Exsanguination and Other Love Stories

XI. The Fourth Wall Fails

Faultless eyes widening, my vampire released me. I whirled to catch the last moments of Barabbas' exchange with the stranger, who had reached forward and grabbed him by the shirt collar with one hand, and seized his razor-brandishing arm with the other.

"That's enough," he cried, with his eerie woman's voice. "Turn on me, will you? Then be as you were!"

"Cordelia!" exclaimed Mr. Blue, in absolute horror. It was the last thing that he said. Seconds later, the razor slipped from his hands and clattered to the floor. Falling onto his knees, he clutched at his throat with both hands, even as his fingers and his face lost color, turned ashen and grey.

Call it cowardice or a belated sense of self-preservation: I didn't make a move towards Mr. Blue to help as it happened. I remember thinking to myself, as a sort of moral excuse, that I wasn't certified to give the Heimlich to anything larger than a cat, as I just stood there, frozen, watching.

His fingers melded together. His blue whiskers grew long and lank, like the fronds of a catfish or the unraveling gills of an abyssal shark, something from cold depths which only comes to the surface to die. His eyes barely changed at all: or at least the expression in them didn't change. There was the same sort of symmetry to his pointed nose and toothy under bite when the magic had finished as there had been to his face before: and as his arms melded into his body and his legs became an long, jagged hashtag of a tail, his flesh, blue-grey and white-bellied, kept the same texture and sheen of moist sandpaper that had once been the defining character of his shoes.

The old man turned to face Florian and I, unconcerned by the death throes of the piscine monstrosity that had once been Mr. Blue.

"Don't shudder like that, Sabilla," my very not-deceased great-aunt Cordelia said, through his thin, chapped lips. "I'm not turning you into anything. Although...physical improvements could definitely be made..."

"What do you want?" I asked her, my voice trembling.

"Why," she said, "I want to make you my scion. More specifically, I need your body. I don't have one anymore, thanks to Barabbas over there and those pesky wolves: so I'll be taking yours."

"It's not a bad offer," put in Florian from beside me. "She can do a lot to improve your circumstances. Physically and otherwise. She made me what I am. Brought me into the world..."

"Not a bad offer!" I very nearly shrieked. "She's NOT DEAD, she just turned Mr. Blue into a – I don't know what – and she wants to possess me!"

"Well, it's not like she has any other surviving options. Witches are particular like that. It's got to be a blood relation for the spell to work."

I stared incredulously at him. Deference to one's elders is one thing, but there comes a point when two feet have to be put down.

"Oh, come on," said Cordelia. "It won't be that bad. So I'll live rent-free in your head! I'll be a free resource! Or ... what does your generation call it... a digital personal assistant! Ask me anything, anytime you like! You'll be perfectly free not to listen to me. And I am so sick of wearing the wolves' uncle. He's got gout and a horrible mental attitude."

"Moreover," added Florian, "The All Soul's Water she used to possess him loses its edge in a few weeks, and then she'll be out of him and this world for good..."

Cordelia shot him a keen-eyed, sharp glance from under the old man's bushy brows, as though he'd just said a little too much for her liking. But Florian only smiled as blithely and fetchingly and blindingly as ever, and kept on talking.

"There's a whole long story involving werewolves and how she lost her most recent body in the first place," he said. "But I won't bore you with the details."

"You gave me up to her," I said accusingly.

"I didn't have another choice," said Florian. "Your aunt's the only one who could have handled Blue, you know. You put yourself into this situation, Bill. You wanted to be spunky and new-fangled and independent, and look where it got you. Why - the only thing standing between you now and the Fourth World right now is three inches of aquarium glass! One light tap and - "

"Enough talk," said Cordelia sharply. "Where's my flask? I know Blue kept it around here somewhere after I had the wolves bring it to him."

She found it, discarded, on the ground. She shook it. Nothing sloshed.

"Oh dear," said Florian. "Blue had her drink it already, didn't he? Clever b****rd. That could change things..."

A funny gleam had come into his eye.

"It changes nothing!" snapped Cordelia. "Come here, Sabilla."

"No, thank you," I said, beelining towards the door.

"Come here right now, Sabilla Vane, or I'll turn you into a goldfish!"

"I'd rather be a goldfish than spend the rest of my life with you in my head!" I cried over my shoulder, banging on the door futilely. "Family or not!" I turned back. The door had no interior latch. Whatever mechanism opened it had most certainly died with Blue.

My mind raced. For a few brief seconds, the sheer hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could still catch glimpses of movement in the water, but the faces were gone - all of them. Whatever intuition had seized me before was fleeing fast. So I did the only thing left to do under the circumstances: I seized onto the last tail of it as it darted away, and I bluffed wildly.

Mr. Blue had said witches cursed people. He had also labelled the pillar "Vane Witches". Cordelia wanted my body because I was related to her. It seemed to me that now, the only way out of this situation now was in.

"FLORIAN WERTHER BATHORY BYRON," I cried, throwing my head up and meeting his eyes head on, "if you don't break that aquarium glass right now, I will curse you!"

It was an educated bluff, and my delivery bordered on the hysterical. Cordelia was not impressed. She crossed her old man's arms and raised one eyebrow contemptuously at me from across the room.

But it wasn't her reaction which mattered right now. Not at all.

"You can't do that, Bill," objected Florian, his alabaster brow wrinkling with uncharacteristic concern. "You wouldn't. You're a nice girl... And besides, drinking that water couldn't have woken more than a little bit of witch..."

"Oh, am I?" I said. "Do you want to bet on me not having the will to do it? After all the disinterested friendship you've shown me?!"

Cordelia laughed. Then she caught a glimpse of Florian's face.

"After you got Selene killed?!" I cried.

"Don't you dare - " my great-aunt began.

But it was too late. There was a great blur of motion. The glass of the tank wall nearest to us cracked.

Splintered.

Florian hadn't needed long to think. And in a wall of silver and memory, witch water broke over us all.