Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
Something is exceptionally wrong. A nagging thought he can’t make sense of as he licks sweet blood off the palm of one hand.
Hand?
Since when does he have hands like these? Not a normal hand made from the formless throng of body, of which he has many, but one of two that are different. Corporal. Constrained by rules of biology that can be bent, as he’s done, but not entirely broken.
That is one of the problems, isn’t it? These two hands contain rigid substance other than that which is nothing.
Solidity.
Meat and bone.
How can he be meat and bone?
And there is more of it. All over. Encasing him.
Him? Is that right?
He looks around the room, which is also wrong, because look and room aren’t things he does. He should not look, because his perception has nothing to do with sockets and wads of jelly-filled flesh. He should not be inside a room, because he exists in the place where nothing else is.
This is somewhere, and the somewhere sucks.
Along with the knowledge that something is majorly boned about the situation, exists an unease.
A fear. A concept foreign to the substance that is both brain and nothing like the soft, salty gray matter he’s just eaten—the matter that he is starting to suspect lives inside the skull anchoring him to this ugly room.
The fear isn’t of the place, which is good because it doesn’t make sense to fear walls and stone. It is an intangible concern, like he’s misplaced something precious, even though he’s never considered anything of particular import.
There. On the ground.
They lie in a pile, which is a very meat thing to do but the sight of them causes a savage fury that hasn’t been felt in units of time he can no longer understand.
Careful, because their shells are meat and meat is so easily destroyed, he lifts them off the stone.
The tacky floor pillows are as good as it’s going to get so he sits them there, dragging more pillows to frame their limp forms so they don’t slump.
The soft, pale one moans, the thin layer of skin over eyeballs flickering. Opening. Opening more and more. That feels normal, the unease in his gut he shouldn’t have softening, shifting to pleasure at being goggled at.
He focuses on the other one, knowing an empty vessel by scent. Searching around the room, he smells the air, easily catching an essence he knows as well as …
Weird.
The thought can’t be completed.
An absence of memory. Is that what’s wrong?
His memory is gone? But gone isn’t right.
He knows some things. He knows he isn’t supposed to contain this density of material.
Knows these carved off pieces aren’t supposed to be sodden and floating around inside of him.
Knows he isn’t supposed to have this silent mass of soft tissue at his center.
Knows it isn’t supposed to be stabbed through with a shard of metal.
And he knows her.
Even in another shell, he will always know her.
Reaching a hand—not the clumsy flesh ones but the correct kind—into the Lululemon-wearing meat crumpled on the ground, he ever so gently pulls her out.
Unlike last time, she doesn’t need much to go back to her shell, soul and flesh connected.
Soul and flesh connected? That thought frustrates him. Alarms him. Something is so fantastically wrong and his mind—that he shouldn’t have—feels slippery, a greased egg on a tilted countertop.
A cage.
He’s been caged.
Certainty swells for a moment, the puddle at his core expanding, deepening and widening into a bottomless pit of fury.
As he moves a hundred real hands to sink claws into the prison, rip it from off of him, he hesitates.
That doesn’t feel right either. He is made of the wrong things, in disconnected pieces, not properly whole, yes, but …
“Teo?” A voice he would sooner cease to exist than not listen to, whispers. Then hands, sliding to cheeks that he shouldn’t have, direct a face that he also shouldn’t have to focus down on her.
Ophelia.
His Ophelia.
But in a reciprocal way, not that he’s a creep about it.
Basement grime and blood coating her dress, she gazes up at him with a brow creased in worry. He doesn’t like that expression on her face, a sliver of panic thrumming through the destroyed heart motionless in his center.
“Are you okay? I mean, you’re not okay, but … are you okay?” This voice is vibrating with nervous energy, but even so it is accompanied by thin fingers, unerringly finding one of the two meat-arms in his mass of dripping shadow and, frankly, a lot of arms and things like arms, and even teeth.
Topher.
He wants to attach a neat yet meaningful summation to that name, like he’d done with Ophelia, but his meat brain skitters around a few different possessive descriptors that make him uncomfortable and don’t necessarily feel mutually agreed upon.
Luckily, there is blood to focus on.
It oozes from Topher’s hairline, down cheek, chin, and throat, and he can smell it on those fragile hands lost in the pulsing blackness of his body.
This blood is Topher’s, and the earlier rage sweeps through him again.
The sight of Topher prone, hurt, bleeding, then awake, trying so hard only to go down again, the brutality of the hit, the way his delicate skull impacted unyielding stone—it is intolerable and unforgivable, yet he’s already consumed the cause.
His strange matter pulses in agitation, but he gently moves his face from Ophelia’s grasp, drawing Topher closer to bring bloodied hands to some of his mouths.
So carefully he drags tongues around each finger, across each palm, mindful of teeth.
Each hand is licked clean before pressing tongue to the sweet mess streaming down Topher’s brow and then cheek.
Another laps up shoulder blades and neck, to the back of Topher’s scalp, mindful of where skin has been mashed against bone.
A soft noise from Topher and he pulls back slightly, concerned he’s hurt his frail flesh in some way.
Gray orbs quiver, but not in pain or even fear—which is wild because some part of him is aware that too many mouths are in play.
The maelstrom of emotion in those storm-cloud eyes drags his attention down to that defenseless mouth, remembering blunt teeth, a questing tongue, and the honeyed press of pale lips.
A kiss he hadn’t reciprocated for reasons more difficult to grasp than the unreality of his form and the fracturing of his memory. Whatever the reason, he wants to correct it now.
Careful to use only the mouth connected to the prison, teeth receding to wherever teeth go when not eating, he presses lips to impossibly soft lips.
Topher’s response is tentative, only lips and breath, soft and hesitant but underneath that, eager.
One of his now bloodless hands slides up to grasp at the place between neck and jaw, unerringly finding it in the dripping ichor and shadow.
Once Topher gets the hang of it—or the assurance that teeth aren’t going to eviscerate him—he leans in, lips parting, and eyes closed. Like he isn’t kissing a monster at all.
“Hey, I’m totally for this but we’ve got stuff to do right now,” Ophelia says, letting them keep kissing for a moment more before catching his cheek and directing his face back to her.
Those eyes are cerulean and beautiful but marred in the unhappiness of her delicate housing.
She strains on tiptoes, trying to press her forehead to his but she is only, like, three inches tall, so he sends a wave of shadow beneath her bare feet, lifting her up so they can meet.
“Mateo Borrero, come back,” she whispers to him, lips close enough to brush at least one of his mouths.
This nonsense jumble shocks him, forcing a clarity he hadn’t known he’d lacked.
He knows suddenly that he can do what she asked, but if he does, there is something he’ll miss. A swell of unknown enticement sits just out of reach, and he stands on the precipice. One step and he can understand, but if he steps, he can’t un-step. He will fall.
“Mateo Borrero, come back to me, or I’m going to be mad at you forever. So will Topher,” Ophelia says less softly.
He doesn’t just back away from the edge, he turns around and sprints—metaphorically speaking.
What his body does is shed shadow like he’s one of those inky cap mushrooms on overdrive, a violent expulsion of ichor that leaves him naked and unstable, holding Ophelia around the middle with Topher latched on to one of his arms. He can’t support Ophelia’s weight, so he drops to his ass on the ground, dragging both of them down with him.