Bleed Away the Sky Read online

“The Invocated,” said Inanis.

  “What?”

  “The folks with the fucked-up faces? They’re called the Invocated. The thrall of the Ovessa. Chances are you’ll see more of them.”

  “Awesome. That’s just what I wanted to hear. In any case, I wanted to ask you about being the Crimsonata. You seem to know shit.”

  “I’ll answer what I can.”

  “Like… does it hurt? Do I have to cut myself open and bleed out?”

  Inanis sighed. “You bleed to feed the Outer Gods, but you do not bleed your own blood. When the time comes to perform the ritual, your body produces a magically-rich ichor that seeps from your pores. It comes from inside you but does not beat through your heart. From what I understand, the sensation has been different for every Crimsonata.”

  “Don’t bleed your own blood,” mumbled Audrey, remembering her childhood fears.

  “That ‘blood’ is drawn up into the celestial gates where it is supped upon by the primordial entities that engineered the multiverse. They don’t need this to survive in any capacity, but only do it as a form of entertainment.”

  “My life is a hobby to them?”

  “Not even your life, just what flows through it.”

  “Jesus! So if I do this, I have to commit to this for the rest of my life. And have a daughter that I damn to this life or we have the same problem all over again.”

  “As the Crimsonata, your body will reject any XY sperm. You’ll only be able to have daughters. Just so you know.”

  “You’re not helping matters here,” said Audrey.

  “But I will, just not now. You’ve got a telephone call coming. Get back to the car.”

  And with that, he vanished.

  Swearing to herself, she raced back to the car just as the phone started ringing. She pulled it out of her purse, Elliot fumbling awake again in the passenger seat. She didn’t recognize the number but figured since Inanis mentioned it, it must be important.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, is this Audrey Darrow?”

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “Audrey, you probably don’t remember me, but my name is Emily Binici.”

  Of all the random people. “Yes Professor, of course I remember you. You bought me a poster that day at the university. I still have it. I’m sorry, I’m not in California right now, but…”

  “My dear, I need to talk to you about something called the Crimsonata.”

  Audrey went cold. “What do you know about it?”

  “Audrey, I’m the world’s foremost expert on Crimsonata lore.”

  Silence. Trying to wrap her mind around what Professor Binici had just said.

  “Are you there?” asked Binici.

  “I’m here.”

  “I’m guessing you know what the Crimsonata is then. And you probably know there are people after you. I’m just about to board a plane for Cleveland and I’ll be staying at the Marriott. Please come find me, I’ll answer any questions you have.”

  “How…” Audrey began. “How do I know…”

  “This is not a trap, not some scam. If anything, this is the culmination of my life’s work and something I should have done for you years ago. I was simply too scared to get out from behind my books.”

  “Maybe, and that’s a strong maybe, we can be in Cleveland by tonight.”

  “I hope to see you again, Audrey. I really mean that.”

  She hung up and turned to her baffled brother. “I need to catch you up on the last fifteen minutes.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The sunlight cut down from the sky, bright and harsh. It was far too hot to be standing outside in cargo pants and boots, but Roma knew better than to even think about changing. There was a fine line concerning what you wore on a mission, a line between blending in and staying geared up. She had a small caliber gun concealed under one pant leg, a knife under the other.

  A young man in scrubs walked by and smiled at her, but she didn’t notice in time to smile back. He probably thought she was just another concerned family member standing outside the emergency room entrances, waiting on news. Maybe someone who had been on a camping trip, based on her attire. Yes, Roma liked that bit of fantasy.

  She took another sip of the apple juice she had gotten out of a vending machine and stared at the parked ambulances. They had brought Greer here in the back of the SUV, him spilling blood everywhere. Those things had almost completely taken off his left arm, nearly gutted him. He was stable now, the wounds in his stomach not as bad as they had looked, but the doctors weren’t sure if they could save the arm.

  The creatures had been horrific, their faces scraped clean of any fleshy features. With bulging eyes, they had come in waves, desperate to kill. She still wasn’t sure if they had elongated nails or talons, or what was going on with their fingers. Even headshots hadn’t necessarily dropped them, each of them needing a good four or five bullets each. It was a miracle that neither she nor Hayden had been injured. They had only survived because Hayden had herded them toward the SUV and their extra rounds.

  But now their rounds were cut down by half and the team was a member down. Roma assumed they would be called off the mission and another cell would be activated. Not according to Hayden. Oh no, he had taken this personally, of course. Although she heard everything Binici had said to him, his phone’s volume cranked up all the way, Hayden still blamed the Crimsonata for the attack. For one of his men getting hurt. For her escaping in the chaos, as if she planned it.

  She had a number for the Council in case of emergencies. Roma sipped her apple juice and wondered if this counted. There was no way Hayden was going along with the script, especially if the mission was as important as they were led to believe. This whole operation, in its present state, could no longer be sanctioned. Going over a lead’s head was considered a sort of career suicide, but this seemed like the kind of thing they would want to know about.

  Slipping the phone out of her pocket, she pulled up the contacts screen. Peering at it, she willed herself to make the call. Her indecision was rendered moot, however, when Hayden came storming out of the hospital. Slipping the phone back into her pocket, she looked up to meet his gaze.

  “Well?”

  “He’s probably going to lose the fucking arm,” grumbled Hayden.

  “Jesus, that’s horrible.”

  “There’s nothing more we can do for him here. We have a mission to accomplish.”

  Roma stared at the lid to her apple juice container. “Hayden, shouldn’t we transfer this to another cell now that we’re a man down?”

  “Another cell would just have to be brought up to speed, and time is a factor. Binici says she’s meeting the Crimsonata in Cleveland, so we go there. She’ll lure it in and then we strike. It’s simple.”

  “It?”

  “What?”

  “You just called Audrey Darrow an ‘it.’ She’s a twenty-four-year-old woman.”

  Hayden scowled. “The Crimsonata isn’t natural, it doesn’t belong in this world of ours. You better get your head screwed on straight, Roma, and get in the game.”

  She took another sip of her apple juice as he stomped off across the parking lot. Now that she thought about it, even if she made that call, Hayden probably wouldn’t back off. Whatever had brought him to the Promethean Wall had made him a zealot, filled him with a complete and total hatred of anything supernatural. Roma understood that the world didn’t work like that. Yes, people needed to be protected from the things lurking in the shadows, but there were things out there that could just as easily be used as tools, too. Hayden called for genocide, Roma called for cohabitation with a healthy dose of suspicion.

  Either way, once this mission was over, she was done with this cell. She couldn’t work with Hayden anymore. She wanted to stay with the Wall, but she’d go to Alaska if she had to. Peru. Russia. Whatever.

  Tipping back the bottle, she finished the last of the apple juice. The golden delicious highlight of her day. Now she had to rid
e in silence with Hayden for hours as they made their way north. Coming up on the SUV, she saw that he had already finished rearranging the bags after taking Greer’s things into him. Roma stopped long enough to grab her satchel from the back and bring it into the front seat before climbing in.

  Hayden fired up the engine and pulled out, Roma looking for her earbuds. The Glitch Mob came thumping out as she laid her head against the passenger side window and watched the hospital disappear. It would have been nice if she could have played the music through the car speakers, but Hayden didn’t listen to anything when he drove.

  She hoped she could contain the situation when they got to Cleveland, keep everything calm and professional. She was actually glad to have Binici’s presence. Although Hayden didn’t have much patience for academia, he might actually listen to an expert. All this Crimsonata lore. Honestly, Audrey Darrow had just seemed like a terrified young woman, totally normal. Roma had been wrong before, though.

  Roma just wanted this mission done.

  CHAPTER 30

  Lutton, Pennsylvania wasn’t like Southard or even like Eldridge. Oh, it was small, with only a population of slightly over three thousand, but it was a prosperous village. Its location was fortuitous, less than an hour’s drive from a number of billion-dollar industries that had not suffered in the recession. The citizens of Lutton went to their jobs, day in and day out, returning to their beautiful little village, always content in the belief that the horrors of the world existed elsewhere.

  Even Sheriff Gibbons believed that, and he saw the worst of what Lutton had to offer. Not that it was all that bad. Speeding tickets for the most part. Drunk and disorderly, the occasional bust for pot. Sure they had their occasional domestic dispute, or bout of robberies, maybe some delinquents causing mischief, but nothing he and his deputies couldn’t handle. There hadn’t been a murder in Lutton since the 1990’s when Pauly Shannon had shot his old man while drunk, and the only instance of hard drugs had been a single meth bust two years ago. No, Lutton was a good, safe village.

  That was why the screams bothered Sheriff Gibbons so much.

  The sun had just begun to set when he heard them. He had stepped outside to have his one cigar of the day before his evening loop through town. His last loop before he called it a day and let the night shift take over. At first, he thought it was just kids playing, but more voices rang out. Strong, shrill, ongoing. Gibbons took another puff and listened. It seemed to be coming from the north end of town. Swearing, he stubbed out his cigar and climbed into his cruiser.

  Taking the streets at a normal speed, he couldn’t hear the screams anymore. He was going to be pissed if it was just kids screwing about. Turning onto Main Street, he passed the ice cream shop, the barber, the used books store, and a thrift store. There weren’t many people out for this time on a summer evening.

  More screams echoed out of the encroaching night. Gibbons slowed down and listened. He couldn’t tell where they were coming from. He started to get out of his car when two teenagers came bolting across the street. One tumbled to the ground in front of him. At first Gibbons was pissed, thinking kids were indeed messing around, until he saw the blood. It was streaming down the arm of the boy whom had fallen.

  “What the hell is going on?” asked Gibbons.

  “Sheriff, they’re everywhere!” exclaimed the bleeding teen, clutching his arm.

  “Who?”

  The other one pointed. “Them!”

  Gibbons spun to see five people dressed in white come shambling out from between the buildings. Their faces were all cut up and they had some kind of slime all over their bodies. And with the last vestiges of daylight dying, it was like the village exploded into violence. Screams ripped through the air, echoing and piercing. People ran everywhere, fleeing the horrors in white who gave chase. In every case that Gibbons witnessed, in those few moments, the people of Lutton were always caught, dragged down hard to ground, and butchered. The nearest white-clad lunatics were already red of tooth and claw.

  Gibbons pulled out his gun and fired. He hit three of them, but only felled one. They kept coming.

  “Get in the fucking car!” he bellowed.

  He jumped in and the two teens tried to do the same. The first made it in, but his friend, the one with the injured arm, was dragged back. Gibbons pulled away as the boy’s ragged screams rang out behind him. Swearing, he tried to navigate through the melee, trying to make it back to the station. In the backseat, the one boy he saved sobbed. He couldn’t have been older than fourteen.

  Everywhere, they were everywhere. People were ripped through their living room windows, pulled out through their battered front doors. Slaughtered on their lawns, their entrails gored out and their faces shredded. The elderly were skinned alive, the newborn were pulled apart. The entire village of Lutton was being systematically murdered in the most atrocious ways possible.

  Bashing his way through roads, gaping at the nightmare that had come to his town, Gibbons finally managed to get his car back to the station. He let the kid out of the back and raced inside. He needed back up, he needed more guns. It was shift change, so he should have the three deputies from afternoon and the three from night still inside, if they weren’t already out dealing with the madness.

  Gibbons ran inside, slipped, and fell. He slammed his head against a filing cabinet. Groaning, he slowly reached up to rub his head and stopped cold. His fingers were covered in blood. His whole back was soaked with blood.

  “Oh hell,” came a whisper from the kid behind him.

  Slowly getting to his feet, Gibbons looked around. The room still smelled of gunpowder. Not that it had helped the four of his deputies that lay in pieces, scattered around the room. The nearest had bled out across the floor, where the sheriff had slipped.

  “Guns, where are the guns?”

  Making his way across the room to where all of their equipment was stored, he heard a noise behind him and assumed it was the kid. He punched in the code to the gun safe and opened it, appraising his options. He hoped it would be enough.

  “Kid, you know how to shoot?”

  Nothing.

  Gibbons turned. The kid was gone. Fled, hiding, or dead, it didn’t matter. There were easily a dozen of the things in white in the room, staring at him. They began to draw closer.

  “Why?” asked Gibbons. “Why here, why us.”

  They didn’t answer. He could see now in the station lights that their fingertips were bone, sharpened to points. They all looked nearly identical with their faces carved up like that. They smelled like a pile of rotting wet leaves.

  “I won’t make it fucking easy for you,” growled Gibbons.

  He tried to pull a gun off the shelf and load it, but the creatures were on him before he ever got the chance. They killed him just as they had killed everyone else in Lutton, no survivors this time. That tale was already told.

  And there were more still to tell.

  CHAPTER 31

  During the entire drive to Cleveland, Audrey planned on what she was going to say to Binici. The answers she would demand from the woman, the truth. Audrey would see that everything played out in a manner that she set, no games, no skirting the issues. But now, standing in front of the hotel, so much of that evaporated, blown away in the wind that battered at them from the nearby airport.

  She had fond memories of Binici, a woman who showed her kindness when Audrey had been flailing. It tore her open to think that this person was involved, or worse, had known this secret about her. Her paranoia flared, seeking routes of escape.

  “We don’t have to do this,” said Elliot.

  Grinding her teeth, Audrey replied. “Yes we do.”

  Binici had texted them and said to meet in the bar. They went inside and glanced around for a moment, getting their bearings. Elliot found a small display that showed them the way and they followed a long corridor past a conference hall full of people, likely some type of convention. The hall spilled out into a spacious, well-furnished r
oom of red leather, fumed oak, and cream-colored walls. The bar lined one whole wall, staffed by three bartenders. There weren’t many people inside, so it was easy to spot Binici standing there right away.

  She hadn’t aged all that much since Audrey had seen her last. A little greyer, a little heavier. Her eyes shown as Audrey walked up to her and for a moment Audrey thought the woman was going to hug her. Instead, she just smiled and gestured to the seats in the booth next to her.

  Hand raised to get the waiter’s attention, she asked, “What would you like? I’m buying?”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” said Audrey, glaring at the woman.

  “Screw that, I’ll get a Long Island. Thank you,” said Elliot.

  The waiter scurried over and Binici said, “You better make it three Long Island’s, just in case.”

  Audrey screwed up her face but didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t expected this. She had to reestablish control.

  “What do you know about the Crimsonata?”

  “Quite a bit. I’ve been studying the phenomenon in one form of another for almost thirty years. I’m tempted to say I’m the leading living expert, next the Crimsonata herself.”

  “Why study the Crimsonata?” asked Elliot.

  “At first, it was purely academic. Correlating data across historical records for studies on the Sacred Feminine. I was shocked to discover this tiny bit of overlap, this blood ritual and linked mythology, something never before explored. Not only was this my ticket into the textbooks, I was hooked. But the more I learned, the more I was pulled into something I didn’t fully understand.”

  “Because the Crimsonata was real,” said Audrey.

  “Yes,” said Binici. “Along with so many other things I didn’t think existed.”

  Audrey shook her head. “Did you know when you met me?”

  Binici gave her a sad smile. “My dear, I knew what you were when I met you. I had an inkling when I met your mother.”

  The revelation shot through Audrey and silenced her next comeback. The waiter brought their drinks, and Audrey chugged down half of hers in one go. At least the professor had the decency to look embarrassed by her confession. But more was to come.