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“Lady Neveux,” she said.
The thing shifted again, even more this time. It almost half sat up.
“Please, take some water. You have to be thirsty.”
Melody tried to ignore the smell. Or the fact that the water she was holding already had some kind of film or scum formed over the top of the meniscus. She sloshed it around a bit. Extended her arm even more.
“Are you able to—”
An eye blinked open. She caught its face.
OH MY GOD…
Lady Neveux’s skin was stretched over her cheekbones so tightly it had actually cracked. Sores covered
her face, open pustules that ran red beneath a cheesy, white substance. It was gruesome. The apogee of unimaginable pain.
The creature on the bed opened its mouth and screamed in what could only be horrific agony. Melody gasped, but still held the decanter. Her entire arm was shaking. She grit her teeth… just as the creature pushed itself up on one arm and reached out for her.
The old woman’s hand was a shriveled claw. The skin had pulled back long ago from her yellowed fingernails, creating even more cracks and wounds that were terrible to behold. She was almost touching the decanter now. Melody leaned forward, bringing it to just within her reach…
Tears streamed down Melody’s face. She was crying openly. Lady Neveux’s corpse-like fingers closed around the vessel, her lips spreading — no, cracking open — in anticipation of bringing the water to her mouth.
Suddenly the door burst open. It had swung closed behind her, but now it banged so violently into the opposite wall Melody heard the wood actually splinter. Startled, she allowed the decanter of water to slip from her hand. It slipped through Lady Neveux’s mummified grasp too, then dropped to the floor and shattered into a thousand crystalline pieces.
Melody whirled in a mixture of terror and disappointment. Then she screamed.
Eric stood in the doorway, his chest heaving with the exertion of having just run up two flights of stairs.
Head to toe, he was covered in blood.
30
Melody put her back to the wall as her ex-companion approached. She began looking around the room for something — anything at all — she could use as a weapon, a distraction, whatever.
Eric’s attention, on the other hand, was focused solely on her. He advanced on her without warning, making a beeline straight for her.
“Give me the pendant,” he snarled. “NOW!”
The blood streaming down his face was his own — Melody could see what looked to be a deep gash somewhere over his left eye. The blood on his arms however, belonged to someone else. Her stomach lurched as she thought of Lucus. Of him lying out near the graveyard, badly hurt or bleeding or even worse.
Eric reached for her, and she scrambled over the bed. There was enough room to avoid the mummified figure of Lady Neveux. One bad step, one wrong move and she could’ve fallen on the woman. Maybe snapped an arm or even a leg as easily as a dry twig.
Luckily that didn’t happen. She made it to the other side and then whirled back to face Eric, only now there was a whole bed between them.
“I’m taking it,” he growled. “Even if I have to rip it from—”
“FUCK YOU!”
The words came out loud and harsh, with an edge of furious anger. Eric smiled through bloodstained teeth. Spat a big glob of something red on the bed.
He’s wounded.
She could tell by the wet rattle in his lungs that her adversary might be worse off than she originally thought. An internal injury, probably. Or maybe he was stabbed.
“Where’s Lucus?”
Eric didn’t answer. He only smiled.
