“You’re in theReview-Journal,” she says.
Police Officers Involved in Shooting at Sunrise Hospital, the headline reads. I snatch it from her hands and start scrolling.
The woman attempted to attack the officers and run, according to the Metropolitan Police Department, the story reads.One of the officers drew a gun during the chase. Officer Bucklee has been employed with the department since 2015.
The worst night of my life, flattened into a few quotes at a press conference. The story doesn’t include my name. No mention, either, of my transformation. It’s easier to deny things when they seem impossible.
“Ying said they got him straight to the OR,” Veer murmurs. “If he was dead, the headline would be different.”
She holds out her hands, and I drop the phone back into them.
“Tell me the real story?” she asks quietly, like she’s afraid she’ll spook me. I swallow and taste dust and blight and the salt of my own tears, and suddenly, the words are there.
“My family’s cursed.” I scratch at my arm without thinking, and my nails reopen one of the many cuts the flayed man speckled me with. My blood still smells like him. “Well, that’s the easiest way to describe it, at least. Not in a special way. In a sick way. I mean, my body’s just like yours, mostly, except for there’s something extra inside.”
Veer’s face doesn’t change, exactly, just tightens, and I remember that she’s seen it—the gaping wound of my chest, the alien inversion of my joints, the scimitar canines curving over my warped jawbones.
“Blood keeps the curse buried. Three, four milliliters a day. My uncle used to steal it from UNLV, he worked in a lab there. But he’s gone, same as my mom. When we drove out together to see your brother, I was getting some more from this guy who has a lab in his basement.” I swallow, remembering the dead beep of Brian’s disconnected phone. “But that was a one-time thing.”
Veer nods slowly, and I smell apprehension on her breath. “And now?”
I’m no good at stealing. I’m worse at killing. I don’t want to be resentful like Uncle Bill, or a parasite like my mom. I wish I knew what else there was to be.
“I don’t know.” Every word weighs me down. “There’s no killing it. Not without killing the rest of me too.”
Veer’s been looking at the floor, playing with her cuticles, but now her eyes rise to meet mine and I’m blinded again by the high-beam intensity of her stare. “Why would you want to kill it?”
For a fresh start. A life without the specter of family or flayed men, where I owe nothing and have no secrets. Would she understand that?
Veer absentmindedly rubs at the still-fresh cut on her arm, and the air fills with a smell like jasmine blossoms and sharpened stakes. “Three or four milliliters, huh. That’s not so bad. A person could lose that much blood every day, no problem.”
She looks at the floor again, and then up at me through her lashes, and sort of half smiles. Her eyes are dark and desperately generous, and suddenly I understand what she’s offering.
I can’t take it. Can I?
A fresh start. Can’t fuckin’ die in Nevada.
Veer saw me in all my grotesque animal fury and still came after me. Maybe she’ll learn to resent me, or I’ll learn to hate her, but isn’t that what I wanted? I mean, the chance to try something new and the freedom to turn away from it when I want, on my terms. And I won’t have to lie or steal or carve pieces of myself off as offerings to the gods of loneliness to survive. At least for a little while.
I want to sayWhy?andWhat’s wrong with you?and maybe, just a little,What’s wrong with me?There’s a roughness in my throat, and it takes a second to realize I’m on the verge of tears. Because I’m scared, fuck, I’m scared that the future might be good, and it feels like betraying my mom to look forward to it.
“That could get old quick,” I say, and Veer shrugs and I’m gripped with the urge to say more, to say everything, to get on my knees and swear to her that I’ll never hurt her, that my curse will never touch her, but that’s not true and I think she’d know I was lying.
I shuffle forward and reach across the gap between us until I can tap the back of her hand with one finger. “Can we go for a drive?”
So we drive. Veer winds through the neighborhoods, going nowhere in particular. Just going. Maybe she’ll drive in circles till the sun goes down, till time stops. Her knuckles are striped pink and white against the black foam of the steering wheel.
“Are you going to tell anyone?” I whisper.
Without warning, Veer pulls over. She shoves her hand into her pocket and then there’s her open palm and the snick of a blade, and before I can react, her hand is on my mouth and my sinuses are full of the scent of calamity and collapse. I lick the line she’s opened, a sort of second heart line, and my body crackles with the electric energy of sacrifice and satiation. No more blood that smells of preservation and penitence. She tastes like coming home.
“What do you think?” she says, her eyes on the horizon, her sweat on my lips.
I press my tongue flat against the cut, willing it to close, and pull away.
“Your palm’s a stupid place to cut. It’ll keep reopening.”
Veer retracts her hand, her eyes dark. “I’m counting on it.”
