one’s slave, I’m gone. I’m out. I do whatever I want.”
“Terry …”
“You want life or not?”
“Yes, fuck it!” He gives a growl of frustration. “Alright. Agreed. I can find better than you at the local whorehouse anyway.”
“Touché.”
I kneel beside the pond and lower Barry in, resisting the impulse to drop him from a height to see how much of a splash he’ll make. Some of the fluid leaps up like a nipping fish and lands on my fingers. It stings like ice. I grit my teeth and keep going, don’t release the head until he is thoroughly submerged.
I try to straighten up, withdraw my arm, but I feel sharp teeth in my wrist. Barry, you bastard. That, however, is the least of my problems: the water has me. Blood spurts from my nose and turns pink as it hits the milky pond. It’s like I’m in the grip of an electrical current. It tugs at me and tugs at me until I over-balance and it pulls me beneath the surface.
I feel as if I’m dying forever.
My last sight before I’m overwhelmed is Barry’s head tossed and churned, jumping about like popping corn. Angry fingers of fluid force their way into my mouth and race down my throat, filling my lungs like inhaled fire. My skin seems to peel off, each hair follicle is a tiny pin in my scalp. Surely my eyes burst.
When it stops hurting, the water lets me go.
I crawl out and lie on the surprisingly warm rock. I’m whole, intact if somewhat soaked. I rub a hand against my shin, right where the possum bite was and feel…
And feel …
Nothing.
I roll up the leg of my cargos and strip away the bandage. There’s just a pink mark that might have been a scar but fades as I watch. The katana is where I left it, and I pick it up, prick at my finger with its sharpness. Something silver oozes out from the cut and just as quickly the opening closes over.
A great spout of water comes from the pool and a body lands not far from me, gives a displeased groan.
Barry, whole again, tall and handsome and muscular and …
And no longer pale as if he tries to tan beneath the moon.
He rolls on his back, coughing, making a noise like an espresso machine. He breathes. I poke at him with the katana. A tiny drop of blood blossoms on his skin and he swears. Rich, fresh, oxygenated, living blood.
“Oh, Barry,” I say. “You were right.”
He sits up, runs his hands over his arms and legs, wondering, not understanding. “But…”
“It does give life, Barry. You’ve been dead a long time.” I can’t keep the laughter out of my voice.
“But … Fuck!” He stands up, pacing. “Okay. I don’t have to outrun them, I just have to outrun you.”
“Here’s the thing, Baz, I don’t think they’re going to be interested in me anymore.” I rise, do the thing with the poking and the quick silvery bleed. “Close as I can figure it, nature abhors a vacuum. The pond finished what you started, taking my blood and all, then … replaced it.”
I start up the path, cast a look behind, “Long time since you’ve been meat. How’s it feel?”
MAGDALA AMYGDALA
Lucy A. Snyder
Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the dark urban fantasy novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, Switchblade Goddess, and the collections Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her most recent books are Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide (Post Mortem Press) and Soft Apocalypses (Raw Dog Screaming Press). Her writing has been translated into French, Russian, and Japanese and has appeared in publications such as Apex, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, and Weird Tales, as well as anthologies Hellbound Hearts, Dark Faith, Chiaroscuro, GUD, Chiral Mad 2, Best Horror of the Year, Volume 5, and others. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com.
With “Magdala Amygdala” Snyder takes us into a near future in which a form of vampirism has “gone viral” …
“I was bound, though I have not bound. I was not recognized. But I have recognized that the All is being dissolved, both the earthly and the heavenly.”
—The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
“So how are you feeling?” Dr. Shapiro’s pencil hovers over the CDC risk evaluation form clamped to her clipboard.
“Pretty good.” When I talk, I make sure my tongue stays tucked out of sight. I smile at her in a