Chapter Twenty:
There was a stern knock on the door, the sound vibrated through the apartment and Cal sluggishly came awake. His eyes were fever bright, his tongue sad and rotting in his mouth. He wheezed as the knocks echoed about his depleting mind.
"Are you in there?" A woman's voice shivered with anger. "Cal Radford, you son of bitch are you in there?"
"Cal, it's me, just open the door." She threw herself upon the wood. Cal could feel the heat of her body through the door, from where he was nestled on the bed, swaddled in linen that had soaked through with shit and piss. He could taste the salt on the air as she cried helpless tears, her desperation whetted his appetite and he had not eaten in a very long time.
His mind was awash with base appetites, his mind was too far gone to construct complex thought patterns such as memory, recalling a name or even speaking at all. He crawled toward the warmth he felt, using elbows to drag his dead legs across the ground.
"Cal please? It's me, Penelope."
The sheets that had swaddled him for days broke like brittle bandages and he crawled across the apartment, his breath releasing in ecstatic gasps and he was hungry for that warmth, the salt of her tears, of her very blood.
"Cal I know you're there." The girl was crying now and as she lifted her fist to pound the door one last time it opened.
She stared at it, the slit in the door releasing a fierce stench. The smell of the unclean. She covered her mouth with her hands and coughed but the smell was overpowering. She slowly walked into the apartment, eyes going wide at the sight.
Everything unkempt, things had been thrown about the place, the sofa overturned, a television in pieces. The fabric of the chairs and curtains were soaked in the brown of old putrid blood.
She heard a moaning, as if someone were trying to speak with a stump for a tongue and she ventured boldly inside to find Cal slumped against the wall, his head hanging down to his chest.
"Cal, what-" She went to him with all tenderness and concern and touched his hair, matted with blood and dirt.
He lifted his head and his eyes gleamed like jewels from within a dirty face, compelling her to silence. Like a serpent he struck, cold, efficient, chewing at her throat, her cheek, her breast, whatever and wherever he could and she didn't even scream.
*
Death. As keen and telling as any other scent in the building, Alex knew of the death before she stepped inside. She found the door open and the waft of Cal's decaying body greeted her as always but there was more horror inside.
A crumpled heap of clothes, a candy pink apron worn by a ravaged corpse that was sprawled across Cal's lap like a doll.
She knelt gently beside her friend. "Cal?" She nudged him.
He exploded into action, gnashing teeth and clawing fingers reaching for her as if he were going to tear her apart. She held him back easily, she was vampire with the blood of an old one running through her veins and he was no real threat.
"Look what I've done to you." She whispered from the receding part of her that was Alex Burrows. The last part of her mortal coil the recoiled at the sight of the waitress dissolved into blood bone and viscera smeared against her apartment floor.
He responded with a reptilian hiss, blood shot eyes flashing and insane. It would not be long before his eyes would shrivel to raisins and this brought the last bloody tear from her eye.
With a shriek she sunk her hand into his chest, held his heart in her hand and squeezed until a terrible breath rattled through his deteriorating carcass and Cal was finally dead.
*
She walked and took view of the vast expanse of sky. Stars, infinite balls of blistering gas radiant in the light of the sun. They sung to her in an ancient tune that she remembered from another lifetime perhaps even another world.
She had witnessed them when the earth was newly formed. Agrat-bat-mahlaht. She sighed. Agrat-bat-mahlaht the demoness of prostitution and bride of hell, the lover of Apollyon himself. The devil himself. She knew this name well and knew it well enough to know that she was once Agrat, beloved of hell itself.
She could recall in startling and unbidden moments Apollyon's fierce heat and rage and light, the Prince of Hell and her creator. He had woven Agrat from the flames of hell and she remembered the rage that radiated through the fabric of her being, sustained by the devil, worshipped by the devil.
She looked down at her hands now and they trembled. She could not understand how it had come to this and even at the thought the voices rose in a gentle stream of unease.
"If this is true then I am cursed twice over." She whispered to them aloud.
Her hands were sticky with black blood…with Cal and Penelope's blood. She had only wanted to protect Cal from herself. She felt the vague sense of disgust at the dreamy way she had sliced into their flesh, through their bones, making small neat parcels of meat.
She whispered forgotten prayers to forgotten gods as she released each parcel to the gentle sway of the bay. Dark waters swallowing dark deeds. "Good bye, friend." She whispered.
She did not know what it was to be a vampire but memories of her former selves rose and fell in her mind. Over the time that had passed since she had been freed from capture the steady stream of voice instructed her of what she used to be.
But deep and dark in her soul, the embers of Agrat-bat-mahlaht lay, not ready to reveal the reason why she existed, how she had come to be made flesh and be reborn again and again. The name resounded through her mind like a heart beat.
To escape hell. Agrat-bat-mahlaht. She closed her eyes as if to shut the seductive whisper of the demoness in her head but it only served to make the voice stronger. Agrat-bat-mahlaht. Before the taste of flesh, the conception of Ea in the E-mul she had been a being of dark and terrible power.
She didn't understand why she was remembering now but she knew Nergal had intended this for her all along. The notes, the artifacts, the knowledge, the possession of her human father. Her father…a face she was fast forgetting, something she was caring less and less for.
She had barely known him and yet her mortal heart clung to notions of love and loyalty and blood. Agrat-bat-mahlaht. Had the Bride had a father? Had the Sarima had a father? How many fathers had she lost in the lifetimes she had lived? Lifetimes that still remained a mystery.
Draconi knew. He had buried knives and teeth into her mortal hearts. Finding her anew and he had killed her again and again but not always, not always…Now he was her father. Perhaps he would kill her a final time and there would be no coming back.
Even as she thought it he appeared, standing so still even though the winds clawed at them both, his long jacket flapping like a cape, his hair mussed around his head, falling into his eyes.
"Draconi." She sighed, the sound of his name on her lips sustaining the weight of her sorrow. She knew he could not stay away from her forever.
"So you have returned to me." He murmured. "Despite the mask your soul shines brighter than you know."
There was silence as they took time to stare and study each other.
"You relieved me of my mortality, Draconi, restored me to my former selves."
He was snared by her eyes that suddenly became, dark, deep, unfathomable pits of oozing, toxic visions. Visions of hell and earth invaded his mind and his arms trembled. Spirits from heaven and hell buzzed about her lips as she whispered languages even beyond his understanding.
When the upsurge of Power had subsided he approached her slowly. "So it is done and your soul, older than the earth, has found flesh forever more."
When he was close enough she reached out and grasped his wrist, fabric clenched between her hand and his skin. She spoke in the voice of a child. "I have nothing left. You don't know what you've done."
He stroked her cheek with his knuckles as her eyes leaked trails of blood. "You will see what I have seen, known what I have known."
He pressed his mouth to hers and she fainted into his memories.