There were howls of laughter and hunger.
"— and then I will set you to hunting down each of DragonStar's helpers, pitiful that they are, and to slaughtering them as they cringe begging for mercy."
"And then DragonStar!" Mot cried, flinging his arms wide.
"Yes! Then DragonStar," Qeteb said, and raised his arms heavenward. "And once His Prettiness is disposed of, we can turn our attention to this entire world!"
"And then?" Sheol asked, sidling close to Qeteb and laying an arm about his waist.
"Then we can rest awhile, my dear," Qeteb said, and patted her cheek. "Before the next world."
Beyond the apple grove, the wasteland ran with corruption. There were now hundreds of thousands of beasts — both human and their livestock, and formerly wild creatures — that ran the wastes. They had bred in past weeks and the young that they dropped only days after the frenzied copulations that had created them grew at a maniacal rate — and grew into maniacal shapes. The breeding itself had been utterly indiscriminate — men-things with cow-things, rooster-things with bitch-things, bull seal-things with woman-things •— and the results of these copulations were worse than horrific, more imaginative than the darkest nightmare, and far more aggressive than the most ill-trained and starved guard dog.
The wasteland crawled with corruption that could have been barely imagined by the most drug-crazed mind.
There was an eating ahead. Their master, Qeteb, had issued an invitation.
But first, Qeteb and his Demons must needs attend the Sacred Groves. Eating aplenty lay there, too, but the Demons were not about to share this meal with anyone. The power of the Mother, and of the Horned Ones, and of whatever other enchantment the Groves harboured was far too potent and far too glorious to share with the misconceived darkness that slavered in the dirt.
Qeteb stood in the centre of the apple grove and raised his hand above his head.
He twisted it in an abrupt motion, and the wooden bowl spun down out of the sky.
It wailed a little as it fell through the air, as if grieving.
Qeteb caught it in firm fingers, and squeezed the wooden flesh of the bowl until tiny cracks appeared.
"Careful!" Sheol muttered, shuffling from foot to foot.
Qeteb raised the bowl as if to strike her with it, then relaxed. "I have never been careful, my dear, only successful."
Sheol grinned. "May I be the one to —"
"We all must shed our blood for this," Qeteb said, "if we all want to go to the Groves."
He put the bowl on the ground and the five Demons grouped about it. Qeteb waved his hand, and the bowl brimmed with water; it was the colour of a murky day.
"Mother, you cow-bitch," Qeteb said in a voice that bordered on the pleasant, "we're coming to eat
you!"
He lifted his hand to his mouth and bit down savagely on his thumb.
Blood spurted out, and Qeteb let it spatter into the bowl of water.
He looked up.
The other four lifted their own hands to their mouths, bit down, and then let their blood spatter into the bowl.
Large amounts of blood also dribbled down their clothes, and stained their chins.
One of them had bit too hard, and the severed tip of a thumb fell into the bowl with a splash.
The water in the bowl turned to blood.
Qeteb laughed — then he began to howl with mirth. He abruptly stopped, his chest heaving, his eyes bright. "It's time!" he cried, and he grabbed the hands of the two Demons next to him.
They all joined hands ... and as they did their forms changed. They blurred and ran like candle wax placed too close to a fire, and each of them lifted a foot — now too metamorphosed into free-flowing form to be distinguishable as a foot — and placed it on the rim of the bowl.
A great wind howled through the apple grove, shaking the trees and knocking over several of the stumps the Demons used as seats.
It was laughter, the laughter of a world gone completely mad.
The Demons' forms flowed completely into a black-green liquid, and then they flowed completely into the bowl of water.
The laughter quieted, and a new grove, a sacred place, was invaded.
Chapter 26
A Gloomy and Pain-Raddled
Night
She did not know exactly why she had come here, but she thought it was because she needed to put an end to it. If she could do that, then perhaps she could move on with the rest of her life.
And maybe she could come to terms with StarDrifter.
"First things first," Zenith muttered as she lifted a hand, clenched and unclenched it to try and control its unwelcome trembling, then grasped the door handle before her.
