Page 31 of Tethered Souls
I fucking wish he did…
Because the alternative –
“If you want to talk to him, you better hurry up before he dies!” Uncle Myers shouts as he struggles with the vampire on the counter.
Khalid waits for me to elaborate, but I don’t. We need to know what Antonio has been doing to the Blood Fangs. He’s been grabbing them off the streets for months, never to be seen again – or at least, never to be seen byus. Aleric has been tracking them down himself, phasing to them as soon as they reappear on neutral ground. Meaning, if he’s that desperate for us not to see anything, he’s either in league with the Death Hunt...or his own Family is on the verge of collapse. Neither of those are good for us.
“Later,” I say as I pass him and head for the swim up bar. Jerry, one of Aleric Zadar’s higher ups, is lying on his back, naked, on the teak counter. Maddox and Uncle Myers are fighting to pin down his thrashing arms and legs. Near his left shoulder, opposite to Maddox, a large dog is standing up on his hind legs, staring intently at Jerry’s face. Red coat. Large pointy ears. Gold eyes that look almost human.
One hand pressed firmly on the vampire’s forehead, Leno curses as he tries to pour some sort of bubbling blue potion down Jerry’s throat, but he’s having a hard time. Not just because of the head jerking around, even though it is.
But because the skin is bubbled and blistered so badly, that it’s slipping off in chunks, and with every movement, a part of his lips fall back into his mouth, choking him.
“Shit,” Leno growls, then changes tactics. Releasing the vampire’s head, he holds his arm out towards a nearby rose bush and calls upon his magic. A stem of thorns shoots forward and grabs the glass with the potion, holding it in the air. Now with both hands free, he twists them around each other. One of the palm trees bends over, twisting under the canopy of the bar, then drops a branch into his hand. A dozen small shoots grow out of the end of it, curling like the face tentacles of Cthulhu.
Just as we get close, Leno shoves it down the vampire’s mouth, and it splits open at the top, creating a funnel. A few seconds later, the pieces of lip that had fallen off and were blocking his throat come hurtling out. They splatter across my brother’s black tee. Grabbing the potion from the stem of thorns, Leno pours it down the wooden funnel.
“Fuck!” Maddox curses as the vampire’s arm comes off in his hand, ripping free at the shoulder, the skin no longer strong enough to keep it connected.
But his spasms are weakening, whatever Leno gave him working quickly.
The stem of thorns, his third hand at this point, dives into the open canvas bag at his feet and pulls out a glass jar of powdered yarrow, a natural styptic. He sprinkles some on the vampire’s armless shoulder, then places his hand over it. Green magic flows beneath his fingers, turning the powder into a scab. It won’t save him though. Whatever the wolves did to him is killing him quickly.
“How long?” I ask as I stop beside the dog, who turns to look at me, my blind brother, Leno, seeing through his eyes.
“A few minutes.” Leno shakes his head. “Maybe.”
“Take the funnel out.”
He pulls it free slowly, but he still manages to rip bits of skin out of Jerry’s mouth. One of the pus-oozing boils on his lips pops, and a rotten smell explodes out of it, churning my stomach. Piss and shit and blood leak free from him, and skin sloshes off every inch of his naked body like an ice-cream dropped on the sidewalk by a clumsy child.
“Jerry,” I say, but there’s not one feature I can identify him by. His nose is slipping down his left cheek. One eye is missing, pink gunk clinging to an open hole, and the other is swollen shut by sacs of pus yet to pop. But Maddox and Uncle Myers both say it’s him.
As shapeshifters, they have learned to memorize every detail of a stranger’s face so they can shift into them, and Jerry is far from a stranger. We’ve dealt with him a few times when moving through Aleric’s territory.
“Tell us what happened to you.”
His mouth opens wide, and it takes me a second before I realize he’s screaming. Because there’s no sound other than a fragile hiss of air. His vocal chords are gone, screamed raw perhaps. Or maybe the inside of his body matches the outer, organs and tendons and muscles just turning into slush.
Whichever it is, his limbs start spasming again, smacking against the bar as his convulsions increase. More skin falls off, and he becomes useless to me. I pull out a knife, but Maddox cuts in.
“Given how weak his skin is,” he says as he holds up the vampire’s detached arm, “can I try pulling his head off?”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
Then I step to the side and let him have at it. It makes no difference to me how he dies. Turning to Leno, I ask, “Did he say anything?”
“Not a word.”
My jaw tics. It would’ve been nice to know he was mute before I came out here, but I don’t say it. Instead, I turn to Uncle Myers. “Have you come across anything like this?”
His lips tight, he shakes his head.
“Then get me Cara Jervis.” I start to move, wanting to head back home and get some sleep. I’m exhausted, not able to top up my reserves like the others can with their magic. And being out here in the middle of the night, not knowing if I can trust any of my brothers anymore… It’s making me paranoid. My hairs rise every time one of them shifts even slightly.
“You can’t be serious,” Maddox says as he moves around the bar, and I unconsciously rock onto the balls of my feet. “Ma’ll be pissed.”
