Page 33 of Envious Of Fire
If Lazarus is what Kyle suspects him to be, and if not being able to sense anything with his Reach is any indication, Lazarus cannot be reasoned with like a human. He is far from human.
So it’s with wild courage that Kyle shouts, “He is mine!”
Lazarus turns his grey, needle eyes upon Kyle. “That so?”
Kyle is taken aback by his surprisingly human, casual tone. It causes Kyle to respond similarly. “Well, yeah. He’s mine.”
Lazarus frowns, then turns to the bed again, to the sight of blood, as if it exists by itself without the accompaniment of the human—of Elias, who has grown entirely still himself, breath held, listening. Lazarus moves his head, and all his hair shifts like a curtain of razor-thin cables, not a single tangle in them.
“You don’t plan to drink it all?” asks Lazarus. “There is so much left in its veins. I can still hear its heart pumping.”
“K-Kyle …” whimpers Elias.
Before Kyle can mutter a word, Lazarus is at the other side of the bed, stretched over it, his mouth latched upon Elias. The room fills with Elias’s shouts, a mixture of pain and terror. The next second, Lazarus is on top of Elias, creating a new wound at his chest, biting with such an opened mouth, Kyle literally sees his teeth coated in blood. Then Lazarus swoops to Elias’s neck,blood still running from the nipple, the chest, and now from the creature’s thin, greedy lips as he laps up blood.
It happens so fast, the moment Kyle shouts out and lunges at Elias, Lazarus has flown from the bed and now stands nearly face-to-face with a completely stunned Kyle, towering over him with shocking strength and unsettling focus, his odd, grey needle eyes bearing down, streaks of red on his lips and chin. “You’re wasting time playing games with your dinner. His blood is good quality.”
“K-Kyle, untie me, please,” begs Elias, “untie—”
“He’s … not just my …d-dinner.” Kyle’s back is against the window and its curtains. “I keep him alive. He lives with me.”
“So it’s your pet?” asks Lazarus, sounding annoyed.
“I’m no fucking pet!” cries Elias over the rattling noise of pulling against his overly tight binds again, barely budging, as if he has any hope of overpowering them.
“You’re starving yourself needlessly,” states Lazarus as he drinks in the sight of Kyle from head to toe. “Look at you. As squishy as a centipede. Weak. Frail. Slow. You can’t even fight me off properly. Why do you do this to yourself?”
“I’m …” Kyle edges along the wall, trying to get to Elias. “I am just trying to live my life in peace. I didn’t invite you here.”
“But you did,” says Lazarus. “I could smell you, for so many nights. I crept upon the perimeters of your life, I watched, and I grew frustrated. You’re so young, you should seek those of us who can help. It isn’t wise to live here with your food, like sleeping on your dinner plate.” He peers back at the bed, wipes blood off his chin, licks it off his fingers, sneers. “These games are so childish.”
By the second, by each word uttered from Lazarus’s thin, terrible lips, Kyle grows sicker. “He isn’t just my food. It’s not a game, and it’s none of your business. You need to leave. Now.”
Lazarus’s eyes sharpen.
“I’m … not like you.” Kyle continues inching along the wall, determined to get to the bed, to free Elias, to protect him with whatever means he has, despite his crumbling confidence in being any match whatsoever against this powerful being. “I’m not like that. I’m not a … a …”
“What?” Lazarus slowly strolls, the first time Kyle has seen him use his actual legs, following Kyle along the wall, keeping himself between Kyle and Elias, as if suspecting exactly what Kyle is attempting to do, a step ahead of him. “You’re not a … what?”
Kyle grimaces. “You know what.”
“Look at that disgust on your face. Why are you disgusted? Who made you hate what you are? It ispower. It iscontrol. The blood is our only god. Why can’t you even …” A gleam of anger darkens his eyes. “… say the word?”
“Because it’s not what I am. It’s not who I’ll ever be.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to be. I’m human. Mostly. And I’ll stay as human as I can until—” Kyle stops, his patience run out. “I don’t owe you answers! I didn’t invite you here, no matter what you say. I want you gone. You’re all supposed to leave us alone. That’s the deal Tristan struck with Lord Markadian.”
“Deal? Tristan? What are you talking about?” Lazarus lets out a boom of laughter that surprises Kyle. “I think you may have me mistaken for something else entirely. Do I look like a man who strikes deals with Lords? Do I look like a man who needs permission from anyone or anything to do as I please?”
Elias yanks even more urgently against his binds, grunting, hardly moving for as stretched as he is. Blood pools at his neck where he was last bitten, red streams down the side of his chest.
Kyle holds his breath. “You’re … You’re not one of—?”
“I do what I want. I live how I want. No one governs me. Look at you. You can’t even say what I am.” He emits anotherterrible boom of laughter that fills the room like a drum. “This is why we have such words. Like human … or pet. You are a child. Maybe it’s why you still play with your food and suppress the thirst in your being … why you cannot even bring yourself to utter the word that which fucking defines you …”
A flash. Lazarus is upon him, long hands crashing against the wall on either side of Kyle’s head with such strength, cracks in the paint and plaster shatter outward from his palms like spiderwebs, the ceiling over their heads shuddering, dust raining down.
