Edward Lee - The Chosen

So they’d drugged her, to be more responsive. None of it had been a dream at all. Every night Feldspar had been secreting into her room, to rape her…

“And I know what you may be thinking,” the squat, frocked man went on. “But it was all bound to one very important consideration.’’

“What!” she spat.

“I love you.”

Her rage roiled, but she knew she mustn’t show it. She must not let herself break. She needed to think, didn’t she? She needed to calculate—

The sick motherfucker…

—a way to destroy him.

And the cutlery rack wasn’t that far away.

She knew what she must do.…

Keep talking, keep distracting him.

“And The Inn itself,” she said. “I don’t understand. None of it makes sense. All the money you pumped into the place and it seemed from the start that you wanted it to fail.”

“Of course I did,” he answered. “We needed a sufficient cover.”

“A cover? What are you talking about?”

“We needed camouflage. A fine restaurant backed by a lucrative holding company provided that. But we couldn’t have it become too successful, could we? We couldn’t have too many people coming here. After all, they might take note of our real services. You do know, Ms. Abbot, why we’re really here, don’t you?”

Again she remembered the book. Magwyth. Servant of Demons. Banished to earth as penance, to provide gluttonies for Satan’s hirelings.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

“Then likewise you can see our need to do things the way we did. The Inn needed to provide a legitimate, expensive restaurant. Yet on the other hand it had to fail, to keep out an influx of local residents. No one makes queries when the bills are paid and the books are in order, Ms. Abbot. We chose The Inn’s remote location deliberately, for the same reason. And as for The Inn’s checkered past, the same reason too.”

Now Vera understood. “And you chose me, a legitimate restaurant manager, to cover for you without even knowing it.”

“That’s…correct, Ms. Abbot,” Feldspar admitted. “And I hope you will forgive me. In time, I’m sure that you will, when you fully realize what I can offer you ultimately.”

Vera sneered. “And what’s that?”

“Eons, Ms. Abbot. I can offer you eons. We’re both alike, you and I. We are both servants, in a sense.” His eyes pricked into her. “Love me, Vera, and serve with me. And I will give you anything you’ve ever wanted and a million times more. Forever.”

She knew what he was implying, the same thing he’d so discreetly implied all along. She knew there was only one way out:

“All right,” she said.

The shiny face peered back at her, skeptically hopeful. Was he actually shaking, he was so nervous?

“Do you think—” he faltered. “Do you think you could love me?”

“Yes,” she said.

He expression blanked. “Then prove it.”

Vera approached him, willingly, and with desire. She didn’t flinch at all when she noted a white marinade bucket on the cold line—a marinate bucket containing Dan B.’s head.

“Make me immortal and I’ll love you forever,” she whispered, and with that confession she wrapped her arms around Feldspar and kissed him on the mouth—an eternal mouth—a mouth that had reveled in the utterance of blasphemies for a thousand years. She kissed that mouth with all the voracity and passion that she’d ever kissed anyone in her life…

Feldspar returned the kiss. He began to weep.

“Make love to me,” she whispered. “Just like you did all those other nights. Here. Right here.”

Vera sat upon the service line, and with no hesitation whatever she pulled up her nightgown to bare her sex.

“Now,” she breathed.

Feldspar, teary-eyed and in bliss, stepped up between her spread thighs. He placed one hand down, and with the other began to unsash his frock. Between the sackcloth divide, his erection sprouted: a pale and hideous tuber with dark blue veins, pulsing upward.

Vera spread her legs further, to offer herself as fully as any woman could…

“My love,” he whispered and closed his eyes.

Instantaneously her hand snapped up, plucked the shiny rib cleaver from the cutlery rack and brought it down on Feldspar’s hand, which remained opened on the wood butcher block beside the range—

chunk!

His scream sounded disappointingly human, and when he raised his hand, backing away, Vera saw with great satisfaction that three of his fingers remained on the butcher block, his ring finger among them, the finger that sported the big, faceted amethyst…

She swung the cleaver in a lateral arc. It’s bright blade sunk inches into Feldspar’s stout neck, releasing a spray of brackish, black blood. He howled further, shuddering.

And with all her might, Vera brought the cleaver down with both hands—

swack!

—into the center of his bald forehead.

He teetered back, arms reeling. The cleaver’s formidable blade had bitten into Feldspar’s brain no less than three inches, the great cranial fissure oozing the midnight blood.

Then he collapsed.

Vera squealed. I did it! I did it! I—

Then her squeals of victory corroded.

Feldspar got up.

The look on his halved face was not one of rage or betrayal or anger. It was a look of wounding, or heartfelt hurt.

He removed the cleaver from his head and tossed it aside. Then, his other hand—the hand whose fingers Vera had so expertly chopped off—he turned over and looked at.

She’d separated him from his power, from the amethyst, and had buried a Sheffield meat cleaver into his head to boot, but he didn’t even seem to care.

“Kyle was just an acolyte, a weakling,” Feldspar said with a vast sadness in his voice. “My power here—my fortitude—comes from a far greater source.”

Vera screamed, a reasonable thing to do under these newfound circumstances. Feldspar’s good hand snapped to her throat. He raised her up fully off her feet, then threw her down. Her head smacked the tile floor, her vision churned, then darkened. She knew she was passing out.

And she also knew what was going to happen next.

Just…let me…die first…

He hauled up her gown, spat on her sex. His hand clamped again to her throat as he bared himself. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you now, Ms. Abbot. But first…”

The bulbed, nearly white end of the thing nudged her sex, began to enter…

“ NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” he bellowed.

Perhaps Vera really was dying, or maybe she was hallucinating. But in the furthest recess of what remained of her consciousness, she thought she heard something.

It reminded her of a dream-sound, a reverberation from a nightmare:

chink! chink! chink!

What was it?

Feldspar struggled shambling to his feet, his eyes for some reason so large that they appeared to be on the brink of launching from their sockets. His face contorted, and his ears—

Vera, in her daze, squinted.

There’s blood coming out of his ears…

chink! chink! chink!

With each chink! Feldspar seemed to buckle. Still issuing the maleficent howl, he staggered out of the kitchen…

To the atrium, Vera deduced.

She crawled at first, then managed to rise to her bare feet. She blundered out of the kitchen, into the black restaurant, each succeeding chink! goading her on.

When he made it to the atrium, she knew she’d been right.

The Inn’s grand front doors stood open.

chink! chink! chink!