. My shit should be lost.

  But it’s not. I’m not.

  My mind is clear and I’m objective.

  I hold no panic.

  No fear.

  Is it Javier? Never before has it mattered. Any man being that close would have triggered a body memory.

  Except with Daniel.

  The memory of the night we had both professed our love for each other and kissed before falling into my bed fully clothed and exhausted sweeps through me. With Daniel I’d had no panic. I trust Danie
l. I love Daniel.

  And he loves me. I know it and not just because he said the words.

  I don’t love Javier. I don’t know him enough to even trust him, although I do feel weirdly protective of him.

  Maybe that’s it? Maybe. Doesn’t feel right. Keep looking.

  Is it some mojo Ashtoreth performed?

  I don’t feel spellcast. No fuzzy head, no thoughts that are sharp edged and foreign in my brain. No weird wire burrowing into the folds and creases of my personality trying to stitch over my innate distrust and hard-won paranoia. My skin isn’t tingling. I don’t have a nose full of any arcane smells.

  I don’t think it’s that.

  Javier sits up, crossing his legs. I can see him swaying with the rhythm of the rocking truck movement. “What’s wrong, Charlie?” he asks.

  I answer him honestly. “Nothing.”

  “Why are you being weird then?”

  “Because nothing is wrong. Absolutely nothing is wrong right now.”

  “And that’s a bad thing because…”

  “Because things should be wrong right now.”

  “Okay.”

  I take a deep breath, moving words around in my brain to explain. You know what? I don’t feel like explaining the whole thing.

  “Just trust me, Javier. I should be freaking out.”

  “But you aren’t.”

  “I am not.”

  He shrugs. “Seems okay to me then. I wouldn’t question it.”

  “Listen to me. In my world, this world you’re tagging along in, you have to question everything. You cannot trust anything to be just what it appears to be. You don’t question you can wind up dead or worse.”

  “Worse than dead? Now you’re just being dramatic.”

  “You’ve already forgotten what you saw back at the diner?”

  He shudders. “Oh hell no. I won’t ever forget that.”

  “That’s what I mean. That right there.”

  He nods. “Okay. I’ll follow your lead.”

  “Don’t follow my lead. I’m making this up as I go along. Keep your wits about you.”

  “You’ll keep me safe. You’re badass, Charlie. I know you will.”

  Oh, Javier.

  “Where’s Ashtoreth?”

  “The mamacita from the restaurant? She said she was riding up front.”