Nobody left alive could tell him exactly what had happened, though some certainly speculated (outside his earshot, as well as in it): Seemed fairly common knowledge how Daddy and Momma had married while still in school, Daddy swapping a low-grade sports career for injury and addiction, while Momma waitressed or hooked just enough to keep them both in generic prescription drugs. How he’d went out to score one night and came crawlin’ back at the crack of dawn, burned lobster-red, almost smoking; he knocked Momma down with a slap that unseated her upper-left bicuspid when she answered the door, then opened up a wound in her shoulder, and got busy.
And nine months later, in a sanguinary haze of emergency transfusions, that’s when he was born—with a full set of teeth, already snapping.
When he was old enough to make the highway on his own recognizance, he ran away; authorities brought him back real quick, so he just did it again and so on, ‘til she beat on him like he was a rug hung up to dry; daily, habitually, offhandedly. Like hurting him was her hobby. The last time, he made sure to wait ‘til she was asleep (roofies stirred in her beer, when she wasn’t looking), then set the house on fire. Tried to get Daddy to come with him when he saw him peering out through the shelter grate, but he just spat and yowled, and then it got too hot to stay. So either he survived or he didn’t, and then maybe they were back together in some better world, or at least well out of this one; he sometimes mused on how maybe he’d run across him on the circuit, one of these nights, so high he wouldn’t even remember how they were related.
Monsters are defined by what they prey on, what they hunt, Chuyia told him once, in a quiet moment. In the jungle, the most fearsome killers are those who know how to hide, to wait. To pretend. Because the best mask of all for strength is weakness, do you know that? Like Saoirse, with her I’m-lost, I’m-scared, Mister-help-me-please game; you’ve seen how efficient that is. And you would know that better than most, I think, at any rate: Little trap-door spider, so expert at concealment…do you even remember who you used to be, earlier that same night? Before you found us?
He hadn’t wanted to agree with her, then; just shook his head and looked away, agonized, as she picked his half-healed neck-scars open again, and bent to lick the blood surface-wards. But now, trapped in Cija and Goran’s diffident embrace, he knew at last how right she really was…how nice she’d been trying to be, in her own way. The way even he (most times) was to those tricks and treats he brought Chuyia and the others, not because he had to, but just because he could. ‘Cause it cost him less than nothing.
He couldn’t feel anything for “real people,” not at all—never before, probably not in future. But at least he felt an attraction, one-sided and screwed as it might be, for things like them; that had to count for something, didn’t it?
So: Thank you, he’d told Chuyia, as her teeth slid out. And felt her nod against him in reply, ever so slightly, as the pain washed back up over him like a black wave, tinged with red: Oh no, thank you…
Kissing the whip-handle, the branding iron. Kissing the hand that stroked his hair, stroked him to full attention then slid down even further, all the better to slit his pulsing throat.
—
“Bad teeth,” Cija said, examining them closely, running her finger over their ragged grey edges—a dirty old snowbank to her fresh salt-ice, opaque as haematite. “Do they pain you? They must.”
“Naw. They come back in like that, after my Momma took a hammer to the first set.”
Cija, to Goran: “A joke?”
“Have you known him to?” They both turned to look him at once, this time with slightly more interest. “So. Not a fanatic, after all—a dresser-up, a…poser? Is this the word?”
“It’s one. But no, I ain’t that, just like I keep on tellin’ you. Jah sh’te oupir, kom toy.”
“Oupir? Necht, merkecht.” Goran paused. “Dhampir, perhaps. You know this word?”
“Means—halfbreed? Born, not made. But not like—”
“—us, no, never. Not even if we drain you dry. But if your father was very fresh when he got you, this might explain; dead man’s sperm lives for some time after, viably. Why is it you want this so badly, though? You’re not them, born meat, so find your own way, your desire. Hunt accordingly. Why be hyena, if you can be wolf? Don’t have to eat our leftovers forever…”
Cija: “You don’t have to let us hurt you, either. But maybe you like that.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Then it’s settled. It’s what he wants, Goran—you heard him. So very little, really.”
“No, I think not. Do you even remember their names, who had you last?”
“Why should I? They didn’t want me. Passed me on to you. You even remember my name?”
“Benjamin Boucher. Says so, on your driver’s license.”
He looked down, oddly shamed. Muttered, resentfully: “Y’all say it Boo-shay. ‘Sides…I know your names.”
“Mmm, no doubt. But, as I say: We leave tomorrow, travelling fast…so fast, you cannot keep up. This is goodbye, little virus. You are…too much work.”
“How? How am I? I do everything for you. Everything! Y’all don’t do nothin’ for yourselves—”
Cija: “But we don’t have to, Ben-ja-min, not while we have you. Or someone like you. They are so easy to find, too, always—”
—You know that.
“We can of course pass you on again, if you want. There are more coming always, even now: Mortlake, Hushien. Marival, and her get…”
Despair welling up in him, sharp yet removed as the sight of someone else’s tears: “But you won’t, that it? Never? Not under no circumstances?” Goran just shook his head—not unkindly, if not exactly kind. Which only made him snarl, already near weeping: “Well, why the God shit Hell fuck not?”