The Poison Eaters and Other Stories Read Free Page B

the filthy tile floor. She died there, a moment later.
    It didn't hurt as much as she'd worried it would. Like most things, the surprise was the worst part.
    * * * *
    The guards released Matilda into Coldtown just a little before dawn. The world looked strange—everything had taken on a smudgy, silvery cast, like she was watching an old movie. Sometimes people's heads seemed to blur into black smears. Only one color was distinct—a pulsing, oozing color that seemed to glow from beneath skin.
    Red.
    Her teeth ached to look at it.
    There was a silence inside her. No longer did she move to the rhythmic drumming of her heart. Her body felt strange, hard as marble, free of pain. She'd never realized how many small agonies were alive in the creak of her bones, the pull of muscle. Now, free of them, she felt like she was floating.
    Matilda looked around with her strange new eyes. Everything was beautiful. And the light at the edge of the sky was the most beautiful thing of all.
    "What are you doing?” a girl called from a doorway. She had long black hair, but her roots were growing in blonde. “Get in here! Are you crazy?"
    In a daze, Matilda did as she was told. Everything smeared as she moved, like the world was painted in watercolors. The girl's pinkish-red face swirled along with it.
    It was obvious the house had once been grand, but it looked like it'd been abandoned for a long time. Graffiti covered the peeling wallpaper and couches had been pushed up against the walls. A boy wearing jeans but no shirt was painting make-up onto a girl with stiff pink pigtails, while another girl in a retro polka-dotted dress pulled on mesh stockings.
    In a corner, another boy—this one with glossy brown hair that fell to his waist—stacked jars of creamed corn into a precarious pyramid.
    "What is this place?” Matilda asked.
    The boy stacking the jars turned. “Look at her eyes. She's a vampire!” He didn't seem afraid, though; he seemed delighted.
    "Get her into the cellar,” one of the other girls said.
    "Come on,” said the black-haired girl and pulled Matilda toward a doorway. “You're fresh-made, right?"
    "Yeah,” Matilda said. Her tongue swept over her own sharp teeth. “I guess that's pretty obvious."
    "Don't you know that vampires can't go outside in the daylight?” the girl asked, shaking her head. “The guards try that trick with every new vampire, but I never saw one almost fall for it."
    "Oh, right,” Matilda said. They went down the rickety steps to a filthy basement with a mattress on the floor underneath a single bulb. Crates of foodstuffs were shoved against the walls, and the high, small windows had been painted over with a tarry substance that let no light through.
    The black-haired girl who'd waved her inside smiled. “We trade with the border guards. Black-market food, clothes, little luxuries like chocolate and cigarettes for some ass. Vampires don't own everything."
    "And you're going to owe us for letting you stay the night,” the boy said from the top of the stairs.
    "I don't have anything,” Matilda said. “I didn't bring any cans of food or whatever."
    "You have to bite us."
    "What?” Matilda asked.
    "One of us,” the girl said. “How about one of us? You can even pick which one."
    "Why would you want me to do that?"
    The girl's expression clearly said that Matilda was stupid. “Who doesn't want to live forever?"
    I don't , Matilda wanted to say, but she swallowed the words. She could tell they already thought she didn't deserve to be a vampire. Besides, she wanted to taste blood. She wanted to taste the red, throbbing, pulsing insides of the girl in front of her. It wasn't the pain she'd felt when she was infected, the hunger that made her stomach clench, the craving for warmth. It was heady, greedy desire.
    "Tomorrow,” Matilda said. “When it's night again."
    "Okay,” the girl said, “but you promise, right? You'll turn one of us?"
    "Yeah,” said Matilda, numbly. It was hard to even