He bit down. Hard.
A sweet burst and flow, and then everything swelled in one slow wave. The richness filling his mouth. Her slow breath sweeping through her body. Her soft curls turning wet against his cheek. The warmth of her skin under the rain’s chill.
It was ridiculously easy, so rich, so pulsing that he hardly even had to swallow.
He sank his teeth in till the trickle became a gush, so fast that he couldn’t keep it under control. He choked and sputtered. He couldn’t breathe.
But he couldn’t let go either. It was wonderful, to take what he wanted, all he wanted, without thought. It’d been so long—the wild, uncaring need.
His pulse, his heart, his tongue, his throat, all hummed with joy, and he was only vaguely aware when her hand, still clutching the open umbrella, slowly fell to her side. Rain pelted his shoulders. It ran down his cheeks, dripped from the end of his nose. He was wonderfully overloaded, flooded with pleasure; he knew this type of omni, his favorite, he ran his hand over the flat belly, and the breasts that swelled out from the rib cage and spilled so deliciously over his fingers—Bess had been like that, although she had never allowed him to touch her; she’d hated him too much—he dug his teeth in even deeper….
It was so easy, to take whatever you wanted.
She swayed a little and began to droop as if her knees had gone to jelly, and a part of him began to be aware. Inside, part of him knew how far he’d gone.
A few more seconds and he could no longer ignore the thinning of the flow in his mouth. He was reluctant to let go—letting go would mean that he had to face what he’d done. But his Thirst was dying, and his stomach wasn’t used to being so uncomfortably full.
As soon as he raised his head, the wounds stopped bleeding and the girl sagged in his arms.
Oh, God.
He clutched her tighter. As long as he made her part of him, they were both safe. His physical need was gone, but he was completely off balance inside now. He couldn’t think.
The girl was completely limp, and suddenly very heavy.
Okay. Okay. He had to think. Had to figure out what to do next.
The rain was slackening already; it had been only a shower, tailor-made to get everyone off the street long enough to hide his lapse. He did not look around to see who might be watching; he raised his head just enough to find the darkened windows of a closed palm reader’s shop a few steps away.
He half carried, half dragged her to its recessed doorway. As he lowered her to the ground, he saw her eyelids flutter.
She was alive.
He crouched and cautiously felt for a pulse. There, but barely. Weak. Too fast. Her Windbreaker had fallen open; her shirt was a tank top, clinging to those breasts, and he had to look away. Omnis and their black. Why did they always wear black?
He turned his head, furtively now, looking around.
Down the street, two omnis, two males in jeans, walking away from him. In the other direction the sidewalk was empty except for a quick glimpse of a dark figure stepping out of sight into one of the buildings. Cole squinted through the patches of dark and light on the sidewalk, but nothing moved; whoever it was must have gone into one of the businesses.
No one had seen. And he couldn’t linger another second: He had to get out of here.
He stood and started walking away.
After a few paces he realized suddenly that he didn’t know where he was going. And then he remembered that his car was in the opposite direction. Everything was crazy. He couldn’t think.
He looked around wildly, spotted his car, and headed toward it, head down now. He had to force himself not to run; he tried to keep his pace even but brisk. Nothing to stand out.
He hadn’t even locked the car doors.
He slid in—and then hesitated. The doorway where he’d left her was ahead on his right. If he hadn’t known what that small dark heap was, he wouldn’t have guessed. No one had seen her yet. No one would, unless they passed her. Should he go back and get her, take her to a hospital?
No. He must leave this place—he’d go back to the hotel and call 911. No, no—they’d know where to look for him then—no, he’d use Sandor’s cell. He’d make sure that his voice didn’t show anything. He’d hang up as soon as he’d said where she was, and no one would ever know.
The address—what was the address? He couldn’t see, couldn’t see; there were too many drops on the windshield—okay, the wipers—he started the car and turned on the wipers, and the drops swept away like magic. He was a mess right now, he knew—the past two days, and now this.
His eyes searched the building next to him for a number—2135. What street? Shit, what street? He’d have to read it from the corner street sign.
He pulled out and a moment later turned on the headlights. As he passed, he looked out the window to see her, a huddled lump on the concrete.
He drove away, watching the doorway that marked her body in the rearview mirror. It disappeared in the dark as if sinking into a current.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ON the way back he started shivering; he was cold, his clothes were wet through, and though it must still be early in the evening, he was exhausted. And the girl—he was weak now, and the connections wouldn’t go away. He’d thought he was in danger of being dead inside, but he’d been wrong.
Bess. He could still feel the raw emotion of loving her, how it raked over him till it was almost painful. His fingers had been on the smooth skin of her arm, and he’d thought how at this moment it was growing older, how it was shriveling—so slowly that he could not see it, but shriveling nonetheless, and how the hair floating in curly tendrils would turn lank and white like gauze. The hand in his would turn into a bony claw, and the eyes that were now sharp and precise would become vacant and confused.
Either that, or she would die and leave only a worn path through the synapses in his brain, a path that would disappear from lack of use. Memories didn’t last intact; he’d already known that, even then.
Every second he’d thought, a knot of panic growing in his chest, of how she was drifting further away.
He’d turned, so that he could look down at her, still nestled against him. She was watching him—many times afterward he had wondered how his face must have looked to her at that moment—but he couldn’t move his eyes from the skin under the curve of her jaw. It looked smooth, white, cold like a marble statue. But when he’d bent over her it was fleeting softness, fleeting warmth that made his breath leave him in one short sigh.
When he was done, he’d raised his head and, for some odd reason, couldn’t quite bring himself to look at her face.
Bess. She’d taken over every beat of his heart like an emotional Thirst. Even the smallest bared expanse of skin had burned into his brain, the slightest brush of her hand had clutched the breath out of his body, the steadiness of her clear eyes looking up into his had melted his life into hers. He’d been as bad as Gordo, telling himself he could push it all away, trying through sheer will to force it not to exist, but the truth was that even after a hundred and seventy years of grief and love, he still didn’t know how to disconnect himself.
Sandor opened the door of 211 almost before Cole could knock. “There you are,” he said, obviously relieved. “Are you all right?”
“I need your phone,” Cole said, holding out his hand.
Sandor studied him for a moment—just a bare moment—then dug in his pocket and handed Cole the phone. He did not show surprise. He did not ask why.
He did not go back into the room, either. He glanced back over his shoulder and then stepped out into the hall, keeping one hand on the doorknob and his eyes on Cole, alert.
Cole pressed the 9, the 1, the 1 again—then hesitated. He wasn’t used to cell phones.
Sandor reached over and pushed a button for him. “It’s dialing now,” he said.
Cole held the phone to his ear. As soon as he heard a woman’s voice on the other end, he said quickly, “There’s a girl pas
sed out in a doorway. You need to send an ambulance.” He heard himself give the address, then repeat it, very clearly. “Send an ambulance,” he said again.
He didn’t know how to hang up, so he handed the phone back to Sandor.
Sandor pressed a button. He stuck the phone back in his pocket. Then he gave Cole a silent, measuring look, as if to say, “What next?”
Cole just stood there, arms dangling at his sides. All purpose seemed to have drained out of him. What was next? What was there to do?
“You seem a bit shell-shocked, my friend,” Sandor said. “And you look like something the cat dragged in. Why don’t you go to your room, get cleaned up, maybe take a little nap?”
But Cole remembered now. “Gordo,” he said, and was surprised to hear that his voice was suddenly hoarse.
For answer, Sandor held the door open just enough for Cole to see in.
Gordo was sitting on one of the beds. He’d propped a pillow against the headboard and was leaning comfortably against it, legs stretched in front of him, watching TV. He glanced over at the door’s movement, saw Cole, and, after one abashed moment, lifted his hand in an embarrassed greeting.
It was as if nothing had happened.
Sandor pulled the door shut. “You were right; it was good for him to feel Thirst. We had a nice talk while you were out. And now it’s my turn to be on duty. Go on,” he urged. “You can check in with us later. Go home, mother hen.”
It took Cole a moment to process all this. He had the feeling of something heavy slowly dropping away. He’d always thought of relief as a sudden thing, but now he only gradually took everything in: the completed call, Gordo on the bed, Sandor’s words.
He was back safe, and his charge was safe as well, and Sandor had taken over for him.
Back in room 213, the air-conditioning was still running full blast, and his damp clothes made him shiver. He went into the bathroom and stripped them off while running hot water.
In the shower, he thought at first he had hurt something inside by overfeeding on the omni; he thought it was a pain working its way up from his chest. And then he felt his face crumple, and he knew. He leaned against the steamy tile while the water poured over him and great, gulping sobs wrenched their way out of his chest. He was grateful for the rushing water, which covered every sound.
All in all, it was a very odd night.
Cole fell instantly to sleep as soon as he hit the bed—a delicious nothingness of dreamless sleep.
From the depths of that nothingness, his mind barely registered a slight noise, a soft click—but it wasn’t enough to really wake him. What woke him was a strange pressure, like a finger in the middle of his chest. Even that didn’t rouse him fully; he felt the discomfort, and sleepily tried to roll over, away from it—but the pressure concentrated and grew into pain, as if someone were pressing him down, trying to pin him to the mattress.
His eyes flew open to yellowish light. Someone had turned on the bedside lamp. And in a split second he saw it all. A ghostly face hovered over him—Royal, one skinny black-clad arm raising the paint-spattered hammer Cole had seen in the Civic’s trunk.
There was no time to feel fear—just to glimpse Royal’s coolly determined face and the descending hammer—before a crack of pain in Cole’s chest exploded into a crushing suffocation that shot into his arms, his neck. Everything was suffocating.
The last thing he thought was that he had completely overlooked this particular danger. And the last things he saw were Royal’s eyes, inches away, peering into his own with steady, clinical interest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THEN the pain was gone, and Cole was floating over a field filled with people. He drifted over the tops of their heads, thousands of them, as far as the eye could see, all moving slowly in the same direction. Not one of them looked up. The grass under their feet was a bright green that only comes in midspring when everything is fresh and new, well watered, hopeful, full of births and pleasant surprises.
As he floated lower and lower, he could make out more details: blond hair, brown, black, straight, kinky, braided; clothing of all shades and styles. Some people were barefoot, some high heeled; some wore scuffed boots or running shoes or sandals. He searched for a place to land, a place where he could gently and safely loft to earth, set both feet on that green grass and walk with the others.
But there was no room. They were all shifting, moving, and he could not keep up enough to find a place to land. He could only watch and feel as they passed him by and moved on. The peace of their passage was palpable, and it was real, as real as the light that shone among them.
He floated, heavy with sorrow and with joy, watching them pass. He understood now what heaven was. He was there on the edge but was unable to be part of it. It was a journey, not a place.
He could never go among them. He could never walk where they were walking.
Not in dreams. Not even in death.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
AGONY drew him back. Fierce, sucking, as if his heart were being ripped out of his chest, and he felt his throat and jaws open in a soundless spasm.
It all contracted quickly into a tremendous surge of pain, punctuated by heartbeat after heartbeat that shot along his body in waves, bullying their way through with each scrape of his pulse.
He felt his lungs fill with air, tightening his chest as if a band were being screwed around it.
He wanted to go back and float over the fields again, but he couldn’t; he was bolted and clamped by pain, flat on his back, unable to move or speak, unable to drift.
He did not know how long he lay like that. He was aware of familiar voices that he couldn’t quite identify, speaking in words that he couldn’t understand. It was all vaguely puzzling; and when the voices rose in gentle questioning tones, only to be followed by a hanging silence, he knew, in sorrow and frustration, that the silence was his to fill and he was falling short.
When he finally opened his eyes, Johnny was there. Johnny, beside him, looking down into his face.
Next to Johnny, Sandor. And now Gordo came into his field of vision too, as if he’d risen from a seat on Cole’s right.
Cole felt a light pressure on his legs—a familiar pressure, of sheets and a blanket—and suddenly he remembered that he had seen heaven, and he opened his mouth to try to tell them.
But he was too tired. And it made no difference anyway.
“Are you with us, Cole?” Johnny asked.
Cole tried to nod. He couldn’t, but somehow it was enough, because Sandor smiled and leaned down, his words pouring over Cole.
“Your heart seems to be better now, and your sternum’s healed. It’s very good you’re not omni; you’d be lying there for weeks. Well, actually, if you were omni, you’d be dead, wouldn’t you? In any case, you must save your strength. I have to tell you that it was quite a shock to come in here and find you lying in bed with a two-foot fence picket driven into your chest.”
“Royal,” Cole tried to whisper, but all that came out was a wheeze.
Still, Sandor understood. “Of course. Who else? Cole, he pulled the window curtain completely down before he took off! If Gordo hadn’t come over to talk to you, you’d be…well, you’d be—”
“Don’t worry about it right now,” Johnny said. “We’ll make sure nothing like this happens again.”
“Oh, yes,” Sandor said with enthusiasm, “when I find that little bastard I will crush him like a fly. I tell you, in Boravia we know how to deal with strigoi. I’ve been telling Gordo that this is what happens when one doesn’t belong to a community—one ends up getting one’s information from bad B movies. I hope you have learned a lesson here, Gordo.”
“You sound like Cole,” Gordo said, but his tone was that of the reasonable Gordo rather than the pouting teenager. “Everything’s a lesson.”
“Well,” Sandor said, “Cole is laid up for a little while, isn’t he? And so I must step in to fill his shoes.” He bent closer to Cole. “I tell you,
Cole,” he said in a stage whisper, “if we had gotten Gordo a dog, none of this would have happened.”
PART THREE
The Heart of the Colony
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE following evening they were able to start the drive home.
Cole was no longer in pain, but his body had exhausted its reserves of strength. Perhaps it was something to do with his blood pooling and clotting for hours as he lay on the bed, or perhaps his poor body had to work extra hard to get everything pumping and moving to all its cells again. In any case, Johnny had stolen one of the Vickery Moe pillows and Cole leaned against it, stretched out as much as he could in the backseat of the Accord.
Gordo was in the back too, crammed up against the other door. Cole felt bad for him but couldn’t summon the energy to sit up.
They’d decided to make the journey in one night. Johnny had flown down to Baltimore, but he wanted to ride back with Cole. He sat in the front passenger seat while Sandor drove, and he kept a close eye on the rearview mirror.
“There’s no way to find out exactly where Royal has gone,” he told Cole without looking around, “but I can guarantee you one thing: he’s not following us now.”
“I don’t understand him,” Cole said. “If he wanted to do this, why wait till now? And where did he come from? I couldn’t get anything out of him,” he added, fretting. “I don’t know how old he is. No clue who created him. Maybe someone from out of the country.”
“It’s always the foreigners, isn’t it?” Johnny said dryly. “I don’t think you have to look that far afield.”
“There’s no one here who would do something like that.”
“No?”
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