by Z. Rider
Nothing stopped it.
Everything made it worse.
Especially Ray. Especially Ray’s blood pumping just beneath his skin, the smell mixed with leather and cigarettes.
Copper rushed over his tongue—his own blood. His nerves screamed with the pain of his teeth sinking into his own flesh.
“Shit,” Ray whispered, clutching him. “All right.” His body shifted as he looked around. “All right. We can fix this.”
Dan shook his head, Ray’s heart tha-thumping against his cheek.
“Yeah. We can. We’ll fix it.” Ray pulled free of him, saying, “I need to get a knife. Okay? I’m just gonna—”
Oh God, the cat. He clutched Ray’s jacket with the hand that could still reach, afraid to take his other arm out of his mouth. Ray dislodged him, strode across the room.
“Got it.”
He dropped back to the floor, and Dan scrabbled for his jacket again. His jaws wanted to clamp down harder, rip his own flesh out, now that whatever was in him had had a taste of blood.
Fingers on his forehead, Ray was trying to look at how bad what he was doing to himself was. Bad enough make Ray hiss. “All right. Let’s fix this.”
As soon as he made the cut down his palm, the bees went nuts. Dan’s jaws let go of his arm. He dove onto Ray’s hand, gripping it in two hands like a bowl.
The knife clattered to the floor.
Dan lapped the cut, panting as he swallowed, going back for more.
Ray said, “Careful.” He pushed his fingers through Dan’s hair.
Not a lot of blood welled from the cut. He backed off enough to pinch it, trying to draw more. He sucked that up too.
Ray held the back of his neck. He felt Ray’s eyes on him. He gripped Ray’s arm hard enough to make white marks. The cut in Ray’s hand was a slice of open skin. With Ray still holding on to his neck, he sat up, wiping his chin—of spit, he saw when he looked at his knuckles. Not a drop wasted.
His head cleared. The volume of the humming went down. Ray held his palm out, a thin line of red seeping into the cut again. He lifted it toward Dan, and Dan pulled it to his face and tongued it until it was done, until he was done, his chest bursting with gratitude, relief.
He sank back against the wall, his arm throbbing with fire. He didn’t want to look at how bad that was. He tipped his head back and covered his face.
“All right now?” Ray asked.
He felt better, definitely better. But—“Shit.”
“What?”
His stomach churned at the thought. He got it out, though, his voice cracking: “Rabies.”
“What?”
“What if that thing gave me rabies?”
“Then thanks for giving it to me, man.” He wiped his hand on his jeans.
“Shit,” Dan said.
“I didn’t see ‘thirst for blood’ listened as a symptom when I looked it up,” Ray said.
“Abnormal behavior,” Dan said. “Wouldn’t that count? You looked up rabies?”
“I’ll give you that you’ve been acting fucking abnormal. Have you been drooling? Painful swallowing?”
“There’s prickling and itching at the bite site.” Dan pushed his hand behind his neck.
“There is no bite site,” Ray said. “Let me look.”
Dan turned a little.
Ray felt his neck. “Where is it exactly?”
Dan pointed.
“There’s nothing there. Not even redness, except from you pressing on it.”
“I’m having auditory hallucinations. It sounds like bees buzzing, until it gets real loud. Then it sounds like a jet engine taking off between my ears.”
Ray dragged his phone out. “Hold on.”
Dan leaned in long enough to watch him pull a web browser up, then dropped back against the wall.
“General weakness?” Ray asked.
“No.”
“Fever?”
“My mom said I felt a little warm tonight, but she didn’t make a big deal about it, so I’ll go with no.”
“Headache.”
“Yes. It goes away after…you know.”
“Right. Prickling and itching at the site of the bite you have, theoretically. Cerebral dysfunction…” He looked at Dan. For all he knew, that could mean ‘so fucked in the head you thought you needed to drink people’s blood,’ so he shrugged.
“Anxiety?” Ray asked.
“I think, considering the situation, that goes without saying.”
“Yeah, but taking out the situation. Anxiety?”
“No.” He rubbed the leg of his jeans. Caught site of the gouge in his arm and grimaced, turning it up to take a better look.
“Confusion? Do you have bandages?”
“No confusion.” He tried to think what they could use for the damage.
“Agitation?”
“Only over the situation.”
“Delirium? I guess we’ve covered abnormal behavior and hallucinations. Insomnia?”
“I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’ve been taking sleeping pills and spending entire days and nights in bed to avoid the situation.”
“And you feel fine now?” Ray said.
“Perfect. Again. For who knows how long. If it is rabies, I’m fucked anyway.” He clamped his hand over the bite, which both hurt sharply where the nerve endings were screaming and calmed some of the deeper throbbing.
“If it is rabies, you wouldn’t feel better after a little blood.”
Dan felt a hot tear welling at the corner of his eye. He turned his gaze to the ceiling.
“Hey.” Ray clasped his shoulder. “We’ll work it out. I think we can cross rabies off the list, so we’re narrowing it down, all right?”
He let out a desperate laugh.
“Is the hospital still a no-go?”
He wrestled with the fact that the hospital had plenty of blood, but panic stomped all over that. The worse his fucking situation got, the bigger his fear grew. “Yeah. Maybe… Shit, I want to say maybe if it gets really bad, but Jesus, this is already really fucking bad.”
“Can I call Moss at least?” Ray said.
“Why?”
“He used to be a paramedic and all, so.”
Half of him was relieved at the idea of someone who might have some ideas knowing about this but… “You have to promise me—promise me—you two aren’t going to pick me up and carry me to the hospital.”
“Hey, we never did that to Jamie. Much as we’d fucking wanted to.”
No. They hadn’t.
“I have an idea anyway,” Ray said. “I want to run it by him, see if it’s doable.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Call him.” He dropped his head against the wall. Ray stood and turned toward the sink.
The cat. The bowl of blood. Shit. Dan brought his arms over his head, wanting to disappear. And doing that, all he smelled was blood, earthy and sharp, from the mess he’d made of his arm. It wasn’t even funny that he and Ray were a matched set now.
“We need to get that cleaned up,” Ray said.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it? After the hospital tech, how many good days did I have? And now…”
“Is it coming back already?”
“No. I was just thinking I only had two good days this time. Two.”
Ray glanced his way before heading for the trashcan. He carried it to the sink.
“I’m going to have to go to the hospital, aren’t I?” He said it lifelessly as Ray’s boots moved around the linoleum. Ray dumped the cat with a thump, poured its blood down the drain, ran water after it. He washed the bowl, the sink, the knife. Ray didn’t even do his own dishes if he could help it—that’s what take-out and paper plates were for—and here he was cleaning up Dan’s.
Dan stared at the ceiling as he went through the drawers, looking for a dishtowel.
He was going to have to go to the hospital. He thumped the wall behind him with his skull.
Ray leaned
a hip against the counter, pulling a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. “I had an idea this morning. Maybe it’ll work. Maybe it won’t.”
“What?”
“Tell you in a minute.” With the cigarette between his teeth and the lighter curled in his hand, he pulled up Moss’s number, walking right by Dan on his way to the back door.
Dan climbed to his feet. With Ray having taken care of the kitchen, the least he could do was take care of himself. In the bathroom, where the window had been strategically placed so that anyone walking past on the porch could look in at the tub, he could hear Ray saying, “Hey, Moss. Sorry to bother you.” He turned on the taps, and the rush of water drowned the voices out. He washed his arm, wincing at the sting. Splashed his face, the water cool. Fresh. As he cranked the taps off, he heard, “Thanks a lot, man. See you in a bit.” He pressed his face into a towel. The screen door at the kitchen knocked shut. Ray’s boots clunked across the floor.
Dan looked over the towel.
“Feeling better?” Ray asked.
“Yeah.”
“Moss is on his way. Do you know you have something sitting on the roof of your car?”
“Shit. Lasagna. Want some?”
“Faye’s?”
Dan nodded.
“Maybe later. You got some gauze?”
While Ray helped him get his arm wrapped, Dan became aware of the stink of the cat, its blood feral and secret.
Turning his head aside, he tied the neck of the garbage bag and lifted it from the bin, the gauze flashing white on his forearm. Ray watching him. He hated how Ray looked right now—dark hollows under bloodshot eyes, too-pale skin. Thinner than he’d been on tour. Dan was getting too much sleep; Ray looked like he was getting none.
The crisp night air was a welcome wake-up. He went down the steps with the bag in front of him. When he approached the cans, the memory of the cat leapt back to him. Here kitty, kitty.
He walked stiffly up, grabbed a lid off the nearest can, and stuffed the bag inside.
As he replaced the lid, he said a silent prayer that no one would go through the garbage, and that if they did they would find nothing there that tied him to the cat with the slit throat. All he needed was cops showing up thinking he was some serial killer in the making, his name in all the papers: “Musician Slashes Cat’s Throat for Satanic Orgy Ceremony.” That’d be fucking fantastic.
He clamped the lid on tightly.
The aluminum foil on the plate shone under the streetlight. He grabbed it off his car roof and headed upstairs. He hoped Ray would eat it, because there was no way he could sit down in front of the plate and not think about that cat.
If whatever it was he had killed him tomorrow, he hoped God would understand he’d felt he’d had no other options when it came to that cat. Well, none that didn’t involve going after humans.
Ray had a new bag in the can by the time he got back upstairs. He shook his head when Dan offered the foil-wrapped plate, so Dan shoved it in the fridge.
“So what’s—” A knock came at the apartment’s front door.
“Must be Moss,” Ray said, the both of them heading into the living room, Dan making sure his sleeve was pulled down to cover the gauze. When Dan opened the door, Moss said, “What’s up?” His gaze moved from Dan to Ray, at which point he furrowed his brow and said, “Jesus, are you all right?”
“It’s not me you’ve gotta worry about,” Ray said. Rubbing his cut palm against his jeans, he added, “I hope.”
Dan wondered if what they’d done was going to turn Ray into a blood-thirsting machine too.
Moss looked at Dan, who closed the door behind him. “What’s going on?”
Dan had no idea what Ray’s plan was. He headed for the couch. Ray could do the talking.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“So do we need some kind of medical license to get it?” Ray asked. He sat on the couch beside Dan, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His frayed shirt cuffs matched how the rest of him looked.
“Nah, you shouldn’t,” Moss said. “If you walk into a medical supply store, they might ask questions, especially after they get a look at you—when’s the last time you slept anyway? But you should be able to order it all online no problem.”
“I really look that bad?”
“Kinda wrung out there, buddy. They’re gonna think junkie right off the bat.”
“We’ll get overnight shipping.” To Dan he said, “Think you can make it till Tuesday?”
“Jesus, I hope so. If this starts coming back in just a day…I’m fucked.”
“And when we get the stuff, you can do it?” Ray said to Moss. “You know how to draw blood?”
“It’s been a few years, but if you don’t mind a bruise or two the first time…”
“Yeah, I’ll live.”
Dan said, “Does it sound like anything you’ve heard of before?”
“Honestly, it sounds delusional. In my inexpert medical opinion,” Moss said.
“He’s not delusional,” Ray said. “Trust me. I’ve seen the shit in his eyes when he’s caught up in it, and I’ve seen the shit go away after he’s had some blood.”
“Can I see that?”
Ray looked at Dan. The thing Ray was proposing was supposed to keep him from getting to that point. Ray said, “What do you think? Just the once, and then no more.”
Dan looked at Moss, who said, “Ray’s the only one who’s claimed seeing anything, and both of you were the only ones in the alley that night. I’d like to know you’re not both delusional. Because from where I’m sitting, you guys both seem a little fucked up.”
Dan dragged a hand through his hair, then shook his head. “It’s too fucking dangerous. I don’t ever want to get to that point again.”
Moss regarded him before nodding.
“Okay,” Ray said. “We’ll order the stuff, hang on to it. When Dan needs it, but before it gets out of hand, we’ll call you.”
Dan nodded. That would be okay. It would be even more okay if they found out they could store the blood. He wouldn’t have to rely on getting two other people together when he needed it. What would be not okay was if they found the time it took for the blood to get drawn and handed to him was too fucking long. “What if doesn’t work if the blood goes from you to the syringe to me, what if the time involved there is long enough to kill whatever it is I need?” he said. “I mean, I killed the cat and dicked around with the blood before I tried it, so maybe the cat would have worked, if I’d—” He swallowed. Jesus, he did not want to do another cat.
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Moss said. “Also, I have to say it’s creepy as fuck you killed a cat and drank its blood.”
“Tell me about it,” Dan said.
“If I didn’t know you guys as well as I do…” Moss shook his head. “Christ. Do you have any idea how crazy you fucking sound?”
“Kinda, yeah,” Dan said.
“Anyway,” Ray said, scratching his face, giving Dan a view of the angry red cut down the middle of his palm. “Can you find out how much blood a person can give on a regular basis? We don’t know how far this thing’s gonna go.”
The frayed cuff of his shirt slipped a little, revealing the edge of a strip of medical tape. Last week’s bite. Dan dragged his eyes away. Jesus, he needed this to work. He couldn’t live with himself if he seriously hurt someone.
“Anemia’s going to be your big worry,” Moss said, “unless this thing goes so far it’s taking all your blood. Then you’ve got bigger problems.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“If he’s just licking up blood from a cut like you showed me, though,” Moss said, “you won’t have to worry much. My big fear is that this delusion gets out of hand, he starts ingesting more than he’d get out of a little cut like that, and then we have real health problems on our hands—for him more than you. You know blood is toxic, right? There’s a reason it makes people puke their guts out if they drink any real quantity of it.”
/> “We’ll worry about that bridge when it comes into sight,” Ray said.
“Well, you’ve got me curious at least. If you’re both out of your minds, something happened in that alley.”
“And if we’re not out of our minds?” Dan asked.
“That’s even more interesting. And fucked up. Either way, I’m putting my collar up at night and staying out of alleys.”
† † †
“I’ll be interested to see if it works,” Dan said after Moss left. “Blood from a syringe, I mean, because I keep thinking maybe if I’d taken blood from the cat while it was still alive… I mean, like, right off the cat, instead of—”
Ray scrubbed his eyes. “If there’s one thing I never want to talk about again, it’s that cat.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his hands together, hunched over at the other end of the couch. Trying to block the cat back out of his mind. Pretend it had been someone else who’d done that. Because he sure didn’t recognize it as himself. He said, “I’m just wondering how fresh it has to be to work.”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
“Yeah.”
Ray fumbled in his jacket pocket, his cheeks dark with stubble.
“So why do you look like shit?” Dan said.
“Spent the past I don’t know how many days on the internet.” He found his cigarette pack, half crushed in an inside jacket pocket. “Every time I lie down, my brain’s running around going, What if you searched on this? What if you searched on that?”
“Did you find anything?”
Ray popped one unlit into his mouth. “I didn’t see the connection till the second time you attacked me, but…there’s that astronaut who killed her two kids. Picked them up from their grandmother’s, acting a little weird—agitated and distracted—but not weird enough to not let her take the kids. So she goes home and kills one with her teeth, then the other by suffocating him. Two and four years old. Probably would have killed herself then, too, but the kids’ screaming had brought the cops.”
Dan fidgeted while Ray hunted for his lighter.
“But that could just be coincidence,” Ray said. “So there was this woman who was taking out the trash one night in Spindale, North Carolina, when something flew at her, attacking her.”
