Part 16 (1/2)
16.
”Alek Knight.”
He opened his eyes almost immediately; almost immediately he sucked in a breath of cold, stale air.
”Debra?” He wanted to reach for the angelic face floating above him, to touch it, but curiously enough, he hadn't any arms or hands to do so.
”Not Debra.”
”Teresa.”
”Yes.”
He smiled drunkenly. ”I'm dead.”
”Then I must be as well.” He frowned at the faulty logic of that.
”Alive,” she said and kissed his forehead with her sweet, innocent little prost.i.tute's mouth. ”Alive.”
Her face was so perfect and unnatural and he so wanted to touch it and make her real to him once more. But where were his hands?
”I can't move,” he complained.
”Your back is broken.”
”Paralyzed.”
”For a time.”
He frowned at the news; it seemed frowning was all he could manage. ”How?”
”You fell. I watched you.”
”You were there...?”
”I stood helplessly by the banks of the Hudson and watched you fall. I took you down to the docks, and from there--here.”
He tried to turn his head, to see what this place was, but that was too much. ”Where's here?”
”A safe place I've brought you to hide you. He won't find you here. Even Amadeus the Mad does not know this city as I do.”
He saw a jungle of colorless waterpipes and shattered plaster in cookie-cutter patterns, cobwebs like shorn, ancient ghosts, or silk. He smelled old water and rust and the musty befurred things which moved busily in the walls. Above came the gentle clapping of things with blunt nighttime wings. They were in the attic s.p.a.ce of some old coldwater brownstone, he was willing to wager, but as to where in the city, if indeed they were even still in the city, was anyone's guess...
”How long...?”
”A long time, Alek Knight. Three days and you've slept them through. How do you feel?”
”I don't.”
She leaned over him and kissed his mouth, and it was terrible for he could not feel the essence of her breath on his dead traitor of a body. He heard from far down below, somewhere in the belly of the building, a roar of voices suddenly. Anger.
Human anger. Something shattered against a wall, and then there were more oaths and cries of violence. Yet he could not force himself to concentrate on them.
He was lying on a mattress or cot of some kind, Teresa's cot, he surmised, with Teresa hovering near, her flesh white and bare to his touch. Her voice, her scent--they seemed to raise his sensitivity until the room itself throbbed with painfully acute life. He saw something long and slender flash in her delicate hands, and for a moment he thought he was doomed. But then ”It's time to heal,” she whispered in her Jezebel's voice and she pressed the edge of the straight razor she held in a br.i.m.m.i.n.g black line between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if what she offered him was death and not life itself. Carefully, through her persuasions, he kissed her flesh and tasted her angel's blood, felt it fill and begin to heal the ruined sh.e.l.l of his body.
So good. But he was so tired. His mouth slackened early, his body relaxing on the meager mattress beneath him and slowly filling with the things he'd thought he'd forgotten--warmth and chill and dull, wretched pain-- as his body came alive around him to torture him for his reckless abuse of it.
He shuddered violently and tried to reach for her. ”Teresa...”
”Shh.” He felt her kiss his bloodstained lips. ”Sleep and grow strong, my beautiful lost one.” Her lips kissed his eyelids to closing and in time he slept. And when his dreams and memories came once more they were only of her.
”I dreamt things,” Alek said when next he awoke to the sounds of violent activity below. He looked around the attic s.p.a.ce and found her sitting in a rocker beside his sickbed. On a table between them were packages of vendor's food wrapped in white paper and string. Like Elijah's raven she had brought him something to eat and helped him sit up now to do so. He sagged like a stringless puppet against the headboardless wall, his body a nest of tingling points of pain.
”You're better,” Teresa said. ”What did you dream?”
Through a white haze of dust her face was ghastly, perfect, beautiful. White skin, black eyes, black, black hair, her delicate body now hidden away by an unidentifiable sheath of some ancient cloth. It looked medieval, or it was only the fact that she wanted it to. Her glamour. He wanted so to touch her and make her real in all her dangerous allure, and to his surprise he found he could. Every gesture of his fingers on her hair and face was an agony, but the pain was fine; nothing felt worst than feeling nothing at all. ”We were walking on Fifth Avenue in the daylight,” he said groggily, ”and it was spring.” He smiled with precision. ”All the old Greek vendors were selling their tulips. And I bought you--”
”An ice cream cone,” she said. ”And I ate it.”
He frowned. ”You can't remember another's dreams.”
”Another's, no. But yours I see.” She kissed his hand, licked the tips of his fingers like a fawning pet. ”I see it the way you've dreamt it, just like I see what became of your unfortunate friend.”
Akisha, ancient Akisha...
”Yes, caro,” she said, ”I know. Slain by the hand of Amadeus.”
Dear G.o.d, Akisha--but he'd never meant-- ”Yes, I know.”
He erupted into shameless, uncontrollable sobs then, and she allowed for it, cradled his face to her perfumed hair. She stroked his face and let his tears baptize her with their purity, and when it was finished and his grief weak and used up she eased him back as carefully as if he was some fragile, valuable old doll.
She leaned forward, her gown rustling, and wiped a tear from his cheek. ”And now?” she prompted.
”Nothing.” He shook his head. ”It's all been in vain.”
”No. Byron's picture. We have a map to the Chronicle.”
He laughed miserably. ”We have nothing, Teresa.”
But her smile was clever and ancient and seductive, as always. ”We have you.”
It took him a moment to understand what she meant. ”I can't,” he said at last. ”I can't do that.”
Down below something crashed against a wall and a woman screamed.
”You will,” she said.