– Hey.
No one hears.
– Hey!
They hear this time. The goon, with a handful of Marilee's hair and something less than a handful of limp dick. Horde, with his daughter's panties pulled just past the tops of her hip bones. They both stop and turn their heads to look at me where I stand leaning crookedly against the pile of desks.
– Stop that.
Horde purses his lips.
– He was supposed to be finished?
– I've got it.
The enforcer is on me. He appears before me from whatever corner he has been lurking in, seizes my throat and shoves me through the pile of half-rotted desks. The wood tops of the desks splinter and crack and he pins me to the wall, fingers digging into my neck.
Horde holds up a hand.
– Don't kill him. He needs to be shot.
The enforcer keeps his eyes locked on my face.
– I know. He's strong.
Predo keeps them gorged on blood. That's what Terry told me. He said that short of the Secretariat, the enforcers are rationed the largest shares of Coalition blood. They feed to surfeit, their appetites always appeased. Predo keeps himself lean, hungry and subtle, but his instruments are often blunt and hard. I have likely never fed as well as this one feeds daily. He is strong, trained and experienced in the use of that strength.
Which is the advantage he retains when my heart explodes. But first it stops.
Death has truly and finally arrived.
Good.
I have failed. Failed as a child; failed as a man; failed as a revolutionary; failed as a lover; failed as a goodguy. My only success in life has been as a pawn. Fuck it, I never asked to be any of those things. And my life was over by rights long ago. I've just been waiting to catch up to it.
Then my heart explodes, beating a manic rhythm, and I realize my life is not over. Hell. The world shivers and splinters, vibrates at a frequency beyond my senses' range of reception, and then resolves into clarity.
I feel the room. Cracks in the concrete walls etched in sharp detail; fecal and delicate odors both, articulated and singular; sounds enunciated perfectly, from Marilee's scream to Amanda's peacefully drugged inhalations; the taste of my own tongue; the whorls of the fingerprints on the hand gripping my throat. My heart trip-hammers, trying to dig its way from my chest. And all of it; cracks in the walls, smells of shit and Horde's French milled soap, sounds of scream and breath, taste of my own flesh, unique identifying ridges; all of it pales beside my hunger.
I grab at the enforcer's wrist. The movement jars the world. The room shivers again, bright trails of light tail from every object, and I miss the enforcer's arm entirely. It's too fast, I'm too fast. I try to breathe, realize I am already breathing, air desperately chugging in and out of my lungs in an attempt to keep up with my heart's need. I wait for the shock of the enforcer's clutch on my neck. But it doesn't come. He is frozen, stunned by the speed of my attack, not yet certain what has happened. I grab at him again, slowly this time. My hand clips his forearm, knocks his hand from my throat. He drops into a crouch, the thin stiletto blade sprouts from his hand, and he waits, poised for my next move.
But I am not interested in him. He has nothing for me. I can smell what is inside him and it will not nourish me or feed my hunger. But the others, three of the others in the room have what I spoil for. They are bursting with it.
The enforcer waits for my attack, but I do not attack. I charge, sweeping my left arm at him as I go past, launching him into the discarded desks, a wrecking ball through crumbling brick. The goon is the closest. I am nearly upon him before he or Horde have registered what has happened. I will drink their blood and they will die before they know death has begun.
The air at my back thrums as something passes through it.
I spin, see the enforcer leaping at me, sidestep and catch only half his blow. Still it drives me to my knees. The stiletto arcs down, a glitter that winks at my neck. I bring up my arm to block the blade. I am too fast again, my arm whistles in front of his, but misses entirely. He is again startled by my speed, and the angle of the glitter changes and it draws a line along the edge of my jaw. I jump up and he dodges back. What I need is behind me. I cannot be bothered with him now. I turn.
The goon is on his feet, pants bunched around his calves, penis shriveled inside its latex wrapper. He is holding his jacket, trying to pull something from one of its pockets, something that has snagged and will not come free. I reach for him, and instead of grabbing his shoulder I shove it. There is a dull snap as his shoulder pops out of its socket and he is sent reeling and crashes to the floor by the door. I look at the bound and half-naked woman at my feet. But she smells wrong. She has been polluted and will poison me if I try to drink her. I crouch, ready to leap on the helpless goon who now struggles with his one useful hand to pull free whatever weapon is concealed in his jacket.
The enforcer lands on my back.
One arm snakes around my throat and the stiletto thrusts at my face. I bring my hand up, the stiletto pierces the palm and juts out the back, the point halted an inch from my eye. I fall backward, lift my feet from the floor and land on the enforcer. He makes a noise and the arm around my neck loosens. I roll to my left, tumbling free of him, wrenching my hand from the blade and coming to my feet.
There is a tingling along my jaw and in my hand. I can feel the flesh knitting, the Vyrus in overdrive, closing my wounds as they are inflicted. The enforcer is up. He is between me and the goon now. No matter. There is more food here.
I turn to face Horde and his unconscious daughter. The stiletto enters my back, is plunged into my liver twice before I can seize his arm, hunch forward, and toss the enforcer to a far corner of the room.
The pain is more persistent this time. The healing tickle not such a balm. The Vyrus is fighting a losing battle against the damage I'm absorbing. I must feed.
The enforcer is on me again, charging from the corner. He crashes into me and we sprawl on the floor. He straddles my chest, pins my arms with his knees. The stiletto comes down, drives through my left forearm and sticks in the crumbling concrete below. He covers my eyes with his thumbs and starts to gouge them out of their sockets. I wrench my head to the side and catch his wrist between my teeth.
His blood is acid. It fills my mouth, scorching my tongue. I close my throat against it. The small bones of his wrist crunch between my teeth and he howls and rips himself free and off of me. I gag and spit his torn meat from my mouth and yank the stiletto from my arm. I roll to my knees. The wound in my arm stays open, streaming blood. The Vyrus is dealing with my more mortal hurts. Ignoring that which will not kill me outright. The enforcer is between me and the others again. He comes in low, in a wrestler's crouch, the blood clotting at his wrist.
I see the Enclave in my mind. Their disciplined sparring. The control they exert over the Vyrus gone berserk in their veins. It can be controlled, this power. I have seen it.
He feints at my right arm, the arm that now holds his blade. I dodge to the left, away from the feint and into the real attack he had planned for my wounded left arm.
He cranks the arm up and back and pain explodes in my shoulder as he tries to snap it before I can react. But I am already reacting, twisting to my left, bringing the stiletto around in an arc behind his legs, and drawing it back, the blade raking the tendons just above the tops of his knees. He drops, his legs folding like marionette limbs beneath him, my arm falling from his grasp. I plant the heel of my left hand beneath his jaw as he comes down and force him back, his legs powerless beneath his body. I climb onto his stomach, still shoving his head back, baring his throat, and stab him in the neck. Over and over. Blood sprays, and air whistles from a dozen holes. I shove the blade in one final time, fixing it at the far point below his jaw, and then heave it over to the other side. I leave the stiletto lodged in his twitching corpse and stand up.