What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (25 page)

There is hyena-high, lunatic laughter in the darkness, shapes whirling at the edge of the light. Movement, mounting excitement and noise. The party is breaking up but the core issue of who gets who has not been resolved.

She must feel like she’s losing control of the situation because when I hear her again, Moira is speaking in a booming, expansive voice, as if she’s stepped back from the circle, thrown her arms wide and is trying to project to the farthest balcony of a theater. It occurs to me that it’s a pity she could never stand the glare of a spotlight.

“
Listen to me!
We’ve put up with this plague, this infestation of stupidity, this contagion of idiocy, for far too long. Dealing with these creatures, these
Elders
…” Her voice is curdled with contempt. “Maybe we should hurry all the Elders along. And the younger ones, too. If some die, they die. But we’ll finally know which of them are destined to survive the change and which of them are just a useless waste of resources.”

There’s more excited monkey-chatter from all around her. I wish I knew how many of them were out there. Their numbers could be enormous by the commotion they’re making.

“Blood!” Moira screams out. The word smashes against my ears with horrible volume, unbearably high, ratcheting up to a frequency only a dog could hear. “Ceremonies of blood for all that remain. Any that live through it will be part of us. Part of a single tribe.”

Her words electrify the night.

Blood. Blood.

The word is repeated everywhere that I can’t see, echoing between buildings that surround us, pulsing through the damp streets like a siren’s wail.

Blood.
They want blood. I can feel any number of them out there, ready to swoop down. My adrenaline kicks in again. Panic. My thoughts slow to the simplest.
Must get away. Or die trying.

Aisa speaks up at last. “So, now you’re going to take the boy,” she says. “For Jendra. Take him, but let us hold onto the girl.” So that I’m not confused with Tetch who is huddling on the ground with William in abject terror, she points at me, arm outstretched, index finger only inches from my face. “
This
girl.”

“I think we’ll simply take all of them. Come to think of it, there are no spoils here to divvy up.”

“We
are
taking the girl. The one you want, Moira.”

Then like lightning, without any forewarning, someone grabs me from behind.

I feel an arm snake around my neck, jerk me back tight. It’s not Aisa or Milo or Bodie. I can see all of them in front of me and they must be as surprised by what’s happening as I am because they all jump back, then hunker down defensively.

There is cold breath against the side of my face. A smell, a coppery, overpowering smell like burning wires. I try to pull away but she holds me tight. I know who it is—who it can only be.
Moira.
She’s not waiting for Doon or another follower to obey an order but is taking me herself, claiming me. Will now do whatever she wants with me.

Ice cold breath. Her face, her body so near me—I have that same sinking sensation like when she touched me once before, back in the Orphanage, in the dorm that night. It’s like I’m being submerged even though there’s no skin touching skin this time. She wears a damp vinyl coat, not thick but slick and rimy, her hands in gloves like the others.

Maybe her breath alone is poison. I start to feel like I’m floating out over a void, a skein of webbing spider-thin all that holds me aloft. I know I’m about to drop and, when I do, I will fall straight inside Moira’s mind, deep down into her soul.

I can sense other Riders from beyond the circle pressing in closer. Aisa, Bodie and Milo have turned from me and have backed toward each other, now facing out in three directions, ready to move, to lash out.

Only seconds remain—a tiny sliver of time while I still have the ability to act. Seconds before I lose control. Am completely Moira’s.

I can still breathe. She hasn’t cut off my airway.

My hands are free. Barely any time has passed since she grabbed me and I haven’t tried to pull her arms away. I haven’t struggled. Maybe that’s why she’s not trying to choke me.

Without thinking it out in any deliberate, conscious way—only acting, only reacting—I reach up with my right hand and shove back the sleeve of her jacket and that of some sweater she wears underneath, exposing the ash-gray, sick-looking flesh of her arm. Maybe it’s the blue-white light from the headlamps but her skin looks dead to me.

I’m fast, faster than she is this time. I wrench my head down and sink my teeth deep into that flesh, that dead-white sickly flesh. I chomp into it as if it’s the most succulent piece of meat I’ve ever seen. Like I’m starving and this is the only thing that will sustain me.

I want to hurt her. I want to hurt her badly.

I keep my teeth locked deep until it hits me. It hits me like I’ve tried to bite a fallen power line hot with current in two. My jaws snap open. Blinding shock sends me reeling, flailing back into Moira. I hear her scream, close to my ear, a sound that might tear my ears to shreds but I’m so full of jagged waves of hot white voltage that it sounds muffled, distant.

Then there’s a sudden break. A moment of…
nothing
.

It’s like Aisa’s shoved me out of a window again and I’ve fallen, blacked out. I come to this time and find myself still on my feet but shaking violently, unsure what’s just happened, another fragment of time missing from my memory.

It’s like the first moments after a horrible car crash. Shock, displacement. Disarrangement of my senses.

And I realize it’s abruptly grown quiet, only the continuing throb of the engines filling the night. I turn and Moira’s not behind me. No one is behind me. Only headlight beams.

I have to spit, hock, hack out whatever’s in my mouth. It must be the blood, plasma, bile—whatever bodily fluids are held in Moira’s dead-white arms. It lies like a thick syrup pooled beneath my tongue.

I scream at myself—

Don’t think about it. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the horror of what you’ve just done.

There’s something gummy, greasy, indescribably bitter smeared across my lips, oozing from my chin.

I swipe at this thick goo desperately with the backs of my hands, the sleeves of my coat.
Contagion.
I’ve tasted it. I’ve bitten deep into it now like a poison apple. If my father’s gift to me, his inoculation, has any effect at all, this will surely be the test of it.

Ceremony of blood.

I’ve tasted Moira’s blood.

Her blood in my mouth. But perhaps not mixing with my blood. I can spit it out like snake’s venom.

I’m sure now that Moira will kill me. Nothing will stop her. To see me die—a painful, gruesome, satisfying death—will become her holy grail.

Must get out, past the ring of light. Escape into the dark.

Without conscious thought, I know exactly what I’m going to do. There’s a motorcycle right in front of me and no one—not Asia or Bodie or Milo or Moira—between me and it. Just past the bright glare of its single headlight are handlebars, wheels, a seat, an idling engine—all of it ready and waiting, so close to me.

The shock still affects me, a muffling around the edges of my senses—sounds indistinct, lights blurred.

I can hesitate. I can wait another second, letting the strain, the confusion, the lights, my fatigue get to me and it would all be over. They’d have me tight in their clutches.

But you won’t be beaten.
I shout the words out inside my head.
You will push yourself, force yourself to keep going until your very last breath.

Stop now and that’s it. No second chance.

I sprint past the light and swing myself onto the seat, clasp the handgrips tight, twist the throttle toward me and feel the bike thrum with life beneath me. Its power revives me, brings me back to myself, kicking my senses alive.

My mind starts working faster, fixes instantly on the little experience with riding I possess.

I pull free a memory of what my father taught me. For a few years he owned a motorcycle until my worried mother made him get rid of it. He took me on secret rides when he was home—if my mother was gone and the weather was nice.

And a few times, just in the long drive leading from our house to the main road, he let me sit in front of him, explained the controls to me, let me do what I’m doing now. Let me kick back the kickstand and, with his feet still on the ground walking the bike, let me inch forward a few yards at a time with only
my
hands on the controls.

And on a few precious occasions, when I was a little older, he taught me more. Let me ride slowly down the drive, shifting into a higher gear, my father always perched behind me, an arm around my waist, watching with his chin hooked over my shoulder.

This time it’s my feet alone keeping the bike up, no one looking over my shoulder. No helmet on my head, no sunny day outside, no familiar drive. Just a cold, brutal, rain-slicked city haunted by creatures once human. All that the blood of our parents has left behind.

The rest happens in an instant. The memories I have are automatic and flow directly into my hands, my feet, allow me to get the bike moving, turn away from the circle.

I know they’re almost on me. I can hear their cries above the bike’s buzz-saw whine as it accelerates. Even though they’re moving fast, it’s like they’ve deliberately given me a few extra seconds to see what happens. Any one of them could jump me, knock me from the bike but they don’t. Maybe they’re surprised. Maybe they assume I won’t get far.

One of them is screaming at me, almost on me, but I listen only for my father’s voice, do what he told me to do, relive what we did together. I’m able to squeeze the clutch and shift into gear without killing the engine. I twist the throttle hard. The bike jerks forward and I manage to stay upright.

I shift again, almost kill the engine, going far too fast for the gear I’m in. The engine wails like it’s about to snap.

There’s a path cleared through some of the debris. The Riders have made paths through much of this section of the city, large enough for the bikes, sometimes for a van or truck. I keep going, looking for an intersection with another large street, not wanting to get cut off, blocked, cornered.

I turn, start to slide, straighten the bike out, my father’s voice still speaking calmly in my ear. In the street I’ve crossed into there is a little more space. I’m able to accelerate in short bursts down to the end of the block. I slow to look back over my shoulder, part of my mind screaming,
Don’t look back. Don’t look back
. There are lights in the near distance, closing in. This city is theirs. And they know I won’t get far.

Slow, turn another corner, accelerate.

Objects before me snap into my field of vision with no forewarning like obstacles in a dream. Everything is dreamlike now, moving too fast and too slow. I could be sleeping, my actions automatic, my conscious mind smothered by sheer instinctive will, a force that protects me from realizing just how much danger I’m in. A bad wreck would be worse than being caught by the Riders—I could be mangled, my body ruined. I’m like a tightrope walker—think about what I’m doing too much and I
will
fall.

I slow, swerve, avoid a wreck that nearly blocks the road. The path through the refuse narrows abruptly but I keep on as fast as I can, the bike shrieking beneath me, burning black oil that makes it hard to breathe. I want to shift but keep having to slow and I don’t want to stall. I’m amazed at how well I’m doing, how far I’ve gotten. Maybe the Black Riders are, too.

I make it to the end of the block, slow and turn the bike in another direction, speed up again, not caring where I go as long as I can keep going, as long as the headlights of the Black Riders aren’t visible, aren’t in front of me—

And in the middle of the street is an object I can’t avoid. A fire escape tumbled down in huge iron pieces. A rusted metal cage claiming the whole width of the street like something an enormous prehistoric bird was kept in, piles of metal railings and ladder steps lying on their sides, filling every inch of space my headlight reveals.

I can’t avoid it, this looming pile of metal. I swerve sharply but there’s nowhere to go, the bike tipping on its side, slicing through a puddle, waves of muddy water plastering the front of me, blasting into my face. The bike slides out from under me, wraps itself into the middle of the bars and railings. Bike metal and fire escape metal tangle like spaghetti strands.

I continue my slide but stop short, avoid being dragged along with the bike into the heart of the iron fire escape cage. The whine of the motor dies away. There’s a choking, burbling sound like the bike is dying, drowning.

I try to get up but my right leg, the same one I hurt before, refuses to support me. I start to crawl, wanting to get away from the scene of the crash, an image in my mind of a fireball explosion but there is no explosion, just a back tire spinning, whining against an iron spike until it slows to a wobble and everything is still, silent.

How far away the Black Riders are I don’t know. But I may still have some time.

I need a
place to hide.

A safe place for the rest of the night.

My right leg aches and I limp along, unable to run, shuffling like a zombie, good foot forward and dragging the other.

I’m certain I’m close to the river. The fog is cotton-thick, a swirl of droplets suffusing the air, icicle cold against the bruised skin of my face. With the fog is a cold sea smell which must be from that deep black ribbon of water flowing through the center of Raintree.

Before me is a side street so choked with refuse it’s pretty much impassable. I have to turn sideways, work myself in. The Riders can’t reach me here. Not on their bikes. I feel my way to a cluster of overflowing trash bins and boxes, wedge myself in behind them and hunker down.

I’m like a wounded animal who’s crawled off to die. I only want to protect myself long enough to prevent predators from intruding on my final moments of life. When whatever feral creature is out there discovers my lifeless body, it can do what it wants with it. But it has to be lifeless.