Blood Vivicanti (9781941240113) Read Online Free Page B

and turned into a
Sleeper Devil.
    “ What will you call
me?”
    It was Wyn’s voice that
spoke, yet it was not his tone. It was the tone of this wounded
girl.
    “ What will you call me now
that I am in this body?”
    Lowen smiled as he
strolled.
    “ You can never stop being
who you are,” he said, “Nell.”
     
     
     
     
    Back in the Locomotive
Deadyards…
    I had crawled up to the
roof of the Labyrinth Fort and I was sitting alone, thinking about
Wyn and Theo while I tinkered with a small device that I was making
for the coming war.
    I was wearing my headgear
over my eyes and I was grateful that Red had made it. The lens that
I was using gave me an ultraviolet perspective on my
device.
    I was adapting the
holographic technology that I’d taken from the mansion to an
encasement that was strapped along my entire right arm.
    Cool, huh?
     
     
     
     
    I finished welding and I
swiveled up the ultraviolet lens. Next I held up the device and
examined all sides of it, scrutinizing my handiwork.
    Then I held it against my
arm, sizing it up.
    Perfect fit.
    Carrying the device in one
hand, I leaped from the roof and landed on the ground. Then I
strolled through the maze of railroad cars to the Red
Man.
    He was in his workspace.
Red heard me enter and glanced at me. He rarely showed facial
expressions. But when he did, it was like glimpsing the subtle
movements of a Weeping Angel.
    He was unbeatable at
staring contests.
    Don’t blink.
     
     
     
     
    The room was dimly lit like
everywhere else, but Red and I could see well enough.
    All around us were devices
that he had made out of dials and copper cogwheels, brass tubing
and wires that were dangling out every which way.
    I showed him the new
holo-imaging device that I had made for my arm.
    He turned toward me, took
it, and looked it over. He nodded his approval and handed it
back.
    Then he turned and pointed
toward the exit, not the exit to his workplace, but the exit to the
Locomotive Deadyards.
    I knew what he wanted me to
do. We had had this conversation before, inasmuch as one can have a
conversation with a genetically engineered alien called Silent from
a planet far, far away.
     
     
     
     
    He wanted me to leave, not
permanently, but he didn’t want me to return until I had drunk the
blood of people with fighting skills and had eaten their Blood
Memories. He wanted me to be a better fighter. He wanted me to be
prepared for the coming war.
    Red was adamant. He faced
me directly and stared impatiently at me. He pointed with greater
insistence toward the exit. I should leave and not come back until
my job was done.
    “ No,” I said defiantly. “I’m
not going.”
    He slammed his fist down on
the table. His tools and projects leaped up a few inches and
settled back down, rattling together.
    He pointed again toward the
exit.
    “ I’m not going to drink
blood,” I said. “I don’t want to. I can’t.”
    He tried to make signs, to
argue with me. But I could only understand a little of what he
meant.
    Go…blood…Franken-Berry?
    In the end, he gave up. And
with a sudden intensity, he grabbed me by both arms, drew me close,
and pierced me.
    Aggressiveness was the only
way he had learned to express himself. He was like many men on
planet Earth. He fit right in here.
     
     
     
     
    He thrust his Probiscus
into my neck. I tried to resist, but in his powerful grip, I had
become just like one of my old victims. I could not get free. And
when he drank my blood and his venom filled me, I didn’t want to
get free anymore.
    But he was gentler than
before, kinder too, and more thoughtful.
    His venom filled me and I
stopped resisting. Soon I began to enjoy the experience, although
my last fighting thought was that I would hate him afterward for
doing this, violating me the way I had violated all my
victims.
    He tried to communicate
with me his fear that Lowen was coming, and that we needed to get
ready for an oncoming war. His mind envisioned the war being he and
I