Page 79 of Envious Of Fire
Then I’d better make sure the cameras catch my good side.
“And how long will you bury the secret in this room? Four or so days, you said? I doubt that monster will be ready in fouryears’time to reenter society. And what if it breaks free before it is ready? You shall make human headlines across the world, worse than your Kyle Amos nearly did—headlines describing a cannibal on the rampage in the casinos of the human city of Las Vegas … hundreds left dead, no number of bullets could put the beast down. What was it you said earlier about firing silver bullets?” He clicks his tongue, bows his head disapprovingly. “Perhaps you ought to consider your own. You have started down a road I don’t think you’ll ever return from.”
Allow me to worry about the road I’m on,suggests Tristan,and the headlines.I have faith in Brock.
“I do not.” George plucks the dirty handkerchief from his pocket with disgust, drops it on the floor. “Keep this. I shall not wish to look upon it—or the monster whose bloody snot now drenches it—for the rest of my days.”
Then George departs the room without another word.
Tristan takes the handkerchief at once, returns to Brock, then stands there for a time. Brock looks so peaceful, sleeping, naked, chained up. He’s drooling again. Tristan crouches down and rests his folded arms on Brock’s lap, staring up at his face while he sleeps. Tristan reaches with the handkerchief to wipe a spot off his chin, then changes his mind, retracting his hand and settling back into place, silent, pensive, curious.
Would Kyle be happy with what Tristan did? The lengths hewent to, the risks he took, to bring Brock back? Or would he also see this as some kind of “perversion”? Would he also stand in this room just as George did, see the bloodied monster that is his former childhood best friend, and feel repulsed?
Has Tristan gone too far?
These thoughts are what follow him back to the House of Vegasyn. These thoughts haunt his every step as he walks down hall after hall, sluggish and pensive, until he arrives at a door right outside the Midnight Garden, the edge of the infirmary, illusions of nurses walking around behind him with cartoonish red crosses on their caps. It’s easy to be fooled by them, unless one takes too much time studying their faces, seeing the tiny falsehoods, cracks in reality—all the weaker fringes of Lord Markadian’s otherwise flawless power giving itself away.
The room Tristan stands in front of is next door to the one that once housed Brock’s corpse. He finds a sick irony in that.
He gently pushes the door open, steps inside.
Upon the bed, Raya lies, glancing off toward a window—an illusion of one, rather—studying the subtle changes in light and spots of fake rain that carve wiggly lines down the glass. Tristan is certain she knows it’s him, but she doesn’t look his way. She is wearing only a thin white gown with long billowing sleeves, likely to cover the fact that half of her left arm is missing.
Tristan knows she doesn’t want to see him, but he speaks anyway.It would seem that George has caught on to us…
“Honestly, I’m not even angry he took my arm,” she says without any prompt, on her own train of thought, “but rather that it was so revolting to him, he hardly ate a bite.”
Tristan swallows, feeling hesitant. Is she trying for humor? To make light of her situation? This is so often the language they use with one another, except there is something else in her tone, something unsettlingly calm, almost cold.
“Is my arm not tasty?” she goes on, speaking to herself, stilllooking at the window. “Did I give it up for nothing? It was the only left arm I had.”
Raya…
“We don’t grow them back … not like Ferals allegedly do. We aren’t full-blooded. We’re just …” Her voice trails off, her eyebrows tugging together. “Well, I’m not sure what we are.”
We’re survivors, Tristan decides to say.Of many things.
“And one day I might say I’m a survivor of you,” she says.
Tristan slowly comes further into the room, stops by a tiny table near the window, a table with a vase of black roses. It isn’t often he finds himself unsure of what to say. He just stands still, eyes lost on the black roses, troubled for words.
“Do you think Kaleb will still find me beautiful?” It isn’t clear whether she’s asking Tristan or herself. “Perhaps I could ask Lord Markadian to augment my appearance with one of his illusions … but then that would shed light on something we are trying to keep in the dark. See? How I think of you? Even when I’m angry?”
The words twist his heart.I’m sorry, Tristan finally says.
“Do you think it’s safe to keep that monster at the Scarlet Sands? Even when obscured by our powers? Humans seem to keep finding their way into places they don’t belong lately.”
He is subdued, Tristan assures her.Chained so heavily, even a full-blooded Feral couldn’t break free.
“I’m quite sure a Feral could break free from any amount of chains. If you’re going to lie, at least lie more cleverly.”
Raya…
“Do you think it is even Brock in that room …?” She turns her eyes onto Tristan now. “After spending so many days … in a place only the dead know …? Days, Tristan. How do we not know somethingelsedidn’t cling along to him for a free ride back to the world of the living? Something really bad? A matter ofevilthat used Brock’s soul like a … like a fuckingtaxiout of Death’srealm?Thatwasnothuman,” she says with a sharp point of her finger, as if Brock is still located in the room next to hers. “Thatwas amistake, Tristan … aterriblemistake.”
He knew my name.
“And so would a demon that devoured Brock’s soul, twisted his persona into something familiar enough to fool someone as desperate as you. You and your bestie Mance called a demon into this world … a demon who didn’t even like the taste of my arm.”
