And he had to have more.

When he turned about, the first thing he noticed was her smile.

‘We never get to watch the mornings, do we?’ Kataria asked, sliding a lock of hair behind her long ear. ‘It’s always something else: a burning afternoon, a cold dawn, or a long night. We never get to sit down at just the right time when normal people get up.’

‘We’re not normal people,’ he replied, distracted.

It was difficult to concentrate with every step she took closer to him. The moonlight clung to her like silk slipped in water, hugging every line of her body left exposed by her short green tunic. Her body was a battle of shadow and silver. He felt his eyes slide in his sockets, running over every muscle that pressed against her skin, counting every shallow contour of her figure.

His gaze followed the line that ran down her abdomen, sliding to the shallow oval of her navel. His stare lingered there, contemplating the translucent hairs that shimmered upon her skin. The night was sweltering.

And she did not sweat a single drop.

When he returned from his thoughts, she was close, nearly pressed against him.

‘We aren’t,’ she replied softly. ‘But that doesn’t mean we must be expected to not enjoy a morning, does it? Don’t we deserve to see the sun rise?’

His breath, previously stale with disease, drew in her scent on a cool and gentle inhale. She smelled pleasant, of leaves on rivers and wind over the sea. His eyelids twitched in time with his nostrils, as though something within him spastically flailed out in an attempt to seize control of his face and turn it away from her.

‘This doesn’t sound like you.’ His whisper was a thunderous echo off her face. ‘Not after what you said on the boat.’

‘I regret those words,’ she replied.

‘You never regret anything.’

‘Consider my problems,’ she said. ‘I am just like you. Small, weak and made of the same degenerate meat. I share your fears, I share your terrors …’

‘This isn’t you,’ Lenk whispered, his voice hot and frantic. ‘This isn’t you.’

‘And you’ — she ignored him as her hands went to the hem of her shirt, her face split apart with a broad smile — ‘share my meat.’

His confusion was lost in her cackle, attention seized by her hands as they pulled her tunic up over her head and tossed it aside, exposing the slender body beneath. His eyes blinked wildly of their own volition, and with each flutter of the eyelids, she changed beneath him. Her breasts twitched and writhed under his gaze for three blinks.

By the fourth, they blinked back at him.

Eels, perhaps? Snakes? He could contemplate their nature for one more blink before they launched from her chest, jaws gaping in silent, gasping shrieks forced between tiny, serrated teeth. His own scream, he felt, was nothing more than a fevered sucking of air through the hole that was quickly torn in his throat by their vicelike jaws.

His hands were iron, their bodies were water. He slapped, clawed, raked at them. They chewed, rent, ripped his flesh, brazenly ignoring his desperation. He felt blood weep from his face and mingle with his sweat in thick, greasy tears.

He collapsed under the assault of their teeth and her shrieking laughter, curling up like a terrified, squealing piglet, marinating. He shivered through his tensed body, expecting the teeth to return at any moment and start raking his back and chewing on his spine.

The agony never came. Nor did the death he was certain would come from having one’s face torn off and eaten. He reached up and touched his face, feeling greasy and sticky skin beneath. He looked up.

She, or whatever had been posing as her, was gone.

Shaking, he pulled himself to his hands and feet and crawled to the brook, peering in. His face was red, smeared with blood, but from long lines that raced down his cheeks. Long lines, he thought as he noticed his hands, that perfectly matched the strip of fingernails glutted with skin.

Though it seemed slightly redundant to say so after engaging in philosophical debate with a simian and committing bodily assault on a tree, Lenk felt the need to collapse onto his back and mutter in a feverish whisper.

‘You’re losing it, friend.’

‘ Understatement.’

Lenk blinked at the voice, coldly familiar after such a long and fiery silence inside his head. He fought the urge to smile, to revel in the return of a more intimate madness. It didn’t matter how hard he strained to resist, though; the voice sensed it.

‘ Seems pointless to try to resist.’

‘Where were you?’ Lenk asked.

‘ Always with you.’

‘Then you saw … all that?’

‘ Know what you know.’

‘Your thoughts?’

‘ Our thoughts.’

‘You know what I meant.’

‘ The point is no less valid. Nothing that has happened tonight was real.’

‘It seemed so-’

‘ It wasn’t.’

‘How do you figure?’

‘ For one, she’s dead. Fact.’

‘It’s a distinct possibility.’

‘ A certainty. Listen to reason.’

‘Greenhair said she didn’t find any other bodies. It’s perfectly sane to believe the others might be alive.’

‘ One would be hard-pressed to take advice on sanity from he who hears voices.’

‘Point.’

‘ Referring to your dependence on them. Why bother insisting that they live?’

‘I … need them. They watch my back, help me during the hard times.’

‘ We have each other.’

‘ Wehave nothing buthard times.’

‘ Their deaths are clearly a sign from heaven. We waste time and effort mourning them.’

‘No one’s mourning anyone yet. They could still be alive.’

‘ We could be back in Toha right now if not for them, the book safe and away where it belongs and our body aching to wreak vengeance upon the next blight that stains the earth. They are a hindrance.’

‘No, they aren’t.’

‘ It isthem who needsus. They wouldn’t survive without us. Theydidn’t survive without us. They are useless.’

‘No, they aren’t!’

‘ We have our duties. We have our blights to cleanse. The demons fear us, fear what we do to them. We were created to cleanse the earth of impurities. These companions can only be called thus because they were considerate enough to cleanse themselves for us. They’re better off dead.’

‘ No, they aren’t!’

The last echoes of the voice vanished, forced out of his mind as he threw himself into a fervent rampage of thought. He sprang to his feet, began to pace back and forth, muttering to himself.

‘Think, think … you don’t need that thing. Think … it’s hard to think. So hot …’ He snarled, thumped his temple. ‘ Think!This isn’t just fever causing the hallucinations. How do you know?’ He ran a finger at one of his scratches. ‘Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?

‘No,’ he answered himself. ‘ Nothingmakes sense.’ He gritted his teeth, the effort of thought seeming to cause his brain to boil. ‘You were hallucinating strange things, thoughts that never occurred to you before. Why is that odd?

‘Because hallucinations are a product of the mind, are they not?’ He nodded vigorously to himself. ‘You can’t hallucinate something you don’t know, can you?’ He shook his head violently. ‘No, not at all. You can’t hallucinate monkeys with philosophical ideas or trees with latent desires for peace, or …

‘Kataria.’ He blinked, eyes sizzling with the effort. ‘She wasn’t wearing her leathers when you saw her. You’ve never seen her without them, have you? No, you haven’t. Well, maybe once, but you always think of her in them, don’t you?’ He threw his head back. ‘What does all this say to us? Hallucination of things that are notthe product of your disease or your mind? Either you’re dead and this is some rather infinitely subtle and frustrating hell as opposed to the whole “lakes of fire and sodomised with a pitchfork” thing, or, much more likely …’