32. Legad (D1)

__ Ardy pulled the Datsun to the side of the road after rolling over the thickening slush for fifteen minutes. The tires protested against the icy gravel as the car slid to a stop half-slumped in a ditch off the back road to Palley's Woods.
__ Doug blinked out the windshield, his face still drilling into the snowy night, determined. But for what Ardy didn't know. Not sure if he was still possessed by... by whatever that was, she stopped the car.
__ "What're you doing?" Doug said, glancing at her. His eyes were wild and unsettling.
__ "You're scaring me," Ardy muttered. The car remained idling, but she had one hand on the key in the ignition and the other on the handle.
__ Doug forced himself to glance from the key hand to the handle hand. "W-What are you doing, Ardy?"
__ "How do I know it's you?" Her chin quivered and she felt tears heat the corners of her eyes. She remembered the horrifying scene, the holes in his head -- now no more than pimple-sized scars -- the hiss and groan of the Alterling within him. "He's a deceiver," she said, remembering a felt warning from the beings she herself had touched on the other side of death.
__ "Who is?"
__ "Doug, don't."
__ He twitched. "I don't understand," he said and sniffed.
__ Ardy turned off the car and clutched the keys to her chest. Something wasn't right. Doug's sniff wasn't as the others had been, not to draw back tears. No, this sniff was feral, animal. He was smelling the air in the car, gathering her scent to determine her next action.
__ "Ardy, don't--" Doug started. But it was too late.
__ Slamming her shoulder into the door as she pulled the handle, Ardy rolled into the road and scrambled to her feet. Lights from an oncoming car grew slowly from the blurred horizon. Turning toward the lights more to escape the darkness, Ardy raised her hands in the air and started waving wildly. "Stop!"


__ Todd blasted the metal station loud enough to vibrate the seat of the dead guy's car and make the broken safety glass crinkle and crack with each beat. He wasn't running the car's heater. The sudden wintry blast didn't bother him.
__ He had only one purpose in life, to find the woman who pained him and brought him to this route. The gypsy fortune-telling woman would soon fall into his grasp and he would delight in so many torturous pleasures he wouldn't be able to contain himself. Already he was starting to sing a toneless droning song that ran through his brain like a tune that won't go away. Though he had never heard it before, it was stronger than the heavy rock blasting the car speakers. It was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar.
__ But he didn't care.
__ He didn't care about what he had left behind either. The fingerprints left on the discarded .357 entered and left his mind as he left the forest and followed his animal instincts down the side road. It didn't seem to matter that he was leading a forensics trail a blind CSI officer from TV could find in... well, in a snowstorm.
__ Todd no longer remembered his parents, his home, or his friends dead at his own hands. His memories were erasing with each flake of snow that drifted in the shattered glass and melted on the vinyl of the ruined seat next to him.
__ He only had his lust.
__ And the voice in his head telling him he was strong. He was infinite. He was powerful. No man could harm him. No god could touch him. As long as he dwelt in the darkness of the Alterlings' home, nothing could touch him.
__ For a creature without a soul is more infinite than the legions of saints gone before.
__ "I'll have to remember that one," he growled to himself, the smile almost pointed as though his teeth were already sharp and filed such to rend flesh.
__ Then a momentary flash of frustration raged in him. He jammed the brakes and rode the twisting slide. The car stopped at a forty-five degree angle across the center lane. "Where the hell am I going? Where is she?"
__ The voice within him said, She's here. She will come to you if you will it. If you demand it.
__ "But how? I don't have that kind of power."
__ But you do. You do, Legad.
__ "Legad. What is that?"
__ The name he gives you.
__ "Who is he?"
__ Your master.
__ "But I have no master. I am power."
__ No. You are his tool. It is his power you feel.
__ This made Todd pause, to doubt. Immediately the cold air from outside began to razor cut the flesh of his arms and chest. He felt weak. He felt memories ebb back into his heart, a vision of his mother crying as she tended a gash he got on his knee as a child.
__ "No! No, don't leave me this way!"
__ Who commands you, Legad?
__ "Him. The master."
__ Are you sure? You have to give yourself fully to him. No doubts. And his power shall be yours to wield.
__ Todd didn't even think about it as he savored the name. "Legad is ready, master. I am your will."
__ With each breath Todd -- now Legad -- felt the strength and heat and determination fill his heart and turn it black. The brief image of his crying mother became a flash of his mother tortured by his own hands, her fear and godlessness filling him and making him even more powerful.
__ Jamming the car back into gear, Legad straightened the wheel and continued driving into the snowy downpour. He rocked from side to side as he chanted his name and vowed to use his master's power to fill his rage and lust.
__ Just as the master wills it.
__ "Now, my master," Legad groaned, "I am yours to abuse and to raze." A cold tear streaked his cheek but he wasn't crying from fear, rage or even happiness. He was overcome with the pure bliss of surrendering himself to another's will. He knew that his master would continue to monitor him, to guide him. And, should he bring the woman to her knees, the voice in the darkness would breathe hot kisses on his neck and anoint him with the blood of a thousand lost souls. And if Legad should fail, each sense would be filled with the sharp pain of his master's lessons. He would accept punishment with relish and possibly even find sexual gratification in the rage of his master's disappointment.
__ Perhaps, Legad mused, he will have both. He will have the woman and do to her what the master would do to him. Then he would surrender himself to the dark one's will and allow himself the pleasure of his lord's tendering.
__ He didn't realize that he was still Todd and that the ancient name Legad meant "slave."
__ He didn't realize that his master had already carved out a plan to use him and discard him in a cold black fire.
__ He didn't realize there is no bliss in torment.
__ "Bring her to me, master." Legad whispered through the broken howling windshield.
__ And was instantly rewarded as the gypsy woman came running directly into the path of his headlights, waving and screaming for him to stop and pick her up.
__ "Thank you, master," Legad grinned and licked his chapped lips.