Wicked Hungry

“Let me wake her up,” Zach says. “So I can at least meet her. She doesn’t have to see the sacrifices.”

“Out of the question,” Gilroy says.

“Father, please,” Zach says.

Gilroy reaches out to caress his son’s cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“Then I’ll wake up the children and sacrifice them. It’s the only thing I’m good for here.”

He reaches out to Meredith, who is sleeping on the couch, and cold sweat forms on my forehead.

“Wait just a little while and have a pineapple. Or a mango,” Gilroy says, reaching out and stopping Zach’s hand. “Patience is definitely something you lack, my son.”

“No,” Zach says. “I’ve eaten more fruit today than all of last year.”

“It will cleanse your body of all that human food. Have some more.”

“I will soon enough. There’s nothing else to eat here, anyway.”

“I thought,” says Gilroy, “that you were sick of the human world. That you couldn’t wait to join us and live like us.”

“Sure,” Zach says. “But I can’t just forget what I left behind, can I? You promised. There’s so much misery out there. It’s time to end it.”

Peeking out from behind Carolina’s cot, I see him reach out with something long, sharp, and strangely familiar.

It’s my athame. Blessed by the moon goddess, ceremonial, pure. But what has he done to it? It’s dark and shiny. Like he’s blackened it in a fire. And it’s sharp. And that’s not all. There’s a strange smell on the blade. Blood, but that’s not all. Something chemical, nasty.

He reaches out and grabs Meredith’s arm. He puts the athame to her, presses the sharpened tip against her skin. He’s going to cut her.

Not if I have anything to do with it.

I jump up with a howl, and my friends rise around me. Gilroy jumps back three feet, but I only have eyes for Zach. He’s grabbed Meredith and holds her tightly, looking me straight in the eyes. In his hand, dark wood glints.

“Back off, Stanley.”

“You hypocrite!” I growl, taking a step forward. “And you called me a murderer.”

“You don’t understand,” Zach says, stepping backward, still holding Meredith tightly. “Big problems need radical solutions.”

“No,” I say. “You’re wrong. Nothing’s worth this.”

“When the Old Ones come, the world will be cleans

ed. And all the impure meat eaters will be washed away.”

“Spare me the prophecy, Zach,” I say. “And let her go.”

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Stanley. It’s too late for that. The process has already begun.”

The room goes dark, and I hear Zach intoning words as he slices the athame through the air. “Ankaris, Tunilus, Canikos—”

Before I can jump at Zach and Meredith, there’s a wall of sulfurous flame around him. In fact, the whole room is filled with fire and smoke. And still it grows hotter.

“Who calls us?” booms out a voice from far, far away.

The fire is everywhere.

“Who prepared the sacrifice?” booms the voice again.