Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

«What do you mean?» Rivas asked angrily, though keeping his voice down. «You couldn't lift up a medium-size stone.»

«True. But I'm part of you. Maybe the most important part, the part that makes—used to make—you you. You know when I . . . was born?»

«No.»

«That day at the Cerritos Stadium, when you gashed your thumb to avoid merging with Jaybush. That works, of course, intense pain does block you from the sacrament, but it splinters a piece of you away—something like a ghost. That's me. And you've noticed qualities missing from yourself since then, haven't you? Weaknesses where there used to be strengths, hesitations and uncertainties where you used to have assurance?»

». . .Yes,» Rivas whispered.

«Merge with me and let me make you whole. You don't mind merging with me —I'm nothing but yourself.»

«But . . . would I be . . .»

«Remember when you threw rocks at me that first day, how I tore apart but grew back together, so you couldn't see I'd ever been cut?» It chuckled out there. «Merge with me and I'll grow back your two fingers for you.»

Rivas gasped as if he'd been hit, and before he'd even thought about it he'd taken two steps forward, so that he was standing on the tilted dirt slope of the canal bank. There was more swirling in the water, and then the thing swam out of the shadows of the trees into the moonlight, and Rivas could see that it was a lot solider now than it had been when he'd seen it last.

«How did you get here?» he asked, thinking of all the populated urban miles around them.

«Followed your boat up,» the thing said, its voice taking on a gobbling sound because of its eagerness. «I caught the new-born ghost that was cast when you used the pain parry against that dose of Blood, so you don't have to worry about where that piece of you went. I ate it. It's in me. And then all day I've been eeling around through the canals, trying to find you. Almost got to you before that damn whore did. You don't need her, do you?»

«Need her. Well, I don't know, I—»

«You—we—don't need anybody. Thinking you did is what split us in the first place, isn't it? And it has nearly destroyed you.»

The thing had swum in closer, and Rivas didn't have to whisper loudly at all for it to hear him. «I'm not sure that's . . .»

«I was angry, earlier today,» the thing said, giggling reproachfully, «when I realized you were in that boat full of women. I was hoping you wouldn't be stupid enough to . . . have congress with any of those vacas in the state you're in.»

Rivas started to tilt, then took a step back, up the bank, to right himself. «Why . . . shouldn't I?»

«It would diminish you. It always does, but in your present broken, unstrong condition it could make you for-get.»

The thing had fishtailed closer as he backed off, and now he could see its fingers above the water, gripping the muddy stones and glistening like fat sea creatures in the moonlight.

«Forget what?»

«Who you are, man. If we forget we're Rivas, what's left of us?»

Rivas took two more steps back. «Whatever is me. That's what's left.»

The thing was trembling so violently that a lot of close rings were radiating away from it. The canal water smelled like crushed green leaves. «Come to me,» the thing in the water choked.

He was suddenly sure that to go to it would mean leaving behind things that had been too costly to acquire. The sadness in the glass eyes of the broken trash man, back in Irvine. The remembered ache in his arm from holding the dying boy up to the corner of the Blood basket where there was air. His shame at having struck a buyer's-market bargain for saving Uri's life. The grudged respect of Frake McAn.

He stepped all the way back up to the path. «No, thank you,» he said politely.

«Your fingers, I can replace your—»

«Get away from me,» said Rivas tensely, suddenly aware that he was scared. «Go catch a fish if you need some blood to drink.»

«You need me more than I need you, Rivas. I can—»

«Then you don't need me at all.»

He turned on his heel and started walking toward Lisa's house, which all at once seemed very far away; and a moment later he was running, for he'd heard splashing behind him and the slap of wet rubbery feet against the packed dirt of the path. The pursuing footfalls stopped after a few seconds and Rivas let himself slow down a little, thinking that the hemogoblin had stopped—he didn't realize it had simply taken off and begun flying until it slammed into his shoulders and sent him tumbling down the slope to splash into the canal.

And then it was on him like a dog that has beaten its companions by only a few seconds to a big piece of meat. As the two of them rolled in the chilly salt water Rivas punched at it with his left fist, feeling jellyfish tissue split apart and spill, but always quickly re-knit, and its entirely solid teeth were greedily tearing at his arms and chest. They were both sobbing with fear and rage, and any time either of them got halfway to his feet the other knocked him down.

Finally Rivas got his knees around its waist and his hands on the corners of its jaw, and he pulled its face away from him, trying to use only the thumb and heel of his bad right hand.

It blew out a mouthful of water and blood and then, its big milky eyes boring into him in the moonlight, it whispered, « Please, Greg.»

Gripping it strongly with his legs, he began twisting its head around.

The creature began emitting a sort of whispered scream, but the noise was chopped off abruptly when he'd given the head one full turn. The thing's hands were scrabbling at his chest and arms and sometimes even his face, but it didn't seem to have developed fingernails yet, and the fingers just broke against him in a slimy nastiness that was worse than scratches would have been.

Rivas had been letting his head submerge in the canal water whenever he had a fresh breath and the move would allow him to get a new grip on the creature's slippery head, but at the third full turn the thing's neck began to split and spurt some kind of fluid into the water, and after that he tried to keep his head up out of it. The hemogoblin was heaving about under him so strongly that he was afraid he'd be flung off, and he couldn't believe that the noise of their splashing wasn't being heard, but at last at the eighth or ninth full turn the creature's head, which like a clock-winding key had been getting more difficult to twist, snapped off, and the abruptly released force of his straining arms flipped Rivas right over in the fouled water.

The body of the hemogoblin went limp and, releasing a lot of bad-smelling bubbles, sank beneath him. He struggled to his feet and flung the still quivering head as far down the canal, in the direction away from Lisa's house, as he could. After three seconds he heard it splash in the darkness. Then, leaving the body there, he swam up the canal, away from the two pieces of the creature, rinsing his mouth and hair in the canal water, which was relatively clean compared to what he had been splashing around in.

Before long he began imagining that something was wriggling silently through the water in his wake, and he clambered out onto the canal bank and walked the rest of the way to Lisa's place. She wasn't home, so he went in and took another bath—which exhausted her water supply– and crawled into the bed she'd made up for him.

And out in the sluggish, lightless canal, thin filaments were fingering out from two pieces of organic stuff in the water—a small round lump to the west and a big four-limbed lump to the east. The filaments from one traveled toward those of the other, and in the small hours of the night they touched, and merged . . . and slowly began to pull the two pieces together.