Bloodfever
Page 65

Why?
Im cold.
Cold is the least of your problems.
Undoubtedly true. Even if I managed to get free, how would I find my way out of this place? Down dark tunnels, through flooded caverns, with no compass, no sense of direction. As desperately as I wanted more information about my clothes, cuff, and spear, I was afraid to press; afraid too much interest might make my captor suspicious, and the last thing I wanted to do was cause the specter to dispose of something it might otherwise have left lying arounda thing that could save my life. How did the cuff work? Would Barrons be able to track it beneath the ground? Who are you? What do you want? I demanded.
My life back, it said. In lieu of that, Ill take yours. The same way youve taken mine. One piece at a time.
Who are you? I repeated. What was this thing talking about?
It raised a hand and pushed back its cowl.
I flinched violently. For a moment I was too horrified to do anything but stare. I searched the face for something, anything that I recognized. It took me several long moments to find it in the eyes.
They were dead, citron, inhuman.
Malluc!
Id been grossly premature in swiping him off my playing board. Id been wrong, so wrong! The vampire wasnt dead.
He was worse than dead.
All those times Id glimpsed the specter, seen it out a window late at night, or in the alley, or in the graveyard with Barrons, it had been Malluc, watching me. All those times Id discounted my Grim Reaper as a figment of my imagination, the vampire had actually been there, somehow. I shuddered. Id been so close to him so many times, with no awareness of the danger I was in. Hed been in my back alley the night the Shades had gotten in, the night Id broken into Barrons garage. Hed been watching me since shortly after Id stabbed him. I wondered why hed waited so long to take action.
I struggled to hold his gaze, if only to keep from absorbing how grotesque the rest of him had become. It was no wonder he kept his hood up. No wonder he hid his face. I looked away. I couldnt take it.
Look at me, bitch. See your handiwork. You did this to me, he snarled.
No, I didnt, I said instantly. I may not know much, but I did know that Id never do anything like that to anyone, not even my worst enemy.
Yes, you did. And Im going to do worse to you before Im done. Youll die when I die. It might be weeks, it might be months.
I looked back at him and tried to speak but couldnt. His face, once handsome in a pale, Goth Byronic way, was now monstrous. I didnt do that, I insisted. Theres no way. All I did was stab you in your gut. I dont know how the rest of you got soso I let the sentence end there, the kinder for both of us. Are you sure Barrons didnt do it? Not very big of me trying to blame Barrons, but at the moment, under the circumstances, I wasnt feeling big. I was feeling small and terrified. Malluc was holding me responsible for what hed become, and what hed become was worse than anything Id seen in any movie Id watched, or any nightmare Id ever had.
You stabbed me with a Fae-killing spear, you bitch!
But youre not Fae, I protested. Youre a vampire.
Parts of me were Fae! he hissed.
His mouth didnt completely close, and flecks of spittle flew through the bars, landed on my skin. They burned like acid. I scrubbed my arms on my T-shirt.
What? How could parts of someone be Fae? Yet that was exactly what it looked like. As if the spear had killed parts of him. Portions of Mallucs face were still marble white and handsome in a vampiric way; other parts had been ravaged by a foul leprosy: A blackened vein ran down his right cheek, over his jaw, and halfway down his neck, like rotted marbling in beef; a chunk above his left eye was gray, moist; most of his chin and lower lip had collapsed into a wet, septic decay. It was horrific. I couldnt stop staring. His long blond hair had fallen out, baring a bloated skull traced by a skein of thin, black veins.
I realized that must be why my hand had sunk into his abdomenportions of his body were decomposing as well, which explained his altered gait and the change in his voice, not to mention a mouth that wouldnt close, which had to make diction difficult. Was he rotting from the inside, too? Revolted, I wiped my hand on my jeans.
Look at me, he said, his yellow eyes burning lanterns in a misshapen skull. Study me. Soon youll know this face as well as your own. Were going to be intimate, so very intimate. Were going to die together. His eyes narrowed to slits. Do you know what the worst part is? He didnt wait for an answer. At first you think its watching parts of yourself rot. Staring in the mirror, poking your finger into melting pockets of your own flesh. Wondering if you should scrape out the rot or leave it alone. Bandage it up. Realizing that your cheek or your ear or part of your stomach is beyond repair. You lose yourself in degrees. You think, I can live with this, but then the next part goes and the next, and you find the worst part isnt the mornings when you wake up to discover another part of you is no longer alive, but the nights when you lie awake in terror of what youll discover at dawn. Will it be my hand next? An eye? Will I go blind before I die? Will it be my tongue? My dick? My balls? Its not the reality that undoes you; its the possibilities. Its the waiting, the hours you lie awake wondering what will be next. Its not the pain of the moment, but the anticipation of the next pain. Its not the dying itselfthat will be a reliefbut the desperation to live, the stupid fucking need to go on long after you hate what youve become, long after you can even stand to look at yourself. Youll feel that before Im through with you. His lipsone sculpted, pink, and firm, one rottedpeeled back from fangs. Look at me. I lived as Death for years. I played it for them. I delivered Death to my followers, dressed in grand Goth seduction. I gave it to them in velvet and lace and smelling of sex. I took them higher than theyd ever been on any drug. I danced them into death. I ripped out their throats and drank their blood and they came beneath my body as they died. Will no one do the same for me? Will no one dance me into the darkness?