S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

Cheba thought about Monica for a moment and then nodded to herself. She stuck the cell phone back into her pants pocket and walked out and down the lane.

Ringing the bell of number one wasn't as hard as she thought it would be. She wasn't a petitioner, a stupid from the bottom of the heap anymore. She was somebody who could help, and help in a real way.

The other woman's overly familiar manner and bubbly personality made her feel just like the orange cat backing away from her the first few days she'd been stuck in number five. But she could take it; it was well-meant. She firmly pursed her lips and pushed the button. Monica's ringer was something cheerful that sounded like kids' cartoons.

Monica didn't look much better than Jose when she opened the door: pale, moving a bit carefully, her hair tousled, and her sweatsuit rumpled.

"Oh, hi, Cheba," she said flatly. "What can I do for you?"

Am I too late? Does she already hate me? No, no, this is just her being tired from last night. The kids are going to be home from school in just a little bit.

"I am the sorry," she said. "I…" Exasperated with the difficulties of trying to speak proper English, she flipped over to Spanish. "I am sorry, I know you understand my language better than I speak yours. I woke up last night when your mother yelled. I have come to say, I will help you if I am not helping Jose. Can I help now? You need to sleep and I can look after the children. They are nice children and a pleasure to watch."

Monica sagged against the doorframe. "You'd do that? I can pay you! Oh, Cheba!" Tears leaked down her cheeks. "I've been so afraid somebody will tell La Dona what Mom said."

Cheba nodded firmly and pushed Monica into the house. "Go, go take a nice bath, listen to soft music, sleep. You do not need to pay me money; that we have."

"I will clean for you today, make dinner, watch children. This I can do and will. Then later you will help me buy things so I can make you some crocheted lace collars or trim an apron for you. And we will become friends; friends help each other. Now I pay you back for those first terrible days when you helped me so much."

Monica gave a sudden sob and clutched Cheba to her in a strong hug. Cheba stiffened, but held still. With a big sniff Monica let go and rubbed her face with a hanky.

"Thanks. Thanks. I know you don't like it here, but, oh, Cheba, I'm so lonely and alone. Ellen was nice. And she's gone and she can never be a friend again. Adrienne will just tear her to pieces when she catches her…"

Cheba turned the babbling woman around and pointed her down the hall. "Bath," she said firmly, and felt the first glow of positive action in a long time.

Twelve days after he fled Rancho Sangre, Peter Boase stumbled into the bathroom of the motel and fell to his knees before the toilet bowl, retching. The heaves came again and again, even though he had nothing in his stomach but a little water. When that was gone it felt as if his guts were coming up, as if something were going to tear inside and he'd spew blood and bits of organ meat into the bowl.

Only clenched teeth kept him from screaming as the waves of misery swept over him; the nausea, the blinding headache, the fierce itching feeling as if his skin were crawling off his bones, the way the bones ached with little jabs of pain in the joints. The flickering of the dim fluorescent light seemed to strobe in rhythm with the gasps that drove themselves through his throat.

I'm not going to die, he made himself think. I'm not going to die . Part of him wanted to die. Most of the rest of him wanted the bite, knew that if Adrienne were to appear he'd beg for it, do anything for it. Everything was wrong, the whole world was wrong. The crooked hang of the shower curtain hinted at obscene possibilities, the grinning fangs beneath the surface of the world. Tendrils crawled at the edges of sight.

She's dead. I'm not going back. Thank God I got too sick and weak to go back before the craving got unbearable.

He managed to choke out a grunt of laughter. He'd placed himself in a situation where he had to endure the unendurable. The cheap motel room didn't even have a phone in the room to call back to Rancho Sangre and tell La Donas parents You don't have to think of her as the Lady anymore. That sadistic bitch's freaking undead monster parents.

– to come and get him and please, please feed on him. And he was too weak to get dressed, much less go ask for a line at the desk. He'd made his own phone inoperable without more concentration than he was capable of right now.

The nausea died down a little, and the universe stopped trying to buckle in on him in waves of squirming horrors. He crawled to the sink, the cracked bad-smelling linoleum of the floor gouging at his naked skin. The stinks of dirt and stale urine and old sweat and bad, distant ghosts of greasy food set his stomach in a knot again; his senses were superacute now, touch and smell especially.

Peter waited out the spasms and reached the sink and hauled himself up. He didn't want to look in the mirror, but he couldn't help it. The blond stubble on his face was a lighter color than his hair, a tinge of orange in it. The face beneath had fallen in on itself, the skin showing the skull beneath, and his hair was lank and greasy and plastered to his forehead with cold muck and sweat. Dried tears marked streaks down to his chin, and his lips were cracked.

Always thin, his body was skeleton-gaunt now; he hadn't been able to keep any food down for nearly a week. Moving very carefully, he turned on the tap, shuddering at the sound the water made as it hit the discolored porcelain of the sink. For a minute or so he leaned with his hands on the side of the sink, panting. Then he put a light plastic cup under the flow and waited until it overflowed. It took both hands to raise the water to his lips, and he sipped cautiously between breaths.

Oh, God, it's going to stay down, he thought. I'm dehydrated. I need this water.

Slowly he reached to a capful of pills. They were a prescription sedative he'd taken from Monica's bathroom before he left; it felt obscurely like a betrayal, although she'd have no problem getting more. The dose was two; in his present state he didn't dare take more than one. Another cup of water to wash it down, and an anxious wait until the nausea didn't grow any worse. He shuffled his feet around, feeling dizzy as he turned despite the caution.

One step to the bathroom door. Grip it, lean, pause. A slatted window across the room, a stained carpet, a chair and table, the mess of blankets and sheets on the bed. Step. Step. Step. Then a slow lowering onto the messy surface.

It's not a mass of flesh-eating beetles. It's not a pit of black slime. It's a bed; you're imagining things.

He startled himself by yawning. Then he turned onto his side, grabbed a pillow, and held it to his stomach as he curled around it. Sleep was an escape, a door he longed to dive through, but only by relaxing could he seek it. The sedative helped, a little. He forced himself to take slow breaths instead of panting. Let the pain flow through. No stopping it along the way, not magnifying it by paying attention. Just let it go as another physical sensation. Another yawn. He shut his eyes and looked at the random patterns on the inside of his eyelids.

Think about the way your retinas discharge randomly in darkness. Its soothing.

A deeper darkness. When he awoke the sun was bright outside the window. He raised his head to look at the clock; it was two, which must mean the afternoon.

I feel better, he thought. Which is to say, I feel like absolute shit.

Stiff, sore, weak, headache, dry grainy eyes. His hand rested before his eyes, and it was like a yellowing spider, the knuckles enlarged like the swellings in a root. Moving it hurt, and parts of it felt as if he had deep paper cuts.