Summer Sons(111)

“I expected as much,” Troth replied.

Bowl in hand, she approached him. The substance she’d created was murky, gelatinous, and flecked with dried plant matter. She scooped up two fingers of the oily sludge to smear across his forehead, his lips, the palms of his hands. With clinical detachment, she rucked up his shirt and added a dab above his belt-line.

“Open up,” she said.

Andrew stared at her and then shook his head once.

“I will make you,” she said.

He clenched his teeth shut and she gave a disappointed sigh—before grabbing his face in both hands and jamming her thumbs into the joints of his jaw. Weak from the drugs, Andrew felt his mouth pop open a fraction. She stuffed two fingers straight to the base of his tongue. The points of her manicure stabbed at his gag reflex. He swallowed convulsively, tongue forcing her nails against his soft palate. She withdrew fast, while he was still reeling, not giving him a chance to bite. The paste clung to the inside of his throat, coarse and stale, after she removed her hand.

“I’m not certain you swallowing is necessary, but I’d rather not skip a step to find out,” she said.

“Are you going to narrate the whole thing?” he rasped.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s soothing for me. I’d rather consider this as theory instead of practice.”

This being his murder, he realized.

From across the room he heard a brief scuff and a hoarse groan. The entirety of Andrew’s being rocked in Sam’s direction within the restriction of his bonds. Troth glanced over his shoulder. The knife dangled from her left hand, smeared with the ritual concoction.

“Keep an eye on him, darling,” she called to Mark.

“Will do,” he responded.

Sam scrabbled through the pile of hay scraps to roll onto his side with a heaving gasp for air. Andrew strained for him once more, cord sawing at his skin. He cursed through his teeth when Troth knotted a fist in his hair and wrenched his head toward her.

“It’s better if you focus on me,” she said. “Remember that I don’t need him, except to keep you cooperative. You can earn my kindness.”

His nostrils flared with the force of his breath. He expected nothing to be revealed on her face—but the pinched frown marring her expression hinted at some internal struggle. She transferred the knife to her dominant hand. The veneer of respectability slipped further for a moment as she tracked her stare from his head to his feet.

“To think that an old bloodline ends here, with someone like you. At least no one will be overly concerned about your disappearance—or his, from what I assume,” she murmured.

Helpless rage made Andrew scuff his toes against the dirt, as much movement as he had left, while her left hand took hold of his forearm and spread the skin around his scab with the air of a clinician. The knife pricked pristine flesh an inch above the existing wound. Despite himself he groaned, strangled, as the blade split him open. His skin separated in a searing line as she bisected the scab efficiently, shallower than the memory he’d received from Eddie’s specter. Her careful cut overlapped with strong hands that had filleted him to the bone.

Shallower, but more than deep enough. Blood welled and spilled over the pale sick line of white. Her palm smeared through the mess, tearing another unwilling yelp from his chest. She dabbed her tongue to her fingers with a crinkled nose. The spectral chill he’d grown used to rose in undulating spirals around his trapped ankles, rustling his clothes and hers.

“I’ll need you to welcome him in, Andrew. Let Edward come to you. I’m surprised you’ve refused him so long already,” she said.

The knife found his other wrist. Andrew tossed his head and screamed as she cut him again. The pain was intimate. She shushed him out of reflex, squeezing his swollen hand for a split second. Behind him, Sam shouted a blurry invective. Rope creaked. Andrew’s blood pooled in the hollows of his elbows, dripped from his fingers. The haunt croaked with renewed desire as it wrapped around his shaking calves, climbed his thighs toward his wounds. The sorcerers in stories all fed ghosts blood to bring them life, and in this version, he was summoner and sacrifice at the same time.

“There we are,” Troth said.

She folded herself cross-legged on the ground in front of him. The tributaries of his gore soaked her jeans as she began to chant a sibilant alien language as familiar as his Social Security number. The revenant shade settled inside him, skin with skin and bone with bone, its hands upturned, its mouth panting in mimicry of his own, while Andrew resisted. His heartbeat stuttered, off-kilter. He gathered his ragged control to stem the pour of his inheritance onto the starving ground, holding the power inside, preventing the union of his phantom and his flesh through force of will alone. If she wanted that consummation, he would thwart it as long as he was capable.

“He’s struggling. Mark, if you could please make a point for me about how much more unpleasant this could be,” Troth said in a normal voice.

“Pocketknife will do?” he queried. She murmured an agreement.

The fabric chair rustled. Troth grabbed Andrew’s chin, forcing him to watch as her husband approached Sam, prone and trembling in the barn dirt. Mark knelt with a flip-knife in his hand and laid it against the apple of Sam’s cheek. Sam kept his eyes and mouth pressed shut. He made no sound.

“Don’t,” Andrew said.