I hesitated to douse the fire, caught in her gaze. Flickers of firelight reflected in her eyes as she stared at me, her hands outstretched over the flames. I realized with a start that she was going to burn herself and reached forward without thinking. When I caught her hands in mine to pull them away from the fire she gasped, and I had trouble breathing myself. Her soul slid between the skin of our hands, and I could taste it through that touch. She leaned over the fire never dropping her eyes from my face. I pulled my hand away and felt a bitter taste in my mouth when the sweetness of her soul disappeared. I moved quickly to put out the fire while she watched me with a desperate hunger that matched how I felt. Her soul was the most beautiful, sweet thing I’d ever seen and now tasted. It would take all the willpower I had to leave without it. I had built up a remarkable reservoir of willpower but it was vanishing the longer she looked at me, strands of her hair standing out dark against her pale skin, her lifeless eyes begging me.
“You’re warm.” It was half whisper, half croak, but she made a gesture towards me with her hand. I sat for a moment trying to think what could possibly make a situation like this right.
“I’m sorry about the fire but it looks like rain. I think I’d better take you home now.”
“Oh.” She sat there staring at me looking even more dejected until I reached a hand to help her up. She took it quickly, grasping it with both hands as I pulled her to her feet. I stood for a moment trying to ignore the taste of her soul while she clung to me, then turned and started through the woods. I tried to block out the taste, the sight of the dispossessed soul hovering between us, but with every step her hands crept higher up my arm, until at some point she put her freezing cold hand on my back. I think I kept my manly calm, but I may have yelped. She had one arm wrapped around me, and the other hand clung to mine. Her head rested on my upper arm while we walked. She moved her legs, but mostly, I pulled her along. I felt a rush of anger at the stupidity of it all. Here I was dragging her home so she could be cold and die there slowly instead of out here quickly. I slowed then stopped and turned to her so I could look down at her face. She had more color to her cheeks. She almost smiled as she leaned towards me rising on her tiptoes.
What was she waiting for? I was no prince charming, and she was no princess. Her soul hovered between us, and I could hear it making a sound of indefinable sweetness. A soul had never sung to me before. In a few days it would fade, her life would snap, and her soul would disappear. Her eyelids drifted shut, and her cold breath touched the skin of my neck. I realized my hands were tightening on her arms, I felt the heat in me soak into her. I felt her soul, sweet and tantalizing around the edges, but the real brightness and beauty was deeper. I didn’t make a decision to kiss her. One moment I was a breath away, and then her mouth was on mine, her breath became mine, and her soul was even sweeter than I’d imagined. I felt it wrap around me along with her arms, tangling fingers in my hair, and then something changed. The sweetness became too sweet, an ache that grew, along with the coldness as I tasted her. I realized that it wasn’t me who was doing the tasting. She was taking my warmth. I began to pull away but she held on and ripped all the heat, rage, and life out of me. I lost the feeling in my legs and slid down her, feeling the buttons of her coat scrape my cheek. I tried to hold onto something, but everything disintegrated as I slid into darkness.
1 Whose Soul Is this Anyway?
I woke up.
An icy stream poured over my face. I put an arm across my eyes and felt the fabric of my shirt against my cheek then smelled the mud on my arm. The smell of growing, living things, of the dirt I lay in, and the rain that swelled around me, filled my senses until I felt as though I was part of the earth and the woods. I blinked and shook my head, feeling the wet strands of hair slap my face and neck.
A brilliant flash of light and a thunderous boom above my head had me shrinking deeper in the mud while I tried to get a grip on where I was. The lightning was followed by an earth-shaking crash. It was as though I’d never seen lightning, never heard thunder before. In another flash I could make out the tree above me, its branches covered in rich leaves that made patterns against the shifting sky. Smaller dots of brilliance surrounded me, bursts of sparks that faded. Fireflies? There was another flash and a boom that painfully filled my ears.
I closed my eyes and put my hands over my ears and felt my hands, slick, slightly sticky but warm against my skin. I could hear the pulse in my hands. The beating resonated with my heart as it pounded in my chest. After another flash of lightning, I tried to stand and instead slipped in the mud. I took a deep breath and shoved the hair off my face while I stood and tried to get my bearings in the flickering light. I started forward blindly and pushed a low branch out of my way. The feel of the rough bark on my hands was intense. Had I never grabbed a tree branch before? The leaves slapped my face as I moved forward through the swimming darkness.
I had the feeling that I’d lost something important, but I couldn’t remember what. Is that why I was out here, in the woods, in the dark, in a storm, looking for something I’d lost?
When I tripped on wet underbrush and landed on my hands and knees, a sharp stick pressed into my palm and the knee of my pants got soaking wet. I was dizzy with how incredible, how potent everything felt. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d really felt anything. Maybe it was during the funeral when I’d watched the coffin descend into the grave.
My heart constricted at the thought of my brother, Devlin. It was hard to breathe around the tightness, the ache in my chest. I rocked, trying to move the pain to make it more manageable and heard a sound like a hurt animal before I realized that it was coming from my throat. I gritted my teeth to make the sound stop and stumbled to my feet. I fastened my teeth on my bottom lip, the sensation distracting me from the problem with my chest. I was cold from the rain and the gusts of wind, but I was warm on the inside; below the pain I could feel the heat.
I scrambled to my feet and started forward blindly through the trees. I had to find the thing I’d lost. I turned my head as I saw a flicker in my periphery, a spark that bloomed into a flame. It lit the end of a cigar. The flame disappeared but the glowing cigar grew brighter and brighter as it burned down incredibly fast. I caught reddish glowing eyes and thought that he’d burn his face, but instead he flicked the cigar sending it flying end over end into the air. When it hit the tree above me, it exploded, and I flinched at the burst of sparks and flame that wrapped around the tree; it looked like someone had taken the time to paint lines of gasoline on the trunk and branches. I crouched trying to see something besides the lines of fire burnt into my retinas. On the ground, shadows danced, making me dizzy. Sparks popped, and there was still the flash and crash of lightening. It was too much. Everything was too much.
I looked up and saw the man with the cigar like a dark blur coming towards me backlit by the burning tree. When he lifted me by the front of my hoodie, I lashed out wildly to get his hands off me. I hit the ground and stayed there trying to regain my breath while he crouched across from me, the brim of his hat dripping rain. I recognized him but instead of feeling comforted at facing my mother’s oldest brother, I was furious with him. How dare he grab me like I was a sack of flour, like I was some thing?
“She was closer than you thought, Satan,” someone said from my left. A shadow came together beneath the brightly flickering tree torch. “Getting sloppy brother. Looks like she ripped your shirt.” It was the second oldest, the one they called Grim.
“What?” His voice registered on several octaves at the same time, a low gravelly sound that sent shivers down my arms. Satan looked down at his white shirt and fingered the sleeve where I’d pushed him away from me. “No kidding. All right, girl,” he said glaring at me. As he came closer I could feel my jaw tighten, and the heat in my belly spread through the rest of me. No one called me girl. “Come on.” He growled and reached for my shirt again.
As he reached for me, I bent my head and took the cigar-satura
ted hand between my teeth. The metallic taste of my uncle’s blood exploded my senses, and I felt like I was turned inside out. Everything slowed down and became even clearer. I watched my uncle’s fist as it came towards my head; I ducked taking the punch in my hand and then twisted his arm. I could feel my heart pounding while I grew hotter and hotter. There was a snap as his arm broke. In a movement as easy as falling, I was behind him holding him down in the mud with my arm across his throat.
“Oh, this is interesting,” Grim murmured. I’d forgotten about him. He crouched, leaning his elbows on his knees watching with apparent interest. “Evening, Dariana. It’s a pleasure to run into you like this. Satan’s manners are terrible. It’s about time a lady taught him a lesson. Don’t loosen your grip for my sake,” he said.
Satan made a sound, a choking unpleasant noise, but other than that held perfectly still. I saw another shadow emerge from the darkness, a longhaired man with elegant hands and soulful eyes, Shelley, and then another with a jagged scar down his face. Was it Steven or Stanley? I’d only been introduced to them in that hazy time I couldn’t really remember. It didn’t matter though since one by one all six stepped forward.
“What do you want?” I demanded. My voice came out loud and sure. Well, why wouldn’t I sound sure? I held my enormous uncle in my bare hands. It was at that point I began to realize how crazy this whole thing was.
“We were concerned when you missed dessert. If we didn’t find you, something terrible would happen. Shelley would eat all the pistachios, and then where would you be?” I stared at Grim’s face. It was white like everyone in my family with icy black eyes… No, his eyes were not black, they were blue, a dark blue that I found mesmerizing in the flickering firelight of the burning tree. His hair was slicked against his head, which made his face look even longer than usual and his eyes more sunken. He was too thin for his height, and as I looked at his hands, I had a flash of how well the shovel had fit as he’d thrown dirt into the grave—Devlin’s grave.
I shuddered and got lost beneath a wave of pain. I let go of Satan and stumbled back to wrap my arms around myself. Once again I noticed the coldness of the rain. The feeling of loss was so great, more terrible and aching than anything I’d ever felt. The sorrow struck me wave after wave until I felt like I was drowning.
The sounds Satan made as he gasped and coughed were harsh in my ears. It distracted me from the pain in my chest. I heard his breathing deepen and realized that the thumping I’d thought was rain was too steady, too different from the shattered raindrops that crashed through the leaves to the ground; they were heartbeats. The loudest came from my own chest. I covered my ears trying to get the sound to stop. Satan muttered and flopped his broken arm around like he was trying to fish something out of his pocket. I closed my eyes tight and hoped it would all go away. I licked my lips and could still taste the blood, cigars and rain. I could smell cigars. I opened my eyes and Satan was smoking, the hand of his broken arm in his pocket while he casually leaned against the torch tree, occasionally showered by sparks and ashes.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” I said then felt silly since the dangers of smoking were greatly outweighed by the dangers of staying so close to the burning tree.
He raised an eyebrow that didn’t have any hair growing on it. It looked bizarre under his slouchy hat. “And you shouldn’t take off with other people’s coats,” he growled in that terrible voice of his.
I winced wondering if I’d done that to his voice. No, it had been like that before I’d attacked him. No, he’d attacked me, hadn’t he? I tried to think clearly but another crash of lightning had me struggling to breathe, to remember what I was doing out in the woods in the first place. Wasn’t I looking for something? I remembered leaving the house with a coat that had been hanging in the hall, and I remembered walking and falling down, but all the images in my head were mixed up. Why had I gone on a walk in the first place? Satan was still staring at me. “Oh. I’m sorry about the coat. And I hope your voice is okay. And your arm... I’m sorry…” I looked around helplessly. I had no idea where I was much less what had happened to his coat. “I guess I lost it.” My voice was shaking now.
“No problem. Just a coat. Like all things, completely replaceable,” my uncle Grim said walking to Satan. “Brother, would you like me to mend your shirt?”
Satan raised his brows again. Had he singed them off when he lit the tree on fire? “I’d appreciate that.” He extended his arm to Grim who pulled out a needle and began working. I looked around at the other brothers but they all looked strangely relaxed and unconcerned as we all stood in the rain. I didn’t understand why they were fussing over a shirt when his arm was broken.
“Wouldn’t it be better to take the shirt to a tailor or something, you know, out of the rain, if you like it so much?” I asked.
“Shirts my size are hard to come by. Besides that, Grim’s stitches are finer than any tailor. As for the rain,” Satan looked up at the sky and let his face get wet. “It’s about done.”
A gust of wind made the uncles’ coats flap, and then the wind was gone and with it the rain.
“You found her,” a husky feminine voice said. I looked up and saw my mother in her long black boots and black coat. I stared at her perfectly dry hair and face. Where were her glasses? How had she stayed dry in a storm like that? The longer I stared at her the more out of place I felt. She didn’t give me more than a cursory glance while she looked at the Uncles. “Couldn’t you take care of the shirt at the house?” she asked. At least I wasn’t the only person who thought it was weird.
“Nearly finished,” Grim said pulling out a pair of scissors. “You know how Satan gets when his shirts rip.”
“Satan’s shirt got ripped by what?” She looked around this time crouching slightly as she peered into the woods around us. There was no way she could see anything, and as for hearing, the only thing to hear was the drip drop of water falling into last year’s bracken and this year’s new growth. As I listened, I noticed the gentle thump of hearts beating, the whining of mosquitoes, inhalations, all quiet except for Satan’s rattle. My mother held her breath. Why was that something I could hear? I covered my ears with my hands. It was impossible for me to hear people’s heartbeats. I couldn’t hear mosquitoes in the woods and a car that drove down the highway miles away. Except that I could.
“Dariana, would you mind if we went back to your house? I could use a hot cup of tea,” Grim said close to me. I flinched but he didn’t touch me. Why hadn’t I heard him move if I could hear so many other things?
“Yeah. Sure.” I followed Grim’s polite gesture ahead of him. Satan ripped a flaming branch off of the tree and walked in front. I watched him and realized that he had a cigar in one hand and the branch in the other. What happened to his broken arm? I must have imagined it. Broken arms didn’t heal in the time it took to mend a shirt.
My mother walked beside me. She looked straight ahead and didn’t glance at me once. That was normal for her so why did it bother me now? We moved faster than my tired body wanted to move. I could feel every step all the way through to my head, where it ached behind my temples. I was glad to finally reach the end of the woods and see a long black car in front of me. That is, I was relieved until I realized that it was a hearse.
“Would you like a ride?” Grim asked. One uncle opened the door and disappeared in the dark depths leaving the door open for me.
“It’s a hearse,” I said.
“Not actually. It’s more of an arsenal.” I stared at him wondering what he was talking about. “I’m not going to deny that it’s carried its share of dead bodies, but most of them start out alive.” Grim made an awful sound that might have been a chuckle. Oh, he was trying to be funny. “You could walk. It is a lovely night for it.” I followed his gaze to the sky and heard an ominous rumble of thunder. After a moment’s hesitation I climbed inside. When the door closed behind me, I sat tense until we reached the house trying not to hear the breathing of the uncle who
sat across from me.
Inside the house I stood in the entryway watching the uncles take off hats and overcoats, throwing them on the console, then heading to the kitchen. My mother gave me a glance, and then followed the rest of them without a word to me. It felt like a slap in the face. Didn’t she care where I’d been?
“Are you hungry or has the taste of big brother dampened your appetite?” Grim asked me as he took his time removing his coat and hat.
I shook my head. “No, I’m hungry.” I put a hand out on his sleeve as he walked by me. We both looked down at my hand, and I dropped it feeling self-conscious. “Grim, you don’t sound upset that I… you know… um… with Satan. You didn’t tell my mother. You must think I’m crazy.”
He looked up at me and smiled. His face was not made for smiling. “I think that it’s perfectly natural to want to hurt my brother. There is nothing crazy about that. I doubt I would want to taste that flesh though.” He grimaced. “He cannot have tasted very good.”
I was surprised at the giggle that came out of me. He grinned. “Don’t worry, niece. I think after a nice hot bath and a big meal, not to mention a good night’s sleep, you’ll feel much better.”
I nodded and started for the stairs. A hot bath sounded good. I heard voices murmuring from the kitchen and realized that Satan hadn’t come in with the others. “Where is Satan?” I asked.
“Oh, probably looking for his coat. He doesn’t like losing things. Are you still cold?”
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