Page 41 of Bloody Bargain
I’d sat shivering against the vanity for an hour, swaying between numb acceptance and terror.
It was the wet in the walls and seeping through the floors that scared me. The plumber that would be called. The landlady that would unlock the room. They’d see the fiend dead in a pool of blood on my bed and call the police. I would have to face the things I’d done. The loved ones left behind. It left a chill in my bones colder than death.
But that never happened.
In one of my moods of numb acceptance, I stared at the pink water around my icy toes, barely breathing, and heard it. The susurration of water as it rolled through the carpet fibres. Like the tide, it spilled over my feet. It wasn’t following the grain of the floorboards, but cutting across them.
Towards the window.
It took hours, but the water rolled through the cracks in the floor, the vents, the caulking around panes of glass. Once my legs stopped shaking from the things D’abel had done to me, I crawled into the bathroom and found it all collecting at the drain, rolling up the lip of the tiled shower to get there. The perforated brass plate rattled as the water swarmed, squeezing its way into the pipes, forcing the house to swallow every drop.
“Thank you,” I’d whispered with my forehead pressed against the tiles. Whether I was talking to D’abel or not, I couldn’t say. He didn’t return to the suite, though, for which I was thankful. I wouldn’t have known what to say.
It took until the next morning for the room to be clean. Owena didn’t do any more wellness checks, but it was my check-out time and she still had some of my laundry. I opened the door to find a neat stack of clothes in a wicker basket with a note that read,“We hope you enjoyed your stay!”
I shoved them in my bag, hefted it onto my back, and marched out into the heathland with my atlas open and my fingers trailing over its pages. Snowdonia was a large, rugged region, but D’abel would find me. He would always find me. The elemental was inevitable.
Or maybe I would find him. As I searched the horizon with clouds heavy like sheep’s wool, I felt a compulsion of the same kind that came with the hunt. It pulled me west, straight through mountain peaks covered in frigid fog. It was too much of a risk to hike through them with the sky so dark, so I ventured out along the highway going north.
The rain set in within minutes of cresting the first hill. It weighed down my hood as I huffed white breath into the air. The going was slow. Not because my fingers and toes were numb, but because D’abel’s blood weighed me down. I still felt it heavy in my gut, unsettlingly hot as it welled through my flesh.
While training to be a paramedic, I’d learned about snake bites. How the fangs would pierce fat and muscle, injecting toxins into the lymphatic system. Muscle contractions are its mode of circulation, which means every squish or wriggle of an organ, every breath and palpitation, spreads the venom like water soaking through a sponge. It’s a slower envenomation than a bite straight to the bloodstream, but thorough and devastating all the same.
Every step felt like I was kneading the sponge. Quiet and still in the yellow suite, I’d only felt weighed down by the blood exchange like it was a stone in my gut. Out in the heathlands, it spread faster. Hotter. My pussy pulsed and weeped, even as miserable as the hike was from the gale.
Three hours later, I stopped at the ruins of an ancient Roman fort with placards erected at its walls for tourists. I slid down one such wall away from the slant of the rain and crouched above the grass, needing the break but not the wet butt. I paused as I pulled the trash bag off my duffel, staring at my fingers.
Humans can’t actuallyfeelwetness. We feel surface textures, temperature, pressure... My fingers were cold as the rain pelted them, so I’d assumed they were wet. But they weren’t. They were as dry as powder.
I pushed my sleeve up and held my hand out into the rain. Droplets hit my cold skin, then slanted off in perfect wobbly spheres. I captured some in my palms and rubbed them together. When I opened my hands, the drops I’d broken apart sifted off my skin like grains of sand.
Wide-eyed, heart pounding in my ears, I pushed off my hood and jumped to my feet. Rain hit my face and slid away in mercurial rivulets. One drop hit my eye and I felt no sting as it slithered into the divot of my tear duct.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. Was I hallucinating? My clothes were wet. My thighs were numb. But my hair? My brows? Dry. All dry.
I slumped back on the wall, speechless, staring at the forearm that D’abel’s blood had healed. I hadn’t looked at it closely, partially because of how disturbing the process had been, and now saw the faint glow of pale scars. When I tilted them in the worsening light, a pearly sheen raced across their surface.
I dropped my arm to my lap with a huff of bitter laughter. Scales. D’abel and I were exchanging a whole lot more than blood. I took a deep breath and let it out. As much as I wanted to throttle him, it was at least proof that I was getting something out of the deal I’d made.
Besides, I couldn’t be sure exactly how much he knew about the whole chalice arrangement. I was the only one he’d ever have, and he’d been imprisoned for centuries before we met. Maybe it was unfair to blame him for the mysterious contract I’d willingly signed.
I forced my way through a stack of crackers and cream cheese, weighing the situation, washed it down with a shot of whisky to warm my bones, then packed up and moved on.
There was nothing to do but move on.
?
The night wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the day. I heard things in the grass. Footsteps and breath, rustling fabric. All not real. All my imagination as the attack in the heathlands replayed itself in my mind on an ugly, frightening loop. I itched to hold my knife but it was useless, bundled up in my duffle and mangled to hell. My hands felt naked without it.
As soon as I found even a modicum of shelter, I took it. I didn’t want to walk into anything in the suffocating darkness. I felt hunted and harried by myself now. Didn’t matter if it was out in the wilderness or in a town, nowhere felt safe anymore.
There was an abandoned lean-to among the miles of fences. Whatever sheep or cattle rested here were off in some other pasture. I took advantage of it, ducking under its tin roof. The roar of the rain was deafening, all-consuming.
D’abel’s blood had worked its way from my stomach into my limbs. Its heat made me ache between the thighs, sweat collecting on my brow. I stripped off my clothes in a fit of madness as soon as my duffle hit the muddy weeds, peeling the wet layers away from my dry skin with a gasp of relief. The water pebbled and rolled off my legs as my pants came off, and I sank my bare toes into the ground.
My skin was pale blue against the Welsh night. I stared down at myself, hardly able to see anything at all without the moon to bathe the landscape, and brushed my hands through my dry hair as the water pelted my shoulders and cheeks. I took a deep breath and the air smelled salty like the ocean, filled with brine and the sediment of billions of years. Churning, churning, just like my gut.
I didn’t put my clothes back on, but sealed them in a plastic bag and stuffed them inside my sleeping bag with me to keep them warm for the morning. I couldn’t imagine putting them back on just yet. They felt like an abomination.
