Page 54 of The Undead

“Oh, yes. You came here to wallow around in self-pity, to give it the most charitable interpretation. Better listen, Michael, because I’m about to tell you the facts of your life.” Adam held me firmly, even when I threw all my strength against him. He shook me again, to make my position very clear, and this time he looked angry. Bone-white, inhumanly angry. “You’re a predator. You hunt when you’re hungry. You’d better damned well understand why you came here, because until you do you’ll never understand anything. Now, why did you come here? Why?”

He encouraged me with a blow across the face that should have snapped my neck. It hurt. I bared my fangs at him—that felt right, felt natural, the rage in my system triggering it just as before it would have triggered the balling of a fist—and Adam bared his own. Long, sharp, and glistening.

“Tell me,” he grated. I clawed at his hands, but he wouldn’t let me go. “All right, listen, you little bastard. You came here because it was easy. Because you knew your way around, you knew you could feed here.Do you understand?”

“No!”

“You came to hunt, Michael. And you don’t even know it.”

“No!” I wanted to scream, but something kept me to a hiss, too soft to be heard in the kitchen even if Connie was still standing at the window. I heard her pulsebeat, a faint metronomic rhythm ringing hot and fast in my ears. I could smell her blood rising from her body like the scent of sex—and Maggie, I’d looked at Maggie and I’d felt—

“No!” I whispered, and went limp in Adam’s hands. I was shaking all over. The ache just went on and on, hunger and need and horror all mixed together. “Oh, dear God, no.”

He kept holding me down, but he didn’t look triumphant. How long had it taken him to come to this first revelation? Days? Months? Years?

You always hurt the ones you love, because they have no defenses against you.

The back door creaked open and quietly shut. We both froze, and the hunger peaked in me to a frightening crest, like orgasm, threatened to take control of my body and move it independently. Adam’s hands tightened on me, anchoring me.

I knew who it was even before she came out into the moonlight and leaned against the slanted porch support I’d always intended to fix. I knew by the sound of her footsteps and the distant scent of her body that rushed through the night to fill my soul. She sank down on her knees like a broken puppet, arms around the support, and stared out blindly into the overgrown wilderness of the garden. It was my job to weed the garden, but I’d gotten lazy, and she’d gotten busy, and we’d tacitly agreed to let it go for a while …

… for a lifetime …

She didn’t cry. Somehow, like Sylvia’s trembling silence, that was worse. She sat in perfect silence, face set like a plaster mask, and her eyes were feverish and dry. Like mine, as I drank in the sight of her the scent. The ache coming off her was like waves of heat against my skin, and her heart drummed and drummed in the silence of the night.

Adam sat above me as if he’d been cast from the same plaster as Maggie’s mask. His head was bowed, and he watched my face as I watched hers. When I finally looked at him, he bent closer.

“How do you fed?” he asked, a bare whisper of sound like the wind turning a leaf. I stared at him with eyes that must have been as crimson as his own, and as anguished.

“Hungry,” I whispered. It came up harsh and black, dragged from the depths of my throat. Adam’s expression didn’t change. He slowly let go of my shoulders and sat back in the dark embrace of the night shadows, tossing his coppered hair back when the breeze teased it over his face.

“Now you understand,” he answered, not without pity, and I twisted over to lie on my stomach. I dug my fingers deep into the cold-stiffened grass and loam, and heard Maggie’s heartbeat thud on and on in my temples.

She slowly lifted her face to the falling moon and moaned, a low tortured sound that didn’t belong in a human throat. I silently clawed at the ground in front of me, fighting back my hunger, my fear, as if I intended to dig my own grave right there under the kitchen window. The sound echoed in my ears, giving tongue to all the anguish and black horror that defined my death—my life—

The back door opened again, and a man came out in a spill of golden light. Maggie didn’t move, didn’t turn to give any sign of notice. He walked up to her and put his hands gently on my wife’s shoulders, then leaned down and kissed her tangled knotted hair.

Maggie turned blindly and reached out to him, to Nick Gianoulos, and he held her very close. Neither one of them said a word. I didn’t say anything either; I felt empty, dead, so deeply stricken that I couldn’t even feel betrayed. Nick finally let go and pulled Maggie to her feet. She took his hand like a trusting little child and followed him back into the house.

Myhouse.

Mywife.

The door shut behind them with a firm, final click.

After a long time I felt Adam’s gentle cold fingers trail on the back of my neck. “Come.” I didn’t think I could find the strength, all things considered. I lay with my face against the grass and looked into the trench I’d dug in the lawn; there were things squirming there, indignant and unhappy with the exposure. I considered them with simpleminded intensity.

Nick Gianoulos.

My wife,goddamn it.

I managed to get to my feet, then fell forward into Adam’s waiting arms. He held me up, as cold and perfect as a statue, inhumanly strong. I pushed him away and walked slowly to Sylvia’s car, putting one foot in front of the other as if that was a monumentally difficult task.

When I looked back, I saw a shadow pass behind the curtains inside the house. Two. The lights went out.

Everywhere.

Interlude

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