The answer was nowhere. I was somewhere between Dulcie’s office and my home, but I felt very strongly as though I had fallen through the walls that divide the worlds into someplace where time did not exist and pain was a commodity few could afford.
The numbness that had come upon me during Dulcie’s tirade had fully settled in and made itself comfortable in the recesses of my body. It nestled into the places between muscles and bones like birds in the large blocked letters of abandoned storefront signs. I could move if the urge truly struck, but I found myself instead just blinking slowly and thinking very little.
A skilled psychologist might have pointed out that this was something one did when one fell into shock. It was also something one did when one was trying very hard not to process something.
Dulcie was angry with me for accosting Vander. My poor, sweet Dulcie, so stupid and loyal and conflict-averse in moments when conflict was precisely the needed thing.
Perhaps I had embarrassed her. Perhaps she simply did not want to seem complicit in the accosting—though, if such was the case, she could have been less personal about it.
Dulcie’s face continued to glower at me in my mind’s eyes. Her mouth moved, but her words were lost to a wind I could not feel. A sense of anger blossomed somewhere deep within me, indignation of the melted-metallic variety, the kind which stung and rang like a gong in a well.
“More than boobs with legs,” I muttered bitterly.
How could she think such a thing?
After everything I had done for her. After attacking her attacker, leaping forward to defend her honor and the sanctity of her person from the unclean likes of Knightley Vander.
I don’t belong to you, she had said. As though she belonged to someone else, to him.
The anger rose and boiled within me. It caught in my throat and swelled like a balloon.
I felt a most confounding urge to laugh, loudly and bawdily, and could not fathom why.
###
I stood before the painting in the basement of my home. The floor was carpeted in beige, the furniture black and bland, the lamps and potted plants lifted from some tawdry suburban magazine. I had intended this room to be lacking, that the color and the virility of the painting might strike the viewer first and foremost.
And it was indeed striking.
The image—Dulcie, in the sheerest gown one could imagine—had been painted by an old master with whom I had long been acquainted. Through my descriptions—my soliloquys, he liked to call them—he used oil to forge the image of a woman. Pointed ears poking through her blond hair, flushed cheeks, lips pursed and open ever so slightly, her breasts pushed together, nipples straining against the feeble fabric.
More than boobs with legs, I thought. How could she accuse me of something so pitifully shallow?
I looked at the painting.
And somewhere, deep within the ancient machinations of my eternally distracted mind, some forgotten cog clicked itself back into place—or, perhaps, it was never in place to begin with. Perhaps this was a new machine, with new and glorious and hitherto unprecedented purpose.
I started laughing.
“How indeed,” I said out loud.
The painting was a worthless representation.
It was not only a pathetic physical rendering, it was a disturbing, insulting reflection. Dulcie had looked upon this painting in the nights before she vanished, and she’d seen herself through my eyes as an ivory body standing demure and vulnerable on a swath of soft green grass.
This was not what Dulcie was.
Was this truly all I had seen in her?
What had I been looking for, when I commissioned this monstrosity, this façade of the truth? What had I been hoping to accomplish?
The answer, of course, was simple and lurid.
This was the version of Dulcie that was not trying to get away from me.
But this was not Dulcie. This was everyone I had ever been with except Dulcie. This was a woman full of sexual energy, begging to be taken and used however I pleased.
What had Dulcie seen, when she’d looked upon this painting for the first time? What was it about her that I worshipped through this craven image? For craven, it was; a coward’s rendering of that which was too beautiful to comprehend.
I had robbed her of complexity, of bravery and wit, and boiled her down to her component elements—and from these, I had taken what suited me.
I was lying, you see, when I said I was not pretending to be more to her than a mere friend. When I leapt to her defense, in any capacity, some part of me always imagined myself to be her conquering shadow, her silent protector. Yes, I played pretend. Yes, I wished that she would thank me, for once, rather than admonish me for a dozen other, lesser actions.
But I must confess something strange.
In these moments, I was not imagining myself to be the kind of conquering hero for whom his princess waits patiently at home. Rather, in my heart of hearts, I was a defender of the very concept of what it meant to be Dulcie O’Neil.
“The Buddha’s name was Prince Gautama,” I told Gerard as he entered the room with a heated water bottle to wrap around the back of my neck. “Did you know that?”
“No, sir.”
“Prince Gautama grew up in a pleasure palace, constructed by his father, that he might never know the miseries of the outside world. There was food and wine and music and dancing. Life was frivolous and grand. And, ultimately, pointless.”
Gerard nodded. “Indeed, sir.”
“But he left,” I went on, as I continued to study the portrait of a woman who was decidedly not Dulcie. The heat from the water bottle felt wonderful on my cold skin. “The curiosity of all mankind beset him, and he peered into the world outside and was horrified. He saw, for the first time, death, sickness, and old age.” The false Dulcie’s eyes stared out and over me at some place no one but her would ever see. Her face was vacant, open. Easy. “And when Prince Gautama returned to the palace, everything he saw there disgusted him.”
Gerard clearly did not know what to say, so he said nothing at all.
“Thus, he left. He shaved his head and put on the robes of a peasant, and he went out into the world to find the truth in all of it. He sat under a tree, determined to die or to know. And by dawn, he knew.”
And so, with this pinprick of enlightenment niggling in the back of my mind, I had a choice to make. I could remain, like Prince Gautama, in the pleasure palace forever. I could immerse myself in blood and sex and wealth, in petty manipulations and grossly idealized women, until the death of the sun itself, turning my face from the windows that led out into the world. I could pretend that my realm of comforts was all that needed to exist.
Or.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that it is time for me to go.”
“Sir?”
I turned to face him and nodded in the direction of the painting. “Dispose of it.”
Gerard’s brow furrowed. He looked between me and the pixie whore on which I had spent so much time and money. “I beg your pardon, sir?’
“Take it down and burn it,” I suggested. “Until nothing remains, if you please.”
Gerard offered me a rather confused bow and scuttled off, presumably to acquire hands to carry the painting to a better ventilated room.
I approached the painting and reached up to touch the grass, to run my hand along the voluptuous breasts of this woman who existed somewhere throughout time. This woman who was beautiful, who looked like a sister of Dulcie’s, but who was not Dulcie in every conceivable way.
And my memory returned to the question Dulcie had asked me most recently.
If her face melted away, what would I do? If I had to close my eyes forever—if I had to erase from my memory her every feature—would I still love her? If my lesser functions ceased to be, could I still want her in a way that mattered?
I dug my fingers into the canvas and ripped it, making four long gashes through the face that belonged to no one.<
br />
Of course I would.
What a stupid question.
And it was perhaps even more stupid that I had not been capable of answering the question right there, on the spot.
I had known the answer even then.
But Dulcie frightened me.
Not owing to her bizarre episode. But, in general. She always had.
Dulcie was reality, something from the realm of the substantial and complex, and I did not want to wake up. I had painted over her truth with a dream, something simple and vulgar, something I did not have to look in the eye and consider for what it was. I had forced upon her the image of something I might find in the pleasure palace, something simple and beautiful. And utterly mundane, that I might not have to venture outside the painting’s walls to confront the truth of who Dulcie O’Neil really was.
How long had I spent skating around this complete and impossible truth? How many years had I spent in the company of Dulcie O’Neil, pretending she was something less, that I might not have to attempt to be something more?
How many years? How many months? How many days?
All of them. Every last one. Every day, to the hour, to the minute, missing what was really there.
But I was ready now.
I was as awake as I had ever been.
My eyes burned with a child’s desire to see everything, to comprehend every color, every shadow, every trembling leaf and errant strand of hair. Every mortal thump of the heart. Every tremor of the soul.
Gerard returned with another of my men, whose name escaped me. Together, they hauled the enormous painting away. As a vampire, of course, Gerard could have carried the bloody thing away himself. I had a feeling he’d retrieved this other man simply to allow me enough time to change my mind, if such was what I was wont to do.
But I had not changed my mind.
And I watched them depart with the painting, feeling some relief.
“I am,” I declared aloud, “awake.”
It was as though I had returned from a place of deep slumber, awakened such as the Princess Aurora had awakened. Except the dragon had yet to be slain, and the fair maiden still needed rescuing.
The story was beginning in earnest, and I was just in time for the interesting bits.
And, yet, that story was yet to be unveiled.
For as I had departed the FBI building, Dagan had followed me.
And Darion had followed him.
I did not know there were intruders in my home, however, until I heard Osenna scream.
TWENTY-THREE
Dulcie
The ambulance was twelve-ish minutes out and I was sitting on a table in what was basically the nurse’s office, letting Sam play doctor. Quillan was perched awkwardly in a chair in the corner, elbows on his knees, watching.
“Does this hurt?” asked Sam.
“Yes,” I admitted, because everything hurt.
“This?”
“Yeah.”
She pinched the outside of my arm, but not with her nails. “Okay, this?”
“Sam, literally everything hurts. I am a walking, talking ball of hurt.”
“You shouldn’t be walking, then.”
“Okay, then, I’m a hobbling, bitching ball of hurt.” I wrinkled my nose. “Hades, that’s fucking awful.”
“What is?”
“Dagan,” I answered.
“You can smell him?”
“Yeah.” I fought the urge to gag.
I couldn’t just smell Dagan; I could smell the very specific cocktail of hormones Dagan’s body was pumping into the atmosphere like a factory churning out smog. It was this weird combination of heat, sweat, sugar, ass, and cigarette smoke, and it was clogging up my nose like I’d snorted wet gunpowder.
“What’s he smell like?”
“I can’t begin to explain it.”
“That bad, huh?”
“The actual worst.” And it was getting stronger, too. He’d smelled like that since he’d gotten here, but it was just this vague undertone of “shut up and fuck me.” Now, it was a fucking tidal wave of animal desperation, like somebody had emptied an entire aisle of Axe into the ventilation system.
“What are the odds he’s masturbating in the interrogation room?” I asked.
“Pretty high, honestly,” ventured Quill.
“Is somebody with him right now?” I continued.
“There are people watching the door,” Sam answered.
“Anybody behind the glass?”
“Probably.”
We didn’t get paid enough for this.
Sam reached up and pushed at the lymph nodes under my jaw. “Does this sting at all?”
I flinched away before she could put much pressure on them. “Yes.” I put my hand up to the place she’d touched, which was now throbbing like I’d been punched.
Sam screwed her mouth up to one side. “Dulcie, I’m sorry, but I really am just trying to help.”
Ah, hell. “Sorry. Just—”
“Everything hurts?” she finished for me.
“Literally everything. All of the things.”
Sam nodded and started rifling around in one of the drawers. The room was set up like your typical doctor’s-office closet-space with that little plush-cloth table thing, except without the paper, bland gray cabinets, and a hook-nose faucet spitting the coldest water known to man.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Something metal,” she answered. “Just a sec...”
She pulled out a little metal scalpel-looking thing and turned to me.
“Um,” I blurted.
“Relax, I’m just gonna touch it to your skin.” She held out her hand and I gave her my wrist. Turning my arm over, she gently pressed the not-sharp end of the scalpel against the crook in my elbow.
“Ah, fuck!” I cried, resisting the urge to pull back. Sam lifted the scalpel.
“What did that feel like?”
“Like really bad stinging,” I confessed.
Sam nodded and made this world-weary sighing sound, like that confirmed something I wasn’t going to like.
“What?” I asked.
“Just, hypersensitivity to cold, swollen nodes, bloodshot eyes, dry mouth, fever.” She trailed off, looking down into the corner where Quillan was sitting. He was watching her expectantly, worriedly looking back and forth between the two of us.
“What?” he asked, a split second before I could.
“Um. Okay, so I’m not that kind of doctor,” Sam stressed. “I mean, I’m not any kind of doctor.”
“Sam,” said Quill.
“And I have no way to actually diagnose this here, or at all, we need legit witch doctors for this—”
“Sam,” I said this time.
“—and I don’t want to freak you out, because I could totally be wrong.”
“Wrong about what?”
“Um.” She looked at me, then at Quill, then back at me again. “Okay. Basically, you’re having an allergic reaction to your own blood… I think.”
“I’m what?”
“I think that’s the problem. Since, you know, you’re bleeding red, and it looks mostly normal red, not like it mixed with the gold, so I’m kind of wondering if there’s some antigen or parasite or disease or whatever in some of the blood Meg used in her transfusions that’s… um…”
“Eating my actual blood.”
“…Kind of.”
“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled, slumping over and putting my face in my hands. “Now my actual body is trying to kill me.”
“…Yeah, I think it is,” Sam answered.
“Okay, so what do we do?” asked Quill. I heard the little squeak of plastic on tile as he stood up too fast out of his chair.
“There’s a couple of things we can try,” ventured Sam. The way she said it, though, didn’t inspire much in the way of optimism.
I groaned, really loud and long. I was just so sick of literally everything in the universe conspiring to kill me. It was
one thing when people I’d put in jail came back looking for vengeance; it was something else entirely when my actual blood wouldn’t jive with the rest of my body.
What would it feel like, to die of blood poisoning? I kind of had an idea. My father had shot me in his library with a bullet full of dragon’s blood, and that wasn’t a fun feeling. But I also hadn’t died, or I didn’t stay dead, anyway, and I honestly wasn’t conscious long enough to really feel the dragon’s blood. Maybe it burned. Maybe it was really, really cold. Maybe it stung like I’d mainlined lemon-juice and cocaine.
It stung right now.
I felt like every single one of my cells had a tiny fever. I imagined white blood cells in old nurse’s hats, handing out bowls of soup and warm blankets to red blood cells in sick bays.
It sounded like a slow way to die.
“Dulcie, are you okay?” worried Sam.
“Fine,” I replied. “Just over here having death thoughts, nothing to worry about.”
And then I realized Dagan’s “shut up and fuck me” smell was gone.
“Crap,” I muttered.
“The ambulance is on its way,” said Sam. “We’ll get you to the witch wing and figure this out, okay?”
“We don’t have time for a hospital.” I was already pulling my bloody clothes back on.
“Wait, woah, hold up,” objected Quill. “Dulcie, you just about bled out on the breakroom floor, you can’t—”
“Dagan’s gone.” I hopped off the table, wavered like a spinning top for three really awful seconds, and started walking towards the door.
“What do you mean?” said Quillan.
“I mean, he’s gone.”
“Yeah, I got that, but how do you know?”
“I can’t smell him anymore.”
“So?’
“Quill, I have no way to explain to you how not okay a horny demon smells.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. If I can’t smell him, that means he’s nowhere near the building.”
We all went out into the hallway—a wide-ish space with tiny doctor-patient rooms lined up on either wall.
“Okay, well, where did he go?” asked Sam. “Can you pick up a trail or something?”
“Maybe.”
Vanity Scare Page 19