Page 64 of Envious Of Fire
He parts his teeth, brings the bead in, hesitates.
Then bites.
Bitterness washes over his tongue. His body feels as if it wishes to reject this vile midnight snack with every mashing of his teeth. He chews anyway. As he swallows, he fights back a gag reflex, presses a fist to his lips to keep it in.
Suddenly he gasps for air, eyes wide. He can’t breathe. All he knows is confusion until he remembers the last step. Tristan thrusts a hand into his pocket, pulls out the dagger he brought from the House. He fumbles with it, dropping the blade with a loud clang, and then goes Tristan, falling to his knees as he gags for air, blindly grasping at the floor for the dagger, eyes clouding over, all the shadows in the room rushing inward.
His fingers close around the handle of the dagger. He lifts it and, after half a second’s hesitation, strikes his own palm.
At once, the shadows pull away from his eyes, air returns to his lungs, and he feels great relief. That relief is short-lived when he sees a fluid the consistency of black, murky oil pooling in his palm instead of blood. It is painful, stinging as it emerges.
Only now does Tristan realize he forgot a container.
While his palm continues to bleed black, held upward so as not to spill any, Tristan drops the knife and scrambles to the shelves. Items go flying left and right until he finds an oblong,finger’s length of glass—a test tube. Cupping his bleeding hand as best as he can, he directs the dark fluid toward the top of the glass, letting it seep in. He’s reminded of maple syrup pouring over pancakes, equally sickened and fascinated as the tube fills.
The bleeding abruptly stops. Did it all come out? Tristan tilts his hand, wiggles his fingers, curious if even just another drop is left inside. Hoping he’s done it correctly, Tristan sifts through the items on the shelf, finds a stopper, and plugs the end of the filled tube. His hand continues to sting as he gazes at the fluid in the glass, wondering what it actually is. Some kind of infection? Magical pus? A liquid form of the beads he ate? Did the last one make it out of his palm, too? How would that be possible? Is there some kind of dark energy still in his body?
Then comes a scream, distant and echoing. Tristan turns at once, tube in hand. Did he imagine it?
Another scream.
Tristan flies from the closet. The hall is empty. He hurries toward the room with Mance and Brock, the tube of dark blood pressed to his chest, his sliced palm still smarting.
He slows when he finds the door ajar. On the floor, smears of blood form a disconcerting red trail from the room leading down the hall.
Tristan stops at the door, glances inside. The bin of ice is spilled over, chunks of bark and blood splashed across the floor. Books and pages everywhere. The ring of black salt, broken. Blood dripping off the ceiling and the edges of the counter, where the box of hair remains, comically untouched.
Mance is gone.
Brock, too.
The sound of distant, anguished wailing is heard. Tristan follows the red trail on the floor with wide-eyed fascination, leading further down the hall. He passes a bulletin board partly ripped off the wall, hanging on by a single nail, swinging backand forth like a pendulum. He passes a turned-over cart of supplies, scattered over the trail of blood Tristan follows, which leads him around the corner to the front of the reception desk.
The end of the trail branches off. At the end of one branch is the top half of a nurse’s body, ripped unevenly at the waist, insides splayed from her abdomen like spaghetti, her legs on the other side of the hall. Another branch of blood leads to the front desk itself, where a male nurse sits on the floor in front of it with an expression of abject horror frozen on his lifeless face, blood pouring out of a giant hole in his chest, which appears to have been entirely gutted, as empty as a cabinet, ribcage visible.
On the floor with her back against the wall some distance away, Raya, the source of the anguished sobs. She clutches her bloodied side where half of her left arm is missing, kicking away from the scene with whatever energy remains in her exhausted body, trying to get up, trying to run, failing at both.
And in front of her, at the end of the last branch of the trail of carnage, the broad-shouldered back of a naked man kneeling on the floor, blood dripping from his tangled hair.
Without Tristan even taking another step, the man turns, sensing him.
Brock.
His face like a rabid animal’s, maddened, bathed in blood completely, even his eyes, only a fraction of his whites visible. Flesh and blood hang from his parted lips, revealing a mouth of shattered teeth, some missing. Raya’s severed forearm dangles from his grip like a dog’s bone.
Tristan stares back at him, paralyzed.
Brock is calm at once, as if the sight of Tristan has brought something back to him. His face twists. Tears well in his eyes. “Tristan?” he mumbles through a mouthful of flesh and blood. He forgets the forearm in his grasp, letting it drop to the floor, forgotten. “T-Tristan …?” He rises to his feet, slips on blood,drops back to his knees. “Can you …” He falls forward, props himself up, starts crawling through the gore on his hands and knees. “Can you … help me find my … m-my …”
Brock inches closer and closer, creeping his way down the hall while Raya moans and wails, still kicking away. He reaches Tristan, clings to his boots, bloodying them, lifts his beautiful, horrifying face, blood dripping. “Can you … h-help me …?”
Tristan quickly runs his fingers over Brock’s face. Eyes roll back. He collapses to the floor. After a moment’s shock, Tristan kneels down, gently cradles Brock in his arms just as he had so long ago in the hallway of a Texas high school, surrounded by a nightmare of his doing, Raya’s tormented weeping in his ears.
15.
More Than I Deserve.
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