Page 8

“Sorry I couldn’t love you the way you wanted,”

Everett mumbled.

“Nothing to be sorry for,”

Marshall lied. “We did okay.”

“No, we could’ve done better. I could’ve given you what you wanted if I tried harder.”

“Don’t work that way.”

Everett shifted against Marshall’s chest, restless and uncomfortable, the fever making him jittery and the chills making his jaw clench and his hand tremble.

He tried to push back against Marshall’s groin.

Pulling in a ragged breath, Marshall pressed a kiss to Everett’s temple, over his hair.

He stank like alcohol, like an open wound gone off, and Marshall wanted to cry.

Everett twisted to face him, pressing closer, gripping him hard with his knees, their belt buckles catching.

“You oughtta rest,”

Marshall said reluctantly, holding him at bay.

“I know I’m not thinking right. Mind’s running in circles and they keep getting smaller and smaller, honing in on this one fixation where I just want—”

Everett broke off to swallow. Marshall watched his throat move, heard it click.

“I want such awful things,”

Everett admitted wretchedly. “Worse than before.”

Worse things than he used to want, or the same things wanted more badly, Marshall wasn’t clear.

Wasn’t convinced Everett would be able to articulate it in this state, anyhow.

Exhausted and heartsick, Marshall tried to catch Everett’s face between his hands.

Just like before, Everett jerked back, this time with his teeth bared like a cornered dog, the whites of his eyes shining.

“Don’t you kiss me like some faggot,”

Everett warned, and then Marshall was the one jerking back like he’d been hit. “You want to fuck me, fucking do it. But don’t — You can’t just—”

“That’s the fever talking,”

Marshall said firmly, disentangling from him.

Marshall wasn’t na?ve, and he wasn’t sheltered.

He knew how men talked, what they thought.

If Everett had been in his right mind, Marshall would’ve knocked every pansy-assed insult from his mouth like loose teeth.

But Everett had never talked to him like that in his right mind, not even drunk, not even after that night under the moon.

Marshall wrapped his fist in the sweat-damp bedsheets instead of driving it into Everett’s blood-stained mouth.

“Lay back and quit making things worse,”

he ordered. “Let me take care of you and you’ll be all right.”

Everett shook his head furiously and tried to crawl forward, dragging himself over the bedcovers as Marshall retreated.

“Isn’t this what you wanted? You wanted me to want you back.

So, finish what I started that night.

Can’t get worse than this, can we?”

When he advanced again, Marshall caught him by the shoulder to hold him off.

Everett’s expression turned cold and calculating like Marshall had never seen.

Like Everett had been carved away and underneath was nothing but mean hunger.

It unsettled every one of Marshall’s natural instincts, as unnerving as a dousing of ice water.

Clarity cut through him like a bullet.

Whatever was sitting there facing him on that bed wasn’t his friend anymore.

They both sat unmoving for a second, waiting to see what the other would do.

Marshall’s revolver was on the dresser beside the lamp.

He didn’t take his eyes off Everett’s face, but he knew exactly how far he had to reach to grab it.

Everett growled, a deep animal rumbling from out of his chest.

His lips curled, flashing inflamed gums, new teeth pressing out like an infected boil trying to burst.

When Marshall recoiled, Everett lunged.

Marshall dragged Everett’s back against his chest again, wrapping one arm over Everett’s collarbones to keep him pinned.

Everett thrashed and snarled, trying to smash the back of his skull into Marshall’s face, to sink his teeth into Marshall’s forearm.

He was a rabid dog, stinking with fever and fighting with more strength than he should have left.

He wasn’t fighting to escape but to deal as much damage as he could, snapping his teeth like he wanted to rip out Marshall’s throat.

Marshall was at a disadvantage, trying not to hurt him in return.

Marshall hoped Everett would exhaust himself or pass out from blood loss before Marshall got tired.

If he didn’t — if his brain was boiling too hot for his body to recognize its own limits — that didn’t leave Marshall too many options.

If he was a sick dog, a lame horse, that poor disembowelled steer, Marshall would’ve done him a kindness and put him down.

But Everett was the boy he’d grown up alongside, the man he’d spent more hours of his life with than anyone else in the world.

The only one he’d loved in years, long before that fat July moon when Everett had come onto him, red-faced even in the dark, and Marshall had been too pathetically hopeful, his brain too full of longing and bullshit poetry, the same bullshit poetry he’d stolen glances of from Everett’s weather-beaten chapbooks over the years, to turn him down like he should have.

The minute Everett hadn’t let Marshall kiss him was when he should’ve called it off, pretended stumbling drunkenness, pretended he couldn’t remember anything the next day.

Marshall had an obligation to put him down before things got worse.

Because it wasn’t just a matter of watching Everett suffer through a bad fever, or trying to find him a doctor before gangrene took hold.

Marshall had seen that monster outside.

He knew what fate had in store for the man, even if Everett didn’t.

Everett writhed in his grasp, his eyes rolling back as he moaned and shuddered like his body wasn’t his own.

“Hurts,”

he panted. “Hurts, god, Marshall, let me—”

He bucked, teeth snapping an inch from Marshall’s throat with a rough, barking growl.

“Don’t you fucking bite me,”

Marshall growled back, shoving Everett off him, too rough for the man’s injury. Everett fell off the edge of the bed to the floor, landing on one hip, his arms still twisted up out of the way with Marshall’s knots.

“Let me,”

Everett begged, his voice a rough and ragged thing.

He hardly sounded like himself.

Marshall didn’t know what exactly what he was begging for anymore, a touch or a fuck or a bite out of Marshall’s throat.

He doubted Everett knew for sure himself.

Everett twisted onto his knees, hunched forward for balance.

Tears tracked salty trails through the blood and dirt on his face; Marshall couldn’t recall ever seeing him cry before.

The tears were bad enough, but his eyes — his eyes were looking strange in the lamplight.

When he turned so the light hit them at just the right angle, they looked flatly reflective, like a wild animal’s in the dark.

Marshall had to shoot him.

No way around it.

And he had to do it now, before Everett’s body twisted itself into that monstrous inhuman thing Marshall had killed outside.

He pulled in a shaky breath, flexing his hand before pressing it flat against his thigh to steady it.

He swung both legs over the edge of the bed, boots planted flat on the floor.

Everett keened, swaying, eyes shut under his sweaty hair, face turned to Marshall’s knees with his bloody teeth bared, nose wrinkled like a predator’s snarl.

In his mind, Marshall held onto the image of Everett as he’d been the day before: still whole, still human, with his soft brown eyes and an easy smile.

Everett’s sweat had turned from the sickly scent of terror to wild animal musk, pungent and ripe.

He’d been on his knees under that full moon, too.

Maybe Everett was right, and that night had set some kind of devil on them.

Not in retaliation for the act itself — Marshall had fucked around with his share of men, and nothing and nobody had ever struck him down for it — but in punishment for being careless with his best friend.

For taking him up on his offer even though Everett couldn’t meet his eyes or articulate what it was he was asking for.

Marshall knew better than to get involved with a man like that, but he’d gone and done it anyway, and now Everett was the one getting ripped apart for it.

Maybe that fever was spreading.

Those weren’t any kind of rational thoughts.

Then again, that beast lying dead outside with a man in its belly wasn’t rational, either.

Marshall reached for his revolver on the dresser. “I’m sorry,”

he whispered. His voice cracked.

Everett’s eyes snapped open, meeting his, and for an instant, he was himself again. Scared and bleeding out, hurt bad enough to die from it, kneeling bound on the floor at Marshall’s feet.

“You’re all right,”

Marshall said hoarsely.

He tested his grip on the Colt, the familiar weight of it uncomfortable now, enamel grip worn smooth, silver barrel licked red by the firelight.

The 140 Colt Paterson was Marshall’s prized possession, passed down to him from his daddy.

Not as powerful as his double-barrel shotgun, but that thing would take Everett’s head clean off.

The revolver would kill him just as dead, but he’d still have a face when it was done.

Marshall hesitated.

He wasn’t sure which option was worse.

To have his friend looking up at him from the corpse, or to obliterate him so totally, he could pretend it wasn’t Everett he’d killed at all.

He’d never killed anyone before and never imagined he might.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,”

Everett said helplessly. The lamplight glowed against his brown eyes.

“It’s okay,”

Marshall lied. More honestly, “It’s not your fault.”

Everett managed some semblance of a smile that hurt to see.

Then, he screamed.

His back bowed forward until his forehead hit the floor hard enough to rattle his skull.

Marshall scrambled back onto the bed, pressing himself against the far wall, body reacting in an instinctive panic before his brain caught on.

The Colt was clumsy in his hand; he couldn’t aim it at Everett the way he needed to.

On the floor, Everett reached for him, his arms still bound tight to his body, leaving him struggling to push himself towards the bed on his knees and chest, twisting from one shoulder to the other, craning his neck trying to catch Marshall in his sights.

His body broke, wrenching itself apart.

Marshall could hear the crack of bones and crunch of vertebrae under the scream that ripped from Everett’s throat like a howl.

His blood-soaked shirt tore at the seams as the devil in Everett’s body fought its way out.