Feast (10 page)
Authors: Merrie Destefano
Thane:
Fog drifted around us, a thick, black haze with gnarled fingers. It teased the trees and blocked out blue sky, turned the forest into a nightmarish vista. She fought me, this woman named Maddie that I had followed through the wood only last night, and as she did, I could see why my cousin had been so intrigued by her. Bits of poems and snippets of stories dripped from her lips, sweet as honey wine, each one of them more lovely than the one before. Meanwhile, my concentration was failing. This human woman was slicing through my Veil and confusing me with her own magic incantations. Then with a mere whisper of words, she knocked me on my back, drove the wind from my lungs, her poem strong as a warrior’s blow.
I rolled away from her and she bounded to her feet, ready to run away.
“No!” I bellowed, then I leaped, tackled her and drove her to the ground again. River chanted at my side the whole while, holding the Veil fast, for my strength was waning. “Sleep, my love, rest now,” I said, my voice soft and soothing.
Her limbs relaxed and her eyelids fluttered.
I slid one arm beneath her neck, pulled her to my chest. This human was not meant for a quick glutted death; she carried the dreams of a lifetime and should be kept in a cage, given robes of velvet. She could keep an entire village alive with her dreams.
With a swipe of rough tongue against her forearm, I claimed her with my mark.
Promising death to any who took her from this moment on.
Then I sang to her, the words so quick that she couldn’t understand them, and I began to sift through her dreams, rooting about like a child through a chest of toys. Webbed fingers spread wide, yellow claws gleaming, I stirred them and watched: First I saw an image of her son falling in love; then another of her grandchildren playing in the yard; then a vision of someone standing beside her—a man, her true love, though his features were masked in shadow.
And finally, I saw a picture of her dog, Samwise. He was running through the house, chasing a black-winged beast, another Darkling, and suddenly, in an instant, he changed, grew until he was as large as the room itself with wings of his own—
’Twas a werebeast she was dreaming about.
Terrified, I sat back on my haunches.
No, couldn’t be real
.
Then, somehow, Maddie found the magic beat that sang in the silent spaces between the letters. She rose up from the ground and forced words to the surface in one final scream.
“Samwise!” she shouted. “Come!”
River and I clamped our hands over her mouth, pushed her back to the ground, but we both knew that it was already too late. We could feel it. Reality was shifting, something horrid was being summoned by this human, something we couldn’t stop.
A shiver raced over me and I heard it beginning; far away a dog pawed frantically at a front door, until finally, someone opened it. But the door swung open too fast and the dog slipped away.
Now it was running. I could hear it, galloping through the forest toward me, blood pumping through its body. New blood with a new purpose soared through the dog’s limbs like fire, tangled through every organ and changed the beast with every beat of its heart. It was running faster than ever before; it was bigger than the sky and darker than the night, a shadow with teeth and claws, taller than the trees—
“The woman has summoned a werebeast,” I said, astonished and afraid.
“Run!” River cried and he spread his wings.
At that moment I saw Cousin Sage, rising up out of the river, one hand raised, ready to cast an enchantment. But even she was too late.
For the ground thundered and the valley echoed with an unholy growl. A mythic beast was charging up the trail, shredding the Veil that should have protected us. I could hear the Veil ripping, the sound shocking through the fog. A werebeast would be here in a moment and the monster would have the power to kill all three of us with a single blow.
Thane:
The trees cracked and thrashed, branches were breaking and the beast was coming toward us on the trail. I was still holding Maddie in my arms when the werebeast appeared, towering above the treetops, part dog, part monster; it skidded to a halt beside me, ripped down two fifty-foot pines with its front paws. Before I could move, it swung a meaty paw and knocked my brother on the chin, sent him bleeding and tumbling into the bramble.
It glared down at me, jaws spread wide, revealing a guillotine of teeth.
I held Maddie tighter, thought about flying away. It would take but a moment to soar above this beast, though carrying her would surely slow me down.
Then the werebeast dropped its head below the treetops, catching me in its silver gaze. It lunged closer, swiped at my head. I dodged to the left, almost dropped the woman.
It growled again, sniffed the woman, tested the air with its tongue.
It was after the woman.
“Nay, beast, you cannot have her,” I growled.
As soon as I spoke, the hairy beast roared and shook the ground with a stamp of its rear paw. I almost fell, but forced myself to cling to her. I crouched low, ready to fly.
At that very moment, the dog’s front paws morphed into nightmarish ape hands, giant and misshapen. It swung and caught me, wrapped massive fingers about my torso, pressed the air from my lungs, wrinkled and tore my wings. I would have cried out, but it had squeezed the air from my lungs. With its other ape hand, the beast grabbed my arm, twisting until my bone broke and my flesh shredded, forcing me to drop the woman.
I finally pulled in a full lung of air and I screamed, a wail that echoed from valley deep to mountain peak.
Then—while River lay dazed and bleeding on the ground, while Cousin Sage hid behind a thick oak—the werebeast lifted me high above its head. It pitched me into the sky, sent me tumbling, end over end, back toward the valley, until I was so far away from them that I was surrounded by heavy fog.
Still flying, out of control, I was just barely clearing the treetops.
Rage filled my veins, turned my blood hot. At last, I managed to right myself; I spun around and headed back.
I would not lose this battle. Not today.
Maddie:
The forest rushed past, a wildwood trail of briar and bramble. All the birds and woodland creatures scampered away as soon we approached. It was a dream, it had to be, a dream larger than the world. Some creature taller than the trees held me against its furry chest; it was a misshapen beast, all fur and claws and teeth, like a cross between a wolf and a dragon, and it galloped on two legs through stands of towering pine. Green branches danced beside us, the creek glistened between the trees.
Finally, the beast that carried me slowed down. It carefully lowered me to the ground; it licked me on the face, as if trying to wake me.
Then the cocoon of sleep that had surrounded me faded away. I felt gritty earth and twigs beneath me, saw a flicker of blue sky above, saw the movement of gray fog drifting between me and heaven. And I heard a dog barking, frantic, as it circled around me; it stopped to lick me on the face, then barked and ran around me again.
It was Samwise, but then again, it wasn’t.
“Stop barking,” I mumbled.
A heavy dream was shattering, all around me the forest began to poke through, and then, a faint, familiar voice called in the distance.
Mom
, someone was calling me,
Mom
.
Tucker
.
I sat up, blinked my eyes open, tried to make sense of where I was and how I had gotten here, but couldn’t. Beside me, Samwise yipped and stopped running, he poked a wet nose against my cheek, licked me over and over, nudged his nose against my shoulder and tried to get me to move, to get up.
“Mom!” Tucker called. I heard him running, closer now, feet pounding dirt. Then he fell to his knees beside me. “Mom, what happened? Are you hurt? Did you fall?”
I stood up awkwardly, wincing. The wind had been driven out of my chest, and my legs hurt, as if they had been pinned beneath me for a long time. “I’m okay,” I said. But the ground seemed to tilt to the left and my thoughts scattered.
Then, as my lungs filled with clear mountain air, my thoughts cleared.
And suddenly, I remembered what I had seen in the woods, the dead body and the shadowy creatures that had tried to hold me. Something foul and dreadful had been loosed in the wood this afternoon. We had to get out of here, quickly. I grabbed my son by the hand.
“Run, Tucker!” I said. “Back to the cabin.”
He frowned, puzzled.
“Hurry, we have to get out of here!”
Then all three of us were running down the trail back toward the cottage, Samwise leading the way. The dog continually turned around to make sure we were behind him, as we reached the clearing. Then he stood at the edge of the wood, guarding the exit, until we were safe inside the house.
Ash:
A loud thunderclap shook the sky, followed by a meaty roar. The ground trembled and in the near distance, something uprooted trees, cracked their trunks like kindling. At the same moment, the Veil shattered and the true landscape was revealed—the wood was once again shrouded in milky fog. The stench of toadstools and cobwebs filled the copse and I knew that someone had just flown overhead.
Thane
. We each have our own masked scent, unique as a human fingerprint, and this was the scent my cousin wore. I squinted. I could see him now through the haze, a leathery silhouette, soaring above the trees. Something about his flight path, crooked and careening, said that he had been recently wounded.
But who had he been fighting?
I bristled. Wings spread wide, I thumped above the tree line. There, I saw Sage tumble into the distant treetops, her face bruised, her body bleeding. River crouched at her side, fists studded with bone, hands clasped together and ready to swing again.
And now, just a wingspan away from my sister, was the beast that is my cousin, Thane, ready and eager to join the fight.
I swooped through mist and shadow, wings spread, mouth open wide, long fangs and claws bared. I latched onto Thane with iron fists, stopped his flight, and then swung him around until he slammed against a sixty-foot pine. He snarled and spit, gnawed at my hands. Then together, we rolled and tumbled through the branches and trunks, smashed against an oak and then a white fir, shattering the trees and breaking branches, until needles fell from nearby trees in a dark green rain.
Finally, I grabbed Thane by the throat and tossed him into the creek, a good seventy feet below us.
Sage hovered above the tree line, one side of her beautiful face swollen and bleeding. It was evidence enough for me, though it wouldn’t hold up in court. Fortunately, I knew exactly what would.
My cousins had broken the rules, sure enough.
“I warned you, cousins,” I growled. “My invitation stated the rules, plain and clear—”
“We didn’t take a thing,” River cried when I approached, his country accent bleeding through. For all his pretending he was nothing but a scavenger and a pauper. “We never harmed any of your humans.”
“You were both trying to harvest before the Hunt, I heard you—”
Then Thane flew up to meet us. He coughed and spit, water soaking his clothes and hair. “He tells the truth, cousin. I swear it.”
Meanwhile, a foul stench rose from the forest floor, somewhere beneath us.
“On top of that, you dared to strike my sister?” I asked, my voice like thunder now. I kneed River in the gut, then slammed my fist across his brow.
“She called your werebeast down upon us with a spell,” River gasped. “We couldn’t defend ourselves—”
“I told you it wasn’t my beast!” Sage growled.
“Then how do you explain its silver eyes? Only your clan has that distinction and you know it—”
“We have no claims on that beast,” I said.
“Conjured up by one of your own enchantments, sure enough,” Thane said. He narrowed his eyes.
I spun and slammed a fist in his side to quiet him. My cousin had always been a troublemaker back home, most likely this was all his idea. The blow fell close to Thane’s left arm, causing him to curl over with a moan. At that same moment my sister lashed out at River, sliced talons, left ribbons of blood on his chest. River howled in pain and shrank away.
Sage and River parted, then hung in the air, panting, glaring at each other.
Again, closer now, the wind swept through branches, shimmered leaves, stirred an unclean stench of decaying human flesh. Somewhere nearby.
“You have broken the rules, I know it. The human woman you attacked may well have escaped, but there was another,” I said. “I can smell a carcass somewhere below us.”
I grabbed Thane’s left arm, surprised to discover a strange throbbing mash of broken bone and flesh in the midst of healing. When my hold tightened, he wailed and struggled to get away. In retaliation he swung a wild blow with his other arm.
He dug a fist into the hole in my side—into the wound that would never heal.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I bellowed, hot searing torment twisting through my gut. Still, I tightened my grip on him, forced him to withdraw his fist. I had to pretend that this blow had not injured me, couldn’t let either of them know that Thane had accidentally discovered my one weakness.
He watched me, a low hiss escaping from gritted teeth as he slowly pulled his knuckled hand away.
“I’ll endure no more of this! The Hunt is off! Take your party and leave Ticonderoga Falls.” I gripped Thane about the throat, threatened to press the life from him. “Immediately.”
“Nay. We will not leave,” he choked out. “You cannot make us—”
“You
will
leave, cousin. You and your clan,” I said as I tossed him into a lattice of evergreen boughs. “Or by Darkling law, you will be banished. You’ll never hunt again.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” River said, trembling. His gaze darted toward Thane, then back to me again.
“Aye, we would.” Sage flew closer until she hovered beside me. “Two votes is all it takes to have you and your entire clan banished from this earth. By court law, we cannot touch you until a full hour passes. But you must be gone by then, or I myself will sign the warrant against you.”
Thane met her stare evenly. “So be it, then.”
“You have one hour, no more. Find Sienna and take her with you,” I said, my brow lowered, my words ending in a low growl.
Thane gave me a brusque nod of assent. Then with a huff, both he and River threw their shoulders back, cast their wings wide and set off through fog-veiled skies. They flew in the flight pattern of the hunt, less than a handspan apart as they headed back toward the Driscoll mansion, not bothering to conceal themselves. Sienna would be waiting for them there, then together the three of them could go anywhere.
As long as it wasn’t here.
Once my cousins were out of sight, I glanced down. There it was, just beneath us. The stench of death rising from the forest floor, strong and dangerous. Human flesh, rotting. I saw the body then, plain and clear, legs sticking out from a haphazard pile of leaves, barely concealed from any human that might happen to wander down the trail.
This alone was enough to call attention to us, to bring the humans after us, just like Ross had warned. It was enough to make us the hunted instead of the hunters.
