Teeth_ Vampire Tales - Ellen Datlow [99]
Nikki pushed herself tighter to his back. “You seem like a nice guy, and I wanted your last minutes to be special, Gory. Really, I did, but”—she reached down and slashed open Gregory’s throat with a short blade—“you talk too much.”
Blood sprayed over Eliana, over the grass, and over Nikki.
And then Nikki leaned down and sank her teeth into the already bleeding flesh of Gregory’s neck.
Gregory arched and twisted, trying to get free, trying to escape, but Nikki was on his back, swallowing his blood and pressing him against Eliana.
Eliana started to scream, but Nikki covered her mouth and nose. “Shut up, Elly.”
And Eliana couldn’t move, couldn’t turn her head, couldn’t breathe. She stared up at Nikki, who licked Gregory’s blood from her lips, as the pressure in her chest increased. She tried to move her legs, still pinned under Gregory’s body; she grabbed Nikki’s wrists ineffectually. She scratched and batted at Nikki as everything went dark, as Nikki suffocated her.
Graveyard soil filled Eliana’s mouth, and a damp sensation was all over her. She opened her eyes, blinked a few times, spit out the dirt, but that was as much as she could manage for the moment. Her body felt different: Her nerves sent messages too fast, her tongue and nose drawing more flavors in with each breath than she could identify, and breathing itself wasn’t the same. She stopped breathing, waiting for tightness in her chest, gasping, something. It didn’t come. Breathing was a function of tasting the air, not inflating her lungs. Carefully, she turned her head to the side.
She wasn’t in the same spot, but the same wingless angel stood atop a gravestone watching her.
He was alive. He looked down at her with shadow-dark eyes, and she wondered how she’d mistaken him for a sculpture. Because I couldn’t see this clearly. . . or smell . . . or hear. She swallowed audibly, as she realized what she didn’t hear: The angel who had watched her die wasn’t alive either.
She swiped a hand over her eyes, brushing something sticky from her eyelids. Not too many hours ago—she thought—she’d coated her lashes in heavy mascara and outlined her eyes in thick black liner. It wasn’t eyeliner that she smeared over her temple. No. The memory of Gregory’s blood all over her face came back in a rush.
Eliana could hear the sounds of people walking outside the graveyard, could smell the peculiar cologne the crypt angel wore, could taste the lingering mustiness of the soil that she’d had in her mouth. And blood. Gregory’s blood was on her lips. Absently, she lifted her hand and licked the dirt-caked dried blood—and was neither disgusted nor upset by the flavor.
“Up.” A boot connected with her side.
Without looking, Eliana caught the boot. She felt slick vinyl over a toned leg. Holding the boot, she looked away from the crypt angel and stared at the boot’s owner.
“Nikki,” Eliana said. “You’re Nikki.”
“Nice catch.” Nikki crouched down. “Now get up.”
Eliana was sober now—or perhaps completely mad. Her face was wet with blood and dirt, and she was lying in a mound of fresh soil. It wasn’t a hole. She hadn’t been buried in the ground. Instead, she was on her back on top of the ground.
Like I was when Nikki killed Gory . . . and me.
But the moonlight falling on Eliana’s soil-covered body felt like raw energy, pushing away all of her confusion, re-forming her. It had saturated the soil in which she was lying, and the energy of the two pricked her skin like tiny teeth biting her all over. She wanted to stay there, soak in the moonlight and the soil, until everything made sense again.
“Get up.” Nikki tangled her fingers in Eliana’s hair and stood.
Eliana came to her feet, wishing she could stop or at least pause longer in the fresh-turned earth. At least the moonlight is still falling. It felt like a very light rain, tangible but too delicate to capture.
She stepped backward, and Nikki released her.
“You killed me,” Eliana said. It was not a question or an accusation but something between the two. Things felt uncertain; memory and reality and logic weren’t all coming