Mercy by Rhiannon Paille Read Free Book Online Page A

maybe. By the closeness of the houses and the mess of streets he was sure of it. He didn’t like London, too close to home, too dirty. The last time London was good was during the plague, for obvious reasons. He hadn’t enjoyed the introduction of modern medicine and the number of people who lived well past their life expectancy.
    He couldn’t wait.
    The hunger and something greater than the hunger gnawed at him. He couldn’t remember what the latter feeling was about, his memory like shredded paper. He drew the pieces together but they came in a heap of memories—some his—some belonging to the souls he’d taken. His mind whirred and he felt dizzy and heavy. He clenched his imaginary hand and transported from the hamlet to the nearest dead body.
    The old man wasn’t dead.
    His tired blue eyes regarded Krishani with a sense of fear and knowing. His body wrinkled, skin sagging, chest heaving up and down with the support of a respirator. Krishani neared him, touched his hand, sending muscle spasms through the body. He turned the man’s wrist over, peering at the hospital bracelet: Pierre LaForge. He regarded the balding head, white tufts of hair and puckered mouth with disdain. He desperately needed to pour himself into a body so he could remember. He hated the feeling something important was happening and he wasn’t aware or awake enough to recognize it.
    He slithered up Pierre’s arm and covered him in a sheet of darkness. Pierre opened his mouth in a cry but no sound came out. Krishani pushed his darkness down Pierre’s throat, and the white matter, syrupy sweet and dripping with purity exploded into him. It tasted as good as a hundred year old wine, Pierre having held on for decades. Krishani pulled the white matter into himself and carefully pressed his darkness into the sternum.
    He opened his eyes, a shock rippling through him the moment his fragmented memories pulled themselves into coherency. He remembered everything Shimma said, the cards on the table, the star, the star, the star. It couldn’t be true, Shimma was a devious little trickster, but she did it twice, the same card appeared.
    Krishani ripped the buds out of his nose and the IV off his hand. He stood and realized he was near naked in the hospital gown. He set his bare feet on the linoleum and cringed. The tiles were warm when they should have been cold, meaning, he was dead. He felt for a pulse, waited, waited, and there it was, slow and methodical. He flexed out his rough wrinkled hands and stood, knees buckling under the pressure of his upper body. He gripped the bed rail and cleared his eyes of the goop in the corners. He hated old bodies, the way they smelled, tasted, and moved.
    He glanced at the end table, a vase with daffodils, and a framed photo of a family, a woman with the same eyes, Pierre and their three kids, all boys. Krishani gulped, Pierre would never rejoin them, not in this life or the next. He shoved himself to the doorframe and held on, his fingers gripping it hard. He shook his legs out to make them work and pulled his posture taut when he had control. He walked with purpose, ignoring that his butt was on display and for once in his miserable existence, he wasn’t invisible. He fled down the hallway until he reached a door reading ‘storage.’ There had to be scrubs somewhere amidst the medical supplies neatly organized on the shelves. If not, maybe another gown. Krishani didn’t want to bend down for fear of crackling out of the form like lightning and bolting into the fluorescent lights. Instead he poked the bottom shelves with his foot and eventually came up with a pair of greenish blue slacks, no shirt. He left the gown, continuing down the hallway towards an exit. The linoleum was warmer and Krishani felt for the pulse again, counting the seconds between beats.
    Reaching the double doors, he shoved them open, pain skating across his forehead. He stumbled down the shallow steps and hastily held his hand out for a