Page 179 of Alchemised
She shoved outwards with her resonance, but it was met and shoved back in so violently that it was like a cannon going off inside her head.
Her vision went white, and when it returned Ferron’s face swam before her, except he was glowing. His eyes had gone bright silver.
“What the fuck, Marino?”
Her head was ringing, and she couldn’t form words. She just knelt there, staring at his living face.
“I told you—I didn’t want to,” she finally said. Then her face crumpled, and she burst into tears.
There was a pause.
“Perhaps I did slightly underestimate you.” He pulled a handkerchief out and wiped her face until there was no more blood clotted in her lashes.
She sat, numb, until he dragged her up from the floor, his arms nearly giving out as he pulled her along to the bathroom.
He pushed her in, twisting a tap to turn on the shower before opening a cabinet and pulling out several towels and some fresh clothes.
“Clean up,” he said.
Helena looked down at herself. She was covered in viscera. It smelled worse than the hospital. All the decomposition. Her throat convulsed.
She stepped into the shower with her clothes on, fingers trembling as she forced herself to remove them, peeling off the wet layers like skin.
It was as if Ferron had found a festering wound and jabbed his fingers into it. Cocooned under the water, she could barely bring herself to step out.
She knew she was only delaying the inevitable as she slowly dried and rebraided her hair, pinning it carefully back into place before looking at the clothes Ferron had left. They were his. Trousers and a shirt.
Did he live here? She pulled them on slowly.
As she stood, carefully fastening the familiar buttons, her shock thinned, her mind resurfacing raw with anger.
When she emerged from the bathroom, she braced herself for the nightmare of blood and gore, but the room had been cleaned. She’d been in the bathroom longer than she’d realised.
The floor had been mopped. Even the furniture had been put back. The scent lingered, but visual traces were all gone.
Ferron was seated backwards on the chair, the fingers of one hand pressed against his forehead as if he was dealing with an intense migraine.
She hoped he was.
He looked up, hand dropping languidly away.
“Well,” he said slowly, his enunciation precise. His eyes still had a strange silver gleam to them. “You really are full of surprises.”
The sight of him so unapologetic only added to her brewing rage.
She went over to the bar, pouring herself a generous amount of something from a very fancy-looking bottle.
She sipped it. It was sharp and bitter. She wished she’d chosen something else; she’d always preferred wine, but Ferron didn’t appear to keep any. Likely not strong enough for his taste.
She braced herself and gulped it, not caring at all about the way it curdled her tongue, burning down her throat and into her empty stomach.
She squeezed her eyes shut and then poured more, drinking it almost as quickly.
She wanted to get drunk as fast as possible. She swirled her fingers, feeling her own body with her resonance, prompting her digestive system to absorb the alcohol a little faster, to get it into her blood before she did something like throwing every single bottle on the wall at Ferron’s head.
She closed her eyes, sinking hard into the warm, blurring relief.
She rarely drank alcohol, and now she was reminded why. It felt so much better to feel like this than the way she actually felt all the time: like a raw nerve.
