Page 8 of Grave Humor

“Then our bargain is made. What are you truly made of, Miss Nash? I suppose we shall find out soon enough, won’t we?”

Eoghan brought the vampire out of the freezer, and with an intent expression, he bandaged and stitched the man’s body back together. “I will not permit ignorance to influence our wager, and I will hold you to none of it should you change your mind after what I tell you. When he feeds, it will be the worst pain you’ll have ever experienced in your life. He will take you to death’s door, and he will hold you there. You’ll scream—or you’ll try to. You won’t have the strength to for long. After three or four deep drinks, your body will react and do its best to conserve your life. Screaming wastes precious oxygen. Your body will understand your death comes swiftly and without mercy.”

“How is that worse than starving to death, suffocating on chemical fumes, or however else someone can die down here? That’s what I get to look forward to.” I pointed at the drum containing the body. “That’s probably going to kill me before anything else.”

“If only killing me were so simple. It’s not. If you’re truly unafraid of death, wake him. Later, don’t complain that you suffered through the pains of hell being foolish.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with him. Only a fool would deliberately bring a vampire back to life. I walked across the room and retrieved a scalpel from the instrument drawer, perched on the edge of the examination table, and nicked my arm halfway between my wrist and elbow. Several drops of blood welled up and streamed over my skin. I pressed the wound to the vampire’s mouth and waited.

It took a few moments, but the vampire’s throat contracted when he swallowed, and steam rose from his chilled body.

“It begins,” Eoghan warned. “Prepare yourself.”

“I think I’m a little beyond that stage, Captain Obvious. I was prep—”

The vampire’s fangs tore into my arm, and steel-strong hands snatched my wrist and elbow to hold me in place. According to movies and rumor, vampires bit and sucked. The reality was a far more agonizing thing, and a great deal more brutal.

He chewed on me, tearing at my skin to release more of my blood so it was easier for him to swallow. Some thought of pain as an ever-strengthening inferno, but lightning jolted through me, zapping to my shoulder, striking with the fury of a tempest.

My chest tightened, and my heart stuttered.

The truth of Eoghan’s words stabbed to my bones. I opened my mouth, but my voice betrayed me. A gasp slipped between my lips, but my scream failed to make it beyond my throat. The first time my heart skipped several beats, I recognized the truth. If I let him, the vampire truly would bleed me dry. His teeth tore at my arm again, deeper.

A line separated the living from the dead, and I straddled it. The pain convinced me I still lived, but a cool quiet lurked just beyond my reach. If I stretched for it, I could claim it and make it my own. No longer would I drift, a victim of greed and as listless as any ghost. I knew all about ghosts, although I’d forgotten about them.

They had kept me company as a child, watching over me when I had had no one else. When I refused to believe in ghosts out of fear of my parents’ wrath, they’d kept their distance, although I’d remained aware of them still. That had been a boundary, too, one that allowed me to please my parents and indulged their dislike of magic, true to their vanilla roots.

Maybe if they had snorted some pixie dust, I wouldn’t have thought restoring a vampire to life by letting him chew my arm off was a good idea. No, I still would have cut my arm and woken him.

Some said there was always hope, but I couldn’t see it. I could barely afford a place to sleep, I couldn’t always afford food to eat, and I got the occasional pack of smokes, but in everything that actually mattered, I had nothing but dead ends.

I had a dead-end job, a dead-end education, and dead-end friendships, which all led to the same place, a dead-end life. Why couldn’t I choose when I hit the dead end?

This way, I made my life and my death worth something, although I hoped the vampire would hurry up and finish his work. The rending agony in my arm dulled, but a sharper throb in my chest promised my heart would give out soon enough.

Closing my eyes, I waited. I drifted over the line between life and death, straining for the cool and calm place beyond my reach. My traitorous heart refused to stop beating.

I supposed Eoghan had been right. Either the vampire had lost interest in bleeding me dry or there was something to his claim. How could I be robbed of even death?

Life was truly a cruel, unfair mistress.

The agony ebbed to a tolerable dull throb, which matched my faltering heartbeat. Sounds filtered in one by one, but a scream captured my attention. Eoghan snarled at the noise he loathed, and the ruckus ended with a gurgle. A body thumped to the floor. Something dripped, and the harsh stench of the embalming fluids burned my nose. My lungs stung, and my chest tightened further.

Some fool had likely killed us all knocking over the formaldehyde.

Another scream broke the quiet, and Eoghan snarled a curse. “Why must they always scream? Maybe if you hadn’t attempted to sacrifice an unwilling to me, maybe I wouldn’t have bothered waking your vampire. You deserve your fate. Had you brought me a willing sacrifice, things would be different right now. No matter. Willing or not, she belongs to me now. It’s a pity you won’t learn from this mistake.”

Eoghan needed to stop talking to corpses. It never accomplished anything, although I had taken up talking to the less lively residents a time or two out of boredom. After hundreds of years on ice, I couldn’t really blame him for talking to anyone—or anything—that might listen to him.

Warm arms lifted me, and cold, clawed hands wrapped around my limp wrist.

“This place is tainted,” a voice rasped.

“That it is. Should we find that director, rip his throat out. Drain him if you like, although he might turn your stomach,” Eoghan ordered.

I took that to mean the vampire lived. Huh. I’d actually lost, although winning wasn’t much different from losing, and losing had benefits if I tilted my head to the side and squinted. I couldn’t open my eyes or otherwise move, much to my disgust.

The cold hands released me, and the world once again fell silent.