The man slid the blade out, and it felt as though Elswyth’s insides followed it, spilling onto the floor. He reared his hand back again, found another spot on her belly with the tip of the blade, and then stabbed once more.
Elswyth groaned. Tears fell from her eyes, and her thoughts scattered like birds. She was going to die.
To her surprise, she thought of her mother. Her mother, sitting over her, wailing, weeping.
No,Elswyth thought,no!
Elswyth’s hands began to scramble. She clawed at his face, drawing vitæ to her hands and growing thorns from her fingertips. The man hissed at her and pulled back, taking the knife with him. It slipped from her and she gasped, blood trickling from her mouth.
“You are starting to irritate me,” he said. A thin line of blood seeped through his eyelid. “I don’t think I want to play with you anymore.”
Then the man reared back the blade, this time to slit her throat.
She grabbed his wrist feebly, trying to keep the knife away. Her fingers found the skin beneath his jacket sleeve, the warm flesh of his wrist. The man pushed the blade down, and she fought, the exertion making the wounds in her stomach scream. The world blurred for a moment and the room disappeared into shadow, and only the man remained, a bright outline of orange light. She felt it, the heat just beneath the surface of him, felt the vitæ that was his life force. And Elswyth pulled.
She grabbed the man’s vitæ with her own. It flowed from his body, through his wrist, and into her hand. It swam to her heart and then pooled in her stomach, where the blood flowed freely.
The man gasped, his knife dropping to the floor.
There was a brief moment of silence as the man stared at his hand. What once had been pink flesh had faded to gray. The muscles there had vanished, leaving only dying skin and brittle bones. It was the hand of a corpse, held up in the moonlight.
“That’s… impossible…” the man said. He turned his hand over, examining it, lost in thought.
Elswyth didn’t wait. She stumbled toward him, her hands closing around his temples. And she pulled. She pulled with everything she had. This time, all the light inside him came. It spilled from his body, through her arms, draining into her own pool of vitæ.
His face withered before her eyes, his cheeks sinking, his lips pulling back over his teeth. The man opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out was a swollen black tongue.
The man managed a few staggered steps backward as he searched his face with skeletal hands.
All of him was rotting now, but his eyes seemed eerily lifelike, staring at her in disbelief. His legs buckled, and he collapsed into a pile of oversized clothes.
He gasped once more and then went still.
Elswyth fell back, sliding against the wall into a puddle of her own blood.
Her vision faded. She wanted to scream, to call for help, but her windpipe was a ruin and she felt so weak. Poison swam in her blood, making her heartbeat slow and her skin shine with sweat. She slid deeper down the wall, unable to find purchase in all the blood. When she fell to her side, she came face-to-face with the corpse of her attacker. His eyes were graying now, rotting like fruit in their sockets.
She wanted to turn away, but she didn’t have the strength. She had no choice but to stare into those eyes. The man’s vitæ still hummed inside her, an orange light that swam through her veins with nowhere to go. She could feel it threading across her ribs and then taking root in her stomach, lingering around the wounds there.
The door to her bedroom flew open and she watched, as though in a dream, as Percival and Kehinde crashed into the room, Percival with his rifle, Kehinde with his staff. The last thing she saw before the darkness took her was Kehinde, scooping her into his arms like a child.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The chandelier tree, also called the candelabrum tree, is a curious African palm that grows only on kimberlite, a stone known to yield diamonds.
The dreams troubled her again. Persephone, calling out, reaching for Elswyth with fingers like elderwood branches. Her eyes of asphodel, seeing nothing. And a shadow behind her, a shadow over the whole world, creeping in tendrils.
Elswyth came in and out of consciousness. Bits of memories persisted. Percival pressing a cold cloth to her forehead. Mrs. Rose brushing her hair. Kehinde standing by the bed, watching her as she slept. Dr. Gall, frowning as he checked her bandages.
When she awoke for the first time, it was to voices in her room. She did not open her eyes. She knew the voices, though; they’d drifted through her dreams for days.
“It’s remarkable,” said Dr. Gall. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“She will live, then?” Uncle Percival asked.
“Yes, I do believe she will. The healing is happening unnaturally quickly. It has only been three days, and the wounds are nearlysealed. The organs, too, seem to be repairing. It should not be possible.”
“And the other body? Her attacker?” Percival said.
