Page 64 of The Scarlet Ball

By the light of the kerosene lamp, his face was as livid as a waxwork, wax given disturbing life in its need. I could see in him the strain of every day since the Rose Ball. It was something between human lust and inhuman hunger, monstrous in the meeting.

I put up a wavering hand to ward him off, sitting halfway up so that I could at least face him upright, but Odile was there, kneeling on the bed to put her arm around me as if we were friends.

“I told you I had something good for you,” she said as if she was talking to a child. “I told you you would like it. Don’t you like her, Mr. Rowe?”

Sebastian’s head jerked up and down in a nod, and he approached the bed with a tiger’s stalking stride, never taking his eyes from me.

“I would never deny you,” Odile said, dropping her voice to a seductive whisper. “I would never play games with what you need. I would see you well-fed every day. She could be the first.” She paused. “I love you, my lord. More than she ever will.”

Beneath the cotton that fogged my mind was the screaming, and beneath the screaming was the realization that Odile meant it. Fucking idiot, she meant it, she was in love with what she thought Sebastian was, and there was a terrible comfort in knowing that if he devoured me first, she would be next.

Sebastian didn’t hesitate when he came to the foot of the bed, only climbed straight onto it and onto me. He hadn’t troubled to take off his greatcoat, and the smell of wind and rain clung to him.

I tried to speak, to say his name, to say something, but his hand closed over my throat. For a moment, I was terrified he would squeeze the life from me so he could drink it straight down, but then he only turned my face away, dropping his mouth to the wounds Odile had left on my breast.

After the first flash of pain, the wounds had ached in a kind of absent way. Now, however, they wakened with a roar of sensation, heat and sting and pressure, and somehow instead of pain, it was pleasure, pleasure by a narrow margin, but pleasure nonetheless. It was a sort of falling, and living side by side with the certainty of death was the promise that at the last minute, impossibly, miraculously, I would fly.

Sebastian growled, or at least my ears called it a growl. Some deeper place inside of me recognized it as words in his native language.

Want you, he said. Need you, only you, always you, missed you, missed you, need you …

It was the first time he had been allowed to touch me as he pleased, and the part of me that was still able to do so marveled at the fact that he did not simply snap my head off. He pressed his mouth to mine, his kiss all-consuming, but for him, it would never be enough.

There were teeth in his kiss, sharpness that cut through the heat with brutal swiftness. In another moment, it would be a bite, and then a bigger one, and then—no. No, I would not end like that. Gathering all my strength, I lifted my hand and pushed his head away. It was startlingly easy, and then he was back, nuzzling my hand as if I had merely pet him. Perhaps he thought I had.

Odile took hold of my wrist, pulling me so I lay half sprawled across her lap.

“Now, now, Ginny,” she said in tones of melting condescension, “you know you mustn’t fight. Good girls don’t. Good girls lie back and take what they have coming to them, and you’re such a good girl, aren’t you?”

She turned my face back to Sebastian, and here was where she made her mistake, because she got her fingers too close to my mouth. I turned my head quickly, and my teeth slid off the bone, snapped down on what they could. My teeth sheared through the loose skin at her knuckle, and when they caught, I threw my head back like a street dog. I must have imagined that I heard the skin ripping. There was something like a long strip of bacon rind dangling against my chin.

A wash of red flooded down Odile’s wrist and she flung herself away wailing as if I was still biting her. She kept making that awful sound as she tried to blot her hand on the pillow. She did it over and over again as if that was the worst thing that she had to worry about, getting the red off of her, getting clear of it. She couldn’t feel anything else, just that rich girl’s appalled offense at the mess.

The blood was getting everywhere, on the sheets, on the headboard, on me, and without thinking, I palmed a wet streak of blood down Sebastian’s face, Sebastian who was watching us so intently.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” I asked hoarsely, and like spilled ink, he flowed toward her, on top of her, over her, and her screaming ended as if it had been cut off with a knife. She had no air to scream with and no lungs to fill. She cast up one arm as if she could ward him off, but he caught it, wrenched it behind her with a greenstick snap. From where I lay, his face was half-hidden in Odile’s throat, but I could see his jaw working before he dropped her to the floor like a broken bird.

In my drugged daze, I imagined her watching him, falling in love, deciding that of course she could feed him well and command his power. Did she stalk him at the theater, had she passed him some note at an afternoon social? Stupid, all of it—if she had wanted his attention, all she had to say was my name.

She was still moving. I had seen two public executions at the Grande Roquette Prison in Paris. I knew how the bodies jerked, their limbs twitching in one last dance. Odile didn’t move like that. She lay on her back, one hand reached out to pat the ground, to grab on to the tassels hanging from the bedspread. It was like she was trying to find some familiar land, something she could hold on to.

“What’s my name?” she asked the room at large. Her voice scraped like a file over steel, but her words were clear. “What’s my name?”

I had understood that the lords ate more than flesh, more than bones. They ate what was inside as well, the thoughts, the memories; they had to, if they were going to rule society in the guise of men. Actually seeing it happen was far worse.

“For God’s sake, finish it,” I rasped.

Sebastian descended from the bed to join Odile on the floor. My entire body was taken over by a monstrous lassitude. There was no time except now, there was no place except here. I turned my back on Odile and Sebastian, rolling over to my side, but I could go no farther. With my aching head pillowed on my arm, I listened to the raw sounds of him eating. He was startlingly quiet, and underneath it all was a soft, contented rumble.

I should get up and run while I can, I told myself. While he is distracted. While he isn’t starving. I might have a chance, if he isn’t starving.

The bed dipped, Sebastian climbing up behind me. If I turned around, I might find him bloodied like some vampire, the bottom of his face veiled in gore, but he smelled clean to me. When he slid his hand over the dip of my waist, curling up to plant itself flat over my breast bone, I stared at it without true sight or understanding. I remarked how pale it was, how neat his fingernails, how much larger it was than my own hand. If I stared at his hand, I would not think about what lay behind him on the floor. I would not start screaming.

“I have missed you,” he whispered against my nape. His warm breath there sent shivers through my body. In vain, I tried to stave it off.

“And you think that makes everything all right?” I demanded in a hoarse whisper.

“I am here with you now. Beyond that, what else matters?”