Connor looked at the clock and noticed it was 9:05, five minutes past the time he promised to call Tara every night. She probably wouldn’t notice the slight delay, but if she did, Connor thought he probably wouldn’t tell her this story after all.
Silent Screams
“Singapore’s great!” Tara heard Connor say over the phone. “How are things back home?” He had to repeat himself once more before Tara tuned back into their conversation. Connor’s voice sounded so distant to her on the phone, like a character on TV. Just background noise.
“Home? Oh, it’s fine,” she answered, somewhat disinterestedly. Tonight Marcus was taking her for her first hunt.
Marcus had explained that, contrary to fiction, turning took time. Tara had already changed radically, but he promised greater changes would come once she had tasted blood. Once she had a taste for blood.
“And did you get the cable and internet connected, like I asked?” So boring.
“Yes, Marcus,” Tara answered. Didn’t really matter anyway, who had time to watch TV when there were so many other amazing things to see with her new eyes? And she would eventually need the internet to get back to work, she knew. Eventually.....
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. “Did you just say Marcus? Who’s Marcus?”
Oops. Tara thought quickly. “Sorry Connor, I was just talking to the guy from the gas company, he’s finishing everything up right now.”
“Oh. Have you seen much of town yet?”
“I’ve been busy around the house, unpacking. I did get to visit a few bookstores though.” Tara said, knowing Connor wouldn’t follow up. Reading wasn’t very much his thing.
“That’s exciting. Anyway, I’m gonna turn in. I have a big day tomorrow.”
“Alright, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Tara said goodbye to her husband and hung up the phone. Marcus smiled at her from across the kitchen, where he sat at the dining table.
“Are you ready to hunt?” he asked her.
Well, maybe not ready, but she was eager to see what it was like, anyway. “Of course. Let’s do it,” Tara answered. Marcus led her out the front door to the BMW. Tara was confused. “Wait, we’re taking the car? I thought we were going hunting,” she said. “Like in the woods.”
“We are hunting,” Marcus smiled again. “Get in the car. We won’t be going to the woods.”
He must mean to go to town Tara thought. Does that mean he wants me to hunt…people?
Marcus must have known what she was thinking because he spoke again. “Think of that man the other night, that insensible, inconsiderate, drunk. Do you really think anyone would miss him? We don’t hunt the weak, only the wicked.”
Again, Tara remembered how still the man had been after Marcus had struck him. But she also remembered how he’d looked at her in the bar. He wasn’t prey, really. Only a weaker predator. “Okay, let’s go.” Tara opened the driver’s side door. “But I drive.”
Marcus, with his great experience of the area, directed Tara through the back roads, creeping further away from Milford. Tara asked, “We aren’t going to town?”
“No. Milford’s a small town. Too many would be suspicious.” Too many victims, he meant. But there were plenty of other places to find a meal. Even out in the woods it would be impossible to find an area completely uninhabited. People were everywhere; campers, lovers, poachers...just a matter of finding them.
Marcus had Tara stop the car and turn its engine off. They got out and waited in silence beside the vehicle for a few minutes until their senses fully returned. Marcus whispered almost imperceptibly, surely too soft for ordinary ears to hear. “Come.”
Tara followed Marcus and soon she could hear voices, almost obnoxiously loud to her finely tuned hearing.
“Cindy has no idea,” she heard one of the voices say. “I just make like I’m leaving town once a month, tell her I’m going to a farm convention and head a mile down the road to Sheila’s.”
The other man answered. “And Sheila knows?”
“Yeah, but she don’t give a fuck. She’s just an easy piece.”
Did these guys want to get killed? If Marcus and Tara didn’t take one of their lives tonight, she imagined Cindy, whoever she was, might, soon enough.
They crept quietly through the woods, steadily growing closer to the pair of loudmouths. Soon they were within eyesight, and Marcus gestured to one of the men, intending for Tara to take that one. He pointed at the other man and then to himself.
Now that the moment of truth had finally arrived, Tara was nervous. She hadn’t hesitated to move on that drunk guy the other night, but that was different. For one, he was coming at her. Also, she hadn’t killed him. Plus these guys, poachers by the looks of their drab green outfits, had rifles. She didn’t know if she was immune to bullets. Marcus hadn’t exactly made a list of everything there was to know about her new form.
Marcus suddenly sprang into action, running towards his man. No more time for reflection, Tara would have to move on the other one. And she began to move. But as she rapidly closed the thirty yards separating them, thrilling at the rush of wind against her skin, her foot suddenly cracked a twig. A little twig, really. But it was enough to draw the men’s attention. A flashlight burst to life, blinding Tara. She didn’t know what they appeared to be to the men; even if they saw people out here they might shoot anyway, loath to give away their illicit activities.
The crack of one rifle echoed in the night. Tara heard Marcus curse, and then she heard a second rifle shot. Tara felt the second bullet hit her chest. So it doesn’t take a silver bullet, she thought as she slipped into unconsciousness. Wait, no. That’s werewolves…
*****
Connor’s visit to Singapore became much more uneventful after that first, tempting evening. He actually was, as he had told Candace, here for work, and overseeing the details of the new pipeline installation kept him busy for a dozen or more hours, most days.
Even so he kept to his promise to call his wife every night at the same time. The first few calls were innocuous enough, but Tara seemed to grow more and more distant. Connor often had to repeat himself several times for her to hear him. By the second week, Tara stopped answering altogether, and Connor became truly worried. By the third week, he was worried enough to cut his trip short and head home to find out what the hell was going on.
His boss, James- or Jim as he preferred to be called- approved Connor’s leave immediately. Most likely it was because in his ten years with the company, Connor had never missed a day, sick or otherwise; it was one of Tara’s bigger gripes that he would never play hooky with her to spend an afternoon at Central Park, or go skydiving as she sometimes requested. Regardless, Connor felt worse than he had since- well, since he’d found himself in the presence of a naked woman who was not his wife. But definitely worse than he’d felt for as long as he could remember before the incident with Candace.
Connor planned to be gone for only a few days, and he knew the crew on site could manage for that long without him, but it felt like quitting. And Connor never quit. He’d once committed to learning Chinese so that he could order Tara’s favorite meal in the language, and although the tones eluded his tongue, he had spent 5 years practicing until he mastered enough for his goal. He called it diligence. Tara called him obsessive.
A few short hours later Connor was on board the Singapore Airlines flight that would take him to New York. He sighed, looking out the window at the country falling behind him. The flight would take 19 hours, and that would only take him to New York. Then Connor would have to rent a car and spend 2 more hours driving to Milford before he could finally see his wife.
*****
Tara came to consciousness slowly, and brought a hell of a headache with her. A few yards away the pair of poachers stood, arguing. She couldn’t quite make sense of what they were saying, but it seemed to have to do with her.
“Fuck, Clyde, I thought she was a deer!”
“I don’t care!
You shot her; we can’t let her live now! Then we’re looking at illegal poaching, and attempted murder.”
“As opposed to actual murder.”
“Nobody will know.”
Nobody will know? What about Marcus? Tara looked around. Where was Marcus, anyway? Surely he had a plan or something. He was coming to save her.
“Fine, but you do it. I ain’t shootin’ her again.”
Marcus or not, Tara would have to act soon. It seemed her attackers had resolved on a final decision. Thankfully they appeared to think she was in much worse shape than she actually was since she didn’t seem to have been bound at all. They had just left her to lie on a bed of leaves. And right there, only another yard or two away: one of the rifles was leaning against a tree. If she could make it that short distance without either of the men noticing, she might be able to make it home alive. Tara slowly inched her way towards the men, being more careful this time than she’d been on her and Marcus’s first attack. She probably wouldn’t survive another twig breaking.
“Why should I shoot her? You already did it once. There’s not any reason for us both to shoot her.”
“Well, that’s why you should have to do it! Otherwise I got all the blame if something goes south.”
The other man offered a compromise. “Flip you for it.”
Flip you for it? Like murdering her was a decision of equal magnitude to getting the last slice of pizza? Now Tara really knew these guys wanted to die.
She heard the jingle of change in a pocket as one of the men fished around for a coin to flip, but then she was at the rifle. Carefully sitting up, she grabbed the weapon. Even though Connor had his service pistol in the house, Tara had never attempted to use a firearm, but it looked simple enough, and she’d seen enough movies to know you point one end at what you wanted to shoot and pulled the trigger.
“Hey assholes!” Tara yelled. That got their attention. The two men turned to the wounded woman they had supposed to be incapacitated and instead, found her holding one of their own guns on them.
“Easy now.” One of the men said, before Tara screamed again.
“Shut up! You’re going to listen carefully to me now, and not say a word. Okay?”
The first man nodded, but the other man chuckled. “She ain’t even got it loaded Clyde, don’t worry.”
Tara pulled the bolt back and chambered a round. “Thanks for the tip. Now no more talking from you gentlemen, ‘kay?”
The one named Clyde glared at his buddy and said, “Dumbass!” before nodding.
“You’re going to leave the other gun right where it is and start walking that way.” Tara pointed the rifle in the opposite direction of the BMW. “You walk for half an hour before you even think about turning around, or I’ll shoot you. Understand?”
Tara was certain they would turn around and try to get back at her within a minute or two, but by then she would, hopefully, have both guns, and be back at the car. The men nodded. “Get moving, then!” she commanded. They immediately started off in the other direction. Before grabbing the other rifle Tara assessed her wound. The bullet actually hadn’t hit the main mass of her chest, just the very side of her torso. Not really a graze, and she probably had a broken rib, but it didn’t seem to be life-threatening. The pain was already subsiding, maybe due to her increased metabolism.
Tara carefully stood up, using the rifle as a crutch to help lift herself, and slowly picked up the other rifle, slinging it over her shoulder. Marcus was still nowhere to be seen. She reached into her pocket and felt that the car keys were still there, at least. If she remembered rightly, they’d only walked a few minutes before finding the poachers.
She was correct, for minutes later she saw the dirt road turnoff where she’d left the BMW and she and Marcus had continued on foot. She set one of the rifles down and leaned against the vehicle for support as she found the key fob in her pocket. Behind her Tara heard a slight whisper. Perhaps even with her heightened hearing she wouldn’t have noticed, but she’d grown familiar with this particular sound over the past couple of weeks. She didn’t know why, but Marcus had a peculiar way of breathing, a sudden swallow of air every now and again. Tara turned around and saw him standing no more than 5 yards away.
She was outraged right now, even more than she’d been at getting shot. At least that had been accidental. But Marcus was deliberately trying to sneak up on her! Evidently, he’d abandoned her to the two poachers once they’d started shooting. She remembered that he had said that he wasn’t immortal - just slower to age, and suddenly, she knew that his actions had been nothing short of self-preservation. He hadn’t cared for her at all - she was just a victim of opportunity. All he had wanted was a playmate for a time, but when it came down to it, she was as disposable to him as last year’s fashions.
Marcus smiled but the display of teeth was not as charming as it once had been. “Tara, oh thank goodness you’re alright! I was coming back for you, really!’ He took a few steps closer, putting his hands together in supplication. “Only I got turned around. I came back to the car to get my bearings so I could head back to find you, but what a relief! Here you are!”
Marcus seemed to be no worse for the wear. His clothing was impeccable, and there was no sign of flush or exertion on his face. He hadn’t been running around these woods, that was for sure. “Stay right there.” Tara told him. She rather enjoyed the brief look of contempt on his face before he feigned shock.
“Tara, what do you mean? You’re hurt, we’ve got to get you back home.”
“I’ll get me back home, thank you. As for you…well you can figure it out.” Tara struggled to hold the tip of the barrel aloft with one hand, hoping Marcus wouldn’t notice it wavering, as she plucked the keys from her pocket.
Now he grinned a particularly nasty grin. “I know where you live.”
Tara’s emotions threatened to choke her. Lust and infatuation had given way to rage, hurt, and betrayal, amplified by the realization that what had been done to her was irrevocable. She was bound to him in her new body, like it or not, for the rest of her life. At the moment, she decidedly did NOT like it. She hated it. And she hated him with an intensity that overcame every other rational thought.
Suddenly, a look of shock passed over Marcus’s face, this time genuine, and he fell to the ground. At the same time, Tara’s mind registered the sound of a gun shot that came from behind her. The two poachers had followed her, and apparently the rifles were not their only weapons. Tara pointed her rifle in their direction and pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed, but evidently she’d not hit anything. Anyone, rather.
Tara heard leaves crackle underfoot as the two men stumbled closer. She picked up the other rifle and lifted it over the car hood just in time to see them running across the clearing. They stopped. One of the men had a pistol, but in his hurry to run closer he had it down by his side. “I thought I told you to walk the other way.”
The men nodded, one of them gulping. “Look, miss-“
“No, you look. I don’t know what you think is going on out here, but I don’t care about your poaching. And as for him,” Tara nodded in the direction of Marcus’s body, “he was no friend of mine. So why don’t we all forget today ever happened and go our separate ways?” Tara didn’t much trust the guys, but she didn’t think she had it in her to shoot someone in cold blood.
The two men looked at each other. “Sounds fair enough.”
“Alright then. I want you to drop the gun at your feet, and back away. When you’re at the edge of the woods, I’ll put your gun down and you can come back and get it.” Her argument didn’t seem to be very convincing. Off to the side, Marcus moaned. At that moment, Tara realized that her blood was anything but cold, and she let her newly-found predator instinct merge with her feminine rage. She turned and fired the rifle again. The moaning stopped.
When Tara turned back she found the pistol pointed at her. Surprisingly, her mind went dead clear and calm. “Look. Now I’m as implicated as you
are. I shot him too. So we all forget about this, right?” After a pause they seemed to agree, and Tara took the opportunity to climb into the BMW. As soon as it was started she stomped the gas and headed back for the highway that would take her to Milford.
*****
Back at the house, Tara stripped off her dirty clothes, feeling an urgent need for a shower. A shower and light; she thrust open all the curtains, letting in feeble morning rays which still seemed bright to her sensitive eyes. She was about to head up the stairs for the much-needed shower when she caught sight of the phone. The red light was blinking, indicating a missed call. Tara approached the phone, putting it on speaker, and played the message.
“Tara-bear, it’s Connor. You haven’t been answering my calls and I’m really worried. I took a few days off and I’m flying back to check on you. I should be there Monday night.”
Monday night. Tara racked her brain trying to remember what today was. Sunday? No that was last night. Today was Monday! Connor would be getting back to the house in half a day! She would have to rush to get things back in order.
First things first. Tara went upstairs for that shower, gingerly washing the blood from her side. Either she still healed pretty fast or it was never that bad to begin with because now all that showed as a wallop of a bruise on her side. If she was careful, Connor might never know. Tara also thoroughly removed all traces of Marcus’s presence. His scent in the air still brought forth some strange feelings, but she figured that would fade soon enough without him here. And of course the matter of most importance, the painting itself. Tara rather enjoyed disposing of that one, hacking it into little bits with Connor’s service knife before throwing the fragments into the big stone fireplace which had been one of the house’s selling points.
*****
Connor floored it the whole way from the airport to Milford, pushing his rental car to its limits. Unfortunately the only thing available was the little puke-green sedan that could barely hit 80, but he kept his foot on the gas the whole way. Miles flew by until he finally hit Milford town limits, slowing down only long enough to pass through the short main street before resuming his frenzied pace all the way back to his house.
Lust and Mistrust Trilogy Page 5
