Page 88 of The Undead

William, his hands clasped prayerfully before him, watched me scream in airless agony, unable to even exert enough control to make my pain heard. My fangs were down and slashing into the flesh of my lip. I couldn’t even feel the mutilation, not over the other. Nothing existed outside of the pain, not even William, not even Foster.

Time was a circular slice of knives, one stab after another, each as freshly shocking and painful as the first. Time meant nothing except more pain. Nothing at all.

I didn’t even sense the approach of sunrise until I realized that the room was getting brighter. William, who’d knelt there rapt for all that time, got up and came toward me. He pressed himself against me again, but I couldn’t even feel the pressure. My whole body was burning; the pain had crept up until it was choking my throat and invading my jaw and tongue.

“Does it hurt?” William hissed in my ear. “It must. You’re screamin’ so much that it just has to. Do you think it’s enough for Adam? I need your expert opinion.”

The dawn was gray, but even though it dragged at me it didn’t seem to dull the pain. It just kept climbing. My eyes were bursting with the heat.

“Guess it’d just be mercy to end all this,” William said with faint regret. “Well, all right, I guess we’ll just do that. Miss Foster, you wanted to kill him. Kill him.”

She was still kneeling where he’d thrust her, cradling her left arm close against her chest. When he turned to look at her, tears spilled down her cheeks.

“You broke my arm,” she moaned. He raised his eyebrows and went to her, carefully lifting her by her good arm. He probed at the wounded arm until she yelped in pain. Then, smiling, he grabbed above the break and twisted.

Two wet snaps. Foster collapsed and screamed. William knelt down beside her and put a wooden stake in her good hand, the same kind that held me to the wall.

“Kill him, Miss Rebecca,” he told her. She raised her tear-streaked face to stare at him, and I felt something that made me shudder even over the pain. Foster slowly got up to her feet and turned toward me. Her eyes were enormous, all pupil. She reached down and picked up the hammer—with her shattered arm. Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t scream, didn’t pass out. She just came toward me with the stake outstretched, holding the hammer at an impossible angle.

She put the stake right over my heart. When she raised the hammer, bones grated in her arm with a sound like teeth grinding. She couldn’t do it, I thought in disbelief. No one could hammer with a broken arm.

The blow was weak and faltering, and the point of the wood only sank about a half inch deep in my chest. I made a raw, gagging sound of pain, but Rebecca Foster screamed. The hammer fell and bounced on the soft rotting carpet. Foster crumbled slowly at my feet, still screaming like a siren. William snapped his fingers in irritation. Her scream stopped like a cut-off recording.

“If you want anything done right …” William sighed, and came forward to pick up the hammer. He straightened and looked into my eyes. I didn’t look away.

“Fuck you,” I whispered. He smiled.

“No time, Michael. Say your prayers.”

He seemed to be moving slower as dawn approached, and there was a gray clayish cast to his skin that hadn’t been there before. Maybe the fucker’s dying, I thought dazedly, maybe if I can just keep him here for one more minute—

And then the voice came.

“Father,” Adam said.

Interlude

Adam

My house, he thought numbly.My life. My love.

All gone now. Except for the rich scent of Sylvia’s blood, and Sylvia’s already-decaying body lying a few feet away.

Adam stood in the shadows and watched as his maker buried his fangs in Michael’s throat, and Adam didn’t move. It didn’t seem to matter anymore; nothing seemed to matter, not even the dead thing lying dressed in its own blood down the hall. The dead thing he’d loved. He slid down to a sitting position against the wall, from there, he could see Michael lying spread on the wood floor with William crouched over him. Mike’s eyes were open and glazed, but not dead, not yet. There was too much pain in them for that.

Rebecca Foster was waiting for Adam to put in an appearance, it seemed. Her face spasmed as she turned in nervous circles; Adam wondered where she’d gotten the gun, but it was a distant wonder, as academic as his own life and death. She was trying not to watch William suck the life out of Mike, a hypocritical child covering her eyes to make the bad things go away. You let the bad things out, Rebecca, Adam thought.Yourfault.

He could care about something, after all. Adam made a breathless hissing sound as he imagined hurting her as badly as she’d hurt him, hurt those he loved.Oh, Rebecca, why couldn’t you just let it alone? You wanted a war, but you never realized that we were made for this, did you? Killing is our business and our life. You’re just a hobbyist.

One passion opened the door for another. He felt a sharp dizzying stab of reality as he smelled Sylvia’s blood, loaded with familiar scent and taste, spiced with old fear. She’d died terrified, as William intended. Adam could only hope she hadn’t died in pain.

It was a false hope, he knew. He raised his blood-streaked hands to his face and breathed again, deeply.

Below, William finished feeding. It was a demonstration only, something to teach Michael his subservience; it served the dual purpose of rubbing more salt in Adam’s wounds. Adam knew all the reasons. He rubbed Sylvia’s blood between his fingertips and slowly, ceremonially, touched one drop to his tongue.

One last communion.

“She died whining and crying,” William said from downstairs. His voice ran liquidly over the wood, stained the ceiling, and ripped Adam’s heart. “You hear me, boy? I took everything she had. Blood, body, heart. I took more of her than you ever did.”

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