Bloody Banquet Read online

  Under most circumstances it would have been awkward, uncomfortable, and kind of fascinating, but I only caught glimpses of it. While he worked on prepping the body, he assigned Tricia the task of cutting as much of Orrin out of me as possible.

  It wasn’t as painful as being stabbed with the necrotic blade, but it wasn’t as far removed from it as I would have hoped.

  Orrin and I both bit down on wooden dowels as she worked.

  Orrin’s spine and throat had attached to my own spine and throat. Tricia did her very best to get all of him out of me. Something that I appreciated in principle, but suffered through exquisitely in practice.

  Tricia was biting her lip in concentration as she worked.

  I gasped in pain as she managed to hit a particularly sensitive area. Tricia jerked back in surprise. “Oh god, I’m sorry!”

  “I thought you said you’d done this kind of thing before,” said Roy without looking up from his own work.

  “Sort of. I’ve butchered animals before. But, you know, they’re usually dead when I get started, or very shortly after I get started. I’m not used to working on someone when the goal is not to kill them.”

  The dead man chuckled.

  Trish took a couple of deep breaths and stepped forward to resume her work. “Aw, shit. It’s starting to heal up already.”

  “Yep,” Roy didn’t sound particularly concerned. “You’ve got to work fast with people like that. It’s like setting a bone: if you think about the pain you’re causing them, you’ll do it too slowly and it’ll only hurt them more and might not get the job done right. You’ve got to sack up and do the job fast and hard.”

  “Fast and hard. Right.”

  She leaned in and went back to it.

  Fast and hard.

  I nearly passed out.

  “That was really something.”

  I groaned.

  “I mean… wow! That was incredible. All that blood and meat and bone. It’s so bizarre to think about how, you know, that’s what we all look like on the inside.”

  I moaned.

  “Thank you for taking me, Mr. Walter. I really feel like I learned a lot today. And that bartender has some crazy stuff. What is he? Like a demon or a wizard or something?”

  I wheezed.

  “Well, whatever he is, he’s really cool and amazing, and I’m glad I got to meet him.”

  I closed my eyes and tried not to think about what I’d just been through.

  “Is your neck still sore?”

  “You had a hacksaw inside of it less than thirty minutes ago,” I rasped. “It’s going to be sore for a while.”

  “Really? Because you healed really fast that time I stuck a spear through your guts.”

  “I had a full stomach at the time. All I’ve had today is a shot of dross. Once we get back to the morgue I’m going to gorge on dead meat.”

  Actually, I was pretty close to fine already. But I wasn’t going to set a precedent with the young hunter that stabbing me in the neck with a knife was no big deal. Plus, I’d been unable to voice my pain when I’d been going through it, thanks to the dowel; I damned sure wasn’t going to forfeit my right to bitch about it now.

  “So, maybe you should ask Orrin about helping you pay off that loan of yours once he recovers.”

  I coughed out a laugh. “Help pay off my loan? Why would he want to do that?”

  “Well, you did kind of save his life.”

  “That?” I rolled my eyes. “He didn’t ask me to. Hell, I’m pretty sure he didn’t want me to. It’s not like I saved his life so that he could go back to having threesomes on yachts and eating caviar out of the belly buttons of supermodels. The guy dedicated his life to killing off people he refers to as his brothers. I doubt he’s going to feel like throwing money at me. Assuming he even has any left after he pays Roy back.”

  “Isn’t he, like, a thousand years old? He should be a billionaire or something, shouldn’t he?”

  “If he spent the last thousand years accumulating wealth, yes. If he spent it fighting, getting hurt, needing to get out of trouble here, or into a fancy place there, traveling all over the world under a dozen fake identities etc, etc, he probably has just enough for an emergency like this one. Besides, I don’t want his help. I’m already absurdly in debt. The plan is to work my way back to zero, not change who it is that I owe.”

  Tricia sighed. “Such a guy.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You don’t want to accept help, no matter how bad you need it. Such a guy thing to do. It doesn’t make you weak to realize that you can use a hand.”

  I opened my mouth to argue the point, then decided I was too tired to get into it.

  “Fine, whatever. I’m a guy.” I closed my eyes.

  “You know, I bet after I’ve been working for you for a couple of months, you’ll be making more than enough to cover my salary.”

  “Wages,” I corrected her without opening my eyes. “You’re paid by the hour, so you get wages. Salaries work differently.”

  “Really? How do salaries work?”

  “Salaries mean you’re employed to a position which has particular duties. You get paid the same no matter how long it takes you to do the job. Basically.”

  “So you’re salaried and I’m waged?”

  “Well, no. I mean, I don’t think so. See, I own the company that owns the business, and the business employs me as an hourly worker, but I don’t report all of the hours that I work, because if I did that I wouldn’t be able to pay The Pig. Anyhow, my assets as the owner of the business are… uh. Oh crap, the guy who set the whole thing up explained it to me once years ago, how does this go?”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s complicated, there’s this whole thing where if I own the business and somebody sues, I can lose everything, but if I own a company that owns the business and the business gets sued, then they can’t get to me through it. I’m not really clear on how it all works; I just know that I have to pay my attorney more money so that I can pay myself less.”

  “Sounds like a rip off.”

  “Let me tell you a secret everybody knows: The purpose of the legal system is to make lawyers rich.”

  We drove the rest of the way back to work in silence, which was just fine with me.

  Once there, I locked the front door and headed down to the prep room for a quick bite and a nap. Tricia said something about doing some studying in her office, which I said sounded fine, just to get her to shut up, and then I passed out.

  It was the smell of singed hair that woke me.

  I looked up at the furious eyes of Abydos who stood over me holding the necrotic blade.

  “Fucking shiteating asshole!”

  He brought the blade down at my face.

  Chapter 15

  I brought my hand up in time to intercept the blade. Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough to make it a clean catch.

  The point cut straight through the center of my palm, slid between the meta carpals of the middle finger and ring finger of my left hand, and popped out the other side.

  By that time, I had brought my right hand up to support my left, so the point of the blade stopped moving a couple of inches over my right eye.

  The room was filled with a high-pitched cry which, after several long seconds, I realized was coming from me.

  It wasn’t the most masculine sound in the world, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. All of my energy was focused on keeping the knife away from my face.

  Abydos had apparently found somebody to steal body parts from, as he was back up to four legs and three arms. Presumably once he was done with me he’d go out looking for his last replacement limb, or maybe he’d just steal one of mine. In the meantime, he had two hands on the hilt of his weapon, pressing down, while his extra hand was busy punching me in the kidney.

  A combination of inhuman strength and the adrenaline rush that comes from knowing how close you are to death was all that stood between me
and oblivion, and from the way that blade was creeping down, millimeter by millimeter, that wasn’t going to be enough.

  I tried to bring my legs around so that I could kick him in the face, but he just stopped punching my kidneys long enough to shove my feet away.

  The whole time he was screaming at me. “Fucking shiteater! You speck of dust! You little NOTHING! I’m a GOD next to scum like you! When I drag your corpse before Andres, I swear I’ll…”

  If I had the energy to spare I might have tried to remind him that Andres wanted me alive. Instead I shut out the sound of his ranting and focused on the knife.

  Since I couldn’t push the knife away from my face, I tried moving my face out from under the knife. Sadly, Abydos had been killing people since before any current civilization had been born. He knew all the tricks and he wasn’t going to let me slip away. The tip of the knife followed me relentlessly.

  My scream turned into a gasp, and the point moved even closer.

  It would be, I hoped, a relatively quick death. The damage to my brain should prevent me from experiencing too much pain, and the necrosis would resist healing. Of all of the many, many, terrible ways to die, this was probably one of my best options.

  That did not, however, make it a desirable one.

  I gritted my teeth so hard that some of them cracked, and pushed with everything I had.

  The dagger quivered and moved up a millimeter.

  Then it sank two.

  He had too much leverage.

  There was no point in fighting it, but I fought anyway. What else was there to do?

  The blade moved closer.

  Closer.

  The door to the room flew open and Tricia raced in. She stopped, staring in bewilderment for a moment. Then she turned looking for a weapon. The only thing within reach was the broom I had used to start sweeping after my fight with Talus. She brought the handle end up and slammed it into Abydos’s nose.

  The chimera stumbled backwards, pulling the dagger free from my hand, a look of surprise on his face as he stared at my unexpected help

  Trish followed him. Her next shot, a sharp jab with the handle, caught him in the eye, and the large man blinked in surprise, tears blinding him momentarily.

  Trish raised the broom up in both hands and brought it down over her knee, snapping it in half, then slammed the broken ends of each half into Abydos’s chest.

  The handles weren’t sharp enough to penetrate him completely, but they did break through the skin, and Abydos gasped in pain.

  He jabbed the dagger at Tricia’s chest, and she bounced backwards to avoid it, releasing the broom as she went.

  The chimera tore the makeshift weapons from his chest and tossed them irritably to the side. The injuries began to heal immediately.

  He growled at Patricia and adjusted his grip on the dagger.

  But by then I was on my feet.

  I didn’t bother with subtlety. I hit him like a buck during mating season: full on, head down, and with everything I had.

  As we bounced off the wall, he brought the knife up towards my midsection, but I caught his wrist with bot my hands, and his other two hands were quickly preoccupied trying to keep my gaping maw from taking pieces out of his face.

  Using his four legs, he managed to bring himself upright, even carrying my full weight on his upper torso. I expect he was planning on slamming me into a wall until I passed out, but before he could try, Trish started stabbing him in the back with the instruments she’d cleaned for me earlier. She had a scalpel in one hand and scissors in the other, and she started slamming them into his lungs and kidneys over and over again.

  Abydos might have had enough limbs for an extra person… well, almost enough, but he only had one head and he could only pay attention to one of us at a time, so I made a point of occupying his attention as completely as I could. I ripped, tore, shredded and bit.

  Tricia apparently got tired of stabbing him as she finally stopped, leaving the instruments sticking out of his back, and started kicking at his knees and groin. And not the weak, desperate kicks of your normal vanilla, these were powerful and aimed to do maximum damage.

  Finally, I managed to twist his wrist far enough that he was forced to drop his weapon, and I moved both hands up to his neck where I started to squeeze.

  His fingers dug into my flesh has he scrambled to regain his control of the situation. But I happened to know that, no matter how good your body is at regenerating, your brain can only go without fresh blood for a very short period of time before it shuts down.

  He’d only managed to dig a few long gashes in my skin before his eyes flickered and rolled back in his skull.

  Tricia looked at me, guilt obvious on her face. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Walter, I just went next door to get an early dinner, I didn’t think I needed to lock up for that.”

  “You didn’t—“ I stopped myself, closing my eyes and forcing myself to swallow my anger. It hadn’t been the brightest move, but in normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been that stupid either. If I was honest about it, I wasn’t actually upset with her. I was just in pain. The necrotic blade slicing through my hand was a unique agony after a long day of hurt and I just wanted to lash out at anybody who happened to be in the room. I picked up the terrible little blade and stuck it into a pocket.

  “Help me strap him to the table.”

  “What are you going to do to him?”

  “Well, first we’re going to get rid of all of these extra limbs.”

  “We?” Trish squeaked.

  “And then,” I continued, ignoring her. “I think it’s about time I get some information out of one of these assholes, don’t you?”

  “Ummm.”

  I sighed and pulled the sharp instruments from the chimera’s body. “Just help me get him secured to this gurney.”

  Tricia was as much help as she could be. For a petite young woman, she was in amazing physical shape, but lifting a large, unconscious man high enough to get him onto a gurney is difficult enough when he only has the normal number of body parts.

  Eventually, though, we managed. I didn’t have a lot of rope lying around, so I found a couple of rolls of duct tape in one of the supply closets and we secured him as best we could. I left small gaps on his upper thighs and upper arms where I could cut the limbs from his body without cutting the tape.

  Oddly enough, my eagerness to mutilate him wasn’t borne entirely out of malice. I was offended by him. He’d killed somebody, somebody from my city, so that he could have extra limbs. I wanted to take that away from him. I might not be able to bring his victim back to life, but I could damned well make sure that he didn’t get to keep what he’d taken.

  Plus, I hated him.

  As soon as he was secure I turned my attention to my injured hand. This was actually harder than the last few times I’d had to deal with necrotized tissue. My hand was more sensitive than most of the other places I’d been cut, and this time the dagger had rubbed up against bone. I wasn’t a hundred percent certain that bone was effected the same way as meat and flesh, but I was a hundred percent certain that I didn’t want have to go back in and do this again.

  Patricia watched in fascination.

  “Oh my god!” I groaned as I worked.

  “Why don’t you just cut the whole hand off?” Trish asked.

  “Because I have no idea how long it would take to grow back,” I muttered through clenched teeth. “And I’d have to completely retrain my hand, and spend hours exercising every muscle. It would be ages before I’d be up to snuff.”

  “You want me to take care of it for you?”

  I bit my lip so hard my teeth met on the middle as I sliced out a bit more tissue. On the one hand, the thought of letting her operate on me again after the fiasco of getting Orrin’s head off made me cringe. On the other hand… fuck it. “God yes!” I shoved the scalpel I’d been using at the girl.

  “Would it help if you had, like, some alcohol or something for the pain?”
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br />   I shook my head. “My body processes it too fast. Just go.”

  She sawed through flesh in a quick, broad circle, then used a hammer and chisel to break out the metacarpals.

  I focused on screaming into a bunched-up lab coat.

  By the time Abydos woke up, we were wrapping some gauze around my temporarily useless left hand.

  Abydos hissed at me, “Fucking useless cunt! We should have split you in two as soon as we got to this useless town. We should have sacrificed you to our glory.”

  “Please, like you haven’t been trying.” I picked up a large hacksaw and moved menacingly towards my captive. “Now you and I have a lot to talk about, but before we do, I’m going to go ahead and get rid of some of your excess baggage. Not all of it, just the stuff you killed people to get.”

  “He did?” Tricia looked aghast. “Are you sure?”

  “Remember what Orrin said. They can only connect to living tissue.”

  The chimera sneered at me. “What do you want? You want me to be sorry? Humans are wisps of smoke. Their lives are fleeting and insignificant. I could torture one every day from its birth to its death and it would be nothing to me.”

  “You can’t imagine how glad I am to hear you say that.” I smiled, bundling up what was left of the gauze and shoving it into his mouth. “I don’t know exactly how regeneration works on stolen limbs. I’m guessing not great, but I’m not taking any risks. Now, we don’t have the searing blade at the moment, so we’re going to have to find another way to make sure that you don’t regrow anything. Fortunately, I just happen to have just the thing. Tricia, that cabinet over there, please, in the back.”

  Patricia dug around for a minute before pulling out a bottle of lighter fluid. “Is this what you want?”

  “Just the thing. You’ll find a box of matches in my desk drawer.”

  Not being able to use my left hand didn’t slow me down very much. I simply used the limb to apply pressure as I sawed with my right hand. It took me just under two minutes of vigorous sawing to get his first leg off, but it finally came free in a burst of blood and a muffled howl of pain. I squirted some lighter fluid on the wound and lit it up.