Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [126]
I’d always thought that the beast was a thing of passion, because passionate emotions could bring it on. This wasn’t passionate, this was passionless. There was no right or wrong in my head. No sympathy, no sense that these two people were fellow human beings, and it would be wrong to hurt them. That wasn’t even in my head. They’d hurt me, and I was hungry, and she smelled so good, and so bad at the same time. She smelled of sickness, and I realized it was drugs. I could smell them in her sweat—acrid, bitter.
I let her go so abruptly she fell forward on the carpet, but I kept my hand on Steve Brown, and I drew him past his wife, because he had bent to see to her, and I’d pulled him off balance. He smelled of fear and anger, but nothing else. He was clean.
He stumbled, and I put a hand in his shirt, while the other used his arm to bring him in closer. I could hear his heart now, thudding, thudding, so thick, so meaty, so . . . so good.
I felt movement behind me, and I whirled, taking Steve Brown with me, tripping him without thinking about it, so that he was on the ground at my feet, with me still gripping his arm. Food should be on the ground.
Nathaniel was there, touching my face. I jerked back, as if he’d hit me, but with that one touch sound roared back into my head. A woman was screaming. Mary was asking, “Should I call the police?”
“No,” Bert was saying, “no, we can handle this.”
I doubted that. But the moment I thought that, I looked down at Mr. Brown. He was staring up at me, eyes wide, and he was afraid. I let him go as if his skin burned mine. I backed up, until I bumped into Nathaniel. I grabbed for his hand without looking, and clung to it. Just touching him helped me think. Usually all touching Nathaniel made me think about was sex or food, but today, it helped me remember that I was human and what that meant.
“Help me,” I whispered.
“Everybody out,” he said.
Everyone stared at him.
I screamed it, “Out, get out, all of you out!” I started to rush at them, but Nathaniel caught me around the waist, and I let him pick me up. I fought not to struggle. But I kept screaming, “Get them out! Get them out!”
Steve Brown grabbed his wife’s arm and started dragging her toward the door. Bert finally moved, taking her other arm, and helping. He was looking at me as if he’d never seen me before, and maybe he hadn’t. Bert had a gift for only seeing what he wanted to see.
Mary’s pale face was the last thing I saw before the door shut, and the words, get them out, changed to a wordless, formless scream. One ragged scream after another, until my throat went raw and I sagged in Nathaniel’s arms.
Before I’d only felt the beast like it was some huge pet that rubbed itself against my body and my mind, but today, I knew that that wasn’t the most dangerous part of the beast. The most dangerous part was that it was an animal, and true animals have absolutely no sense of right and wrong. I screamed, because to stop and do anything else was to risk that mind coming back up through me, and I wasn’t sure I could stop it again.
30
NATHANIEL CALLED MY name, but I couldn’t answer. I was afraid to answer. Afraid if I took even a moment to think that that other colder mind would take over again. Nathaniel dropped to his knees with his arms still around my waist. The sudden movement startled me, stopped the screams like a switch had been thrown. That other mind spilled into the silence. But it wasn’t cold anymore, it was frightened. Leopards are solitary. There are only three reasons to meet another leopard in the wild. Fighting, fucking, or eating. He was either something that would hurt us, something that would fuck us, or something that would eat us. There were no other choices in the fear that roared through my brain. I thought I’d understood what the fight or flight response was, but I’d been wrong. This made anything I’d ever felt