Black Hole Werewolves Page 8

  “And I have the claw marks to prove it.”

  Cali touched his arm. “The scars are gone. I remember tearing through you, right to the bone.” She retreated a little, scared or nervous or ashamed.

  And it wasn’t because he was naked. Cali had seen him naked about a trillion times before, when they were together. And he’d lost his modesty after about fifteen minutes of living, breathing, and showering with his Astral Corps unit each and every day.

  Nombre de Dios, his unit…Ian, Tanner, Chase, Jared, Logan, Jacob. But Jacob was dead. And the others were werewolves. If they had survived the Etrusca ruin, which was likely, they would be coming for him.

  “Cali, not now,” Blaze said. “Trina and I are gonna deal with this. I don’t want you complicating things.”

  “Humans,” Cali whispered. “You think we’re not animals, but we are. Only about three percent of Terran mammals are monogamous. After years with my pack, I understood how things can work if we’re more…flexible.”

  “Arlo was flexible. Like a drunk gymnast on cyclobenzaprine.” Blaze grimaced. “That’s not me. Won’t ever be me. I’ll be done showering in a minute.”

  Blaze walked away, and he felt Cali’s eyes on him. He turned. She smiled, and it was so innocent, and it so wasn’t, all at the same time.

  Cali ambled back into her room.

  For a hot second, he thought about following her in there and finishing what they’d started.

  Was it his imagination, or was his crew acting odd? Cali was generally tears and sorrow, not combative with a side of seduction sauce.

  How deep had Nauzea’s psychic torture gone? Trina, like the Clickers, had been under her spell a long time.

  Blaze finished his shower, troubled. He tried to contact Trina through comms, but she had set herself up in do-not-disturb mode.

  He went up to the burned-out barbecue pit of his room to get more clothes, couldn’t find the woodland cammies he generally wore, but slid on jeans and a cotton shirt with silver snap buttons. He pulled on his old Oklatexsaw cowboy boots. He clipped his fusion ax to his belt because he wasn’t going to be caught weaponless again.

  On his way to check on Elle, he stopped by Ling’s room, which was situated directly behind the bridge on the left side of the ship.

  Blaze knocked. The doors slid open.

  Ling’s room was mostly hydroponic towers growing Meelah leaves and providing a home for Meelah caterpillars. Ling’s hammock was spread near the ceiling, so he had a view of the greenery dangling from the towers. Water dripped down through the plant roots, so it always sounded like a forest stream in his room.

  Incense burned in one corner in front of a small statue of the Buddha.

  At first, Blaze couldn’t see the Shaolin sloth, but he could hear him, eating loudly, in a far corner behind one of the towers.

  “Ling?”

  No answer.

  Ling was stuffing his face with Meelah caterpillars, munching through them, slurping down their green bodies. He belched and continued to stuff himself, devouring every worm he could.

  “Ling,” Blaze said quietly, “I thought you saved the protein for Sunday. What’s up?”

  The Meelah glared at him and barked, showing green-stained teeth.

  Those eyes, normally so calm and peaceful, were full of violence and hate.

  TEN_

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  “Ling, easy buddy, it’s me.” Blaze held up both hands and backed away. But he was keenly aware of his fusion ax, buckled to his belt.

  So far, none of the demons they’d encountered could possess a Clicker or a Meelah. Humans were fair game, which is why he, Elle, Cali, and Trina had ink. Ojo de Horus tattoos covered their hearts.

  Ling let a fuzzy green Meelah worm fall from his fingers. It hit the floor and moved slowly toward another leafy tower. The Shaolin sloth blinked, and a blank look took up residency on his face. “Gunny, I do.”

  “Do what?” Blaze asked. His hand went to haft of his ax.

  Ling didn’t respond. The golden rings of his eyes were far away, so distant he might as well have been staring into the Onyx Gate itself.

  “Do what?” Blaze asked again.

  Ling nodded. “Sundays. Keep holy the sabbath. That’s the Judeo-Christian tradition. I studied Buddhism at the Shaolin Temple, in the forests of Shaoshi Mountain. Batuo walked the long miles from India to China, nearly five hundred years after the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Batuo came to teach us that life is suffering. Rejoice in the agony.”

  Blaze had heard that before, from the lips of Nauzea. He raced to his friend and squatted down. He took Ling’s three-fingered paw in his hands. “Ling, is it Nauzea? Is it her?”

  But it was as if Ling didn’t hear him. “It was near Shenyang Prime, where I was found, my family of explorers killed, and me, orphaned. My Chinese parents found me, took me in, Huaxia scrappers, for long years, a pet, a pet to them. They pretended I was a son, but I wasn’t. I was a pet. And then, back with Meelah, where I was an oddity, a Meelah raised by Humans. And then my long journey to Earth, to the Shaolin temple, and they promised release from my suffering. Suffering! They lied! There is no escape!”

  The gunny swallowed hard. He’d never heard this version of Ling’s past. He’d always insisted his Chinese foster parents had been so kind to him.

  Ling was losing it. The gunny raised his voice. “Buddy! Snap out of it! It’s Nauzea. She’s somehow messing with you.”

  Ling bared his teeth, his eyes went wild again, and his claws gripped Blaze’s hand. “Nauzea, sister and mother…Nauzea, the whip and the chain. Nauzea, she tortures us because to live is to be tortured.”

  “Not for Meelah,” Blaze said. “For us Humans, maybe, but the Meelah are the children of the universe. They are the children of now.”

  Ling’s lips closed over his teeth. His eyes focused, and then he laughed. “You are right! What am I thinking?” He knocked his skull. “Oh, this silly mind of mine. Always trying to trick me out of the now.” He glanced around. “My poor worms! Many of the ones I ate today weren’t ready to explore death. I was greedy. I was out of my wits. Darn.” He looked troubled for a minute, then brightened. “Is that the right word? Darn? Did I use it correctly?”

  “You did. Good job.” Blaze kept a smile on his face, but inside, he was troubled. What was going on with his crew?

  Ling’s pointed face turned thoughtful. “Of course, it’s the presence of Nauzea on our vessel. She is doing this. Yes, we captured her in the snare sphere, but her influence is apparent. Ha, when I was in battle, I had my guard up. But when I thought I was safe, I let her trick me into believing that I have to suffer. What nonsense! Life is wonderful, vibrant, magical, strange! Every moment is eternity! Every meal is a banquet! Every paycheck is a fortune! And the best part? It ends, and we get to explore death!”

  Blaze chuckled. “Uh, not sure that’s the best part. Could be, we die and die forever.”

  “I’ve never been nothing before,” Ling said. “I wonder what it’s like. And if that’s true, this moment, our friendship, our loves and our battles become all the more precious!”

  The gunny couldn’t argue with that. “Let’s head out and go get Elle. We need to take care of this Nauzea mess before Trina and Cali kill each other. Or Elle relapses again.”

  “Yes.” Ling sighed and stood. He helped the fuzzy green caterpillars that had escaped his feeding frenzy back onto their leaves.

  “Nervous eater, Ling?” Blaze asked.

  “Apparently,” the Shaolin sloth said. “Good thing I don’t get nervous very often.”

  Both left the green room, turned a hard left, and walked right onto the bridge. Elle was there, in a chair, watching the stars stream by them as they surfed through the Huaxia Quadrant. But something was off. Around here were strands of her hair. She was compulsively pulling out her own hair, not in clumps, but one strand after another after another.

  “Elle,” Blaze said. “Stop it. Don’t.”

&
nbsp; His sister stood, pale. “I need to get the gray out. I’m old, Blaze. I’m a hag. If I pull out the gray hair, it will keep me young.”

  Blaze bent and showed her red and black hairs she had been pulling out. “No gray there, Elle.”

  His sister blinked. “Did I use spells on you all? Did I do that? Did I kill Cali? I remember TKing her, snapping her neck. I remember it cracking.”

  “No,” Blaze said. “It’s Nauzea. We have to put Nauzea in the cellar. The snare sphere is not keeping her contained. Can you feel it? Can you feel what she’s doing?”

  Elle’s face was blank. And then tears streamed down her face. “I killed Cali. I killed you all. It seemed like the right thing to do. The Onyx Gate. If you close the Onyx Gate, I won’t get my fix. I love the Onyx far more than I love all of you.”

  Ling took one hand, Blaze took the other. “It’s not true,” the Meelah said. “The Onyx and your addiction lie to you. It tricks you out of the now and it pretends to be life, when it isn’t. It’s not even the wonderful strangeness of death. It isn’t even nothing. It exists just enough to torture you, and you are far too amazing, Elle, to let this little bit of something torture you so.”

  Elle calmed, and after that, even Blaze felt better. He connected to the Clicker doctor’s implants. “Fernando, where are you at now? Where are the snare spheres you used on Shenyang Prime?”

  “I am in the antechamber to the cellar,” Fernando said. “Bill and Lizzie say that Nauzea’s power is affecting the more irrational members of our crew.”

  Blaze rolled his eyes. Goddamn pinche bugs. “We’re on our way,” Blaze said.

  Blaze, Elle, and Ling hurried from the bridge, down the hallway, and down the central staircase to the third deck. To the left, down a short corridor, was the first door to the cellar. They had three doors, each airlocked, each sealed with both technology and magic to keep the ghouls in the cellar contained.

  Since energy couldn’t be created or destroyed, they had to keep the Onyx entities imprisoned in a secure location. Blaze opened the door; circular narrow steps led down to the second door. Through it was the antechamber and the last door, which led to the cellar itself.

  Fernando was there, holding a snare sphere. Blaze, Elle, and Ling crowded into the tight space. The last time Blaze had been there, his ship had been infested with vampires and Cali had been on the loose.

  The Clicker doctor held up the snare sphere, which flashed green. “I have already successfully transferred the succubus from the sphere into the cellar. I didn’t want to attempt to imprison Nauzea without Elle’s guidance.”

  A sheen of sweat colored his sister’s face. Part of her scalp was showing, where she’d been pulling out her hair. She nodded and gestured to a housing in the wall next to the thick iron door, covered with sigils. Those sigils flashed red light as the creatures inside the cellar tested her warding magic. She’d redone them, recently, after Blaze had seen ghastly hands reaching through the metal.

  Fernando placed the snare sphere into the housing.

  “Now, cast another snare spell but push the spiderweb onto the wall, where you did it before,” Elle said.

  Blaze could see how his sister was getting off on the whole situation. It was like a drunk trying to get sober going to bars to watch other people drink.

  Fernando drew a spiderweb out of the pouch in his bandolier. With one hand he pushed the spiderweb onto a wall that was gray from webs, old and new. With another hand, he held the sphere. He growled out Onyx speak.

  An impossible wind blew through the room. The spiderweb burst into flames, but the breeze immediately extinguished the fire. The snare sphere glowed white hot, so bright, they couldn’t look at it. Blaze opened his eyes once the light was gone. The blinking red dots turned green again. The snare sphere was empty, and now whatever was inside of it was trapped in the cellar.

  “Lizzie,” Blaze said, “where is Nauzea?”

  “My sister? Hhher?” the ship said in a soft voice. “My hhhorrible sister. The worst of us. The most powerful. My father’s favorite. My sister of torture. My sister of pain. A hhhorror show of family hhhate.”

  Blaze’s growls turned into sighs. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Rejoice in your agony. Pour it on your ice cream. Stick it up your butt. Where’s Nauzea?”

  “In the cellar, Gunny,” Lizzie said.

  They all exhaled.

  “Just in case, I think we should destroy the snare sphere,” Fernando said. “Who knows what kind of debris this archduchess left inside it. Are we agreed?”

  Elle, Ling, and Blaze all nodded.

  Fernando clicked, and Blaze recognized the sound. It was laughter. Why was the Clicker doctor laughing?

  A bad feeling filled the gunny’s belly. But he had to trust his crew, give them the benefit of the doubt, until they actually betrayed him.

  But Fernando wouldn’t hurt Elle, no matter what. The Clicker doc was in love with her. And yet, that laughter … that laughter …

  ELEVEN_

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  On their way out of the cellar, Blaze and Elle lagged behind. “Was that all normal?” Blaze asked her. “The wind, the web catching fire, the bright white light?”

  “Nothing is normal with an archduchess of hell,” his sister said. “We weren’t able to catch Xerxes. With Chthonic, yes, we got him into a snare sphere, but I lost it before we could do the transfer.”

  “But with things like a ghost, or a succubus, was that part normal?” Blaze asked.

  Elle nodded. “Except that bright white light. When I do it, the webs burn, and the lights turn from red to green. The end. But Fernando’s magic is going to be different, right? Hell, Blaze, he’s the first Clicker witch ever. We won’t know what his limits are or how well he’ll handle the Onyx. I miss it. I miss it so much.”

  Blaze didn’t know what to do, so he grabbed his sister’s hand and squeezed it. They made sure all three doors into the cellar were sealed tight and started up the central staircase. “Elle, about Chthonic, you don’t have any memory of what happened to that snare sphere?”

  “I don’t,” she said. “I remember goddessing out on the Etrusca ruin, with the ectoplasm ocean about to hit us, and then I remember thinking I should kill you because at some point, you’d want me to kick the Onyx. But that felt like too much emotional work, and you looked so pathetic with your little ax and your little guns in your silly little armor.”

  “Yeah, well, fuck you, a lot,” Blaze snapped.

  Elle stopped him. They stood close together on the stairs to talk. “I’m being honest. It saved your life. But whatever. Then I teleported away. I wanted to kill Granny. That was my first thought.”

  “But you didn’t cast a spell to teleport, I don’t think. Like Granny, you just vanished. Boom. Gone.”

  Elle shrugged. “I don’t know how I did it. It felt like the Onyx was in control, and it wanted to kill Granny as much as I did. She’s old, Blaze. Not Etrusca old, but for a Human? She’s at least two thousand years old.”

  “Is she Human?” he asked.

  “Kind of?” Elle crinkled her nose. “Human and something else. I sometimes think she’s like Raziel. Not an Onyx creature, but something supernatural we haven’t figured out yet.”

  “Yeah, that feels right,” Blaze said. “So you left me to die. No worries, I didn’t die and got out alive, no thanks to you.”

  Elle dropped her head. “I’m so sorry.”

  Blaze laughed. “It’s okay. You’re just the latest in a long line of people who’ve tried to kill me. Cali has, Trina has. Lizzie was a demon that did his best to murder me, and even Ling went after me on Hutchinson Prime with his nunchaku. So far, Bill and Fernando are the only people on this ship who haven’t wanted to put me in an early grave.”

  “Still,” Elle murmured, “I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted,” Blaze said. “What happened between capturing Chthonic and us picking you up on Earth?”

  Elle’s face went blank
. “I don’t remember much. It’s indistinct. Like, I remember wanting a gyros and fries at some point… So of course, I went to Cat’s place. But I was a total bitch to her and she threw me out and called you. And that’s where we are.”

  “Damn,” Blaze cursed. “That snare sphere and the archduke of death could be literally anywhere. You had enough Onyx mojo to teleport anywhere. Do you remember catching up with Granny?”

  “Yes,” Elle said. “In a desert somewhere. A star in the sky. A cold, spring night. But don’t ask me anything more. I don’t remember.”

  The gunny thought for a minute. “During the dragon battle, after Chthonic resurrected Granny, she whispered in your ear for like five seconds. You said something about her explaining everything to you, about our past, about the Onyx Gate, about her. What did she say?”

  Elle shook her head. “It’s right on the tip of my mind. It’s like waking up from a dream, and you know you’ve dreamed, but you can’t get the memory into your head. You know, at some point, something will jar it loose, but I can’t do it on my own.”

  “Nombre de Dios!” Blaze let out a big laugh. “Elle, buddy, here are the secrets of the universe. But yeah, you’ll forget them five minutes later. Enjoy that five minutes knowing everything, though.”

  Through comms, Lizzie laughed. “Hhhha, good one, Gunny.”

  Elle and Blaze exchanged glances. Lizzie had been listening to them. Blaze still had one topic he wanted to discuss with his sister, but he didn’t want the ship to hear.

  If Elle were still casting spells, they could have communicated telepathically. As it was, there was nowhere on the ship they could go to get out of Lizzie’s hearing.

  If the ship’s computer was still in league with the hellish forces they were fighting, they were in trouble. Lizzie had said the only reason she wasn’t actively trying to kill them was because of her deep love for Bill. But Bill hated them all except for his brother.

  “Lizzie, don’t listen to us, ever,” Blaze growled. He then patched into Bill and Fernando. “Bill, your goddamn computer demon girlfriend is listening to us. We can’t have that.”