Dastardly Bastard(57)

“What do you want?” the Bastard asked, as if already bored with her presence. He clicked forever-long fingers against the podium.

Justine met the thing’s one eye, a black void containing a small red gem. As the fire raged behind her, she saw the ruby dilate, then return to normal as the light faded.

“I want Trevor. And I want out.” Justine managed to maintain some semblance of bravery in the Bastard’s gaze, but she could feel her courage fleeing by the second.

“Then you should have never come.” His gaze lowered, and he went back to work on whatever kept his attention.

“I had no choice. You left me no choice.”

The Bastard laughed. “Me? Oh, you are a treasure. I see why he likes you.”

“What?” Justine felt unsure. She felt as if a rug was being pulled out from under her. Some terrible prank had been played. Feeling dizzy, she leaned against a far wall. The voices inside the tomb-like passageways hissed like angry snakes.

“I grow so very tired, child, tired of the games he plays. But I am helpless.” The Bastard chuckled. His hands snapped something in two, accompanied by a squeak from whatever he held.

“Who? I don’t understand.”

“You poor thing.” The Bastard clucked his tongue, a segmented thing far too full of red blood. His hand came up quick, popping something into his mouth. “You can’t really tell me you fell for the boy’s story.”

Justine, broken and enraged, screamed, “No! You’re lying! Why should I believe you?”

“In this place, child, I’m as much of a prisoner as you and your friends. It makes no difference if you believe me.”

Justine could stand no longer. All the strength drained from her legs, and she collapsed to her knees. “I don’t understand.”

“Please stop repeating yourself. These things are not your concern. The truth will come. If you let it.”

“I can’t… I can’t believe anything you show me. I won’t.”

“That makes no difference. I am but a fraction of the real problem. That boy is far more powerful than you and I combined. How else do you think I came to be here? I’m nothing more than his… servant.” The Bastard went back to his podium chores. “I do as I’m told. In turn, I am allowed to remain.”

I didn’t fall. I jumped.

“You weren’t down there hiding in the chasm. You were in the boy.”

“I thought he would set me free. But he had other intentions.”

That thing’s voice is so sweet. Like music. I heard it calling me. It wanted me down there with it. So I jumped. I heard my father calling me the entire way down.

“You were the boy’s… creation?”

“Nothing more than a fracture of the mind. They kept him hidden away in that… that cell. He had no one to talk to, no one to share his trauma, no one on which to lay the burden of his memories. I am only the product of a lonely child.”

Justine saw Scott sitting cross-legged in that padded room, drawing, coloring… writing. He had toiled over that poem just as the Bastard worked on yet another snack he would toss into his mouth.

‘Cross wreckage of bridge is where this man lives. Counting his spoils, his eyes how they dig.

“He created you as an escape. You were meant to save him.”

“And save him I did. From himself. He hid away in those houses up there, out of my sight. He cowers because he knows I will come for him. I will take what is left of him and swallow it whole.” The Bastard stuffed his maw with something that sounded an awful lot like a crying baby. Justine tried to clear the image from her head, but couldn’t. It was forever there, cemented in place.

“You want me to give him to you.”

The Bastard had no control over his master. He needed Justine’s help.

The Bastard stopped working and looked at Justine with that red gem. “You will help me, then?” During his meal, his midsection had grown to three times its original width. She doubted the thing was full. It would never be. All it did was eat, feeding on the memories Scott allowed him.

“What becomes of me?”

“I do.” The Bastard didn’t have to explain.

Justine would be no more. Everything she was, all her memories and hurt and pain would be erased. She would become him. Forever.

“Will you allow Trevor to leave?”

“If you wish.”

Justine nodded. “Do it.”





44


DONALD FELT AS IF HE’D just stuck a fork in a light socket. He sat up on the trail, coughing and gagging on a sulfuric taste in the back of his mouth. Rolling over onto his stomach, he crawled to the edge of the chasm and vomited over the side. His eyes burned, hot tears blinding him.

The situation flooded back at once. He was rooted in place by it. He lay there, his chin hanging over the cliff side, reliving every vision, every horrible little nuance, until it wasn’t so real anymore. His thoughts hung in the back of his mind, just out of sight, as if he’d only just awakened from a very bad dream.

Still, he knew it had all happened—the chaos on the trail, the faux memory of him being a coward, the decayed version of Sunne chasing him through the cave. Every realization and revelation was behind him, but not forgotten.

Yet, in the forefront of his mind, he could see the sun playing over Sunne’s untarnished face and the smile there, the twinkle in her chocolate eyes. He knew what had really happened in that alleyway, how he had fought for her survival.