Chapter 122 - Dinner Conversation part 4

Brahms had finished. The needle rose from the grooves of the phonographic record and returned to its cradle with a click. For a moment the music reverberated in my mind, but then I put it aside. I rose and returned to the my captive's bedchamber. I did not want to be alone with my thoughts. They were too melancholy, too desperate and unnerving.

I paused at his door to listen. I could hear nothing on the other side. Only his breathing. The beating of his heart.

For some odd reason, I felt compelled to announce myself, to ask his permission to enter the room.

Ridiculous! I thought.

I let myself in.

Lukas leapt toward me with a howl, throwing his chains over my head. He meant to garrote me!

He sprawled on the floor, but was on his feet a moment later, spinning around with a frantic expression.

"Really?" I asked from the other side of the room. I was standing casually beside the frosted window, nary a hair out of place.

"Ha!" he yelled, and then he raced across the floor toward me, his fingers curled into claws. He ran until the chain jerked taut and his feet shot out from beneath him.

"Let me know when you tire of this foolishness," I said-- back at the doorway now-- taunting him with a grin.

He rolled onto his hands and knees, panting raggedly, his long bangs hanging in front of his feverish eyes. "I'm going to kill you," he wheezed.

"You cannot," I replied, speaking gently, as to a child. "Don't you understand? You cannot choke me to death. I cannot drown. I do not burn." Frustrated, I strode toward him.

He cringed, expecting me to retaliate.

"Get up," I commanded. "Stand!"

He rose, his body trembling.

"Hold out your hand, Lukas."

"Why?"

"Hold it out!"

He extended his palm toward me.

I took his cohort's switchblade from my pocket. It was the knife Maurice had stabbed me with in the park. Lukas's hand twitched back when he saw it, then he pressed it toward me eagerly. I placed the weapon into his palm.

"Stab me," I said.

Grinning, he pressed the button on the hilt that unleashed the spring-loaded blade. It flashed out with a snick, then he eyed me up and down, licking his lips, trying to decide where he wanted to stick it. At the periphery of my vision, I noticed the front of his boxer shorts beginning to tent out.

"Go on," I encouraged him "Perhaps you will believe me if—"

He shoved the blade into my throat.

I stumbled back, knocked off balance.

"Die, you fucker!" he hissed at me, his eyes avid and insane. His flesh was flushed with excitement, his male organ fully erect.

I couldn't speak with the blade lodged inside my windpipe. Hoping to impress on him the futility of any further attempts on my life, I squared my shoulders and gripped the handle of the blade. Meeting his gaze, I shook my head, and then I used the blade to slice my throat completely open.

He blanched in disbelief, retreating a step, as I sawed the knife in and out of my flesh. I worked it all the way around to my right ear, and then I tilted my chin back to open the wound. It hurt tremendously-- I might be immune to death, but I am not immune to pain-- but I gave no outward sign of my discomfort. I kept my expression bland as I displayed the interior of my larynx.

"Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed.

I lowered my chin. I could already feel the Strix knitting the wound. The living blood shifted inside my body, racing to the region that had been injured. It frothed at the edges of my slashed throat, tingling, as fibrous white tissue went zigzagging back and forth across the gash. The edges drew together like a pair of gruesome lips. Finally, the injury faded from sight. It took-- at most-- four seconds. I swallowed experimentally. Cleared my throat.

"Do you see now?" I asked, slightly hoarse.

I judged by his expression that he was having trouble believing his eyes.

I held my free hand up, palm toward him, then sawed off one of my fingers. I sliced through the flesh, then snapped the bone with a grimace. It was only then, at the sight of the black tendrils wavering from the stump, that he accepted what he was seeing. He covered his mouth.

"Stop, please," he said with a belch, struggling to keep his dinner down.

I held my finger near the stub. The Strix snatched ahold of the severed digit and drew it back into place. In less time than it took me to saw off the appendage, my body was whole again. I flexed my hand to show him.

"I cannot die," I said. "Nothing you can do in your present form can possibly harm me. The light of the sun will not incinerate me. A stake through the heart will only annoy me. I do not burn. The strongest acids will not etch my skin. I am the deathless hostage of time… just as you are mine."

My captive sank onto his bed, his chain clanking on the floor at his feet. "So what do we do now?" he asked softly.

"Just talk," I said soothingly. "I only want to talk."