Forever Odd

soften its hard features.
        Like a mountain moving, he came to the table. He stood beside Robert’s chair.
        When Datura had gripped the three long-stemmed roses in her fist, thorns had punctured her palm. She revealed no pain when she had lashed the air, but now she bled.
        Robert might have contented himself at her wounds until no taste remained. From him issued a murmur of deep satisfaction.
        As disturbing as this was, I doubted it was the “need” of which she had spoken. That would be a worse thing than this.
        With an expression of perverse noblesse oblige, the would-be goddess denied Robert further favor and offered communion to Andre.
        I tried to focus on the window and the spectacle of the storm, but I could not keep my gaze averted from the chilling tableau across the table.
        The giant lowered his mouth into the cup of her hand. He lapped like a kitten, not seeking sustenance, surely, but craving something more than blood, something unknown and unholy.
        As Cheval Andre accepted his mistress’s grace, Cheval Robert watched intently. Yearning tortured his face.
        More than once since I’d entered Room 1203, the scent of Cleo-May had grown so sweet that it became repellent. Now it thickened to such a degree that it began to sicken me.
        As I strove to repress my nausea, I had an impression that I don’t mean should be taken literally, that was metaphoric but no less disturbing:
        During this blood-sharing ritual, Datura no longer seemed to be a woman, no longer a sexually distinct creature of either gender, but a member of some monoclinous species that harbored both sexes in the same individual, and almost insectile . I expected that if lightning backlighted her, I would see her body as a mimicry of human form within which quivered a many-legged entity.
        She withdrew her hand from Andre, and he relinquished it with reluctance. When she turned her back on him, however, he returned obediently to the window, once more placed his hands flat upon the glass, and gazed into the storm.
        Robert’s attention focused again on the table candles. His face settled into placidity, but his eyes were lively with reflections of the flames.
        Datura redirected her attention to me. For a moment she stared as if she did not remember who I was. Then she smiled.
        She picked up her wineglass and came to me.
        If I had realized that she intended to sit in my lap, I would have exploded to my feet as she rounded the table. By the time her intention became clear, she had already settled.
        Feathering against my face, her warm breath smelled of wine.
        “Have you seen an advantage yet that you can seize?”
        “Not yet.”
        “I want you to drink with me,” she said, holding the wineglass to my lips.

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    THIRTY-FOUR
        
        SHE HELD THE WINE IN THE HAND THAT HAD BEEN pricked by thorns, the hand upon which the two men had suckled.
        A new wave of nausea washed through me, and I pulled my head back from the coolness of the glass rim against my lips.
        “Drink with me,” she repeated, her smoky voice alluring under even these circumstances.
        “I don’t want any,” I told her.
        “You do want it, baby. You just don’t know you want it. You don’t yet understand yourself.”
        She pressed the glass to my lips again, and I turned my head away from it.
        “Poor Odd Thomas,” she said, “so fearful of corruption. Do you think I’m a dirty thing?”
        Offending her too openly might be bad for Danny. Now that she had lured me here, she had little if any further use for him. She could punish me for any insult by pushing the black button on the remote.
        Lamely, I said, “I just catch cold easily, that’s all.”
        “But I don’t have a cold.”
        “Well, you never know. You might have one but not be showing symptoms yet.”
        “I take echinacea. You should, too. You’ll never have a cold again.”
        “I’m not much into herbal remedies,” I said.
        She slid her left arm around my neck. “You’ve been brainwashed by the big drug companies, baby.”
        “You’re right. I probably have been.”
        “Big drugs, big oil, big tobacco, big media-they’ve gotten inside everyone’s head. They’re poisoning us. You don’t need man-made chemicals. Nature has a cure for everything.”
        “Brugmansia is