The Crooked Letter (46 page)

‘Let me tell you what intemperate love is,

that insanity and frenzy of mind:

a constant burning, never extinguished;

a great hunger, never defined;

a wonderful, sugary, sweet mistake,

a dulcet evil, ill and blind.’

adrian shivered, remembering the ancient lyrics he and his brother had re-written at university. Why they came to him now, he didn’t know. The sun had set an hour or so ago, and he was in no hurry to move. With Ellis asleep beside him and no immediate threat in his vicinity, why would he? Only the cold bothered him. It was in his bones, having crept there while he slept. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with something, although it wouldn’t surprise him at all, given everything he had been through.

Outside the furniture showroom, the city and its new inhabitants were gearing up for a busy night. The distant rumbling that had become such a familiar part of the background ambience grew louder, punctuated by faint booms and crashes. It sounded like whole buildings were coming down. Occasional screams echoed through the streets, followed by ghastly shrieks and moans. Some sounds were too low to be heard, and instead swept physically through him, like a cold premonition. His fillings buzzed in his mouth.

Ellis slept through it all. He lay as close to her as he dared, wary of disturbing her. She must have been exhausted. Alone and frightened as humanity was wiped from the city, then captured and used as a hostage, she deserved all the rest she could get. He didn’t know when they would find such a sanctuary again. If the source of the noises came closer, they could soon be running for their lives once more.

As he lay silent in the gloom, he thought of Kybele and the way he had been used by her. He couldn’t blame her for doing what she had to do; no doubt she had her reasons, even if he disagreed with them. To her he was nothing but a pawn, a magic token to use as required then toss away. That was okay, too; he hadn’t earned any greater status in her worldview.

What stung him the most was that he hadn’t had the sense to guess before now. He should have worked it out. Not knowing the truth — about him, about her, about the way the world was changing — was very different to being stupid. Ignorance he could forgive. Not deliberate blindness.

He had wanted to be told what to do. Without his brother around, he’d had no one to give him direction, definition. Kybele had offered him that, and he had taken it without questioning. Without even thinking to question. He was an idiot.

No,
he told himself. He wasn’t an idiot. That was the whole point. If he
was
an idiot, he wouldn’t have minded making such a stupid mistake. He had higher expectations of himself. He owed himself more than that.

Ellis snuffled and rolled over to face him, barely visible in the gloom. Her eyes remained shut, and for a long minute he thought she was still asleep.

‘It’s dark,’ she said.

‘Yes. It is.’

‘How long have we been snoozing?’

‘I don’t know, exactly. Most of the day, I guess. How are you feeling?’

‘Hungry.’

He sat up. Next to the bed, in a sports bag they had stolen, were Utu and several ‘shopping’ items. ‘I think I have some chocolate left.’

‘No, Hade. It’s okay.’ She pulled him back onto the mattress. ‘Let’s just lie here. I’m in no hurry to do anything too energetic just yet.’

‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Well enough, I guess. Bad dreams.’

‘I’m getting used to them.’ He hadn’t told her that he had been dreaming about Seth almost constantly. It sounded obsessive, even to him. ‘I guess we’ll just have to, if that racket keeps up.’

She craned her head to listen to the city’s supernatural fauna. ‘It could be worse,’ she said. ‘It could be completely silent. I can’t imagine a city like that. It’d be terrifying.’

He nodded, remembering his first day out of hospital. It was different now. He felt as though a storm was building. Not the physical sort, though. Something else entirely.

‘If you don’t listen too closely,’ he said, ‘it could almost be traffic’

‘Traffic from hell.’ She laughed, then turned back to face him. Her irises contained tiny reflections, chips of fluorescent diamond glowing in the dark. Her expression was suddenly very serious. ‘What’re we going to do, Hade?’

‘I don’t know. Stay alive as best we can. Beyond that, I’m trying not to think too hard.’

‘We have to, though. We can’t just walk around at random until something picks us off. We won’t last a week.’

‘Got any suggestions?’ Although he didn’t mean to sound irritable, it came out that way, and he instantly regretted it.

‘I’m less in the know than you are,’ she said, taking one of his hands in hers. She was icily cold and he wrapped his free hand over both of theirs to give her some of his warmth. ‘There must be something we can do, somewhere we can go. Didn’t Kybele tell you
anything
about what she had planned? Where to find her at least, if things went wrong?’

‘She wasn’t on my side, remember?’

‘But she didn’t want you dead in some stupid accident. I thought she would’ve taken precautions.’

‘I don’t think she ever really expected to lose.’ He remembered the dismay on her face when Lascowicz announced that he was raising the creature called Mot. That had taken her completely off-guard.

‘So she didn’t give you anything at all? Not a clue?

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I bet she’s looking for us right now, wanting to get her hands on us.’

‘I bet so, too.’ The thought didn’t seem to worry her. In fact, it seemed to make her relax. She stretched, emitting soft, languorous noises as her limbs woke. Hadrian smiled, more glad to be with her than he could begin to say.

When she had finished stretching, she rolled over to face him, and kissed him on the lips. He returned the kiss warily.

‘Is something wrong, Hade?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘beyond knowing my mouth tastes like crap.’

‘Well, that makes two of us. I never realised how much I’d miss running water and toothpaste.’

‘Agreed. There’s nothing so unromantic as cleaning your teeth over a toilet.’

She laughed and kissed him again. Their bodies moved closer together, as naturally as though the mattress had a bow in it. Despite their circumstances — the weird noises, the cold, the lack of hygiene — he felt himself respond. They wrapped their arms around each other. The kiss became deeper. Their tongues touched.

Hungry:
it was her word, but he shared the feeling. She peeled him out of his top, the same one he’d worn since the hospital. His skin was hypersensitive to her touch. She moved against him, stroked him, guided him. He slid his hand under her top to cup her breasts, and she flinched.

‘Cold hands,’ she said, rolling him over onto his back.

‘Warm heart.’

‘Something like that.’ She pulled off his pants, giving him sweet freedom, and then took off her own. She leaned over him, knees on either side of his hips, not quite touching all along his abdomen. The tip of her nose stroked his cheek, his lips, his chin. He could feel her breath against his skin.

‘Do you love me, Hadrian Castillo?’

‘I —’ He hesitated, unsure how to respond. ‘You know I can’t.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Both.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘It’s the truth.’
It’s what you told me was the truth.
‘How can I love you when everything we have is shared? Loving is about giving someone everything. Neither of us can do that — so by definition this can’t be love.’

He put as much conviction as he could into his words, although every instinct warred against them.

‘Definitions, huh?’ She lowered herself minutely, so her body was brushing against him. He strained upward, and she pulled away. ‘I don’t see the point in splitting hairs at a time like this. Do you?’

He shook his head, wanting her, needing her despite this strange new tack. He didn’t know where it was going, but his anticipation was mounting.

She laughed low in her throat. ‘I’ve had you in the palm of my hand ever since we met.’ As if to prove her point, cold fingers encircled him, raised him into position. ‘You might not want to admit it, but you’d do just about anything for me right now.’

He was rigid under her, trembling. He could feel her sliding against him. She was cool and moist, rocking gently back and forth. Although he was too caught up in the sensation even to nod, inside he was screaming:
yes, yes, yes!

And unless you cough up something new about Kybele in the next thirty seconds, I’ll finally take my fill.’

She plunged down onto him, and he gasped at the bitterness of her. Instead of warm, enfolding flesh, she was like the inside of a fridge. His mouth opened in an O of surprise and shock. He tried to pull away, but the hand that had guided him into her was suddenly at his throat, forcing him down.

‘Stay still,’ she whispered. ‘Or talk. It’s your choice.’

He flailed helplessly, pinned beneath her. The voice belonged to Ellis, but it was no longer her speaking. It was something else, something inside her. The realisation that he had been tricked yet again made him feel colder than her insides, even as her legs wrapped around his thighs and he failed to buck her off. She pressed herself around him and made a moaning sound like a territorial cat. It grew louder as he fought her, tearing at her. Her bloodstained shirt came away, exposing a knife-wound to her chest that leaked old brown blood.

He managed a raw, anguished scream. His mind couldn’t form the words to say that he didn’t know anything about Kybele. It all seemed desperately unimportant at that moment. The iciness of her was spreading over him. He could no longer feel his hips. She, on the other hand, was growing warmer, and her back arched as she sucked the life from him. Her moan threatened to become a joyous wail. He remembered the bloodless Bes lying in the hallway outside the safe in which he’d woken, and the words she had used on finding it:
Looks like it made a tasty snack.
She would know, and he was just the latest morsel.

He reached for her mouth, her eyes, and she snarled, ‘Stop that. It won’t make any difference.’ She reached under the mattress and produced the same knife Bechard had held to her throat in the rotunda. She leaned back so she was still impaled upon him, but loomed over him, her face out of reach. The tip of the blade flashed down at his left nipple before he could try to roll her over. It stopped just short of his skin.

‘If you don’t behave, I’ll stab you through the heart,’ she said. ‘Although I’d be pleased to keep it beating a little longer, stopping it won’t ruin my fulfilment. Your blood will be warm whether it moves of its own volition or not. Like hers was, for a while.’

He bucked, sobbing, and she slit his nipple in two. The pain was sharp, blinding. It had an oddly anaesthetising effect, giving him something immediate to worry about rather than the thought of what was happening to the rest of him.

It made him hate. She wasn’t Ellis. She wasn’t Kybele, either, but he hated the thing inside Ellis’s body for betraying him just as much as if she had been.

He froze, trying in vain to feel his fingers.

‘Good boy. Now, where were we?’

She closed her eyes, and he felt himself ebb into her. His life was draining away: the cold was spreading. He tried to reach out, knowing that if he was to have any chance of surviving, he had to move now — but his arms lay limp on the bed. He had left his charge too late. His sight was going grainy, Even the fear was beginning to fade.

I am the weak one,
he thought. Just like Seth always said.

The creature inside Ellis’s body bent down to lick the blood from his left breast, and in doing so moved Hadrian’s right hand just enough. His fingers touched cool metal.

We fight!
said Utu, and suddenly the staff was in his hand and swinging upward. It carved a silver streak through the air, as bright as a meteorite in a black sky. He didn’t see where it hit, it moved so fast, but hot moisture splattered across his face and chest, leaving him in no doubt that it
had
hit. She screamed and he tried to pull out from under her. Utu wouldn’t let him go. It swung again, and again, and finally the weight on his hips fell away.

Utu dropped onto the bed, inert. Hadrian sobbed helplessly on his back, utterly drained. What strength she hadn’t taken, the staff had used up. Ellis’s body lay on its side, facing away from him. Dark blood seemed to cover everything. If she woke now and killed him, he would be glad.

He was having trouble breathing. His eyes crossed and uncrossed with the effort of looking, but eventually he managed to focus. The handle of the knife protruded from his left breast — and he knew then that she might as well have drained him dry. She had killed him anyway. It was all over. He had lost everything.

There was no pain, only the ignorant striving of his body for breath. He wished he could switch it off and be done with it. There was no point.

A bubble of blood burst from his gasping lips.

Everything went black.

* * * *

The hum shrugged him out of himself and carried him off into the darkness. It was calm and peaceful there. The pain was a long way away. He seemed to be floating, like a speck of pollen among the branches of a giant tree. He could have drifted forever were it not for the voices.

* * * *

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘But, El —’

‘I don’t trust you, Seth. And why should I, when you’ve been part of this all along, ever since you were born? I know you didn’t know either, but that doesn’t change a thing. What else don’t you know? How else am I going to be hurt? I’ve already died once because of you. I’ve been murdered. Can you blame me for wanting to keep my distance?’

‘Will you at least tell me how you got here, after you died?’

‘I came out in the wrong spot, falling, and Shathra tried to take me down with him. The Ogdoad wouldn’t let him through, so we had to come back up here. What more do you want to know?’