Black Magic
6
"You said... but he's..." The words came disjointedly but I could do nothing but stutter. I didn't know what was the correct thing to be feeling was; whether I should be glad, elated, or frozen with fear as Bones prowled ever closer to me. He had never before looked upon me as he was looking at me now, with a primal hunger etched into his face and working his jaw, but I could still read that it meant danger for me. Whether he was just Mencheres's puppet, or was being forced to serve him by some other means, I knew that words alone would not help me. The moment he attacked I would have to attack too, no hesitations or second guessing – it was the only way I could live to see another day. If I dropped my guard or underestimated him for one tenth of a second it would be over, I would be fully dead, and I would admit, at last, that my mother had been right all along – they were all blood-sucking monsters.
I didn't dare turn from Bones to look at Mencheres, but I felt cool breath on the right side of my neck. I had to suppress the urge I had to scrub the condensation from his breath off my skin, although it was the grossest sensation I have ever felt in my life. The clammy feeling spread like an infection through my body until cold sweat appeared on my forehead. Though I had never been sick one day in my life, I thought that this must be how normal people felt when they caught a virus like the flu: cold but sweaty, achy and light-headed.
The air around me shifted as he took in a deep breath, dropping the temperature of the space a few degrees. "This is the only way, Cat. I'm sorry but it is..." he whispered in my ear before leaving me, without putting much emotion into the words, sounding just as bland as a dejected salesman who knows you aren't going to buy anything at all that he has to offer. Even as distracted as I was, I could hear him opening a book and flipping through the pages, one every half-second. Bones eyes were on me, I could feel them burning my skin, and his voice faded into nothing but a faint hum.
"I'm going to enjoy sucking every drop of blood from your body," Bones told her easily, the dark pits of his eyes smouldering a dark crimson colour. The way he assessed her was all predator, "And then afterwards..."
I gulped at his words, knowing that he meant every one of them, and knowing what he would do to me when I was no longer strong enough to fight him off. Maybe my mother had been lying all those years, telling me I was the result of rape, but I had no doubt in my mind that it may become a reality for me in just a few precious moments. I fought back the urge to lean over and throw up, if only to keep eyes locked with the predator—the monster of my worst nightmares and my most pleasant dreams. Maybe I had known, somewhere deep inside, that this was the only way things could have ended.
"...ṯnı͗ ḫnt..." Mencheres intoned, his voice sounding as ancient as the words. A pain so great there were no words to describe it gripped me in a vice of white-hot agony and my whole body crumpled in on itself and, with aching arms and legs, I curled into a tight ball on the ground. In the moments that followed, I did not care if I lived or if I died, I just wanted the end to come quickly. "Bones!" I managed to shout through the cramps. I coughed and blood splattered on the floor.
Darkness built like a canopy above me as I lay on my back, choking on the blood which had formed from nothing to fill my lungs, breathing black magic. It was like being underwater, trying desperately to breathe liquid instead of gas, except that for me there was no surface for me to reach for. I was drowning in an infinite pitch-black sea and there was no one to pull me to shore. I could do nothing as the forces hovering above my head swooped down to smother me with dark energy.
Before my consciousness slipped away completely, I thought I saw fire flicker in Bones' eyes that frightened more than it reassured me.
TBC