Page 5 of Bloody Bargain
Then he faded out and fell into unconsciousness.
03
The not-dead not-human’s chains were held by the same sort of master locks as were on the door, hidden in the shadows of the stone crossbeam from which he was suspended. No doubt the key I held in my slippery, sweaty palm would open it just the same.
If I hadn’t had the key, I probably would have killed him instead.
But there I was, standing on an upside-down bucket with a crack in the side, hoping it wouldn’t break while I fought with the–you guessed it–rusty lock. I teetered over his shoulder on my tip toes like an idiot, expecting him to yell,“Aha! Stupid human, I’ve got you now!”in a very Hollywood voice as he raked into my guts and spilled them all over the floor.
A particularly nasty nail caught the soft flesh between my knuckles. I murmured a sharp curse, irrationally worried that I might wake the… might wakehimup. A rivulet dripped from the tips of my fingers before I managed to press my tongue to the wound and suck on it. I’d been nicked more than once, finding out the hard way that the nails were in the ceiling too. Those wicked stalactites were everywhere.
The lock popped open and I wobbled with a victorious grunt, holding onto the chains to keep my balance. The body below me jostled and the shed groaned, damp clumps of debris falling from the shifting roof.
I stumbled off my bucket and out of the door, holding my breath and expecting the dilapidated iron maiden to tumble. I sighed with relief when it didn’t.
But now that I was back outside, I chewed my lip. If I dropped the creature without something soft for it to fall on…
My brow creased.
“It doesn’t matter,” I grumbled, taking one step over the threshold. Then I stopped again, rolling my eyes at myself. “Fuck me.”
I turned on my heel and stalked back to the cottage, confused with myself. I needed a minute to sort my thoughts without staring at his pain. The brutal truth was that pulling him down would likely kill him. Whatever clots had formed in the mangled mess of his suspended arms would reach his brain or his heart. Brackish, infected fluids would fill his lungs. I wasn’t sure which would happen first, drowning to death or cardiac arrest, but whatever I was about to do was probably a lot of agony for no reason.
And if hedidsurvive, then what? I didn’t know what he was. Was he something worse than the fiends I hunted? Was he what they looked like when they weren’t pretending to be human? There was just no way of knowing.
Unless I asked…
I pondered my options as I sat on the front steps with my boots in the weak rays of sunshine. The sky was a little brighter now and there was a definite wakefulness in the air. My protein bar tasted like brick putty, but it cleared my mind better than tea or herring. Reason was telling me to forget him and leave, but a buzz like a mosquito in my ear kept me on the precipice.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The fiend that had taken Matthew’s face had tortured this creature to the brink of death. Surely he would want payback? It was a feeling I understood well. I could use that to my advantage.
I leaned around the side of the porch to glare at the open door. I couldn’t see him from this angle as I took a swig of water, sucking the sticky, chalky taste of fake chocolate off my teeth. I was in a catch-22. I couldn’t sleep at night and let the creature off his chains, but I couldn’t pass up this incredible chance either. He might not know much more than I did, but he’d knowdifferentthings.
Besides, he was going to die no matter what. Might as well make him comfortable. Maybe then, he’d feel obligated to tell me more. I’d be able to sleep again once he was dead.
Five minutes later, I kicked the door of the cottage open with my heel and dragged Matthew’s mattress down the stairs. It trundled over the watery gravel as I pulled it towards the shed and dropped it nearby.
The mattress didn’t fit inside the shed, so I pulled a pair of gloves out of the deepest recesses of my duffel and started prying planks away from the walls. I was careful at first, keeping my eye on the ceiling, watching the chains for movement. Then the wall I’d started with collapsed on top of me, cracking and splintering under my hands. I sprawled out in the mud beneath it, pushing rotted wood away with wide eyes, expecting to find the creature crushed beneath the collapse.
His chains hadn’t even rattled. The roof was fine.
But I wasnot.
The creature was now bathed in grey light and a smattering of debris from the wall. His skin was dirty and covered in black veins, but the infection that looked like barnacles was filmy, rotting scales.Notskin. His feet and fingers were tipped in claws and his ears were pointed. He had a tail, at least as long as he was tall, and as muscular as a python. I wouldn’t have been able to wrap both my hands around the base if I tried.
I clenched my jaw and leveraged my elbows against the mud, kicking my way out from under the rotted planks. What the creature looked like didn’t matter.Dead anyway.I reminded myself of that like a broken record, more sure of it than ever.
I’d never seen injuries like his, but I’d heard of them. Palestinian hanging–when someone is suspended by their wrists tied behind their back–causes necrosis of the musculature from the immense strain. Sometimes suffocation. Once I cut him free, rhabdomyolysis would cause acute renal failure. It would be over quick. Less than a day was my best guess. Maybe less than an hour, even. Now that he was in the light and I could see just how bad it was, the pressure slid off my conscience. There was nothing I could do for him, even if I wanted to help.
“Sorry,” I told him, kicking at the nubs of wood stuck in the ground that had splintered. “Can’t do much. But I’ll try.” I glanced at him, but there was no response.
I flattened my lips in thought. There was no point in exerting all this effort if he was already gone. I knelt down in front of him with a slow, fortifying breath. A little puff of white blossomed out of his parted lips in the cold air. His breath was shallow, barely visible, but there. A streak of dark red painted his deathly pale skin from his temple to the corner of his mouth, still slightly wet. I took off my glove and glanced at the wound between my knuckles where the nail had hit me. The same dark red smeared the grooves of my fingers where I hadn’t yet washed it properly.
“You in there?” I asked, voice husky from disuse. He didn’t stir, so I tried again, inching closer on my heels. “Hello?”
His eyes rolled beneath his eyelids. His throat bobbed. A little gurgle worked its way up to his lips.
