Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page B

his ear. She looked at Krishani seeming unruffled and when she neared him her golden aura pushed him out of the way.
    “You sicken me … Krishani … Mekallow … Mekelle.” Her brown flats clacked against the linoleum floor. Krishani stared after her, his eyes wide as she turned the corner. He couldn’t think anymore, his mind circling three little words he forgot centuries ago.
    His true name.
    He almost collapsed from the pressure, unwanted memories filling his mind making the sand increase. He wanted to vomit but without a body he couldn’t. He fled the hospital letting out a loud screech as he found the sky, not caring where he was going. He fought with the wind until he descended, landing in the slums. He recognized it as Calcutta, and the home of the only person from his past he saw frequently.
    He wished he didn’t know Shimma.
    He neared a shack, boards holding up parts of a house with shoddy workmanship. The family inside was with a shaman, lighting incense and whispering an incantation over another man’s body in the back of the shack. Family members conglomerated in the living room, an old woman clutching a middle-aged woman’s hand tightly, their faces contorted in worry.
    All of them reacted to the cold, and the old woman cried out in Bengali. Krishani recognized the word death on her lips and she was hysterical, calling the shaman, telling him to banish Krishani. The shaman prayed harder, pressing his hand to the dying man’s chest in a vain attempt to give him safe passage to the other side. Krishani found it amusing, as nobody but Gemma, and Kazazar could really stop him from devouring a soul. He slid into the body, feeling heat press into him. Fever. He reached the center point of the man’s essence, finding the white matter. The man tried to resist but the Vulture was too strong and too seasoned. Krishani lapped up white matter like air and poured himself into the sternum, anchoring himself to the body.
    Krishani woke with a start in a foreign body, a hysterical old woman fainting beside the bed, the shaman clutching a small red book, a look of shock on his face. He began rejoicing in Bengali about a miracle, about Shiva bringing back their brother. Krishani couldn’t stand it. He leapt to his feet, and though the fever raged on, forcing dotted lines to appear in front of his eyes he fled the shack without another glance in the family’s direction. Cries rose from behind him but none of them willingly chased him into the slums.
    He focused on his feet, making every barefoot step count, hearing his heart beat singing in his ears. He was alive and all he had to do was stay that way for as long as possible.
    O O O
    India was a shithole, but it was the only place Shimma felt safe anymore. She swept the cards off the small round table, the hard wooden chair digging into her back. She used to do this at the market place a few blocks away but lately there were too many crazies for her taste. This house had been abandoned for several years. She wasn’t taking anymore clients for the night, looking to get some rest in a tangle of blankets pulled over a floor. She went to blow out the candles when she heard someone outside, panting, footsteps squishing into sewage. Whoever it was, she wasn’t interested.
    “Move that curtain aside and I’ll slice you from navel to nostril,” she called, a laziness to her sweet voice. She used to lure men with her beauty and coy vocals, but these days, it was better to sound scary and mean it. She waited; shuffling her multi layered skirts around, wanting desperately to take off the corset pinching her lungs together. It was embroidered in gold, stretched overtop a loose fitting beige top. Her skirts were beige, burgundy and dark green, all cut at different lengths. Her hair was wrapped in a tight babushka, blonde hair falling to the small of her back. She wore big gold hoops for earrings and completed the look with an imaginary wart off center from her lips on her