Page 137 of The Cannibal

He closed it quickly to avoid any prying eyes of guests.

The room looked normal. A bit of dust unsettled from the wind of the door, but otherwise it was still.

A small flutter on the floor, the light trail from the window moved. That is when I saw the shivering.

“Alina?” I said, as softly as I could. “Are you well?”

The closer I got to the window, the hotter it became. The summer heat couldn’t be good for her fever.

I pushed the curtain away, unveiling the mess.

Alina was crouched, red nightgown and bare feet. Her knees hugged to her chest as her hair covered her like a shroud. Her entire body was pressed into as little space as possible against the wall.

Her nails were black, so were the stains on the skirt of her dress.

Along the floor were smears and droplets from what looked like her crawling to her current position. But that wasn’t what made my veins freeze like a river.

There was a form in the bed, tucked under the blankets. The smears covering the edge of the blanket were a testament to the care taken to cover it.

Looking back at Alina wasn’t going to give me answers, not in her current state.

With cautious steps, I stretched out my arm, touching the blanketed form. There was no reaction.

I pulled the silk. The cream revealed strawberry hair, then a creeping stain of black. A hollowed-out throat between pink neckline.

My hand was numb by the time I tucked the blanket back over her.

It was like my body failed. My knees gave out as I gripped the sheets and sat beside the body. No words could be found, neither the will for my mind to rationalize what I just saw. Not anymore than the next image of Alina before me.

All I could do was press my hand to my mouth, counting breaths to calm myself.

Alina’s eyes as black as the spit dripping from her lips. An expression that begged me to tell her that what I just saw wasn’t real, that it was an illusion in her ill state.

Except she would know it wasn’t a mirage if she saw how her skin glowed, her hollowed-out cheeks were filled, and her very essence flushed with life.

I failed her. If anyone was to see it, I should have.

This whole time, I assumed it was a late-form rejection to the turn, to the venom.

We never considered we were feeding her the wrong way.

We were starving her and didn’t know it.

The solution was never human blood.

It was Vipera.

40

THE POISONER

The ringing in my ears prevented me from hearing anything else. I was confined to the corner, barefoot in my blackened nightgown, seated on the stool.

Luka did not leave my side, even when they performed the gastric lavage. He was the one to hold me as the siphon tube went down my throat. It was still there on a cloth on the floor. Black undigested blood with bile, and pieces of flesh picked out and jarred as evidence. The same independent doctors brought in to treat me during my fall were now the ones building the case against me.

I stared down at my feet, the edges of the bloodied cloth below, right next to Luka’s rasping shoe. Every time someone got near me, he stepped in front. The scar on his face distracted from the absolute fright in his eyes, and it wasn’t fear of doctors, but the thing on the other side of him.

We didn’t say anything. The doctors talked back and forth, sometimes to ask Luka questions, which he kept short, but I barely heard a word.