Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [50]
His rich curling dark hair was well groomed and clean and he had about him an attitude of prosperity and well-being, except that his clothes were dreadfully stained with blood. It was not human blood. I would have smelled human blood. He soon gave me to know by a simple facial expression that he was in dire distress.
“What is it? What can I do for you?” I asked. I tried to cloak my pure loneliness, my pure need to touch his hand.
You are a creature like me, I wanted to say. We are monsters and we can put our arms around each other. What are they, my guests, but tender things? But I said nothing at all.
It was Avicus who spoke.
“Something dreadful has happened. I don’t know how to correct it, or even if it can be corrected. I beg you to come.”
“Come where, tell me,” I said sympathetically.
“It’s Mael. He’s been grievously wounded and I don’t know if the damage can be repaired.”
We went out at once.
I followed him into a very crowded quarter of Rome where the newer buildings faced one another sometimes with no more than two feet in between. At last we came to a substantial new house on the outskirts, a rich dwelling, with a heavy gate, and he took me inside, through the entranceway and into the broad beautiful atrium or courtyard within the house.
Let me note here that he was not using his full strength during this little journey, but I did not want to point this out to him, and so at his slow pace, I had followed his lead.
Now, through the atrium, we passed into the main room of the house, the room where mortals would have dined, and there by the light of one lamp, I saw Mael lying in seeming helplessness on the tiled floor.
The light was glinting in his eyes.
I knelt beside him at once.
His head was twisted awkwardly to one side, and one of his arms was turned as though the shoulder were out of joint. His entire body was hideously gaunt, and his skin had a dreadful pallor to it. Yet his eyes fixed on me with neither malice nor supplication.
His clothes, very much like those of Avicus, hung loose on his starved frame, and were deeply soaked with blood. As for his long blond hair it was clotted with blood also, and his lips shivered as if he were trying to speak but could not.
Avicus gestured to me helplessly with both hands.
I bent closer to have a better look at Mael, while Avicus brought the oil lamp near and held it so that it cast a warm bright light.
Mael made a low, harsh sound, and I saw gradually that there were horrid red wounds on his throat, and on his naked shoulder where the cloth of his tunic had been pushed out of the way. His arm was at the wrong angle to his body, most definitely, and his neck had been horribly twisted so that his head was not right.
In a moment of exquisite horror, I realized that these parts of him—head and arm—had been shifted from their natural place.
“How did this happen?” I asked. I looked up at Avicus. “Do you know?”
“They cut off his head and his arm,” said Avicus. “It was a band of soldiers, drunk and looking for trouble. We made to go around them, but they turned on us. We should have gone up over the roofs. We were too sure of ourselves. We thought ourselves so superior, so invincibly strong.”
“I see,” I answered. I clasped the hand of Mael’s good arm. At once, he pressed my hand in return. In truth I was deeply shocked. But I could not let either of them see this, for it would only have made them more afraid.
I had often wondered if we could be destroyed by dismemberment, and now the awful truth was plain to me. It was not sufficient alone to release our souls from this world.
“They surrounded him before I knew what to do,” said Avicus. “I fought off those who tried to harm me, but look what they have done to him.”
“And you brought him back here,” I said, “and you tried to replace both head and arm.”
“He was still living!” said Avicus. “They had run off, drunken, stumbling miscreants. And I saw at once that he was still alive. There in the street, though the blood poured out of him, he was looking at me!