Every other day(14)

“Oh. My. God. What are you doing?”

“Keep your eyes closed.” I barely recognized my own voice. I’d cut my arm deeper than I’d meant to, and the blood just kept coming and coming. I thrust my arm closer to the ouroboros symbol.

“Here, kitty-kitty,” I said, unwilling to let the enormity of the moment sink in. “Auntie Kali has num-nums for you.”

Nothing happened, and I lowered my voice in both volume and tone. The words came fast and then slow, and every single one of them sounded like it was being spoken through me more than by me.

“You want memories? I’ve got memories. You want blood? I’ve got blood. You don’t want her. You want me.”

Bethany stiffened. “Kali, what are you—”

“Bethany. Shut. Up.” I lowered my voice to a purr. “Is this what you want? Some cheerleader? What’s her best memory—getting to stand on the very top of the pyramid? Do you have any idea what I’ve seen? What I’ve done?”

Do you have any idea what I am? I wanted to say, but I didn’t. My plan required me playing bait, but it also required a certain amount of discretion. If my target figured out what I was before it took the bait, this wouldn’t end well for anyone.

“I know you can hear me. I know you can smell me. I know you’re sucking these words out of Bethany’s brain as fast as I can say them. I know that you know—you don’t want her. You want me. This girl is Denny’s. I’m gourmet.”

This was a bad plan, bad idea. I felt that with certainty as my arm went numb. As the little stars dancing at the periphery of my vision began to turn dark and spread like inkblots across a page.

I don’t want to die.

The thought came, quick and vicious, into my head, and then there was a sound like a gun going off and a smell like rotten eggs. Bethany stumbled forward and went down to her knees, and I sank into velvety nothingness. It caressed my skin, lapped at my temples, the nape of my neck. It circled me like smoke, its touch light, but all-consuming.

And just as I was about to lose consciousness, I heard the voice.

Hello, Kali. I’m Zev.





Consciousness came slowly, like the rising of the tide, my body and my mind falling gradually into sync with each other until I remembered that I was called Kali, that what I was feeling was known as pain, and that here—in this space, in this time, in this body—I wasn’t alone.

Hello, Kali.

The voice in my head was silent, but my memory of those words was ice slipping down my spine.

Everything hurts, I thought, clinging to the pain and pushing all other sensations away. A groan escaped my throat, and my eyelids fluttered. For a second, I thought I saw a person out of the corner of my eye: broad through the shoulders, muscular and sleek and made almost entirely of shadow, but even before I’d marked its existence, it was gone.

I blinked, and the hunter in me began automatically surveying my surroundings: bright lights, a padded surface, paper that crinkled beneath me as I moved, and on the opposite wall, I could almost make out a cartoon drawing of …

A kraken.

This time, when I groaned, I put some oomph in it. My entire body felt like someone had taken a Weed Whacker to it, then strung me up like a piñata. Awareness of where I was and how I’d gotten there did nothing to soothe me.

Chupacabra. Blacking out. Nurse’s office.

Well, crap.

I struggled to sit up, and as I did, the feeling that I wasn’t alone in my body spread from my brain to my chest and from my chest out to each of my limbs. To the outside world, I probably looked no different than I had before, but whether it was my imagination or my body’s reaction to being bitten, I could feel an alien presence in the warmth of my skin, the blush in my cheeks, the steady, but rapid beating of my heart.

A whisper in my ear.

A phantom hand on the small of my back.

I shivered and wondered if this was what it had been like for Bethany. If this was normal. And then I stopped wondering—because since when had I ever been normal?

Luring this thing from Bethany’s body to mine wasn’t normal.

Thinking that I could be bitten and survive wasn’t normal.

And the way I felt now?

I forced myself to stop thinking about it and concentrated on the thing—the only thing—that mattered now.

I’m going to find you, I thought fiercely, willing my newly acquired parasite to absorb that particular thought and leave the rest alone. I’m going to find you, and I’m going to fight you, and I’m going to win.

Maybe it heard me. Maybe it didn’t. I had no idea if these things were picky little memory eaters, or if my brain was an all-you-can-eat chupacabra buffet. I didn’t know how this was supposed to work or why. For most people, it probably didn’t even matter, because by the time they realized they’d been bitten, they were as good as dead.