For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the bite came, a white-hot stabbing pain inside my stomach.
Then the office door caved in.
Then my pores began secreting a resinous brown goo that hardened as it hit the air.
The vampire women poured inside. Lilith tore them limb from limb with her bare hands — her back to me, ensuring none got to me before I was safely encased.
I fell to my knees, my head swimming from the booze and God knows what else, my body wracked with jolts of excruciating pain. I tried to scream, but my mouth and nose were filled with resin, so instead my diaphragm spasmed in useless panic. Then my eyes were covered brown, and my world went dark. Suddenly, a vast bluish plane unfolded all around me, dotted with a billion billion points of light. Souls, I realized or was told or always knew: all that are, or were, or ever will be. The whole of human existence, laid out across a thin skein of light. I zoomed backward from it — weightless, bodiless — and that wisp-thin plane became but one whorl in the vast fingerprint of all existence, a single undulating tree-ring in the cross-section of the universe. The other planes were red and green and purple and black and a thousand other colors not yet imagined, or perhaps impossible for our own eyes to discern. And between those planes swam flew floated massive beasts like whales like sharks like snakes like oh my God like giant worms and I was in one I was one I am one I will forever be one and then, as quick as it began, I felt a pain in my stomach that reminded me I had a stomach I felt a tingle in my limbs that reminded me I had limbs I felt an awful burning in my sinuses that reminded me how godawful that rotting worm sac smelled and then I was tumbling twisting falling naked in a slick of amniotic fluid toward a filthy flop-house mattress a massive ruptured cocoon hanging above me and it was cold and damp and dark a basement I thought or a storeroom or a warehouse empty and abandoned and still I fell as if forever but not forever merely seconds and somewhere nearby or faraway both trumpet-loud and whisper-soft a phone was ringing ringing ringing in the dark.
Dazed and knocked windless, I lay on the mattress spattered with afterworm for seconds or minutes or hours, sanity returning by degrees. I looked around, and realized I was, in fact, in a basement — the wired-glass-windowed, pipe-laden basement of a commercial building, to be more precise. Six mattresses were scattered across the floor, all bare and cheap and worn from use, three others caked brown with fallen gore and sprinkled all around with glinting shards of shattered glass. Above mine and those ones hung cocoons — mine fresh, glistening, and steaming slightly like sweat rising from a body on a cold day, the others downy-white and desiccated to varying degrees. Above the other unused mattresses hung bottles like the one from which I had drunk, rough twine knotted at bottleneck and then around the building’s heavy piping, pale worm-halves swimming around inside.
So this was their rendezvous point, I thought. Their fallback position, should I get too close to any one of them. Meant I had ’em on the run, I thought. It didn’t occur to me, but should have, that there’s nothing more desperate — more dangerous — than a cornered animal. Unless, of course, it was a trio of cornered sociopaths with near-unlimited means and access to some for-seriously dark magicks.
Beside my mattress, I found a coarse blanket and a stack of clothes: jeans, sweatshirt, socks, shoes. All cheap, tacky, and off-brand. I used the blanket to towel off, and then dressed hastily. The shoes were too big, the pants an inch too long. But they’d do to get me out of here, at least.
And still, from somewhere, a phone rang.
I staggered to my feet. Touched a finger to my meat-suit’s throat, only to find it healed. Rotated his right arm in its socket, and no longer felt the pull of Ricou’s bite-marks. Looked like the worm-thing did me one better than just getting Malmon out alive, it patched him up some, too. Put him right, physically, at least. I kinda hope he was too overwhelmed by the experience of what we’d just gone through to even try to process it. Better he thought it nothing more than a bad dream — or, more accurately, a bad trip.
By the pale gray light trickling in through the windows, I saw a tray table in the distance, on which sat two items: one a rectangle of black with a green dot of light at the center of its upper edge, the other a cordless phone standing upright on its base, a red light on it blinking in time with every trill of its ringer.
I walked cautiously toward them, certain they must be some kind of trap.
Which they were, but not in the way that I’d imagined.
I reached the table without incident, nerves jangling. The rectangle of black, I realized, was an open laptop computer. And unless I was much mistaken, the green light I’d seen from across the room indicated that its built-in camera was activated. The table it and the phone were sitting on reminded me of the type folks used to eat their TV dinners off, pressed tin and collapsible, its surface painted beige with brown trim, an ugly orange floral still-life at its center.
Still the cordless rang. I picked it up. Heard Father Yefi’s cheerful voice on the other end of the line. “Samuel,” he said, “so good to see you!”
“Wish I could say the same,” I replied.
“In due time,” he told me. “I trust my brother didn’t give you too much trouble?” His tone was playful, jovial.
“You aren’t pissed I killed him?”
“The Ricou you killed was an animal, nothing more. I mourned his loss a long time ago.”
“Then why’d you go to all the trouble of bringing him to Nevazut?”
“I felt I owed him that much, at least. A chance to live, in whatever stunted way he could. But your untimely arrival rendered my gesture moot. And so his final act was one of sacrifice for the greater good. As, I suspect, will yours be.”
“The greater good? I think you mean your own continued well-being.”
“Yes. Mine, and Drustanus’, and Yseult’s,” he said, without a hint in his voice that my reprimand had stung him any. “I assure you, were he in any position to’ve chosen such a path, he would have done so. He was once a decent man.”
“Sure he was,” I said. “But then again, weren’t we all? Speaking of Drustanus and Yseult, I’m looking forward to meeting them. What say we arrange a little get-together? You, me, them, an iron stake or three…”
“Funny you bring it up, Samuel. arranging a little get-together’s precisely why I’m calling.”
“Is it, now.”
“That’s right. It’s high time, don’t you think? In fact, we’re overdue, but it took my siblings longer than expected to make the arrangements I’d requested. I wanted it to be quite the to-do, you see.”
“You’re a regular Gatsby, Grigori. And you remember how well that ended for him.”
“Be that as it may,” he said, “the time has come to extend to you a formal invitation. It’s why I allowed the occlusion spell protecting Nevazut to expire, after all, and left your handler the breadcrumbs necessary to lead you here. I trust your journey was a pleasant one?”
“Peachy,” I said. “Where and when?”
“How’s now for you?”
“Good as any time, I guess.”
“Excellent. Do me a favor, and press the touch pad on the computer to your left.”
“A computer? Really? Seems disappointingly non-magic-y for you, Grigori. Simon might consider that a victory, were he not, you know, all dead and stuff.”
“My apologies,” said Grigori drolly. “I do so hate to disappoint. But don’t worry, I think you’ll be suitably impressed by what we have in store for you. Now, the computer, please. She hasn’t much time. My siblings bore easily when prevented from toying with the living, and our new pets are growing hungrier by the minute. I cannot ensure her safety for much longer.”