Free The Everlasting by Tim Lebbon Page B

the traffic. He wanted to know, that was all. He was interested.
    â€œAfrica. South of the Sahara, before it was named.”
    â€œYou have no accent.”
    â€œI do; you just don’t know it. I’ve lived all over the world, and I have the accent of humanity.”
    Scott started laughing. Like the tears earlier in the kitchen, this laughter came out unforced and natural. It was tinged with panic—loss of control stalked beneath the surface—but he let it come, enjoying the sense of release. He guided the car onto the hard shoulder and switched off the engine. He laughed some more. It felt good, but it made every moment seem like the beginning of something new. The whole world was changing and he had to ride with it.
    â€œYou’re so full of shit,” he said when he could speak. He wiped tears from his eyes and switched on the hazard lights. “I don’t know who you are, what you want, what you put in my tea last night, but I’ll tell you now you can fuck off. Just . . . fuck off.” He started laughing again, gripping the steering wheel as though afraid Nina would steal it away.
    â€œOh, damn,” she said. “This is going to hurt.”
    Scott was still laughing when she pulled a heavy knife from beneath her jacket, turned to face him, and sliced her throat from ear to ear.
    The spray of blood splashed across the windshield and pulsed onto the dashboard. Nina leaned forward to rest her head against the air bag cover, letting more blood pour from her gashed throat to pool on the seatbetween her legs and in the footwell, soaking the front of her jacket and shirt.
    Scott tried to shout, but it was as if his throat had been cut as well.
    He was still holding on to the steering wheel. He gripped tight, unable to let go, and he was so silent that he could hear blood dripping, clicking in Nina’s throat as she tried to breathe, and the bursting of tiny bubbles as air escaped the horrendous wound. She had dropped the knife and he wanted to pick it up, but he could not let go of the wheel. Try as he might, his fingers would not uncurl.
    Nina turned to look at him. There was no panic in her expression, and little pain. If anything, it looked as though she were accusing him of some vast wrongdoing.
    â€œHospital,” Scott muttered, and Nina snorted. Twin trails of blood burst from her nose. Her mouth opened with a wet sound, lips parting and tongue squirming as though she were trying to speak. She shook her head and expelled a bloody sigh through her new mouth.
    Scott’s hands at last relinquished their hold on the wheel, and he reached for the door.
    Something pressed against his side. He gasped and turned slowly to look down. Nina’s hand held the knife pushed into his jacket, point first. One shove and it would be in him. It gleamed red. He looked at her and she shook her head, very slowly. With each shake her slashed neck pursed like kissing lips.
    The bleeding had stopped and the wound was scabbing over.
    Scott held his breath and stared at the cut, and when he looked up at Nina’s face again a few seconds later he saw a smile in her eyes.
    â€œImmortal,” he muttered. And he watched as the wound bound itself together. Every stage of a healing cut presented itself: blood clotting and scabbing, the rough scar, the smooth scar, the discoloration beneath the skin, and finally the virtual disappearance of any evidence of the cut’s having been there at all.
    Scott timed the healing with the dash clock, and it took less than five minutes.
    Nina coughed. Gurgled, spit out a mouthful of blood. Turned her head left and right, looked up and down, coughed harder. And then she spoke. Her voice started gruff and deep, but by the end of the sentence she was starting to sound like herself again. “So you see, there are more things in heaven and earth. And the truth goes far wider than you can imagine.”
    Scott could not speak. There was so much he wanted