The snow had turned to ice during the strange storm last night and it crunched under Emerson’s hiking boots. He was wearing a v-neck sweater but not a coat or gloves and I saw right away that he was also wearing contacts in an unspectacular shade of gray blue that failed to make him inconspicuous, if that was his goal. His skin was tinted a faint gold and I could smell the odor of soggy cornflakes which said a spray tanner had been employed. His long black hair whipped around him in the breeze that ran down the mountain at night and in the opposite direction come morning. I thought he looked like the Prince of Darkness. Without the hooves and horns, of course. He was Lucifer before the Fall and I found myself taking a deep, steadying breath.
He studied the broken window and the melted pit in the snow where the remains of the afghan lay in tatters.
“I had company. Some kind of animal, I think.”
“It’s dead?” he asked, turning back to the jeep and removing an anonymous duffle bag in sensible black.
“Well, it’s ash. Which is good enough since I’m not quite sure how to define dead anymore.”
“A conundrum,” he agreed and then walked toward me. He mounted the porch steps and with barely a pause, kissed my cheek in the manner of an old friend and then stepped indoors.
He kissed me. In that moment what I wanted most was five minutes alone with a shower and a toothbrush. It had been a long night and I suspected I looked and smelled rather the worse for wear. The shock of the attack had worn off enough for me to be vain.
“That was for the benefit of your inquisitive neighbor,” he said before I could ask why he had kissed me. “A large gentleman with no neck skulking in the bushes. That was chaste enough that I might pass for friend or family, if you want to explain me that way.”
I nodded, having an uncharitable thought about my neighbor and possible stalker. Dave has a neck, it is just overshadowed by the largest head I had ever seen on a homo-sapien. He probably also had a gun with him. Now, when I no longer needed one. I live in the country. With most guys in our town, a gun was just a gun. A few, like Dave, tended to use them as penis-enhancement. He never visited me without one. Thank goodness I hadn’t gotten weak and called him last night.
“Dave hasn’t much brain either, but he may notice the broken window and tell people. I suppose I’ll have to make up a story now.”
“Is there someone local who can do repairs?” Emerson asked, surveying the living room and the burn marks all over the hearth. There were claw marks too. The creature had fought hard.
“Yes. I’ll call at nine.”
“Good. In the meanwhile, we had best shift these rugs to cover the scorched floor or there will be questions if you have visitors. What messy creatures they are.”
“Especially when on fire,” I muttered.
His matter-of-fact calm was at once reassuring but also vaguely annoying after all my fear and panic. Before I could say anything more, the phone rang. Having a moment of clear intuition, I said: “Hello, Dave. You’re up early.”
“Hey.” This was his habitual greeting. “I noticed your broken window. What happened? I thought I heard a gunshot last night.”
Damn, he had noticed. I didn’t ask why he didn’t rush over immediately to check on me or call the police if he thought there was danger. Jerk. Brother-keeping isn’t a habit in a frontier town fueled more by nosiness and gossip than tender loving care, but a certain amount of it is to be expected among neighbors. However, as my grandma had observed more than once, a strong body can be topped with a weak mind. It is one of the ways The Lord plays jokes on us.
“It was a raccoon,” I lied since it was barely plausible. I met Emerson’s dark gaze. He looked amused and I was betting that he could hear both ends of the conversation. “A Godzilla sized raccoon. Don’t ask me how it got in, but it made a mess of the kitchen and then got into the fireplace. I have ash everywhere. I tried shooting it, but missed and messed up the wallpaper in the kitchen and broke the damn window.” That would amuse Dave who thought a pretty little thing like me couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if a target was painted on it. I am actually a fairly good shot. My grandmother had made sure of that. Pickles Linn had worshipped Annie Oakley and made sure her granddaughter shared her interest in target shooting. “I finally had to catch it in a blanket and throw it out. The damn thing ripped my grandma’s afghan to shreds.”
“Do you need some help? I could clean your gun so you don’t shoot your foot off. I know how it is with you brainy gals when you try to do practical things.” He was almost laughing. Not all of Dave’s tactlessness is due to a limited vocabulary and a defective school system.
Emerson was also smiling in amused disbelief. Great, two men were worried about me and both found me entertaining, though probably for different reasons.
“No, but thanks for asking. My cousin from Connecticut just arrived and he’s giving me a hand. I’ll have Ernie Campion out to fix the window as soon as he can. Do you think insurance will cover this?” I could not believe how easily I was lying.
“Maybe,” Dave sounded doubtful. “Don’t know about the wallpaper and window since you did that yourself.”
“Well, I better call and ask. Thanks for phoning, Dave. I’ll talk to you soon.” Whether I wanted to or not.
“Okay. You take care now.” He’d be back on the line as fast as he got dial tone and spreading the word about my supposed encounter with the raccoon. He would make me sound like a fourth in a Three Stooges movie.
“I will. Bye.”
“Would you like some coffee?” I asked as I hung up the phone. I did this carefully because I was mad at Dave not the hapless instrument that had brought me his voice. “I think I managed not to shoot the coffee machine.”
“Thank you,” he answered politely and followed me to the kitchen. “Would you like me to prepare it? I have some facility with this particular device.”
“Okay. I’m going to fix something to eat as well. You must be hungry. The airlines don’t feed anyone these days.” I sounded like my sister, always the hostess with the mostess.
“True, but the ghastly cuisine is no loss to me.”
“Okay,” I said a while later as I pulled a tray of biscuits from the oven and put butter and honey on the table. The kitchen was a lot neater. Emerson had applied himself to cleaning away the greasy ash while I made breakfast. Working side by side with this virtual stranger was oddly comfortable. “I want to know about this creep, Saint Germain, and why the hell—and how the hell—he was able to find me. Was it the blood at the cabin?”
He shot me a calculating look whose meaning I could not entirely decipher. Perhaps he was surprised that I would have any knowledge of the arcane. Or that I was willing to consider such ideas as plausible? It wasn’t that hard to accept though. As the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes. I had been attacked by a flaming monster that had discovered my whereabouts somehow, though I lived thousands of miles away from the last assault.
“Maybe. Probably,” Emerson said as he split a biscuit in two and slathered on some butter. “If so, it won’t happen again. I burned the cabin. It was the only way to be certain no one would discover what had passed there.”
I blinked, a little amazed at his ruthlessness, but pleased at the efficiency. Seeing my calm, he went on candidly.
“The how and why are both speculation, but here is what I know of our persecutor. Saint Germain is a necromancer, for lack of a better term. His work is only with the dead. He has never changed the living—perhaps he doesn’t know how the Dark Man’s curse works. And the trouble with resurrecting the dead is that whether walking or talking or committing blue bloody murder or even cannibalism, they are still dead. Still decaying in body and brain, however slowly—and they are slaves to the wizard’s will.” That was comprehensive. And horrible. “This imbecility maddens the wizard because he cannot create, train or control enough creatures for his army—not all at the same time. Why he wants a dead army, I do not know, but it canno
t be for any good purpose. As a way to possibly get around this problem, he has been collecting up the life-force from his father’s few still-living creations who are mostly humans with extras. He is what I think of as a soul-thief, and he likes our type of damned souls best. That would include my people as well as the Dark Man’s creations.” Emerson popped a piece of biscuit in his mouth and smiled blissfully. His horrifying words were not affecting his appetite. Familiarity truly had bred contempt.
“And he wants you now,” I suggested, ignoring the whole damned souls thing. I was pretty sure I didn’t believe in damnation.
“Yes. He succeeded in killing some of his father’s patients—the few who survived the Dark Man’s last insane purge— but some of us have escaped and remain at large. This annoys him.”
“How does this work exactly? I mean the changing.” What exactly had happened to me?
“I am certain that there is some scientific explanation for why this process works, but I am able to understand it only in mystical terms.” I would be happy to understand in any terms so I nodded encouragingly. “Death actually happens at the moment of electrocution, the five senses cease, the soul flees out of the body, but in some people there is a tether—a sixth sense—that is not so easily severed and this is a kind of lifeline back into the body. We are stronger after the death, I think, because of our brief encounter with and then rejection by the Divine. We have snatched godly fire and brought it back. We are not gods ourselves though, and after some decades it becomes necessary to repeat the process or we age rapidly and die. And we must use Saint Elmo’s fire as we act the part of the phoenix. Artificial electricity will not work. Nor does normal lightning.”
I tried to turn my critical faculties to his answer but found I had none available. The answer was unbelievable, but so was the reality. It had not escaped me that these monsters who had attacked me had seemed to be the perverted version of what Emerson and I were, resurrected by some supernatural power if not for the same reason. I found after some consideration that it wasn’t the grafted on limbs and teeth that were so terrible to me. Or that they were dead to begin with. Well, that was pretty terrible, but far worse was their overwhelming desire to kill and eat people. Could Saint Germain do that to Emerson or to me if we were captured?
“How many times have you…”
“Committed suicide? Three.”
The bald answer did not invite question or comment.
“Is Saint Germain going to be after me now?” I asked, with what I think was admirable calm. Inside I was hysterical. The smell of biscuits usually served up some happy memories of family breakfasts, but it was no match for the current grim reality. The odor was actually making me a bit nauseous.
“That depends on if the creature was the only tracker he sent and if you killed it before it reported in. Was it very aggressive?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. I’m certain it was after me, but falling down the chimney may have been an accident. I heard something in the flue and lit the fire. He was flaming by the time he made it into the living room.”
“You sensed it attempting to gain entrance?”
“Heard it and decided to be cautious. I listen to the little voice inside when it tells me to be careful. The little voice is almost never wrong.” Except that day at the cemetery. It had failed me then.
He nodded, undisturbed by the mention of inner voices. I‘ve heard that many authors have them too. And what is an inner voice compared to an undead creature anyway? The weird-factor wasn’t even on the same scale.
“And the window?” he asked.
“I threw him out the door, but he came back again. Through the closed window. He chased me to the kitchen—without any eyes, I should add, because his head was pretty much burnt away—and I shot him. It. Then I gathered up the body and put him in the fireplace. Had to skewer him with a poker to keep him there because he kept fighting.” I swallowed. That memory left me revolted. The smell had been like nothing on earth.
“That suggests determination. Still, if Saint Germain really wanted you dead, he would have sent more that one creature or at least something larger. I think it is safe to assume that this was a spy who may have been given orders to take you hostage if the opportunity arose. Dining upon you wasn’t on its mind. At least, not chiefly.”
“Kidnap, not murder and mastication? Oddly, that’s not all that reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. Complacency would not be wise at this juncture.”
“Swell. Not to complain about being alive, but I would really rather not have too many more monster visitations,” I said and made myself pour honey on a biscuit. I hadn’t Emerson’s appetite but I knew I would need food in my stomach before I took my medication. If I took my medication. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t taken any anti-seizure meds since I came home. My epilepsy was apparently gone too.
Perhaps it was all these undeniable physical changes in my body that were making it increasingly easier for me to accept what I was hearing from my strange companion. Maybe it was that my inner voice wasn’t telling me I was crazy for thinking these things.
“I believe that you are the means to an end,” Emerson said, interrupting my reverie.
“The end being you? Why—I mean why you in particular? And why would he assume that you would care what happens to me?” Eyes weighed me and I think they held reproach for my implied belief that he was indifferent to my fate. “What?” I asked. “It’s a fair question. We’ve barely even met. Most people wouldn’t put themselves out for a stranger. At least not to this degree.”
I meant kill for them, but we were being polite over the breakfast dishes and mostly dealing in palatable understatement.
“I believe that the wizard perceives the act of making you into… someone like me as significant. I have never done it before. I had thought the curse would end with me.” I suddenly felt like blushing though I was damned if I knew why. “As to why he wants me in particular…. My clan has always had a special gift which I believe he now covets. I am the last of my kind who goes into the world and the only one he could discover.”
“What clan? What gift?” I was willing to ask questions all morning if that’s what it took to understand.
“Raven Clan and I will discuss my hereditary peculiarities another time,” he said firmly. “Now let us begin the removal of all signs of your visitor. No need to leave any markers for other spies who may come calling later. Not all his creatures are inhuman and he is certainly not adverse to paying people for information.”
“Swell. Then let’s get going,” I agreed.
Emerson reached out and brushed a stray wisp of hair off of my cheek. It was a small gesture, but not something just any close friend might have done, and I realized how badly I had missed these small intimacies of the man-woman interaction. Feeling suddenly weakened and tearful at this small kindness, I hurried to my feet to hide my confusion and coloring cheeks.
I suspect that he was also surprised by his gesture since he stared at his fingers in perplexity, but said: “You are amazingly valiant, Anna Peyton. I don’t know many people who could have faced down a monster and stayed so calm. You should be proud of whatever has made you this way.”
Again, I was at a loss for words. Valiant? Me? My childhood had been pleasant, though not the paint-by-number happy meal most of my friends had. My parents had had too much personality for anything that mundane, and it was no surprise to my sister and me that they hadn’t died old and in their orthopedic beds. Adult life had been harder with them gone—a real crap-kicker, in fact, taking first the parents in a plane crash while trying out one my dad’s experimental aircraft designs—something my mom should have foreseen since she had the same inner voice as I— and then losing my husband in a hit-and-run by a drunk driver. Tragic but not beyond the normal, and my life before Baltimore still seemed reasonably conventional to me. I didn’t know where this efficiency and acceptance in the face of supernatural threat was coming from. I s
uspected that it had something to do with Emerson James. I was beginning to recall a little bit of what happened at the cabin, of the lightning eating my flesh and of being attacked what seemed like a murder of spectral crows, finally driven off by a giant raven.
Had my transformation at his hands caused some form of bond between us? Was that why his touch moved me? Fantasy and horror books were full of stories about monsters and their creators having mystical ties. I shivered at this thought.
Nervously I touched my bleached hair. It felt so much finer in texture now, but was that real or just my super-sensitive fingers? How could I be certain of anything?
“Anna, I know that the changes to your appearance have distressed you, but you look beautiful. Most of us touched by Divine Fire are appealing to the eye. In time it will all seem less strange. I do not even recall how I looked before.”
At least he had stopped calling it the curse. I was sort of pleased and sort of embarrassed by this observation. No one had talked to me about being beautiful since my husband died and I didn’t know how to react to the offhand comment. The silence stretched uncomfortably as I searched for a reply that wouldn’t sound coy or like I was fishing for further compliments. Or discouraging them either.
“Would it be possible to dictate a story to you later?” Emerson asked casually as he folded his napkin and set it aside. “I have a deadline and I can’t use a computer myself. Electronics fail around me because of the strong magnetic field that surrounds my body. You will eventually have troubles too, but it is something that grows over time.”
I blinked, not sure whether to be more interested in a chance to hear a new story or to be worried about the idea that someday I might not be able to use electrical devices.
“Um— certainly.”
“But let us arrange to have your window repaired first. We don’t feel cold the way others do, but it will appease your inquisitive neighbor,” he suggested. “And I shall remove all sign of the creature from the yard while you use the phone. I think that another snow this afternoon might be convenient.” This last bit was said quietly and didn’t sound like idle observation. I wondered wildly if he could make it snow.
Divine 05 - Nevermore Page 5
