“Yes, we have saved you a place at our table,” the other one whispered, just a few feet to my right. The redhead was careful to stay out of my range, so I couldn’t fire upon her. But this one, another female with dark blonde hair, her face streaked with dirt and blood, crouched exactly where I wanted her. “Our King told us about you, little sister. He wants you to come with us—”
I aimed my rifle, trying not to listen to her words, but unable to block them out.
“All night long he talked about you,” she continued. “He told us about your long dark hair, so like a raven, he said, ready to fly into our camp at any moment—”
I quietly cocked my gun, set my thumb on the trigger. Sweat dampened my grip and my jaw clamped shut, teeth grinding.
“Fly out the window, little bird, and join us.”
“Come, open the window; let us be friends.”
Some part of me longed for this, to have the company of women who would accept me without judging me. So different from my sisters who resented that my mother had been a renowned author and that my father regularly entertained literary guests who fawned over me. So different from my stepmother, who bought my clothes with leftover money and gave me a cold smile whenever I walked into the room.
In that instant, I remembered that my stepmother’s lies had been similar to this, promising a love that I never received.
I aimed with trembling fingers. Waited until the closest sangsue was directly in my sites.
Then I fired.
Hannah said you couldn’t kill one of these creatures with a gun. She was wrong.
I shot this monster’s jawbone off. She screamed, a long wild howl, lost her balance and careened off the side of the villa, tumbling down like a falling star, striking the ground in a heap. Her cry ended when her skull crushed on a nearby rock.
The red-haired sangsue echoed her companion’s scream, distracted for a heartbeat as she watched her companion’s descent.
I used that moment to grab the window and pull it closed, temporarily exposing my flesh to her—if she’d been paying attention, she could have latched onto me and I would have been hers.
We stared at each other through the glass, her face distorting into a fiendish snarl.
The female sangsue pointed at me with a long clawed finger, then she dipped the claw into her own flesh until it drew blood. She used it to make a sign on the window, drawing something that looked like a character or a symbol from an ancient language.
“You will belong to me one day, little sister. And that day will be a feast that I will remember forever,” she said with a hiss. Then she raced down the side of the villa, so fast it almost looked as if she had flown.
I didn’t return to the parlor. I let the others sleep, while I kept watch from the second floor. Throughout the evening, I moved from one room to the next, gazing down at the perimeter of the house. As long as I kept the rooms dark and walked quietly, the sangsue were never aware of my presence. Only three of them noticed me as I moved from one window to the next, and they were each positioned on different sides of the villa. The King, handsome and proud, oversaw the continual slaughter of our horses on the south side of the villa; the red-haired female, crouched over her dead companion on the west side of the house; and Percy, alone at the back of the villa, always stared up toward my bedroom window.
This was where I returned, again and again, throughout the night. While darkness reigned and sangsue fed on horseflesh and my own companions slept, I took refuge in my bedchamber, where a fire blazed and oil lamps glowed. This was my retreat, the one indulgence I allowed myself.
The rest of the world was being destroyed by real monsters, but I leaned over my desk, my fingers stained with black ink just as theirs were stained by warm blood. As I wrote, I imagined my own world, where ice and snow surrounded a young eager scientist—in many ways he was a combination of Percy and John, though I didn’t realize it at the time. He was building a monster of his own, a patchwork man built from the limbs of dead men. In many ways, my Doctor Frankenstein was a modern Prometheus, making a man from clay.
Every time I wondered what to write next, I’d take my rifle in hand and walk from room to room, staring down at the evil creatures who had me surrounded. I’d swing open a window and call down to one of them. And when the beast looked up at me, both startled and delighted, I’d fire my gun.
Blowing the monster’s head clean off its shoulders.
Sometime during the long night of hunting and writing, I fell asleep, curled on my bed, still wearing my bloodstained clothes. I woke to sunlight, sweet as choir music, transforming a wretched soul. I stretched and rose. All was silent in the parlor downstairs, so I used my time wisely. I quickly went to Claire’s room and packed a light satchel for her, things she would need when we left the villa, making sure I kept the bag light in weight, for I realized that we may have to walk to freedom.
In the end, it might be only her and me and the babe. I was prepared for that.
I packed my own bag, and then I rooted through Byron’s room, finding a new pair of britches and a clean shirt. At first, I’d planned to get clothes from Percy’s room, but I couldn’t bear to open the door. The thought of him caused me to wince with pain, a deep wound I knew would never heal. I built another fire in my hearth and burned my hunting clothes, scrubbing my skin and washing my hair while the flames destroyed the last things I had that had belonged to my father.
Would he take me back, I wondered. Now that Percy was lost, would my father be able to forgive me for running off? For the past two years, he’d refused to even speak to me. Even when Percy and I had briefly returned to England and my baby had died.
I sat on my bed, trying to fend off the fear that overwhelmed me when I realized how lost I was. No mother, a father who had disowned me, a stepmother who had always resented me. My longing for a perfect family had been destroyed by the death of my own daughter.
The only family I had left was a stepsister who might die at any moment in childbirth.
Naked, I stood and began to dress, once again donning the attire of a man, preparing for a hunt. I vowed that I wouldn’t wear women’s clothing again until I returned to civilization, far from the beasts that sought to either enchant me or drink my blood. I was facing the door and buttoning my shirt when John came down the hallway. He swung my door open without a thought, though it didn’t matter. At this point, I’d lost all modesty and knew I would probably never regain it.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” he demanded, both anger and relief on his face when he discovered me. Then he realized I wasn’t fully dressed, that my shirt billowed about me, my breasts exposed. I suppose if he’d been a gentleman, he would have turned away, feigning embarrassment. He didn’t. And I didn’t care.
I continued buttoning my shirt as if he wasn’t there.
“Mary, are you all right?” he asked. He held a rifle in one hand and his gaze ran across the room, as if searching for sangsue in the cracks and crevices.
I lifted my chin, grabbed my own rifle and both of the satchels I had packed. I swung them both over my left shoulder, rifle in my right hand, and I brushed past him.
“I have never been better, sir,” I answered him.
And I headed downstairs, ready to begin my day.
Ten
Claire was still sleeping and Hannah was cooking something—oatmeal, I think—in the kitchen. Hannah and I exchanged knowing glances when I came into the room, wearing my cloak, rifle slung over one shoulder. She nodded at me, her only words short and to the point, as usual.
“Be careful where you go, girl. They’re stronger now, since they’ve been feeding all night long. They could be hiding from the sun in any patch of darkness.”
I nodded, then made my way across the room and out the door.
Brisk cold greeted me, stirring my blood. Snow had fallen sometime in the night, revealing trails that led off into the woods behind the villa—some with spatters of blood and some that looked as if several sang
sue had dragged something off with them. The door opened behind me and John stamped out, feet planted on the porch beside me.
“You’re not going out alone,” he said. He surveyed the yard, his gaze moving from left to right.
“If you’re coming with me, make sure you don’t muddy any of the tracks.”
“You’re not hunting them,” he said, his brow furrowing in a way that made me smile. He was handsome in the sunlight and, though I hadn’t wanted it, his presence was welcome.
“No, not yet anyway.” I pointed toward the shed. “I was hoping to find an ax, and to bring any other possible weapons the sangsue could use inside the house.”
That morning the two of us brought in armloads of potential weapons from both the shed and the cottage. We laid them in the dining room, planning to organize them later. Among the items we carried in were the tools John had left in the cottage, the ones he used to stitch the wolf together. I thought those items would be better buried in a deep pit and forgotten, but I said nothing. Instead, I headed back outside, toward the carnage I’d been dreading.
The stable.
John touched my shoulder, as if to stop me. I paused, my breath coming out in tiny frozen clouds as I stared up at him.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, his words softening as he took a step closer. “I can take care of it.”
I gave him a half smile. Though not a gentleman like Byron or Percy—he hadn’t been raised in a lord’s manor or taught polite acceptable behavior—John had the heart of a true nobleman. For this I was glad and I admired this characteristic in him.
I stood on my toes—for he was much taller than I was—and I kissed him on the cheek, an act that surprised us both. Then I whispered in his ear, “You don’t have to protect me, John, though I am glad you are willing.”
I turned quickly, afraid to see the expression in his eyes—I couldn’t bear another act of passion, not today—and I strode off toward the stable. Knowing he was right behind me.
I thought I knew what to expect when I rounded the corner of the villa and saw the stable. Throughout the night, I had looked down upon this scene often, sometimes with a lantern in hand, sometimes lit only by the moon. But nothing had prepared me for the brutality I saw now, revealed in the cold morning sun. The stable itself had only three walls left standing, for the wall Percy had battered with the ax had been completely torn down. It now lay in shattered bits on the ground, covered with gore and half-eaten limbs, many of them still trembling with life. The carnage stretched the full length of this side of the villa and the first thing that struck me, besides a horror that hit me like a strong blow, was that this had been a feeding frenzy, with no sense of true hunger.
It had the appearance of mania. Savage, brutal, senseless.
I turned to the side and wretched, one hand on the villa wall.
“Mary, you should leave. Go back inside,” John said.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and leaned against the house, looking up at him. An expression of sorrow made his whole body mourn, his shoulders sagging, his mouth open, his eyes filled with tears. He didn’t know I was watching him, that I saw his chest heave with a great sigh, that I saw him turn away, unable to bear it any more than I.
I took his hand in mine.
“We will fight these demons together,” I promised.
“Yes,” he answered quietly, his head down.
At that moment I wished that I’d packed a satchel for him too. For I knew then that I couldn’t leave this place without him. We were united in this. He was more than a brother, and less than a lover—though, truly not much less. I had a strange longing to wrap my arms about him and comfort him, and I kept my gaze from meeting his for I didn’t want him to know that my feelings toward him were changing.
Together we carefully stepped over the ripped bodies of the horses, once such noble and beautiful creatures, now images of horror. Blood was everywhere, thick as paint, smeared over the stable walls, inside and out. The only thing we could do was offer mercy, from time to time. Whenever we found a horse, still somehow half-alive despite mortal wounds, we shot it, a clean shot right through the temple, and we held our hands on its flank, offering whatever comfort we could until the animal died. We crushed every skull we could find, remembering the wolves, believing that perhaps the life of the beast was somehow still trapped inside. Twice I almost tripped over eviscerated organs that spilled out onto fresh snow, intestines wrapping about the toe of my boot. Both times, John caught me in his arms. The second time I leaned into him, longer than I expected, breaking into sobs that made me shake. He comforted me like a child, patting my back and saying soothing words, until at last I was able to compose myself again.
In all my years of hunting, I had never seen anything like this.
It was a massacre. Nothing less.
However, there were two bright spots in this murderous landscape.
One, that a buggy had remained intact, despite the carnage.
The other, that several of the horses must have escaped alive, for there were hoof prints striking out across fresh snow and leading into the distance, with no accompanying trails of blood. In the process of galloping away, the horses must have trampled a handful of sangsue. Five blood-drinking monsters now lay on the ground, twisted and broken and left behind by their own kind to go blind in the bright sun. These few stared unblinking up into the light, wincing and groaning, yet unable to flee when John and I approached. We both carried axes and were ready to wield them.
We took turns cutting off the sangsue’s heads, smiling when their bodies flinched in pain before dying. We looked at one another, glad for this one small thing we could do.
And then, as we were finishing our gruesome morning labor, we heard frantic cries coming from the front of the house. Someone was running up the hill toward our villa, weary and wounded, his clothes torn and his form barely recognizable. He was alone, no horse, and he had no weapons. He fell repeatedly as he ran up the hill, gasping and crying out for help, blood on his face and hands, the expression on his face so terror-stricken that I almost didn’t recognize him.
It was Byron, returning from his journey into the mountains.
Eleven
John and I watched in amazement for a few moments, neither of us able to believe what we saw. I’d been waiting for Byron to return for many days now, but in my mind I always saw him emerging from the forests behind the villa, his head held high, a few new pelts hanging over the back of his horse. I imagined that somehow he’d come back to us triumphant and unscathed, and that he might bring us a solution to our dilemma.
All my imaginings had been wrong.
We ran to meet him at the door and when we were finally there, holding our arms out to him, he didn’t recognize us. Instead, he fell back in fear, arms raised to defend himself. It took much coaxing and a long while before he calmed down enough to let us approach.
“You are not one of them?” he kept asking, over and over. At one point he grabbed me and ripped my sleeve, exposing the flesh of my forearm. John shoved him away and stood between us.
“Stay back, Mary,” John warned. “He’s delirious.”
I shook my head. “No, I think he’s searching for bites. Look.” I spoke to Byron now in soothing tones as I unwrapped first one of my arms, then the other, showing there were no marks of any kind on me. Then I unfastened the first few buttons of my shirt, revealing my neck—just as Hannah had done when inspecting Claire. “They haven’t bitten me. I’m clean. You’re safe here, Byron, come inside.”
He watched me, his eyes wild, and I wondered if he comprehended what I said. Then John did the same thing, rolling up his sleeves and opening his collar, showing he was clean as well. At this point, Byron’s knees sagged and he collapsed, as if he’d used all his strength to get this far and had no more.
John carried him into the villa, careful not to go too near the parlor—we couldn’t take a chance on Claire seeing him in this state. It was Byro
n’s child she was carrying and, with her tendency toward hysteria, anything could happen. At Hannah’s insistence, we’d been forbidden to make loud noises whenever we entered or passed the parlor.
We took him into the library, which was on the other side of the house, and there we wrapped him in blankets. John carefully inspected Byron’s fingers and toes for frostbite while I rounded up enough wood to start a fire. Once we had a good blaze going, Hannah came to check on him, examining him for herself until she was convinced that none of his scratches or bruises were sangsue bites.
“He should never have gone up there,” she mumbled as she ran rough knobby fingers over his arms. “Only a fool would have gone to investigate the rumors we’d been hearing.” She lifted her gaze to meet mine, her eyes so pale they almost looked like sangsue eyes. “He may have drawn more of those monsters down the mountain with him,” she warned. “As if our problems here weren’t bad enough.”
Then she left us alone, preferring to watch over Claire.
Byron’s state of distress got worse after Hannah mentioned the sangsue. He shivered uncontrollably as he stared into the fire, his gaze occasionally flicking toward the window whenever he saw movement outside. I closed the drapes, hoping it would comfort him.
“They followed me from one village to another,” he said, never meeting our eyes.
John took one of his hands. “You’re safe now,” he said.
The chill was gone from Byron’s skin and I’d made him a hot broth from onions and venison bones. I sat beside him, feeding him spoonfuls of soup, pausing only while he rambled on about his journey. Every time he spoke, his words brought an unnatural chill into the room.
“Have you seen them?” he asked once, sitting upright as if ready to run.
“Hush now and finish your broth,” I told him.
“I stumbled into a town after it had been attacked. Villagers were gathering up dead bodies and stripping the flesh from bone, then stringing the bones around their necks. It was morbid. They told me the monsters only hunted during the night, but they were wrong.”
Dusk: A Re-Imagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (The Frankenstein Saga Book 2) Page 5
