Bloody Banquet - Corpse-Eater Saga 2 Read online

  Orrin hit Eryx, moving even faster than I had managed with the help of the brass knuckles. The lizard man traveled completely through the wall that separated the kitchen from the pantry, out the pantry door, and hit the wall to the exterior of the building hard enough that it probably knocked bricks off the front façade.

  Abydos, I saw, was still on the ground, nursing his injuries, not yet aware that the dynamic of the fight had changed.

  Somehow Jayr the giant managed to hang onto my hands, despite the fact that my teeth were sinking steadily deeper into him. Given a moment he’d have to let go, but I didn’t want to give him that moment.

  Talus only had one of my feet. I bent the other at the knee, ignoring the flash of agony from the necrotic blade, then straightened my leg, connecting with Talus’s groin.

  The grip that he had on my foot kept the sole about even with the bottom of his sternum. By the time my free leg was straightened, his body was bent double just to prevent me from kicking his balls through his body.

  Talus released his grip and spasmed out of sight into the attic.

  As my feet fell to the ground, my teeth twisted and, finally, Jayr was forced to let me go.

  I grabbed the blade from where I’d dropped it and cut two long gashes into the giant’s chest before he could get out of range.

  I moved to follow him, but a weight dropped down on top of me, and powerful hands twisted my arms into pretzels, forcing me to release my weapon.

  Jayr let out a roar and rushed forward looking to help his companion put an end to me.

  The sound of thunder filled the house. The giant fell back and the bug man released me, flying fast and hard into the attic.

  Orrin aimed his oversized handgun at Eryx and fired the last three shots, only one of which hit, before he turned and gave me a calm nod. “You good?”

  I grimaced. “No, but I could be worse.”

  Orrin turned his attention back to the lizard man as I searched the debris for a few seconds and came up with a shard of glass.

  For a few moments, I ignored everything going on around me while I yanked the necrotic blade out of my thigh, and proceeded to cut out a large chunk of my own muscle.

  That done, I started carving away at the gash in my side.

  A marching band could have made a visit to the house without me noticing, but when a wave of sickly sweet magic rolled through the room, I stopped what I was doing and looked up.

  Orrin, who had Eryx’s metal club in one hand, and Eryx raised over his head with the other, made an odd choking sound and began to tremble.

  I turned my attention back to my gash and worked faster, slicing through tender skin and fat and tossing my bloody flesh to the ground.

  Motion captured my attention and I glanced up in time to see a mostly healed Jayr slamming both of his fists into Orrin’s midsection.

  I ripped away the last pieces of damaged flesh, grabbed the necrotic blade and slammed it into Jayr’s exposed back. He shuddered, twisting the knife from my hands in the process.

  The dagger must have hit a lung, because the large man fell without making a sound.

  Talus came at me from above, so I rolled out of the way, grabbing the searing blade from the ground. Two quick slices severed Talus’s middle limbs entirely from his body, but before I could stab him through the throat, Eryx yanked him out of the way and flew under my defenses.

  I slammed the hilt of the sword on the back of his neck and kicked at him as he rolled out of my reach.

  In the kitchen, Abydos ripped the necrotic blade from Jayr’s body and moved meaningfully towards Orrin, who appeared to be having a fit of some sort, thrashing on the ground.

  The brass knuckles still hung from my wrists. I planted a foot on the wall behind me and pushed off, the searing blade cutting through Abydos’s arm before he could stab Orrin.

  He howled and dropped to the ground once more.

  Eryx, still stunned from my attack, was trying to pull himself upright. Jayr lay nearly motionless, the damage to his back refusing to heal. Abydos was down to three legs and one arm (did I cut all of those off, or had Orrin gotten one while I was mauling myself?). Talus floated, wings humming madly, in the middle of the room, but from the look on his face, I suspected that most of the fight had gone out of him.

  Victory was by no means guaranteed, but the odds were definitely better now than they had been when I entered the building! If only Orrin would stop convulsing.

  I considered going to his aid, but I didn’t think that this was the time. Besides, my knowledge of chimera physiology was limited.

  Instead I moved to strike Talus down before he could gather his thoughts enough to attack or retreat.

  I took one step in his direction, drawing the blade back, and then stopped. My entire body strained to move me forward, but one hand wrapped around my wrist was more than enough to prevent me.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see the open door he’d come through. It must lead to the basement.

  I turned.

  Andres was tall and thin, with piercing green eyes and jet black hair. His nose was crooked as though it had been broken but healed before it had a chance to properly set.

  And he had almost no scent to him.

  The man stood less than a foot away from me, and I could barely smell him!

  The only creatures I knew of with a scent that subtle were boogies. Psychic parasites that liked to hide in the closets and under the beds of children to torment them at night and feed off their fear.

  So, where his comrades had incorporated animals into their being, Andres had chosen to slice, dice, and rebuild himself with the pieces of supernatural creatures. I could just barely detect a bit of vampiric odor on him, and werewolf, and ogre. That explained his surreal strength.

  Who knew what other monsters he’d sewn into himself?

  I needed to act quickly. I drew a leg back and—

  And suddenly I was on the other side of the room, slamming into the remains of one of the walls, and falling to the ground in the hallway.

  I forced myself onto my back and gasped for air.

  How could someone with that little mass hit that hard? The ground beneath his feet should have torn from the recoil of that blow.

  It took an effort to turn my head and stare at the man.

  He was holding the searing blade in front of him, looking it over thoughtfully.

  I blinked. When had that happened? I looked down at my hand. Several fingernails were missing and my pinky was at an angle. That wasn’t right.

  I pulled the brass knuckles off my wrists and shoved them into my pocket to get them out of the way. I grimaced, grabbed my finger, and straightened it with a pop. As long as I was at it, I reached up and set my nose in a sudden jerk that brought tears to my eyes.

  Talus buzzed down and landed lightly on the ground next to Andres. “Sorry, sir. We just had him contained when the traitor showed up.”

  Andres’s lips pursed in annoyance, but he didn’t say anything.

  Orrin coughed, apparently finished with his convulsions, and drew himself slowly to his feet.

  “Wasn’t expecting that. What did you hit me with?”

  Andres shrugged. “It’s a variation on a plague spell. Doesn’t last for long, but if you time it right, you don’t need it to last.”

  Orrin hacked up something that looked like it should have stayed inside of him. He spit it on Jayr’s back. “Yeah, well, good timing.”

  “What did you think you were going to do?” Andres asked, mildly. “Sneak in here and kill us all? I thought you were smart enough to know better.”

  “Smart enough, yes. But desperate as well. I’ve had a hard time keeping your body count down these past few centuries. Now you have my coin… I figured I wasn’t going to last much longer.”

  Andres smiled. “You’re right about that.”

  The searing blade flicked out like a snake’s tongue, piercing Orrin’s chest first, then pulling out and darting back in,
cutting into his stomach and slicing him nearly in half.

  Viscera would have spilled out if the blade didn’t cauterize everywhere that it touched.

  I gasped in surprise and darted into the room, catching the chimera as he fell.

  Orrin stared up at me with surprise. He moved his lips as though to speak, but nothing came out.

  Above us both, Andres turned to Talus. “Gather our brothers in the lab. I’ll see to their wounds.”

  “But the subject, sir, shouldn’t you interrogate him?”

  I ignored the reply, staring down at my… my what? Friend? I didn’t know him that well. Ally didn’t seem to be quite right either. I liked the man, felt for him. And I owed him something. I wasn’t sure exactly what, but I owed him something.

  Could I do anything for him? His heart wasn’t simply destroyed; it was burnt beyond repair. If I cut it out, maybe he could grow a new one, but could he also heal the gash through his stomach? The damage I’d have to do to him just to give him a chance to repair his body would be… significant.

  But, then, chimeras weren’t like most supernatural creatures. They didn’t just heal; they were capable of incorporating other creatures into their being.

  Great, so I could save him, but only if I ripped out his organs and replaced them with the organs of someone else. Not that I’d hesitate to eviscerate any of his brothers to save him, but I’d that would be difficult to pull off if I was only fighting one of them.

  On the other hand, I had a morgue full of bodies. If I had him there, surely I’d be able to replace the necessary organs.

  These thoughts, which had been flickering through my mind so quickly I barely had time to examine them, came to a screeching halt for one half of one moment.

  And the they moved again, even faster now.

  What was my end goal? What did I need? I needed to get Orrin to the morgue if I was going to have any chance to help him. What stood in my way? He was going to die, very soon. Long before I could get him to the morgue. He needed something, some kind of first aid.

  What else stood in the way? I needed to get him and myself out of the house.

  To do that I needed to get past Talus, who was fast and strong, and disciplined, and Abydos, whose insanity inspired him to sacrifice his own body to do greater damage to his enemies, and Andres, who for god’s sake I couldn’t even smell over the smell of the other chimeras and all of that gasoline, and—

  Gasoline.

  We’d brought the gasoline so that if, somehow, we managed to overpower the rest of the chimeras, we could toast the bodies to be certain they wouldn’t heal. But sometime during the violence, something had punctured one or both of the containers of gasoline I’d brought with me. Maybe one of Orrin’s bullets, maybe some piece of debris. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was leaking out, spreading.

  My needs, my goals, everything solidified in my mind.

  I laughed madly and looked up. Andres was staring down at me, a peculiar expression on his face.

  My smile stretched far beyond anything a human could manage as I reached down, grabbing onto the butcher knife I’d found when I’d first been thrown into the room.

  Andres took a half step back, grinning back at me and preparing himself to do terrible things to me when I attacked him.

  I brought the blade to Orrin’s neck and sliced deep and hard.

  Andres stared at me in bewilderment as the blood poured. His confusion only increased as I began to pull.

  Orrin’s head and a few inches of his spine broke free from his body. His mouth shaped into a silent scream as I lifted it free.

  It takes quite a bit to shock someone who’s been around for a thousand years. On a certain level, I have to admit that I was proud of myself for accomplishing that much.

  Andres blinked and fell backwards a step, his mouth slightly open as he watched me mutilate my own ally.

  I tucked the head under my arm like a football, popped up and raced through the hole in the wall, down the hallway, and to the front door before anybody could recover from their shock enough to pursue me.

  As I pulled the front door open, I heard the buzzing of Talus’s wings and footsteps kicking through debris.

  I reached into my pocket, pulled out the lighter I’d picked up at the gas station on the way over, lit it, and threw it onto the ground behind me.

  And I ran. Though I have no proof of it, I suspect that I ran faster than I’d ever run before in my life. Few things are as motivating as racing away from a burning house filled with people who want to torture you to death.

  No. My father would have been disappointed to hear me say that. He’d have pointed out that I haven’t experienced everything that can possibly happen.

  More accurate to say: prior to that moment, I neither experienced, nor imagined anything in life that could have motivated me to move faster.

  I didn’t have to look back to see that the fire was spreading fast. I could smell it, feel it, hear it. It was growing.

  Which meant that the best move for the chimeras would be to get the fuck out of the neighborhood as fast as they could.

  Thank god nobody had lived in this neighborhood in a couple of years.

  Once I was back in my truck, I tilted my head to the side, raised the kitchen knife to the spot where my neck became my shoulder, and cut deep.

  In normal circumstances, the pain probably would have elicited a scream, or at least a moan, but everything is relative, even pain, and the pain I’d gone through since I walked into that house made the pain of a knife slicing into my neck basically meaningless.

  Positioning his head as best I could, I jammed his spine down into the cut and held it there.

  There was, for a brief moment, an odd sensation, like when you hold the north side of two magnets towards each other. There was a sort of mutual resistance. And then something clicked. I could feel the wound closing together, the flesh bonding. It felt wrong. And right. Three seconds later I was peeling out and heading for the morgue, and the head on my shoulder seemed to be doing most of the work staying in place. I kept one hand on it, though, just to be certain.

  I could feel things moving in my shoulder and neck. I didn’t know if I’d done enough to save Orrin, but his head was definitely trying to find a way to connect itself to me. I felt dizzy. I forced myself to slow down and focus on the road in front of me.

  It came as a surprise when I heard his voice in my right ear. “Oh, shit. I was hoping that whole thing was a bad dream.”

  I grimaced. “Try not to stress yourself out.”

  “I’m a severed head, stressing myself out is one of the very few things I can do.”

  I couldn’t rebut that. I fought not to yawn. Two blows from the necrotic blade, and both of them were deep. Cuts, bruises, broken bones, splinters. Healing this much was brutal.

  “Why did you cut off my head?”

  I grimaced in annoyance. I didn’t want to be having this conversation. But the poor guy literally had nothing to do but think and ask questions.

  “You weren’t going to live long without a working heart.” I explained. “I needed to connect you to a functioning cardiovascular system. Preferably one that wouldn’t fight me every step of the way. The only body available that matched that criteria was mine, and I didn’t want to have to carry more of your body than I had to. Now shut up.”

  “You should have let me die.”

  He slurred a little as he spoke. Likely his brain was still adjusting to my blood. Given how different my blood was from most people’s, it was entirely possible that it was giving him brain damage. I hadn’t even considered that!

  “If I let you die, who would fight your brothers?”

  Orrin’s head was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. But haven’t I done enough? Seven hundred years. No. More than that. A thousand? God, it’s been so long. I’m so tired.”

  I wanted to slam the pedal to the floorboards, but patrols had been up in this area recently, and the last t
hing I needed was for a cop to pull me over looking like this.

  Orrin made some uncomfortable noises for a few seconds, then he seemed to shake it off. “Andres… Andres got your sword.”

  “The searing blade.” I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll worry about that later.”

  “No,” Orrin sighed. “I’ll worry about it later. You’ll be dead.”

  I blinked. “Dead, what do you mean?”

  Orrin coughed. “Can’t you feel it? I’m growing into you. It’s what we do. We take a piece of something and attach it to ourselves and take it from its owner. Possess it.”

  I shook my head. “This is only temporary. Until we get back to the morgue. I’ve got plenty of bodies there. I’ll attach you to one of those.”

  Orrin made a sad sound. “If only it were that easy. Can’t be dead tissue. We can only merge with something still living.”

  Still living? Crap.

  “You should cut me off while you still can.” He was speaking slowly, slurring his words, like he’d just drunk a liter of hard liquor.

  “No, I’ll… figure something out.”

  “It’s a mistake. Save yourself. Before it’s too late. Before I take over and you… wither away.”

  Wither away? That didn’t sound good.

  “I said I’ll figure something out”

  “Can’t… no time.” Orrin yawned. “You’re exhausted. All the healing, all the fighting. It’s a wonder you haven’t passed out already.”

  He was right. I was exhausted. My heart was pounding like I was running a marathon and I was still struggling to keep my eyes open. “How long do I have? Until… until you take over.”

  “Don’t know. I’ve never done it this way before. And each body is different. Yours is fighting more than most, but at some point, it will succumb. Maybe a day or two?”

  A day or two. I could work with that. I hoped.

  “Go to the grove. The dryads will know what to do. They’ll burn me. What’s left of me anyway… let me nourish the grove… lovely creatures, dryads, so kind, in their own way.”

  I turned the radio on and cranked it up, partly to keep myself awake, but mostly so I wouldn’t have to listen to Orrin’s ramblings.

  My adrenaline was fading and the stresses and trials I’d gone through were adding up. By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the mortuary, my hands were shaking.