His frozen fingers squeeze her jaw. He whispers in her ear, soft and menacing: “Still yourself, Lalla. Or I'll snap your neck right now. And that would spoil the fun for both of us.” With a whimper, Shay deflates. A sob bubbles up her chest. “That's better.”
The bloodsucker flips her around. Her back scrapes the gate as he looms over her. The creature places one arm to either side of her head, gloved fingers curling around the iron rails. His heavy body presses into hers in a manner that's grotesque in its intimacy. His bloodless lips smack, a string of drool glistening from his protruding incisors.
He smells, not like a dead body but like death itself, all the cloyingness of overripe melons mixed with the musk of sodden earth. His nose is perfect.Jawline sharp. Each feature is attractive on its own, but wrapped together in waxen skin, their sum becomes something uncanny. “It has been a long time since I've tasted someone so pure of heart. Your pristine blood will do wonders for me. I might even feel the smallest bit human again—can you imagine?”
Shay shakes her head. A slew of pleas cements inside her throat. Without realizing why she's doing so, she reaches into the satchel beneath her djellaba. With clumsy fingers, she unfastens it. It's only when she makes contact with the cool metal spine of her pocketknife, the one she uses for trimming branches and tough stems, that her intention crystalizes.
The bloodsucker smiles wider, the tips of his incisors lengthening to impossible points before Shay's widening eyes. “I know I should wait until we get inside where we can enjoy our privacy, but you are so tempting. I think I'll have a sip to tide me over.”
“No, please, no.” Shay's voice breaks free, her words the only shield she can throw up in her swelling terror. She flicks her wrist, but the knife doesn't open. She flicks it again and again and again, until she hears the blessedclickof the blade. With her range of motion limited, she struggles to angle her hand as she continues talking. “My blood is no good. It's tainted, you see.” Her best bet is to jab the blade between his ribs. Ideally, she'll rupture an organ, and failing that, she can use his surprise to get away. “I … I'm the daughter of an addict.”
“Even better.” The bloodsucker dives for her neck. Vicious teeth plunge into Shay's throat where the flesh is soft as a kitten's underbelly. Her fingers flex in surprise, the knife slipping from her grip. Blood howls like wind in her ears. The thump of her heart grows loud and slow, almost soothing as it drowns the pain.
Shay hears voices. She thinks she's lost consciousness and reconnected with Iman and the others until the murmurs rise into shouts that sound distinctly masculine.
The bloodsucker peels his lips from her neck with asquelch.She's weak and limp, and her body would collapse on the grassy verge if his were not pinning her to the gate. She can open her eyes to narrow slits, but no farther.
The creature growls, whipping his head around. He lifts his hand and swipes the blood dribbling from his chin. “Hello, neighbors.”
“Neighbor?” questions a gruff voice. “What kind of neighbor commits such barbaric acts right out in public? Have you no shame, Tarik?”
“Shame?” The bloodsucker turns, dragging Shay with him. Her head flops against his hard chest. He pets her hair and shushes her, and it's only then that she becomes aware of her own crying. Tarik scoffs. “You have some nerve speaking that word as you crawl back from your nightly excursions with the innards of rotting corpses clumped between your teeth.”
Shay blinks. The sight that comes into focus is so frightening, she actually clings tighter to the bloodsucker. A group of monsters surrounds them on the clay road. They have skin so thin and translucent, every bone is put on display. Their pale eyes glow like lanterns, some set within sunken pits and others bulging from their heads. Their arms stretch to their knees. Greasy hair hangs past their ears in strings, and their faces are something cut from the fabric of nightmares and sewn by a drunken seamstress.
Bone-eaters.
“At least we aren't killers.” Absurdly, the bone-eater who speaks wears a wide-rimmed reed hat topped with colorful pom-poms. He leans upon a cane, its handle fashioned in the shape of a small and realistic-looking skull. Perhaps too realistic. He runs a hand down his scraggy white beard, disturbing a trio of flies from their rest.
Tarik narrows his eyes, gripping Shay tighter. “I'd mind my business if I were you, Aidi. Go on home.” The bloodsucker gestures to a building one yard over. The squat two-story cottage boasts a thatched roof, a bent chimney, and a small yard overrun by tangled weeds and bulbous mushrooms. “Unless you want dibs on the leftovers?”
“You're disgusting.” A bone-eater swathed in a hooded black cape steps forward.
“Stand down,” Tarik hisses, baring his teeth. “You're on my property. And you're scaring my guest.”
“We're on a public street, actually,” another bone-eater with a hunched back and long, thin antlers branching above his head chimes in. “And I'd ask your guest to tell us herself whom she fears.”
“I'd say that chivalry isn't dead, but, well, look at you.” The bloodsucker tosses his head back with a droll laugh. “As to your complaint about public spaces, worry not, my guest and I will be going inside now.”
Tarik moves to pass through the gate. Shay moans. In her weakened state, the only objection she manages is that of stretching her arm over the bloodsucker's shoulder. She reaches out toward the distant forest that separates her from home and safety. Through pooling tears, she meets eyes with Aidi.
“I think not.” The bone-eater steps forward. “The girl is hardly more than a child.”
He lifts his skull cane high, and the jaw of the handle drops. With a dry wheezing sound, it gathers the mist around them in a trail that recedes into the gaping maw. The thinning mist makes room for moonlight to beam down in red gashes.
“I'm not wearing my night cream,” Tarik screeches, throwing his arms up against the intrusion. “You miserable grave robbers!”
“At least we don't sleep in coffins,” a short, chubby bone-eater with wide, upward-curving horns barks out.
“Now you're just being cliché,” the bloodsucker says indignantly. “How about you go scare some sleeping toddlers and cause them to soil their bedsheets?”
In slow wobbling steps, Shay backs away while the creatures exchange barbs. She's unsure whether the bone-eaters are the saviors they appear or simply present a new, perhaps less immediate, threat. She counts seven of them in total. One, with fat horns that curve downward to either side of his head, smiles at her through a mouth full of jagged teeth.
She retreats one man's length before Tarik realizes what she's doing. He lunges after her, only to immediately trip over the cane Aidi flings across his path. Without further hesitation, Shay runs for it. She steadies her feet by sheer will. Her vision blurs. Unsure of her way, she heads in the general direction ofthe forest's twisted silhouette. At the end of the block, while she's deciding which turn to take, a pitiful cry rings out.
She glances back to where Aidi swings the cane. He whacks the bloodsucker repeatedly as the creature lies on the ground. The other bone-eaters circle around and take their turns punching, kicking, and stomping on him.
Shay fumbles. A stabbing pain runs from the ball of her shoulder to the base of her skull. Her hand seeks the two round punctures on her throat, and when she draws her fingers back, they're slicked with a shocking amount of blood.
