Edward Lee - The Chosen

Tate walked out of the apartment and slammed the door. Paul felt riddled in shock. He wiped his upper lip, and his hand came away red. And he was shaking, he was sweating. But there was one thing he knew without doubt. He was not a drug user. The entire confrontation was too impossible to even contemplate.

But his memory still hung before him like a black hole. He couldn’t remember the last four days. I better call Vera, he realized. Find out what the hell’s going on.

His joints ached when he went to the phone. He couldn’t even remember The Emerald Room’s number; he had to look it up.

“Vera Abbot, please,” he said when the hostess picked up.

A long pause, “I’m sorry, sir, but she’s…gone.”

Paul frowned. “What do you mean gone?”

“She quit a few days ago, for some job in north county.”

Quit her job? “That’s impossible,” Paul countered. “I—”

“Apparently,” the hostess persisted in the rumor, “she caught her fiancé cheating on her, so she took another job the next day and left town. And she took three of our best people with her…”

Listening further would’ve been useless. Paul’s senses blanked out. Something in his psyche snapped, like a bone cracking, and his eyes blurred. He dropped the phone.

Strange—and awful—visions showed him things. He stared ahead, at nothing. The small glass panes of the dining room cabinet reflected back his pallid, unshaven, and bloody-lipped face—

And in that face he saw the nightmare. Its whorls seemed to congeal above him.

“Oh my God,” the reflection whispered.

Then the memory crashed down.

««—»»

Lemi’s blade gleamed like molten silver. He used it with a calm and lavish finesse. Organs slid wetly from the cadaver’s sliced abdominal cavity; they landed on the floor in a sloppy, sort of crinkly sound. The corpse’s blood had long since gone dark.

The Factotum liked to watch Lemi work. He saw resolve in the young man’s eyes, determination and an almost reverent placidity. Faith, the Factotum thought. It was faith, he knew—a doubtless, unvacillating, and even radiant faith in the promise behind their tasks. Zyra was the same way: incorruptible in her loyalty to the Factotum and their calling.

Zyra, her beautiful eyes set in placid determination, undraped the female, who lay prone in the stark light. Bound and gagged, her face looked similarly stark-drained of its color by dread. She was plump, ebon-haired, and her light blue eyes would have been alluring were it not for the pink circles of shock about them, and the muddy smudges of mascara. Her entire body faintly trembled.

“Don’t be afraid,” the Factotum consoled her, not that she could reply. “Wondrous things await you. But you must have faith!” And he thought of sacrifices, of warm hearts plucked from opened bosoms and held high to the eyes of gods. He thought of the flesh consumed, and the blood drunk fresh from newly sliced veins. Time immemorial, his pondering persisted. All of history wears the same face. Good and evil are only masks which change like the seasons. The designs scarcely mat ter. It was all the same in the end. Heaven or hell. Abstinence or pleasure.

Denial or truth.

The Factotum chose truth. It was his own god which beckoned him now, with providence, with truth.

What a wondrous acknowledgement!

“The balm,” he instructed. “Calm her down; she’s terrified.”

Zyra knelt and opened the tiny hand-blown bottle. The bottle looked ancient. She dribbled several drops of the warm leahroot oil onto the gagged woman’s bare abdomen, then gingerly massaged it into her skin. She did this with great care, caressing the slippery oil over the plush belly, breasts, and legs. A pleasant, cinnamony fragrance rose up with the woman’s body heat. The fervid squirming began to wind down, then abated altogether when Zyra gently rubbed a few more drops between the abductee’s legs. Now the strained face relaxed, and her eyes—previously pried open by sheer terror—narrowed against the seeping repose of the balm.

“There,” the Factotum whispered. “That’s better.”

And it was. Everything was better. The Factotum felt becalmed in his surmise of the future. The silence, now, hung about his baldhead like a halo, or a static tiara as he lent a final, smiling gaze to his acolytes. “Take the corpse up,” he instructed Lemi, then, to Zyra, “And take her down.” His gaze seemed radiant on them. He thought of them as his children.

“Soon,” he added, “it will be time to begin.”

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWELVE

Vera slowly closed her bedroom door, noticing the unopened bottle of Grand Marnier on the antique nightstand. Below it lay a one white rose, a snifter, and a little note:

Dear Ms. Abbot,

I hope that your first day at The Inn proved a re warding one, and one of countless such days. I’m indebted to you for the expertise that you have so enthusiastically brought to this endeavor, and I’m delighted as well as proud to have you as one of my staff.

Sincerely,

Feldspar

What a lovely gesture, and how fitting. The day had been long and hard, and Vera knew that they would all be like that; a nightcap right now was what she needed. She uncorked the bottle and poured herself a drink, twirling the pretty liquor around in the wide glass to let it aerate. But why the rose? she wondered. It had been plucked of its thorns. She took it to the veranda doors with her drink. Certainly Feldspar was not making a romantic gesture—the rose was just an appreciative token. Still, she contemplated this, and herself. It seemed almost bizarre to her. Despite Feldspar’s clipped, businesslike demeanor and squat looks, she felt remotely attracted to him. Is he married? she wondered. Is he involved? Somehow, she didn’t think so; she couldn’t picture it. And why am I thinking about this anyway? What did she foresee? A potential relationship with him? An affair? Ridiculous, she scoffed. Besides, she knew full well that the biggest mistake a manager can make was getting involved with people she works with. Still, the notion tickled her.

Maybe I’m just horny, she flightily considered. The day and all its work was over now. This fact cleared her head, and left her to ruminate her own life outside of work. What did Paul think of her leaving? What was he doing now? This she could only wonder about for a moment until the awful imagery returned, and the wretched scene she’d walked right into. Even the thought of his name gave her a quick shock. I hope I never see that cheating, lying, demented son of a bitch ever again, came the bitter words.

But it made her feel naive, embarrassed. How long had she been fooled by him? How many times had she come home from work to make love to him without a clue as to what he’d been up to earlier in the day? Drugs, bondage, kinky sex. The whole thing made her positively sick.

She let the sweet liquor buff the edge off her thoughts. At least it was all behind her now, and thank God she’d always used condoms with him. Who knew what kind of diseases people like that had? Probably all of them, she thought.

The French doors offered only a view of deep winter dark now, but it was warm in the bedroom, and cozy. Then another thought—an unbidden and crude thought-popped into her mind. I wonder how long it’ll be before

I get laid again? It would require some adjusting to; she’d been sexually active with Paul for the last two years, but now, like a gavel striking its pad, the outlet was closed. Well, Vera, she joked, if things get too high and dry, you can always take Kyle up on his swimming offer. She wondered if he pulled the same come-on with other women. What a hound. Sure, Kyle, I’ll go swimming with you, but only if you wear a chain-mail jock strap with a lock on it.