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He smiled at me, and his smile stretched. His teeth grew longer. The points
gleamed. The nanovirus reshaped the canines, forcing them out.
Behind me, Peter said, "Wait for me. And let's take our time, shall we? I'd
hate to gulp the finest wine I
ever uncorked."
I struggled, but Corrigan looked into my eyes, and a stronger version of the
same hypnotic pull I'd felt before from Oe and Fedara and even from my mother
overwhelmed me. Suddenly I didn't want to struggle anymore. I wanted to give
in. I wanted Corrigan's touch. I wanted Crane's. I fell willingly into the
dark and warm and seductive pull of their eyes and embraced my death.
The pain of the bite in my neck was an ecstasy. My heart pounded, and I felt
myself merging with
Corrigan. And then Crane bit my wrist, and the thrill deepened. The bite, the
sharing of my blood with them, was power and sex and submission and lust and a
blood-red driving need all at once, and I
welcomed it and fell into it and begged it never to stop.
The surging tide of my blood swept me into the maelstrom, into the vortex of a
whirlpool that led to annihilation, that led to rest and silence and peace. I
felt the thundering of my blood in my veins, the hammering of my heart in my
chest, and every beat was foreplay and climax and release, the sweet song of
Kali.
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Lisle, Holly - Hunting the Corrigan's Blood
But then it stopped.
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First Corrigan, then Crane, backed away from me. I stood stupidly, still lost
in the spell of their bloodlust and bereft at the loss of their touch.
I saw Corrigan go down on his knees, his hands clawing at his chest. "No," he
whispered. Crane buckled, rocking back and forth with his head on the carpet.
Then he was still. Then he began to swell.
My slow, sensation-dulled brain struggled to understand, but finally the
answer came to me. My blood, I
thought. They drank my blood and it killed them.
I stood and put a hand to my neck, to the place that hurt so much now that
Corrigan wasn't touching it, and my hand came away red and hot and sticky. I
felt my blood squirt out beneath my fingertips to the rhythm of my heart. Some
tiny spark of my survival instinct came back to life then, and I pressed my
right hand to my neck. I looked at my left wrist. Bleeding, too. Arterial
blood, pumping hard. I shoved the wrist against my hipbone, and, finally more
alert and truly frightened, I ran through Crane's house looking for his
medichamber.
I lived, in spite of them, in spite of myself, in spite of my despair.
I lived.
I went back to Meileone Station in Cantata long enough to reclaim the
Corrigan's Blood
. Only I knew where it was, and since I didn't get paid the rest of the money
owed me for the work I'd done, I took the ship in trade.
I towed the
Hope's Reward near a busy space lane, where I blew out the airlock and ripped
out everything of value. Someone found it not too long after that, and
reported the ship hit by pirates. The shipcoms log confirmed that story; its
record showed an attack by two ships, followed by the quick and brutal deaths
of Strebban "Badger" Bede and Cadence Drake.
I stopped in to see Storm Rat long enough to have him install a gravity shear
on my new ship, as well as to give both me and the
Corrigan's Blood a new ID.
When times are hardest, I recite the part of Badgers last poem over and
over these words have become my mantra.
Life's a miser; death's a thief that
Steals Life's bread when darkness falls.
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Lisle, Holly - Hunting the Corrigan's Blood
I'll shame the thief; I will not weep
But, head high, stand and fight and bleed.
I will not call death friend; I will
Not ask for softness; I will not
Embrace the empty, silent night
And when I lose, as I must lose
With neck unbowed and back unbent, I'll run the path where darkness creeps
And scream and shout and pound the walls
And death will cringe to hear me come
And Life, well-lived,
Will weep.
The softness of hope and of love that once filled me are gone. Fedara Contei's
and my mother's murder of Badger burned them out of me, and replaced them with
a cold, ferocious determination to live. I am not the same woman I was when
Peter Crane asked me to find his ship for him. I am, I think, less than that
woman was, for who can eliminate both love and hope and remain whole? Yet I am
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as much as I
need to be. I am enough for my own purposes.
I stalk the predators now. My weapon is my own blood, and the darts I shoot
are judge and jury and executioner the innocent never die and the guilty never
live. I could lie to myself. I could say that the killers killed themselves by [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]