Page 39 of The Cannibal

“Like something went rancid,” I mumbled.

“You would think with the price they’d have better-tasting Hosts,” he mumbled, folding the dirty towel neatly.

“I . . .” I considered my words carefully, unsure if this would be a situation to panic or not. “I don’t think it was her.”

“Then we will try another.”

“The man in the gardens tasted the same.” I swallowed back tears. “Something is deeply, terribly wrong, Luka.”

He stared at me. It could have been anger or stress, but he did not take my words lightly. He twisted the rag between his hands mindlessly, then bit the inside of his dimpled cheek as he glanced back at the door.

“Look,” he said and turned back to me, coaxing me to stand, “we will go home, figure something else out, yeah? Relax, recover.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

“Watch it,” he warned, escorting me outside the washroom. “I’m helping.”

The only comforting thing about tonight was knowing that I didn’t have to figure it out alone. Yet the problems just kept building, threatening to burst if I collected any more. Even if I could keep blood down long enough to digest, there was this pestering feeling that it wasn’t going to happen. That something was wrong, and it was completely out of my control.

Everyone has problems, but whether or not we had the means to solve them was as unknown as what would happen if my time ran out.

13

THE FIXER

The ceiling became my muse for the night.

I attempted to sleep, then attempted to not sleep, but ultimately I was haunted by that woman again. How she managed to spike my blood pressure only a couple days after resurfacing from her coma is quite a feat.

I slipped an arm off my shoulder to reach over another body for my lighter, sitting up against the headboard to scratch a match for my cigarette. Even a deep breath was less meditating now.

When I shifted, so did my blanket of body parts. One woman turned her back to me, the ringlets of her hair tickling my arm. A second woman tucked to the opposite side, her face buried in the pillow. Last one was across the end of the bed, hugging a decorative pillow and curled in a throw blanket. The bed was covered in a mess of twisted sheets, pillows, probably some other unsavory items lost in the ripples of slippery satin.

Even with such succulent distractions, one thing kept me awake like a fresh shot of cocaine. It was the taste, like something went rancid. Alina’s voice echoed in my head.

I took a deep, meditative pull on the cigarette before even that didn’t agree with my stomach. The tobacco embers waned and died between my fingers.

I shifted around the sleeping forms before my feet could touch the ground.

My arm hooked around my bicep, pulling it across my body to stretch before doing the other.

With one step forward, I stumbled.

“The floor? Really?” I hissed.

The nude man on the floor groaned, rolling over in his hungover state.

I flicked the cigarette butt at him before gathering trousers and a shirt at the very least. The room was in more of a mess than I’d thought. An abandoned fruit cart, pillows, wine bottles, clothes. Women specifically have cut down on the number of garments they wear in a single outfit, but I am of the opinion they could use even fewer layers. Just the petticoats alone took up most of the floor. I stepped on the heel of a shoe, the pain making me bite my tongue and hold back a clenched fist.

By the time I stumbled out of there I was finishing the buttons on my shirt. The smell of fresh-made coffee wafted from the parlor down the hall. Just in time for breakfast. A migraine was already bleeding through, the aura creating flashes in my vision.

I had accepted that my face would always be scarred, but what I didn’t prepare for was the constant pain of a dying eye. The poison had a long half-life, breaking down my flesh as it tried to heal, a vicious cycle of decay that was far too prolonged.

Voices cast in the background as I approached. I never understood how everyone was so chipper, so early. People bustled about, literally; there were a lot of women today, fully dressed, possibly a bit too formal. I suppose when the Sire is in, it means hunting time for a different kind of predator. Women. They’ll eat you alive if you don’t watch yourself.

Good-quality Hosts knew that sometimes, uncommon but not unheard of, proposals were made during visits from other Nests. Cattle graduating to butcher, it seemed, but these ladies weren’t too concerned as long as they benefited from the transition. Stability is one hell of a motivation. The Appraisal had been in the planning stages for months, with the small sidetrack that was our trip to Buffalo to collect Alina.

By the time I dragged myself to the table, most of the food had been picked at by the Hosts. Which was all fine, I was here for coffee.