The Worm in Every Heart (14 page)

“You bitch,” was all he'd finally had to say, once he got his mouth working again. “Bitch. Fucking, lying, frigid bitch.”

And: “Only with you,” you replied, weirdly cheerful, as you raised the nearest copy of Mayfair.

The water is almost gone now, though the heat remains; you suppose you might as well lie here until it seeps away entirely, before getting out and into one of Maris' old flannel robes. Then a hair drier, if you can find one; a towel, if not. Bed, either way.

A slumberous flush seeps through your extremities, making all your still-sore private parts hum with sudden tension. You feel stretched, strafed, empty of everything but your own emptiness. Barely fit to haul yourself up by the tub's sides and stumble into Maris' room, where you collapse face down onto her unmade bed.

On the table at your elbow, a blue-glazed bottle—precariously placed—captures the last of the light from the hall, shining like some ill-shaped star.

* * *

Sufiya watches Maris' straight, pale back fade away down the dark street. Already, she feels a bereft wave of desire knotting inside her, pulling all her pain centres taut with longing. Her teeth ache. The many lines of her face, imperceptible in the hut's dim light, all spring out fresh and sharp. Her eyes have gone dry as stones.

Well,
she says, aloud, in her own, her private language.
One is glad enough to be rid of you, my foulest sweetness, my awful mirror. One may even wish the foreign lady joy of you, and to die with a light heart.

There can be, after all, too much of a good thing.

* * *

Much later in the early morning, you think you feel yourself begin to bleed again and turn over, your hand accidentally brushing the bottle from its unstable perch. It wobbles, falls. Shatters.

Scatters, in a frail blue litter of glass.

Something pale blinks, unseen, among the pieces.

You grope for the belt of Maris' robe, only to find it already open, twisted asunder by the hard, round mass of your—stomach?

You open your eyes, expecting darkness. But the air is full of a soft, bright kind of visual diffusion—a pointillism too lightless to see by, exactly, yet lit all the same and pulsing with things barely seen. Fragrance, ether, carbon, a mere outline, a full-body mist, a bubble of blue-tinged steam. A person-shaped smoke ring, surrounding and penetrating you, stroking you from inside and outside at the same delirious time.

Contractions beat up through your gut and pelvis, painless, rhythmic. Forcing your legs apart. Forcing something up, and out, between them.

You open your mouth and gasp, air-starved—the whole world gone drunken and concave with a transparent film of warp—as something long and pale pulls itself from your packed-full womb, with a wrenching heave, squirming up and over you, pinning you down.

You deflate on contact, with an internal sigh, far too fast to even wonder over. A dream, a nightmare, a life-long fantasy finally come true. The want made flesh.

Pale hair hanging down, its braid unravelling like a spider's skein. Dark eyes, staring down into yours. Those soft white lips. That knived tongue. Sharp blue teeth, parting.

“Maris,” it says, softly. Naming you. Naming itself.

Maris.

Or something that knows her well enough to reproduce her to the least detail. Something so close as to bloody well make no never-mind.

You arch to meet it, mouth-first, breathing it in like something addictive, something impossible. Liquid aniseed. Scented flower water. Poison gas. And wherever it touches, nerves flick on like lightbulbs, incandescent.

This lovely
thing
. . .

. . . makes your veins glow and sing, an unstrung neon network. It runs taut, cool hands down your sweaty breasts, cupping and circling. Pinches both nipples at once, light but firm, just hard enough to draw a moan. Its caress is alchemical—all your post-miscarriage flab miraculously transmuted, in one swift move, to yearning, open curves. It kisses your throat, moves lower. Pulling at the nipples now, teasing them longer than you would ever dare to, unchecked by your helpless whimpers. It fastens its lips on one, teeth and all, then sucks with such sudden fierceness it makes you cringe, forcing the last of your milk out in a single, painfully sweet gush.

Licking down your quivering belly, rimming your navel, tongue cool as well. You shudder, spread wide, hips thrusting automatically up, splaying yourself in anticipation. And it doesn't disappoint you, plunging its thumbs inside, then sliding farther still—using them like a speculum, peeling the labial rind to get at the tender meat inside. Its rapt interest alone enough to make you grind your hips, oozing, juices welling up like sap. Giving away all your secrets.

The Maris-thing looks up, smiling. Whispering, “You should see what I'm seeing.”

This open book of mirrors, running slick and silver as mercury.

Oh, no. Oh—
yes.

It lowers its face and licks lightly up your swollen crevice, making you thrash from the cervix outward. Pries your lips open wider and drives its tongue in deep, circling your button. Takes your clit between its teeth, and bites down hard.

Yes, yes, yes.

It slips two more fingers in, smooth and easy; you feel yourself grip them like a velvet vice, rippling uncontrollably. A heartbeat clench. Flinching from the strength of your own response. Running like oil and water, like that fresh heat down the crack of your ass, that rush of sweat and juice together. Your thighs trembling, spasming, as it lifts one leg by the soft inner knee, studies the result.

Your whole cunt ticking like some wet, red-pink, tightly ravelled clock—your labia puffed first mauve, then purple, swollen so far they've turned nearly inside-out—your fluttering anus, poised to bloom at a touch. And the shiny bead of your clitoris, hot and hard, still quivering for more of that cold tongue. Finding it harder and harder—

Harder.
Harder!

—to keep your proper shape.

The thing with your Aunt Maris' face sucks your clit back between its teeth once more and nips gently, grazing it, scraping it. Sucks soft. Sucks hard. Keeping right on sucking—until you groan, and grunt, and thrust your hips back and forth, your cunt flooding her fingers—until you come wildly, babbling, bursting like some ripe fruit.

Oh yes, you think incoherently.
Come in. Come home.

Your muscles sagging. Your ruined womb gaping ever wider, wider. Your flesh spread out in silent welcome, an open invitation. Your hollowed heart, it's for the taking.

Come back inside me now, now. Now!

And the unclean spirit enters.

* * *

Here is what will happen, days later, when Diehl has finally traced enough of your path from the hospital to guide the police to your Aunt Maris' house.

You will still be upstairs, in Maris' bed, a once-fresh stain gone dry enough to sketch a thick, red-brown outline of your legs and thighs against the rumpled sheets. Your body, nude and lax, will be smeared with blood and dust from this last, most terrible (and wonderful) haemorrhage.

When the paramedics peel back your eyelids—deftly, gently—they will find your eyes turned back in their sockets, pupils mere wavering pinpoints. Your flesh will be cool, your breathing shallow. On your otherwise slack mouth, a faint—but unmistakeable—smile will linger.

Back at the hospital, with Diehl's permission, they will run all the tests they can think of. They will prove you definitely comatose, functionally brain-dead.

And pregnant.

The nurses Diehl hires will watch you swell, marveling at your body's resilience. All of them will remark on a curious perfume that clings to your flesh, whilst the more allergic ones will also routinely complain that some unknown person, with flagrant disregard for your safety and security, apparently seems to keep on choosing your room as the perfect place in which to break the hospital's no smoking policy.

Diehl, meanwhile, will attempt to exorcise his rage and disappointment by using his power of attorney over your holdings to buy—and demolish—Maris' empty house.

Weeks after the bulldozers have come and gone, he may well reach into a pocket for change, but find only some small shards of glass, instead: the remaining traces of that bottle he found on the floor of Maris' bedroom, after the ambulance had already taken you away—old, and rare, and blue, and broken.

And empty.

EX-STAFF SERGEANT (USMC)
Sonia Kopek was sitting by the window when they brought the vampire in. It was 8:30, a typical Monday night at Douglas Bell Memorial—residents drugged and gibbering, new entries being booked, interns slipping on vomit between the front desk and the nearest supply cabinet. The vampire was naked, dripping wet, skin like ice, handsome. Had long hair, which struck Sonia a bit faggy, but whatever turns you on. One cop kept the vampire in an arm-lock, nunchuks tight around his free wrist, while the other signed the log-book. When he was done, he gave it to Maunderly. As his hand went by, the vampire snapped at the cop's knuckles with broken bone-needle teeth.

“Motherfucker!” the cop exclaimed.

The vampire's eyes burned, like irises on an autumn bonfire. Hot and acrid, with that faint blue tang of sex. Sane and insane alike shrank—hushed, scalded—from his gaze.

But none of them seemed to notice he cast no shadow.

Except for Sonia.

Thin, plain, wire-boned Sonia, huddled into her straitjacket like a rhesus monkey waiting for today's injection. Her thorn-crown hair stood straight up, mocking gravity. A half-moon gouged above her left cheekbone added extra emphasis to her bruisey, all-pupil, blank Belladonna eyes. Craziness aside, they remained her sole ornament. Black glinting gems; cow-velvet stupid, Halidol blind.

Ah, che bella donna!

She snorted at the thought.

La pauvre ragazza ‘e pozza,
more like.

The cops threw the vampire to Essen and Grillo, who—smooth as tag-team wrestlers—let his momentum carry him back through the violent ward's doors before following.

“Evening, Sonia.”

Dr. Tau.

Not too bad a guy, as shrink buttheads went, if a little green for his own good. He had new shoes on; alligator. They complained as he squatted, flipping to her chart, ballpoint poised. “We cut you loose last week, right? So what was it this time?”

Sonia cleared her throat, noisily.

“Cops say you threatened to blow up a restaurant. Feinberg's, on West? Told them you had a bomb or something.” He waited. Then: “You really think you were going to get away with it, Sonia? Or did you just sit down and wait for them to bring you back here?”

Sonia grinned, an uneven scribble of teeth.

“It's hard to run with a grenade down your pants,” she said.

Dr. Tau sighed.

“Okay—you're back on the Fourth, all right? No privileges. Tell the truth, you're damn lucky no one bothered to press charges once they found out you were a Section Eight.” At the end of the hall, the vampire had begun to scream—a string of intricate curses, so refined they barely sounded like English. “Sonia. Sonia, you hear me?”

Sonia closed her eyes. She remembered a movie, from when she was twelve; Christopher Lee's beautiful black-and-white face, his eyes red stones. Chin slicked brown with blood. Then Zia Tatya, incensed by her son-in-law's blasphemous choice of family entertainment, running down the rules in mid-pirogi-dunk: “Such things exist, fool, and have no cure. Never trust a man whose eyebrows meet, whose palms are hairy, with red hair, born with a caul, a man with no shadow.” Years later, in the sewers of Dar ‘es Alaf, she'd come suddenly nose-to-nose with one more civilian the clean-up team had missed. A monobrowed boy barely her age, dead so long his puke had turned to dust.

Sonia?

With effort, she got her eyes open again.

“Perfectly, doc,” she said.

* * *

The vampire sat propped up against the Quiet Room's wall, as far from the window as he could get. A hospital gown dimmed his luster somewhat, as did the mottling of bars the nearest streetlamp cast across his face. His hair, still wet, hung straight and red. No visible scars. An amber spray of freckles, inappropriate to his pallor, punctuated his left shoulder blade.

“I know what you are.”

The vampire turned, hissing—his teeth naked in the dark.

Sonia stared back, unimpressed.

Essen was down the hall talking baseball, Grillo in the john. Four in the morning was Douglas Bell's dead hour, most patients having either screamed themselves to sleep or been clubbed into a good imitation of it. Long experience had taught her this much: Once glimpsed sprawled and snoring by the baseboard, Sonia became invisible. All she had to do was wait until the hall cleared, and she was free to roam unchecked.

“And what,” said the vampire, “is it you think I am?”

A struck silver tuning fork of a voice. Sonia shrugged. “Hey, buddy—I'm crazy, remember? Pleasures few and far between—maybe I'm getting off on jerking your chain.” She paused. “Probably just another hallucination, anyway.”

“Humor me.”

Blue fish-hook eyes, caught and twisting. Endless holes of sky.

What the fuck are you doing here, Sonia?

Essen shifted his considerable weight; her breath froze. But he stepped forward instead, slamming the rec room door behind him.

Okay
.

She let her lungs thaw, and met the vampire gaze-on.

“Uno bevitore di sangui,” she said, levelly.

No response.

Well, that was worth a couple of yucks
, she thought.
Nothing much else on the old plate, so, hey.
When morning came the shrinks'd grill him, like any other nut. They might even brush elbows at lunch, both doped flat-line. Smile vacantly at each other, drool a bit, move on—

“You're Italian.”

Sonia shook herself loose, with a jerk. “Oh, no shit,” she snapped, reflexively. “I look like I'm from Utah?” The vampire didn't blink. After a moment, unwilling: “Half.”

Now stop looking at me like that.

“And the other of some Slavic derivation, I venture.”

Sonia glanced away. The moon was a quarter stuck in grey dough—birthday money-bread, waiting for a baker.

Are you my present?

“Sun'll be up soon,” she said.

“Very.”

While they were still mopping up in Kuwait City, a PFC in Sonia's platoon had pulled requisition duty and done it so well they kept him there a month and a half. Then somebody nailed him diverting stuff—shipping a bazooka back home to Harlem, part by part. The Section Eight quota'd been filled that week, so he got stockaded instead. But Sonia could get behind what he was doing; once you've been armed, walking the street empty-handed again don't really appeal. She'd stashed crates of willie pete eggs all over the Bronx, herself. Wrapped three deep in Glad garbage bags, and ready to go.

Just in case.

Because you never knew, right?

Ever.

She felt the vampire's eyes tangle in her hair, like bats.

“Okay, say it comes up. Then what?”

He paused, considering.

“I burn,” he said, at last. “And you—watch.”

Uh
.

Then, seeing her wince: “But I take it you've done
that
before.”

Sonia blinked.

June 25, 1991; the Antichrist's birthday, Grandpop always said.

They were up on the ridge that morning, north by northeast, following a tip on some Iraqi deserters supposedly seen at the outermost well. Handler and Koo walking point, Raycee behind. Horse bones to the left, picked clean, under a saffron bell of sky. Mortensen's radio was still leaking static, even set as low as it went; it'd been that way since orientation back in Saudi. He kept fumbling with it, knocking the receiver on his helmet. When the job at hand gets second place, everybody suffers (DI Turner's favourite phrase, his breath halfway up your windpipe like a pepperoni fart.) Sonia was in mid turn,
Cut that shit out
on her lips, when Mortensen's foot met the mine.

Bright black string-man against the sand, stretched too thin to catch hold of. Too thin not to snap.

And Handler behind her, repeating: “Holy joe, Sarge. Holy joe. I mean, Jeeze.”

Screaming.

Her cheeks were wet.

Something touched her mind then, softly. Something—red.

Now listen.

A clawed hand peeled memory flat and laid it aside, folding the moment back on itself. Flame and noise shrank; a line, a dot. Handler faded.

No more time for words.

Sonia recognized the vampire's words, cool now as clean sheets on a fevered forehead.

No—need.

O shadowless angel, reasonable beyond humanity.

A toilet flushed. Grillo would be back any moment, with Essen close after. The vampire drew his long legs back, clumsy, as the dark around him dimmed. Four square feet. Three.

Dawn shivered the window's frame.

Step down,
thought Sonia.
Stay SAFE.

The vampire bent from it, until bone grated and locked.

Another thought, most insistently:
Let this bastard BE
.

“I'm nuts,” she muttered, stating the obvious. Then: “Mortensen's dead, man. It wasn't—I—couldn't do anything.”

That's no excuse
, the vampire's no-voice replied.

Sonia moaned.

Jesus Christ, get out of my HEAD—there's enough of us in here already.

But her thumbs pricked, crawling, under the jacket. Her lips went dry; mouth, groin, nipples set abruptly alight. Her limbs shook. Fistfuls of tiny red ants emerged from her brain's grey folds, each clamouring—in his voice—to be heard.

You came for a taste of power,
the vampire not-said.
To sit where my shadow should be, and watch. I commend your honesty. But let me go, and I offer you everything. Simply that. Let me free, and I swear I'll come back for you. I'll make you sister to the moon, mother of snakes. You'll live forever.

Handler, keening. Grillo knocking at the rec room door.

Only free me.

Where the vampire ran out of corner, smoke began to rise.

Please.

Sonia's heart shook, blue with eyes. She drew a breath—which came back out as a word:

Yes.

“Hey, Kopek!” Grillo yelled. “What—”

Sonia turned, and—

—figure it OUT, dick—

—rammed her head into the nearest fire alarm.

Double uh.

Glass sprayed. Essen came running, keys ready, as her knees hit the floor. Grillo knelt beside her. He turned her face up with one huge hand, almost gentle:

“Oh, Kopek, you crazy bitch.”

Well, THAT's news.

The impact had broken her nose, again. It hurt, but no sweat; she'd felt worse. She opened her mouth to speak, coughed blood and snot instead. Everything inside her head turned suddenly liquid.

Clangaclangaclangaclanga—

Essen sniffed. “Fuck me,” he said. “Smoke.”

Inside his cell, the vampire was starting to char. He howled along with the alarm, tearing chunks from the walls. Padding flew. Sonia thrashed on the floor outside, keeping time.

Come on, come ON—

And the sun was a spilled lamp, everywhere at once.

Like napalm.

Grillo threw one leg over her knees, and held it there. Shouting to Essen: “I can't hold her much longer here, man—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Essen fumbled with the keys, misread labels, swore. Supplies, furnace, front lobby, elevator—

—clangaclangaclangaclangaclang—

—Quiet Room.

The vampire's hair finally caught fire. He tore at it with both hands, skipping a whole octave.

“Essen!”

“Got it,” Essen replied.

Truncheon out, he kicked the door open.

And Sonia and Grillo turned as one at the sound, to see—

(incoming)

—Essen blown back in one red blast, throat unravelling as he went. His head hit Sonia's thigh, cracking the femur. Grillo, next in line, had time for a yelp; then two blood necklaces (jugular, carotid) broke at once across the wall behind him, dripping. Sonia gaped up, shading her eyes, from his suddenly slack palm. Her lips skinned back in a snarl of protest.

“The fuh—”

A sole syllable, choked at birth.

Poised for flight, the vampire—by the light of his own wings' blazing, studied her face. Behind her brow, his words.

The first rule, my little Sergeant: Leave nothing living.

Bones bells ringing.

Even mad as you are, you must see that.

Synaptic mortar rounds.

(incoming)

But you'll die out there,
Sonia thought. Then, instantly reconnecting her own dots with impeccable non-linear logic:
Or maybe not—with my blood inside of you.

Up and down, the stairwells sang with running feet. Suddenly sure she'd probably never know one way or the other, Sonia gulped, then stared.

You made—me a—promise.
Shaky breath. “Motherfucker.”

Blue eyes crinkled, half-amused.

So I did.

Sonia blinked. In that one second, she felt the last eight years drop away like a thought gone wrong; a flurry of sloughed skin. She was home, whole, happy. She'd never left. Married to Gio from down the street, womb full and kicking. Makeup perfect, home congenial, flesh unscarred except for a little acne. Sanity intact. Never split wide and left to bleed, under an empty sky. Never burnt and screaming. Never splayed in her own pain like a cow in razor-wire, black with flies, while faceless things stood by and laughed and laughed laughed
laughed
—

—but before she could react, dead man's fingernails dug as her pulse. Lifted her, effortlessly, ceilingward.

And squeezed.

Hail Mary the Lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus—

Sonia's chest narrowed; became a vise, screwed beyond its limit.

“Did it never occur to you, though,” the vampire said, “that I might have been—lying?”

And leaned down.

—now and at the hour of our deaths—