Death In The Family

Chapter 7

Simone was right. His blood was repulsive in her mouth, but it was easier than she had thought. Not in the level of force she had to put into the bite just to break his skin between his neck and shoulder, but in getting close enough to him to do it. If she imagined she was on the subway during peak hours, pressed between the swaying and sweating bodies of the general New York public, it was barely anything at all.

If she could ignore the kindred response to the conjoined twins of agony and ecstasy in his trembling gasps, it might have even been simple. The faulty mechanism that mistranslated brutality into pleasure in him was dreadfully familiar and she had shuddered in the raw exposure she felt as that dark piece of her related to him. That commonality between them shook her and made her reach inside him to where she did not want to feel and look to where she did not want to see. Without meaning to, she understood Maier and, in understanding and relating, became infected with him.

She spat into the sink, a burst of red blooming abruptly in the white porcelain and then swirling away in the running water. She glanced at her reflection on accident, recoiling at the nightmarish image of the blood-splattered and fever-damp girl. It seemed more like something she would have hallucinated, but lately, her hallucinations were becoming reality. She forced herself to look, to see what she was and what she would have to be to bring an end to all of it. A creature stared back at her through the glass.

"Do you hate him?"

Maier pressed a hand towel to his prized wound, the splotches of bright red on the clean white of both the terrycloth and his shirt like oriental poppies embellishing the materials. She looked away from both the thing in the mirror and the man in the doorway, uncomfortable with cleaning herself in front of this unfamiliar audience.

"I hate the world that created him," she answered, her own voice distant from how far she felt from herself. She was stripped down too raw to lie anymore. Photographs flipped rapidly behind her eyes. "I want to... destroy it for what it allows... for what it does. I want to cut away the rot and burn it."

"That's too ambitious," he said, a bitter delight ringing clearly through that terrible piece of him he infected her with.

She forced herself to look back into the mirror. Her father's gray eyes glittered in the light. "Not for him."

"You might be killed," he smiled. "You might not like it, but you would be safe within the network. They'll offer you plenty more than safety for your service."

"I'd rather be dead than their carrot to dangle in front of him," she sneered.

He walked into the bathroom, the steps of his fine polished shoes echoing off the stone and porcelain until he stood behind her. She watched him in the mirror, meeting his stare, and had the strong impression that if he didn't abhor human contact, he would place his hand on her in reassurance. His admiration was more condemning than any accusation she could expose herself to. It occurred to her then, in a winding twist of horror and amusement, that she had made a friend.

"If you free him..." he started to request, but faltered on the edge of hope. She followed that thread easily.

"He will slaughter you without mercy," she assured him. "I'll ask him to do it barehanded."

Maier's polite little smile twitched into something frenzied and she could feel an ecstatic response swell within him. Love had as many faces as horror and, after touching Maier's love toward Leif, she was able to accept that the two emotions often wore the same masks. Fear and love sung in a tumultuous harmony in her heart, fueling her devotion to vengeance both for and against her father. She swiped up some of the blood from her chin and pressed it to the center of her forehead, letting it gather enough to dribble down the bridge of her nose. With her eyes unfocused, she could see a hole stabbed through her head. Maier's high, trilling laughter bounced off the tiles.