Chapter 20 Christine #2
If I can’t climb off the pipe, I’ll have to tear it out sideways, through my flesh.
“I’ll heal,” I whisper desperately to myself. “I’ll heal, I’ll heal, I’ll heal. Okay, Christine. Do it. Stop being a coward and just do this.”
I extrude the claws of my right hand and slash at my side, ripping through skin and flesh. I have to work fast before it heals back up.
My faint, frantic screams echo back to me as I carve into my own body, working toward the pipe.
Once I’ve gone far enough, I throw my weight to the left, as hard as I can.
The metal tears through the rest of my decimated right side, and I fall, plummeting farther into the dark and crashing hard on my left shoulder.
My body has been severed partway through, right below my ribs. I can’t move. I lie in the clammy dark on damp concrete, choking on my own blood and pain, waiting to heal.
My consciousness dips in and out while my organs, blood vessels, and muscles knit themselves back together. It’s slower than usual, since my blood supply is so low.
I need to scale the side of the pit. I have to get back up to the main level and find someone to devour. Maybe I’ll drink from the Angel again if I can find him.
Patting my side carefully, I discover that it’s much more intact now. It’s still sticky, since the muscles are forming, and there’s no skin yet, but I’m whole enough to climb, and I must do it before blood loss sends me into convulsions.
At first, it’s difficult to make headway up the wall. But my claws are strong, and I’m sure-footed, so I manage it, little by little, finding grooves and nooks for my toes and nails. Judging by the structure of the wall, I think I fell down a subterranean elevator shaft.
No city planner in their right mind would have approved this building as safe for use, not with so much of it in disrepair.
I’m more convinced than ever that Firmin Richards and Gil Leveque bribed people to get approvals and pass their inspections.
I’ve always gotten slimy vibes from them both, even more so since I ran into Mr. Richards that night in the residential wing.
Not to mention the discovery that not only my room but several of the other apartments have two-way mirrors for walls.
It’s disturbing on a whole other level. Mr. Richards must have requested those mirrors, and Joe Buquet, the contractor, knows they exist, too.
Those perverts set everything up and then lured in disadvantaged girls, offering them work and a cheap place to stay.
And now Buquet, Mr. Richards, and probably Gil enjoy a free live peep show whenever they want. It’s disgusting.
Fueled by rage, I drag myself over the edge of the pit and lie on the concrete floor for a moment to catch my breath while visions of lurid vengeance swirl through my mind.
I should drink them both dry. But if I destroy Mr. Richards, what will happen to me, to Raoul’s musical, to everyone who lives and works at the New Orpheum?
Maybe lethal vengeance is too drastic an option. I need to figure out something else.
For now, all I can think about is drinking my fill of warm blood.
Where there’s an elevator, there are probably stairs nearby. I fumble along the walls of the dark hallway until I locate a door, half-torn from its hinges. Cool air wafts through the space, and I know instinctively that I’ve found my way up.
Slowly, step by step, I climb out of the depths of the New Orpheum.
By the time I reach the upper floors and find familiar territory, I’m shaking all over.
Thanks to the absence of prey and my nearly unconscious state, my body skipped right past the blood frenzy and into a state of weakened desperation.
I’m not even sure I have the strength to overpower a human, much less the presence of mind to lure someone into a closet and make sure they stay quiet while I take what I need.
There’s no time to drug them, which means they’ll remember everything, and that’s a complication I don’t need. But at this point, it’s drink or die.
I shove my way through one of the doors with the construction tape on it, and I stagger into the hallway beyond.
There, in the buzzing light of the fluorescent fixtures overhead, stands a miracle in gray coveralls, wearing a hard hat and holding a measuring tape.
Joe Buquet, contractor.
At the sound of the door closing behind me, he turns.
I must be a sight, with my bloody shirt torn halfway off, blood drying on my leggings, more blood spotting my ballet flats. My hair is a wild tangle, and I know I’m pale as death.
Shock blazes across his whiskered face. He’s got a big, frizzy neck beard and a red flush of alcohol across his cheeks. There’s a beer bottle sitting near his feet.
So he’s a little tipsy. That might help me. If I play my cards right, everyone will believe he got too drunk on the job and passed out. Even if he remembers what’s about to happen, he won’t talk about it for fear that people might think he’s lost his mind.
I’m too weak to pounce on him, but if I can lure him in closer…if I can just get a taste of his blood, enough to revive me…
I stagger toward him.
Buquet’s eyes widen at first, but there’s an opportunistic glint in them, too.
“Hey, hey now,” he drawls, hooking the measuring tape dispenser onto his work belt. “You’re not supposed to be back here. It ain’t safe. Did you get hurt? I don’t see any cuts or nothing.” His gaze slides along my body, lingering on the exposed part of my right breast.
Any decent man would be so alarmed by my bloody clothes that lusting for my body would be the furthest thing from his mind. Obviously, Joe Buquet is not a decent man.
“I’m fine,” I manage. “I just need…a hug.” It kills my pride to say it, but I have to get close enough to bite him, and I’m weakening fast. I don’t think I can close the distance between us without help.
“Well then, c’mere, darlin’,” he says in an oily tone that’s probably supposed to be comforting. “You bump your pretty head back there? Head wounds can bleed like a sumbitch.”
He approaches, and I collapse against him, clinging for support. At the scent of his thick body and the heated blood within it, my fangs slide out, so I turn my head away, letting my hair hang over my face so he doesn’t see them yet.
I need to bite him now. Rise to my full height and latch on to his neck. Gulp down what I can, use the regained strength to push him down, then take everything he can safely spare. Maybe a little extra.
But a spasm passes through my whole frame, a hideous weakness washing over me.
Shit…I think I’m too late. I don’t know if I can drink from him without help.
“Can you…hold me?” I whisper.
He chuckles with lecherous surprise. “You feelin’ horny, little one? Come to see Daddy?”
He’s pulling me closer, thank goodness. I turn my face toward his neck while his hands grope my ass.
But before I can bite him, he spins me around, shoves my front against the wall, and presses in behind me. “I dunno what kinky role-play shit you got goin’ on, but I’m into it. Had my eye on you since the day you moved in.” His hands fumble along the waistband of my leggings.
Sandwiched between him and the wall, my body racked with cold shivers and waves of nausea, I realize two things.
One, he’s planning to fuck me. And two, I can’t defend myself this time.
I am no longer the predator.
“Stop,” I rasp with a faint attempt at struggling.
“Nah, you can’t tease a man and then back out,” he rumbles. “You take it like a good little slu—”
The last word cuts off, transformed into a garbled choking sound. Buquet is yanked off me. I slide down the wall and crumple to the floor, dizzy and fading.
A tall, black-clad figure in a white mask towers over him, seeming to fill the entire hallway.
The Angel’s jaw is hard as granite, and his gloved hands grip the long black rope he has flung around Buquet’s neck.
Is it a rope or a shadow? I can’t tell. He draws it tighter while Buquet tears at the noose with both hands, kicking uselessly.
The Angel gives the shadowy rope a savage jerk, and Buquet sags, his eyes blank and bulging, his face brick-red stained with purple. He makes a sound I’ll never forget…a choked burble, the last tiny bubbles of air escaping his constricted throat in a death gargle.
After several more seconds, the Angel lets the body fall to the floor. The noose vanishes instantly, confirming my suspicion that it was only a shadow all along. A shadow made real, a dream turned into sickening, tangible reality.
The Angel steps over Buquet’s corpse and kneels beside me.
“One of my other ghosts told me that Agnes led you astray.” Rage and sorrow mingle in his eyes. “I have destroyed her for good. She will never find rest, as she no longer exists in any plane of reality.”
“You killed Joe Buquet,” I murmur.
He cocks his head, eyes glittering behind the mask. “He touched you.”
“But I need his blood. I got hurt, and—”
He tears his coat off one shoulder and pulls his shirt aside, baring his throat. “Take mine.”
I try to make myself lean forward and drink from him, but I can’t move a muscle. I’m finished. Dying.
“Help me.” It’s the barest whisper, and it’s all I can manage.
“Fuck,” says the Angel in a pained tone. Leaning forward, he grasps my head gently and pulls my face into the curve between his neck and shoulder. My fangs sink into his flesh, and instantly the blood flows, pulsing over my tongue.
His blood tastes as deliciously incandescent as the last time.
Immediately, I’m awake, transported, whirled into a thrilling expanse where constellations dance behind my eyelids and meteors streak through my veins.
After a few swallows, I’m invigorated enough to control my limp arms, curl them around the Angel’s neck, and hold on tight while I drink my fill.
And yet amid the bliss of blood, a thought sticks in my mind like a splinter.
The Angel killed someone.