Throat

by R. A. Nelson

  “Like Spider-Man’s tingle,” I said.

  “Huh?” Anton said.

  “Never mind.”

  “We use it to communicate. Feld is like a telephone wire.… You can speak through it when you know how.” Anton’s eyes brightened. “But Feld is also … health! You balance it and it takes care of you. The infection—when a Verloren attacks someone, they are really attacking that person’s Feld. Understand?”

  I nodded. “I guess so.”

  Anton jabbed his finger on the circle he had just drawn. “The infection is not in the blood. A doctor couldn’t find it. The infection is not an infection of the body; it’s an infection of the body’s Feld.”

  “Wow. Okay, but how about the Wesentliche?”

  “I’m getting there. When you’re drinking from someone, your two Felds are temporarily joined,” Anton said. “Mixed. Blended. If you drink long enough, they become permanently bonded, see?”

  “Okay,” I said. “But when we went on the Blood Hunt and … drank from those people … why weren’t they turned into vampires?”

  Anton held up a finger. “If you stop drinking soon enough, the Felds separate. Become two again. Unchanged.”

  I thought of Wirtz. How long had my Feld been hooked to his? Long enough. But why hadn’t it changed me completely? The seizure, I thought. Something about my tonic-clonic must have screwed up the bonding process. Scrambled it. I shuddered.

  “So … how do you know when to stop feeding?” I said.

  Lena jumped in here. “It is instinctual. You know when you are approaching the boundary where the bond is forged. I hate to tell you this, Emma, but … once that boundary is reached, it creates a bond between your Feld and your attacker’s Feld. This bond will extend through time without lessening.”

  My heart sank. Not Wirtz. No.

  “You mean … I’ll be glued to that creep for as long as I live? He can keep sending his Wesentliche through over and over again?”

  Anton nodded. “The Wesentliche comes through and keeps coming through. With the Feld, there is always a sender and a receiver, okay? The sender has control. The receiver must submit.” He held his finger up. “But wait! There is hope. Remember that this contact is a two-way street. It goes both ways, yes? The one who initiates the contact is usually the sender. But the sender also can be the one with the strongest will. With patience, years of practice, you can strengthen your will to fight against the bond, but until the infection is cleansed completely by the Sonneneruption—”

  “Oh my God. Years?” I said.

  “There is a shortcut,” Donne said.

  “Which is?”

  “Kill him.”

  We were quiet awhile as I digested everything. “In the meantime, you must guard against der Anruf,” Lena said. “The Call. Resist it. He will try to use this against you over and over. This is the Verloren’s way of controlling others.”

  “Why? What do they want?”

  Lena glanced at Donne, who was unusually quiet. “For some, the attachment can be … physical. In others, it is perhaps a twisted kind of loneliness. Power, a wish to dominate. Control for the sake of controlling. Now, however, they are being directed to go against their natural instinct for killing in order to strengthen their numbers. This is unthinkably difficult to accomplish. Imagine herding wild animals. It has taken an extraordinary Verloren leader.”

  “Who is it?” I said.

  They looked at each other with worried eyes.

  “Come on, don’t tell me this is some kind of Harry Potter deal,” I said. “You can say his name, can’t you?”

  Lena gathered her ragged skirts so that she could step down from the wall. “It is not a he, Emma. It is a she,” she said.

  Now we were sitting around the little table in the Sonnen hideout.

  “It’s not as dangerous talking in here,” Anton said. “Surrounded by earth, stone, trees, things with big Felds. They help to mask our own.”

  “So who is she?” I said.

  “I don’t know that anyone among the Sonnen knows her original name,” Lena said. “We call her die Esserin. In New Orleans, she is la Mangeuse. Further south, La Comedora.”

  “Which means?”

  “The Eater,” Lena said.

  A wave of cold rolled through me. “Have you ever actually seen her?”

  “Are you kidding?” Donne said, speaking for the first time in a while. “Do we look like the kind of people who would come within a hundred miles of someone called the Eater?”

  “So where is she?”

  “As far as we know, like other Verloren, she is always on the move,” Lena said.

  “I once heard she was in Tennessee,” Anton said.

  “Too close,” Donne said.

  “Die Esserin changed everything,” Lena said. “She is the one who made the war.”

  “But how?” I said. “How did she get them to act together?”

  “By using the Feld to offer them something,” Lena said, “that even a Verloren would find difficult refusing.”

  “Which was?”

  “The world.”

  “You mean … they want to wipe out all the human beings?” I said.

  “Oh no, not at all,” Anton said. “They would breed some … for food.”

  I tried to picture a world where human beings were enslaved to a vampire race, alive only for the … thirsty.

  “But why can’t anybody resist them? How can they control you the way they do?”

  The three vampires glanced at one another.

  “Through threat of torture,” Lena said finally. “So unspeakable …” She hesitated as if she literally couldn’t bear to say it. “The Sonnen call it der Verlust. The Loss.”

  “The Verlust cuts the victim off from her Feld,” Anton said.

  “But … you said the Feld is everywhere, inside everything?”

  “Oh, it’s still there,” Anton said. “Only the victim can’t access it anymore, okay? To be cut off from the Feld … We’ve been told it’s like … existing, but not existing. There is no escape. Soon, even thinking of escaping this … place without a Feld … is too hard.”

  “So the person … dies?” I said.

  “The victim is still a living, breathing being. But with no sense of being connected to anything. Not the earth, not other people. Perfectly isolated and helpless, they care only to satisfy their basest needs.”

  “Are you saying they’ll be like that for … eternity?”

  “Now you’re catching on,” Donne cut in.

  Lena gave her a frosty look. “We don’t know that. You are frightening Emma.”

  “She needs to be frightened, little Fresh,” Donne said. She spat on Anton’s drawing.

  “So what was the war like?” I said.

  “It was really more of a battle than a war,” Lena said. “The Sonnen did not want war. But as the Verloren grew in strength, it became a point of survival, if the Sonneneruption didn’t come soon … and so the Sonnen united to locate the Eater … in order to kill her.”

  “Killing the head of the snake,” I said.

  “Yes,” Lena said.

  “So what happened?”

  Lena didn’t answer for a moment. She put a hand to her mouth, as if she didn’t want to let the words out.

  “The Sonnen who were sent against her … they underwent the Verlust. They lost their Felds.”

  All of this swirled in my head as I rushed home to my tower, the seed of a crazy plan beginning to form. Something Anton had said had given me an idea: With the Feld, there is always a sender and a receiver. The sender has control.

  That’s why I had been able to go to Wirtz when I had experimented with the playing cards. I pushed first, I thought. I had been the sender. Now it was time to go on offense again, and I intended to take the vampire right over the edge. But first I had a phone call to make.

  I dug out the headset and dialed Sagan’s number. It took him a while to answer.

  “Hey … it’s you.” I
could hear him yawning happily. “My … street sweeper.”

  “Sagan, listen—”

  “Everything all right? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m fine. Please, I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think it was important. But … it’s in another town.”

  “Um, yeah, sure, what is it.…”

  “Do you still have the address to my apartment?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s practically sewn to my skin.” He was wide awake now.

  “Tomorrow morning, would you please go to my place and check on them for me? Google the directions. I’d screw it all up.”

  “Really? Okay, yeah, sure.”

  “Don’t knock on the door or anything. That would be a disaster. Just park and watch for them. They should be coming out about seven-thirty or a little after to get Manda to school. It would mean so much to me if you could just see them.”

  He yawned again, pointedly this time. “There’s just one thing.…”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you mean today instead of tomorrow? It’s 3:22 a.m., Emma.”

  “Oh crap. You’re right. Sorry, I’m losing track of time.”

  “I gave you a watch,” he grumbled good-naturedly. “I love hearing your voice, though.”

  “It’s really important.” So at least someone I trust will know where they are. In case—just in case … I didn’t want to finish the thought.

  “Has something happened?” Sagan said.

  “No! I’m okay. I just need you to go there. Don’t worry about me. There’s something I want to try.”

  “Wait—you’re sounding all serious now. Like somebody leaving a last will and testament. What is it really?”

  “I’m just scared for them, that’s all. Okay, Mom drives a maroon Kia, so you’ll be sure it’s them. Just see if everything looks all right. I have to know.”

  “Are they in trouble? Come on, Emma, let me call the police!”

  I swore. “No, God—Sagan—I’m sure they’re fine. But if you call the police, the cops will force you to tell them where I am and I’ll have to run again. I told you what would happen then. Do you understand me? If you think you know better than me and do it anyway—we’re dead.”

  “Jeez, okay.”

  “And call me the second you get back.”

  “I’ll call you from the complex; how about that?”

  “Even better. Good deal. And don’t get caught,” I said.

  “Caught by who?”

  “My mom, who else?”

  “So I don’t need a gun or something.”

  “Sagan! This isn’t a joke.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  I switched off the headset and shoved it back in the bag. Time to get ready.

  I grabbed a length of nylon rope and dropped down into the feral room. I stepped off the distance to the back of the room, which turned out to be approximately fifteen feet, then cut a little over half that length in rope. I wrapped one end of the rope around my stomach and knotted it securely with three granny knots. Then I tied the other end to one of the legs of the prehistoric desk. Last, I plumped a few thick bath towels around any sharp edges, sat down, and made myself as comfortable as possible in the rickety old chair. Shook out the playing cards on the desk and went to work.

  I was going to induce a grand mal seizure.

  Actually, I wasn’t really sure that I could. A big part of me hoped I would fail. But I wanted to know the vampire’s location, and I figured this would give me my best chance. My simple, or “small,” seizures generally lasted about thirty to sixty seconds, while a TC could go on for several minutes. I wanted that extra time inside the vampire’s head.

  I was scared to death of going there again—not to mention sickened—but I had to gain an edge somehow. Besides, who knew what else might happen? Maybe the “bond” between our two Felds was so deeply rooted, it would shake something loose in Wirtz’s skull too. The way he had looked at Manda’s picture—so help me God—I was ready to strike back any way that I could.

  I checked the rope one last time. I had to work fast; daylight wasn’t that far off. Wirtz would be going to ground soon. Then, as before, I started out by rapidly shuffling the cards before my eyes. Then I laid the whole deck out in a checkerboard pattern, quickly flipping them over, one after another. Not a twinge. Wish I had a strobe light.

  What was I doing wrong?

  I tried just watching the cards, letting my eyes go in and out of focus. Finally I lapsed into a semi-doze, tipping back in the chair until a line of drool running down my chin woke me up.

  I snapped forward, gasping. Remembering what I had done the last time I traveled to Wirtz. My scar … I touched my scar.

  I looked at the pattern of the cards again, this time running my finger over the raised flesh on my leg. Take me to Wirtz. Take me to Wirtz. Then I added something new: I started rocking forcefully, getting into a vigorous rhythm that exactly matched each time I stroked my scar. Take me to Wirtz. Take me to Wirtz. Take me to Wirtz.

  The chair squeaked violently as I picked up speed. Faster, faster. Finally I began to feel the sensation I had experienced before: the comfort of the rolled-up towel behind my eyes. The cards slowly melted, losing their shapes and colors, becoming a part of the desk. Any second now …

  Wait.

  That smell … Cinnamon and apples.

  I opened one eye and I could see trees. The other eye was squashed against something pebbly and hard. I was lying on my side, somewhere outdoors. How did I get here?

  For the longest time I couldn’t move, then I tried to sit up, but the top half of my body felt as if it weighed twice as much as normal. I slumped back down on my side. My ribs hurt as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to them.

  One of my hands was pinned beneath me. I raised the other and tried to grab something that could help me sit up. There was nothing there. I could see my free hand moving against the sky, but I no longer had control over it. It didn’t belong to me anymore.

  “Mom?” I said, but I doubt the word ever left my throat.

  Nobody came. Finally I managed to fall over onto my stomach. Got both hands under me and pushed. My body moved forward a few inches, then collapsed again.

  I pushed as hard as I could and rolled over onto my back. I was looking up at the bluish black of the night sky: twinkling stars, little ragged bits of clouds. Everything hurt. Everything looked round. The world started to spin. I closed my eyes, but that made the spinning worse.

  A warm liquid was spreading across my legs.

  For the first time I noticed that a rope was knotted around my stomach. Rope? It was bunched up under my back, and that’s where some of the pain was coming from. I angled my head to the left and opened my eyes again—there was some kind of tall metal structure there. I couldn’t remember a thing. Not even my own name.

  “Hello,” a deep voice said.

  My heart gave one big hammering lurch, then kept on beating rapidly.

  With great effort, I struggled upright. A man was sitting on the ground across from me. He had a shirt that was gray and stained. Little corks for buttons. A long coat and dark pants, muddy boots. His legs were crossed, arms draped over his pointed knees, hands clasped in front of him. Oh no. What is that? There was a reddish-lavender glow all over his body.

  Nothing made sense. Why would a man be glowing like that unless he was something—something that was not a man.

  Oh God. The guy’s head was seriously messed up, like he had been in some kind of horrible accident. A long pinkish flap of scalp hung over one eyebrow. It made me sick to look at him.

  The man stood; he was really tall. He walked a little ways around the clearing, the lavender glow following. I turned and looked at what he was staring at: the huge iron and steel structure behind me. If only my memory would clear. Where was I? What was this place?

  What was he going to do to me?

  “So this is where you are,” the man said. “I have been looking in the city
, but you are outside the town limits, aren’t you?” He put his hands in his pockets. “This tall structure is … industrial, I am sure. But not exactly … modern … is it, Mädchen?”

  Why was he calling me that? The man smiled and licked his lips. His eyes were black as marbles.

  “Who … are you?” I finally managed to slur. To my ears the words sounded syrupy and confused.

  “She speaks,” the man said, seemingly pleased. “Sehr gut. But there is something … damaged with you … ja?”

  Was this strange guy German? I tried to stand and fell down on all fours again. A runaway gyroscope inside my skull made me sway in little circles. The stranger kept looking at the tower.

  “There is something … familiar about it.… I would think this may be a Försterstation for observing fires … correct? But no, the structure is too elaborate.”

  The man came closer to me. I was still on all fours, so dizzy I could barely move. He knelt and looked straight at me, putting his arms out in front of him. He turned his hands up to where I could see the palms. Dipped his head until his stringy hair hung on either side of his face. But he kept staring into my eyes.

  “Have you ever painted with watercolors?” the man said. “You cannot keep them from running together on the Leinwand … the canvas. They blend no matter what you do. We are like that, Mädchen. You are a part of me now. I am a part of you. Indivisible.”

  He kept his hands out in front of him. I felt something pulling.

  The pulling sensation grew, but the man remained motionless. A giant magnet connected me to the steel of his fingers. I felt I would tip over.

  I wanted to go to him. I didn’t want to, but I wanted to. I began to walk on all fours to him. The rope trailed along behind me like a tail. The man waited, on his knees, head still down, arms still reaching.

  Finally I knelt before him, our knees almost touching. The man was so much taller than me. I suddenly wanted to hold him. Wanted to be held. How? I was disgusted by him. I could see his face so clearly now, that horrible hooked nose and flap of scalp.

  The man wanted me to kiss him. I wanted to kiss him. I started tilting my head to make it easier.

  We were less than an inch apart. If I inhaled, I would be inhaling his breath. The man smiled. He was here to help me—