J. Ward - Lover Enshrined

“The serrated knife now.”

Mr. D didn’t waste his effort on the blade’s plastic lockdown. The Omega burned right through the thing, then took the knife and put his free hand down on the table. Curling his fingers into a fist, the master sawed through his own wrist, the sound as sharp as if he were working through aged hardwood. When he was finished, he passed the knife back, picked up his hand, and placed it inside the empty chest.

“Be of good cheer, my son,” the Omega whispered as another hand appeared at the blunt end of his forearm. “You shall feel mine blood course through you in but a moment.”

With that, the Omega streaked the other knife across his newly formed wrist and held the wound over the black fist.

Mr. D remembered this part from his own induction. He’d screamed in what had been more than physical pain. He’d been duped. So duped. What he’d been promised weren’t like what he’d received, and the agony and terror had made him pass out. When he’d done woke up, he’d been something else entirely, a member of the living dead, an impotent, roaming body doing evil work.

He’d thought it was just a gang. He’d thought what would happen to him was just going to be some hazing and maybe a branding to mark that he was in with them.

Didn’t know that he were never getting out. Or that he wouldn’t be human no more.

Whole thing reminded him of something his mama used to say: If you make a deal with a copperhead, you can’t be surprised you get bit.

All at once, the electricity went out.

The Omega stepped back and a hum started. This time it weren’t no Disney crib musical, but the calling of a great gathering of energy, an impending reaping of some unseen potential. As the vibrations grew louder, the house started to shake, dust falling from cracks in the ceiling, the buckets vibrating on the floor until they were doing the do-si-do. Mr. D thought of the bodies in the kitchen and wondered if they was dancing, too.

As he put his hands to ears and ducked his head, he got back just in time.

A blast of lightning hit the farmhouse’s roof in what had to be a direct line of contact. With the noise it made, it couldn’t have been a ricochet or the feathering off of a larger piece.

Yup, this weren’t no chip of a stone that got in your eye; this was the whole boulder landing smack down on your head.

The sound registered as pain in the ears, at least to Mr. D, and the shattering force of the impact made him wonder whether the house was going to crash in on them. The Omega didn’t have that worry, ’parently. He just looked up with Sunday-preacher zeal, all rapt and orgasmic, like he was a true believer and someone had just brought out the rattlers and the strychnine.

The lightning funneled through the house’s electrical highways, or in this case its back roads and beaten paths, and came out in a liquid shaft of brilliant yellow energy right over the body. The chandelier’s hanging wires gave it its guidance, and the vampire’s open chest with its oiled heart was the basin.

The body exploded off the table, arms and legs flapping, chest inflating. In a flash, the master blanketed the male, as if forming a second skin so that the four quadrants of flesh didn’t fly apart like blown tires.

As the lightning receded, the male hung suspended in midair with his Omega blanket shimmering in the darkness.

Time… stopped.

Mr. D could tell because the cheapie cuckoo clock on the wall halted. For a span, there was no longer any moment-to -moment, just an infinite now as what had been without breath found its way back to the life it had lost.

Or rather, had been robbed of.

The male floated gently back down to the table, and the Omega removed itself from it, taking form once more. Gasping noises came from the vampire’s gray lips, and a whistle let off on every inhale as air passed into its lungs. The heart flickered in the open chest cavity, then got its act organized and started pumping in earnest.

Mr. D focused on the face.

The death pallor was slowly replaced by a freaky rosy glow, the kind of thing you saw in a kid’s face after they’d been running around in the wind. But that weren’t no health. Nope. That was reanimation.

“Come to me, my son.” The Omega passed his hand over the chest, and the bones and flesh cleaved together and soldered shut from navel to the stitched-up throat wound. “Live for me.”

The male vampire bared its fangs. Opened its eyes. And roared.

Qhuinn didn’t float back down into his body. Nope. As he stepped back from the white door in front of him and then ran like a bastard, life on Earth returned to him in a rush, his spirit landing in his skin like he’d been bootlicked in the ass with the Fade’s All-mighty Converse All Star.

Someone’s lips were crushed against his mouth, and air was being pushed into his lungs. Then there was a pounding on his chest, with someone counting along with the push and shove. There was a little pause, followed by more breathing.

It was a nice alteration of things. Breathing. Pounding. Breathing. Breathing. Pounding-

Qhuinn’s body gave a sudden heave-ho, as if it were bored with having training wheels on its respiration. Riding the jerky spasm, he broke contact with the other mouth and sucked in a breath of his own.

“Thank you, God,” Blay said in a strangled voice.

Qhuinn caught a brief impression of his friend’s wide, teary eyes, then he curled onto his side and cramped up into a ball. Sucking air down his throat in shallow huffs, he felt his heart pick up the ball and run with it, fisting and releasing on its own. He had a moment of the oh-goody-I’m-alives, but then the pain hit him, washing over him, making him want to go back to being out of it. His lower back felt as if it had been dug out with a hammer claw.

“Let’s get him into the car,” Blay barked. “He needs to go to the clinic.”

Qhuinn cracked an eye open and looked down his body. John was at his feet, nodding like a bobble-head.

Except, hell, no… they couldn’t take him there. That Honor Guard wasn’t finished with him… Shit, his own brother…

“No… clinic,” Qhuinn wheezed.

Fuck that , John signed.

“No. Clinic.” He might not have much to live for, but that didn’t mean he was in a big hurry to eat a Death Whopper with fries.

Blay leaned down, getting eyeball to eyeball with him. “You were in a hit-and-run with a fucking car-”

“Not… car.”

Blay got silent. “What was it?” Qhuinn just held the guy’s eyes and waited for him to figure it out. “Wait… it was an honor guard? Lash’s family sent an honor guard after you?”

“Not… Lash’s…”

“Yours?”

Qhuinn nodded, because the energy it took to move his swollen lips was too much like work.

“They aren’t supposed to kill you…”

“Duh.”

Blay looked at John. “We can’t take him to Havers’s.”

Doc Jane , John signed. Then we need Doc Jane.

As John took out his phone, Qhuinn was about to shoot down that idea when he felt something flutter against his arm. Blay’s hand was shaking so badly, the guy couldn’t even grab on to anything. Shit, the guy’s whole body was shaking.

Qhuinn closed his eyes and reached out for that palm. As he listened to the soft clicking noise of John texting, he squeezed Blay’s hand to comfort his friend. And himself.

A minute and a half later there was a beep announcing the text had been replied to.

“What is it?” John must have signed something, because Blay breathed out, “Oh… my… God. But she’s coming, right? Good. My house? Right. Okay. Let’s move him.”

Two sets of hands lifted him up off the road shoulder, and he grunted from the agony… which he supposed was good, because it meant that the whole back-from-the-dead thing was probably for real. After he was settled in the backseat of Blay’s car and his buddies were in with him, he felt the subtle vibrations of the BMW accelerating.