Death of the Body (Crossing Death) (26 page)

“Are my friends still around?” I asked nonchalantly, trying to read a reaction.

Henric looked tired but his expression otherwise remained the same. “They’re taking a nap in the back room I think. When you arrived they looked pretty haggard. I saw on the news there was some trouble over at the college. Nothing you were involved with I hope?”

His tone wasn’t accusatory, just curious.

I could feel my mind start to race with the question. Henric asking meant it was a big deal. I should have felt anxious. Instead, I felt numb. I collected the knives and dropped them into a sink filled with hot soapy water.

“Nope. Xia and I were at lunch and hadn’t been back all day, and I’m pretty sure Nicholas was hooking up with some guy in the steam room at the gym again.” Honestly, I added the last part not only because it was true, but also because I always suspected that Henric might be gay. I tried to get him to react to such statements all the time but he never flinched. Just in case, I wanted to remind him that I had a gay best friend so that he would feel comfortable telling me more about his personal life if he
were
gay. There wasn’t even a flicker in his eye or a slight pause in his smooth motion as he wiped down the cutting tables with disinfectant.

“I think the police wanted to talk to everyone who lived in the building,” was Henric’s only response.

“Well, then we should probably go talk to them.” If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was trying to get rid of us. I hung up my apron and washed my hands a final time before adding, “Do you need me to check inventory or stock the shelves?”

“Already did it yesterday. Maybe tomorrow?”

At least he wanted me back. “Okay.”

“Oh, and Edmund? When you are gone for a few days, I tend to get a little worried. You’ve always done so well in the past, but at least try to call in every so often. Especially with all that has happened at the school recently, I wasn’t sure where you were. I just want to know that you
’
re okay.”

He said it without any emotion, so matter-of-factly that I wasn’t sure what to make of the statement but decided I was probably reading into everything too much.

“Sure. Hey, drinks Friday?”

“Of course. If you missed that, I’d have to file a missing person’s report,” he grinned.

I found Xia and Nicholas not sleeping, but looking rather bored, and perhaps a bit worried, in the break room. Xia was slouched over what looked like a terrible cup of coffee and Nicholas was sprawled across an old leather sofa Henric and I had rescued from the dumpster out back.

“Okay, how the
hell
did we get back here?” I asked with more force than I intended, my emotional numbness starting to wear off.

Xia and Nicholas’s faces both widened into a shocked expression.

“Well at least you’re talking again!” Nicholas exclaimed. “What was up with you?”

I had no idea what they were talking about but I wasn’t about to let them answer my question with another question. “I’m glad you guys are okay. What happened?”

“It was pretty sweet,” Xia answered, now animated. “I think you meant to send us to the cave… the portal back to our world?” she grasped at what exactly to call the cave in the side of the mountain that we
’
d been trying to reach. I couldn’t think of a word or explanation that would help her. “Anyway, you ended up bringing the mountain to us!”

“Oops,” I couldn’t help but beam with pride.

“So we grabbed you and took you with us, but when we got back you were… different. You wouldn’t acknowledge us, wouldn’t answer our questions. All you kept saying was that you needed to get back to work.”

Nicholas wasn’t smiling, but his expression was soft. “You’ve spent the last six hours back there cutting up meat. Xia and I couldn’t watch.” He made a face and mimicked vomiting.

“Six hours?”

“Without saying a word,” Xia whispered. “We were worried you were… broken or something.”

“Asleep, more like it. At least that’s what it felt like,” I thought aloud.

“You were sleep butchering?” Nicholas laughed. “You’ve got some mad skills.”

“Speaking of mad butchering skills,” I interrupted, “why don’t you tell us what happened back at the dorms?”

This was the kind of conversation that made Nicholas uncomfortable, but I figured if I sprang it on him he’d have less wiggle room. I was still surprised when he started talking without much protest.

“I figured you’d ask eventually, so I’ve been trying to piece it all together. Even now it all feels like a bad dream that has pieces missing. But I guess the past day or so has been like that for all of us.”

I nodded almost involuntarily.

“Anyway, I went to the gym as usual, and there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. This guy kept smiling at me, working out next me, offering to spot,” Nicholas grinned at the memory. “When he was standing over me at the bench, I could see up his gym shorts—”

“Do we really need those details?” I chuckled half-seriously.

“I do!” Xia bellowed, her eyes wild with lust.

Nicholas laughed and winked at her playfully, “Skank.”

“Well, come on!” she chided, “We’ve been covered in blood, in Edmund’s imagination—not a very sexy place, by the way—fought off shadow demons and half-werewolf-dog-things, it’s about time we get to a little naked action.”

We all laughed, and it felt good. I put an arm around Xia and gave her an affectionate squeeze.

“Well, it was nice. Really nice,” Nicholas continued. “So I thought, why not see if he was interested in a bit of a more private show? He followed me to the steam room. We fooled around for a bit before he asked if we could go somewhere…”

“And that’s when Xia and I came home and saw the tack.”

“Yeah, what is it with that anyway? I still would have preferred a sock on the doorknob. I thought college boys like gloating to all your buddies about getting laid.”

Nicholas smirked, “A tack for tact.”

“Well, the noises we heard weren’t very tactful,” Xia grinned lasciviously. “Was he any good?”

Nicholas’s eyes glazed over momentarily while he thought about it. “A-maze-ing. His body was—”

“Again, details we don’t care about,” I interrupted. It wasn’t so much that I was getting uncomfortable (in fact, watching Xia’s reaction to the story was quite erotic). I just wanted to get to the important demon-possessed-me-and-made-me-kill-everyone stuff.

“I totally care about
all
these details,” Xia spoke again, giving me a knowing look while her hand trailed slowly down her stomach. I couldn’t help but swallow whatever it was I was going to say next.

Thankfully, Nicholas picked back up further down the story line, “Well, we were—” he looked at me uncomfortably.

“Having sex,” I spoke for him.

“Yeah, and then he looked at me. His eyes looked weird. I thought at first that it was just the light from the window, but then it felt like something was stabbing into the back of my head. It hurt so bad that I lost consciousness. I don’t remember much after that until a few minutes before you came in. It’s all sort of disconnected.”

“What do you remember?”

“It was like I was having a dream, and in the dream I was really hungry. Nothing I ate felt satisfying. There was this girl down the hall, and I’ve never felt that way about a girl before. She looked so amazing… but the lust I had for her wasn’t sexual, it was… predatory.”

Nicholas looked like he was going to be sick, like he hoped that he had said enough, but we waited and he eventually regained his composure.

“I think I ate her,” he said, “and the jock down the hall, and the chess club president, and the head cheerleader… well… technically the cheerleader was being eaten by the jock down the hall first, you know? They were
together
together. Anyway, I
ate
ate them.

“And then I went back to the room, and people kept coming. I couldn’t eat anymore because I was so full, but their blood was so warm.”

“What did you do with the bodies?”

“I don’t know,” Nicholas was crying now. “I think he took them.”

“Who?”

“The demon. I don’t know his name. But the worst part was that he was looking for something. He wanted everyone dead so he could collect their souls. I remember him thinking that. It wasn’t a hunger for flesh, blood, or murder that he had. It was a hunger for souls. He said with them he could do anything he wanted.”

“And what did he want?” I asked cautiously.

Nicholas gave me a look of compassion and horror, one that communicated everything he needed to say even before he said it. “He kept repeating a name. Your name, Edmund.”

Nineteen

My eyes fluttered open just as Nicholas pulled a tight red polo over his broad shoulders. The orange light in the room looked florescent as it filtered through a high concentration of dust. Cheap motels always made me worry. I had to wiggle my nose a few times before I felt like I could breathe again after sleeping on a pillow I was sure played host to a New York-sized colony of dust mites. At least the sheets were crisp. I didn’t dare move too much since Xia was comfortable in the nook at my bare shoulder. My arm tingled and felt a bit clammy, but I hadn’t ever seen the rose color on Xia’s cheeks that appeared only when she slept. Even in the orange light it was so beautiful a color that I dared not wake her for fear it would fade.

Nicholas had turned on the TV, but had it muted with captions. The news was currently scrolling text about twenty-nine students who had mysteriously gone missing from the dorms at UCSD. There was speculation that the disappearances were the result of some psych student’s senior thesis, but it was hard to read the scrolling black-and-white text from the angle at which I was viewing the screen.

Xia stirred and pulled herself in even closer, her hand landing squarely on my groin. Nicholas stifled a chuckle as my eyes widened and I flushed.

He flashed me a toothy grin, taking a long moment to give me one of his “knowing” stare-downs. I smirked and stuck my tongue out, childish, but effective.

He winked at me and mimicked holding a phone to his ear while mouthing the word “mom” before he silently slipped out of the room into the bright morning.

I couldn’t help but squirm as Xia’s grip tightened. I looked down at her, expecting a sleep spasm to be to blame, but her clear cocoa eyes met mine directly.

I couldn’t contain a smirk. “Good morning,” I said.

“Seems to be for you,” she glanced down at her hand.

I snorted. “Oh no, you’re not pinning that on me. That was all you.”

“Mmm hmm,” she intoned with a sarcastic note. I couldn’t help but notice she lingered a bit longer.

She stretched while I balled and released my fist to get rid of the unpleasant feeling of the blood rushing back into my arm. She was right back against me after a few moments.

“These look like they are healing well.” She lightly traced the lines of the wounds on my chest.

“Well,
that
feels a bit… tingly.”

She withdrew her hand quickly, but I snatched it and used it to pull her on top of me. She half-shrieked and half-laughed, but didn’t resist. The result was her straddling me, our faces so close together that I could feel her breath tickle my upper lip as she exhaled.

“Good morning,” I repeated. It was stupid, but it was the only thing that came to mind, which now clearly focused only on how little clothing both of us were wearing and how full Xia’s lips looked in the morning. Did they always look this way? Who knew? Who cared?

I caught a rather mischievous look in her eye just moments before she pressed her lips to mine. The look caused a thrill to ripple through my body, but the greater response was when I felt her melt into my embrace and give way to my lips.

There are many books written from the point of view of a woman during the fateful kiss between the romantic hero and his heroine. Pages have been written explaining the melding of souls, the buckling of knees, or the helpless sense of falling during a romantic embrace. Most of these descriptions make you assume the man is a fortress of stability and control, knowing exactly what effect he has on his heroine. Part of the romance and power of the scene is the heroine’s perception of the manly, emotionless hero—but I’m here to tell you that as stanch and powerful as the hero may be, if he were anything like me, if his heroine meant half as much to him as he meant to her, he would also be weak in these moments, not powerless, and maybe his knees wouldn’t falter, but he would give up every bit of power he had in his respective kingdom to make that connection last just one second longer.

Which is exactly why I felt nothing but extreme anger when Nicholas came back into the room and Xia pulled away.

“Oops, sorry! I can come back,” he said.

I assume he was skulking back through the door, but my eyes were locked on Xia’s as she responded, “It’s okay, Nicholas. I was going to take a shower anyway.”

When she disappeared into the bathroom, I found the closest thing and hurled it at Nicholas in fury. Unfortunately, it was only a pillow.