Parts of the Whole Read online

  ~~~~~~~

  “This is bad,” Tom whispered.

  We had decided, rightly, as it turned out, not to just barge in with guns blazing. We snuck in, careful not to be seen, which was easy thanks to the candles all over the place, dimly lighting small areas around this huge room. The chamber resembled, for all intents and purposes, the set of the second Indiana Jones movie, though the stench of cooked flesh and spilled blood and rotting innards was nearly unbearable. There was even a decrepit six-armed statue that looked ancient looming over everything and everyone. Ghastly light seeped out of the eye sockets, while sickly smoke flowed from the gap-toothed grin of the stone edifice. Each hand held some kind of wicked stone implement of destruction.

  Standing in front of the statue was a man stripped to the waist, his upper torso drenched in entrails. He was bald with red horns painted on his head, and his eyes... there was nothing but madness in them. He seemed to be a high priest to the remaining dozen or so who bowed deeply in rhythm, chanting some nonsense that I couldn't understand. The priest seemed to be waving one of those wavy knives above his head, describing shapes over the bound form of a small boy, spread-eagled on what looked like a stone altar.

  “Gods, these jokers actually went and did it.” Tom's voice dripped with disgust. “Stupid. So godsdamned stupid.”

  “What?”

  “That guy pretending to be Mola Ram is full of shit.” Tom took careful aim with his pistol. “He knows this won't do a thing, but it keeps his base under his thrall.”

  “Well, he is a cultist,” I said. Tom rolled his eyes and half-smiled. “Can you hit him from here?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but that knife could hit the kid on the way down, and I don't want to chance it.” Tom looked at me. “Got another one of those grenades?”

  “I wish.”

  “Note to self: Always have two grenades.” Tom sighed. “Okay. Cover me.”

  And with that, he stepped out from cover and walked directly towards the group of cultists and killers. There was no fear in his voice, only disgust and derision. When subtlety was handed out, Tom skipped his share and went for more guts.

  “Hey, chucklefuck,” Tom said, his voice cutting through the chanting like a laser. “You know you've got this completely wrong, right?”

  I shook my head and took a bead on the high priest, which I immediately lost as the crowd stood as one and massed around Tom. They were dirty, and looked like they hadn't bathed in weeks, and they grabbed my friend and looked to be ready to tear him apart. I switched to the nearest target, aiming carefully.

  The mass was about to begin dismembering my friend when a loud barked command rang out from the high priest. They moved to Tom's side, two of the bigger ones holding Tom's arms tightly. The priest moved forward to stand in front of Tom, his knife a copper gleam in the candlelight. “So, you are the one who killed my followers.” The voice was lyrical, almost musical in intonation.

  Tom spat in his face. “You can drop the bullshit accent, jerkweed. I saw the same movie you did.”

  The priest wiped the spittle from his eyes and looked at it as it dripped from his fingers to the floor. “You doubt the power of Kali?”

  “Man, I know Kali, and she's ultra-pissed at you.” Tom didn't flinch as the copper blade traced his chin. I could see the disgust from where I hid. “I'm giving you one chance, and one chance only: let the kid go, turn yourselves in, and maybe I won't call her here to fuck your world sideways.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence, and the priest lowered the knife. I again took careful aim at the high priest, the sights centered directly in between the red horns on his head. My aim shook a bit as first the priest, then his lackeys, started laughing, the kind of mad laughter when someone has absolutely no inkling of sanity. I took another deep breath.

  “How will you talk when you have no life with which to draw breath?” the priest cackled as he brought the blade up above his head and his underlings held Tom fast. I had no more time.

  I fired.

  The bullet tore through the priest's hand, sending the dagger into the darkness. He screamed in pain, and I knew it was pain; his drug of choice was apparently bloodshed. I shifted my aim and double-tapped the guy on Tom's right. The bullets made horrific exit wounds, splattering blood and bone onto the priest.

  Tom didn't waste time as he took his free hand and punched his remaining captor in the throat, effecting his release. He ducked under a wild punch from another cultist, who I shot through the back, and grabbed up his shotgun. The crowd had finally figured out where I was, but froze since Tom was right there. I took that opportunity to send two more to hell. With three giant booms, Tom ended the lives of three more cultists, disintegrating them from near-point-blank range. That left four cultists and the Big Bad.

  Or just the Big Bad, as the cultists, apparently figuring out they were screwed, took off running. I was tempted to go after them, but I had more important things to worry about.

  Namely the high priest making his way over to the boy, who was now stirring from whatever drugged slumber he had been under, and was starting to figure out he wasn't in Kansas anymore.

  Tom almost took the shot, then realized he was too close and the shot would hit the kid. He reversed the weapon and went to club the priest. The shotgun took him on the side of the head, but it didn't seem to stop him; in fact, it only seemed to make the priest angry as he turned to face my friend. I couldn't get a good shot either, so I made my way towards the two men. I stopped as the priest jumped back, another knife appearing in his non-ruined hand. Tom held back as well.

  “You think you can just come in here and fuck up my gig?” All trace of a lilting accent was gone. There was only anger and madness and deep Midwestern in that voice. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “We're the ones who've taken you down.” Tom didn't bother with his gun, and I wasn't sure why. I stood a bit to Tom's right and behind him. My gun was aimed in the priest's direction. “This is your final warning. Kali is not known for lenience.”

  The laughter was as derisive as it was raucous. “Asshole, you don't know me! I built this shit from nothin. I own this, and you and some bullshit six-armed bitch ain't got nothing. I run this motherfucker!”

  Tom shook his head. “I gave you your chance. You run jack shit.”

  I was about to take aim again when I saw something I couldn't quite believe. I came up short and just stared at the stone arm, or what I took to be a stone arm, bend down behind this punk with its stone sword. My gun lowered, not out of fear of hitting anyone but because I knew I was before a force that could blast me out of existence with the thought a dog would give a flea.

  The statue's other arms began to move, and the priest finally figured out we weren't staying back because of the knife, at least not the one in his hand. He spun around just in time to get a six-foot-long stone sword rammed through his chest. The sword burst from his back, and impaled on the tip was his heart, somehow still connected to his body through the elasticity of veins and arteries. The scream tore out of his throat so loudly I thought he head would explode. His heart kept beating until it shredded itself on the stone.

  It was then I accepted that the statue of a goddess of destruction, as Tom had described Kali, had come to life and taken some kind of horrible vengeance on this blasphemer. The blood flowed down the stone sword in a seemingly never-ending torrent as the statue shrank to a more human size. Even when the rock had melted away to blue flesh clothed in cashmere, and the craggy face had softened into loveliness, I was stock still. This was a goddess before me, and she still had the man stuck on her sword, now a silvery metal one, and he still bled, sobbing pitifully. The gushing had tapered to a slight flow, but it was obvious that more blood than had ever been in any fifty people had already doused his killer.

  And she apparently didn't mind.

  “Keeper.” Her voice was like her face and form: beautiful, lyrical and complexly mysterious. Her other five a
rms performed different duties, two dedicated to keeping the priest in hand. The other three were flowing with a musical sense, moving to a rhythm not for my mortal ears. “You have done me a service. I have been looking for this creature for quite some time.” She smiled at me. “Tell your friend that I'm flattered, but he isn't my type.”

  I caught myself staring and began stammering. “I'm sorry,” I managed after a few seconds. “I've just never seen---”

  “One of my clients,” Tom finished. “It's his first time. You going to take care of this thing?”

  A silky murmur came from her lips. “Oh, with pleasure.” She caressed the priest's body, her very touch creating runnels of flesh and blood dripping off him. He tried to scream, but I think his throat had broken. “Come now, little one. Let me show you what real destruction truly is.”

  “Oh shit. Mac, we gotta move. I told you she was pissed!” Tom grabbed my arm, pulling me back to reality. He nodded his head to the boy, who couldn't have been more than eight years old. We untied him and at Tom's urging hurried through the warehouse to the outside.

  The screams followed us, which was bad, but the gurgling was worse. So much worse. I felt tremors in the floor as the three of us ran as quickly as we could, Tom and I sharing the load. There was crunching that got blessedly quieter as we made our way outside into the wet rain. The drizzling rain of Newport News had never felt better.