Feast (5 page)
Authors: Merrie Destefano
Maddie:
The door swung closed behind me and from the moment my foot crossed the threshold, I felt like I was in another world. Outside the moon cast broad silver beams, the forest clung possessively to the colors of summer and the air was electric. But here, inside the Ticonderoga Falls Bed and Breakfast, I felt suddenly trapped.
Like I had just walked inside a glass jar and someone had spun the lid closed.
It’s my imagination, I thought, forcing myself through the foyer into a large entryway, toward the registration desk. I’ve always hated Victorian houses, with all their nooks and crannies, pantries and closets, their doors within doors and hallways that seem to lead nowhere. Hitchcock got it right when he staged
Psycho
in that mausoleum. Ever since that movie, my heart would ricochet in my chest whenever I saw turn-of-the-century architecture. Like this place.
Part Victorian Gothic, part Queen Anne romantic, part Herman Munster scary.
I crossed the lifeless room filled with swirling dust motes, shadows melting in corners, time standing still. My body the only thing moving as reality seemed to shift around me.
The rules are different here.
I stopped, remembering that thing I had seen back in the woods: Talons and skin the color of night—
My pulse sped and something flickered in the back of my mind, something that hadn’t happened for so long that I almost didn’t recognize it—an idea for a new character.
“Did you want something?” Professor Driscoll, the owner of the bed and breakfast, gloomed in the shadows, blending in like a chameleon. He crouched behind the desk, a wizened old man staring over wire-rimmed glasses. With his bowed stance and unflinching grimace, he looked like he had eaten something bad for lunch.
“Yeah, I—” I reached the registration counter, remembering that wild animal that had followed us in the woods. I swallowed with difficulty, my throat suddenly dry.
“Speak up.” Driscoll tilted his head, probably aiming his best ear in my direction.
“I want to rent the cabin for two more days.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You went off the Ticonderoga Trail. I warned you not to go up by the falls. That bridge isn’t safe after all the rain last week and I’m not gonna be liable for some idiot who tumbles over the edge out there.”
“But I—how do you know I went off the trail?”
“It’s written all over you. Eucalyptus leaves in your hair, red clay on your shoes. That stuff’s only on the Ponderosa Trail.”
I ran a hand through my hair and, sure enough, I pulled out a leaf. “Okay, I won’t go up that path again. I promise.” But even as I said it I knew I was lying. I suddenly needed to see what was up there, hoped that I would see that flying creature again.
Leathery wings, body that hovered in midair, staring at me.
I just wouldn’t go at night next time. And I’d take my pepper spray.
Driscoll squinted his eyes, watery and pale blue and bloodshot like he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. He watched me, almost as if practicing the ancient art of telepathy.
“I’d really like to stay.” I pulled out my credit card and set it on the counter between us.
He glanced nervously toward the stairway landing. I thought I saw someone up there, a tall figure watching us. But if anyone was there, he vanished almost instantly, retreated down the hallway. Nothing but shadows up there now.
“Fine,” the old man said as he grabbed my card, then swiped it through a machine nearly as old as he was. “I’ll send fresh linens over in the morning. Just remember what I said about staying off the Ponderosa Trail, or I’ll come over there and help you pack up your things myself.”
I chuckled as I signed the receipt, imagined him tossing my clothes into a battered suitcase, fumbling with the cords on my laptop, wagging a finger in my face. “Yes. Sir.” I found myself studying his face, the stubble of a day-old beard, craggy blue shadows on gaunt cheeks. He’d make a great character—the tortured pawn.
He lowered his brow. Perhaps his telepathy had finally kicked in.
I folded the receipt, tucked it in my back pocket and nodded good-bye. Then I headed toward the door. Eager for fresh air.
Chapter 13
The Great Puppet Master
Professor Eli Driscoll:
The door swung shut with a thump. For a long, painful moment it felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room, like Maddie MacFaddin was the only true living creature in the world. Then I caught my breath. My body sagged back in the chair, limp. I closed my eyes. If I had been a praying man, there would have been a litany of words pouring from my lips right then, I would have been begging for release. I’d have scuffed my knees on that polished wooden floor, would have braided my fingers together and clasped them to my chest.
But prayers meant nothing to me.
The only thing that mattered was the curse.
I knew this reprieve was temporary. I felt like a prisoner who finally got to walk around in the yard, who could let his head fall back and stare up at the sun. This long, delirious moment of quasi-peace was marred only by the fact that it wouldn’t last. It would shatter, break into a thousand unrecognizable shards, I might not even be able to remember that the Beast had left me untended.
Sometimes it was so lonely when that happened. Like a horrid vacuum.
But right now it was sweet as sugar, sweet as a thick caramel sauce drizzled over vanilla cake, sweet as a baked apple swimming in buttery molasses—
That was when I realized I wasn’t truly alone. The Great Puppet Master was still inside my head, listening.
“Leave me alone!” My words echoed through the cavernous room. No one answered, but I heard laughter upstairs, faint and condescending. “Just leave me alone,” I muttered again, words running together, falling over one another, “let me run the bed and breakfast on my own, quit giving me orders. I’m sick of it, I’m going to leave if you don’t stop crawling around inside my head—”
“And where would you go, human? How far do you think you would get before one of us tracked you down and brought you back?” It was the female, still wearing gray skin and silver eyes, walking down the stairs like a prowling cat. I didn’t turn, didn’t look. Didn’t want to see her with those leathery wings, folded neatly at her back.
“I don’t belong to you—” I said, careful to keep my voice low.
“Oh, yes you do, sweet little man.” She was almost behind me now. I could smell her, like a field of wildflowers. I longed to look, to drink her in, to let myself be mesmerized by her alien beauty. “You are mine and I can harvest anytime I want. Would you like to take a little nap, right now?”
“Leave him alone, sister. He’s terribly sorry, he never meant to talk to you like that.” The Beast itself was speaking, making sure that she remembered who I belonged to. Always and forever.
I kept my eyes focused on the floor as they drew even nearer, as if I could make all the bad nightmares go away by pretending they weren’t real. There were three of them now, not two.
How many would there be by the end of the night?
“You’re sorry, aren’t you?” the Beast asked, moving closer.
I nodded my head. They were surrounding me. Even if I wanted to run, I couldn’t get away. Then I sensed something. The air grew softer, calmer. I glanced at them from the corner of my eye, saw that they were all wearing human flesh now, human clothes. Pretending to be what they weren’t.
The front door opened then, the cold fresh night air swept into the room. That woman, Madeline, walked in again. She stopped for a second. I glanced up at her.
“Sorry,” she said, seemed to feel an awkward silence. “I think I left my credit card.”
The monster called Ash, the one who owned me and all of Ticonderoga Falls, stood behind the counter. He found the card, held it in his hand, lifted it, stared at the woman.
A cold electricity flowed through the room.
The woman walked toward him with a grin, lifted her head and sniffed. I could smell it, layers of shadow, the heady fragrance of the forest at dusk. The scent hung in the air like droplets of water, sparkling, spinning. She had to walk through the mist to get her card and her eyelids blinked like she was fighting a dream.
One hand outstretched, fingers wrapped around her card.
Ash didn’t let go until she looked into his eyes.
“I’m glad you decided to stay,” he said with a grin.
“Me too,” she answered.
The wrong answer, of course. I could feel it, vibrating beneath the floor. Gears set in motion, cogs and sprockets instead of emotion, metal and sparks instead of flesh. I couldn’t look at the monster’s face, it just wasn’t allowed in situations like this. So I stared at the woman instead. I wished that I could tell her to run, wished my mouth would open and a warning would come out.
She pocketed the card, turned and left.
She didn’t notice the silent plea in my weary, sleepless eyes. Didn’t hear the word
run
get tangled and erased by the Beast’s machinery. Silver wires laced through my brain, stole my strength. Forced my knees to bend, to stay in the chair although I longed to follow her out the door, to see the stars, to walk so far away that no one would know my name.
I should have cried
help
. Next time I would.
Then, as soon as Madeline walked out the door, electricity sizzled through the air and the transformation took place. Fake human flesh dissolved like ashes in the wind. And I was surrounded by monsters once again.
Elspeth:
The house sighed and moaned, shutters rattled and boards creaked as soon as the human woman stepped outside the door. A restless hush teased lace panels, making them dance, ghostlike, against wooden floors. I followed the human woman out of the house to the wraparound porch. There I stood quiet and still as a shadow, watching as she jogged back toward her cottage, toward the child and dog that waited for her. Then I glanced back through the leaded-glass window on the front door and saw my father inside, wearing his true Darkling skin. I saw the fear on Driscoll’s face.
Stupid, weak humans.
I kicked the railing that ran the length of the porch, then quickly glanced down to make sure I was wearing the right skin.
Can’t be calling attention to myself unless I’m dressed properly. Can’t embarrass Father.
I leaned against a column and felt the vibrations that flowed through the house. Every time I visited earth, I was drawn back here, to the Driscoll mansion, no matter how I tried to fight it. I hated this house, hated every piece of furniture and every painting, hated the stench of human pride that had soaked into every crevice.
Hated the fact that I was the only one in my clan who could walk through doors or windows uninvited.
Hated my human blood.
“Shouldn’t hate what you cannot change, my pretty.”
One of my cousins stood behind me. Thane. I gave him a quick glance and a nod. Ran my gaze up and down his shape, then wrinkled my nose. Broad shoulders and long limbs, narrow brow and probing dark eyes. But his feet curled up at the toes and his skin had a green cast. He never could get the human form quite right. Didn’t have the eye for shape or color.
Barbarian
.
He snickered and took an unwelcome step closer, placed one long finger under my chin. “You don’t want to hear the word that comes to mind for you, love.”
My spine turned rigid, fingernails curved into claws.
“Better learn how to hide that anger, little one. Or you’ll lose the Hunt.” His breath was hot on my face. No one ever got this close to me. “And then your father would be displeased. Might not give you a seat at his table.”
“Your father spent so much time training you, did he? Oh. I forgot. Your clan doesn’t train for the Hunt, do they? You’re supposed to work in the fields or the factories. Beasts of burden. I heard that you and River haven’t even been taught the gift of discernment—”
“Fair and square, we’ve had our training, sure enough. Wait and see, my precious. Wait and see who goes tumbling through midnight sky because they can’t keep up with the rest of us.”
“I’d race you now, if the humans weren’t still awake. Perhaps we should cast a sleep enchantment together and then see who—”
“Elspeth.” My aunt Sage stood beside me. Tall and majestic and beautiful, everything I would never be.
I lifted my chin, could still feel the warmth of Thane’s finger pressing into my skin even though it had been gone for several heartbeats.
“I’m sorry, Cousin Sage,” Thane said with a sweeping bow. “I was merely hoping to get her blood ready for the Hunt.”
Perfect words, mocking tone. My cheeks reddened.
Damn human blood
. Never obeyed when I needed it to. I tried to make my skin ivory pale, like that human woman who had just walked past.
“It would be good for all of us to stay focused on the Hunt,” Sage answered. She glanced at the sky, at the track of the moon, the position of the few stars brave enough to shine when the Queen of the Heavens reigned. “One human hour. And then we will have dinner.”
“Dinner?” Thane frowned.
“A ritual,” she said. “Ash’s human needs to eat and we may as well watch.” A devilish grin spread across her angelic features. “After all, he watches us eat often enough.”
Ash:
The moon crested the tree line until she hung, full and sweet, in black heavens. She called us to obeisance and the rest of my clan heeded. They gathered in the back garden for a brief ritual. Meanwhile, I prowled the halls, searching for my own version of redemption. I slid a key in the lock, turned the knob, then pushed my way through the door to the study. I thought about opening the louvered wooden shutters, letting in a sultry bank of moonlight, but changed my mind. I preferred the darkness. Besides, I didn’t want to see all the dead things hanging on the wall—all the bright winged creatures inside wooden frames and the animal heads with glass eyes.
The killing room.
Even after a hundred years, the stench of death never left this place: a peculiar odor of potassium cyanide, plaster of Paris and hydrogen cyanide hung in the air.
This was the room where Lily had died.
She came for a party, but got murdered instead.
I pulled open a desk drawer, fumbled with a false back panel, fastened my fingers around a small sphere, then clasped it in my fist. With my back to the wall, I placed the sphere in my mouth, bit and swallowed, ignoring the bitter taste and the foul odor. She would be here soon and that was all that mattered.
The dream melted in my mouth.
“Forgive me,” I whispered to the shadows that began to move and shift, as the room itself began to glow beneath the dream. “I wasn’t always like this.”
“I know, my love,” my wife answered.
She slid into the room, tall and beautiful and whole, her gown glimmering, casting its own light in the darkness. In a few steps, she was at my side, nestled in my arms.
“There was a time when I was invited to the best parties, when my smile charmed all the ladies, both young and old. When I told stories that kept the children up late at night, as we knelt before the Evenquest fires, beneath the stars of home.”
“I remember. Children would run to greet you,” she said, the curve of her smile dazzling, her neck a perfect arc of alabaster flesh. I leaned in to kiss her and she closed her eyes. “They would laugh and jump into your arms.” Her voice was a husky whisper now, a waterfall of words.
I didn’t want to speak. Didn’t want to break the spell.
“You’re not really here, are you?” I said.
“No.” But the smile remained and I could still taste her skin on my lips.
I remembered a dance we had attended in Germany once, long ago. She had worn a peacock green dress and pale human skin, her hair a tower of glistening gold. Everyone had watched her as we both waltzed together over gleaming floors. Then she had tripped, caught her slipper in her gown, and nearly fell. In the confusion, she forgot what skin she had been wearing, and as she came to her feet again, she was now a round-bellied merchant with a swollen red nose and a ragged frock. People around us shrieked in terror.
Monster
, they had cried.
Doppelganger!
Lily and I had fled, laughing, bursting through the doors to the great hall and then sailing up into moonlit skies. For weeks afterward, we had laughed whenever one of us remembered the incident.
It had been her only flaw. Sometimes she forgot what skin to change into.
And now, in the dream, she put her head on my chest. My dear sweet dead wife. Even in the dreams she had no heartbeat. And she was so very pale.
“But the children didn’t always run to greet you.” She was gazing up into my eyes now. Why did the truth grow more brittle with age? She didn’t used to speak like this. Not when she was alive. “Remember? The Boy was frightened of you, the first time we met him.”
I stared into the darkness that surrounded us, wished the morning would come, that the bright sun would devour me whole and that this torment would be over.
“It took a long time for me to woo him,” she continued, “to get him to trust you. There was always a dangerous glimmer in your grin, my love, something hiding between your words. That is what attracted me to you in the first place.”
But it wasn’t true. I had never been that way around her, my precious bride. “Your true memories are fading, blossom,” I said with a catch in my voice. “The dreams are growing old, turning bitter with age. You were never like this.”
“Then tell the Boy to make you some more dreams. Throw the old ones away.”
It always came to this. You’d think I would learn to stay away from this room and my hidden cache of golden dreams. And now, it was time. I had to tell her.
“I only have a few dreams left,” I said. “And the Boy is dead.”
Her eyes widened. A moment passed when she didn’t move, then tears formed on her lashes, her lip quivered. “Nay. Young William lives. I know it.”
I shook my head.
“When?”
I shrugged. I had lost count of human years. “Fifty years, maybe. I don’t remember.”
She pulled away from my embrace. “Why didn’t you tell me that he was gone?”
“I do tell you, my love. Every time I see you. And then you forget.”
She turned away. “Don’t come to me again, Ash. Let me go. I don’t want our time together to always end in pain.”
“Yes, my love.”
She was facing me again, arms about my waist. “Kiss me, sweetheart. Hold me one last time.” It was always our last time, now and forever. It was all the Boy had been able to give us, a lasting torment that neither one of us could end. I had bound the Boy’s father in the curse, then the Boy got caught in the web by mistake.
Her image began to fade. The dream was breaking, growing thin like river ice in the spring.
“Tell Young William that I love him,” she said. Already she had forgotten that the Boy was dead.
Then she was gone.
And as soon as she left, the pain in my side flared up, the wound tore just a bit, shining bright silver in the unlit study.
This was the room where she had run, a hundred years ago, during a game of hide-and-seek with Young William. It was the same room where William’s father met with the members of the local lepidopterist club. Lily had panicked when a group of men unexpectedly sauntered in from the back parlor, smelling of brandy and cigars. Startled, her disguise of a nine-year-old girl had fallen off and without realizing it, she turned into a faery.
It was the disguise that Young William had always preferred. It was the skin she wore when visiting him in the grove—gossamer wings, her body small enough to sit upon his outstretched palm.
In the flash of an eye, William’s father had caught her in a tangled net; with rough fingers, he sealed her inside a killing jar. Then, when all life had fled her, the old man pinned her to a board, like she was just another giant blue swallowtail caught on an African safari. He speared a pin through her side. And her wound matched the one I wear to this day—the gaping hole just beneath my ribs that travels straight through to my back.
I paused before the window, opened the shutters and let the moonlight pour down upon me, burning my flesh. I didn’t blink, didn’t turn away when the silver light scorched my flesh.
The moon spoke a different language in this room, all her kindness gone, for this was the place where I had failed my beloved. This was where my curse had fallen, like stars from heaven, beyond my control. It bound me to this place, where I had tormented the Driscoll family for three generations.
And now I ripped my shirt open and let the moon scourge my skin, the pain of a thousand cat-o’-nine-tails blistering my flesh and forcing me to my knees.
Knowing all the while that I was a fallen creature and worthy of my torment.
