Honeymoon of the Dead by Tate Hallaway

Author:Tate Hallaway [Hallaway, Tate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Horror & Ghost Stories
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-03-10T05:00:00+00:00

5.

The Devil

ASTROLOGICAL CORRESPONDENCE:

Capricorn

Thus I was completely floored when I woke up to discover myself in someone’s basement.

My head pounded so fiercely, tears streamed from my eyes. The inside of my mouth felt dry and cottony. Blearily, I tried to take stock of my surroundings.

I lay on my side on a cracked, dust-caked concrete floor. My arms twisted behind me, bound with something that felt a bit like duct tape and stuck to my wrists painfully. Someone had thrown a blanket over me, which was good because I wore only my chilled, moist swimsuit.

That bastard stole my clothes!

A bare bulb harshly glared down on an uneven stone floor. Tangled spiderwebs gathered dust between exposed copper pipes near the cracked ceiling tiles. A water stain on crumbled concrete made a patchy pattern on the nearby wall.

Eclipsing much of my view of the rest of the basement was one of those huge octopus-armed furnaces that a lot of older houses still had. Nearby, a rusty bicycle was propped against wooden shelves filled with cans of paint, half-used containers of wood stain, spray paint, and tubes of caulk. Somewhere close by I could smell the sour, rancid odor of a litter box overdue for a change.

I didn’t remember Larkin having a cat.

Lifting my head even the slightest made my stomach lurch, so I wisely determined to move as little as possible. The whole of my body continued to ache in tune with my heartbeat. I closed my eyes and felt around for any inner Goddess. I thought I caught a whisper of Lilith’s—or maybe Athena’s—presence humming deep inside, but it seemed as impossible to catch as quicksilver. Every time I thought I had a hold of it, it slipped away.

Damn drugs. Whatever Larkin gave me must be making it impossible to connect to Lilith. Or Athena, for that matter.

I heard the creak of rusty hinges followed by the sound of heavy footfalls on a wooden stairway. Screwing my eyes shut, I tried to continue breathing normally, despite a spike of fear that sent shooting pains behind my eyelids.

“Jesus, dude, you totally overdosed her.”

“So?”

Without opening my eyes, I strained to distinguish Larkin’s voice. I thought the gruff response might be him, but it was hard to tell. Who were these other guys?

“So she could die, man. Don’t you ever watch House? We don’t get the ransom if she’s dead.”

Ransom! I was being held for a ransom!? What was going on? All I could figure was that Larkin set me up again. This time, however, it was much more serious.

“How long has she been out, anyway?”

There were some fumbling noises. I thought maybe I heard the sound of a cell phone being flipped open or a watch being pulled from a pocket. It was hard to keep my eyes from twitching open to check which one it was. “Twenty minutes. That’s bad.”

“Let’s give her another five. If she doesn’t wake up, we’ll have to call the master.”

The master? They couldn’t be serious about that, could they? I mean, it sounded like a line out of a bad made- for-TV horror movie.

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