A Taste of Blood Wine by Freda Warrington

Author:Freda Warrington
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-10-27T00:42:04+00:00

Now the grass was sheened grey with twilight and he watched tiny beetles struggling and stumbling along the blades; frantically busy, yet desperately slow. A bird began to sing in the hedgerow; he was aware of its bright eyes through the stiff mesh of twigs. Oh, shut up, he thought. You are no use to me.

Pierre began to hallucinate. Revolutionaries were rushing towards him, arms raised, ragged clothes flying. Bandaged necks, they all had bandaged necks. They were dragging him towards the guillotine and he was fighting them, shouting, "I am no aristocrat, you fools, I am one of you..." But they saw through his words; they knew what he was and that the only way to destroy him was to decapitate him.

He shuddered from head to foot with horror and the figures faded.. .all except two which kept coming towards him, their necks all wrapped up, and they must be real because he could feel their heat...

Fool, he told himself. These are human beings, not figments of my imagination!

Their heat flowed out before them like a bow-wave as they came along the lane, reaching him long before they did. Relief swelled through him, and with it the lashing, ravenous snake of thirst. Yet he still could not move.

Two boys of about twelve, muffled up in caps and scarves, on their way to school. With all his strength he forced a groan from his lips and they saw him and came to him.

"Is it a scarecrow?" said one.

"Nah. It's a tramp. P'robly drunk."

Scarecrow? Tramp? Don't they realise how much this overcoat cost? They leaned over him; clouds of breath, sweet with milk. Bright hard eyes, like the bird. Yes, that's it, come closer...

Pierre pushed the words through his fossilised lips. "Help me..."

"Sounds foreign," said the second boy. As he reached down, starvation cracked through Pierre like a whip and his arm shot out as if controlled by a primitive brain of its own. Suddenly he was half-sitting up, pulling both children towards him. Tearing a scarf away with his teeth and then, oh then, life flowing hot into his collapsed veins.

While he fed on one boy he held the other to his chest, his grip tightening as his strength returned. It had happened too fast for them even to struggle, though one was letting out faint, high-pitched moans of protest.

As he fed on the second child he found himself sobbing with gratitude, murmuring, "Merci, merci. . .

" But as his head cleared he pushed them away, appalled at himself for being thankful. He propped them against each other on the grass verge and thought how sweet they looked, a pair of grubby sleeping cherubs.

"Gratitude is so undignified," he said, regarding them with affection. "But thank you anyway, children."

Pierre thought they were not quite dead; perhaps they would survive, if someone found them soon. He wasn't really interested. Turning away, he tried to enter the Crystal Ring.

It was like pushing against a closed door. Nothing there. His usual shimmering awareness of a dimension layered beneath the visible world had gone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.