Chapter 18
The light was blinding. They had her in the operating theater, a mask cupping her nose and mouth to give her oxygen. A doctor
in latex gloves and a surgical mask stood on her right. He was splashed up to the wrists in blood. Gwen was aware of nurses
hurrying about at the periphery of her vision. There was a blue curtain behind the doctor and a great brown smear of gore
across it. A stack of monitors to the side of the bed captured her vitals: her pulse, her temperature, her oxygen levels.
“Where am I hit?” she asked or tried to. She wasn’t sure if the sounds she made were words.
The doctor turned his head to meet her gaze and she saw it was King Sorrow. Behind the mask, his skin was a sheath of black
scales. His golden eyes, shot through with those threads of crimson, glittered with good humor.
“Looks like that old bitch shot you right in your only chance to beat me, love,” he said. “But don’t worry. You’ve got one
in the lung, one in the rectouterine pouch—my, that sounds dirty—and one in the hip. It’s bad. But it’s not fatal. I’m sure we can keep you alive until Easter. You ought to be on the slow, painful road to recovery when I hit this hospital like a
cruise missile. The ICU is right below the maternity ward, and there is nothing quite so sweet as the smell of roasted newborns.”
Something was moving behind the paper mask covering his mouth, as if there was a great slug in there, where his lips belonged.
“I’ll kill myself first,” she whispered. “I’ll go right out the window.”
“You won’t be strong enough, Gwennie, darling. It’ll be months and a hip operation before you can walk again. And you don’t have months, Gwen. You have weeks.”
“Doctor,” a nurse said, “the patient is articulating.”
He twitched his head slightly and when he spoke again, it wasn’t King Sorrow’s voice, but a nasally American accent. “I hear
her. You’re with the nursing school? They won’t have talked about this in your classes. It isn’t uncommon, when the patient’s
blood pressure is this low, for a certain amount of anesthesia awareness. It isn’t true consciousness. It will pass as we continue the infusion.”
The doctor, who still had King Sorrow’s face, looked back at Gwen and winked.
“Not that I’ll let you burn to death. Just everyone around you.” It was King Sorrow’s voice again, and she understood no one could hear him but
her. “You, Gwen—I’ve been dreaming of you for years. How sweet it’ll be to tear you apart and watch your guts slop out, while you’re
still alive. And how sweet it’ll taste to lap at a lake of your blood. How often have I told you that regret and failure and
grief season one’s juices? And after all your failures, all your regrets, after everything you’ve lost—and you’ve lost so much, Gwen, it’s almost funny—I get dizzy just thinking about it. In fact, how would you feel if I had myself a little aperitif right now? The blood will
have to wait, but I know something almost as good.”
A black, impossibly long, forked tongue slipped out from behind the mask and flicked at the tears running from her right eye.
She hadn’t known until then that she was crying.
“Irresistible,” he said.