Free Vile Blood by Max Wilde Page A

and nearly toppled, but he locked his abdominals and squeezed the muscles of his legs and with the sheer force of his will stayed standing. Then he stumbled back to the bed and fell upon it, face down, his beard wet against his face.
    He drifted off to sleep chanting again, using the language taught him by his parents before they had taught him English, the language of the blood rites they had enacted with and upon him, his small body the vessel taking them from the gray and mundane day-to-day to the vivid playground on the other side.
     

15
     
     
     
    Skye was unused to talkative men. The men she knew spoke when they had to, reluctantly, as if each word diluted their power. The blond man, though, was different. As the RV swayed and rumbled through town in the direction of the saloon he recounted the events that had him behind the wheel of the unlikely vehicle.
    His uncle, a rancher, scratching out half a living from the parched borderland, had dreamed of retiring, selling up his spread and taking himself and his wife to the ocean. In the way of these things, the uncle had bought the RV and refitted it and sold his ranch and was preparing for his journey to a better life when he keeled over from a heart attack.
    “Right back there,” the blond man said, jabbing a thumb toward the rear of the RV, “fixing the chemical john.” He looked at Skye, the beams of a passing car setting his hair alight and getting his teeth gleaming. He sure was pretty. “Now, you’re not scared of ghosts, are you?”
    “No,” she said, feeling the thing in her swoop and rise, bumping up against her diaphragm, as if it wanted to explode out of her.
    “No need to fear Uncle Jim, he was the sweetest man I ever knew. I’m named after him.” Smiling again.
    He went on to tell her how his aunt was in a retirement home and her son, young Jim’s father, had paid him to collect the RV and drive it up to the city, where a buyer was waiting.
    Jim slid a CD into the player and loud, primitive, music pumped out. “Like it?”
    She nodded, listening to the drums and the high, keening voices.
    ‘It’s called Kwassa Kwassa . From central Africa. I was there for a year, with the Peace Corps.”
    And he was off again, with his tales and his jokes she couldn’t quite catch, the punch lines eluding her.
    The neon of the saloon beckoned them in the distance when he said, “Why bother with that place? Bet it’s all good ole boys and country on the jukebox. I’ve got a bottle right here and, hell, we’ve got music and a place to sit.”
    Without waiting for her to reply he drove the RV off the road onto the sand and killed the engine. Got up and squeezed between the front seats and took a bottle and glasses from a cupboard and set them on the little fold-down table.
    Skye joined him and he lifted his glass to her. “Cheers.”
    “Cheers,” she said and took a sip. It burned.
    He leaned across and kissed her. First with his lips, still sharp from the liquor, and then with his tongue, sending it into her mouth where it got all entangled with hers, because she was still learning this business. But she learned quickly and felt her nipples harden in her bra and a pleasant wet heat in her underwear.
    Jim unbuttoned her shirt and nuzzled at her breasts, working the top buttons of her jeans loose, his fingers hot and hard on her belly.
    When Skye closed her eyes The Other erupted, smashed up against her, forced her aside, and she felt again what she had felt the night with those men, the strength in her muscles, the shifting of her bones, the reshaping of her.
    Jim came up for air, his hair hanging over his eyes. He moved the bangs aside with his fingers, looked at her and froze.
    It was almost comical. His eyes widened, his mouth worked like he was chewing toffee but no words emerged. He backed away, up against the bulkhead of the RV, and finally found his voice: “Jesus fucking Christ.”
    She stood, feeling her shirt stretching and tearing, feeling