Bad Blood Read Free

his exposed intestinal loops. Left a trail of it up the steps.
    His hunger was different now that Kayla was nesting in his brain, blood, mind, soul, or wherever it was she existed . His need for blood had lost its serrated edge—it was still sharp, just not so jagged, so raw.
    But hunger was hunger.
    They pushed into the apartment. Nice place. Open concept. Built-in bookshelves, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, travertine tile in the entryway. And a long-dead man in a leather recliner with a gun in his mouth and a rusty, clumpy peacock tail sprayed on the wall behind him.
    A year ago, the sight of even that dried, shitty blood would’ve had Coburn tearing the pipes out of the walls in the hopes of finding a rat to eat, but now he kept his cool. As Gil orbited the room, Coburn muttered through gritted teeth: “Yeah, I’m going to need to eat something.”
    “Can’t you heal that”—Gil gestured toward the exploded gutty-works—“first?”
    “Normally. But turns out, a big hole in your midsection is one way for blood to make the great egress outside your body. And I need the blood to heal up.”
    “Take my blood.”
    The reaction inside Coburn was like a tiger with a string of firecrackers shoved up its ass—he damn near leapt across the room to get a taste of the walking blood-bag standing right in front of him. But Kayla’s presence—not even her voice, just her existence —inside of him cooled his heels.
    “I’ve fed from you... too much already.” Pained him to say it, but it was true.
    Last time he had a proper non-Gil-flavored meal was three days northeast of the city, where they found a trio of cannibals living out of a dead conversion van outside of Vallejo. They’d been driven mad, could barely speak English—everything was just howls of rage and single syllable words like hunt, kill , eat . Almost mistook them for zombies.
    They thought to hunt Coburn and Coburn let them.
    He ate them up. Drained them dry. They were too skinny. Their blood tasted of ash and madness. And an iron deficiency.
    Now, most of their blood was on the ground.
    Useless, now. Once again, ash and madness.
    “I’ll be fine,” Gil asserted.
    Again Coburn resisted the urge to go hog wild and break open Gil like a fucking Pez dispenser. “I said no . I feed off you now, you’ll be weak; too weak. Might give you a stroke or tweak your heart. You may die, but I won’t be the one to do it. Your daughter would never forgive me.”
    You got that right , she said.
    Gil slumped against the wall, slid to the floor. The crossbow clattering away as Creampuff sat next to him.
    Coburn smelled the salty tears before he saw them.
    The girl’s father was crying.
    “Oh, goddamnit,” Coburn said, trying again to hold up his guts. The hunger coiled and uncoiled like a rattlesnake in his mind. “We’re gonna do this now?”
    “I failed her,” Gil said. “You were right. I was her protector, and her death is on my hands. Not yours.” He sniffed up a snot bubble and his mouth formed a mortified line. “Her. Cecelia. Ebbie. All dead because of me.”
    “All dead because of Benjamin Brickert, who was the one who led you into that death trap.” And Benjamin Brickert , Kayla reminded him, came looking for you, didn’t he? Doesn’t that make our deaths your fault? “Shut up!” he barked at her, not meaning to say it out loud, but there it was. He decided to run with it. “I need you to toughen the fuck up, Gil. Your rope’s got too much slack in it; your daughter doesn’t need a limp snot-slick handkerchief. She needs her father. She’s not dead like you think of her being dead. I have her blood. I have the future.”
    Those words made him sick to say, but there they were anyway.
    “I need blood. Can’t be yours.”
    The terrier whined.
    “No,” Coburn said. “I’d need ten of you.”
    Creampuff wagged his tail.
    “You need to hunt,” Gil said, sniffling.
    “Assuming anybody’s alive in this city may be a