The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [148]
“Give it here,” Dean said. “I’ll make bandages. Get him talking—if they whammed his noggin, he shouldn’t fall asleep.”
“Cal.” I shook him, gently as I could. “Cal, say something.”
“Aoife.” My name on his lips was thickened with blood and delirium. “They brought you back.”
“I was trying to get out,” I said. “I got caught.”
“I …” Cal coughed, and dark blood appeared on his chin like inky raindrops. “I gotta tell you something, Aoife.”
“No,” I said, smoothing a hand over his forehead. “Save it. There’s time yet.”
Linen shredded as Dean ripped up Cal’s school shirt. Cal grabbed for me. His palm was slick, with blood or sweat, I couldn’t tell. “Can’t wait. I can’t wait.”
“All right, all right,” I said. “You have to stay still, Cal. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I lied to you.…” Cal’s voice went dreamy, and his pulse under my fingers slipped away like a drop of mercury on glass.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Whatever you did, I forgive you.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said. “I’m so far away, Aoife … so far away from home.…”
My shoulder began to throb, and I clamped my free hand over the bite. “Dean, he’s not making any sense.”
“He lost a lot of his juice,” Dean said. “Probably needs a transfusion.”
“Cal.” Shaking wasn’t working anymore, so I slapped him across the face, trying to avoid the worst of his bruises. “Don’t you die on me, Cal Daulton. I’ll get you blood. Just please hang on.”
“I don’t need blood,” he wheezed after a moment. “I need …” Another coughing fit, more blood droplets scattering across the stones and my hands.
“What?” I said. “Tell me, Cal.”
“I need meat,” he rasped. “Fresh meat. Something live.”
I gaped at him. “Why in the stars would you need that?” The pain in my shoulder where the shoggoth had bitten intensified and I groaned. I’d be seeing double if I could see at all. The last time it had hurt this much was when I’d been close to eldritch creatures, as if, in a peculiar way, the shoggoth’s venom had given me an early warning.…
“Meat,” Cal whined, in a voice that echoed off the high parts of the cell. “I want to eat.…”
“Aoife.” Dean grabbed my shoulder and I yelped. His touch burned the shoggoth’s bite. “Get away from him. Now.”
“He’s in shock,” I said. “He’s hallucinating.”
Cal gave another groan like bones creaking, and then he sat up, as if someone had jammed a rod into his back. The spot on his face I’d touched was beginning to peel back, skin hanging in loose ribbons. I stared, unable to think of moving, or anything but the sloughing flesh on the face that had formerly been Cal’s.
My stomach lurched as the pain crested, and Dean yanked me out of Cal’s reach as he swiped at me. His hands were huge, and tipped with black claws that flexed and retracted.
“He’s not hallucinating,” Dean whispered in my ear. “He’s a ghoul.”
Trapped in the half-dark, I clung to Dean while Cal convulsed on the cell floor. “Cal …” I reached out an experimental hand, and Cal snapped at me. His teeth had multiplied and lengthened, and his bones protruded from under his skin like a mountain range.
I jerked my hand back. Cal wasn’t Cal any longer. He snarled at me, and I flinched as if I’d been slapped. How could I have not seen this? Cal had fooled me, more than even Draven.
“Keep away from him, princess,” Dean said. “Ain’t anything more we can do.”
“No,” I said, wriggling free of Dean’s grasp. “He’s still Cal.” I was mostly talking to talk myself into believing the thing on the floor was still my friend. I couldn’t deny he had changed. There was precious little of him left to the naked eye. Just the thing I’d been told my entire life was the embodiment of terror. Only the fact that I couldn’t see much in the dark kept me from screaming.
Keeping myself clear of his claws and jaws, I crawled over to Cal and forced myself to touch the clammy, loose skin hanging from his newly hollow ribs. “How could you not tell me?” I demanded. My voice rose, anger