“So, what now?” Gene grunts with a raw voice, spitting blue-tinged saliva onto the stones and adjusting his collar.
We’ve drunk more blood than water these past days. It isn’t good for us. I know it. He knows it. I can feel the parasites, the worms, and maggots in my stomach. It is in our feces and vomit, but mostly in mine. Even now, I taste iron on my tongue, feel the heat spreading through my veins. It’s a drug, worse than any I’ve ever known, even though I never took any. Moreover, I couldn’t, I had to care for Ren after all.
Only Cham seems untouched. Or at least, he doesn’t let it show. Maybe he doesn’t feel the urge at all, or he’s just stronger at resisting. He’s small, quiet, but there’s something hard in him. I glance at him, noting how his face is lowered, hidden under the shadow of his dark hair.
I reach out and pat his shoulder—both of us dressed now in formal clothing, faces caked in blue makeup to hide our true colors. It’ll last the night and the next day, as long as we don’t sweat too hard or get caught in the rain.
“Just follow me,” I say, voice flat and cold. “And Gene, spit the rest of that shit out of your mouth.”
Gene obeys without complaint. He doesn’t even glance at me as he wipes his lips and hawks a wad of blood onto the street.
Ren would have hated what I’ve become. He’d have tried to talk me down, reason with me. But he’s dead, and I’m all that’s left. So I bear the pain, the agony in my ruined arm, and keep moving.
It hurts. Gods, it hurts so much I want to scream. The tears sting my eyes, and I have to bite down hard not to sob like a child. But I don’t stop.
“Eos...” Cham’s voice is small but clear, cutting through the night. His hand finds the stump of my missing arm. He looks at me with that same expression—sad, lost under the glow of the gas lamps and golden moon.
I shake him off, jaw clenching. I don’t want his pity. For some reason, I have to keep going down this street. It’s more than a choice. It’s a compulsion. Like déjà vu that wraps around my throat.
My pace quickens, not quite a run, but faster than a walk. I leave them behind, though they scramble to keep up.
I round a corner, taking in the rows of houses stretching off into the golden fog. Some have lit windows, one in particular spilling weak yellow light onto the street. I can hear voices. A man and a woman, and the tiny warble of a child. A family.
Gene shoots them a murderous look, his eyes glinting with rage at their laughter. He’s starving for blood. I catch the smell of soup and cooked meat, and my stomach growls in answer. But I force myself to keep going.
Cham keeps his eyes on the ground, like Ren always did when he was thinking. It twists something in my gut.
My entire body begins to itch. Not the phantom pain I always feel on my missing side. This is something else. Deeper. As if my bones remember something my mind refuses to see.
I slow, scanning the stones beneath my feet, the cracked bricks of the buildings, the heavy fog that clings to the walls. The gas lamps barely push back the gloom, making the street seem even more unreal.
The itching spreads to my neck. Sweat beads on my forehead, dripping into my eyes.
I stop dead in my tracks. Cham bumps into me, his small frame glancing off my side. Pain flares in my arm, and I can’t stifle a choked moan.
But I keep my eyes fixed forward past him.
The same one, I—Aston was.
It’s dark now, the sign gone or maybe just unlit. But the shape is the same. The cracked door. The warped windows. The memory hits me like a blade to the gut.
I’ve been here before.
I feel something in me lock into place, as if I’ve been following an unseen thread all this time. I know I have to go inside. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I’ll find.