Voracious (11 page)

A nagging feeling preyed on her, and she pushed it away. It loomed back up, though, surfacing repeatedly. She could help. She could use her ability.

This was exactly what she wanted to avoid: working on murder cases, sacrificing any chance she had of living a normal life and enjoying her youth, relinquishing whatever innocence and happiness was left to murder and violence.

Loud laughter brought her attention to a cabin a couple doors down from hers. A group of college-age guys sat around a bonfire in front of their cabin, laughing and drinking beer. They looked like they’d come out for a weekend of partying.

She envied their carefree demeanor. They could afford it. Probably their biggest concern was passing calculus or asking someone out for a date.

She walked by them and hesitated before the bathroom door. Closing her eyes, Madeline made a brief wish for a safe bathroom: nothing hiding in the stalls or behind the trash cans, or under the sinks, and especially no bodies in the rafters. Her wish done, she pushed the door open. It creaked on rusty hinges, admitting her to a large, brightly lit bathroom with a white tiled floor and white painted walls. Immediately Madeline looked up. No rafters. The ceiling came to a point above her. Nothing was up there.

Three stalls stood on one side of the room. All three doors were open. Cautiously Madeline crept past them, peering inside each one. The last door was partially closed, and she pushed it open with her foot.

Nothing.

Just a normal bathroom with normal toilets, two normal sinks, and a couple of shower stalls.

Outside she could hear the college guys getting rowdier and rowdier. She heard a beer can being crushed, followed by more laughter and drunken shouting. They turned up their radio so loud it overpowered the droning of a nearby RV generator.

After she’d gone to the bathroom, Madeline took a deep breath and stood before the mirror. Grasping the length of tape, she carefully peeled the bandage aside. Underneath, an inch-long angry-looking gash nestled amid brown and blue bruised flesh. But it wasn’t as bad as it felt, and she replaced the bandage. She brushed her teeth and recapped the toothpaste. Taking another long look at the gaunt, exhausted Madeline in the mirror, she sighed, then walked to the door, where she paused. Originally a source of fear, the bathroom, having proved clear, now felt like a safe haven. The creature could be out there, even now, its approach muffled by the radio and the voices of the drunk guys across the way.

Noah said the creature killed at random. If that was true, then it was illogical to think it had followed her here. Except that it had intercepted her at the ranger’s station. But now that she was down in civilization, maybe it wouldn’t risk being seen.

She wished she’d asked Noah if it hunted in more populated places. She wished she’d asked Noah a lot of questions.

Opening the door, she stepped out into the night. The college guys were now throwing different things into the fire and seeing what effect it had. One of them sprayed something—
Bug spray?
she wondered—into the fire. It spat out flame in a long, flowing arc.

When they started talking rudely about a woman one of them had asked out, she slunk by them quietly, hoping they wouldn’t notice her.

“Hey!” one of them called as she began to pass by. “Hey, baby! Come over here!”

She just ignored him and kept walking, as if he wasn’t talking to her at all, but to someone else.

“Don’t just walk by!” slurred another. “We need some company!”

“Yeah,” a third one laughed as if that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “We need some company!” The way they said
company
let Madeline know exactly what kind of “company” they had in mind.

Great,
she thought,
a perfect end to a perfect day.

Madeline shot them an unfriendly look, which enabled her to see how many there were, and how far away.

She counted four by the fire. Just as she looked away, she glimpsed one of them get up from his seat and begin walking after her.

Madeline’s mouth went dry. At community college last semester, she’d taken a self-defense class, and she remembered the teacher saying to look around continuously when you were under threat so no one could sneak up on you. She also remembered the instructor saying, “GET him!” which meant strike at the groin, eyes, and throat.

Madeline picked up her pace and glanced behind.

“Shit!” one of the guys said. “Pete’s going after her.”

“C’mon!” another said. Soon all four guys were up, following her along the road. Her cabin was too far away. She didn’t think she could reach it in time. She made a decision and spun around quickly, shouting in a loud, aggressive voice, “What the hell do you want?”

This completely surprised them, and the lead guy stopped. The other three caught up with him.

“Just some company, baby.”

“Not a chance in hell.”

She waited to see their reaction. They looked unsure. She turned to leave, and then heard one of them start to run after her. She whirled around and came face-to-face with Pete. Hostile brown pig eyes glittered under a crop of blond hair.

She remembered what her instructor said about the “reaction range” and stepped back so she was too far away to be grabbed. At least she could see where all of them were, she thought, looking for an advantage.

“You’re a real fucking bitch,” Pete said, “you know that?” He stepped forward, and she echoed his move, striking out with her palm and connecting with his throat. He reeled back, grabbing his neck, a hiss of pain escaping from his lips.

One of Pete’s cronies lunged out to grab her. She darted to one side, and he missed. They all came closer, and Madeline broke out in a cold sweat. She took an aggressive stance, ready to “GET” as many of them as she had to. Holding her hands up ready to strike, she watched them closely.

The guys advanced, Pete still trying to recover but watching the action. “I’m gonna fucking kill you!” he yelled, frowning mouth raining spittle. As they advanced, Madeline retreated, waiting to kick or hit any of them if they came close enough.

And then she backed into someone.

She hadn’t even seen a fifth person—realized he must have flanked her and that she had to whirl around and smash him with every bit of strength she could muster. Madeline spun around, her hand looking to connect with a throat or eyes. But she whirled around in darkness, her hand striking only air, her eyes meeting only the black behind her.

“Someone call for help!” she screamed.

“I can do better than that,” said a voice from the darkness. And then she saw a part of the night come alive, straightening up out of the shadows. Two red, luminous disks blinked into view and narrowed in the darkness.

“Holy shit!” one of the drunk guys yelled. She heard someone stumble back and fall on the ground. She had her back to the four guys but didn’t care now. The creature filled her vision, and she stood staring at it, frozen.

It placed a clawed hand on her shoulder and pushed by her. Madeline whirled around, not taking her eyes off it for a second.

“You pathetic swine,” it growled. “I’m going to slit open your bowels and force you to eat what I find.”

The guys stumbled back as the creature approached. One guy in the back broke away and took off down the road. In an instant the creature was down on all fours, loping after him. It met him a few yards away, leaping onto his back and twisting his neck fatally.

Then it spun around, eyes locking on the remaining three. In an instant it was among them, claws slicing open stomachs and throats, slashing at skin, tearing at meat. When it finished, four bodies lay sprawled around its feet. Then one of its hands suddenly elongated, becoming a sharp, gleaming silver spike. The creature reared its arm back and plunged it forward, driving the spike deeply into the closest body. A sizzling sound filled the night, and Madeline watched as the body melted and sputtered, sparked and flamed, then erupted in a cascade of ashes. The creature leapt to the other bodies, thrusting the spike within, filling the night with the sounds of spitting fire. In under half a minute only ashes remained of the bodies, carried away on the wind and soaking into the pools of blood on the asphalt.

And then she was alone on the road with the creature.

The creature stood up before her, the long spike shortening and re-forming into an ink-black hand. She could see the creature bore no mark whatsoever where she’d struck it with the ax. Its black skin was smooth and unscarred. She marveled at its strange, sharklike skin and lack of features. It was shadow come to life. An ebony wraith.

A solid lump formed in her throat. She stood transfixed, watching the eyes in the darkness. They had no pupils, just pools of ruby light.

“Where is Noah?” it asked, its voice low.

She moved backward and opened her mouth, but at first no sound came out. “I—I don’t know,” she finally managed.

The creature cocked its head and looked closely at her. “He can’t be far away. Not with you here.” She could hear a hint of a foreign accent but couldn’t place it. “After all, he’s still trying to make up for it.”

“For … for what?”

“For letting her die.”

It stepped closer, breathed in deeply, then reached one long-clawed hand up to her hair. The claws combed through it gently, and she flinched away. “Does he know about you?” the creature asked.

Madeline frowned, confused by the question.

“Touch me,” it said.

Madeline didn’t move.

It lowered its hand, reaching to her side and closing around her fingers. Then it raised her hand, placing her fingers on its chest. An overwhelming sensation swept over her—a vast, incomprehensible amount of experiences, thoughts, and emotions—and one extraordinary sensation of age. It was old, older than she could fathom. Heat began to tingle in her fingers, traveling through her hand, up her arm.

And then the visions came, scorching geysers erupting behind her eyes.

A handsome young man, the creature in disguise, she realized, hopping into a hansom in Victorian London, then laughing, drunk in a tavern, conversing with its next victim, a rosy-cheeked young playwright, a linguistic genius …

Stumbling through an alley in Prague, starving, panting, hiding in shadows as a group of Nazi soldiers march by. The last one looks into the alley, sees the creature disguised as a young man in a tattered woolen coat. The soldier, sneering, pulls the gun from his holster and fires into the shadows as a terrible pain erupts in the belly of the beast …

In a parlor in Vienna, listening to an amazing pianist, a young woman, so vibrant, aching to tear into her and devour every morsel, to taste that sweet flesh, as tantalizing as the music itself …

Coughing, staggering, smelling of goat urine and feces, the creature dragging itself out of a barn in a drunken stupor, not drunk on ale, but drunk on flesh, meat from the body of a traveling bard with the ability to spin tales that spellbound listeners. The creature makes its way toward a castle in the distance. It has a hiding place there, a hidden corner of the catacombs where it can digest undisturbed …

Hiding in the shadowed galley of a Viking longboat, waiting for a cartographer to descend into waiting jaws, so eager to devour that knowledge, the thirst for places unseen but for the cartographer’s eyes, soon to be the creature’s alone …

In a grove of trees on the island of Anglesey, stalking a Druidic priest, fires erupting, cries of battle as the Romans invade, all turning to chaos, the Druid lost, wasted, dead before the creature even gets a chance …

Stalking the well at Alexandria, chariots rumbling by, the creature memorizing the routine of the Greek geophysicist, imagining the tasty meats of the brain, salivating, adjusting its garb stolen from a fellow scholar and the laurels crowning its head. Soon. So soon …

Midnight at an Egyptian festival, the full moon bright on the Nile, the young pyramid architect caught unawares in the grove of palms, the rustling of the trees’ fronds muffling the sound of eager feeding …

“What do you see?” the creature demanded.

A vague part in the back of her mind, beyond the visions, the anguish, the searing pain, remembered how to speak. But Madeline could see nothing but the visions. Her eyes filled with them, unable to see the creature, the woods. “You … were shot,” she breathed, “in Prague … and before that, you were in London, happy …”

She wrenched her hand free and gasped, sights of the real world flooding into her once more. The road. The bathroom. Pine trees.

The creature.

It stared at her, eyes wide, silent.

Neither spoke, Madeline forgetting to breathe. Images still swirled in her head, a cacophony of sounds and smells and images from a dozen other times. She could still smell bread baking in an eighteenth-century Viennese bakery, could taste a bitter root pulled from the earth in ancient Norway.

“Stefan!” Noah’s sudden cry cut through the heavy silence between them.

The creature looked past Madeline’s shoulder. Then it backed up, retreating completely into the darkness, just melting away. For a second she saw the red eyes moving in black, and then even they were gone.

Madeline heard Noah’s boots thumping on the pavement behind her, approaching quickly. She didn’t dare turn away, afraid the creature might bound back out of the darkness and take off her head with one powerful swipe.

“Madeline!” He pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly. “Did he hurt you?” Madeline’s head pressed against his chest, and he felt warm and reassuring. She shook her head.

“But—I heard screaming.”

“It wasn’t me,” she said and pulled away. Silently she indicated the blood on the asphalt.

“Oh, no,” said Noah.

Maybe it was cold, but Madeline just felt relieved. Those guys would never bother her or any other woman again. She felt oddly numb and shaky and just wanted to sit down.

Noah evidently saw this on her face. “What is it? What happened?”

Madeline shook her head. After a long pause, she said, “He … he
defended
me.”