Page 51 of This Vicious Hunger

It is so simple I can’t believe I’ve never considered the possibility before.

For all Petaccia’s research, her theorising, her damnable hypotheses, I wonder if she’s perhaps been too blinkered to notice what’s right in front of her.

The experimental antidotes with the highest success rates have been those using offal.

Petaccia’s theory about the success is to do with the body’s ability to read and absorb these organs—and her theory of the failure is that rejection of an organ by the host body is equally common.

It happens all the time in humans and animals alike, the body attacking even its own internal parts.

I stare down at my hand. How often does the human body reject its own blood?

It’s not unheard of, I’m sure—but truly, how common is it?

The same goes for animals. A thrill of discovery trembles through me.

Perhaps the carrier is not protein, not the meat itself.

What of the haemoglobin found in blood? Low levels of haemoglobin, otherwise known as iron deficiency, cause—and I know this from my lectures in the halls of La Scienza—dizziness, shortness of breath, and muscle weakness or exhaustion.

The exact same symptoms I’ve been suffering since I became a regular in Olea’s garden, almost as if my body is trying to tell me what I’m lacking.

This may be a coincidence, but it feels too fated not to try.

Haemoglobin. Blood. The perfect colloid.

I act without thinking. I change from my stained nightgown into a pair of dark trousers and a simple short-sleeved shirt, pushing my hair back off my forehead with a ribbon tied at my nape.

I pull on my gloves and my mask, a hooded cloak over my outfit despite the heat.

It is the middle of the night, but still the temperature soars, my clothing instantly sticking to me with the briskness of movement.

The last thing I grab is Olea’s stinging tree leaf, now very badly wilted—near dried—from its empty vase.

I remember what she said when she first introduced me to the tree in the garden, how the neurotoxin contained within its tiny hairs is so virulent it can be reactivated long after a sting by something as accidental as a little heat.

I’m careful to pick the leaf from its vase with the tips of my gloves, wrapping it in a silk hair scarf and carrying it like a parcel instead of in my pocket. It will be perfect.

St. Elianto is always deserted at this time of night, though I have rarely crossed the square with such purpose after sunset.

I am usually in the garden with Olea, or wallowing in despair in my rooms. Not tonight.

And hopefully never again for either. I am going to help Olea, I’m going to hand Petaccia her damned cure, and then I am going to leave this fucking place—in that order.

I enter La Vita as silently as I can. I am not in the mood to deal with Petaccia after our last conversation.

In fact, right now I’d be happy if I never had to speak to her again.

I breathe another sigh of relief when I find the door to the Cave locked, the remaining salamanders left to their own devices for the time being.

The Tombs, too, is entirely silent. There are more empty cages than the last time I was here, and two more failed antidote vials on the shelf, both a thick green soup infused with what looks like some kind of algae.

I scoff silently. For all her intelligence and perseverance, Petaccia’s research is like a game.

I’m not one to boast, to crow loudly about any sort of achievement, but tonight could very well change that. I am filled with fresh zest, excited for the first time in days— weeks . I know that this discovery potentially has scope for the betterment of humanity, but it is Olea I think of first.

“I’m coming,” I say aloud, and then laugh quietly to myself in the silence of the lab.

I work like a woman possessed, extracting what I need from the stinging tree with practised ease, cooling and distilling until I’m left with a neurotoxin so potent it would drive most people mad. Or to suicide, if Olea’s tales of the tree are to be believed.

It pools at the bottom of the vial, the colour of saffron and texture of honey.

Liquid gold. Weeks ago this might have surprised me, but now I only make notes as I swirl the liquid in the tube; the way it catches the lamplight reminds me of summer sunlight filtering through the high window over the golden cradle in our sepulchre—or, I realise, the bold yellow of the sun-kissed clouds in Olea’s tapestries.

This is right. I know it the way I knew every other attempt I made wasn’t quite there. But close, so close. All avenues have been leading me to this.

I have, however, got a problem. There are no more animals in Petaccia’s cages aside from one anaemic-looking vole.

The big brown hare I was hoping to use for blood is nowhere to be seen—I suspect the victim of one of Petaccia’s failures.

I curse inwardly. If I’d thought ahead I could have…

I could have what? Caught a bird with my bare hands?

The thought sickens me. The vole won’t do: it barely looks like it will have enough blood to fill my vial.

I check Petaccia’s icebox, filled to the gills with carefully labelled pig hearts and rat innards. The sight of it always makes me feel lightheaded, but tonight it makes me inexplicably hungry. I paw through her scientific stash, but there’s nothing I can use. No blood.

I growl in frustration. The vole will have to do.

I swipe off my cloak, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.

It must be near dawn. I don’t have the time to mess around if I want to finish this before Petaccia comes back.

I peel off my gloves too; the vole is tiny and I’ll need as much dexterity as I can get.

I carry the vial carefully over to the cages and prepare to extract what blood I can from the vole. I always start with a little prayer, one my father always favoured in his rites.

Hush now, dear one

Let the cradle carry you to the everlasting end

These golden hands

The sweetest of earth’s honey

And the strongest bridle on Grief

It is only thanks to the hissing coming from the vial that I stop what I’m doing and finally pay attention to what is before my eyes.

My unwashed fingers, which have until now been beneath the gloves, are still stained with dried blood.

I grip the vial of stinging toxin between my thumb and forefinger, both smeared red and pressed against the glass.

The golden liquid thrashes wildly against the sides of the vial, near crawling towards the top like a storm, hissing and spitting all the while.

It takes everything in me not to throw the vial down and back away. Instead I grip it tighter, watching the stinging solution roil and bubble, clawing—if liquid can claw—at the sides. As if begging for my blood.

Immediately I abandon the idea of the vole. The stinging solution is—well, it’s crazy, but the liquid knows better than I do. I prop the vial in the closest empty rack, washing my hands in the trough with rough soap and scrubbing them dry before seeking out Petaccia’s sharpest knife.

I hesitate. If I do this, and it works, then there is no going back.

In another life I would want more time, hours and minutes, days and weeks, to consider all the options before me: I have not, I realise faintly, any idea what this could do.

If it works… If we release it… But it turns out I am selfish in this, and I have nothing to barter with except my potential success.

I need the time to concoct it, and then to use it—to take Olea’s future out of the doctor’s hands.

There’s nothing for it.

The cut hurts less than I expect it to, the bite of the metal in the pad of my thumb spreading a slow heat through my skin.

I could, perhaps, have chosen a more elegant method, but time is ticking and every minute is one precious moment of discovery slipping away.

I say another quick prayer and hold my thumb over the vial—

The blood drips.

The mixture writhes.

The scent that arises from the hissing colloid is not at all what I expected.

It is not blood and nectar, but bread and honey.

The sweetest fresh loaves with golden tops and rich, dark honey butter spread between warm slices.

It rises to my nostrils, the aroma nearly dragging my head down it is so good and pure and whole.

I brace myself against the counter, careless now of the blood dripping from my thumb.

My body sings at the proximity. It would not be an exaggeration to say I hear angels, or the soft timbre of my mother’s voice calling me home.

The fragrance envelops me and it takes all my strength not to pour the liquid straight into my mouth, drowning my tongue.

I force myself to step away. To inhale the clean, bland air of the Tombs.

Every part of me strains for the antidote.

This is good , it choruses. Drink, drink, drink it all.

Instead I steady myself with another clean breath and another.

There is a tray of unused pipettes in here somewhere, I know there is— where is it?

I grab one. There. I am as careful as my shaking hands allow. The antidote has stopped its unnatural writhing now, though the scent is still as strong. I wrap my thumb in a strip of gauze and shove it into my glove, then hold my breath as I draw a pipette dose of the solution out of the vial.

It is no longer that golden colour, not like sunlight or wheat or any of those.

Now the colour is darker, rusty with my blood.

There is a wholeness to it now, an indescribable quality, like the thickness of good cream, the bite of salt through butter.

A completeness. It is red, it is orange, it shimmers strangely in the pipette as I lift it.

I know I should wait. Regardless of my hurry, this is—it is insanity.

I am not qualified for this, nor do I want to be.

All thoughts of bartering, of success, of winning , are gone, replaced with the knowledge that I should be afraid.

I should wait. Yet I can’t wait. Its siren lure is too much. I am so tired of fighting…

Before I have the chance to process my own actions, the pipette is on my lips, the solution in my mouth.

The taste of warm bread and honey fills my tongue, slowly replaced by something deeper, something more primal—a bitter concoction of stale earth, tree sap, the bite of a green leaf. My tongue goes instantly numb.

I start to panic, but the numbness lasts less than five seconds.

The taste dissipates soon after and I’m left with nothing but a sharp metallic edge.

I swallow once. Twice. Nothing happens. The vial sits in its rack, the liquid a ruddy orange-brown.

I might begin to wonder if I’ve imagined the entire episode, except for one thing: I feel amazing.

No tiredness, no dizziness, no cloying sickness in the pit of my belly.

I wait five minutes. Ten. The night is growing thin and I’m eager to leave La Vita, but I make myself wait.

Half an hour, a little more. I pull my hand from its glove and check the wound on my thumb—but it is gone.

Not only is it gone; there is no evidence it was ever there.

No scar, nothing but the smear of blood left behind.

The same is true of the wound on my leg, now completely invisible.

I let out a caw of victory, startling the tiny, lethargic vole in his cage so badly he flees under his bundle of hay. I don’t care.

“Olea, I’m coming.”