Blood cursed, p.20
Blood Cursed, page 20
Those people were hurting each other.
One held another wriggling one down while he did vicious things to her with a long thick object I didn’t want to identify. A body screamed, spreadeagled on the floor in a shining wet stain, while another poked him with sharp needles the size of chopsticks. Someone dragged a limp body by the ankles, insensible or dead. A thin one shivered in a corner, moaning. No one did anything to her. She just trembled and muttered like her mind was broken, like they’d tormented her until her brain was spaghetti and she couldn’t talk or think or endure any more.
The rich stink of suffering fouled the air like rotting meat. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
In the light of my strange pink glasses, colored auras bloomed around each person, sick hues shimmering rancid. The ones in control glowed blue and scarlet with triumph and passion, their exhilaration burning bright. And around the tortured ones, the air bled black and silver, roiling waves of pain and fear and disgust, emotions spilling from their torment like blood from a wound. And the torturers sucked it up, drinking it greedily from the air, their grins splashed with luminescent gore.
Feeding on raw emotion. Gobbling up the suffering like hungry parasites. People go to Famine’s to play games, Vincent had said.
My glasses gripped my nose, the wire tightening with glee. I thrashed my head from side to side, but I couldn’t knock them off. I wanted to be sick. Ultimate power, ultimate submission, not just physical but emotional as well. It was disgusting. It was compelling. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
My skin rippled cold. Famine’s dungeon lay a world from the sweet-tempered bar upstairs. He’d torture me, probably to death, sucking out my last drop of agony for a tasty snack, and with my luck, I wouldn’t die soon enough.
I struggled, but my limbs felt watery, my strength drained by his nasty spell. I tried to bleed the tremor from my voice with sarcasm, but it came out wobbly and small. “Very clever, stinkweed. What do you want with me?”
Famine poked a taunting bony finger at my nose. “Should’ve thought that’s obvious. Real question is, what d’you want with me?”
I’d almost forgotten why I’d come here. Find the gemstone, get free, escape this bizarre torture den. My dazed eyes skittered, trying to focus. He wasn’t wearing any jewelry I could see, nothing around his neck or on his wrists. His pale shirtless body was clean.
His black persuasions still licked my skin, stroking me in places he’d no right to touch. His invisible spelldark caress numbed my wits. I wanted to bolt screaming into the street. But I also wanted to stay, be consumed, lie down and let this weird pain-vampire drink me up.
I licked wet lips, stalling. Find the gem. Only the gem mattered. “What do you mean?”
Famine jabbed sharp claws at my belly. “Fancy hunting me. How rude. We’ve never even been introduced.”
He sounded genuinely incensed, and green mist sparkled from his hair, swarming like tiny gnats. My fingers tingled. Visible emotions. The glasses worked on him, too. I could use that.
I tried my charming smile. “Well, we can remedy that. I’m Ember. Pleased to meet you. I didn’t mean to be rude. You frightened me, is all. Perhaps we can—”
“Not interested.” Famine slapped my naked hip, scolding.
Ow. Sweat smarted over the spot. My blood heated, unkind memories of my mirror fantasy taunting me. “Huh?”
“I don’t want your body, Ember, lovely though it is. So you can give up trying to seduce me.” He grinned, exposing flayed gums. “Got any other tricks?”
I simpered. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything like that. I just thought we could be friends … .”
His voice hardened, contempt flashing yellow on his breath. “You don’t have any other tricks, do you? You’re just a grasping little whore.”
Memories of Diamond’s insults sucked my mouth dry. It wasn’t like that. Was it? “Screw you, okay—”
“Shut up.” Famine’s flat tone stopped me dead. “Just be silent. Your tart’s tricks won’t work on me. And you don’t know any other way to get what you want.”
He stroked drybone fingers across my forehead, cold like a skeleton. I recoiled, but I had nowhere to go. Famine hacked a laugh and scraped his palm over my temple, a gruesome parody of a lover’s caress, and inside my skull something wet and sticky pulled.
Agony ripped my head raw. I yelled, horror stuffing my stomach with cold worms. God, it hurt, like skin flaying, ripping wet and bleeding from the muscle, only this was my head and the bastard was tearing out my thoughts and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I’d thought Diamond’s glassfae tricks were invasive. This was infinitely worse.
Famine sighed, satisfied. “Mmm. Thought so. You’re useless. You’re so dirtypretty and lovely to taste, but you’ve got nothing else. They all want to touch you but no one wants to talk, do they, because you’re a stupid, boring, useless little whore. Yes?”
“Shut your face, boneweed.” I bared my teeth, defiant. But his taunts attacked my heart, vicious truth-wasps that stung and stung.
I struggled, trying to shake off my dismay. It was stupid. What did I care what he said? But he drilled a brittle claw into my forehead, probing deeper, and his spellsharp perception scraped my mind’s surface raw.
His gibes shouldn’t hurt me. They weren’t true. But despair carved me up inside like salted razors, smarting long after the wound was made.
I scraped my dry tongue across my lips. “I don’t wanna talk about this anym—”
“You’ve got no friends, Ember. No one cares about you.” He darted behind me, slipping a skinny arm around my waist, his jutting bones poking into my back. “Just liars and hungry boys. Because you’re not worth it. If you were worth it, you wouldn’t have to flirt and fuck to get attention.”
“That’s not tr—” I choked, tiny black gnats of spell-craft clogging my throat. It was true. My friends were all Jasper’s friends. My girlfriends drifted away when I took up with him. And I didn’t remember the last time a guy talked to me without his greedy gaze fixed on either my pulse or my cleavage.
Except Diamond. But only because he wanted something just as sordid.
Famine’s stealthy mindtricks settled on my brain like evil black fog, and fight as I might, I couldn’t shake them off. His spectral fingers tunneled deeper, darker, searching out the places that hurt and stabbing them sharp. God, I’d acted like such a desperate whore with Diamond. The fact that I’d wanted his attention sickened me. I’m a sad, pathetic, needy woman. A wisp of careless affection, and I’m anyone’s.
“It’s true, Ember. You know it is. Show me your fear.” Famine’s grip on my screeching mind-skin tightened, and self-disgust tore up my throat from deep in my heart. It burned, that self-loathing, bubbling through my brain like acid, chewing hungrily into my soul.
My heartbeat stumbled into a sprint. Sweat broke out in rivers, soaking my dress with the rotten stink of terror, and an evil green aura rippled the air, spreading outward from my body like ink.
I gurgled, sick. I knew what he was doing. Dragging out my deepest, most secret fears and desires so he could feast on me. But I couldn’t stop him. Already he sniffed the air, drinking in the pulsing green liquid of my despair.
Frantically, I tried to tear my mind loose, think of something else, banish the fear and desperation from my heart.
But I couldn’t help it. Everything Famine said was true.
Famine snaked in front of me, green ichor spilling over his chin. He stretched his parched wings with a sigh, and they swelled with glowing blue fluid, life pulsing inside, the crumbling edges plumping out to a silky taut edge.
Feeding himself. Growing fat on my misery.
He settled bony hands on my hips. “Mmm. That’s it. Trust me. Feed me your fear. Show me what you’re really afraid of.”
He leaned closer, and my own green fearjuice splashed my face. He sniffed my lips, humming sweet oblivion, his hypnotic warble rooting me to the spot. My muscles cramped in terror. I couldn’t move my head. Couldn’t turn away.
He forced crunchy white lips onto mine. His tongue forced inside, cold and salty with insane hunger.
I gagged, my mouth filling. His mesmerizing magic flowed over me like water, warm and threatening, drink or drown. I wanted to scream and stab him dead with my claws. I wanted to open my mouth and take him in, embrace him, savor the faint as he stripped me raw and swallowed me.
Desperate, I kicked at my determination until it sparked. I wouldn’t let him have me. Not like this, mind-raped and babbling. He’d have to kill me first, and then no one would get to swallow anyone. Screw you, hungerboy. I’m not on the menu.
Defiant orange sparks sizzled my hair, and the green fear-haze roiled black with my anger. But Famine just murmured in delight and kissed me harder, desire salty on his tongue.
Confusion yammered. I’d tried to swallow my fear. But it hadn’t worked. He ate everything I gave him, fear and defiance and anger, too. I could feel his body heat growing, absorbing me, his thinparched skin swelling with glowing blue moisture. How could I ever escape?
Famine gave a hungry laugh. His lips slid over mine, no longer dry and crackling but succulent, pulsing with stolen life. “You can’t escape. You’re mine. Just give in to me.”
“No.” I fought, writhing in my shackles until metal sliced my skin. But the pain only sharpened my mind, casting off confusion, leaving my fear exposed and raw for him to taste.
I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to go to hell. And try as I might, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t afraid.
“Tell me what you fear.” Famine’s dark persuasion caressed me, hot magical fingers digging deep into my nastiest memories, and my mind reeled with dark, threatening images of everything I’d ever feared.
Dark places, a closet where they’d locked me in as a child, spiders black and hairy and crawling down my throat. Smothering, drowning, loss of breath, nightmares that wake me in freezing sweat. Vomiting and cowering in the dust as a kid, the gangly redheaded thing who got boobs before everyone else. Mean girls with flouncing wings kick me in the guts and skinny fairy boys pull my hair and slide long bony fingers up my skirt. No school for fairy girls, not if their glamour isn’t right, and mornings I curl tight in my nest under the bridge with the torn blanket pulled over my head, quivering lest someone see what I am and hurt me.
Famine crushed my hair in strengthening fists. His skinny body hardened and filled out with muscle. Curves swelled, skin stretched, flesh forming fiber by fiber, tightening over bone. He forced his mouth onto mine, sucking in my breath. “Mmm. That’s it. Show me more.”
I tore my mouth away. “No. Stop. Please.”
His growl rusted my mouth dry. “I’m starving, Ember. Feed me. Don’t make me hurt you.”
Green fearstain splashed between us, hot and sticky. I recoiled, but more images flooded, irresistible.
Older, fourteen going on twenty, a body I can’t control and passion-crazy moonblood I don’t want to resist. My first vampire, a gorgeous pewter-eyed maniac who promises me flowers, the pain and terror as his teeth tear my skin, the cold hollow inside as I think he’s going to kill me, the shame afterwards that I never get over.
Jobs, interviews, scratchy human clothes that don’t fit and my dirtyscarlet hair pulled back like a nun’s, typing tests I can’t do because my stupid claws keep catching no matter how I cut them, long walks home in tears because I can’t afford the train. A greasy fat human boss with sour breath and dull, glamour-piercing eyes, who grabs my wings and pushes me over a desk and whispers, It’s okay, young lady, I won’t tell a soul, not if you’re a good fairy girl and do exactly as I say. Carpet stings my knees, his vile skin scraping my fingers and his sweat’s rotten stench before bile chokes my throat and I scramble up and run.
I whimpered, but Famine just swallowed my cries. “More. Such sweet guilt, Ember. Show me why you hate yourself so much.”
“No.” I shuddered and struggled. I didn’t want to. That one hurt too much. But Famine’s kiss drenched me in ugly self-pity and I couldn’t help but drown.
Ash, my darling bloodfairy boy. My only friend, dying parched and drained to keep me safe. I cry, every sunrise in our grubby little room when he stumbles home bleeding, too exhausted to kiss me or talk to me or eat the food I buy with his trick money. His pretty brown skin bleaches and crumbles, night after night, wingpanes riddled with cracking holes, and his faded golden hair breaks off like yellow candy in my hands as I plead with him to stop, it’s killing you, we’ll find something else.
Famine laughed, rich with desire. “But he didn’t stop, did he?”
I whimpered, lost. No, Ash didn’t stop. And he didn’t die in my arms. I couldn’t even offer him that comfort. He sneaked out one night while I slept for one more trick, and I never saw him alive again.
“But that’s not the worst, is it?” Famine nuzzled my throat, nipping me. “Tell me, Ember. Say it.”
His will forced into my mind like a drugged needle. I choked and fought, but I couldn’t keep silent.
“I never tried to take his place!” Tears stuffed my throat like broken glass, and I sobbed, bleeding. “I never tried to help. I could’ve sold my blood instead, so he could recover. If we’d shared—”
“If you’d shared, maybe he’d still be alive.” Famine’s voice chewed black holes my heart. “But you never did. Why not, Ember? Such a little thing. Why didn’t you help?”
“I was frightened!” It spilled out stained in golden despair. Ash was a memory, but my guilt was alive and ravenous. “I couldn’t bear it! Those horrible vampires—”
“What? Sucking on your blood? Like they did his?”
“Yes! Ash was strong. He could take it. But I …”
“But you were weak.” Famine yanked my hair back, and green ichor splashed over his face. “You never insisted. He brushed you off and you let him. He died because you’re a coward.”
I sobbed in Famine’s embrace, despair stabbing hot blades through my heart. His fingers crept over my waist, popping the buttons. He was peeling away my dress, sniffing hungrily at me. I didn’t care.
Poor, besotted Ash. I’d said I loved him. What a dirty, lethal lie. I didn’t love anyone. Especially not myself.
“Come on, sweetie. More. What did you do then? Why did you end up with that nasty Jasper?” Famine mouthed my nipple through my bra, sharp teeth catching. The sting jolted me forward, and my mind hurtled headlong, horrid memories spilling like black poison.
Jasper that first night, hot and passionate under the swelling moon, slinky black with lies. I’m desperate and vulnerable, my body weeping pleasure in his embrace. Later, when he thinks I’m asleep, I hear him on the phone, talking his dirty business of drugs and death, and I realize who I’ve hooked up with and I feel sick. I should smile, walk away, never come back.
“But you didn’t.” Famine licked my belly, tasting me. “You were too afraid.”
I nodded, sobbing. Jasper had an evil, sunflash temper. I was scared of what he might do to me if I angered him.
But also because he might leave me. Because I needed protection, too weak and scared to survive on my own. Because this dangerous, selfish, beautiful fairy boy might be the last good thing I ever got in my life.
A shattering smile, some stolen kisses, a couple of scorching nights of passion, and before I know it, I’m living in his apartment, wearing clothes he bought me, jewels he gave me, the haircut he chose for me, living the decent life I’ll never afford without him because I’m bloodfae, talentless, just a useless prettygirl.
Tiptoeing around when he’s in a nasty mood, hoping I won’t shuffle or sigh or drop something at the wrong moment and make him mad. Lying awake beside him at four in the morning, wondering how the hell I got here, if tomorrow he’ll lose interest and throw me out and I’ll be left on the street with nothing but a false candy smile and a body full of vampire-bait blood. I don’t want to die like Ash. I have no choice.
Later, when he starts hitting me, I cry in the shower where he can’t see the tears. I know he doesn’t love me. How could anyone love me? But I’m too afraid of being alone to leave.
I spluttered, green fluid splashing my naked chest. Jasper kept me around because I made him look good and gave him all the sex he wanted, at least all he wanted from me. My girlfriends didn’t talk to me anymore. I’d no time for them. I spent my hours shopping, getting haircuts and beauty treatments, desperate to be more beautiful, more fashionable, the perfect girlfriend. Jasper insisted.
Famine grinned. “Only he didn’t, did he? Not in so many words.”
I sobbed. No, it was that hot, calculating look in his darkviolet eyes, the one that said, Better take care of yourself, Emmy. I can have any girl I want. Better make sure it’s you.
It was my own gut-numbing fear.
“Self-absorbed little tart.” Famine’s whisper savaged my soul. “Preening and cowering, wasting your life away to please a man who doesn’t care.”
“Because he’d leave me and I’d be alone!” The words spilled out, scarlet with despair and agony and tears. I was humiliating myself. I didn’t care. I just wanted to scream it to the world, cut that horrid swelling disgust from my heart so it couldn’t hurt me anymore.
“You’re too scared to be alone, aren’t you?” Famine’s lips caressed mine, and he whispered between kisses to savage my soul. “Too scared to live. And now Jasper’s dead and you’re lost. Scrabbling in the dark. Offering yourself to any man who’ll flatter and adore you and make you forget what a worthless piece of meat you are. Your fresh pink fairy boy, for instance. Pretending there’s something more so you can lie to yourself all over again.”
I howled, tears splashing. He was right. I hadn’t just wanted Diamond because I was moonstruck or horny or infatuated by his smile. I’d wanted him because sex was the only way I knew to get him to like me. If he gave me the chance, I’d do anything to make myself into the girl I thought he wanted. And it’d start all over again.
