Ashley June pulls the trigger. A >twang, no louder than a rubber band stretched and released, so innocuous, I think the dart gun has misfired.
Sissy spins sideways in the air, then falls to the ground, arms and legs splaying about. She stands up on her legs and blinks, quickly, rapidly. A dart is jutting out the base of her neck, right in the tender dip between collarbones. She pulls it out, throws it against the wall. “Nothing’s happening,” she says, scratching her wrist. “It didn’t work. You—” And then she is suddenly collapsing to the floor. Reduced to a quivering heap of flesh.
I start to move toward Sissy.
“Don’t,” Ashley June says. She cocks the dart gun. Fires again at Sissy, hits her in the thigh.
“What are you doing?” I say in a loud voice.
“Giving her what she wants. She wanted to become a heper again, didn’t she? So I’m just helping her. ”
With the two Origin darts injected into her, Sissy is re-turning rapidly. Her head snaps back. Her hands smack against the ground in quick, jerky pats. An anguished groan escapes her mouth.
“Why are you doing this?” I shout.
Ashley June turns to me. Her eyes, a shattering softness in them. “Because I know everything. The whole truth. And it’s not what you think. It’s not what you think at all. ”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sometimes the truth doesn’t set you free. Sometimes it haunts you. Sometimes you wish you never found out. ”
A horrific yell issues from Sissy. Her back severely bent, concaving her stiffening body. I start moving toward her. And that’s when I smell it. A whiff of the decadently delicious. The fragrance of heper, blooming and ripening by the second.
“Shissy!” I say. Her designation odd on my tongue, slushing out, snared in saliva. I turn to Ashley June. “She’s re-turning. ” My jaw starts vibrating uncontrollably.
Ashley June wipes drool from her lips. “That’s the idea. ”
Heper fragrance is flowing out of the pores of Sissy’s skin, an irresistible velvet seduction. She moans in pain, but all I can think of is the flow of her bloodstream, swishing and pulsating so very near.
I fight my impulses. Take two steps away from her, every centimeter a tug against the grain of my craving. To lick her, to taste her.
To eat and drink it.
I smash my hand against the window. It cracks, first in a single line, then, as I pound it again and again, into an expanding web.
“Don’t fight it,” Ashley June says. “You will understand later when I explain. But she has to die. ” She lifts the dart gun at Sissy, readying to fire off the last dart.
“Stop!” I shout. The odor, so much thicker, so much more luxurious, now. I curl my claws into the marble floor, trying to hold myself in place.
“Better that she dies,” Ashley June says. “Better for us. For everyone. You will come to understand. Go on,” she says to me, flicking her chin in Sissy’s direction. “You get first dibs, poor baby. ” Tilting her head, she howls with plea
sure. And her voice is joined by another, a harmonizing howl that takes me a second to realize is coming from my own mouth. Ashley June shudders; I shudder.
A heper. Right in front of us. Virginal and tasty and irresistible.
“Don’t fight it,” Ashley June says. “Don’t resist it. ”
My tongue, red and thick, laps out. I can almost lick up the odor in the air, it is so thick and tantalizing. The flesh of the heper quivers suggestively, and I am about to leap at it, on the soft, wondrous flesh, on the lava of blood that is mine with the slightest prick of my fangs. The desire so pure, so overwhelming, even the succumbing to it will be an exquisite pleasure in itself.
“Gene!” Its face is twisted in an effluence of emotion. Fear humming off it, sweat dripping off its chin, a tornado of ungainly excitements tiding off its body.
I hunch my body down, preparing to pounce. I can almost feel the warm melt of supple flesh on my lips, its blood gushing into my mouth, its body squirming under my paws.
“Gene. ” It’s spoken again. Its voice is calmer, though still tinged with fear. But there’s a different look in its eyes. Not fear. Not panic. Something different. It holds me in place, glues my hands and feet to the ground. “Gene,” it says again, and this time all fear is erased from its voice and its eyes are filled with strength and softness both.
I stop, head cocking to the side. And then I see. A brief moment of clarity of a different kind. Of a watermark imprinted on my mind, my heart.
It’s Sissy.
And then I am remembering; then I am reseeing her. Who she is, what she means to me.
There’s only one way out of this.
I pull the strap of the shotgun over my head, touch its long, cold length. And press the muzzle against the bottom of my chin.
“No!” shouts Ashley June. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t, I can’t,” I say, and even now my saliva is running down my chin and sliding down the long shaft of the gun.
“Don’t!” Ashley June says, her hands white against the cold steel of the dart gun.