The studio, formed of soft mist, was limned in gleaming threads around us, and the top of Queen Anne Hill spread away beyond it, through inconsequential walls, glimmering with phantom fires and falling into an ink-dark stain of cold nothingness—the Sound. In the distance, the black beast howled in rage and I felt it gather itself and rush toward us, all teeth and claws and unquenchable hatred.
The Grey was alive inside me and I felt it vibrating, coiling, binding into me like a malevolent vine growing from the living seed Wygan had planted. I could feel the pulse of it. I shrieked despair.
Wygan laughed. "Yes! You will grow to the part I need you to play. But we'd best go now, before the hungry one ruins the party."
He let go, his touch withdrawing with the same sensation as cactus spines drawn from my skin. The Grey lapped over me like a wet sheet and slid away, leaving a single, indissoluble thread that vanished between my breasts.
I was on my knees by the studio door. My clothing and face dripped. I fought nausea, gagged and swallowed bile, gasped to catch my breath again. I staggered to my feet.
"You doin' all right?" Wygan asked. He was still in his chair.
I gulped. "Alive."
He giggled, and the sound rubbed against my nerves like ground glass. "More or less. But you should be able to keep yourself that way now, until I need you. Now you see it as it really is, and you can use that. You'll need to learn the part, though, or something may hurt you."
I turned and stared at him, shivering in shock. He looked back and smiled a little, sending a breaker of cold over me. The light in the booth turned blue, though the bulb on the stand was amber.
"I… know all I can stand to."
"For now. You can let yourself out, I think."
He turned his back to me, tugging on his headphones and crouching over the console. Will Robinson pursued Dr. Smith through bars of Led Zeppelin, casting a blue shadow from the video monitor in the shape of a giant reptile, which grinned at me.
I bolted out the door and stumbled, tripping, desperate for distance, toward the door.
"Don't forget me," he called out, a shadow voice gliding on a non-existent breeze. I heard him laughing behind me all the way.
I staggered out to the Rover and leaned against it, bowing my neck to press my face against the cold solidity of the old truck's side. I shivered and gulped mouthfuls of ordinary Seattle air to stop myself howling out loud. There was an ache in my chest where Wygan had touched me, black pain equaled by the tearing horror rampaging through my mind. I hated myself for this trembling weakness, and more so for what had happened. I crawled into the backseat and curled into a sickened ball as my thoughts screamed and raged:
What are you? Raped, ripped, re-formed. What are you, now? Ignorant fool. These are vampires; a monstrous redesign of humans, psychotic by our standard, alien, divorced from humanity. What drives them is not what drives you. It never will be. Never again. They are not human. They are not humans! And neither are you. Not anymore. Insect. Half monster. What are you, now?
I lost track of time, hysterical, quivering in a crumpled wad of misery, despair, and self-disgust. After a while, I noticed I was stiff, cold, and stinking—right after I unclenched long enough to throw up. Hanging upside down, shivering and crying, some kind of common sense reasserted itself. The nearest vampire was just inside the building, laughing still, and I was sitting like a tethered goat.
I had to drive with care, in spite of an urge to speed. I couldn't see well through my swollen eyes and the streets flickered Grey, overlaid in mist and silver, outlined in streaks of neon-bright light. I pulled over a couple of times and tried to breathe slowly and attentively until it stopped. It would not recede. The trip home was very long.
I jerked awake at a sound and cowered under the covers. The beeping continued and the bed shuddered as Will fumbled for his pager on the nightstand.
I hid my face in my pillow and moaned, "Make it go away."
He flopped backward with the pager on his chest. "It's just Mikey, letting me know he's at work." "He works on Sunday?"
"Usually it's me. Mike volunteered to do the paperwork so I could sleep in." He rolled over and grinned at me. "Wanna go back to sleep?" I peeled the pillow aside. "No."
His smile got wider as he felt my toes sliding up his leg. "Feeling better?"
"Much," I replied. If I focused my attention on Will, I didn't have to think about what had happened in the night, didn't have to look at it, shimmering in the verges.
I had forgotten the note I'd left with Michael. The sight of the scarecrow figure in the darkened hall outside my home had made me recoil in fear. When Will stepped into the light, my relief flooded out as a puddle of idiotic tears and shaking. He was very sweet, even when he told me I stank and put me in the shower. I kept sliding down into the bottom of the tub and crying until Will gave up being a gentle-man and got in with me. I clung to him and things improved from there, even though I refused to tell him what had happened.
Now I was disgusted with myself for having blubbered and oozed like a jellyfish.
He caught me frowning as he snatched away my pillow. "Hey. Want to take another shower?" he asked, laying on a wicked grin.
I was slow on the uptake. "Do I need one?"
"From a hygiene point of view, no. But interesting things seem to happen in your shower, so I thought it was a good place to start."
I made a rude noise, grabbed back the pillow, and swatted him with it. He dove under the covers and tickled me.
Will let the horrors of Saturday night lie and kept me too distracted to think about them most of Sunday. After an afternoon of goofing off, he even agreed to come and look at the parlor organ with me on Monday and never speculated about whatever it was we were doing together.
After Will had gone, the misery and uncertainty began to close in again. Typing up my notes sent me into fits of shivering and crying. I thought of quitting. I could not face any more nights like Saturday, but I wasn't sure I'd done enough to destabilize Edward. And if I could not move him in the direction I wanted, neither Cameron nor I stood a chance of seeing another spring. What did I have to offer Edward that was more attractive than the pleasure of taking my head off? I couldn't trust vampires. I wasn't even sure that I could look at Cameron without either screaming or putting a bullet in him—not that it would do any good.
I closed my eyes, trying to think, but only slipping around the edges. The Grey washed against me, chill and nauseating. I felt that I was standing on a dock—a world—afloat on the surface of another world, pitching with the motion of unknown tides. The disconcerting feel of electricity zipped along my nerves, but I kept my eyes closed against those twisting threads of fire. I didn't want them, or anything to do with Wygan's realm or vampires or ghosts or any of the rest of it. I felt the insubstantial ground shivering and thought of stepping oil the dock…
Chapter 26
The sound of little claws on woodwork pulled me back from the bloody edge. I picked up the ferret and snuggled her to my face, smelling the warm, corn-chip odor of her fur. For once, she didn't wriggle.
Close to that soft warmth, I relaxed, taking deep, easy breaths. Everything Grey seemed to flow like silk thread, shimmering with strands of energy, and I could feel every movement I made through it. I pushed on it and it bent, stiffening into a reflective curve around me. Even the chill was less now. I tried to push it away completely, but it would not recede below a constant bright softness lying over everything. Grids of energy gleamed on the threshold of light. Peeking side-ways brought it all up to a bright blaze. I did not wish to step inside and see how the normal world looked from there.
But the constant presence was like acid on my nerves. I didn't want to be near it or anything associated with it. I didn't even want to talk to the Danzigers. Then I would have to think about it.