The Worm in Every Heart by Gemma Files Read Free Book Online Page A

Grammar threatened to bathe in baby’s blood, only lent the Lieutenant further social cachet, increasing his glamour as Calcutta’s resident homme fatal—a turn of events which struck me, surprisingly enough, as not entirely to my liking. For though I am many things (all things to all people, as the phrase so aptly goes) I had never before thought myself vain.
    It is from this point onward, then, that I enter into the narrative fully for the first time, o my beloved—making myself known, initially more through rumor than deed, but with an ever-increasing sense of proximity.
    Any given human being is, under even the most reassuring of circumstances, a frail and awful thing: A far-too-crackable ivory nut stuffed full of addictive meat, a bag of scented blood, a walking fever. But since it is so patently in the nature of the British to haunt, as much before their own deaths as after them, I now understand just how predictably suited the mantle of my well-earned reputation was to fit Grammar, once mass opinion had mistakenly assigned it to him. The whims of a beautiful (and mortal) monster are, in their own way, often more fearful a threat than something inexplicable can ever be—especially for those unlucky enough to stand directly in his way.
    We seemed fated to be namesakes, he and I. So, to seal this undeclared liaison, I began a series of elaborations on my usual theme—variations in the tone of red, involving our mutual chosen prey (unrepentant and uncaught sepoys, whores and beggars, low-caste Indians of all descriptions.) The credit for which was inevitably laid directly at Grammar’s increasingly bemused . . . and more than slightly flattered . . . door.
    Obviously—though it was really then long past the time for such small pleasantries as introductions—a meeting was in order.
    My plans towards this end were aided greatly by the nature of Grammar’s next posting, which would send him upriver—to a tiny, jungle-bound village named Amsore, outside of which a last, lone outpost of sepoys was rumored to still be in hiding—and away from all the “civilized” influences which conspired to keep him sane.
    The continuing presence of Romesh Singh, already more than half in worshipful lust with his chosen British “master,” promised to be similarly useful, as he remained one of the few who did not fear Grammar enough to desert him. His potential impact on the situation could in no way be underestimated, since—the innate idiocy of his desires aside—he was a wholly upright Sikh, a career soldier, no prude, and (above all) no fool. He knew that wanting Grammar was both morbid and perverse on his part, but the freakish glamor of a berserker must always hold its own attractions, especially for a military man.
    He was also the only person near Grammar who not only knew exactly what the woman had meant by calling him Rhakshasa . . . but might actually be counted upon—eventually—to tell him.
    All people of Hind—educated as they are in the laws of dharma—know both of the Wheel, which pulls them up or throws them down, and of enlightenment, whose attainment offers them escape from it. But for the Rhakshasa, whose forms are as many as their hungers are simple—with whom I may, respectfully, stake my claim of kinship—there is no escape, and no need of one. There is no Wheel for us. Nothing changes. From the moment we elect to leave it, everything stays firmly tied to the same crooked track of appetite and deception.
    Novelty, however brief, is the only thing we have left to welcome.
    I had smelt Desbarrats Grammar coming from as far off as his landing at Calcutta-ghat, wading up through the river’s muddy shallows, as the bearers struggled with his gear: A pale blaze of frustrated heat with nothing but itself for fuel, too quenchless for remorse. There was a hole inside of him that demanded either light, ever more