Dark of the Moon

Boucher studied him for a moment longer and then released the chain that held Joe suspended. Joe fell, striking the ground hard. The pain nearly destroyed him.

Boucher knelt behind him. Joe felt the cuffs spring open, though Boucher had no key.

“Can you stand?” Boucher asked.

Joe crawled to his knees. Whirling blackness tried to suck him under. A strong, narrow hand pulled him up by the ruins of his shirt.

The eyes that stared into his were a deep brown tinged with red. “Will you serve me?” Boucher asked.

A coldness washed over Joe. “How?”

“As my enforcer. You will keep other humans obedient to me.”

“Hu-humans?”

Boucher smiled. There was something wrong with his teeth.

“Don’t be concerned, boy,” he said. “You will no longer be among them.”

He leaned forward, tearing open the collar of Joe’s shirt. It seemed for a moment that he was kissing the base of Joe’s neck, and Joe thrust out his arms in panic. But then he felt a strange sort of peace mingled with incomprehensible pleasure, and his muscles relaxed.

When he woke, there was no pain. He was naked between clean sheets, not a single injury marking his body. The room in which he lay was spartan, holding little more than a bed and a washbasin, but fresh clothing hung in the plain armoire against the wall.

Joe rose from the bed, feeling the strength surge through his body, aware of a ravening hunger such as he had never known. He had just begun to dress when Boucher walked into the room.

In an instant Joe remembered everything. And something strange happened inside him; when he looked at Boucher, he knew he was bound to the other man by means he had no way to explain.

“Good,” Boucher said. “You will come with me, and I will instruct you in what you must know.” He smiled and touched Joe’s face in the way a man might stroke a favored pet. “You shall keep your name for the time being. Someday, when you earn it, you may choose your own.”

He turned for the door. Joe closed his eyes, caught in a maelstrom of sensation.

“What am I?”

Boucher paused. “You are more than human, my protégé. And you will live a thousand years.”

DORIAN WOKE AGAIN. It was several minutes before he could distinguish the past from the present.

Joseph. Dorian. Neither name had any meaning now. Soon the husk of his body would begin to rot. He would become incapable of movement, and then his brain would start to die.

He let himself sink back into the half world of formless dreams and visions. Sometimes he thought he saw Gwen Murphy, her heart-shaped face framed with soft red curls, green eyes blazing, full lips parted as she prepared to admonish him. “You can’t die,” she said. “I won’t let you.”

Strange how clear her voice was. Clear and strong, as if words alone could draw him back from the precipice. But it was for her sake he’d come here. It was easy to let go when he remembered her sleeping in the hospital chair, her lashes brushing her cheek, completely unaware of how close she had come to death.

His cracked lips moved in a smile. Gwen. She had saved him. Saved him by showing him what he had to do. He closed his eyes.

“No!”

He felt something touch his arm and tried to brush it away. Perhaps the rats had grown bold again.

“Dorian!”

Air blew softly in his face. He imagined that he smelled flowers.

“Wake up!”

Someone began to shake him. He rolled onto his side, too weak to fight his attacker. It kept after him, claws furrowing his shirt and digging into his skin.

“No,” he murmured. “Let me be.”

“Never.”

The blow stung his face like a hive of angry bees. Instinctively he reached for the thing that had hurt him. His fingers closed on smooth flesh. He twisted, provoking a purely human cry.

He opened his eyes. The face above him was a blur topped with a corona of fire. An avenging angel come to drag him to hell.

“Dorian,” she whispered. “Please. It’s Gwen. Listen to me.”

His senses turned traitor. He couldn’t block the fragrance of clean skin and perfume, the sound of a heartbeat he knew as well as his own.

“Gwen.” His voice was hardly audible even to his own ears. “Go away.”

She leaned closer. His strength failed him. He released her, knowing he had no hope of forcing her to leave. All he could do was beg.

“Please,” he said. “There’s…nothing you can do.”

GWEN HEARD HIM WITH disbelief and horror. The creature below her bore almost no resemblance to the man she’d known: his skin was cracked, each wound seamed with dried blood; his eyes were deeply sunk in his face; his body was strangely attenuated, as if he were slowly disintegrating before her eyes.

He was dying. And he wanted it.

“Dorian,” she whispered. “Why?”

He turned his head away, dismissing her question. Dismissing her.

“It’s been two weeks,” she said, convinced that she had to keep talking, to keep him clinging to life even against his will. “I’ve been searching everywhere. All Walter could tell me was where you used to live. That wasn’t enough. I had to walk through every tenement and speakeasy, talk to people I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them…and this is my reward.”

The sharply outlined muscles beneath his jaw tensed. He was listening. She touched his shoulder with the greatest care, afraid his flesh might crumble under any pressure at all.

“I don’t know how you got this way,” she said, “but if you think I’ve wasted my time only to let you die, you’ve got another thing coming.”

A husk of sound emerged from his chest. She thought it might be laughter.

“Too late,” he said. “Debt…is repaid.”

“The hell it is.” Gwen looked around the filthy room, considering how she might drag him into the hallway without hurting him. “Can you get up?”

The breath rattled in his chest. Her eyes flooded, and she felt close to emptying the contents of her stomach…not that she’d had much of an appetite since Dorian had gone missing.

“If you can’t move,” she said, “I’m sending for an ambulance.”