Page 62 of Envious Of Fire
Let’s have a little more faith, he suggests.Mance is, after all, the only expert we know in this particular practice…and desperate times call for desperate experts.Oh, by the way, can you cover up the corpse’s penis with more ice? I’ve been staring at it for an hour.
Raya rolls her eyes and moves to the door. “If you need me, I shall be in the supply closet down the hall trying not to hang myself out of boredom.”
The moment the door closes again, Tristan lays his head back down, this time on the uncomfortable counter instead of her soft lap. His rest lasts approximately six seconds before he lifts his head and peers at the bin again. After a minute’s pause, he hops off the counter and approaches, hesitating to come too close. From this angle, Brock merely looks asleep in a bath of ice, perfectly alive, if not for his unnaturally greyish, dead skin. Tristan finds himself thinking about one of the first times he encountered Brock and how adorable he looked when angered. It’s almost sweet, how his cheeks would flush, eyebrows tugging together, how his eyes became so alive with conviction. Tristan nearly fell in love right there in the hallway of that Texas high school as Brock kept spitting insults at him, jabbing his finger at Tristan’s face, puffing himself up in front of his jock friends flanking him—Kyle being one of them.
Tristan smiles down at Brock as the memories flood in. His smile fades, a childlike curiosity taking over. He reaches out to touch Brock’s face, then stops, uncertain. He takes a step closer, up to the cold metal edge, his fingertips seeming to breathe in the icy air. He reaches again, this time with more courage.
“You ain’t about to fuck him, are you?”
Tristan retracts his hand at once and spins.
Mance stands by the doorway, tattered cowboy hat cocked downward shadowing all his face save for his twisted lips. He’s in a trench coat with the collar popped over the back of his neck, little else visible except for his leather pants and boots.
“Well, would you look at that,” sings Mance as he saunters to the table full of items. He whistles and shakes his head. “You collected all this shit for me, huh? Man, I’m impressed.”
Is there anything else you need for the ritual?asks Tristan.
“I see you’re almost done chowin’ down on that bracelet I gave you.” Mance smirks and leans against the table, causing one stack of books to shift slightly. He clicks his tongue. “You must really got a boner for whoever it is you’ve been thinkin’ about every hour for the last day or two.”
Four days, states Tristan.One hundred beads I’ve eaten.I counted.
“One hundred hours. Fuck me sideways, that’s a lot of lost sleep, huh?” Mance licks his lips, clearly enjoying his taunting of Tristan. “You must be feelin’ like a slug on a rug. Hey, don’t forget the hand-stabby part, the most important part, comes at the end like a big ol’ orgasm outta your palm.”
How kind of you to remind me.
Mance pushes away from the table—causing two books to topple off the leftmost stack and onto the tray of charred tree bark with a clumsy crash—and saunters up to the other side of the ice bin, staring down at the corpse. “Fuckin’ rank, huh? Ice only helps so much, especially when you bloodsuckers have thatheightenedsense of smell.” He finds that funny, laughs. “Part of the business. Used to it.” He leans forward, hands on the edge of the ice bin. Tristan winces, wondering if it stings. “Handsome dead fella.”
You get a lot of business?asks Tristan, looking up.
“No one can afford me anymore.” He reaches into the bin, takes a cube of ice, weighs it in his palm. Tristan is reminded of Mance’s dark fingertips and sickly greenish spots on the backs of his hands. “I guess I’m startin’ to see the finer sides of bein’ alive, sides far finer than money. You like bein’ alive, Tristan? Can I even call you bloodsuckers alive, or you prefer ‘undead’?”
Alive is just fine, and I do enjoy it.
“Of course you do. We all do. So did this sad fella. Brock?” he asks, as if to be sure of the name. Tristan gives a mild nod. “I value life, believe it or not, and I respect it when a person’s timecomes. This act tonight comes at a great personal cost to me.” He lets out a sigh as he flicks the ice back into the bin, landing on Brock’s chest. “And yet you still refuse to pay my price.”
Tristan suspected Mance would know the gift has yet to be given.I thought I might deliver the boxafterthe deed is done.
“Because you don’t trust me? Damn. I’m wounded.”
It’s less you that I don’t trust, more the art itself. Tristan gazes at Brock.I can’t imagine him alive again.I still think I’ll never see it.To bring loved ones back…it is such an age-long wish.There are reasons no one speaks of it.I fear that reason is because it isn’t possible.
“Not without great cost. Like I said, Death will be owed.”
And you said that you would be the lucky one to worry about that debt.I doubt it’s a small debt.Yet all you ask in return is to give a box to Lord Markadian? It’s not even all that impressive a box.
Mance tilts his head. “So are you questioning the deal? Or my giftwrapping ability?”
Can’t it be both? Giftwrapping is quite important.They say we eat gifts with our eyes first…
“I didn’t kill my parents.”
Tristan frowns.An unexpected change of topic.
Mance’s eyes seem to shift, as if just now emerging from the shadow beneath his tattered hat. He glances away, appears to reconsider saying anything at all. Then he smirks. “If you’d believe it, Markadian and I, we used to be close friends. Like brothers. Even came to my wedding. He never attends mortal shit, that’s so far beneath him, you know that much.” Mance glances back at the long metal table of items, as if reminded it’s there, then takes into his hand the chunk of obsidian, inspecting it, looking for flaws. “Ferals … they were a worse problem back then. First years of my marriage, felt like I was fending them off more than mosquitos. Came after me because I was a knownwitch. Not my wife. Just me. And y’know how it is with witches and vampires … sworn enemies, all that ancient shit. Three or so years after my second daughter was born, all the Ferals left us alone, learned to leave us alone, weresmartenough to leave us alone … all except one.” He drops the chunk of obsidian into the ice. It lands with a sickeningthumpon Brock’s cold, rigid chest. “I asked my buddy Markadian for help, my good ol’ pal, my special chummy-fuckin’-chum. By this point, shit got busier in his life, he had less time to hang out—y’know, less time for Sunday dinners.” Mance takes a few slabs of bark and, with unexpectedly delicate care, starts arranging the pieces around the chunk of obsidian, some resting on the ice, some on Brock’s chest. “And apparently he had less time to help out his best friend. ‘Go talk to your local witches,’ he said, ‘they deal with Ferals.’ But I wasn’t in any coven. I was just a pyromancer at that time. Had a lucrative stint at a Vegas theater that didn’t last long where I fire danced, spat more kerosene over flames than you can fill this clinic with, juggled torches in a black leather thong, you name it. After that, my poor fire-magician ass stooped to performin’ on the streets mostly, my power hidden in plain sight, like a cheap roadside clown with a deck of cards. Never made any friends. Pyromancers aren’t crazy about formin’ covens, I guess. Wasn’t part of noclique. You got any idea how fuckin’ cliquey witches are? ‘What’s your last name?’ they ask you, fuckin’ interrogating you like the CIA. ‘What’s your bloodline? Which corner are you?’ Gotta know every last fuckin’ thing down to your blood type before they decide if you’re worth their time.” He sets the last piece of bark in place, steps back, as if admiring art. “Decent quality bark, not bad.”
I shall pass your compliment on, says Tristan distractedly, still trying not to picture Mance in a black leather thong.
“This Feral that was so damned fixated on us ... was one persistent-ass motherfucker,” Mance goes on. “Wouldn’t leaveus alone. Got so bad, had to quit my gigs, and my wife and I took the girls and went into hiding. Markadian still wouldn’t budge. ‘Local witches, local witches,’ he kept repeatin’ himself hoarse ‘til he stopped takin’ my calls altogether.” He snatches the jar of black salt off the table like it’s Lord Markadian’s neck, then tips it, letting the granules pour onto the floor as he slowly walks in a circle around the ice bin. “And then came the night of Valentine’s,” he calmly goes on, as if telling the story over campfire. “I recall the guilt sittin’ heavy in my chest the whole damned day ‘cause I didn’t prepare anything for my wife and I to celebrate. We were too afraid of that bloodsucker, afraid for our lives, holed up, consumed by fear every time the sun went down.” Tristan steps out of the way as Mance comes around to his side of the bin, still pouring the salt. “Told my wife I was sick of sittin’ around, I was gonna get her some cupcakes from her favorite bakery. Told her she’d eat to her heart’s content that night. She laughed me off—Goddamn, that woman had the cutest laugh—but I was determined as sin for us to live our lives. I’d pick up roses, too, but wouldn’t tell her. Let that be a cute surprise, she’d love it.” He completes the circle, sets the empty jar down, then pauses. “When I returned, cupcakes and roses in hand … somethin’ else got there first, somethin’ else ate to its heart’s content. There lay my wife on the floor … There lay my beautiful girls in their room, too … All of them, faces sheet white … drained to the bone.” He draws very still. “Wouldn’t you know it, Tristan … it was that night, I tried my hand at the dark art of necromancy for the first time in my wretched life. That was a fuckin’ big-ass mistake.” He lets out a tortured snort of laughter, then sneers at the memory, as if physically fighting it away. “My wife and sweet daughters … whatever perversion of life I had brought them back with, my bad attempt at the forbidden art … it went so fuckin’ wrong.” Even now, Mance’s voice doesn’t shake, doesn’t reveal a single scrap of sadness—only anger. “Idishonored them, to try such an act.”
