by Mason Sabre
“James?” He was slumped against a kitchen counter. “Oh, God, James.” She dashed to him, dropping to her knees beside him. “James, wake up.” He was breathing, thank God, he was breathing. His skin was as pale as the off-white cabinet in the kitchen. His eyes were closed and sunken into their sockets. Dark circles formed under his eyes, but they didn’t hide the red rims. The only sounds he made were that of the light breaths as he slept. Diana didn’t call his name again or try to wake him. If this was how he got some sleep, then she was sure as hell going to let him.
Still, she put a hand across his forehead to feel his temperature. His skin was hot to touch, burning, wet and clammy. He had a fever for sure. “Oh, James,” she whispered.
She didn’t mean to wake him, but as she used the edge of her top to wipe his face, he muttered, “What time is it?”
“I’ve no idea. After five at least. The sun is up.” She touched a hand to his chest. “I didn’t hear you get up again.”
“No. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“You should have done.”
He shrugged and opened his tired eyes. So dull, so drained. The sight made her want to hold him, soothe him even. “For what? So, you could watch me hurl?” The lids of his eyes hooded again. He held them there for a second and closed his eyes and swallowed.
“Do you want me to help you lie down?”
“In a minute.” Another pause, longer this time, and Diana thought maybe he’d gone back to sleep. “You’re not sick?”
“No. But then I didn’t eat the rabbit.” It had to be that. There was no other explanation. It couldn’t be a sickness that was viral. She’d been around James. Whatever he had, she would have caught it too. Finn was fine too, but he’d not had any of the meat either. Diana had checked on him a few times, but he’d opened his eyes, raised his furry brows at her, huffed and gone back off again.
“Do you want some water or something?” She ran a hand along the side of his head, pushing back his wet hair. “What’s—” She leant in. There was something on the side of his neck, just under the join in his jaw. “James …”
“Yeah?” A sleepy reply.
“Tilt your head.” She pushed against him to make him tilt his head to the side. The skin on his neck was different to his face. More different from if it was just a case of he’d caught the sun better. His neck was pale like the rest of him, but the veins running up the side, instead of the usual blue-green shade, they were grey, dark grey. She traced her thumb along one and it ran down to his collar.
“What are you doing?” he asked, when she pulled his shirt to the side to look at his collar bone. The grey vein ran down there too and disappeared deeper into his clothing.
“You’ve got a mark on you … a rash … or …” No, it wasn’t a rash. Rashes were red and spotty, this … it was like … she wasn’t sure. Maybe when they shove that stuff in your veins. God, what was it? Not the radiation stuff. No. Did they do blood tests that way? Inject someone with a solution that showed all the veiny pathways in the body? “I’m going to …” She opened his shirt without warning and found more of the grey lines, like an artwork of roads under his skin. She had to stifle her gasp as she pulled his shirt fully open. The lines reached across his collarbone and spanned out across the top of his arm. They went down his chest, just one side, though, like they stopped where his heart was. “Can you sit up for me? I want to see if it’s down your back too.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
He tried to peer down to his chest, but Diana was too focused on what she wanted, and she lifted him forward, so she could drop the shirt off his back and look at his skin.
“Ah, Jesus.” It was all down the right side of him. Down his back, his arm, along his neck—an intricate mesh of grey and black veins. Some veins were more pronounced than others, thicker, darker. When she touched them, they bulged and moved. His right hand was covered. He had been a military man, so he didn’t have soft, hands. His were strong, calloused, well used, but these veins, they did something to the appearance, aging his hand almost. The skin sunk in between every bone, defining his hand to look like that of someone twice his age. The black vein ran through the middle and bulged in such a way it seemed to have been glued onto the back of his hand. “There’s a rash, or something. I’ve never seen anything like it. I …”
She watched as James lifted his hand to his face and stared at the lines there. But then he closed his eyes and wobbled a little.
“I need to get you some help. Shit.” She couldn’t leave him. Not here. And where did she go?
“No,” James said. “It’s just--”
“You’re covered in something. I don’t know what it is.”
“They’ll catch you. I …” He had to pause between words, as if the act of speaking was tiring. “Rest. We’ll find antibiotics.”
“James …”
He looked at her with tired weepy eyes, and she could only stare back with fear, horror, and a truck load of images of what would happen to her husband. “Please,” she croaked. “Let me get help. I …”
He lifted a weary hand to her face and flopped it on her shoulder, his energy going from him. “I’ll be okay. Just need sleep.”
“We need help.”
“No. Wait …” He let out a long sigh and forced his eyes open. They tried to hood, but he made them open, wide. “We need to get back on the road.”
“You can’t drive like this.” Stubborn man. “Sleep. Just two hours.” The words were like lies as they came out of her mouth. She wanted to get someone. She didn’t know who. They were a day’s drive from home, three days from their meeting point and God knows who was friendly in this area and who wasn’t. But two hours. She’d give him that. “The slightest hint you’re getting worse, and I am going for help.”
The protests he was about to give, died on his lips when he saw her expression. “Two hours.”
“Two.”
At least with being a half-breed angel, she had more strength than a mere Human. She didn’t have the full strength of her kind, but it was enough to get James up and back to the make-shift bed, even if she had to make a couple of stops during the tiny trek from one room to the other.
By the time he was laid down and sleeping, Diana was sure those grey lines had spread. She fingered at his face, trying not to wake him, but wanting to see. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed them on his face because the kitchen was so dull. She could tell herself that.
While James rested, Diana boiled water on the fire and then let it cool. While the water from the kitchen tap tasted fresh, who was to say it was? James had been drinking from it all night. It was possible it was making him worse. She’d only had boiled water in the broth and then to drink, she had boiled more water and put lemon in it. Perhaps the grey was from the water … She clutched at straws, she knew that, but it was focus on boiling the water, or sit and go mad with her own thoughts and convince herself that her husband would be dead by sundown.
Three hours he slept for. Diana had let him, and she didn’t feel bad about it, either. He’d not moved and the couple of times he had, she’d felt for his fever and was happy it had gone down a little. He was still too hot, though. Hotter than she’d be happy with, but not the on fire, cook food heat he’d been suffering before.
She put a marker on one grey vein. It had to be growing, spreading or something. Even just a little. The more she stared at them, the more she convinced herself. Sure enough, it had. Not a lot, just the fraction of a centimetre, but it was enough.
Without waking him, or at least trying to avoid waking him, she peeled back his shirt, so she could take another look. Although the black veins were still only on the right side of his body, there were more of them, thick, deep black lines, spreading out and making him look like a mutation.
She leant in closer, touched at one, and with a sudden jerk, James thrust himself onto his back and arched. Every visible vein bulged. He clenched his fists by his side, ground
his jaw. The veins in his face popped out and formed darker lines.
“James …” She grabbed for him. “James … what is it?”
Oh, God. His body shook, tremors taking him. He made a sound deep in his throat, and his eyes snapped open wide. They were so filled with terror. So red around the outside, so dark on the inside.
“James.”
“No,” he shouted, and pounded both fists against the floor beside him. “I …” He clenched again, making such a noise like she’d never heard before. It screeched into her head, into her soul, clawing at her insides, until she needed to clutch her own head and beg it to stop.
Finn was up. He barked wildly from the other side of the room, near to the kitchen. His top lip was peeled back, his muzzle held in a crinkle as he snarled.
“James. Oh, God. Please wake up.” She shook her husband, tried to ignore the dog, but Finn gnashed at something.
“What is it?”
Just as fast as he had started, James flopped down in a heap. It was like he had been possessed. Possessed and left thrashing and then whatever it was had left his body in a crumpled heap.
Finn snarled again, this one louder, deeper. The heckles on his back had risen. His fur stuck up. His tail was whipping in anger and warning.
“Finn …”
Gently, she rested a hand on Finn’s head, not wanting to startle him and have him snap at her by accident. Her own heartbeat was a pounding racket in her ears, but she willed herself to step around the dog and peer into the kitchen.
“Oh, shit …” A cat. It stood on the counter nearest to the sink. She gripped the door frame, keeping her eyes on the cat. It wasn’t one like she had seen before, not the domestic cat to sit on your lap. It had a wide mouth with layers of sharp teeth and a grin like that of the Cheshire cat. “Oh, hell.” She knew what it was. “A grimalkin.” They ran in packs, hunted, ate … chewed down their food like a bunch of feline piranhas.
Grimalkin cats were predatory animals. Different to normal cats, so different. Usually they had bright blue eyes. Eyes so shocking it was as if someone had reached down and put stars in them. A blue star on a pure black night, but this one didn’t have that. He didn’t have eyes at all, just empty dark sockets.
Diana took a step around Finn, and the cat moved and hissed at her. She put a hand up. “Easy.”
Something black and liquid oozed off the cat’s body and into a small pool on the counter top. The cat didn’t have a side. Where its fur should have been there was a hollow arch. Bones jutted out, dark, grey bones with bits of partially rotted flesh hanging from it. Its tail, long and whipping, Diana realised, was decayed to the bone.
This wasn’t just a grimalkin cat. No. This was an already dead grimalkin cat.
It made a noise from its non-existent throat and shook its head as if it was trying to wake itself up or come back to life. That was it, wasn’t it? This was James. Ah, shit. How did she miss it?
He was a necromancer. His power was to raise the dead, but he needed potions and different rituals for it. It was only on rare occasions he could do it with nothing. And even rarer occasions he could do it by accident. He’d raised the family dog once, he’d told her. Scared the life out of his mother when Bruno had come trotting back in, all maggots and shit like that.
He needed to set the animal down, to free its soul from its body again. Poor thing.
“Watch the cat,” she said to Finn.
James hadn’t moved, but he made a low noise in his throat like a hum. She dropped to her knees beside him. “James? James … I need you to wake up. James?”
Finn backed up, and she wasn’t shocked to see the grimalkin at the door. The dead always went to their masters.
“Oh, God. James, come on. Wake up.” She shook him hard, harder than she would have. “James. Come on … wake the hell up.”
The cat moved closer. Finn snarled.
“James,” she yelled.
He jumped. “What is it?” he asked, voice full of sleep, eyes fighting to open.
“There’s a cat. A dead cat.”
“What?” He rubbed his eyes, forced himself up, wobbled, fell back and pushed again. “A cat? I …”
“You’ve raised a damn grimalkin.” It was near to his feet. It had no internal organs. Just dust and rot. Diana was sure if she touched it, it would be just a dried-up husk. This grimalkin had been dead a while. God knows where in the house it had come from. “James …”
“I got it.” He put his hand up, the way he might if he were beckoning a live house cat, easing it in, making reassuring sounds to get it to come closer. It jumped over his foot, depositing a maggot or two on the blanket. They were getting washed, or burnt, or both. One of its paws held no flesh, no fur. Just bones. It was more like a walking rat than a cat.
“Jam--”
“Stop,” he said, putting his hand up to the cat. The grimalkin did. Stopped as if frozen in place. It even had one paw raised, stuck mid-step. “I’ve never seen one of those in real life before.”
It was fascinating. Yes … maybe if this was happening at some other time, and not now. Not when he was sick, and the rotten thing only had to jump her way. Geez ... the thought. No.
“Come,” James said to the cat. “Slow.” As the cat moved, James pushed himself onto his knees and moved towards it. “That’s it. Come on. Closer … closer …” He lowered his hand to the cat’s head, not quite touching it. James told her it was like he could touch an aura—the light around people and beings. He could reach into them and almost unzip them to let the soul back out. “You’re free,” he said to it, and the cat slumped onto its front, and then any substance its soul gave vanished, and the cat keeled over and was still. “I raised this?” He didn’t take his eyes off the cat at first, when he asked Diana.
“You were having some kind of seizure.”
“I don’t even remember.” He rubbed his head. “I think we need to get moving. We’ve wasted enough time.” He raised his eyes to Diana’s. “Maybe the Prisoner knows what’s wrong with me.”
She couldn’t keep her eyes off the veins. God, she hoped so. She hoped more than he knew what it was. She hoped the man knew how to cure it.
Chapter 6
Diana drove, with Finn in the back, and James in the passenger seat. He wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t awake either. More just staring out as they went. She didn’t bother to cover their tracks this time or hide the fact they had been at the farmhouse. If anyone were to investigate, they’d find the wonderful remains of the cat.
She’d put broth she had made into tubs, so they could stop and have them later. It would mean they’d be drinking them cold, if James could keep them down, but it was food, and that was all that mattered. It would do no good to take this trip and then pass out from exhaustion and lack of nutrition. She’d dumped the other rabbit, though. It might not have been that making James ill, but she sure as hell would not risk it. Not even cooking it up and giving it to Finn. No. Not a chance.
A good couple of hours into the drive it rained. The rain hammered against the roof of the car with little let-up, making any sounds in the car inaudible to the harsh rat-a-tat-tat. The wipers were of little use against it. They couldn’t move fast enough to give Diana any kind of visibility. She had to slow down to a creep. Thank God they had taken the back roads. James had mapped out their plan, using roads that ran around the backs of places, took them to the depths of the countryside and hid them from most people who’d never bother to go the way they were going.
A car came along the road on the other side. It was big, sturdy, all dark with shining paintwork. Diana gripped the wheel and ground her jaw, tensing her entire body.
Please don’t be someone. Please don’t …
The last thing she wanted, with James in the state he was, was to have to face money hunters or questions or something like that. Her pulse spiked as the car got closer, and she held her breath as it passed. She watched it disappear along the road behind her through the rear-view mir
ror, and only when she was sure it would not turn around and come back, did she blow out a breath and relax. At least the rain was keeping the sweepers and the money hunters inside. Nothing like bad weather to make people lazy.
James slept most of the morning away. He woke the odd time, murmuring something, but it would be minutes and he was gone again. When Diana pulled off onto a side road to let Finn out to do his business, and grab something to drink herself, she left James in the car.
“Need me to take over a little while?” he asked when she snuck back in.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I was.” He yawned. “Bladder woke me. Give me a second.”
The moment Finn saw James up and walking, he dashed over to him. James said something to the dog and waved him off and Finn sat by the hedge as James ducked behind it and took care of his own needs.
“I think we need fuel soon,” she said when he got back in the car. “We’ve just under a quarter of a tank left.
James pulled a blanket back around himself, closed the door and lifted his legs. “We’ll try to find a town or something. God, it’s bloody cold out there.” He shivered with it.
Diana put her hand on his forehead again. “Your fever is back. It’s not cold at all. Look.” The temperature on the gauge at the dash said 17 degrees centigrade.
“There should be a fuel place here,” James said, and he took the hand-drawn map off the dash and pointed to a place just a little ahead of where they were. “Or there was, the last time I was this way.
“James, I …”
He reached to her. “I’ll get the fuel. Don’t worry. I can manage that at least.”
She had never fuelled their car up. While the town didn’t know they were in hiding, Diana kept herself out of stores and places that would have cameras or people to recognise her. It had served them well so far. Well it did; if the Humans were looking for her still. Maybe they assumed she was dead. God, she hoped so. But it wasn’t worth the risk. One sighting, one report back, and she and James would be done for.
