The Taker-Taker 1

by Alma Katsu

  The day came when Adair was no longer able to remain. Lactu and everyone else had withered and aged with time, while Adair had remained the same as the day he’d returned to the castle. So as not to arouse suspicion, the time had come for Adair to disappear for a while, lay low, perhaps to return in a few decades’ time pretending to be his own son, golden seal in hand.

  He decided to go to Hungary, as his heart directed, to track down his family. Adair longed to see them—not his father, of course, whom he hated only second to the physic. By now his mother should be old and living with the eldest son, Petu. The rest would be grown, with children of their own. He burned to see them and to know what had happened to them.

  It took Adair two years to find his family. He started at the estate where he’d been taken from them and painstakingly reconstructed their route based on threads and scraps of information from former neighbors or overlords. Finally, as the second winter was setting in, he stopped at Lake Balaton and rode through the village, searching for faces that were like his own.

  As he came to a gathering of huts on the outskirts of the village, a feeling passed over him, a feeling that someone he knew was very close. Adair dismounted, crept through darkness toward the huts, and peered through the windows. Pressing an eye to a chink in the shutters, where candlelight was barely visible, he saw a few familiar faces.

  Though they had changed with time, had gotten rounder, wrinkled, and worn, he recognized those faces. His brothers were gathered around the fireplace, drinking wine and playing the fiddle and the balalaika. With them were women Adair didn’t recognize, their wives, he supposed, but no sign of his mother. Finally, he caught sight of Radu, grown up, barrel-chested, tall … How Adair wanted to rush into the cottage, throw his arms around Radu, and thank God he was still alive, that he’d been spared all the hell and torment Adair himself had been through. Then it struck him that Radu looked older than Adair did, that all his brothers had passed by him in time. And then he saw a woman come up to Radu and smile, and Radu slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her tight. It was Katarina, a woman now and beautiful, and in love with Radu, the brother who looked just like Adair. Except older.

  As he stood in the dark and cold, Adair still burned with the desire to see his family, to embrace them and speak to them, to let them know that he hadn’t perished at the physic’s hands—when the terrible truth settled on him in its fullness. This would be the last time he would look on them. How could he explain all that had happened to him and what lay ahead still? Why he would never age. That he was no longer mortal like them. That he had become something he could not explain.

  Adair went to the front of the hut and slipped a bag of coin from his pocket, leaving it before their door. It was enough money to end their wandering. It would be hard for them to fully trust in this miracle, but in time they would accept their good fortune and thank God for his generosity and mercy. And by then, Adair would be several days to the north, losing himself in the crowds of Buda and Szentendre, learning to cope with his fate.

  By the end of the story, I had withdrawn from Adair’s arms, the narcotic smoke’s effect worn off. I didn’t know if I should be in awe of him, or fear.

  “Why did you tell me this?” I asked, recoiling from his touch.

  “Consider it a cautionary tale,” he replied cryptically.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  MAINE BORDER, PRESENT DAY

  Luke turns off the highway and onto a shaggy dirt road, letting the engine’s low torque pull the SUV along over the ruts. When they come to a bend, he parks just off the access road but lets the engine run. Their view is clear owing to the nakedness of the winter trees, and both he and his passenger can see the U.S.-Canadian border crossing in the distance. It looks like a child’s play set of a construction site: an enormous span of booths and bays clogged with trucks and cars, the air above it heavy with the fug of exhaust fumes.

  “That’s where we’re going,” he says, gesturing toward the windshield.

  “It’s huge,” the girl replies. “I thought we’d be going to some backwater outpost—two guards and a bloodhound, inspecting cars with a flashlight.”

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this? There are other ways to get to Canada,” Luke says, though he’s not sure that he should encourage her to break the law any more than she already has.

  The look she gives Luke goes straight to his heart, like a child turning to a parent for assurance. “No, you brought me this far. I trust you to get me over the border.”

  As they approach the checkpoint, Luke’s nerves begin to falter. The traffic is light today but still, the prospect of sitting in a queue for an hour is daunting. There must be a police bulletin out on them by now, for the murder suspect and the doctor who helped her escape … He nearly jerks out of line, but stops himself, hands shaking on the wheel.

  The girl glances over, nervous. “Are you okay?”

  “It’s taking too long,” he mutters, sweating despite the chilly winter air outside the car.

  “Everything’s fine,” she croons.

  Suddenly, a green light snaps on over a booth the next lane over, and with surprising speed, Luke cuts the steering wheel and stomps on the gas, throwing the car toward the border police benignly waving traffic in. He cuts off a car that was waiting two vehicles ahead in line and the woman behind the wheel gives him the finger, but Luke doesn’t care. He brakes hard in front of the border agent.

  “In a hurry?” the official says, disguising his interest with nonchalance as he reaches for the doctor’s identification. “We normally take the next person waiting in line when we open a new lane.”

  “Sorry,” Luke says abruptly. “I didn’t know …”

  “Next time, okay?” he responds, amicably, not even looking up as he goes over the driver’s license, then Lanny’s passport. The agent is middle-aged, in a dark blue uniform, his utility vest bristling with a walkie-talkie and pens and whatnot. In his hands are a clipboard and an electronic device that seems to be some kind of scanner. His partner, a younger woman, walks the perimeter of the car with a mirror on the end of a long pole, as though they expect to find a bomb strapped to the underside of the SUV. Luke watches the female guard in the side-view mirror, a new round of nerves breaking over him again.

  Then it dawns on him: if they ask for the vehicle registration, he’ll be in trouble. Because it’s not registered in his name. Don’t you own this vehicle? the agent will ask.

  People borrow cars every day, Luke tries to tell himself. Nothing criminal there.

  I’m just going to have to run this through the system to make sure it’s not stolen…

  Don’t ask for the registration, don’t ask for the registration, he thinks, as though by directing this mantra at the agent, he will keep the guard from thinking of it. If Luke’s name is flagged in a database somewhere—wanted for questioning—their chances for escape dwindle to nothing. This glitch makes Luke even more nervous because he has never been in trouble, never, not even as a kid, and so he is ill-suited to try to trick authority figures. He is afraid of sweating and appearing too anxious, and—

  “So you’re a doctor?” the agent at the window asks, jolting Luke to attention.

  “Yes. A surgeon.” Stupid, he catches himself; he doesn’t care about your specialty. It’s his doctor’s vanity rearing up, demanding attention.

  “Reason for traveling to Canada?”

  Before Luke can answer, Lanny leans forward, to be seen by the border agent. “He’s doing me a favor, actually. I’ve been staying with him and it’s time for me to go sponge off the next relative for a while. And rather than put me on a bus, he generously insisted on driving me there himself.”

  “Oh, and where is the cousin?” the agent asks, a gentle prod hidden in the question.

  “Baker Lake,” the girl answers casually. “Well, we’re meeting him in Baker Lake. He actually lives closer to Quebec.” She knew the name of a nearby town, which seems like a miracle to Lu
ke. The doctor relaxes a little.

  The agent steps into the booth and, through the scratched Plexiglas window, Luke watches him, hunched over a terminal, filling in a database no doubt. It’s all he can do to keep from stomping on the gas. There’s nothing to stop him, no striped automated arm or strip of metal teeth waiting to puncture the tires, blocking their escape.

  The agent is suddenly at his window, the driver’s license and passport in his extended hand. “There you go … have a nice stay,” he says, waving them along, already looking to the next car in line.

  Luke doesn’t start breathing until the border-crossing station is shrunken in the rearview mirror. “Why were you so worried?” Lanny laughs, looking over her shoulder. “It’s not like we’re terrorists or trying to smuggle black-market cigarettes over the border. We’re just nice American citizens going to Canada for lunch.”

  “No, we’re not,” Luke says, but he is laughing, too, in relief. “Sorry, I’m not used to this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. I know you’re not. You did great.” She squeezes his hand.

  They stop at a motel on the outskirts of Baker Lake, a nondescript place, not part of a chain. Luke waits in the car while Lanny is in the office. He watches her chat up the older gentleman behind the counter, who moves slowly, stretching out his one chance that morning to speak to a pretty young girl. Lanny climbs back into the SUV and they drive around to a unit in back, overlooking a stretch of trees and the tail end of a neighborhood baseball field. Theirs is the only vehicle in the parking lot.

  Once inside the hotel room, Lanny is a blur of activity, unpacking her bag, checking out the bathroom, complaining about the quality of the towels. Luke sits on the bed, suddenly too tired to remain upright. He lies down on top of the polyester bedspread, staring up at the ceiling. His surroundings spin like a carnival ride.

  “What’s the matter?” Lanny sits next to him on the edge of the bed, touches his forehead.

  “Exhaustion, I guess. On the midnight shift, I usually go to bed as soon as I get home.”

  “Then go ahead, take a nap.” She eases the doctor’s shoes off without untying the laces.

  “No, I should head back. It’s only a half hour away,” he protests but doesn’t move. “I have to return the car …”

  “Nonsense. Besides, it will only arouse suspicion at the border station, turning right around and going home like that.” She spreads a blanket over him, then digs around in her suitcase and pulls out a Ziploc bag filled with the most voluptuous marijuana buds Luke has ever seen.

  In less than a minute, she expertly rolls a generous doobie, lights it up, and takes a long, greedy hit. She closes her eyes as she exhales and her face relaxes with satisfaction. Luke thinks that he would like to bring such a look to this woman’s face sometime.

  Lanny holds the joint out to him. After a second’s hesitation, Luke takes it, brings it to his lips. He inhales and holds the smoke, feels it spread into the lobes of his brain, feels his ears clog and stop up. Sweet Jesus, this stuff is potent. Fast.

  He coughs and hands the joint back to Lanny. “I haven’t done that in a while. Where’d you get that stuff?”

  “In town. St. Andrew.” Her answer both faintly alarms and surprises him, reminds him that there are other unseen worlds that exist right under his nose. He’s just glad he didn’t know she was holding when they crossed the border or he would have been even more nervous.

  “You do this kind of thing a lot?” He nods at the joint.

  “Couldn’t get by without it. You don’t know the memories I carry around in my head … Lifetime after lifetime of things you regret doing … things you’ve seen other people do. Stuff you can’t get away from—without this.” She regards the spliff in her hand. “There are times when I’ve wished I could knock myself out for, say, a decade. Go to sleep, make it all stop. No way to erase the bad memories. It’s not doing that’s so hard—it’s living with what you’ve done.”

  “Like the man in the morgue—”

  She presses a finger to Luke’s mouth to keep him from saying another word. Time enough for that later, he imagines; in fact, she has nothing but time stretching out before her to realize the irreversible thing she has done to her true love. Not enough pot in all the world to wash that away. Hell on earth.

  The things he’s done seem small in comparison. Still, he reaches for the joint.

  “I’m going back,” he says, as though he has to convince her. “As soon as I take a nap. It’ll be safer driving if I take a nap. But I have to get back … things to do, waiting for me … Peter’s car …”

  “Sure,” she says.

  When the doctor wakes, the hotel room is bathed in gray. The sun is setting but none of the lamps has been turned on. Luke lies still, not sitting up, trying to get his bearings. For a long minute, his head is stuffed with cotton, and he can’t remember where he is and why everything is unfamiliar. He’s hot and sweaty from lying under the blanket and feels like a kidnapping victim rushed out of a car, blindfolded, spun around.

  Slowly, the room comes into focus. The stranger is sitting in one of the hard wooden chairs at the table, looking out the window. She sits absolutely still.

  “Hey,” Luke says, to let her know he’s awake.

  “Feeling better? Let me get you a glass of water.” She rises from the chair and hurries through a doorway to the kitchenette. “It’s only tap water. I put some in the refrigerator to get cold.”

  “How long have I been asleep?” Luke reaches for the glass; it feels deliciously cold, and he’s tempted to press it to his forehead. He’s burning up.

  “Four, five hours.”

  “Oh Christ, I’d better get on the road. They’ll be looking for me, if they aren’t already.” He pushes the blanket back, and sits up on the edge of the bed.

  “What’s the rush? You said there’s no one at home to wait for you,” the girl replies. “Besides, you don’t look well. That shit might have been too much for you. It’s strong. Maybe you should lie down for a little longer.”

  Lanny retrieves her laptop from the chipped veneered chest of drawers and walks over to him. “I downloaded these from the camera while you were asleep. I thought you would like to see him. I mean, I know you’ve seen him, you’ve seen his body, but you might be interested anyway …”

  Luke winces at this macabre little speech, not happy to be reminded of the dead body in the morgue and its relation to Lanny, but accepts the laptop when she hands it to him. The images jump off the screen brightly in the dusky darkness of the room: it is the man in the body bag but there is no comparison. Here he is, vividly alive, vibrant and whole. The eyes, the face animated, electrified with life.

  And he is so, so beautiful, the sight of him makes Luke strangely sad. The first picture must have been taken in a car, window down, his longish black hair swirling about his head and his eyes crinkled as he laughs at the woman taking the picture, laughs at something Lanny has said or done. In the next picture, he is in bed, the bed they must have shared at Dunratty’s, his head on a white pillow, again his hair falling over his face, lashes brushing his cheeks, the perfect blush of pink across the high ridge of his cheekbone. A glimpse of throat and the protruding knob of a collarbone are visible beneath a creamy white fold of sheet.

  After a minute, looking from picture to picture, it occurs to Luke that the beautiful thing about the man in the photos is not the pleasing quality of his face. It’s not his handsomeness. It’s something in his expression, an interplay between the delight in his eyes and the smile on his face. It’s that he’s happy to be with the person holding the camera and taking the pictures.

  A lump forms in Luke’s throat and he thrusts the laptop at Lanny. He doesn’t want to look anymore.

  “I know,” the girl says, also choked up, giving in to tears. “It kills me to think he’s gone. Forever gone. I feel his absence like a hole in my chest. A feeling I have carried with me for two hundred years ha
s been ripped away. I don’t know how I will go on. That’s why I am asking you … please stay with me a little longer. I can’t be alone. I’ll go out of my mind.” She puts the laptop on the floor, then reaches for Luke’s hand. Hers is tiny and warm in his. The palm is damp, but Luke can’t tell if the dampness is his or hers.

  “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for me,” she says as she looks through his eyes and into him, as though she can see what is swimming inside him. “I’ve—I’ve never—I mean, no one has ever been so good to me. Taken a risk like that for me.”

  Suddenly, her mouth is on his. He closes his eyes and sinks his entire being into the warm wetness of her mouth. He falls backward into the spot on the bed he had just left, her nearly insubstantial weight falling on him, and he feels a part of him tear in two. He is horrified by what he is doing, yet he’s wanted to do this from the moment he first saw her. He’s not going back to St. Andrew, not yet anyway; he’s going to follow her—how can he walk away? Her need for him is like a hook planted in his chest, pulling him along effortlessly, and he cannot resist. He is diving off a cliff into black water; he can’t see what’s waiting below for him, but he knows there’s not a force on earth that can stop him.

  TWENTY-SIX

  BOSTON, 1817

  After hearing Adair’s story, I withdrew to my room in fright. I crawled onto the bed and tucked my knees under my chin. I was afraid to recall the things he’d told me and I tried to push them away.

  Alejandro knocked, and when there was no answer, nudged the door back so he could slip in bearing a tray of tea and biscuits. He lit several candles—“You can’t sit in the dark, Lanore, it’s ghoulish”—and then placed a cup and saucer quietly at my elbow, but I wanted none of his hospitality. I pretended to look out the window, but in truth I could see nothing, still blinded by fury and despair.